MIRROR Cassia Fistula (Idea) 7" 6.50
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Both Andrew Chalk and Christoph Heemann of the the drone-improv outfit Mirror had been commissioned to remix elements from Brandon Walls' "Cassia Fistula" album. In spite of the fact that the source album was a dud, this limited edition 7" is quite good, with delicate feedback modulations and thick drones culled from analogue synthesis, ending up a bit more electronic than any of the Mirror albums. The packaging -- just a generic 7" sleeve -- leaves much to be desired though.

MIRROR Die Spiegelmanufaktur (Die Stadt) cd 24.00
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Previously released as a super limited edition picture disc, "Die Spiegelmanufaktur" has now been re-issued on CD!
This installment from the prolific Mirror catalogue finds Mirror's core protagonists Andrew Chalk and Christoph Heeman working with avant-rock darling Jim O'Rourke, who has kept himself busy by joining Sonic Youth. His presence will certainly bring this understated drone project to a bigger audience, and hopefully more attention to the reclusive, yet brilliant Chalk, whose solo work as well as his work with Organum, Ora, and Jonathan Coleclough remain all-time favorites here at Aquarius. The recordings found here were culled from a Mirror performance at the Lagerhaus in Bremen, Germany just a few months back in April 2002. The instrumentation appears to be organ, drone guitar, bowed metal, and some unidentified resonant clatter hovering at the event horizon much like the miniature sounds that Keith Rowe has produced for the recent AMM recordings. Through the glassine drone tricks that Chalk and Heeman have perfected in previous Mirror recordings, all of these sounds seamlessly meld into a tranquil piece of evocative ambience. Sporadically, a tremolo flutter emerges, probably indicative of some laptop trickery from O'Rourke. Do not fear, O'Rourke has left his Max / MSP patches turned off and thoughtfully ensured that his contribution was complementary to the Mirror sound. "Die Spiegelmanufaktur" is the least ominous Mirror recording, conjuring images of the colorful spectacle of calm sunrises, but fortunately, Mirror veer far from the artistic suicide of New Age drivel. This is another beautiful recording by Mirror.
MPEG Stream: "Die Spiegelmanufaktur 1"
MPEG Stream: "Die Spiegelmanufaktur 3"

MIRROR Die Spiegelmanufaktur (Die Stadt) lp 24.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This installment from the prolific Mirror catalogue finds Mirror's core protagonists Andrew Chalk and Christoph Heeman working with the avant-rock darling Jim O'Rourke, who has kept himself busy by joining Sonic Youth. His presence will certainly bring this understated drone project to a bigger audience, and hopefully more attention to the reclusive, yet brilliant Chalk, whose solo work as well as his work with Organum, Ora, and Jonathan Coleclough remain all-time favorites here at Aquarius. The recordings found here were culled from a Mirror performance at the Lagerhaus in Bremen, Germany just a few months back in April 2002. The instrumentation appears to be organ, drone guitar, bowed metal, and some unidentified resonant clatter hovering at the event horizon much like the miniature sounds that Keith Rowe has produced for the recent AMM recordings. Through the glassine drone tricks that Chalk and Heeman have perfected in previous Mirror recordings, all of these sounds seamlessly meld into a tranquil piece of evocative ambience. Sporadically, a tremolo flutter emerges, probably indicative of some laptop trickery from O'Rourke. Do not fear, O'Rourke has left his Max / MSP patches turned off and thoughtfully ensured that his contribution was complementary to the Mirror sound. "Die Spiegelmanufaktur" is the least ominous Mirror recording, conjuring images of the colorful spectacle of calm sunrises, but fortunately, Mirror veer far from the artistic suicide of New Age drivel. This is another beautiful recording by Mirror.
While in a few months a slightly different mix of this performance will be published on CD, "Die Spiegelmanufaktur" is now available as a picture disc feature Chalk's artwork and is strictly limited to 400 copies!
RealAudio clip: "Die Spiegelmanufaktur (excerpt 1)"
RealAudio clip: "Die Spiegelmanufaktur (excerpt 2)"

MIRROR Eye of the Storm (Streamline) cd 14.98
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Of all of the Mirror records that have come out over the past three or four years, "Eye Of The Storm" has so far been the cream of the crop for the impressionistic drone duo of Andrew Chalk and Christoph Heemann. Originally released as an incredibly limited and incredibly expensive lp (even by Mirror standards) complete with an individually printed etching smeared with watercolors, "Eye Of The Storm" has thankfully been reissued on CD by Heemann's Streamline label, although with much more economical packaging. The sounds on this album immediately manifest a sublime sense of calm and tranquility, underpinned by subtly unnerving, haunting evocations that keep this album far from the realm of New Age drivel. Environmental sounds of wind, surf, and maybe even distant highways comprise the bulk of the source material, although Chalk and Heemann have multi-tracked and down-pitched these elements as to blur all of the edges and muffle the references. The duo couples these environmental passages with a quiet and slow chorus of bells, gongs, and singing bowls which flutter and quiver with an elegantly restrainted use of electronics. Perhaps because of the source material in question, "Eye Of The Storm" sparks a physicality of meteorological phenomenon, especially the cold & humid foggy air of a sleepy coastal town, yet it is eerily unwelcoming. Absolutely one of my (Jim's) favorite records of all time.
RealAudio clip: "Eye of the Storm"

MIRROR Front Row Centre (Die Stadt) lp 17.98
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The breathtakingly beautiful collaborations between Andrew Chalk and Christoph Heemann as Mirror have resulted in three superb deep listening / tonal drift records in a little under a year, with "Eye of The Storm" for Streamline, "Ringstones" for Some Fine Legacy, and this for Die Stadt. While their production techniques revolve around blurring the sonic edges of arcane source material (highway field recordings, bowed metals, and tape machine backmasking), Mirror allows more of the source material to speak on its own with extended notes from orchestral warm-ups. They have layered hazy passages for lengthy french horns, warm strings, and a handful of their own mysterious drones within a slow building composition. If you've fallen for Chalk's work in the past, this album will certainly impress you also. Stunning work.

MIRROR I Paint For Love Of Color (Idea) lp 22.00
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In November 2000, Mirror travelled to the US for a handful of shows in Austin, Chicago, and maybe a few other places in between (unfortunately not San Francisco). While cd-r bootlegs of those shows have been circulating, "I Paint For Love Of Color" is the second official documentation of that US tour, the first being the "Island" 2LP on Die Stadt. Mirror, of course, is the dronological outfit featuring Andrew Chalk, Christoph Heemann, and Andreas Martin, and has been releasing their work in a steady stream of very limited, vinyl only pressings. "I Paint For Love Of Color" was recorded in Ceremony Hall in Austin, and finds the trio creating another beautiful drift of guilded guitar drones that slide from delicate, elemental tones into eerie field recordings of distant alien screeches and thickly reverberated clamor. In contrast to the other Mirror albums, this is a bit more noisy, but doesn't stray too far from that amazing Mirror sound. Limited to only 800 copies, which will probably be gone before you blink.

MIRROR Islands (Die Stadt) 2lp 17.98
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With a pressing of 1000 copies, Mirror's "Islands" may stay in print a little bit longer than all of the previous outings from this magnificent drone ensemble. Beginning as a duo of hermetic Andrew Chalk and part-time Nurse With Wound collaborator Christoph Heemann, Mirror has officially expanded into a trio with the addition of Andreas Martin -- Heemann's former partner in the cinematically Dadaist collage outfit HNAS. While all of the Chalk / Heemann outings as Mirror are totally breathtaking, the first outing for this Mirror trio was the shakey "Nightwalkers" album, which was dominated by perfunctorily isolationist washes of e-bowed guitars.
"Islands" finds Mirror returning to the guitar with much more successful results. Sprawling across four sides of translucent blue vinyl, "Islands" seemlessly melts both studio sessions and live recordings from a series of recent shows in Austin, Texas. Like all of Mirror's albums, "Islands" appears as a fragment of a much larger composition which extends well beyond the temporal constraints of any given media. Complex ever shifting drones and mercurial tonalities belie the instrumentation being solely guitars, as field recordings of rainstorms and shadowy metallic striations emerge within Mirror's thick ambient wash. Of course, it's recommended. But don't expect this to last, despite the larger pressing.

