PSYCHIC REALITY Real / Chic (self-released) cassette 7.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

PSYCHIC REALITY / LA VAMPIRES split (Not Not Fun) lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Two-way split from these two weirdo soundscapers, the debut vinyl release for Leyna Noel, aka Psychic Reality, after a whole mess of super limited cd-r's and tapes. She lets it all hang out (on the naked sparkly cover too), spreading a clutch of interwoven songs over a whole side, letting them all blend into one organic whole. A dizzying mesh of primitive home brewed new wave avant pop, skittery looped rhythms and weirdly chantlike vocals, playful little almost-African sounding melodies, eventually adding a thick layer of buzzing feeding back guitar, a heaving, churning swirl, that sounds almost metallic, but at the same time weirdly poppy, that mechanical rhythm and Noel's soaring vox the link between the various movements. Blown out fractured cold wave noise pop gives way to hushed abstract ambient drift, which gives way to squalls of Eastern style skronk, and intense swells of howling caterwaul, a haunting intense Diamanda Galas / Lydia Lunch soul purging, only to slip back into a dark swirling abyss, tranquil and shimmery.
LA Vampires are a whole different can of warped distorted musical worms, sounding more like a floorcore, underground noise version of Madlib, taking snippets of old tapes, dusty, scratched up records, adding lots of effects, random bits of noise, extra vox, all under a haze of tripped out lysergic crackle and hiss, a patina of bongsmoke and druggy warble, flutes flutter, voices flit, beats, lurch and shuffle, everything twisted and washed out, and seemingly melting very very slowly right before your ears, cool cool stuff for sure.
LIMITED TO 450!! With awesomely sexy, sparkly, painted, hippy, nude cover art.

PSYCHIC REALITY / LA VAMPIRES split (Not Not Fun) cassette 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Out of print vinyl split now on a limited cassette! Here's what we said about the vinyl version:
Two-way split from these two weirdo soundscapers, the debut vinyl release for Leyna Noel, aka Psychic Reality, after a whole mess of super limited cd-r's and tapes. She lets it all hang out (on the naked sparkly cover too), spreading a clutch of interwoven songs over a whole side, letting them all blend into one organic whole. A dizzying mesh of primitive home brewed new wave avant pop, skittery looped rhythms and weirdly chantlike vocals, playful little almost-African sounding melodies, eventually adding a thick layer of buzzing feeding back guitar, a heaving, churning swirl, that sounds almost metallic, but at the same time weirdly poppy, that mechanical rhythm and Noel's soaring vox the link between the various movements. Blown out fractured cold wave noise pop gives way to hushed abstract ambient drift, which gives way to squalls of Eastern style skronk, and intense swells of howling caterwaul, a haunting intense Diamanda Galas / Lydia Lunch soul purging, only to slip back into a dark swirling abyss, tranquil and shimmery.
LA Vampires are a whole different can of warped distorted musical worms, sounding more like a floorcore, underground noise version of Madlib, taking snippets of old tapes, dusty, scratched up records, adding lots of effects, random bits of noise, extra vox, all under a haze of tripped out lysergic crackle and hiss, a patina of bongsmoke and druggy warble, flutes flutter, voices flit, beats, lurch and shuffle, everything twisted and washed out, and seemingly melting very very slowly right before your ears, cool cool stuff for sure.
LIMITED TO 100 copies!! With awesomely sexy, sparkly, painted, hippy, nude cover art.
MPEG Stream: PSYCHIC REALITY "Sela (Seeing-Eye Lion)"
MPEG Stream: LA VAMPIRES "Acid We"

PSYCHIC REALITY / SEX WORKER Bored Fortress (Not Not Fun) 7" 7.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We managed to get a very small handful of this very limited, Not Not Fun, Bored Fortress series split, between Psychic Reality and Sex Worker (Daniel from Mi Ami). And what a nice slab of damaged and entrancing sounds it is. Sex Worker's side is a Blondie cover transported to an underworld within an underworld of sound that is both decaying and roaming in another orbit, which had us imagining Cupid Car Club remixed by Excepter, Replikants (that awesome Justin Trosper side project) or Black Dice.
Psychic Reality continues to really come into their/her own as this track finds her bringing moments of beauty and sweetness into an overall fucked up and disorientating sound. Fresh off her split with LA Vampires, this finds her sound lurking somewhere between early Gang Gang Dance and a much more primitive version of what's been radiating out of the witch house scene as of late.
We would gush even more but like we said we only have a handful of these and once they're gone they are GONE for good. So you know what to do....

PSYCHIC TEENS Tape (Video Horror Show) VHS + download 14.98
While the rest of the world has been reveling in the resurgence of the cassette tape, some folks have been taking it a step further, and going full VHS! Video Horror Show is a label who releases VHS tapes, which feature not only music, but also appropriately enough accompanying psychedelic visuals. Past releases have included the electro goth witch house of Masacara, and the droned out abstract psychedelic black metal of Suffer The Shards Of The Lost Cult Of Silence, which was in fact members of Woe and Absu, and now comes Psychic Teens, which weirdly enough might sonically fall right in between. Described by the band as "the time you saw your creepy metalhead brother at 80's night" which isn't really that far off. Imagine a sound that was equal parts dirgey psychedelic metal, and broody deep vocal-ed goth, and you'd have the Psychic Teens, and we have to say, it's a pretty bad ass sound. Especially if you're tired of all the wimpy twee eighties throwbacks, this is more like a metalized Sisters Of Mercy or Kommunity FK or Fields Of The Nephilim, with some thick squalls of blown out shoegaze psychedelia mixed in for good measure. The sound is dark and gloomy, a little poppy, a lot heavy, the guitars thick and crunchy, the vocals deep and dramatic and wreathed in echo, this is the sort of eighties throwback we can get behind for sure. And these three songs have definitely whetted our appetite big time!
The accompanying video is appropriately VHS looking, mostly live footage of the band, but super grainy and gristly, with plenty of old school interference, the pic flickering and flipping, as if it was being viewed on an old TV with a busted horizontal hold, a playback of an old videotape that had been in a box under the stairs for the last twenty years. Awesome.
Nicely packaged in a cool old school style VHS case, with printed grey on white covers, and recorded onto a white VHS tape, includes a download coupon as well!
LIMITED TO 75 COPIES!!
MPEG Stream: "Rose"
MPEG Stream: "Arm"

