OV The Moon Is Down (Jewelled Antler) cd-r 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This is a monumental occasion, the return of Jewelled Antler, after a seriously lengthy hiatus. This is the first Jewelled Antler cd since the last Of record, The Quartz Pond, way back at the beginning of 2005. It also marks the debut of newly married duo Ov, which just so happens to be sound artist Loren Chasse (Thuja, Blithe Sons, Child Readers, Coelacanth, Of, etc.), and former aQer Christine Boepple (Whysp, Skygreen Leopards Skyband, Kyrgyz, etc.). You know that whole 'beautiful music together' thing, but wow is that the case with The Moon Is Down. The first two tracks are lengthy abstract soundscapes of bells and chimes and gongs and percussion. The amazing thing is that the final result doesn't necessarily sound all that percussive, instead Chasse and Boepple manage to smooth the sounds into a dreamy billowy fog, with tinkling bells, reverberating chimes, it's like floating through a slowed down sculpture garden, huge pieces of metal slowly swinging, and gently rubbing up against each other, sending soft ringing tones to float softly across the gauzy landscape like dry leaves on a summer breeze, underpinned by slow low end pulses, smears of glistening shimmer and a constellation of glimmering tinkles. There are lilting guitars too, but plucked and strummed so sparely, they almost just sound like more chimes.
The record shifts gears after that, drifting from one dreamlike sound to another, a rich and exotic tribal landscape, huge swells of crystalline fuzz beneath fluttering flute melodies, primitive shakers and hand drums, and what sounds like forest sounds, drifting in and out of the mix, a world of alien lullabies, super distorted melodies over warm warbling woodwinds and textural percussion that sounds more like the crinkle of plastic, a gentle stream of fuzzy organ, buzzing harmonica, plink plonk guitar melody, pocket full of coins jangle, all bathed in a soft focus shimmer and some Eno-esque melodic ambience constructed from a dense assemblage of notes and tones, rich and oversaturated with tonal color, delicate minimal guitar strum and a mesmerizingly reedy hypnotic high end flute melody hovering in the background.
The final track is mostly made up of field recordings when the pair were on a trip to Germany, they were strolling through the quiet streets when suddenly the town's church bells began ringing, more and more, from every direction, a glorious cacophony, here there is a brief interlude part way through, a wheezing organ breathing out a fuzzy melancholy melody, but it quickly drifts away, leaving the record to fade out with just the distant pealing of bells. Wow!
Packaged in a beautiful hand printed sleeve, a strange angular crystalscape on the front, a mysterious symbol on the back, each sleeve with a different color ink and different colored paper. Includes an insert with liner notes and an image of some mysterious multi horned instrument on the other. As with most things like this, SUPER LIMITED!!!
MPEG Stream: "The Chambers Of The Hand"
MPEG Stream: "Spiritual Magnetism"
MPEG Stream: "Devoted Realms"

OVAL O (Thrill Jockey) 2cd 17.98
Just months after Oval's recent Oh 12", Markus Popp's first release in more than a decade, comes this, the similarly titled O, a sprawling, nearly sixty track, double disc, which continues on right where Oh left off. In fact, listening to O now, it sounds like most likely all of these tracks were recorded during the same session. They certainly have the same feel. A strange hybrid of past and present Oval, the cd skipping liquid glitchery of classic records like Diskont and Systemisch, and the new, more organic, 'real instrument' Oval. The main instrument sounds like a steel string guitar, sampled and chopped up and fed into the computer and spit out in strange gnarled glitchy shards. When we reviewed the 12", we mentioned that the new Oval sounded a bit like Michael Hedges or Derek Bailey all chopped up and computerized, which still holds true, but that's probably a bit reductionist. As Popp obviously has a keen ear and a deft hand at assembling digital errata into weirdly dreamy popmusik. The opening suite of songs perfectly encapsulates the new Oval sound, while setting the stage for the two discs to come. In "Panorama", over soft shimmery, warm and languid melodic swells, Popp flings flurries of grinding glitched melody, little spurts of melodic tangles, jagged and looped, their echoes and ripples allowed to ring out, as the first track progresses, the background shimmer seems to dissipate as the foreground glitchery becomes more and more clipped, the shimmer only returning briefly alongside the glitch, like a hazy shadow. "Ah!" is a loping bit of looped guitar tapping, while all around, soft steaks of gauzy electronics drift and swirl and swoop, and then in come real drums, another new addition, less present than on the 12", but here, evoking the same sort of post rock vibe, a little bit Tortoise, a little Stereolab, especially with its little swaths of melody and female vocal sounding "Ah"s. On the surface, it's a sweet bit of electronic post rock confection, but there's always so much going on, layer upon layer, little bits of glitch, little shards of melody, mysterious effects, but all perfectly placed. The result, some modern electro space pop, that sounds incredible. "Shhh" takes the same sort of approach but instead crafts the same elements into a hushed lullaby, the tones muted, the track laced with bits of keening metallic high end, drifting over a softly looped bit of mesmer. "Glossy" is another bit of electronic post rock, the big booming drums, shuffling beneath a cloud of constantly shifting notes and tones, clipped and skittery and stuttery, a scattershot spray of electronic sound draped over a minimal rhythmic backdrop.
And so it goes, for nearly 60 more songs, most 2 minutes or shorter, many clocking in closer to 30 seconds, all sounding like they were cut from the same sonic cloth, or maybe more accurately, they all sound like micro-movements of the much larger, sprawling epic whole, the electronic post rock symphony that is O, separated into tiny parts, miniature separate segments, every one its own little fragment of electronic avant pop, but all of those parts (maybe not so) loosely connected into Popp's grand masterwork, a whole that is perhaps easier to absorb broken down into its constituent parts, or perhaps not, maybe this is in fact a collection of mini-tracks, the sounds broken down into commercial length segments designed for the modern attention span, but who really knows the method to Popp's madness, all we really know is that O is deliriously delightful, mysterious and playful, and totally fantastic.
The vinyl includes extra tracks NOT on the cd (as well as a digital download of all the cd version tracks).
MPEG Stream: "Panorama"
MPEG Stream: "Ah!"
MPEG Stream: "Shhh"
MPEG Stream: "I Love Musik"
MPEG Stream: "Dynamo"
MPEG Stream: "Emocor"

OVAL O (Thrill Jockey) 2lp 17.98
Just months after Oval's recent Oh 12", Markus Popp's first release in more than a decade, comes this, the similarly titled O, a sprawling, nearly sixty track, double disc, which continues on right where Oh left off. In fact, listening to O now, it sounds like most likely all of these tracks were recorded during the same session. They certainly have the same feel. A strange hybrid of past and present Oval, the cd skipping liquid glitchery of classic records like Diskont and Systemisch, and the new, more organic, 'real instrument' Oval. The main instrument sounds like a steel string guitar, sampled and chopped up and fed into the computer and spit out in strange gnarled glitchy shards. When we reviewed the 12", we mentioned that the new Oval sounded a bit like Michael Hedges or Derek Bailey all chopped up and computerized, which still holds true, but that's probably a bit reductionist. As Popp obviously has a keen ear and a deft hand at assembling digital errata into weirdly dreamy popmusik. The opening suite of songs perfectly encapsulates the new Oval sound, while setting the stage for the two discs to come. In "Panorama", over soft shimmery, warm and languid melodic swells, Popp flings flurries of grinding glitched melody, little spurts of melodic tangles, jagged and looped, their echoes and ripples allowed to ring out, as the first track progresses, the background shimmer seems to dissipate as the foreground glitchery becomes more and more clipped, the shimmer only returning briefly alongside the glitch, like a hazy shadow. "Ah!" is a loping bit of looped guitar tapping, while all around, soft steaks of gauzy electronics drift and swirl and swoop, and then in come real drums, another new addition, less present than on the 12", but here, evoking the same sort of post rock vibe, a little bit Tortoise, a little Stereolab, especially with its little swaths of melody and female vocal sounding "Ah"s. On the surface, it's a sweet bit of electronic post rock confection, but there's always so much going on, layer upon layer, little bits of glitch, little shards of melody, mysterious effects, but all perfectly placed. The result, some modern electro space pop, that sounds incredible. "Shhh" takes the same sort of approach but instead crafts the same elements into a hushed lullaby, the tones muted, the track laced with bits of keening metallic high end, drifting over a softly looped bit of mesmer. "Glossy" is another bit of electronic post rock, the big booming drums, shuffling beneath a cloud of constantly shifting notes and tones, clipped and skittery and stuttery, a scattershot spray of electronic sound draped over a minimal rhythmic backdrop.
And so it goes, for nearly 60 more songs, most 2 minutes or shorter, many clocking in closer to 30 seconds, all sounding like they were cut from the same sonic cloth, or maybe more accurately, they all sound like micro-movements of the much larger, sprawling epic whole, the electronic post rock symphony that is O, separated into tiny parts, miniature separate segments, every one its own little fragment of electronic avant pop, but all of those parts (maybe not so) loosely connected into Popp's grand masterwork, a whole that is perhaps easier to absorb broken down into its constituent parts, or perhaps not, maybe this is in fact a collection of mini-tracks, the sounds broken down into commercial length segments designed for the modern attention span, but who really knows the method to Popp's madness, all we really know is that O is deliriously delightful, mysterious and playful, and totally fantastic.
The vinyl includes extra tracks NOT on the cd (as well as a digital download of all the cd version tracks).
MPEG Stream: "Panorama"
MPEG Stream: "Ah!"
MPEG Stream: "Shhh"
MPEG Stream: "I Love Musik"
MPEG Stream: "Dynamo"
MPEG Stream: "Emocor"