MIRROR Nightwalkers (Robot) cd 15.98
Back in 2003, Streamline reissued the first Mirror record Eye Of The Storm on cd; and now Robot has seen fit to reissue another early Mirror record Nightwalkers. Originally released back in 2000, Nightwalkers found Mirror's core duo of Christoph Heemann and Andrew Chalk working with Andreas Martin, who had previously collaborated with Heemann in producing the crushed-velvet prog / ambience of Mimir. Martin's presence on this album definitely changes Mirror's awe-inspiring dronescapes built from manipulated field recordings and sustained tonalities; first of all there are clusters of drum machine rhythms which interrupt the tranquil beauty of the signature Chalk / Heeman minimalism, and elsewhere, Martin brings a wholly unmysterious e-bow guitar sound to Mirror as well. This has never been our favorite Mirror record, but even the weakest Mirror record is still pretty darn good in the greater scheme of things.
MPEG Stream: "Nightwalkers 2"
MPEG Stream: "Nightwalkers 4"

MIRROR Nightwalkers (Robot Records) lp 17.98
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Mirror, the collaborative effort between Andrew Chalk and Christoph Heemann, has already produced four albums this year of gorgeous drone mystery. Here the duo has been joined by Andreas Martin (who with Heemann made up the dada collage outfit HNAS in the '80s). I was never a big fan of HNAS, so even the collaboration of someone as awe-inspiring as Chalk with Heemann made me nervous. While all of Mirror's preceding albums are some of the best drone records to pass through Aquarius, "Nightwalkers" is not as exciting as one would hope. Perhaps we should blame the new kid in Mirror, as Andreas Martin brought a wholly unmysterious eBow guitar sound and intrusive drum machine clatter to the otherwise alien dronology of the group. Certainly for Andrew Chalk completists (like Jim) only.

MIRROR Ringstones (Some Fine Legacy) lp 16.98
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Mirror is the collaborative work of Andrew Chalk and Christoph Heemann (whose production talent has recently been employed by Nurse With Wound). Through the gradual introduction of delicate hazy drones which provide little external references, Mirror's audio alchemy is apt to delude the listener about the length of these two beautiful and hypnotic recordings. We had thought that this might be the more affordable version of the first Mirror album (which ran around $55.00 due to the individually printed etchings as on the artwork), but it's an entirely new album. As with each Andrew Chalk release that has presented itself to us, this is highly recommended!

MIRROR Solaris (Idea) cd 16.98
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Finally! The first CD release from Mirror, the AQ-favorite duo of Andrew Chalk and Christoph Heemann (nope, no Jim O'Rourke or Andreas Martin on this album) whose previous recordings had been all been vinyl only releases! As was hinted in their last album "Die Spiegelmanufaktur," Mirror express themselves on "Solaris" less through the quest for the drone supreme of unidentifiable tonal fluctuations and more through the delicate interplay of slowly evolving improvisations sounding not unlike recent AMM swimming in the murk of drainage-ditch reverberation. Similarly, the instrumentation has shifted more towards the free-improv territory, centered around prepared piano and clarinet with plenty of drone processing. Neither instrument come across as being typically employed, as the woodwind emits breathy rushes of sound at times and at others haunted bleats resonating like Tibetan thigh-bone horns that had been so prevalent with the early Current 93 and Lustmord recordings. Slightly more conventional in its use, the prepared piano comes across as delicate plucks of the piano's strings and muffled clusters of notes hovering throughout the spatial plane. Nicely done.
RealAudio clip: "Solaris (excerpt 1)"
RealAudio clip: "Solaris (excerpt 2)"
RealAudio clip: "Solaris (excerpt 3)"

MIRROR Still Valley (Die Stadt) cd 24.00
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Earlier this year, Christoph Heemann and Andrew Chalk parted ways, effectively ending the steady stream of objet d'arts / impressionist soundscapes the two produced as Mirror. Still Valley is one of the final Mirror documents, which found Heemann and Chalk working with occasional member Jim O'Rourke. It was orginally released on vinyl earlier in 2005, but like all of the Mirror LPs, Still Valley quickly went out of print and is probably fetching very high prices on eBay. Now that it has received a proper CD reissue, Still Valley features a lengthy bonus track to make it well worth the investment for those who got the LP to also get the CD. In comparing Still Valley to recent post-Mirror output by Andrew Chalk, it appears that Still Valley is more closely aligned to his aesthetic than of those by either Heeman or O'Rourke. As on his breathtaking Sumac collaboration with Jonathan Coleclough and the flawless The River That Flows Into The Sand, Chalk's whispered minimalism exhibits the ability to stop time; and Mirror does just that in this aural mirage of tonefloat shimmer, delicate whistlings, and reverse-engineered drones. Limited to 1000 copies, which may translate to this sticking around for a little bit longer; but that does not change the fact that Still Valley is absolutely gorgeous.
MPEG Stream: "Still Valley 1"
MPEG Stream: "Still Valley 2"

MIRROR Still Valley (Die Stadt) lp 27.00
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Except in unabashedly biased reviews from this store, Christoph Heeman continues to get the bulk of the credit for the successes of Mirror; but again, we must reiterate that Mirror is a collaboration with Andrew Chalk. His sustained bowing drones have previously been heard in his work with Jonathan Coleclough on Sumac, some of the more tranquil compositions by Organum, and a few hard-to-find solo albums; and his aesthetic of a whispered minimalism that has the ability to stop time is front and center on Still Valley, even though occasional Mirror-man Jim O'Rourke contributes to this LP only release. There's actually very little to talk about, as backwards masked drones (from what may be long-stringed instruments, bowed cymbals, or even just guitars) linger along the horizon like a mirage, flickering with a formless consistency. Absolutely gorgeous.

MIRROR Viking Burial for a French Car (Plinkity Plonk) cd 19.98
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It may seem like a curious title for Mirror, who are best known for simple if anthropomorphic allusions in their titles rather than something more fitting for the Icelandic absurdists Stilluppsteypa; yet one cannot forget that Mirror's Christoph Heemann began his musical career in the Nurse With Wound obsessed ensemble Hirsche Nicht Aufs Sofa, which translates as Moose Without A Sofa. That is not to say that Viking Burial for a French Car recalls the surrealistic meandering of HNAS, rather it sounds much like all of the other Mirror recordings -- tranquil, somber, and hypnotic dronescapes that hover like a wintery fog. With the inclusion of a few Scotsmen (David Keenan, Alex Neilson, and Gavin Laird) alongside Andrew Chalk and Heemann, the Mirror sound is altered a little bit. At first, Mirror unveils a sonorous tone of what could be a thousand car horns bleating into a canyon. This undulating mass of sound gradually gives way a post-AMM / Organum clamour of drum kit improv tumbling and textural growling, before dissolving back to the introductory funereal timbers that drift onward to oblivion.
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 01"
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 02"

MIRROR Visiting Star (Three Poplars) lp 39.00
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During the last year, Mirror has quietly released 6 albums - several of them incredibly limited art editions, wrapped in etchings, hand drawings, or monoprints. "Visiting Star" is one of those art editions (hence the price) with a lengthy strip of delicate paper hand patinaed with coppers, blues, and silvers and then wrapped around a standard black album cover. The color choice is one that matches the overall tonal quality that Mirror has been mastering during their brief but incredibly prolific career. Once simply the duo of AQ-favorite Andrew Chalk and recent Nurse With Wound collaborator Christoph Heemann, Mirror has recently expanded its membership to include Andreas Martin (who worked with Heemann in the '80s dadaist collage ensemble H.N.A.S.). While the first document of the new Mirror lineup faltered a bit, Mirror has returned to form with 'Visiting Star' -- mostly by recognizing that what Mirror does best is allow for Chalk's aesthetic of reflective metallic tones to float through space with all of their sublime glory intact. Here, Mirror's working process reveals itself a bit more, as eBowed guitars drift lazily alongside gently bowed gongs and bells. Absolute beauty.