PSYCHIC TEENS Teen (Golden Voyage) lp 14.98
We first heard Philly psychedelic shoegaze death rockers via their VHS tape (!) released on Video Horror Show, and as we mentioned in that review, the band describe themselves as sounding like "the time you saw your creepy metalhead brother at 80's night", which while hilarious is really pretty spot on. The guys are most definitely gloomy and gothy, thick Joy Division-y basslines, reverbed dramatic vox, all moody and minor key, but beyond that, they buck lots of gloom pop and goth rock convention by tethering that stuff to big muscled drum pound, clouds of wild psychedelic guitar freakout, not to mention dense distorted guitars, reminding us at time of Bailter Space, thus the shoegaze vibe, the result a sort of eighties death rock, cranked up and spaced out and metalized, in fact that Bailter Space comparison definitely taps into what makes us dig these guys so much, cuz in some ways, with the noisy guitars and thick bass, and the deep vox, they almost sound more like some super obscure Flying Nun band from the eighties, who put out one lp that no one really heard but that still pretty much destroys everything else you've heard. They also remind us of AmRep Aussies Kingsnakeroost and Lubricated Goat, that sort of noise rock blues stomp just gothed up a bit. Plus they pepper their gloomy crush with blasts of almost punk sounding crunch, which makes them seem even heavier when they slip back into the churn and pound. These guys must kill live, which definitely seemed to be the case from what we could discern from that VHS tape (of which we have a few copies left), and this record oozes the sort of live energy most recordings lack, which of course means this is WAY recommended, for fans of gloomy heaviness, metallic gothrock, psychedelic shoegaze deathrock and other sonically similar genres we just made up!
Pressed on white vinyl, housed in a cool striking heart-art cover, with a big white 'x' affixed to the outer sleeve. Includes a download coupon as well!
MPEG Stream: "YUNG"
MPEG Stream: "KIRA"
MPEG Stream: "ROSE"

PSYCHIC TV Those Who Do Not (Cold Spring) cd 15.98

PSYCHONAUT Witches' Sabbath (Athanor) cd 16.98
A throwback of sorts to the ritual esoterica of late 80s industrial culture, Psychonaut sets down trance inducing percussive tracks of tribal drums, Tibetan horns, and Crowleyian incantations not unlike the earliest Current 93 or ritual Psychic TV recordings.

PSYCHOPHYSICIST s/t (Side Effects) cd 15.98
Psychophysicist is a one off collaboration recorded back in 1994 between Andrew McKenzie (better known as the Hafler Trio) and Adi Newton (Clock DVA, The Anti Group Conspiracy). The two claim to be working under a Gurdjieffian approach to science and sound as a method towards metaphysical knowledge and gnostic understanding of the universe. That said, McKenzie has been known to exaggerate the theoretical statements behind his sound work and fabricate fictional conspiracies around the research of Dr. Edward Moolenbeek and Robert Spridgeon (both of which are McKenzie pseudonyms). Like the beloved Museum of Jurassic Technology, McKenzie's research is a tangled web of fact, fiction, and kooky philosophies wrapped up in faux-authoritarian language. Thus, anything that McKenzie states about his work needs to be read with a close attention to detail to discover what his true intentions may be.
Sonically speaking, both McKenzie and Newton are no slouches, although some of Clock DVA recordings are painfully dated within Industrial culture. The Psychophysicist collaboration brings together their mutual interests in psychoacoustics - the ability of sound to affect the mind and body in profound ways. Within the record, complex hypnotic sweeps of radio static are processed to resemble the tonal patterns of interlocking sinewaves, sounding much more like Hafler Trio than The Anti Group and much more than Clock DVA. Furthermore, close observers of the Hafler Trio's work will recognize elements from "Masturbatorium" and "Mastery of Money," as the recycling of sound elements within different contexts had become an increasingly important agenda for McKenzie throughout the mid-90s.
As the Hafler Trio albums - once overflowing experimental bins across the globe - are now becoming scarce, this would make an excellent introduction into McKenzie's work.

PTAK, C. Prepare Your Self (Here See) 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.
Carly Ptak, one half of Chicago's Nautical Almanac, presents her solo effort through her own Here See label. Hot rodded primitive electronic machines and overdriven contact mics are manipulated and sonically mutilated by this young experimental music killer. No computers were used in these recordings, yet the heavily processed effects displayed within are sonically similar to much of that "cutting edge laptop electronica" sound. Limited run, each cd-r comes with its own unique photograph of Carly wrapped in cords on the cover.
RealAudio clip: "You're Your Yore"

PUDDLE THEORY s/t (xPCHUCKPx) cd 8.98
The found photos of the dead racoon, the family posing with the dead lion and the beer-swilling truck driver provide little clues into the mysteries of Puddle Theory (although I like to think that the beer-swilling trucker made this record in the extensive 'home studio' in the cab of his 18 wheeler). Dark and gritty washes of processed feedback with ominous sweeps of electronic isolationism, Puddle Theory's self-released cdr is a worthty entry into the realm of black energy drone, inhabitted by Xenakis and Arcane Device and others.

PUFFY AREOLAS Gentleman's Grip (HoZac Records) 7" 5.98
Another blast of Stooges-via-AmRep noise rock snarl and swagger from these Ohio heavies, and like their Siltbreeze full length, they kick up a seriously dense noisepop din, the vox slathered in distortion, the riffs blown the fuck out, the drums a buried barely there pound, tons of effects, lo-fi, but still in the red and LOUD, the A side has a killer dubbed out / tripped out chorus, that sends the vocals careening through clouds of buzz and crunch, and there are even some wildly skronk horns in the mix.
The flipside takes the same sound, and slows it down, turning it into a serious slab of noisy sludgey pummel, chugging and churning, a blurred, buzzy, druggy dirge that hides a pretty kick ass hook, which leads right into the brief instrumental closer, a short sharp chunk of fuzzy garage punk jangle, all wrapped up in squiggly psychedelic leads, atonal and angular, noisy and chaotic, but still jangly and poppy and weirdly catchy. Super rad!