OVAL Oh (Thrill Jockey) 12" 13.98
It's hard to believe it's been 10 years since the last Oval record, even longer since Oval's Diskont record, which was and always will be an all time aQ favorite, with its gorgeously languid underwater ambience, burbling dreamily, washed out and so totally mesmerizing, all created from skipping cds, and Oval mastermind Markuss Popp's meticulously handcrafted soft AND hardware. But Oh is a whole other musical beast entirely. Right out of the gate, it sounds more like a band like Tortoise than Oval, big loud, REAL drums, spread out over what sounds like guitar harmonics, as well as a very Oval sounding lush landscape of shimmer and whir in the background, but the point is, it sounds like a band, some kind of electronic avant post rock band. And it's not just the sound, it's the process that has changed, gone are the days of expensive computers and one of a kind plug-ins and software, all of Oh, and the forthcoming double cd, was created on a stock cheapo PC computer, using regular old software anyone could buy, with Popp playing all the instruments, and creating, in his own words, 'real' music for the first time, after years of dissecting and pulling apart sounds, and the results are pretty incredible.
Folks looking for more of that classic Oval sound might definitely be disappointed, but will more likely be pleasantly surprised. Imagine Tortoise, or maybe Battles, fed into a computer, and then reprogrammed, the drums still propulsive, but more scattered and skittery and abstract, almost like post rock free jazz, while guitars aren't strummed so much as allowed to ring out, chime, and all around, various bits of electronics and strange processing transform this new 'rock' Oval into something as unique and original as the Oval we've always loved.
The A-side is made up of longer, more song-like tracks, while the B-side is a bunch of super short snippets, but short and long alike, these songs are all about melody, and rhythm, and harmony, where as old Oval was more about mood and texture, for as abstract as these new tracks are, they are definitely more 'musical', the A-side playing out like some super far out post rock band, the B-side more like some avant solo guitarist, whose guitar is super processed and transformed into something beautifully alien, and subtly electronic, without losing the sense of the organic, the sound of a proper instrument. The shorter tracks, while melodic, are also very percussive and buzzy, almost like a computerized Michael Hedges / Derek Bailey hybrid, effortlessly slipping from tangled scrape and crunch to softly hazy fuzz to heavily processed almost-folk.
It's all definitely a big change for sure, but those old Oval records are pretty much perfect, and impossible to improve upon we think, and these new sounds, these new SONGS, are just as exciting, albeit in their own, obtuse and idiosyncratic, 2010, post 'rock', post glitch, post-Oval fashion.
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES, cool fancy jackets with a paste on front image (featuring a still from that birds and guitars installation at the Tate Museum in London), and comes with a download coupon as well...

OVAL OvalDNA (Shitkatapult) cd+dvd 21.00
Oval's 94Diskont still ranks as one of the most gorgeous, emotional and lush and lovely electronic music records we've ever heard. Oval mainman Markus Popp arranging a symphony of glitches and skipping digital sound into something impossibly organic and beautiful. For whatever reason, around the turn of the century, Popp seemingly hung it up, only to return almost a decade later with a new record, and a new sound. With this first new release, an ep called Oh, Popp offered up something that sounded like a proper rock band, gone was the pure glitch and experimental electronic collage, and in its place was something that sounded more like some strange post rock / free jazz hybrid, which weirdly enough sounded more like something that should be on Thrill Jockey. Still rife with glitch and jagged edits, but definitely a strange new direction. Next came O, which positioned itself as the perfect meeting point of this new band-like Oval, and the Oval of old, and we have to say we dug it quite a bit. And now it seems like Popp must be re-energized cuz here we are not more than a year later, with a whole new full length, and yet again, the sound has shifted, in one respect, more toward the warm liquid soundscaping of those early records, but with hint of nineties IDM in the mix, the result is a record that shifts from swirling contemplative glitched out drift, to stuttery, propulsive groove, albeit those grooves assembled from the same strange elements, resulting in a bastardized electronica, that even in that more 'groovy' state, could be no one but Oval. Popp's new sound palette continues to amaze as well, a veritable symphony of clicks and chitters, of creaks and bleeps, strange synth sounds, and what sounds like heavily processed, but proper recorded drums, warm chordal whirs, haunting melodies, lush textures, the sound brittle and crunchy one second, hushed and lush the next, with an attention to detail that's staggering, yet even as meticulously crafter and deftly assembled, the music sounds alive, and emotional, and the more we listen to it, on headphones especially, the more we're sucked in, and utterly transported.
Accompanying the cd is a second disc, a DVD, but not to be played in a DVD player, instead, loaded with extras, including videos, a ton of bonus tracks, a TV special, extensive liner notes (which are also in the booklet) from David Toop, Atsushi Sasaki, Minoru Hatanaka as well as Popp himself, not to mention a whole library of Oval sounds, which one can use to make your own OvalMusic, and there's a link in the packaging to the Shitkatapult site, where you can download OvalDNA software as well!
MPEG Stream: "Quiro (Oval Post-Ovalcommers)"
MPEG Stream: "Kasino (Pre-O)"
MPEG Stream: "Tweakk (Pre_Commers)"
MPEG Stream: "Australasia (Pre-O)"
MPEG Stream: "Credit Line (Post-O)"

OVAL Process (Tokuma) cd 31.00
In the honored tradition of giving credit where credit is due, we must mention that regular AQ customer Richard Ross was apparently instrumental in designing the software that is the basis of Markus Popp's multi-media installation as well as the new Oval record. "Ovalprocess" repesents the innovative software design of Ross and Popp as well as the basis of Oval's new 'Ovalprocess' sound installations. The installation invites the public to manipulate sound terminals in the "Ovalprocess" application, rendering the exhibit a customizable workstation, which Popp will reportedly be taking on tour. The sample-set utilized by Popp has a harsher grit and a more difficult agenda than some of Oval's recent output. Gone are the burbling underwater murmurs, and in their place, scratchy grit and stuttery clicks and cuts.
This is actually the Japanese import version of "Ovalprocess" which features 4 tracks not to be found on the upcoming Thrill Jockey release (June 20).

OVAL / LITURGY split (Thrill Jockey) lp 16.98
An odd matchup indeed. We weren't sure whether this was a joining of convenience, since both bands are now labelmates, or if it went deeper than that, considering the two groups are sort of iconoclasts, Markus Popp and his Oval project constantly reinventing himself and following his own idiosyncratic path, and Liturgy, whose 'transcendental black metal' has been known to ruffle a few feathers, and whose frontman Hunter Hunt-Hendrix has been outspoken in his academic/spiritual approach to black metal, which seems to be at odds with the true grim hordes, not to mention his distinctly UN black metal pretty boy appearance. Regardless, these two definitely make a good team, at least in terms of splitting a record. We were secretly hoping this was in fact a collaboration, but this is the next best thing.
Popp's Oval has definitely moved on from those beloved skipping cd underwater dronescapes we love so much, his return heralded a move toward manipulating acoustic instrumentation, and the tracks here continue in that direction. The main song here is a sort of glitchy electronic flecked post rock, sounding a bit like a more warped and abstract Tortoise, all manner of squiggles and squelches tangled up into the loping rhythm and melancholic strum, the result blissed out and melodic. The following three tracks are brief bits of experimentation, solo guitar it seems, processed buzz, transformed into distinct melodies that sound less like guitars and more like thumb piano or gamelan.
Liturgy subvert all expectations and come out with some seriously chugging churning math rock, repetitive and droney, looped and mesmerizing, it's pretty compelling, a sound we love, and these guys nail it, it's not until about halfway through that any black metal riffing comes in, but instead of launching into it, the track slips into something way more minimal, a haunting, pulsing electronic ambience, so gorgeous and hushed, until FINALLY, the song does explode into that soaring and majestic transcendental black metal we love so much, but even here, the blasting is kept to a minimum, the rhythms more midtempo, seemingly a sonic extension of the math rock opening. Great stuff. Definitely has us chomping at the bit for the new full length, and hoping for more of this transcendental math rock!
This too was a Record Store Day release, and thus was extremely limited, so not sure if we can get more once this batch sells out. Includes a download coupon as well.
MPEG Stream: OVAL "Kreak"
MPEG Stream: LITURGY "Untitled"

OVAL LANGUAGE, THE Tapes Singles And Remixes (Monochrome Vision) cd 13.98
There doesn't seem to be any useful information about The Oval Language to be found. What we can say is that this German duo has been making a peculiar brand of dada noise and aktionist concrete since the '80s and they have a really shitty website which indicates that they occasionally play some German noise festivals. But nothing is at all indicative of how fucked up The Oval Language is. Much of this would have fit alongside any number of thoroughly damaged cassette compilations circa 1987 on Broken Flag or Bain Total alongside Controlled Bleeding, Etant Donnes, Le Syndicat, and Merzbow. Their din is distinctly lo-fi with swarms of accumulated tape noise and overdriven distortion running throughout the recordings. The first 8 tracks on this disc were rescued from old tapes, which may or may not have been released back in the day (like we said, there's no information about this project anywhere), with the first tracks taking after Neubauten in thrashing some unfortunate pieces of metal and wood in a big warehouse. Then comes a rather sickening piece of garbled microphone digestion that may or may not have been influenced by the likes of Otto Muhler or Sudden Infant with gross-out lurches and heaves of ipecac-induced vocalizations amidst tape machinations of metal on metal squalor. Full-throttle noise explosions come afterwards, all shrouded in the obliterated tape-deck miasma that was a signature of many industrial-noise musicians from the '80s. Very well done we might add!
The last 8 tracks are remixes by the underground German noise musician Guido Hubner (aka Das Synthetische Mishgewebe), and while of the wooden plonks and metallic crashes seem similar to those on The Oval Languages original recordings, there's no information as to whether these remixes are from those tracks or from other tapes that were so murky and fucked up that they needed somebody to completely rework the material. As such Hubner does a commendable job in keeping to the spirit of those earlier tracks, with lots of tapedeck start and stop jitteriness and mumbling bumps in the night. The main difference Hubner adds to these noises is found in his abrasive use of crashing loop techniques. Even though Monochrome Vision did include some liner notes in Russian and English about the group, little of it is of interest and none of it offers context as to where The Oval Language operated or why they did what they did. It's a mystery... granted a very fucked-up and noisy mystery. Limited stock.
MPEG Stream: "Tapes 00:09:38"
MPEG Stream: "Tapes 00:07:16"
MPEG Stream: "Remix 00:03:27"
MPEG Stream: "Remix 00:07:03"