MIRROR TO MIRROR A Personal Reality (Arbor) cassette 5.98

MIST Glowing Net (Amethyst Sunset) 12" 14.98
More exceptional recordings broadcast from the house of Emeralds! Mist is the collaboration between Emeralds' John Elliott and Sam Goldberg, both employing a bunch of synthesizers for this sci-fi extravaganza. Like Emeralds (and all of the other John Elliott productions for that matter), Glowing Net locates itself at the tail end of the post-krautrock explorations of progressive electronics from the early '80s that quickly devolved into new age drivel and tepid incidental music. Much of that devolution of kosmische music into garbage came at the hands of too many portentous concepts and over-reaching metaphysical agendas, and while Elliott and Goldberg are tapping into a poetry of galactic expansiveness through their electronics, they never lose sight of the simple elegance of an arpeggiated melody, open-ended allusions, or a bittersweet reflectiveness that comes from the benefit of hindsight. The album opens with a plaintive aquatic percolation that slides into a tighter, focused lazerbeam of sequences on "Sky High" that at once speaks to fellow hypnotist Oneohtrix Point Never and the soaring work of J.D. Emmanuel. "Mist Stream" acquires something similar to Wolfgang Voigt's highly innovative ambient swoosh on the Gas album Pop, soaring above a low-ratcheted arpeggiation. Very impressive stuff, that could easily be extended into a 20 minute zoner jam, but Mist has condensed this down to an economic four minute track. While this album is cut at 45 rpm, we've resisted our normal urge to spin these at 33, since Mist got everything just right at this speed. No need to fuck with genius!
MPEG Stream: "A.M."
MPEG Stream: "Sky High"
MPEG Stream: "Soaring Yellow / Glowing Net"

MIST House (Spectrum Spools / Editions Mego) cd 16.98
NOW ON CD!!!
Since Emeralds released their impeccable album Does It Look Like I'm Here in 2010, the trio has set a very high bar for themselves, not only for the next Emeralds record (whenever that may surface) but also for all of the individual members' various side projects. For the most part, everything John Elliott, Mark McGuire, and Steve Hauschildt have produced by themselves has not strayed far from the Emeralds aesthetic of luminous, analogue electronics that harkens back to the progressive sounds of Ash Ra Tempel, Cluster, and early Tangerine Dream, and there have been some completely sublime moments that came close to Does It Look Like I'm Here. The Imaginary Softwoods double lp set was one such album, as was the McGuire solo lp Off In The Distance, and now we have this Mist album, released through John Elliott's Mego-manufactured imprint Spectrum Spools. Mist finds synth-wrangler Elliott working with fellow Cleveland native Sam Goldberg; the two had previously released a couple of lps of sparkling electronics on Arbor and Am. While those records were quite good, House is fucking great.
Out of a tightly interlocking set of synthetic percolations, the opening track "Twin Lanes" launches upward into satellite orbit with an effervescent burst of shimmering noises and one of Elliott's impeccable bass-melodies (think back to "Candyshop" on the aforementioned Emeralds album Does It Look Like I'm Here). "Mist House" is a radiant track of tonefloat purity and church organ hallowedness that eschews the early tracks' step sequencing and arpeggios, while keeping the same sparkling atmosphere. The transition from the fuzzy static laden percolations from "Dead Occasions" to the Kraftwerkian sequences of the mechanical track "Ovary Stunts" is particularly dramatic, especially given the polygon layers of sci-fi melodic wander on the latter track that gives Mist a very Oneohtrix Point Never feel. "P.M." rounds out the album with prolonged passages of hypnotic arpeggiations coated with interstellar space dust and girded with a sublime motorik churning of step sequenced bass synths. House is easily the best Mist record to date, and ranks up there amongst the many Emeralds related projects.
MPEG Stream: "Twin Lanes"
MPEG Stream: "I Can Still Hear Your Voice"
MPEG Stream: "Daydream"

MIST House (Spectrum Spools) lp 27.00
Since Emeralds released their impeccable album Does It Look Like I'm Here in 2010, the trio has set a very high bar for themselves, not only for the next Emeralds record (whenever that may surface) but also for all of the individual members' various side projects. For the most part, everything John Elliott, Mark McGuire, and Steve Hauschildt have produced by themselves has not strayed far from the Emeralds aesthetic of luminous, analogue electronics that harkens back to the progressive sounds of Ash Ra Tempel, Cluster, and early Tangerine Dream, and there have been some completely sublime moments that came close to Does It Look Like I'm Here. The Imaginary Softwoods double lp set was one such album, as was the McGuire solo lp Off In The Distance, and now we have this Mist 2lp, released through John Elliott's Mego-manufactured imprint Spectrum Spools. Mist finds synth-wrangler Elliott working with fellow Cleveland native Sam Goldberg; the two had previously released a couple of lps of sparkling electronics on Arbor and Am. While those records were quite good, House is fucking great.
Out of a tightly interlocking set of synthetic percolations, the opening track "Twin Lanes" launches upward into satellite orbit with an effervescent burst of shimmering noises and one of Elliott's impeccable bass-melodies (think back to "Candyshop" on the aforementioned Emeralds album Does It Look Like I'm Here). "Mist House" is a radiant track of tonefloat purity and church organ hallowedness that eschews the early tracks' step sequencing and arpeggios, while keeping the same sparkling atmosphere. The transition from the fuzzy static laden percolations from "Dead Occasions" to the Kraftwerkian sequences of the mechanical track "Ovary Stunts" is particularly dramatic, especially given the polygon layers of sci-fi melodic wander on the latter track that gives Mist a very Oneohtrix Point Never feel. The album's finale "P.M." fills up all of side D, with prolonged passages of hypnotic arpeggiations coated with interstellar space dust and girded with a sublime motorik churning of step sequenced bass synths. House is easily the best Mist lp to date, and ranks up there amongst the many Emeralds related projects.
MPEG Stream: "Twin Lanes"
MPEG Stream: "I Can Still Hear Your Voice"
MPEG Stream: "Daydream"

MIST s/t (Amethyst Sunset) lp 17.98
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We thought these to be long gone, but a surprise restock of this Emeralds side-project reappeared a month or so after we originally pegged it as out of print. Do NOT expect this to remain in print for much longer!
Mist is the Ohio-centric retrograde electronics duo featuring John Elliott of Emeralds and Sam Goldberg, who runs the Pizza Night tape label. This is actually the third outing for Mist, as the two have mustered a couple of other cassettes, released earlier this year which disappeared before we even had the chance to grab any. Fortunately, we did manage to snag some of this LP on Amethyst Sunset. The Elliott / Goldberg authored electronics here don't veer too much from the Emeralds spaced-out electronics that reflect the best in the realm of late '70s / early '80s progressive electronics (e.g. the more abstracted moments from Kraftwerk and the Eno collaborations with Fripp and Cluster). It's not quite as dark or as melancholy as Emeralds and thus sounds like those sci-fi percolations that fellow knob-twiddler Oneohtrix Point Never and Pulse Emitter have rejuvenated in recent years. Certainly, these are elegant passages of arppegiating analogue electronics and heavily sequenced patterns that intertwine nicely into chiming, sparkling, bubbling zone-tripping. Recommended for sure!

MIXED BAND PHILANTHROPIST The Impossible Humane (Siren) cd 17.98
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This is the cd reissue of a unusual neo-Dadaist collage from the Mixed Band Philanthropist originally on vinyl only from Selektion back in 1986 or so. Recombining source material from Nurse With Wound, Organum, P16.D4, Andrew Chalk, The New Blockaders, S.B.O.T.H.I. (Achim Wollschied), Merzbow, Controlled Bleeding, Asmus Teitchens, and dozens more, the Mixed Band Philanthropist's wacky noise assault is similar in nature to the blistering collages found on Nurse With Wound's "Sylvie & Babs" album. Strains of this mid-80's experimental sound can be heard in the laptop collages from the Mego technicians.