PULSE EMITTER Grass (Gift Tapes) cassette 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
That's right. Another killer collection of sci-fi space drone synth bliss from big time aQ fave Pulse Emitter. And yeah, this one is again, crazy limited. Only 100 copies made, we got the very last 20. Which means once these are gone, we will NOT be able to get more. And since we're fairly sure there are more than 20 people out there in aQ land who wand, nay NEED, all things Pulse Emitter, we'll keep this brief.
Grass, while not as 'oppressive' as the recent Oppressive Nature release on Digitalis, and not as meditative as the three part Meditative Music series, manages to fall somewhere in between, probably a little closer to the meditative side of things, we'd say. Slow burning dreamdrones drifting through space would sum it up in a sentence, but why leave it at that. The sound on Grass is epic and expansive and space-y, definitely a Pulse Emitter disc that would hit the spot for all you Expo 70 obsessives, the same sort of space kraut vibe. Loooooong tones undulate and shift, melodies surface and dissipate, laced with some strange Morricone like faux flute melodies. The foundation is a dense throbbing low end, layered and gorgeously textured, shifting overtones and barely restrained feedback, but above and all around that main drone, various layers and melodic fragments drift and shimmer and float weightless as if in orbit around a brilliant black star. So gorgeous.
Definitely recommended, as is grabbing one of these quick before they disappear. Already out of print, these are again, the LAST 20 copies. Packaged in super nice full color sleeves.

PULSE EMITTER Meditative Music 1 (Synthnoise) cd-r 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Daryl Groetsch - the one-man synth symphony better known as Pulse Emitter - has just answered one of the more commonly asked questions by passersby, but strangely on of the more difficult questions for us to answer: Do you have any music for massage? That question gets addressed here at Aquarius more often than you might think; and the answers that *we* would like have as the soundtracks to our massages (i.e. SUNNO))), Corrupted, Lustmord, Hazard, Thomas Koner, hell, even Merzbow might work for us!), well they just don't seem to cut it for most folks. So with this series of contemplative and un-cheesy ambient recordings, Pulse Emitter has that perfect record that we can recommend for that particular purpose; and it certainly works for us in terms of drifting to sleep music as well.
The first installment of Meditative Music unfurls a stream of undulating synth lines, whose phase pattern shifts and oscillating tones are hypnotizing in their own right; then a set of crystalline tones calmly rise and fall at a pace that seems to always be getting just a little bit slower. That's pretty much all that happens with Meditative Music, but it works very well. This is great inner-cosmos exploration music using the simplest of techniques that probably the ambient pioneers of Cluster, Eno, and Schulze would not have shied away from. As Groetsch put it, here's an excellent album for "sleep, massage, or any activity where a peaceful and balanced sound environment is desired."
MPEG Stream: "Meditative Music 1"

PULSE EMITTER Meditative Music 2 (Synthnoise) cd-r 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Daryl Groetsch - the one-man synth symphony better known as Pulse Emitter - has just answered one of the more commonly asked questions by passersby, but strangely on of the more difficult questions for us to answer: Do you have any music for massage? That question gets addressed here at Aquarius more often than you might think; and the answers that *we* would like have as the soundtracks to our massages (i.e. SUNNO))), Corrupted, Lustmord, Hazard, Thomas Koner, hell, even Merzbow might work for us!), well they just don't seem to cut it for most folks. So with this series of contemplative and un-cheesy ambient recordings, Pulse Emitter has that perfect record that we can recommend for that particular purpose; and it certainly works for us in terms of drifting to sleep music as well.
The second installment in this series features a soft bit of white noise undulating in the distance, acting much like a field recording of wind, surf, rain, or any combination you would prefer. Above this, Groetsch gradually unfurls a revolving set of notes from one of his modular synthesizers that overlap in various combinations, occasionally creating nifty harmonics, but mostly gradual swells and blossoms of Doppler-effected tones. There's nothing ominous, nothing cheesy, nothing hackneyed about these drifting ambient passages - just great music for, as Groetsch puts it, "sleep, massage, or deep reflective thought." Nice.
MPEG Stream: "Meditative Music 2"

PULSE EMITTER Meditative Music 3 (Synthnoise) cd-r 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Daryl Groetsch - the one-man synth symphony better known as Pulse Emitter - has just answered one of the more commonly asked questions by passersby, but strangely one of the more difficult questions for us to answer: "Do you have any music for massage?"
That question gets addressed to us here at aQuarius more often than you might think; and the as far as music *we* would want as soundtracks to our massages (i.e. SUNNO))), Corrupted, Lustmord, Hazard, Thomas Koner, hell, even Merzbow might work for us!), well they just don't seem to cut it for most folks. So with this series of contemplative and un-cheesy ambient recordings, Pulse Emitter has that perfect record that we can recommend for that particular purpose; and it certainly works for us in terms of drifting to sleep music as well.
The continuation in the Meditative Music series brings us to the brightest of the three released so far. A slow, shimmering oscillation of an interwoven set of synths from Pulse Emitter's patch-bay modules gird the entire album which is dotted by a series of chiming bell-tones placed above. This is more of a record for summertime daydreaming than of the introspective meditations found on the previous two. Still a potent opiate through sound despite the warmly rounded tones of the album. Groetsch offers a brief description of this one: "placid waves for reflective times."