OVERSTREET, THE REV. LOUIS An Evening With The Rev. Louis Overstreet (Mississippi) lp 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT!! MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT!! MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT!!
The above is of course for the benefit of the legions of Mississippi obsessives, that seems to be growing with each and every release. Fans who will buy anything and everything Mississippi, whether it's blues, or gospel, or world music, whether it's African or Greek, classic New Zealand pop, or legendary underground Portland Punk. Which is totally understandable, the guys at Mississippi have great taste, and besides their incredible compilations, and unearthed rarities, they also have a knack for picking out old records that folks have been DYING to get on vinyl. But even if you're not a Mississippi obsessive, this here is well worth checking out. And may be just the disc to convert you to the cult of Mississippi...
Here we have a kick ass gospel record from 1963, originally reissued on Arhoolie, now available on Mississippi, ON VINYL. And while we're not super well versed in gospel music, we do dig what we've heard, but very little of what we've heard sounds like the Rev. Louis Overstreet. It's festive and inspirational, but at the same time it's super rocking. Most of the tracks collected here are relentless garage gospel grooves, the guitar and drums locked into killer jams, the guitar occasionally pealing off some wild licks, but for the most part offering up a jangly twangy strum, the congregation clapping in time, and hooting and hollering. The testifying is minimal, and when there are vocals, they are alternately crooned and howled, The Rev.'s voice is gritty and soulful, but even when he's singing, it's the groove, irresistible and unstoppable and most certainly inspired. It does slow down here and there, and gets all super bluesy and soulful, but for the most part, An Evening With is some seriously rollicking and rocking praise-the-Lord good time gospel rhythm and blues!
Probably would have been a lot easier to get us to go to church when we were younger if it sounded like this!

OVO Miastenia (Load) cd 14.98
Italian duo OvO is a band that we think a select crowd of AQ-customers will totally appreciate. But...don't look at that awful cover. Oooh, what were they thinking? Well the (sorta) little-girl voice of OvO's singer Stefania does perhaps explain the little-girl drawing on the cover (which she drew). As does the Load label's often willfully 'ugly' aesthetic. But where that illustration is sort of twee, cringe-inducing cutesiness, Stefania's voice is far from cutesy! It's a rabid, wretched little girl we're talking about. Her yelping shriek has been compared to both a squeaky toy and a wheezing dog dying by folks here at AQ. Basically, if you hate the extended high-pitched babble of Yoko Ono, stay away! Nerve-grating for sure. We don't know how she does it. Must need a lot of lozenges.
Meanwhile, OvO's music ranges from chaotic punk frenzy to plodding, art-rock dirge. In addition to the unusual, extreme vocals, OvO also uses/abuses cello, for extra droning ambience. They're hard to compare to anybody, but we'll throw out these names: the aforementioned Yoko Ono, Load labelmates Noxagt, Double Nelson, Oxbow, and Khanate. Or maybe a twisted, primitive, Japanoise version of Devil Doll ('cause they're Italian and sorta theatrical sounding). Definitely not always (ever?) easy listening, but strangely fascinating. For us, it's the endurance-testing 20 minute title track that makes this a keeper. A torturous trudge with throaty rasping and heavy doomy death-knell drums and guitar. Oppressive. Depressive. Feedback hell gargle. Very much in the vein of Corrupted and Khanate. But with witchy Yoko vox! Like we said, the select few will love it.
MPEG Stream: "Miastenia"
MPEG Stream: "VooDoo"
MPEG Stream: "Anime Morte"

OVRO Horizontal / Vertical (Drone Records) 7" 9.98
New on Drone Records! Ovro is a Finnish woman who has recorded a handful of dark, dark, dark electronic albums for the steel-eyed Some Place Else label. Her contribution to the Drone series curated by Stefan Knappe of Troum, features two tracks of underwater percolations and bubblings, not all of that far removed from the geothermal vent recordings that Jakob Kirkegaard presented through Touch a while back. On top of these thick, churning, low-end rumbles, Ovro musters an unsettled chorus of scraped guitars and found object manipulation that pushes what otherwise could have been a clinical investigation into geologic sound towards the sound esoterica of Cranioclast, Coil, and irr. app. (ext.). As with all Drone singles, this is limited to 300 copies; and for this edition, Ovro has hand mounted photo negatives to the covers.
MPEG Stream: "Horizontal"
MPEG Stream: "Vertical"

OWWL Dark Places (Utech) cd 14.98
We first discovered mysterious multiple w'd dronedrift outfit Owwl via a cd-r that showed up one day in the mail, and we were pretty much totally smitten on first listen. This German duo specializes in that sort of ultra minimal dronemusic we can't ever get enough of, blackened sprawls of obsidian thrum and softly pulsating rumbles, long tones spread way out and layered into lush landscapes of dark overtones and perceived rhythms. The thing that really made Owwl stand out was that they augmented their drones with a 19th century reed organ, giving the sound a haunting organic feel, and transforming it into something much more emotional and evocative than most the guitardrone records we hear.
So it makes perfect sense that they would end up on Utech, who seem to specialize in the sort of blackened minimalism and psychdrone mesmer that Owwl traffic in, and it is indeed a perfect match. This latest missive from Owwl is even darker and denser than the cd-r, the sounds impossibly lush, at times reminding us of some Phill Niblock piece slowed down to a crawl, but with the same sort of overtones, the sound deceivingly static, but alive with all manner of sonic subtleties. But it's not all pure dronemusic, the band do explore a more psychedelic sound, creating shimmery ragas, the harmonium unfurling a gorgeously warm thrum, that the group stretch waaaaay out, wreathing it in guitar buzz and pulsating swells of crumbling distortion, or wrapping it in sheets of muted feedback. The sound veers into an almost industrial black ambience, abject and corrosive, but still washed out and dreamlike, before settling into a long stretch of whirring chordal shimmer, a dense softnoise cloud that seems to ooze and expand, the sound growing more and more lush, the blackness revealing colors hidden within, a smoldering soundworld of blunted tones, blurred chords, and beautiful black drift.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!! Housed in a super striking oversized sleeve.
MPEG Stream: "44° 25' 39" N, 26° 5' 15" E"
MPEG Stream: "29° 15' 0" S, 70° 44' 0" W"

OWWL Tree Speaks To Stone, Stone Speaks To Water (self-released) cd-r 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We've mentioned it before, but we do find it sort of strange, the device of doubling a letter in a band name (Mutiilation, Celestiial) or even adding s superfluous one (Wooden Shjips), and now we have Owwl, and granted, Owwl is a way cooler name that Owl. This German duo sent us their cd-r, and like many things, there it sat, for way too long, cuz when we finally did throw it on, we were pretty captivated. Guitardrone records are no new thing, but these guys definitely offer their own take, the instrumentation to begin with, guitar feedback and a 19th century reed organ, and that's it, improvised live in the studio, these three long tracks are lush and dark and haunting and hypnotic. The guitar and the organ both trafficking mostly in low tones so it's often difficult to tell which is which, deep rumbles, and layered whirs, keening almost melodies, the sound so thick at times it almost sounds orchestral, often building to epic crescendos, the sound threatening to crumble, the feedback just this side of howling, instead pulsing and undulating and adding a subtle, almost rhythmic component.
The tracks slip easily from high end thrum, to deep sonorous shimmer, the various bits of buzz and rumble, often turning caustic, the sounds becoming crunchy and crumbly, the distortion seeming to transform the notes and chords into strange decaying textures, sometimes splintering into near chaos, other times slipping into more meditative drifts. The final track is a series of dense swells, the layered tones pulsing and beating against each others, the various overtones creating strange overlapping rhythms, the sound seemingly alive, an active expanse of droneguitar on the verge of blossoming into pure psychedelia, especially when a cascading avalanche of high end tones rains down on the churning black rumble below.
LIMITED TO 70 COPIES!!! Each one hand numbered. These are the last copies available. They come packaged in super swank hand made mini book-like sleeves, with an actual photo affixed to the front, while inside there's a nice printed vellum insert.
MPEG Stream: "I"
MPEG Stream: "II"

OX Aftermath (Kult Ov Nihilow) lp 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
For those of you unfamiliar with OX, a quick look at the cover should tell you all you need to know. The image on the front it a towering Orange amplifier, the back cover, a close up of some amplifier vacuum tubes. Two songs to a side, with titles like "Seismic", "Mass", "The Horror" and "Abyss". And hell, the record's called Aftermath. Plus, it's on Finnish label Kult Of Nihilow, who in the past have brought us records from Boris, , Dot [.], Church Of Misery, Fleshpress and Stumm. So if you guessed massive, pummeling, sloooooow, doooooom, dirge heaviness, you've definitely come to the right place.
We listed a 10" from OX years ago, and sadly we were only ever able to get about a dozen. We got a whole lot more this time, but these will probably still be gone before you know it. OX is the one man guitar doom project of Ken Baluke, who spends most of his time wielding his axe in Canadian doom groove outfit Sons Of Otis, but in OX, it's just him, and his guitar, and what sounds like lots and lots of really big amps. OX is definitely a practitioner of that sort of slow motion sludge guitar ambience, but definitely has his own unique angle. The core of OX's sound is a thick slithery Earth 2 style glacial riffing, a black liquid doom that sort of seeps out of your speakers, but above this dense low end is a gloriously fuzzed out effulgence, all glistening fuzz and radiant sparkle. Those two extremes all tangled up and constantly bleeding into one another. Haunting and heavy and so beautiful. Not sure whether it's supposed to play at 33 or 45, but sounds great either way. On 33 it's a sloooooooooooow crawl, at 45, it's still slow, but a little less murky and more luminous. Sort of like having two different, but equally heavy and kick ass records in one!
LIMITED TO 255 COPIES!! We got about 40 of those, and once they are gone we most likely won't be able to get more.