MIZUTANI, KIYOSHI Scenery Of The Border: Environments And Folklore Of The Tanzawa Mountains (And / OAR) 2cd 15.98
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A few years back, Kiyoshi Mizutani ventured into the Tanzawa mountain range located to the southwest of Tokyo in order to document the sounds of that very isolated region. In the liner notes to this album, Mizutani explains that this region enjoys a complex history with centuries worth of military endeavors and legends including one tragedy which Mizutani alludes to about "the losing army's princess." Needless to say, the mountains may have been of strategic importance to any number of rival factions; but by now, their remoteness and desolation harbors only a small population. He focuses his attention upon three aspects of those mountains: the natural (which is the dominant voice of the Tanzawan environment), the ceremonial folklore of the people, and the residual noise of the man-made. Mizutani's love of bird sounds was evident on one of his early sound works simply entitled Bird Songs; and the spirited chatter of many a bird dots Mizutani's field recordings. Crickets, cicadas, and plenty of insect choruses also feature into Scenery Of The Border, as does a broad range of watery recordings from quiet drips from a misty rain to the immersive white noise of waterfalls. The few recordings that feature a human presence are of restrained Shinto and Buddhist ceremonies, which Mizutani mentions have rarely been heard outside of that region. It's these ritualistic stompings and hushed bits of chanting that stand amongst the highlights of this incredible field recording document.
MPEG Stream: "Hail At Mt. Tanzawa"
MPEG Stream: "Million Times Invocation Of Yozuku"
MPEG Stream: "Blue And White Flycatcher At Shiomizu Pass"

MIZUTANI, KYOSHI Bird Songs (Ground Fault ) cd 11.98
During the '80s, Kyoshi Mizutani was a member of Merzbow with Masami Akita - the man who's name is often synonymous with Merzbow, in spite of the many individuals who have helped with his ongoing Merzbow project. For this album, Mizutani presents six different and mostly untreated field recordings with tenuous connections to bird songs. The first track features the most overt manipulation of the field recorings with Mizutani sampling and modulating the tweeting song of an Indian Tree Pipit. Mizutani's raw recordings also feature the strange call of a Ground Thrush in the midnight rain and the squawking of several ducks as the airplanes fly overhead their bird sanctuary. There's also a track in which Mizutani records a duet between himself spartanly playing a thumbpiano and the calls of a number of birds in the forest. While he's captured some nice sounds, his microphone is not quite as finely tuned as the ones used by Bernie Krause or Chris Watson.

MNEM Hypstatic Ground (Drone Records) 7" 6.50
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Drone Records -- run by Stefan Knappe of Troum and Maeror Tri -- exclusively produces seven inches mostly by emerging artists who specialize in expressive drone work (hence the label name). While there is something to be said for Drone's dedication to unknown artists, the work that comes from the ongoing series tends to be some of the best work from each of the artists' respective catalogues. This definitely includes more familiar names such as Reynols (with their infamous '10,000 Chicken Symphony'), Francisco Lopez, Spear, and Osso Exotico; but also lesser known artists such as Klood and Tarkatak. Drone tends to make small runs of these singles (usually about 250 copies and with handmade covers) and they always go fast.
Mnem's "Hypstatic Ground" is another fine entry from the ongoing Drone series. It appears that Mnem is a couple of Finnish guys who have been tinkering around with the mechanisms of old reel-to-reel tape machines, to build warbling compositions of collaged creaks, clatterings, and buzzes with all sorts of slow descents into rumbling noise and infernal rhythmic grindings. If Philip Jeck ever wanted to make a piece that was seething and angry and subtly brutal, it would probably sound like this. Limited to 250 copies.

MNORTHAM :coyot: (Erewhon) cd 13.98
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Aeolian harps are relatively simple devices made from of a couple planks of wood and a taut wire, which are placed in relation to a wind source to transform the speed, force, and directionality of the air itself into an extended drone. David Kenny's Aeolian String Ensemble and Douglas Quin's Antarctica recordings (using ice instead of wood and wire) are previous examples we've mentioned of the amazing sounds that an aeolian harp can generate. Portland sound artist Mnortham received a commission to install a series of aeolian harps in an abandoned bunker found on an island off the coast of Finland. (Cool!) ":coyot:" is a collection of the transmuted sounds from the recordings that Mnortham made within that bunker, as well as from various field recordings culled from the exploration of the island's landscape. While the lengthy essay contributed by Giancarlo Toniutti offers a complex thesis on the relation of these recordings to the sky / wind / air mythologies of a number of ancient Nordic races, Mnortham's recordings succeed through their beautifully droning simplicity, much like Francisco Lopez or Jonathan Coleclough.
RealAudio clip: "Effects On Atmospheric Pressure On Air-Born Particles"

MNORTHAM Automnal 2003 (And / OAR) cd 13.98
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As of spring 2007, the nomadic lifestyle of Michael Northam may land the American born sound artist in New Delhi where he might manage a media arts facility or he might take up the humble calling of a gardener in the south of France, where he could find plenty of inspiration for his ecologically tinged compositions. The excitement, fear, and instability of not really knowing where housing might come from has been the existence for Mr. Northam for many years now, and he's always managed to build an impressively cohesive body of work through composition, performance, and exhibition. The Automnal 2003 disc was originally a self-published CD-R which Northam gave to his friends and colleagues as a testament to the benefits, joys, trials, and failures to his chosen lifestyle. During the 24 months between August 2001 and the autumn of 2003, Northam picked up and moved his studio 13 times across Europe and North America; and the three extended tracks on Automnal represent three particular places along that journey. The first track opens with a glassy drone of sustained string vibration which sound remarkably like the more pastoral tones of Phill Niblock. Aquatic rumblings and fluttering patterns emerge as complementary elements to the Northam's droning infinitude that aptly fits Northam's geographical subject, a glacier on the Switzerland / France border. The second track is my (Jim's) favorite piece that Northam has created to date. With a gaping low-end drone beautifully stacked with what seem to be choral harmonics built from the environmental recordings of crickets near a stream, Northam offers a breaktaking, nocturnal piece of activated ambience much like Zoviet France's Shadow Thief Of The Sun or Gas' Konigsforst minus the motorik rhythm, of course. For the finale of Automnal 2003, Northam presents a sinewy vibrational hypnosis that's quite similar in frequency to the first track, yet he manages to dislocate the bleary ambience with a subcutaneous stream of crackle and static. A wonderful record!
MPEG Stream: "Weave"
MPEG Stream: "Creek"
MPEG Stream: "Ils Grosbois"

MNORTHAM Go (Ferns) 3" cd 9.98
This 3" CD from the always impressive sound artist mnortham (nee Michael Northam) was conceived as a tribute to his father who was a race car driver from 1949 until 1965. In those days, Northam's father strapped himself into what was quite literally a rocket of a car, as it was little more than a aerodynamic cylindrical frame, a beast of an engine, four wheels, and barely enough room to cram in the driver. While the sound artist Northam didn't have any archival recordings of the race car driver Northam as source material, mnortham did venture to the Terre Haute Raceway back in the summer of 2005. From the field recordings of that event, mnortham concocts a surprisingly elegant collage of cyclical tumblings and aerating sonic masses reflecting the centripetal forces of the human body when put under such rigorous conditions. As volatile and aggressive as the soundfield of raceways can be (one can look no further than the Santa Pod collection of racetrack recordings released by Ash International a few years back), mnortham has wholly avoided the Merzbowian noise precepts. While cacophonous in the truest sense of the word, Go is a certainly not a noise composition instead adhering to the signature aggregate sound of compounding and compacting layers of sound into a vulcanized, elliptical drone mass aiming for the elation from speed and acceleration over the testosterone implied by the roar of an engine. Very well done.
MPEG Stream: "Go"