PULSE EMITTER Meditative Music 4 (Synthnoise) cd-r 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The fourth in Pulse Emitter's series of Meditative Music cd-r's, and like the first three, another hour long expanse of warm liquid synthmusic, designed, according to Mr. Pulse Emitter himself, Daryl Groetsch, as the perfect music for "sleep, massage, or deep reflective thought" or as an album ideal for "sleep, massage, or any activity where a peaceful and balanced sound environment is desired." Which this most definitely is, minimal, spacious, spare, abstract and ambient, lush and hushed, softly pulsing synth swells drift in and fade out, leaving lots and lots of space, eventually, the various swells overlap and are layered into blurred stretches of barely there melody, the notes stretched out into long blurred streaks of chordal thrum, allowed to ring out and fade nearly to silence, before another note takes its place, a sort of space music, the soundtrack to the cosmos, or an ultra minimal Carpenter style soundtrack, dark and languorous and so mysterious, the perfect music for mediation or relaxation, but also perhaps to accompany gazing into the heavens, or wandering across moonlit vistas. Besides the usual synth suspects, Pulse Emitter's Meditative Music definitely reminds us of folks like Leyland Kirby/The Caretaker or Indignant Senility, their strange gauzy ambience definitely an analog for PE's hushed sonic dreamworld, if anything, PE taps into the same sort of wistful melancholy, it's definitely relaxing and serene, but it's also infused with a certain amount of pathos and mystery, that evokes thoughts and memories of other worlds, lost memories and forgotten pasts, a lovely chunk of electronic minimalism, that will definitely appeal to anyone into abstract sonic wonder and dreamlike kraudronedrift.
MPEG Stream: "Meditative Music 4 (excerpt)"

PULSE EMITTER Oppressive Nature (Digitalis) cd 13.98
Oppressive Nature couldn't be a more apt title for this album from Portland's wizard of analogue synthesis Daryl Groestch (aka Pulse Emitter), or at least for the opening track of this album. Through and through, this is a far cry from the pastoral ambient sensibilities administered through his surprisingly great Meditative Music cd-r series. A grim curtain is cast from the onset, with squelching distortions, animalistic grunts, and wounded chirps propagated through electronic means. All of these blistered, cracked, and abused noises are strategically placed on a rumbling battlefield of crunched-low end rumblings, lending comparisons of today to Wolf Eyes and UW Owl and of yesterday to SPK and Factrix. Groestch lets off the distortion pedal for good chunks of Oppressive Nature, relying upon his filter-sweeping modulations and sinusoidal oscillations to craft isolating, deep space atmospheres. Weirdly majestic melodies counter the streams of noise generated throughout the untitled second track, eventually overtaking the noise amidst a series of tightly appregiated squiggles. The fourth cut hangs a sequence of revolving tones of phased dissonance upon a hyper minimal structure of tiny clicks and glitched pulses, which had they been generated digitally could easily fit within the Raster-Noton ethos. The album glides to a stop with windswept drones laced with distant clouds of feedback, white-noise, and one of Groetsch's melodic motifs.
MPEG Stream: "Track 1"
MPEG Stream: "Track 3"
MPEG Stream: "Track 5"

PULSE EMITTER Over Clouds (Root Strata) cassette 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The good news is that there's a new Pulse Emitter, another collection of dreamy analog drift, softly serene meditative new age synthscapes, laced with muted rhythms and softly swirling abstract melodies. The kind of stuff we, and you, can't get enough of. The bad news, is that we COULDN'T get enough of it, literally. This is out of print already, and we only have 4 or 5 copies, after selling half of the batch we got, which was already less than half the number we ordered. So apologies, we tried our best, we figured we might as well list the copies we had so that way, at least a tiny handful of folks will get a copy.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES (why?!?!), nice, thick offset printed covers, and again, already OUT OF PRINT.
MPEG Stream: "Purple"

PULSE EMITTER Progression To Desolation (Black Horizons) lp 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
First vinyl release from this one man sci-fi synth slinger. Two epic sides of blown out, FX drenched synthesizer spacescapes, drones, and rippling fields of alien bleep and bloop. All produced from a handful of homemade synth modules. The first side is wild and playful, total b-movie sound effects, tripped out and bizarre, atmospheric, buzzy and squelchy, like some long lost recording from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Lots of these sounds would be right at home on an episode of Dr. Who! The flip side is much less playful, more dark and moody, dreamy stretches of fuzzed out drones, very cinematic and Goblin-like at times, a constantly shifting soundscape of rumbling atmospheric murk, peppered with little bits of damaged synth noise. Awesome stuff.
Gorgeous psychedelic cover art, full color paste on black sleeve, with a full color insert.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!

PULSE EMITTER Spiritual Vistas (Cylindrical Habitat Modules / Expansive) lp 14.98
After the darker, more cinematic buzz and whir of Pulse Emitter's recent The Palace Of Love cd-r, Spiritual Vistas, the latest from Daryl Groetsch, aka Pulse Emitter, finds his sound, as the title might suggest, returning to a zone much more dreamy and washed out, ethereal and kosmische. Four looooong tracks, all variations on that dreamy PE space-synth krautdrone shimmer, the sonic element linking the various tracks together this time around seems to be a super melodic almost new wave sounding synth bassline, that pulses right below the surface, offering a sort of anchor to the otherwise light and airy sounds above, the opening track is a sort of kosmische kraut lope, which gives way to full on Tangerine Dream style ethereal new age swirl, but still held together by that low end pulse.
The flipside starts off with lush string like swells, all majestic and warm, lush and layered, minimal melodies hovering over constantly shifting backdrops, rife with overtones and subtle sonic colorations, the sound so dreamlike, meditative and tranquil, like new wave, blurred and smeared into a sun dappled shadowy impression, before slipping into the final track, which revisits the ominous, more darkly cinematic vibe of the above mentioned cd-r, adding some buzz and crunch to the hazy whirl of prismatic thrum and droned out lysergic shimmer. So nice.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!