OXBOW King Of The Jews (Hydra Head) cd 17.98
If someone had never heard San Francisco's Oxbow before, and knew nothing about them - or for that matter knew nothing about Sammy Davis Jr. either - we wonder what they'd make of that album title/cover art? Definitely wouldn't help 'em guess what sort of music lies within, some of the earliest and insanest stuff by an AQ fave band we lovingly call "fucked rock geniuses". If you are one of those innocent souls who have never heard Oxbow before, well, dive in here and see if you can take it. And needless to say, if you are already an Oxbow fan, of course you NEED this if you don't have it already, which you might not, since until now Oxbow's 1991 sophomore album King Of The Jews has never been available as a domestic compact disc release. It has been paired previously with their 1989 debut Fuckfest as an abridged single cd, and then later as a double, both imports long out of print, as are of course the original vinyl lps on Oxbow's own label CFY Records. And this new Hydra Head reissue is the most deluxe and definitive, packaged in a nice paste-on mini lp-style sleeve, and enhanced with four bonus tracks, three of 'em previously unreleased.
Back when we reviewed Hydra Head's similarly presented, equally essential reissue of Fuckfest in 2009, we said that when they did King Of The Jews, we'd probably just write more or less the same review, that is, saying that this record also displays all the elements of Oxbow we appreciate: primal swampy skree and atmospheric loud-soft dynamics, lumbering slide guitar sickness and singer Eugene's regression therapy vocal histrionics... it's part Scratch Acid (or Jesus Lizard), part Butthole Surfers, part Birthday Party, part Cormac McCarthy novel, part primal psycho-sexual cabaret, part utterly alien WTF?!
This album's special guest star Lydia Lunch joins the madness on 2 of the cuts, "Daughter" and "Angel", utterly subsumed into the crazy, kecak-y, confusional handclap chaos of the former (what an album opener, damn!!), adding extra drama to the latter. Not that Oxbow needs much help in the drama department; Eugene's bedlamite mewlings and mutterings amidst the band's desolate atmospheres and sudden rock spasms are both bizarre and intense and go way beyond mere music-as-entertainment that's for sure.
Oxbow has been keeping rock weird for a long time now, and this is one of the most crucial documents in their entire discography. It'll clue you to the Oxbow formula of lots of tension, not so much release, though there's more of the latter here than on some other Oxbow outings... Highly, highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Daughter"
MPEG Stream: "Angel"
MPEG Stream: "Cat And Mouse"

OXBOW Love That's Last (Hydra Head) cd + dvd 14.98
Rock and roll as a raw nerve art form, that's the intense Oxbow aethetic... a band that dares you to listen, much less attend one of their shows. Avant garde yet drawn to swampy roots, Oxbow's approach is both intellectual and primal at the same time, these men channeling psychic and physical distress into their music, so much tension and release it's disturbing to behold... This brilliant and unique Bay Area outfit has been going strong against all odds for almost two decades now (!) and with each passing year seem to gain a wider audience, despite never ever being a part of any scene or trend. Not one that would help them, anyway. Except maybe now, that they've seemingly been accepted into the Neurosis/Isis axis of arty post-metal noisecore, releasing their last full-length An Evil Heat 4 or 5 years ago on the Neurot label and now (finally!) reappearing on Hydra Head with this cd+dvd package. Love That's Last isn't exactly the new Oxbow opus we've being waiting for, since it's not an all-new album but rather a collection, complete with commentary and lyrics in the booklet, of unreleased live cuts, improv tracks, compilation rarities, and a few "greatest hits" from their hard to find early albums. You'll certainly get a representative serving of their cathartic ugly/pretty rock action here, with all of Oxbow's characteristic Bonham beats, slide guitar skronk, droning ambience, and of course the distinctive mewling/screaming baby monster vocalizations of scary front man/fighting man Eugene Robinson. Highlights (and that's what all this is, really) range from their infamous "Insylum" duet with Marianne Faithful from 1996's Serenade In Red to the 1998 live recording "Glimmer Bird" to the prototypical expression of Oxbow anguish that is "Yoke" from their 1989 Fuckfest debut. Ten tracks in all... you too might be crying like a baby when it's over. Oxbow would be happy about that.
The DVD portion includes 5.1 mixes of a handful of Oxbow classics, plus filmmaker Christian Anthony's Oxbow documentary Music For Adults (previously available here at AQ when it was a dvd-r release) with outtakes too, AND a bunch of additional live footage of the band in Belgium and San Francisco. Here's what we said about Music For Adults before: "Now you can vicariously join Oxbow for their summer 2002 European tour. Even better than actually being there, you can enjoy their shows and tour hijinx without running any risk of Oxbow singer Eugene getting you in a headlock (and pulling down your pants, as happens to at least one unhappy Scotsman in this film). The live footage captures the Oxbow rock machine in all their twisted, bawling glory, while the 'behind-the-scenes' stuff will show you that they're actually all really nice guys!"
So, Oxbow fans NEED this. And it's obviously the first thing the prospective Oxbow fan needs to pick up as well. Hopefully that's just what's gonna happen. Recommended as always with all Oxbow product!
MPEG Stream: "Insylum"
MPEG Stream: "Is That What Sleep Looks Like?"
MPEG Stream: "Pretty Bird"

OXLEY, TONY The Advocate (Tzadik) cd 16.98

OXYKITTEN Oxtagonal Wax (Field Hymns) cassette 7.98
Third mysterious sonic missive from this Northwestern lo-fi synthscaper, and like the two tapes that came before, it's another wild and wooly mad scientist concoction of stuttery beats, creepy soundtracky synths, woozy loops, and all manner of warped effects. At first we dug this stuff just cuz it was kinda far out and fun, but with every record the sounds get better, the arrangements more fully fleshed out, and with Octagonal Wax, we're really beginning to wonder how this guys has remained such a secret. Just check out the opener, "50 Times Higher Than Any Normal Man", with its weird little blurts of synth squelch, woozy haunted house ambience, bloopy bleepy 8-bit video game melodies, all wrapped on a creepy cinematic Goblin-y gauze, playful but also infused with a strange sinister streak, which is precisely what makes this stuff so good. The last Oxykitten played out more like a summer party record, but this one is ominous and a little bit wintery, the opener a herald of strange dark times to come, leading directly into "Drowning Inside", which weds a thick buzzing synth to swoonsome melancholic strings, some weird wah wah melodies and a lumbering staticky beat. But it too has a strangely melancholy cast, with some almost choral like sounds that give this the vibe of some heartbreaking montage, and weirdly enough, sort of sounds like a WAY better produced Fastest.
From there on out, the sounds continues on in much the same fashion, definitely slipping into much more sun dappled sonic climes, but almost always drifting back toward something more woozy and moody, with a lot of the tracks touching on Carpenter / Goblin retro-synth soundtrack territory, making Oxykitten definitely ripe for discovery by fans of Umberto, Zombi, Majeure and all that stuff. That said, this is much definitely way more home brewed and DIY, which also in many ways makes it more appealing, strangely idiosyncratic, a dizzying melange of retro soundtracks, modern beatscaping, and outsider synth oddities. Another weirdo winner from Oxykitten!
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!! Includes digital download coupon!

OZMADAWN Rise Of The Moth (Chambara) cd-r 6.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We've been raving about krautdronedrifters Expo 70 quite a bit around these parts, and you all have been equally smitten it seems. Their blissful spaced out meditations, looped guitars and thick washes of outerspace shimmer pushing all our krautrock and doomdrone buttons.
But imagine Expo 70 with a bit more muscle, more grit, more guitars, more synths, just... MORE. A bit darker, a bit heavier, more buzz and more layers, less blissy and more propulsive. Imagine almost if you can, a more metal Expo 70, and maybe you'd end up with something like Ozmadawn.
We highlighted a disc by an SF band called Horseflesh a short while ago, a killer slab of post industrial krautdrone, channeling the German masters, but also more recent floorcore like Wolf Eyes, Yellow Swans, Skaters, etc. Well, the man behind Horseflesh just so happens to be half of the duo known as Ozmadawn, and on Rise Of The Moth, he and his partner take up from where Horseflesh left off, jettisoning some of the washed out shimmer and industrial crunch for something much more thick and corrosive, blown out and druggy, dense throbbing pulsing blasts of buzzing snarling layered krautdrone nirvana. Falling somewhere between Popol Vuh and SUNNO))), Hawkwind and Vulture Club, gloriously trance inducing outerspace hypno-heaviness. Not to say there aren't blissed out moments, there definitely are, the band unfurls super dreamy synthscapes, that drift and pulse, that feel like they trail off into forever, but those tranquil stretches always eventually seem to build into something equally hypnotic but way more fierce, soon overtaken by coruscating blackdrone guitars, and all manner of thick buzz and oscillating whir, somehow retaining the same sense of mesmer, but within a much more dense and aggressive framework. Simultaneously thick and heavy, soft and space-y, murky and metallic, drone-y and dreamy.
Packaged in cool hand screenprinted digipaks, pressed on black cd-r's, with a screen printed cardstock insert, and each with a unique 'recycled' Ozmadawn sticker.
MPEG Stream: "Entering The Atmosphere"
MPEG Stream: "Planet Forbidden"

OZMADAWN The Deepest Sleep (Chambara) 2 x cassette 8.98
Latest release from Bay Area blissdronespacedrift duo Ozmadawn, this one a gorgeously and elaborately packaged double cassette of music for sleep, separated into two sections, "For Sleep Or Meditation" and "For Smoke And Spirits".
The first tape is designed as the title suggests, for meditation and sleep, and is indeed a dark, dolorous bit of drifting low end, slow motion rhythmic swells, shimmering drifts of soft buzz and delicately crumbling distortion, lots of space, distant hiss, a softly swirling bit of minimal ambience, but with a dash of grimnity, this is not totally blissful and dreamy, the sounds here are dark and haunting, the mood harrowing, the overall vibe cinematic, the soundtrack to late nights and lost caves, to grey clouds drifting in front of a blood red moon, the various bits of electronic glitch, sound like they could be field recordings, insects, small creatures exploring their nocturnal landscape, all quite beautiful, but simultaneously quite dark.
The flipside gets even more evocative, with a layer of hiss that makes the record sound like it's wreathed in a rainstorm, or at the very least a late afternoon shower, the rumbling and buzzing drifting way back behind a sheet of processed hiss, the whole thing a softly shimmering bit of deep blackened late night moodmusic. So nice.
The second tape, the one designated "For Smoke + Spirits" is indeed a much more stirring bit of soundscapery, right out of the gate, creepy and tense, long tones wrapped around repeated motifs, total scary soundtrack stuff, a slow build from haunting to downright freaked out, streaks of feedback, a low lumbering melody, but right up in front a bit of sustained chordal soft focus skree that will most definitely have your hairs standing on end. Still pretty and mesmerizing, but seriously and cinematically harrowing, eventually building to a full on swarm-of-insects frenzy, a buzzing, swirling, convulsing wall of sound, while underneath, the original creep and drift continues to hover, the mix of the two disparate elements creating something gorgeously noisy, and/or noisily gorgeous.
ULTRA limited, as in 50 copies, we got about a dozen, they come housed in those oversized plastic clamshell cases, the kind that usually contain language tapes or instructional cassettes, the sleeve is hand stamped, hand numbered, and assembled one at a time, featuring a cool reflective front cover, includes a printed insert, and again, will probably be gone in no time...