MNORTHAM Memoirs of Four Discarded Objects (Edition ... ) cd 14.98
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MNORTHAM Molecular Knot Phase One (Cloud Of Static ) cd ep 13.98
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Sound piled upon sound piled upon sound and piled on more sound is the signature of Michael Northam's process in his installations and compositions. Far from the irritating collisions of sound in Merzbow, Northam softens, rounds, and blurs his dense collages into a shadowy minimalism; and the Molecular Knot Phase One is an excellent example of Northam's methods. He began this short 20 minute composition with source material he produced with Seth Nehil, whereby the two gently struck a variety of zithers and found objects. Northam then extracted tiny sounds (hence the title) from that source material, stretched and compounded them into timbral drones, then densely collaged those sounds into the eerie mass found on Molecular Knot Phase One. Very nicely done.
MPEG Stream: "Molecular Knot Phase One"

MNORTHAM Porous (Cloud Of Static) cd 23.00
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The expatriate American sound artist Michael Northam has been wandering across Europe for many years now, finding himself in various residency programs where he has built an impressive body of installations, collaborations, and recordings from densely superimposed sounds that result in gorgeous swarms of magnetic vibrations and droning minimalism. For better or for worse, Northam has consistently released his work on small labels in small editions, meaning that we've not been able to dedicate as much to his work as we would like. Porous is one of those, released on the Cloudmirror label, which Northam had a hand in establishing. This lengthy, two-part composition is a reworking of a 24 channel installation Northam produced for the Klangturm in St. Polten, Austria back in September of 2001. Northam typically begins with acoustic instruments or phenomenon; and Porous is no different, as he collects tiny sounds from plucked pine cones, rustled leaves, and scribblings from other found objects. Slowly, he builds these textural sounds into quiet thrashings of muffled events that begin to echo and fold on top of each other into a thick droning mass. A very nice record, Porous ends up sounding not too far from the best work of Francisco Lopez, Andrew Chalk, Ellen Fullman, and Loren Chasse.
MPEG Stream: "Porous 1"
MPEG Stream: "Porous 2"

MNORTHAM / JGRZINICH The Stomach of the Sky (Staalplaat) cd 16.98
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MNortham (who has previously been sighted on the fantastic Ora album Anagram and in recent collaboration with Francisco Lopez) and JGrzinich are sound artists investigating the properties of various organic acoustic forms, making use of long wire devices, found materials, assembled devices, aeolian wind harps, and a field recordings. Culled from years of collaborative recordings, The Stomach Of The Sky begins with extended rumble of densely layered sounds -- very much like the latest Lopez field recording work. Then the duo introduces a delicate metallic drones / scrapes / gurgles which could come from the Organum / Andrew Chalk school of bowed cymbals and gongs or from a processed field recording of water running through copper pipes. Either way, it's a beautiful magnetic tone.

MODELL, ROD Incense & Black Light (Plop) cd 17.98
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We kinda went nuts for the recent Echospace record, The Coldest Season. So much so that we made it our record of the week. And judging by the response, most aQ customers dug it just as much as we did. Which makes sense really. A modern take on that old Chain Reaction sound we all love so much. Heroin House, or whatever you want to call it, muddy murky atmospheres wrapped around deep throbbing four on the floor pulses, smeared and blurred, the sound gloriously washed out and dreamlike. Super spaced out abstract dub, beats drifting in wide open expanses of FX and electronic glitch and shimmer. Dance music for those of us who loathe the dancefloor and instead lurk in the shadows. The rhythm is probably still gonna get you, but it's going to creep up on you slowly and wrap you in its inky black embrace, and pull you into the swirling fuzzy abyss.
Incense & Black Light is the new record from Rod Modell, one half of Echospace, and while everything we loved about the Echospace record is here in full effect, it's even noisier and buzzier and grittier, which can only mean we might even like it moreÉ
The opening track is super dense and heavy, a swirling cloud of crumbling distortion, a bassline that almost sounds like some muted metal riff, but completely abstracted and disembodied, a rhythm buried beneath layers of grit and grime, the track peppered with jagged blasts of glitch and hiss, the whole thing looped into something, that despite all of it's harshness and density, is almost groovy.
The second track begins with some Pole like dub throb, drifting on a layer of gristly hiss, those big echoey crunches pulsing and fading into the mist, beneath it all a throbbing bassline and some muted percussion, sounding like a rougher more raw Echospace. After that the record drifts into much less noisy territory, dipping its toes into some Kompakt like minimalism, still dubby and dreamy, but a bit more skittery, and not nearly as dark and dense. After three songs of gauzy late night Kompakt style minimal techno, the record dips back into the darkness, a slowly shifting smear of pixilated digital crunch, long blurred waves of prickly buzz, all woven into a gorgeously gauzy sheet of sound, that seems to billow in some midnight breeze, laced with crackles and hiss, almost completely devoid of any rhythm. Almost.
The next two tracks crank the dub factor, dialing back the noise a bit, but keeping the effects distorted and the beats crunchy, a sort of Kraftwerk groove pulled apart into some alien dub, hovering over a sea of whirring hum and buried buzz, the melody clipped and bouncing from beat to beat before fading into the roiling ambient murk.
Finally, the last two tracks finish things off, the way they started, with some sort of damaged dub, via Tim Hecker or Christian Fennesz, the second to last a gorgeous dubby driftscape, the beats barely holding together, the sound of lapping waves another layer of hiss and buzz, the whole dub drifting into its constituent parts, so druggy and dreamy and blissed out, while the last is glimmering shimmering effulgence, sun dappled sparkles stretched into slow whirring slabs of soft fuzzy thrum, like someone took a single measure of the blissiest Orb song, and stretched it out to 5 minutes, the chords pulled apart exposing the notes within, the notes pulled apart, crumbling to pieces, just blurry shadows, all woven into some slow slippery sonic stream, gauzy, buzzy, warm and dreamlike.
If you loved that Echospace record, but wondered what it would have sounded like if it was mixed by Fennesz, or recorded by Tim Hecker, or spun in a DJ set by Philip Jeck (and who among us didn't?), then this just might be exactly what you're looking for.
MPEG Stream: "Aloeswood"
MPEG Stream: "Hotel Chez Moi"
MPEG Stream: "Body Sonic"
MPEG Stream: "Morning Again"

MOE, OLE-HENRIK Ciaccona / 3 Persephone Perceptions (Rune Grammofon) 2cd 22.00
Not for the faint of heart. But pretty bad ass. If you can say that about an academic, avant-garde, micro-detailed, solo VIOLIN recording. Two discs worth to boot! Norwegian composer Ole-Henrik Moe (henceforth known as OHM as per the liner notes), who studied with extreme 20th c. classical dude Iannis Xenakis, offers up 43+40 minutes of stark, scary musick, all brilliantly performed by his wife, violinist Kari Ronnekleiv. Disc one, "Ciaccona", is a tour-de-force of scratching and sawing and scraping, tortured strings sculpting some kind of strange and terrible beauty out of the vast (yet intimate) soundspace that the resonant silences present here delineate. In fact, these recordings took place an a (presumably empty) church, that Ronnekleiv alone fills with menacing drones. It's pretty frickin' amazing that this is all played straight through by one person. She's got incredible stamina and such subtle, awesome control, her fingers commanding overtones, with no overdubs.
More high end shriek and suspenseful shimmer is to be heard on disc two, "3 Persephone Perceptions". On both discs, at times it's like you're hearing the violin analog to a free jazz saxphonist's circular breathing freakout, or for that matter a demented little kid's frantic balloon-rubbing. But plenty of it is quiet and atmospheric as well, full of droning delicate waver, suggesting the weeping of a frightened child. Sudden bursts of sound are the whip hand coming down.
With all these dynamics of hush and hysterics, this is a palate cleanser that puts other stuff in perspective... put on some, say, Wolf Eyes or Yellow Swans on after this and they'll sound like campfire singalongs. Heck try this back to back with some black metal, we swear the corpsepainted ones will seem just a little less intense than they previously did. Hmm...Orthrelm/Octis might be a match for it though. Maybe it's the association we make between stabbing violins and stabbing knives due to Bernard Herrmann's infamous score to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, but this is definitely "shower scene" music at times. And the whole thing could easily be running through the head of any self-respecting resident of your local Asylum for the Criminally Insane. Play it LOUD. And tremble.
Perhaps how we're describing this isn't what OHM intended... but c'mon it's what any normal person's gonna hear. And also what any abnormal person (i.e. typical AQ customer) who digs the weirder, out-there edges of "20th Century Classical" (a la Xenakis), is gonna like.
Comes in the usual nice Rune Grammofon packaging with a suitably evocative Kim Hiorthoy designed digipack sleeve.
MPEG Stream: "Ciaccona track 14"
MPEG Stream: "3 Persephone Perceptions track 3"
MPEG Stream: "Ciaccona track 2"