PULSE EMITTER Sunset Into Night (Gneiss Things) 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.
One of our favorite Portland Modgular synth wizards is back to business with another deeply dreamy dose of synthisizer bliss. Per usual, Sunset Into Night is limited to an edition of 100, a down-right shame considering how much we dig this spaced out new outing. Falling somewhere between his Meditation series and a loosly knit Goblin, Sunset Into Night shimmers, sails and dissipates into the cool evening air, all the while inviting the listener on a cinematic journey through analog dream zones and icey modualr drips. Deep, glacial drones lift off into infinity, gorgeous notes and sounds flutter and errupt through buzzing filters and ambient wash, so nice.
But not all is sunny and blissful in Pulse Emitter's world, the dreamworlds give way to moments of somber reflection, quiet sonic shrines to dusk and the setting sun. Moments of tension dissipate into the sinking tide, darkened tones pulse and hover in blackened ambiance, all oozing into a pool of nu new age grime. We dig Pulse Emitter's tendency to walk the line between light and dark, borrowing equaly from new age soundscaping and dark ambient synth magik, so rad and so recomended!

PULSE EMITTER The Palace Of Love (Ruralfaune / Synth Series) cd-r 9.98
Latest batch of swirly swooshy, psychedelic sci-fi synth new age drift from Pulse Emitter, aka Daryl Groetsch, and since we've raved on and on about PE over the course of close to 15 releases (and those are just the ones we were able to get enough of to list) we most definitely risk repeating ourselves, which is probably okay, as this is another perfect installment in Groetsch's ever expanding catalogue of otherworldly synthscapes.
This one is crazy limited too, we only have about 15 copies, and it's already out of print so odds are these will be gone in a flash, fans, you already know what you're instore for, and probably want to grab one of these quick. Newbies, prepare to be transported to some strange futureworld, but one as envisioned by our 1980 selves, rocket cars, and space probes, cities in orbit around dying planets, whole worlds buried beneath the ruined surface. We can't help but envision Logan's Run, especially on the first track here, a percolating arpeggiating synthscape laced with laser beam effects and deep buzzing ominous basslines, super soundtracky, and evocative of some low budget sci-fi future.
The second track is a bit more sun dappled and new agey, but is cut from the same cloth, so in some ways it almost sounds like the love scene from that imaginary future, but it too is laced with weird swooping low end buzz, and strange streaks of blooping and bleeping FX, which transform the tranquility of the main synth lines into something a bit more dramatic.
After a short-ish, music box like synth ballad, thick swells beneath tinkling melodies, comes the 10+ minute closer, a sprawling expanse of sci-fi space kraut synth drone bliss, super spare and abstract, dreamy and woozy and mediative, hazy and hypnotic, and the perfect soundtrack to drifting off, and floating weightless into space. So good.
And again, LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Already sold out at the label so these are indeed the last copies we'll be able to get...
MPEG Stream: "07:12"
MPEG Stream: "05:15"

PULSE EMITTER & PETE SWANSON s/t (Jyrk) cd-r 7.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Killer match up between Pete Swanson of the Yellow Swans (and also overlord of the mighty Jyrk Collective label) and Pulse Emitter, a one-man synth outfit from Portland who not only whips up a serious wall of analog sound, he also builds his own gear, and has been making his own synths for years. Eat your hearts out Wolf Eyes. Actually, Wolf Eyes would not be a bad reference, although this collaboration is not nearly as caustic or abrasive as Wolf Eyes. In fact, it's downright soothing in a way. The opening track is a swirl of thick warm fuzzy washes of analog synth, like floating weightless in a sea of buzzing whir, neither soft nor sweet, but more a sort of roughly smooth. The second track is a bit more noisy, lots of high end, definitely testing your aural stamina, but in there somewhere is some melody, although it would take a suit of armor and some shock proof pliers to find it. The final track is a gorgeously creepy drone, almost like someone took the least structured Goblin track, and sort of smeared it into a single slow shifting tone, still rife with creepy tension and all sorts of haunting goodness, eventually letting the track explode in a frenzy of thick fuzz and some serious Merzbowian rrroooaaaar!
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES. WE GOT 30 COPIES, ONCE THESE ARE GONE, THEY ARE GONE FOR GOOD, IT'S ALREADY OUT OF PRINT AT THE LABEL!
MPEG Stream: "One"
MPEG Stream: "Two"

PULSE EMITTER / DATE PALMS / EXPO 70 / FACEPLANT split (Immune) lp 25.00
Originally scheduled to be released earlier this year on Record Store Day, this was easily one of the most anticipated RSD releases, which now, just a few months late, is finally here! Avid aQ list readers probably don't need to know much more. After all, it's four different aQ faves spread out over two lps: Pulse Emitter, Expo 70, Date Palms and Faceplant (Aaron Coyne of Peaking Lights), each offering up a whole side of unreleased material.
But in case you do need a little more to go onÉ Pulse Emitter, aka Darryl Groetsch delivers two length drifts of celestial synthscapery, all new age raga shimmer, soft swirling swells, dreamy melodic cascades, all woozy and washed out, ethereal and abstract, laced with playful melodies and lush ever shifting textures. Date Palms deliver a sidelong slab of smoldering psychedelic minimalism, one that starts out deep and droney, but soon blossoms into something much more rhythmic, a super skeletal sprawl of krautrock like mesmer, driving by a spare programmed rhythm and a thick buzzing bassline, wreathed in sitar like buzz, the vibe laid back and swoonsome, with just a hint of sinister malevolence, the perfect soundtrack for endless highways through darkened deserts, with the various elements gradually growing more and more dubbed out before slipping into a final stretch of hushed mesmer.
Expo 70 starts their side off with some Sabbath like riffage, low slung and swaggery, and then the drums kick in, and we're in full on metal territory, classic old school doom, who knew they had it in them? Sure they flirted with it in the past, but here they go for it. The heavy riffing and caveman drum pound is laced with some more psychedelic breakdowns with killer sorta shredding leads, the sort of spaced out stoner rock jam that could go on forever, but here eventually winds down into an oozing sprawl of muted black buzz. The second track is more what we're used to from Expo 70, at least at first, a sort of brooding cosmic shimmer, thick layers of synth and guitar whirring and swirling beneath a cloud of shimmering soft focus FX, but soon the drums come in, the track ominously and malevolently krautrocky, before blossoming into full on psychedelic space rock blowout, a sky full of tangled leads, the drums pounding and propulsive, the bassline woozy and fuzzy and darkly driving. Another mega jam that needs no terminus, but before it's cut off by running out of vinyl, the drums drift off, leaving just the guitar again to slowly fade out.
Faceplant's side opens with a cosmic disco version of Coynes' Peaking Lights, all dubbed out and psychedelic, but seriously groovy, and darkly funky, squelchy synths, spacey shimmer, plenty of reverb and echo, squiggly synth melodies everywhere, total retro-futuristic dubfunk grooviness. The second track is much more murky and laid back, sounding like a way more psychedelic and tripped out Muslimgauze, lurching rhythms, beneath a sky full of effects heavy swirl, more synth pulsations and an almost housey throb buried underneath, before finishing things off with a track that finds Coynes doing his best Carpenter / Goblin style synthscaping, a warped VHS soundtrack dipped in dub and sent spaceward, heady and hypnotic.
Killer stuff from all four groups. And as you might have imagined, LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES. Includes a download coupon as well.
MPEG Stream: PULSE EMITTER "Bioluminescence"
MPEG Stream: DATE PALMS "Night Riding The Skyline"
MPEG Stream: EXPO 70 "Closet Full Of Candles"
MPEG Stream: FACEPLANT "Aggression"