P.A.R.A. Mermalien (Olde Engish Spelling Bee) lp 17.98

P.H.O.B.O.S. Anoedipal (Megaton) cd 28.00

PAAVOHARJU Yha Hamaraa (Fonal) lp 21.00
NOW AVAILABLE ON VINYL!!! Oh how we adore the Finnish label Fonal Records -- home to the likes of Kemialliset Ystavat, Islaja, Kiila and Es. And now, won't you please kindly welcome the newest addition to the Fonal roster, Paavoharju! We can say that that welcoming 'em is not such a difficult thing to do 'cause they sure do make some wonderful music! In fact, Cup and Jim have both listened to it almost every day since its release. It's true!
Note: We don't want to deny anyone the pristine 'first listen' magic that we experienced. We can attest that it was a sheer delight packed with many surprises, and our fondness has only grown with each listen. So if you want your introductory spin to be 'pure', please be forewarned that this review contains what some might call spoilers... that means stop reading now!
In many ways Paavoharju can be likened to fellow enchanting Finnish artists Lau Nau and Fonal labelmates Islaja, but their finely detailed yet loosely strung music is considerably more melted and collaged and electronic. Listening to Yha Hamaraa is almost like eavesdropping on a dream... or having someone else's heartbreaking memories come back to hazily haunt you. Sounds, voices and melodies drift in and out of focus, occasionally overlapping and seeping into one another. Sometimes it seems like you're listening to a rickety old radio with the dial set between stations so that the sounds somehow magically fit together. Odd faintly familiar elements make their presence felt such as in the ninth song where the male vocal melody brought to mind a twisted folk (and of course very Finnish) version of "Stairway To Heaven". The swooping, trebly female vocals find their own special place between Indian film music singers and the Southeast Asian voices that surface on the similarly (un)structured Sublime Frequencies travelogue field recording compilations. And reference must be made to Bjork as well! Now after having read this far in our review, you might find the very first track with its swell of distorted static-y noise to be somewhat unexpected, disorienting even, but we encourage you to go with it (and with us). Allow the wash of sounds to transport you into Paavoharju's intoxicating world. Completely and utterly breathtaking.
MPEG Stream: "Aamunuringon Tuntuinen"
MPEG Stream: "Vitivalkoinen"
MPEG Stream: "Kuljin Kauas"

PACIFIC RATE TEMPLE BAND / MONOPOLY CHILD STAR SEARCHERS split (Pacific City) cassette 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We only have a dozen or so of these, and it's unclear whether we can get more of these, so we won't bother going into too much detail. A split release, from the Skaters' Pacific City label, this one featuring new aQ faves the Monopoly Child Star Searchers on one side, the new to us Pacific Rate Temple Band, who we will assume is another Skaters side project.
The MCSS are in fine form as always, creating a sound so fantastically alien, we're still unable to pinpoint how much of it is played, how much is sampled, what instruments are used. Regardless, it's a gorgeously tripped out tribal dronejam. With way more guitar (?) this time around keening and waiting over that distinctive Monopoly murky tribal rhythm. The sound sometimes hiccup when the tape jogs, but it only adds to the weirdness. Warbly and dizzying and another recording towards convincing us we just might dig MCSS more than the Skaters!
Pacific Rate Temple Band have a similarly hazy sound, but the percussion is more distant or buried, instead the focus is on long drawn out high end tones, a sort of upper register skree, layered notes, overlapping tones, all shifting and beating subtly against each other, very primal and tribal, sun dappled and shimmering. It almost sounds like a high end remix of the other side, or if it were possible, the two sides played simultaneously would probably sound amazing.
Either way, this is some gorgeous stuff, and is of course limited, and again we only have a dozen, so be warned...

PACIONE, ADAM Dobranoc (Elevator Bath) picture disc 17.98
Adam Pacione's blissed ambience has quietly enthralled us over many years now; and he continues his relationship with the exceptional Elevator Bath label, who has issued this wondrous album through an ongoing series of picture discs that previously included work by Rick Reed, our own Jim Haynes, and Dale Lloyd. Pacione claims a bunch of sources for Dobranoc, including guitar, field recordings, analogue synth, Moog filters, and shortwave radio. He seems intent on extracting particular, harmonious colors from each of those materials and working them into a monochromatic blur of softened dronescaping and hushed ambience. The faintest of half-melodies work through Pacione's stately compositions; and it's easy to become lost in these extended moments on Dobranoc. Throughout, Pacione streams a series of delicate textures that could be snow coming through the radio, or it could be a light shower of rain that settles behind much of Pacione's sustained tonal flutterings. No matter the source, the slight abrasions of these sounds act as a ghostly counterpoint to the purity that Pacione gets out of his drones. The resulting wanderings through his radiant soundfields have much of the sense of mystery that Zoviet France managed on Shadow Thief Of The Sun or that emerged from the more minimal explorations of Stars Of The Lid. The picture disc features two blurred macro-lens images sporting oversaturated colors abstracted through the lens; these are suitable visuals to accompany Pacione's ethereal work. Limited to 268 copies.

PACIONE, ADAM From Stills To Motion (Infraction) cd + 3"cd 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

PACIONE, ADAM Sisyphus (Elevator Bath) cd 14.98
After a handful of amazing, and of course super limited cd-r's comes the debut real cd full length from Adam Pacione, a modern day practitioner of ambient alchemy, realized in the form of luxuriously understated dreamdrone music. Still limited (329 copies) of course, and still amazing, Pacione channels the spirit of Brian Eno, William Basinksi and other like minded explorers of musical inner space through lengthy drifts of super soft focus abstract sound. Each track is an impossibly spacious underwater world of murk and murmur, muted rumbles, smoothed out expanses of shimmering fuzz, gentle lilting smears of sound, all subtly looped into incredibly hypnotic barely shifting soundscapes.
Ultra minimal for sure, but so dense and layered that the songs and sounds seem to change shape and color with every listen. Smooth and darkly glistening, Pacione crafts a deep lush sound, while somehow managing to retain bits of lo-fi sonic grit that help add all sorts of unlikely texture and timbre to Pacione's otherwise ultra serene drift. A perfect dreamlike blend of dark glacial glide and warm glistening glimmer. Another absolutely essential disc of gorgeous late night drift.
Packaged in lovely screen printed, recycled paper jackets, with printed inner sleeves. And again LIMITED TO 329 COPIES!!! So not sure how long these will last.
MPEG Stream: "Joelma's Burning"
MPEG Stream: "An Evening's Pursuit"
MPEG Stream: "Groves, Springs & Hilltops"

PACIONE, ADAM With Wakened Eyes (Bee Eater) cd-r 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Like fellow Texan mesmerists Stars Of The Lid, Adam Pacione's sounds are utterly timeless with only the barest gesture of movement to deliver a beautiful arc of sublime driftwork impressionism. Similarly, Pacione is quite the craftsman for these utterly beautiful surfaces of subtle sonic reflections and refractions, choosing to spend many years on a set of recordings instead of churning out the cd-rs. This ambient alchemist had issued a variation of With Wakened Eyes back in 2005, with the material dating back a few years earlier. We've not heard the earlier version (although some of the sources mutated into his impeccable Sisyphus CD), but this sounds damn good to us. The aforementioned Stars Of The Lid, William Basinski, and the best of Brian Eno's ambient compositions come to mind when trolling through the expansive wash of drift and drone of With Wakened Eyes. Pacione's blurred soundfield actively engages in softened vibration, aerosolized melodies, sunbleached drones, and sustained tones that glimmer with a blinding sunbeam shot through a dense thicket of leaves, making for a gorgeous, late night drone album. Limited edition of 100 copies.
MPEG Stream: "This New Ocean"
MPEG Stream: "Ways Of Telling"

PADANG FOOD TIGERS Born Music (Blackest Rainbow) lp 21.00
Brand new full length of hushed minimal pastoral psychedelia from the duo of Spencer Grady and Steven Lewis, who also do time in aQ fave Rameses III, and like we mentioned in the review of the cd ep we listed a while back, the sound of Padang Food Tigers is like a more minimal version of the sound of their main group, the songs lush layered expanses of hushed folky drift, laced with field recordings, the sound of rainfall seems to run throughout, as if the listener was eavesdropping on some intimate back porch rainy day jam.
Most of the songs here feature just a couple instruments, usually guitar, banjo, lapsteel, piano, even harmonica, the song a gradual unfurling of some lazy woozy melody, the sound rich with room sound, a lush natural reverb, a dream like echo, the opener introduces the record with the sound of rain, over which a haunting piano plays a funereal lament, accompanied by banjo, the two playing out a skeletal harmony, often making it difficult to tell which is which, the perfect intro to such an introspective record.
Much of the record is like some sort of abstract, Appalachia, subtle strum, slippery slide, all spread way out, letting notes flutter and fade, spinning surprisingly lush streaks of warm whirring buzz, the tracks with banjo sound like slow motion bluegrass, other tracks introduce more natural sounds, rushing rivers, chirping crickets, and suddenly the jam seems to have moved creekside, the notes bouncing off the porch and joining the sounds of the woods and water, a few of the tracks build and become epic and emotional, like the soaring majesty of "Right Up Rooster", a lush swirl of strummed high end steel strings and warm piano chords, the sound almost liturgical, but so dreamy and divine.
And the record finishes with a bit of music box like melody, woven into some spare late night folk, all warm and lit by flickering firelight, a darkly dreamy finish to a darkly dreamy record. So nice.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES, already sold out at the label!
MPEG Stream: "Born Music"
MPEG Stream: "Rise Before The Rain"
MPEG Stream: "Every Heaven I've Ever Seen"