MOEBIUS Nurton (Blue Pole) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
It's so inspiring and sadly all too rare to find someone who was making challenging music that sounded ahead of their time decades ago, and who is STILL pushing themselves to creating music with the same adventure and scope. All too often, those who were at the forefront of creative musical invention end up settling down and creating safe and boring music as the years pass. Even many AQ psych/prog/kraut favorites end up going that route. For proof just take a listen to what folks like Franco Battiato or Tangerine Dream made decades into their careers. Luckily there are some exceptions to that downward spiral, and Dieter Moebius is a perfect example of how one can continue to make weird and wonderful music years and years after they first hit the scene. From his pioneering krautrock/kosmische work with Cluster and Harmonia as well as collaborations with Brian Eno, it would be very easy and well deserved for Moebius to just rest on his laurels. But even after those trailblazing years of the '70s he continued to make great albums into the 80's and still does today. Nurton, released in 2006, is his first solo outing in over seven years and it finds him as unpredictable and pleasing as ever. The sounds he creates take twists and turns that hold your attention fast, and he's always able to take you to a special spaced-out place full of wonder, bliss and intrigue. Crazy instrumental electronica to put the youngsters in the field to shame.
MPEG Stream: "Mahalmal"
MPEG Stream: "Warum?"
MPEG Stream: "Opaque"

MOF FAR FAR RAH Little More (Sabbatical) cd-r 8.98
We only have 5 or 6 of these which is probably enough, cuz boy is this a weird one. We've had these for a really long time, so can't remember the story about who this guy is or what else he's done, but this record, well, it starts out with SEVENTY FIVE super short vocal experiments, as in 6 seconds to 29 seconds, running the gamut from animal like growls, wild hysterical shrieks, disembodied humming, percussive experiments, heavily effected beat box, sort of throat singing, growly death metal grunts, operatic howling, and pretty much all manner of fucked up vocalizations. Think an audio test record featuring nothing but Eye from the Boredoms doing vocal exercises. Fucked up, weird, a novelty, totally cracked and demented. Definitely worth it to disrupt your next party or to torture your downstairs neighbors, but hold on, there's a nearly hour long final track, also seemingly constructed from vocals (?) and it's gorgeous, an extended soundscape of layered hum, of shimmering drones, distant click and skitter, deep bell like tones, murky floorcore, looped stuttering rumbles, moaning and groaning warbles, all drifting beneath a thick fuzzy haze. Almost sounds like it could be the first 75 fragments combined into one thick swirling morass.
Definitely cool And quite weird. We only have a tiny handful, so act fast if you want one of these...
MPEG Stream: "Little More"

MOFF, JAR Commercial Mouth (Pan) lp 28.00
This is the debut full length from this US artist/soundscaper, whom we first heard via a remix on Harald Grosskopf's Synthesist/Re-Synthesist lp, and whose sound falls somewhere between the ADD short attention span plunderphonia of John Oswald, and the textured, layered, warblescapes of turntablist Philip Jeck. Two sprawling sidelong tracks, that sound like they could be part one and two of the same piece, finds Moff, employing a definite kitchen sink style of composition, that initially had us hearing some Our Love Will Destroy The World, especially in his ability to create rhythms and grooves from strange samples and layered loops, in places it gives the sound a sort of hip hop / dance music vibe, but that vibe is subtle, and sort of gets lots in Moff's wild collaged soundscapes, the structures lurching and stuttering, the sound dense and chaotic and not a little bit noisy, super psychedelic, tripped out and in its own way sort of heavy.
The sound palette, and the seamless juxtapositions, also remind us of DJ Female Convict Scorpion, only armed with a DOZEN turntables instead of just two. A constant barrage of samples and snippets, looped and layered, tripped out and kosmische at times, darkly psychedelic and almost jazzy at others, it's definitely chaos, but some impossibly controlled chaos, the whole thing strangely, and seemingly impossibly melodic, the idea of some random jazz loop, some burst of truncated rhythm and some weird little blurt of distorted crunch, would somehow come together to form some brief bit of super hooky, noisy catchiness, speaks to Moff's mastery. A dizzying, mind melting sonic overload that is pure ear candy, absolute headphone blissout, with the B side sounding almost soundtracky, but the soundtrack to some sort of wild, super lysergic drug freakout, or perhaps some super arty, experimental film all rapid cuts and flickering images, the noisiness finally abating near the end of the album, and blissing out into a dreamy droney coda. WAY recommended.
And like all Pan releases, super deluxe packaging, the record housed in fantastic silkscreened PVC jackets over printed full color sleeves, pressed on 140 gram vinyl and of course EXTREMELY LIMITED!!!

MOGLASS, THE Kogda Vse Zveri ZhiliKak Dobrye Sosedi (Nexsound) cd 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
For a land as huge as The Ukraine, the amount of exceptional music that makes it half way round the world to Aquairus is proportionally very small, especially when compared to how much we get in from New Zealand and Finland. Thus, we were quite intrigued by the prospects of the Russian ensemble The Moglass who prefer to qualify their music as 'personal folk' -- an anti-genre that is beyond the mutable definitions of post-rock, psychedelia, or space-rock. That said, The Moglass are not without precedents, as this trio (armed with guitars, bass, old Soviet synths, and tons of effects) realizes the pinnacles of Popul Vuh (particularly their Werner Herzog soundtracks) entirely through the haunted drones of guitar feedback. Periodically, they have included several radio transmissions all in Russian, so the exact meaning is unknown to us, but the urgency of some of those broadcasts speaks of traumatic events. These work very similar to Godspeed! You Black Emperor's found sound interludes (e.g. "the car's on fire, and there's no driver at the wheel..."), but the mysteriousness due to the language barrier works to enhance the overall mood of the drone rather than compartmentalize it into leftist rhetoric. Although it's a mere 30 minutes long, "Kogda Vse Zveri Zhili Kak Dobrye Sosedi" (which we learned from their website translates as When All the Animals Lived As Good Neighbours) is a remarkably strong album.
RealAudio clip: "A1"
RealAudio clip: "A3"

MOGLASS, THE Sparrow Juice (Nexsound) cd 11.98
It's been a while since we've heard from Ukrainian abstract free folk ensemble The Moglass, who in the past have spun darkly delicate webs of creaking ambience, rumbling disembodied drones, stumbling tribal primitivism, all tangled up in a massive swirl of dreamlike ether.
Thankfully not too much has changed. Incorporating bits of jazz (via subtle sax) and all sorts of found sound and field recordings, The Moglass spread simple guitars out over skeletal frameworks of not-quite-rhythms, glistening sonic sparkle, and moody murk, creating slow swirls of ominous sound. The thing about The Moglass, is that they don't just create noises and sounds, little sonic events that 'happen' and then fade away, their music has a purpose, a drive, a direction, the guitars, and the spare riffs they unleash are propulsive, they carry us forward, pulling us by the ear into a world that sounds simultaneously fascinating and frightening. Bits of intercepted shortwave radio, the sounds of families talking, and children playing, are slowly subsumed by thick low end melodies, warm bowed warbles, glistening with bits of glitch and buzz, sleepy and serene, but always gorgeously melancholy. Maybe more than any of their other records, Sparrow Juice has a bit more twang, a little spaghetti western, a little Morricone, although they do a fantastic job of stripping those sounds down and stretching them out into abstract desertscapes. Elsewhere, music boxes hover weightless above creaks and scrapes, thick swirls of molasses like sound crawl glacier-like, swallowing all the sounds it encounters and building to an almost roar, thick fuzzy sun dappled buzz slithers and shimmers like purloined slabs of some long lost M83 single, and guitars and computers and synthesizers are wrapped into rightly wound knots and allowed to slowly unravel, becoming big billowy clouds of rumbling whir and keening skree. So good.
MPEG Stream: "Obviously Political Lyric"
MPEG Stream: "Revisited With K."
MPEG Stream: "Maya Britanova"