PUMICE Pebbles (Soft Abuse) cd 14.98
From jaunty opener "Eye Bath" onward, this album is one that surprises and delights and offers so much interesting DIY recorded avant-drone *texture* along with its actually quite catchy indie-pop song-iness! We always knew we liked the music of New Zealander Stephan Neville, aka one-man-band Pumice (also a member of The Futurians), he's definitely been in there amongst all the cool, home-taped dronological sounds appearing on obscure cds, cd-rs, cassettes, lathe-cut vinyl and so forth from his entrancing island home that we've been geeking out about over the years. But all the releases tend to overwhelm. Not just Pumice's, but Birchville Cat Motel and Omit and Peter Wright and Antony Milton all the rest. We can't always devote our full attention. And actually, Pumice's previous album, Yeahnahvienna, released a year or so ago on Soft Abuse was a bit ho-hum we thought, we didn't even ever get around to reviewing it. A lot of it was too stripped down and acoustic, revealing too much of the vocals which aren't really Mr. Neville's strong suit. But we're glad we didn't miss this new album! It's different, dense, infectiously fuzzed, and really really good (one of those albums that gets all the AQers coming up to the counter to see what's playing when it's on). Actually our interest in Pumice was rekindled by the recent underground NZ comp on Xeric, Need For A Crossing. Neville, along with Pseudoarcana's Antony Milton, curated it, and it featured several cuts by Pumice and other projects of his, which were quite striking. So suddenly were were like, hmm, Pumice, hey let's be sure to check out this new disc Pebbles. And lo and behold, it's a winner.
Like we said, Pumice makes lo-fi indie rock, the Dead C and the Velvet U are both likely influences, also all the rich history of NZ indie awesomeness from labels like Xpressway and Flying Nun, artists like The Clean, Tall Dwarfs, and Alastair Galbraith. The music here is damaged, reverbed, distorted, as much about sound as song. Regarding Pebbles, Pumice claims Moondog and Simply Saucer as inspirations -- while we might not have thought of those disparate outsider references, they're not so outlandish when we think about it. And although Neville has a reputation for gloominess, the sheer pop umph buried beneath the lo-fi grit and noise of these tracks can't be denied, and tends to balance the depressive effects of the doleful droniness also much in evidence. Yeah, there's moments of rollickin' destroyed rock as well as an experimental folkiness that Richard Youngs fans will dig... and again if you like ye olde Xpressway style NZ indie stuff this is gonna be a blast. Another reminder for us here at AQ that we need to make a New Zealand section in the store again, like we used to back in the day!
MPEG Stream: "Eye Bath"
MPEG Stream: "Stop Over"
MPEG Stream: "Greenock"

PUMICE Pebbles (Soft Abuse) lp 15.98
NOW ON VINYL, this NZ fave from back in 2007! Lp limited to 300 copies, remastered, comes with download.
From jaunty opener "Eye Bath" onward, this album is one that surprises and delights and offers so much interesting DIY recorded avant-drone *texture* along with its actually quite catchy indie-pop song-iness! We always knew we liked the music of New Zealander Stephan Neville, aka one-man-band Pumice (also a member of The Futurians), he's definitely been in there amongst all the cool, home-taped dronological sounds appearing on obscure cds, cd-rs, cassettes, lathe-cut vinyl and so forth from his entrancing island home that we've been geeking out about over the years. But all the releases tend to overwhelm. Not just Pumice's, but Birchville Cat Motel and Omit and Peter Wright and Antony Milton all the rest. We can't always devote our full attention. And actually, Pumice's previous album, Yeahnahvienna, released a year or so ago on Soft Abuse was a bit ho-hum we thought, we didn't even ever get around to reviewing it. A lot of it was too stripped down and acoustic, revealing too much of the vocals which aren't really Mr. Neville's strong suit. But we're glad we didn't miss this new album! It's different, dense, infectiously fuzzed, and really really good (one of those albums that gets all the AQers coming up to the counter to see what's playing when it's on). Actually our interest in Pumice was rekindled by the recent underground NZ comp on Xeric, Need For A Crossing. Neville, along with Pseudoarcana's Antony Milton, curated it, and it featured several cuts by Pumice and other projects of his, which were quite striking. So suddenly were were like, hmm, Pumice, hey let's be sure to check out this new disc Pebbles. And lo and behold, it's a winner.
Like we said, Pumice makes lo-fi indie rock, the Dead C and the Velvet U are both likely influences, also all the rich history of NZ indie awesomeness from labels like Xpressway and Flying Nun, artists like The Clean, Tall Dwarfs, and Alastair Galbraith. The music here is damaged, reverbed, distorted, as much about sound as song. Regarding Pebbles, Pumice claims Moondog and Simply Saucer as inspirations - while we might not have thought of those disparate outsider references, they're not so outlandish when we think about it. And although Neville has a reputation for gloominess, the sheer pop umph buried beneath the lo-fi grit and noise of these tracks can't be denied, and tends to balance the depressive effects of the doleful droniness also much in evidence. Yeah, there's moments of rollickin' destroyed rock as well as an experimental folkiness that Richard Youngs fans will dig... and again if you like ye olde Xpressway style NZ indie stuff this is gonna be a blast. Another reminder for us here at AQ that we need to make a New Zealand section in the store again, like we used to back in the day!
MPEG Stream: "Eye Bath"
MPEG Stream: "Stop Over"
MPEG Stream: "Greenock"