PADANG FOOD TIGERS Go Down Moses (Under The Spire) cd ep 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The strangely named Padang Food Tigers, are actually an offshoot of blissed out pastoral dream drone folk outfit Rameses III, and it sounds like it.
A short three track ep of sun dappled folky drift, sounding like three movements of a single piece, all hazy and hushed and delicate and lovely, the simple strummed melodies drift above field recordings of wind and water, wrapped in lush gauzy swells of soft focus whir, laced with tinkling chimes and distant bells, a slowly unfurling landscape of abstract folk drone meditative mesmer, eventually the instruments fade, leaving just the chimes and the sound of the world outside. Only to have the simple strumming reemerge over a brief stretch of crackle and pop, the sounds presumably of a warm fire in the hearth, this time there's piano as well, a delicate counterpoint to the crystalline guitar, which drifts lazily into the final track, the piano more pronounced, this time everything underpinned by the thick liquid buzz of a bowed cello, the deep resonant rumble wrapping warmly around melancholy pointilist piano, a sonic rendering of a lazy summer afternoon, the trees waving in the breeze, a stream burbling nearby, a glimmering world of tranquil bliss and washed out dreamlike folk drone ambience. So lovely. Sad it's so short.
Packaged in a stamped cardstock sleeve, LIMITED TO 200 COPIES, each one hand numbered.
MPEG Stream: "Go Down, Moses"
MPEG Stream: "Corn Stem King"

PADDEN, DANIEL Pause For The Jet (Dekorder) cd 16.98
Another back room discovery, a little stash of these until-now-unreviewed discs, 2008's Pause For The Jet, from aQ fave Daniel Padden, whose solo records we ended up digging way more than his day job in Volcano The Bear. Not to slag VtB, but Padden on his own, manages to create gorgeously head spinning, fractured and fantastical worlds of sound, schizophrenic and chaotic for sure, leaping willynilly from all out noise assault to lilting folk, from murky drone to twangy ethereal drift, which in other hands could definitely be jarring and disorienting, and, well... hell, it still is in Padden's hands, but there's just something about the way he strings all those disparate sounds together that works. Although works in a way that will most likely not be obvious to the casual listener, but by now, anyone into weird homebrewed sounds, will no doubt find much to dig here (and anyone whole loved Padden's other discs, you're probably gonna want this too!).
Pause For The Jet seems to tend toward the drone and the drift, sort of, 17 songs most of them pretty short, some as short as 30 seconds, the longest almost 5 minutes, but the rest hovering between 1 and 3 minutes, which might frustrate some, looking for long, slowly unfurling dronescapes, but taken as brief bits of droning sound and twisted melodic weirdness, PFTJ is a pretty appealing listen. Stretches of ethereal shimmer, underpinned by plonking piano and low slung bass, slip into maddeningly fractured collages of varispeed tape manipulation, hazy blurred drift and disembodied pump organ, detuned twang flecked campfire folk gives way to hushed melancholic thrum, Tow Waits-ish back alley cabaret is peppered with Ribot like guitar buzz and still more tape weirdness, elsewhere strings keen and buzz and bombinate, Padden croons beautifully over skeletal melodies, dark swells of thumping upright bass pulse beneath Herrmann like strings and noisy percussion, the record lumbering back and forth between atonal skronk, and haunting avant lo-fi folk, psychedelic shimmer, and disembodied ghostlike creep.
Another one we have VERY few copies of, so act fast...
MPEG Stream: "Those Troats"
MPEG Stream: "Marseille Tape"
MPEG Stream: "Our Earthly Balloon"

PADDEN, DANIEL Pause For The Jet (Dekorder) lp 14.98
Another back room discovery, a little stash of these until-now-unreviewed discs, 2008's Pause For The Jet, from aQ fave Daniel Padden, whose solo records we ended up digging way more than his day job in Volcano The Bear. Not to slag VtB, but Padden on his own, manages to create gorgeously head spinning, fractured and fantastical worlds of sound, schizophrenic and chaotic for sure, leaping willynilly from all out noise assault to lilting folk, from murky drone to twangy ethereal drift, which in other hands could definitely be jarring and disorienting, and, well... hell, it still is in Padden's hands, but there's just something about the way he strings all those disparate sounds together that works. Although works in a way that will most likely not be obvious to the casual listener, but by now, anyone into weird homebrewed sounds, will no doubt find much to dig here (and anyone whole loved Padden's other discs, you're probably gonna want this too!).
Pause For The Jet seems to tend toward the drone and the drift, sort of, 17 songs most of them pretty short, some as short as 30 seconds, the longest almost 5 minutes, but the rest hovering between 1 and 3 minutes, which might frustrate some, looking for long, slowly unfurling dronescapes, but taken as brief bits of droning sound and twisted melodic weirdness, PFTJ is a pretty appealing listen. Stretches of ethereal shimmer, underpinned by plonking piano and low slung bass, slip into maddeningly fractured collages of varispeed tape manipulation, hazy blurred drift and disembodied pump organ, detuned twang flecked campfire folk gives way to hushed melancholic thrum, Tow Waits-ish back alley cabaret is peppered with Ribot like guitar buzz and still more tape weirdness, elsewhere strings keen and buzz and bombinate, Padden croons beautifully over skeletal melodies, dark swells of thumping upright bass pulse beneath Herrmann like strings and noisy percussion, the record lumbering back and forth between atonal skronk, and haunting avant lo-fi folk, psychedelic shimmer, and disembodied ghostlike creep.
Another one we have VERY few copies of, so act fast...
MPEG Stream: "Those Troats"
MPEG Stream: "Marseille Tape"
MPEG Stream: "Our Earthly Balloon"

PADDEN, DANIEL The Isaac Storm (Ultra Eczema) lp 16.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
As much as we all dig Volcano The Bear, we've actually been loving VtB member Daniel Padden's One Ensemble project even more. While Volcano are more of a surreal dadaist experimental sound outfit, for the One Ensemble, Padden takes those same Dadaist tendencies but tempers them a bit, wrapping them around pretty pop or lilting folk and creating some truly alien sounding prettiness.
But on this ultra limited lp, Padden takes his One Ensemble and wanders back into some serious Volcano The Bear territory. Demented music box melodies drift amidst soaring strings, clinking clanking percussion, deep moaning cellos, bursts of staticky field recordings and manipulated field recordings, while over the top float haunting mysterious melodies. Sounds a bit like a more druggy demented Tom Waits.
Elsewhere, thick washes of fuzzed out ambient whir wrap themselves around damaged pitch shifted guitar warble, junk yard percussion marches through thick clouds of ominous drones, detuned acoustic guitars shimmer beneath heavily reverbed scrapes and squeaks and wheezing harmonica melodies. A totally mesmerizing, dizzying and damaged trawl through some surreal junk yard filled with broken musical instruments and ghost musicians, jamming in the middle of the night to an audience of beat up stuffed animals and rusted out appliances. So cool!
Packaged in a super spiffy crayon colored owl, coloring book collage cover.
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES!!

PADDEN, DANIEL (THE ONE ENSEMBLE OF) Live at VPRO Radio (Brainwashed) cd-r 11.98

MPEG Stream: "Clown Flinging"
MPEG Stream: "Mustard Mustard"

PADDEN, DANIEL (THE ONE ENSEMBLE OF) The Owl Of Fives (Textile) lp 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
As much as we dig UK musical experimentalists Volcano The Bear and their disjointed sonic surrealism, VtB member Daniel Padden has always managed to take that sound of theirs even further, somewhere else entirely, to a place where his juxtapositions coalesce into a dark and highly personal, mostly instrumental melancholia. Meandering and thoughtful, like a twilight walk through a musical forest, just wandering, laying down on the ground when the mood strikes you, gazing at patches of sky through the dense canopy of leaves, feeling the wet earth soak through your clothes, shivering as small insects crawl all over you tickling your skin, squinting as you're blinded by a brilliant shaft of sunlight that breaks through the trees, then melts into the forest floor beneath while you're sprinkled with a fine mist as the wind looses the condensation from the branches. This not-so-precise effect is achieved with reverby pianos in vast expanses of space, slippery slide guitar, plinkety plonk keyboards, soaring minor key strings, Appalachian guitar picking over squirming beds of bombinating drones. Padden's dense buzzing ragas are all dreamy and melancholy and super intimate and personal sounding, but somehow at the same time are grandiose and epic, with occasional waltz-like marches, like chamber music for some outer space / otherworldly king and his court. Occasionally delicate and haunting, occasionally rambunctious and a little chaotic. But always totally beautiful and mesmerising and truly mysterious. Think somewhere between Eyvind Kang, the Sun City Girls, Kronos Quartet, Godspeed You Black Emperor, and Jack Rose. All that and more is filtered through Padden's slightly skewed musical mind's eye.
MPEG Stream: "Farewell My Porcupine"
MPEG Stream: "Gong Farm"
MPEG Stream: "Singing Norway To Sleep"