MOGLASS, THE Uhodyaschie Vdal' Telegrafnye Stolby Stanovyatsa Vsyo Men'she i Men'she (Nexsound) cd 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Second missive from this mysterious Ukrainian ensemble exploring the dark and cobwebby corners of free folk, shuffling rhythmic tribalism, space-y dronemusic, and splattery free rock ambience. A dreamy and expansive travelogue of endless soundscapes, glassy sheets of crystalline shimmer, warm and smooth, with melodies woven subtly throughout. Metallic glistenings, tinkling guitars and glitchy crunch struggle to disrupt the ambient dreaminess while occasional machine like rhythms chug tirelessly over atonal melodic clusters and urgently strummed angular guitar chords. Even though the band themselves describe their music as 'personal folk music', the actual sound is much closer to the drone music of AQ faves Jonathan Coleclough, Mirror or Organum, and occasionally the free ambient clatter of the Dead C or Skullflower. Really gorgeous stuff.
MPEG Stream: "Track 2"
MPEG Stream: "Track 4"

MOHA! Norwegianism (Rune Grammofon) cd 16.98
Second Rune Grammofon album from this extreme improv duo from Norway! It makes sense that they'd have an exclamation point as part of their name, as their music is indeed punctuated with glitchy outbursts, zaps of loud guitar/drums/electronics. Meanwhile, "MoHa" simply references their names: Morten J. Olsen and Anders Hana, both of whom are members of Ultralyd as well. We compared their first disc of hyperactive skree to some of Mick Barr's stuff, and to the most nutty bits from their labelmates Supersilent. Now we can add that shortly after our first listen to Norwegianism, we put on a classic avant-garde electro-acoustic album from 1970 by Luciano Berio, and after a few minutes got confused and thought we were still listening to MoHa!, when the Berio got into a particularly crinkly and chaotic passage of electronic bleepage. We like it best, though, when MoHa! pace themselves, give the music space to breathe, maybe even settle into some broken-down rhythm for a while (which are the parts that remind us of Supersilent), as on the track "Home Two".
We guess they may have titled this album Norwegianism 'cause they recorded it in Geneva and mixed it in Berlin, and felt that they were bringing some Norwegian noise to those locales. Also it could be in recognition of the fact that they get monetary support from the Arts Council Norway -- apparently Norwegian taxpayers are a lot more musically open-minded than the typical US citizen!
MPEG Stream: "Gay One"
MPEG Stream: "Home Two"

MOHA! Norwegianism (Rune Grammofon) lp 17.98
NOW ON VINYL!
Second Rune Grammofon album from this extreme improv duo from Norway! It makes sense that they'd have an exclamation point as part of their name, as their music is indeed punctuated with glitchy outbursts, zaps of loud guitar/drums/electronics. Meanwhile, "MoHa" simply references their names: Morten J. Olsen and Anders Hana, both of whom are members of Ultralyd as well. We compared their first disc of hyperactive skree to some of Mick Barr's stuff, and to the most nutty bits from their labelmates Supersilent. Now we can add that shortly after our first listen to Norwegianism, we put on a classic avant-garde electro-acoustic album from 1970 by Luciano Berio, and after a few minutes got confused and thought we were still listening to MoHa!, when the Berio got into a particularly crinkly and chaotic passage of electronic bleepage. We like it best, though, when MoHa! pace themselves, give the music space to breathe, maybe even settle into some broken-down rhythm for a while (which are the parts that remind us of Supersilent), as on the track "Home Two".
We guess they may have titled this album Norwegianism 'cause they recorded it in Geneva and mixed it in Berlin, and felt that they were bringing some Norwegian noise to those locales. Also it could be in recognition of the fact that they get monetary support from the Arts Council Norway -- apparently Norwegian taxpayers are a lot more musically open-minded than the typical US citizen!
MPEG Stream: "Gay One"
MPEG Stream: "Home Two"

MOHA! One-Way Ticket To Candyland (Rune Grammofon) cd 17.98
As always (this is their 3rd album), the exclamation point in this Norwegian industrial-skronk duo's name is quite appropriate. They definitely provide some bang for your buck, if you're into this extreme style of choppy, panicked trash-compactor "jazz", wherein sizzling electronics collide with machine-like percussion in a satisfyingly spastic frenzy. Electric guitar, keyboard, drummachine, drums, and something called "supercollider3" (a software program?) are deployed for maximum density and intensity, sounding something like a bunch of John Zorn types trapped in an exploding Radio Shack.
The album title One-Way Ticket To Candyland only makes us think that these guys have already splurged on the sugary treats, certainly seeming a bit hyperactively agitated by -something- in their quirky, chaotic music making. Yet the weird thing is, despite their jitters, they have such a knack for getting all the little pulsating puzzle pieces of their only seemingly messy compositions/improvisations to fit together remarkably well, turning this way and that like tiny, precision cogs in a well designed machine. All their herky-jerky blurting turns out to be exactly according to spec.
Knowing this, they almost get sassy, in that there's a bit of smartass punkrock 'tude to their (instrumental) song titles, from "The Shitman" to "Oh My God It's Rave". Shades of Don Cab!
MPEG Stream: "It Burns Twice"
MPEG Stream: "Prog-O-Rama"

MOHA! One-Way Ticket To Candyland (Rune Grammofon) lp 18.98
As always (this is their 3rd album), the exclamation point in this Norwegian industrial-skronk duo's name is quite appropriate. They definitely provide some bang for your buck, if you're into this extreme style of choppy, panicked trash-compactor "jazz", wherein sizzling electronics collide with machine-like percussion in a satisfyingly spastic frenzy. Electric guitar, keyboard, drummachine, drums, and something called "supercollider3" (a software program?) are deployed for maximum density and intensity, sounding something like a bunch of John Zorn types trapped in an exploding Radio Shack.
The album title One-Way Ticket To Candyland only makes us think that these guys have already splurged on the sugary treats, certainly seeming a bit hyperactively agitated by -something- in their quirky, chaotic music making. Yet the weird thing is, despite their jitters, they have such a knack for getting all the little pulsating puzzle pieces of their only seemingly messy compositions/improvisations to fit together remarkably well, turning this way and that like tiny, precision cogs in a well designed machine. All their herky-jerky blurting turns out to be exactly according to spec.
Knowing this, they almost get sassy, in that there's a bit of smartass punkrock 'tude to their (instrumental) song titles, from "The Shitman" to "Oh My God It's Rave". Shades of Don Cab!
MPEG Stream: "It Burns Twice"
MPEG Stream: "Prog-O-Rama"

MOHAMMAD Som Sakrifis (Pan) lp 29.00
Record number three from this Greek trio, but the first one we've managed to stock, and holy moly were we blown away. Mohammad specialize in long-form drone works, focusing on the low LOW end - drone lovers be warned, this will blow your mind. Anyone can coax rumbles and buzz from a guitar leaned against an amp, but these guys, utilizing just cello, contrabass and some oscillators, conjure up a sprawling expanse of ribcage rattling, soul stirring thrum, a breathtaking acoustic dronemusic, lush and organic, resonant and expansive. Super shorthand would be to say these guys sound like an acoustic SUNNO))), but their sound retains much more melody and nuance, sounding almost folky at times, near symphonic at others, and occasionally liturgical. The reverberant buzz of vibrating strings, slow shifting overtones, a dirgey doom folk by way of La Monte Young, slowed down to the point of near stasis, but still rife with texture and dynamics. The fact that these sounds are acoustic, give the sound a very organic feel, the sound or resonating wood is tough to simulate, and at high volumes, the music here is near transcendent, the sounds extremely physical in their heft, primal and powerful, but also intimate and emotional. It's a soundtracky atmospheric ambience, but fused to a mutated strain of modern minimalism, with the vibe of something ritualistic and timeless. It's impossible not to imagine these sounds being performed by some cloaked court musicians, in some mysterious black castle, hundreds, if not thousands of years ago. It's also hard to not imagine these guys teaming up with Russian drone vocalists Phurpa, for what would have to be the heaviest, droniest, acoustic performance EVER.
This will no doubt make lots of our year end lists, and it's only April. Dark and heavy enough for folks into extreme drones, but mysterious and musical enough to appeal to modern minimalists, and really anyone into mysterious sounds and dark dreaminess.
Like all Pan releases, the packaging is fantastic, a printed heavy stock matte sleeve, housed in a heavy plastic PVC jacket, screen printed in silver metallic ink, super striking!