PUMICE Quo (Soft Abuse ) cd 14.98
For the last 14 years, New Zealander Stefan Neville has been issuing a steady stream of cassettes, lathe-cuts, cd-rs, 7"s and other assorted slabs of mysterious small-run skronk under the Pumice moniker. Somehow through it all Neville has managed to find a comfortable spot nestled in between two very distinct strains of NZ music-making. At their heart, the songs he writes are pop songs obviously indebted to the legacy of Flying Nun, The Tall Dwarves and The Clean; that said, his willful disregard for fidelity, his love of tape hiss, wow and flutter, garbled vocals and blasts of harsh drone are a tip o' the hat to kiwi noiseniks like Birchville Cat Motel, Dead C, and Antony Milton. It's a compelling combination, as it allows his records to be both densely textural and supremely melodic - for every piece of blown out headphone candy, there's a memorable vocal or frighteningly catchy guitar riff. It's this incredible tug-of-war between (as we put it in our review) "doleful drone" and "sheer pop umph" that made us flip out over the last Pumice full-length, Pebbles, and we're happy to report that Neville's latest, Quo, finds him refining the Pumice formula in all the best possible ways to create a record full of impish charms, slack anthems, rambling bedrooms hiss, and speaker fried drone assaults!
Quo opens with "Pumice Quo," a song that hints at what is to come on the rest of the album: fuzzed-out, atonal guitars klang and skree like some sort of netherworldly faux-sitar over a ragged, swinging stomp that effortlessly mutates back and forth with a breezy, expansive, half-time swagger. Rhythmically and structurally it's all angular and math-y but it never sounds cold or analytical - it's like some incredible mix of Doc At The Radar Station and Celebrate The New Dark Age where you can't tell if it's Beefheart covering Polvo or vice versa, but everything sounds perfectly fucked up and damaged but so inexplicably catchy at the same time. Likewise, "World with Worms," a creeping, rumbling, blown-out, billowing sea shanty that mixes Neville's signature, mannered (almost goth, really) vocals with a teetering melody pounded out on some sort of half-broken chord organ or accordion.
The first half of the record continues to cast a few different lines - "Fort" sounds like some sort of classic mid-'90s B-side pop anthem you'd expect from GBV or Boyracer buried under 10 feet of shrieking keyboard noise; "Thermos in the Studio" is a winsome bedroom pop instrumental that would sound right at home buried amongst the ruins of Pavement's Westing (By Musket and Sextant) with lyrical slide guitar melodies that are simple, gorgeous and over in an instant; "Pebbles" is 2 minutes of rambling, shuffling, ramshackle pop. However, everything starts to come together with the second half of the record, as "Whole Hoof" looks back to the Polvo/Beefheart battle royale of the album opener but this time ads layers of distorted howling vocals. It starts out like Simply Saucer plowing through some freaked out rockabilly jam but mutates into something completely creepy and sinister at the end.
The album's second half is incredibly strong and manages to focus the scattershot elements of the first half without sacrificing any of those songs' chimpy playfulness. There's a darker element that emerges, but it never overwhelms the whole proceedings. "Sick Bay Duvet" starts out like a lost Fahey side being played back on a broken down gramophone, all rumbling, twanging, echoing, and slightly out of tune. When drums, melodica and a low, throbbing drone finally kick in at the end, it changes into something completely different - a kind of dour, anti-anthem that leads perfectly next track, "Dogwater," whose warbling, garbled take on Blackheart Procession's western goth vibe manages to come as both tongue-in-cheek and gracefully mannered. Things get stronger still with the last three songs: "Heavy Punter" is a solemn funeral shuffle built around a fractured Beefheart/Polvo riff filled out by ghostly keyboards that woosh and drone in and out of the background and fantastic, layered, pseudo-goth vocal stylings; "Battersby" is almost like Pumice's stab at punk rock with Casio tweeters battling against four on the floor drums and stumbling, disaffected vocals that wouldn't sound out of place on a Fall record (the whole thing comes across like some weird mashup of a NZ cd-r salvo and something off of a Messthetics comp - bizarrely catchy and certainly one of our favorites!); and album ender "Beak Remedy" is 7 minutes of blissed out, see-saw chord organ drone, ghostly tape loops, fluttering, stuttering ambient flickers of feedback, hum and hiss with percussive clomps that sneak in toward the end until the whole thing trickles out with choppy puffs of feedback and static.
All this adds up to a brilliant mix of pop songwriting and freaked out fuzzmongering that has been perking the ears of both customers and staff since it first arrived. We're confident that Quo is going to show up on many of our year end best-of lists, and we think you'll feel the same way about this blissed-out, smashed to pieces, melodic, thoughtful, mannered, playful and thoroughly recommended record!
MPEG Stream: "Pumice Quo"
MPEG Stream: "Heavy Punter"
MPEG Stream: "Whole Hoof"

PUMICE Raft (Last Visible Dog) cd 9.98
Another slice of prime lo-fi New Zealand "pop" music. But pop only in the absolutely loosest sense of the world. Pumice, AKA Stephan Neville, crafts a haunting, murky, off kilter, otherworldly sort-of-pop music. Lots of warble, both instrument and malfunctioning tape, big ol' reverbed guitar, super distorted heavily affected melodies that sound like high pitched alien transmissions, mumbling marbles in the mouth vocals, clattery percussion, damaged motorik rhythms, not exactly in tune guitars, angular riffing, all cobbled together into one big beautiful chaotic pop mess that sounds a bit like a battle of the bands between the Dead C and the Velvet Underground, after all had partaken of the complimentary pot brownies, the secretly spiked punch, the PCP popsicles, oh and all that horse tranquilizer..
Damaged and druggy and darkly delirious, truly bizarre but strangely beautiful.
MPEG Stream: "In Space (On The Burst)"
MPEG Stream: "Pipes"