PAIK, NAM JUNE Works 1958-1979 (Sub Rosa) cd 16.98
Five compositions by video artist Nam June Paik. Long before he became famous for his work in the visual arts, Paik had travelled to both Japan and later to Germany (along side Karlheinz Stockhausen at the Westdeutsche Rundfunk's Studio For Electronic Music) to study composition. This cd is the first time these works have been released outside of extremely limited cassette and lp issues and date from as early as 1959 to as late as 1979. The tracks themselves are as varied as one might expect from such an extended period. The first piece "Prepared Piano For Merce Cunningham" (1977) is a solemn 28 minute improvisation on a detuned piano. This piece was originally released in an edited form but is presented here as it was recorded, in its entirety. Three of the pieces were unearthed in Paik's apartment in 1999 while searching through uncataloged films and videos. "Hommage A John Cage" (1959), "Simple" (1961), and "Etude For Pianoforte" (1960) are tape experiments using crude splicings of recorded music, Paik screaming, various recorded noises, all sped up, slowed down, scrambled and otherwise mutilated. "Duett" (1979) is a 25 minute improvised collaboration between Paik on piano and Takis on metal sculpture. Paik drifts between various baroque and classical themes before settling into a slow dirge while humming mournfully as Takis intermittently strikes on large chunks of metal. The piece has a beautifully melancholic yet absurd quality that approaches self-mockery but somehow remains sincere.
RealAudio clip: "Hommage A John Cage"
RealAudio clip: "Duett"

PAINE, ANDREW & RICHARD YOUNGS Mauve Dawn (Fusetron) lp 14.98

PAINFORGED / GNAW THEIR TONGUES A Confession Of Worshipping The Depraved And Perverse Human Psyche (Shadowgraph) cd-r 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We won't go into too much detail with this one, it was limited to 100 copies, is already sold out, and we got a mere 10, sold 3 or 4, so by the time you read this we'll have 5 or 6 left, and will NOT be able to get more. Gnaw Their Tongues obsessives will NEED this, three new tracks of GTT's fucked up and brilliantly brutal industrial symphonic cinematic black doom, all buzzing guitars, crashing percussion, twisted strings, warped vocals, twisted samples, black ambience, all woven into something freaky and creepy and unlike anything else you've heard.
We had never heard Painforged before, but they are most definitely a worthy matchup for GTT, a similarly abject bit of abstract blacknoize and metallic ambience, processed sounds throb and skitter and pulse over monstrous vocals, strange samples laced with super spare programmed doom-ed drumcrush, swirling black ambience and thick swells of rumbling buzzing doomdronedirge low end, laced with deconstructed and decaying riffage, slowed down cookie monster vox, and spidery atonal guitar squiggles, all melted down into a noxious and black sonic stew.
Packaged in a dvd style case, nice printed covers, almost sold out, so cross your fingers and add to cart...
MPEG Stream: PAINFORGED "A Confession Of Worshipping The Depraved..."
MPEG Stream: GNAW THEIR TONGUES "Kaolo"

PAINKILLER Collected Works (Tzadik) 4cd 44.00
4 cds collecting the almost-complete works (plus some previously unreleased pieces) of the collaboration among 3 of the biggest egos in contemporary music: John Zorn, Mick Harris, and big bad Bill Laswell. Nicely presented, with all the original (banned-in-England in one instance) artwork. Includes "Guts Of A Virgin," "Buried Secrets," and "Execution Ground" (with the bonus live in Osaka disc from the import Japanese version, featuring guest Eye Yamantaka of Boredoms). And then there's the previously unreleased track with Keiji Haino on guitar (doing a Jacks cover!). Makigami Koichi also guests on vocals.

PAINKILLER John Zorn's 50th Birthday Celebration Vol. 12 (Tzadik) cd 16.98
JZ's 50th was/is a never-ending party it seems. The cds just keep on coming. We haven't managed to keep up at all with 'em all. But we did have to take a moment to check out this, a new Painkiller document! Painkiller being one of our favorite John Zorn ensembles, wherein he teamed up with grindcore drummer Mick Harris (Napalm Death/Scorn) and ubiquitous bassist Bill Laswell for several extreme explorations of heavy-duty, jazz metal improvcore back in the early '90s. The "Collected Works" four-cd box set on Tzadik remains quite recommended (especially for the band's best work, the dubby death ambient double disc set called Execution Ground), and includes guest appearances from the likes of Eye Yamantaka and Keiji Haino.
So what's the deal with this live, September 2003 birthday Painkiller reunion, then? Well, first off, although Laswell is (of course) on board, Mick Harris isn't. Does he even still play drums? His replacement is Chicago jazz percussionist Hamid Drake. And, the special guest at this show was Mike Patton, always a suitable stand-in for Eye. So this isn't quite the same Painkiller, being rather, um, "funkier" than we remember 'em being. It's also certainly exuberantly noisy. Well, maybe the darkest Painkiller stuff wouldn't really be right for a birthday party, after all! The three tracks here, two of 'em quite lengthy, were all composed and/or improvised by the Zorn/Drake/Laswell/Patton unit. Patton contributes plenty of distorted screams and jib-jabbery glitched out electonics n' vocals, while the Laswell/Drake rhythm section generally grooves along, and Zorn switches back and forth between both camps, blowing like crazy to keep Patton company or playing "jazzier" stuff to swing with Laswell and Drake. Zorn, Patton and yes indeed old Painkiller fans will all find this of interest. It's not quite the Painkiller of the Mick Harris days, but there's still plenty of dubby, mayhemic skronk here that's at least really "Painkillerish".
MPEG Stream: "Your Inviolable Freedoms"
MPEG Stream: "DPM"

PAINTED CAVES Not Here Not There (Dust Editions) cassette 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
It's here! Not Here Not There is the first release from Painted Caves, aka Evan Caminiti, one half of psychedelic dronefolk duo Barn Owl, and while Painted Caves, like many of the Barn Owl offshoots, definitely exists in a similar sonic plane, one of sprawling smoldering guitar thrum, and shimmering soft focus guitar ambience, Not Here Not There finds Caminiti getting way more abstract, mixing some ethereal synth drift into the dense swells of chordal thrum, a gorgeous expanse of guitar/synth exploration, with subtle electronic manipulations, all blurred into a gauzy softly billowing whole. The tape begins very much like past Barn Owl outings, a sort of twang flecked, sun dappled whirring cloud of warm guitar swirl, but after a spell, the sound grows downright malevolent, expanding into churning sonic stormclouds before dissipating into another hazy washed out ethereal atmosphere, underpinned by a
smoldering chordal fog, wreathed in a murky shimmer that soon gives way to a brooding softly undulating soft-psych thrum, and eventually finishes with the dreamily wistful final track, a hauntingly melancholic smear of muted prismatic buzz and hum, almost like a more psychedelic dronedrift version of the Caretaker, with buried lost memory like melodies, and a glimmering field of soft focus crackle and cosmic haze.
This is the first release on Caminiti's Dust Editions imprint and is LIMITED TO 200 COPIES. Includes a digital download as well.

PAINTING PETALS ON PLANET GHOST Fallen Camellias (A Silent Place) cd 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We love, love, loved the cd that Japan's PSF label released by Painting Petals On Planet Ghost, 2009's Haru No Omi, a disc of hushed hazy psychedelic semi-acoustic drones backing delicate female vocals, themselves often gently looped and layered. Although on PSF, and despite those vocals being in fluent Japanese, PPOPG is the work of Italy's Ramona Ponzini, joined by the ever-industrious Opalio brothers from My Cat Is An Alien, and is probably our favorite thing the Oplaio's have been involved with.
Now, we knew of an earlier Painting Petals album on Time-Lag, the vinyl long out of print, but had somehow missed out on this one, a 2008 release from the A Silent Place label. Well, as you may have noticed elsewhere on this week's list, we just managed to acquire an assorted quantity of A Silent Place "product", at a "nice price" too, including (yay!) a handful of these lovely discs. It's totally along the lines of the PSF release, being another album of gorgeous, near-ambient driftworks, apparently recorded in "mystic locations" in the Italian Alps, with Ponzini's dreamy vocals once again set amidst melodious shimmering drone, and tinkling bells... there's both wind chimes, and what sounds like field recordings of actual wind, along with guitars, glockenspiel, antique accordion, mini-keyboard, and harmonica. Utterly entrancing and relaxing.
So, if you liked the more recent Haru No Omi as much as we did, you should act fast and try to grab one of these. We won't be able to get more, and only have a few...
MPEG Stream: "Kari"
MPEG Stream: "Yume No Hanashi"
MPEG Stream: "Kyoto No Mizu"

PAINTING PETALS ON PLANET GHOST Haru No Omoi (PSF) cd 17.98
It'd be easy to mistake this beautiful, beautiful album for being Japanese... the title is in Japanese, the singing is in Japanese, and it's on the great Japanese psych label PSF after all, with an obi and everything! But actually, it's the work of Italian experimental chanteuse Ramona Ponzini, who is an associate of the My Cat Is An Alien collective (members of whom also being part of this project), and is obviously fluent in Japanese. Totally belongs on PSF though, worthy of being of the rare albums of Western origin appearing on that label, and we think it's one of the loveliest, regardless of where it's from. And it also lives up to its evocative name Painting Petals On The Planet Ghost, whatever that phrase might mean...
On the seven hushed tracks here, Ponzini's gentle vocals hover amidst even gentler hum and hiss, accompanied by sun-dappled, slow motion acoustic guitar melodies, minimalistic and melancholic, and droning synth. These songs are sometimes visited by chiming bells, or restrained, ceremonial-sounding percussion. There's an intimate, yet mysterious vibe to it all, one that's dreamy and drifting, Ponzini's singing at the center of these songs, the focus of the listener's attention, but at the same time, the soft-focus nature of these tracks as a whole also being the attraction, the delicate interplay of vocals, melody, and drone almost becoming a haunting, holistic oneness. Pleasantly haunting that is, a hypnotic late night listen, somnolent folkish lullabies given gorgeous drone treatment.
Doused in mild echo effects, with overdubs her sweet singing is vaguely layered and looped, or at least some ghostly suggestion is made in that direction, where she starts one vocal line, then it fades into a wordless hmmmmmm, as another one of her vocals is layered over what has become part of the warm background hum...
For fans of Fursaxa, Grouper, Valet, and other female-fronted loner psych-folk-drone stuff, as well as of course certain Japanese artists, like AQ faves Nagisa Ti Te for sure, or Ai Aso with her cooing waifish vocals. Or, remember female Japanese duo Eddie Marcon's Shining On Graveposts disc (soon to be available again, at long last, by the way!)? This reminds us a lot of that wonderful album, but 'tis even more gauzy and droned-out... Packaged in a miniature LP-style gatefold sleeve, and highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Honoho No Ko"
MPEG Stream: "Yume No Hanashi"
MPEG Stream: "Akatsuki No Hoshi"