MOHAVE TRIANGLES Eternal Light Of The Desert Plateaus (Hooker Vision) cassette 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Altered state exploration and bedroom mysticism is on tap from North Carolina's Robert Thompson, who's taken up the moniker Mohave Triangles. Thompson has crafted the standard fair torrent of cassette releases, now offering his wares through the shambolic cottage industry label Hooker Vision out of rural Georgia. This tape opens with a spoken word segment from a Native American shaman explaining a recurrent prophecy about a messenger arriving at the end of a cycle of time. With accompanying ambience, the piece closely resembles the beginning of Godspeed! You Black Emperor's F#A# lp. But instead of orchestrated rock crescendo, Thompson zones out a very hypnotic piece of murky ambience, one that would harken back to classic Zoviet France or perhaps Basinski's shortwave compositions, through the hazy mirage of slowly repeating, constantly shimmering sounds. Elsewhere, he picks up the guitar, dialed into plenty of looping patterns, delays, and effects, skewing the Mark McGuire sound towards a freeform approach to avant-trance dronescaping. Limited to 100 copies!

MOHNE, ACHIM And It Could Have Been Dead... (The Tapeworm) cassette 8.98
One of two new cassettes on this week's list from UK cassette label The Tapeworm, the other a weird bit of haunting minimal living room ambient electronica slowcore from Old Apparatus, and this collection of tape experiments from multimedia artist/musician Achim Mohne, whose sounds sources are almost as interesting and baffling as what he does with those sources, a 1982 instructional tape for a Blaupunkt tape player, that overlaps various instructions in different languages, as well as adding blasts of white noise, overlapping the various different styles of music offered as samples, and messing with the tape speed. A serious blast of Plunderphonia for sure.
Then there's a track that uses as its source a 1999 performance for disassembled VCR's, video monitors, glue, medical gloves and rubbing alcohol, with Mohne cutting up the tapes, taping them back together, and manipulating them over the VCR's playback heads, the result is a dark, woozy assemblage of hiss and warble, whirs and disembodied voices, snippets of music and dialogue, deep rumbling tones and plenty of glitch and thrum and buzz, it sounds a bit like something you'd hear on Raster-Noton, albeit a bit more collaged, homebrewed and lo-fi. Another track is a live performance for multiple turntables and cassette recorders, and finds Mohne mixing a dizzying onslaught of different musics and sounds, from pop to noise, from metal to classical, all chopped up and looped and layered, almost like a skipping Negativland cd, or some sort of John Oswald / Philip Jeck DJ set.
There are a couple tracks that employ handheld recorders, one that uses recordings of fairy tales, another that's a sort of twisted Jeck style tape player / turntable mash up, those all murky and muted and droned out and atmospheric, and then prepare yourself for the final jam, a super short ultra dense blast of tape noise, that's actually the beginnings and ends of the first 34 releases on The Tapeworm label! Cool twisted stuff, that ends up being surprisingly haunting and beautiful much of the time. And features an awesome (and awesomely creepy) cover drawing of some character called Pooman, in a drawing called "The Tapewyrm Will Drive Out Any Stuck Up Turd With Fragrant Sound!" Indeed!

MOHOLY-NAGY Like Mirage (Temporary Residence Ltd.) cd 13.98
The former core trio of post rock combo Tarentel (Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Danny Paul Grody and Trevor Montgomery) have been on a roll lately, releasing tons of solo, side projects and collaborative efforts! Danny and Trevor are both in The Drift and synth duo Believer, which both have new releases out or coming soon. Danny has got a new solo album on Students of Decay that'll be here shortly. Trevor has been on the last two Date Palms records and released the Isidore Ducasse lp with Jefre, and Jefre has released recently a solo album on Type and a record with his other outfit, The Alps on Mexican Summer. Hardest working local musicians? Maybe so now that the three of them have reunited together in this new outfit, Moholy-Nagy (rhymes with mirage, hence the title of the album, Like Mirage). Named after the Bauhaus artist and professor whose photogram experiments and industrial design aesthetic have made him known as one of the fathers of Light Art, the band have made a gorgeous record of light-searching cosmic excursions utilizing synths, piano, pastoral guitar and drum machine. Dreamy and drifting but also focused and grounded, Like Mirage hones the strongest sensibilities of each member into something truly collaborative. And though cosmically charged music has been the modus operandi of all three members through most of their side and solo projects and labels, Like Mirage manages to sound completely distinctive from their other projects which is a strong indicator of the masterful musicianship each one brings to the table. Beautiful stuff!
MPEG Stream: "Tears Of The Prophet"
MPEG Stream: "Brute Neighbors"
MPEG Stream: "Sunday Brunch"

MOHOLY-NAGY Like Mirage (Temporary Residence Ltd.) lp 15.98
The former core trio of post rock combo Tarentel (Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Danny Paul Grody and Trevor Montgomery) have been on a roll lately, releasing tons of solo, side projects and collaborative efforts! Danny and Trevor are both in The Drift and synth duo Believer, which both have new releases out or coming soon. Danny has got a new solo album on Students of Decay that'll be here shortly. Trevor has been on the last two Date Palms records and released the Isidore Ducasse lp with Jefre, and Jefre has released recently a solo album on Type and a record with his other outfit, The Alps on Mexican Summer. Hardest working local musicians? Maybe so now that the three of them have reunited together in this new outfit, Moholy-Nagy (rhymes with mirage, hence the title of the album, Like Mirage). Named after the Bauhaus artist and professor whose photogram experiments and industrial design aesthetic have made him known as one of the fathers of Light Art, the band have made a gorgeous record of light-searching cosmic excursions utilizing synths, piano, pastoral guitar and drum machine. Dreamy and drifting but also focused and grounded, Like Mirage hones the strongest sensibilities of each member into something truly collaborative. And though cosmically charged music has been the modus operandi of all three members through most of their side and solo projects and labels, Like Mirage manages to sound completely distinctive from their other projects which is a strong indicator of the masterful musicianship each one brings to the table. Beautiful stuff!
MPEG Stream: "Tears Of The Prophet"
MPEG Stream: "Brute Neighbors"
MPEG Stream: "Sunday Brunch"

MOKNOK s/t (Smittekilde) cd-r 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

MOKNOK Slugstorm (Smittekilde) lp 17.98
Definite contender for best cover art ever. Super striking orange on brown paper space demon, wielding a huge broad sword amidst jagged mountain peaks, but abstract enough so that it takes a minute to figure out what it is. The band name is pretty awesome too, Moknok, scrawled in a sort of drippy angular metal font on the back, and the record is called Slugstorm. Open it up, and the band members are wearing sweaters and gas masks, and there's a scrawled drawing of a cat skull. So we were definitely expecting some sort of demonic sludge or black drone, but this is nothing of the sort. These guys are from Copenhagen, and weave violin, drums, organ and guitar into loping mathy jangle and moody mournful slowcore. Everything off kilter, damaged and demented, warped and weird, like an even more tweaked Deerhoof...
Most of the record is a sort of cracked pop, stumbling and confusional, but weirdly hooky and catchy, but here and there the band explore other sonic territory, buzzy droning stretches of minor key strum, like a more drugged and art damaged Dirty Three, haunting hippy folk that wanders and meanders, Stooges-y garage stomp, but all of it is slightly and gorgeously, a little bit off.
It all sounds as if it was some transmission from another dimension, but in the crossing over, Moknok's pop music got all bent up and twisted, and we love it.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Pretty sure we won't be able to get more when we run out...