PAINTING PETALS ON PLANET GHOST Transparent Winter (Silentes) cd 14.98
Geiger-counter-ish clicks, reveberant chords, and swooping zwooping synth blips herald the atmospheric beginning to this new disc (a considerably expanded cd edition of the limited & long gone Blackest Rainbow vinyl version from last year) from Italy's Painting Petals On Planet Ghost, an aQ-fave combo ever since we heard their release on Japan's PSF imprint back in 2009. Those sort of eerie, uncertain sonics continue throughout this disc, forming the backdrop to the haunting, echo-effected vocal rites of Ramona Ponzini, singing Japanese poetry as per Painting Petals On Planet Ghost tradition (this time, the words come from the works of Takamura Kotaro). Also in the tradition of their other recordings, this is quite lovely and mysterious! Ponzini and her two cohorts (the brothers Opalio of experimentalists My Cat Is An Alien) have conjured another gently damaged and droning psychedelic soundscape of layered prayerful vox in a mad scientist's laboratory of strange secretive sounds. Just be sure to turn it off before you go to sleep, or the "hidden" bonus track at the very end of this lengthy disc will disturb your slumbers, featuring as it does some sudden, startling loud percussion, in the form of gongs being struck and bells being rung.
MPEG Stream: "Mars Appears"
MPEG Stream: "Winter Is Coming"

PAIVANSADE Puhalluspelto (Eclipse) lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Attention Finnophiles!! Another missive of forest-y free folk from far away Finland. This time in the form of a super limited lp from the group Paivansade, who happen to be made up of folks from Kiila, Rauhan Orkesteri and Lauhkeat Lampat who some of you may be familiar with. The sound is everything we've come to expect and love, plucked strings, wheezing squeezebox, chimes and rattles, very spare and spacious, like a Fahey record stretched out as far as it will go, with ambient bowed strings, very haunting. Once in a while the sound erupts into squealing, clattery, whistling frivolity, with deep throaty hand drums providing a clumsy rhythmic framework for a wild tribal gypsy folk workout. Fans of Anaksimandros, Kemialliset Ystavat and Avarus will obviously find this essential. Limited to 500 copies!

PALACE OF WORMS The Forgotten (The Flenser) cd 8.98
For a while, San Francisco seemed like some sort of black metal mecca, record after record and shows galore, all sorts of grim and kvlt hordes, Leviathan, Draugar, Crebain, Horn Of Dagoth, Elk, Necrite and more. And while some of those bands are still active, the recordings have seemed to dry up, more a trickle than a torrent. We know there is a Crebain record in the works, there's the forthcoming Mastery 2cd on tUMULt, a rumored Leviathan, but there are lots of new bands too, Botanist, Kerasphorus, and these guys, or rather this guy, Palace Of Worms, and finally a new slab of fucked up freaked out blackness from SF to obsess over, and believe us, this is well worth obsessing over.
Anyone into any of the above mentioned bands will dig PoW for sure, a dizzying blend of troo black metal buzz, and experimental post rock, which is evident from the first few seconds of the record, beginning with haunting majestic synths, then a brittle lo-fi blast of metal, that sounds like it was played on a mandolin, or pitched up, before the song proper kicks in with a wall of frenzied super saturated black buzz, croaked vokills, and buried in the mix blast beats, switching gears multiple times throughout the song, chugging doomic sprawl, to gnarled Deathspell style blackprog, with plenty of tangly guitar lines and lurching tempo changes, clean guitar, very reminiscent of another aQ BM fave Woe, the same sort of melodic sensibility fused into a seriously harrowing chunk of grim black aggression.
The rest of the record follow suit, dipping occasionally into ultra raw, old school black metal pound, weird almost industrial shoegazey ambience (sounding a bit like Nadja or Jesu), classic midtempo Burzumy blackness, awesomely creepy Eastern tinged black ambience, almost Katatonia moody sounding melodic blackness, but always returning to that furious heaviness, all lightning speed riffage, hellish vox, dizzying complex rhythms, soaring synths, but all infused with that strange, and subtle pop element that turns grim and black into something much more interesting, and makes Palace Of Worms another band to add to SF's black pantheon.
MPEG Stream: "Far From The Light"
MPEG Stream: "The Antagonist"
MPEG Stream: "As I Slumber Amongst The Cold Thoughtless Stars"

PALADINO, FRANCESCO & OPUM Nosesoul (Hic Sunt Leones) cd 7.98
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
Some of our favorite records over the last few years have come from our customers. As in, recorded and released by, not just recommended by. I mean, it makes perfect sense, that folks into cool weird music, would be making cool weird music themselves, but nevertheless it's always a nice surprise. Whether it's the delicate dreamy folk of Ilyas Ahmed, or the crushing doom of Monument of Urns, it's always exciting to discover that the guy who buys all the weird cd-r's, or the customer who is always ordering super limited vinyl is in fact, making some strange and wondrous sounds themselves.
Such is the case with our Italian mailorder customer Francesco Paladino, who has teamed up with Opum (Paladino seems to prefer the collaboration, having joined forces with lots of folks in the past including dronesters Alio Die) for a record of epic and hauntingly cinematic low end explorations. Field recordings are deftly woven into huge sprawling drones, strangled falsetto vocals and growling grumbled voices drift ominously amidst the slowly swirling low end ambience. Chimes tinkle and random bits of percussion float restlessly above thick fuzzy synthesizers, all the while more and more strange animalistic vocalisations enter the mix. Birdsong and simple percussion are the framework of one track, while a pulsing synthesized throb another, FX swirl effortlessly over the sound of scraping stones, whispering wind, distant chanting. The vibe is strangely liturgical, one can imagine this disc as the soundtrack to some slow moving Italian giallo, Goblin handling the freaked out progged up horror parts, while Paladino and Opum handle the suspense, the dark shadowy corridors, a long walk through a moonlit park, the foreboding feeling that death lurks around every corner. Creepy and sinister and ominously beautiful.
MPEG Stream: "Preghiere"
MPEG Stream: "Light"

PALE BLUE SKY Shades Of Grey (Arbor) lp 14.98

PALE REVERSE Words of Ash, Walls of Smoke, Minds of Glass (Petit Mal Music) 3" cd-r 5.98
Words of Ash, Walls of Smoke, Minds of Glass is the debut solo release by the Bay Area avant-rock denizen Gregory Hagan, whose languid violin and tempestuous guitar work was prominently featured in one of our favorite local outfits Common Eider King Eider. He's also active in the Thomas Carnacki performances / recordings as well as in the post-MX-80 project Grale. But as Pale Reverse, he sets down the strings in favor of analogue electronics and a four-track to build this elegantly creepy piece of nocturnal dronemuzik. A ghostly rumble introduces the 20 minute piece which slowly morphs into radiant, shivering oscillations of guilding tones suspended with hiss, mist, and fog. Subtle melodies flicker with beautifully singing overtones echoing throughout the electronics, eventually amassing into a holy crescendo of interlaced dronescapes snapping back to the industrial pall which opened the proceedings. At loud volumes, the tape detritus from multiple overdubs and erasures become all the more obvious and lend more than a few complimentary comparisons to William Basinski. But fans of the BJ Nilsen / Stilluppsteypa collaborations, the latter day works from The Hafler Trio, and even the Caretaker would be well served to check this out. Limited to 73 copies!
MPEG Stream: "Words of Ash, Walls of Smoke, Minds of Glass"

PALE SKETCHER Jesu: Pale Sketches Demixed (Ghostly International) cd 13.98
Pale Sketcher finds Justin Broadrick taking his post Godflesh project Jesu in an entirely new direction. Named for Pale Sketches, a collection of early Jesu demos and song fragments, unused parts and unfinished songs, which were presented on Pale Sketches as a collection of odds and ends, but here are reworked into a mysteriously minimal electronica. And to be totally fair, the sound, while on the surface seems radically different, really doesn't sound all that far removed from the sound of Jesu proper, sure the thick metalgaze guitars are stripped away, and the beats are a bit more skeletal and overtly electronic, but the lush shoegazey drift is still what it's all about. Thick swells of melancholy minor key shimmer, spidery melodies, hushed gauzey production haze, everything sun dappled and washed out and prismatic, it's not that hard to imagine that instead of this being a one time excursion, that this is in fact the direction Jesu was, or is, headed. Every record since the debut, Heartache, has consistently gotten less heavy, more and more mellow and dreamy, drifting ever closer to a sort of M83 style retro eighties shoegaze doom pop, so it would make perfect sense for Jesu to gradually be transformed into something warm and dark and electronic.
The sound here suits the songs perfectly, dreamy and minimal, moody and hushed, a little bit dubby, the heaviest parts are the swaths of buzzing dubsteppy bass that surface here and there, but otherwise this is like some spaced out soundtrack composed by Jesu, very cinematic, haunting and lovely, stripped down and abstract, the vocals ghostly and ethereal, in fact most all of the sounds here are ghostly and ethereal, allowed to drift and shimmer, held in place by muted pulses, and streaks of soft skitter, the whole thing ends up sounding so dreamlike, so otherworldly, the perfect next step in Jesu's constant evolution.
MPEG Stream: "Don't Dream It (Mirage Mix)"
MPEG Stream: "Wash It All Away (Cleansed Dub)"
MPEG Stream: "The Playgrounds Are Empty (Slumber Mix)"
MPEG Stream: "Plans That Fade (Faded Dub)"