PUMICE s/t (CMR) lathe cut 7" 13.98
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 these as we only got a tiny handful of each. Latest batch of ultra limited lathe cuts from New Zealand label CMR. Each one packaged in a super striking, simple cardstock jacket, most with printed inner sleeves, Limited to 60 copies, of which we got the remaining stock. Once these are gone, they are gone forever.
Two brief blasts from AQ fave Pumice, aka Stephan Neville. One side delicate and ephemeral, gorgeous disembodied guitar melodies, drifting in a wide open field of static and distortion, drifty and spacy and so lovely. The other side clattery free noise jam, with junkyard percussion, atonal melodic buzz, bits of low end growl, everything angular and abstract, stumbling and chaotic and strangely catchy.

PUMICE Sexual (Live) ( Pseudo Arcana) 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.
Re-release of two out of print cassettes from 1998-2202. Indie rock, but of the fuzzed out, buzzy and drone-y, ramshackle EXTREMELY LO-FI variety. Jangly at moments, sparse and damaged at others, noisy and spastic at others. Cool and weird and pretty fucked up. Includes a handful of extra live tracks!
MPEG Stream: "The Lady Of The Pitch"
MPEG Stream: "Tank In The Hole"

PUMICE White (Stabbies Etc.) cd-r 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

MPEG Stream: "Embrace The Place"
MPEG Stream: "The Space Writer Proves Everything Is Possible"

PUMICE Yeahnahvienna (Soft Abuse) cd 13.98
Underground NZ drone pop from Stephan Neville, veteran of many a cassette and cd-r release. Some really nice moments, particularily in its second half. But we'd wouldn't put it in the front rank of Pumice releases 'cause it suffers a bit from being too acoustic-y in parts (we like the thick, distorted stuff instead) which tends to put too much stress on his singing, which isn't perhaps his strong suit. Fans certainly should check it out though.

PUMICE / GHOSTING / BONUS / GMS Tour Split (Onomato) cd-r 7.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Super limited tour only split featuring a serious arsenal of awesome underground noise makers. The names alone should have loads of you diving for that click-to-buy button, but on the off chance some of you are unfamiliar with any of these outfits, here's a quick breakdown.
Pumice is NZ musician Stephan Neville, who often crafts delicate outsider folk, Jandekian guitars, keening sadboy vocals, all bathed in lo-fi 4-track ambiance, but can also kick up a serious skree. Both sides are represented here. A soft folk opener, followed by a blast of serious Dead C-like clatter, immediately followed by another delicate drift, this time, a haunting guitarscape wrapped in some strange strange buzzing crackle, finishing up with a brief nylon string lullaby that sounds like a lo-fi Hawaiian folk song interpreted by Jandek.
Next up is Ghosting, who have gotten AQ customers into quite a lather with their massive ghostly dronescapes. This track adds some tribal percussion to their bag of tricks, resulting in a sound like a much more blissed out laid back No Neck Blues Band!
GMS is Gabe from Yellow Swans, who offers up a strangely minimal solo guitar piece, that drift dreamily along for almost 10 minutes before the hammer falls and a distorted guitar gets locked into a super hypnotic ultra blown out loop before drifting back into gentle tangles of acoustic guitar. Really nice.
Finally it's Bonus, another band that folks around here have been loving BIG TIME. 17 minutes of ultra ultra minimal drone. This is definitely headphone music. A low level sonic event, spread out over a vast expanse of open space. Like the sounds of your home or office, isolated from the world around them, the air conditioner, the refrigerator, placed in a vacuum, allowing us to hear the microscopic music that is all around us. Wow!
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES! Packaged in cool hand screened cover, includes a photocopied insert, and housed in a thick vinyl sleeve.
MPEG Stream: GHOSTING "Tourssssnotitlessss"
MPEG Stream: BONUS "16:54"

PUMP KINN Aunte Donne (Weird Forest) 3"cd 7.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Seems like there have been a surprising number of vocal oriented releases lately, Lichens, Grouper, it makes sense though, the most intimate and personal music making device there is. This most recent exploration of the human voice comes from the strangely monickered Pump Kinn, a vocalist named Michelle who channels the spirit of Diamanda Galas, but adds a heaping dose of effects and stereo panning to send our heads spinning and our ears into a confusional tizzy. The first track sounds like water running, a shower, the soothing white noise slowly shifting from the right speaker to the left speaker and back again, a soothing, slightly dizzy sensation, before the vocals appear on track two, a soft faraway cooing, swinging from right to left along with the fuzz of the running water sound. Track three is a strange world of creaks and cackles, screams and shrieks, lots of reverb and delay, a world of alien bird calls, and cooing alien infants. Track four finds the voice turned into rhythm, careening from speaker to speaker, truly haunting and disorienting. The next five tracks drift from haunting ethereal ambiance, to swirls of high end shriek to dreamy drifts of distant harmony, like a feral Joan LaBarbara or an outer space Fursaxa scampering wildly between your speakers. Truly far out. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Packaged in a super striking custom, full-color, 6-panel fold-out slowly undeveloping faux-Polaroid cover. Really cool.
MPEG Stream: "Raine Dae"
MPEG Stream: "Birthing Bonnie Parker"

PUMP, THE s/t (Klanggalerie) cd 21.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The Pump was the first project of Nigel Ayers, Daniel Ayers, and Caroline K, which morphed into the Nocturnal Emissions around 1981. Nigel Ayers hand-dubbed all of the tiny editions of The Pump's cassettes on the shittiest tapes he could find in a local market; and when he learned that Rough Trade in London quickly sold through a run of 30 copies, he made a point to find even worse grade tapes for The Pump's recordings. Crap tape, cheap electronics, stop/start editing techniques, and overdriven distortion run throughout The Pump's recordings, which have more of an art-damaged aesthetic in keeping with the likes of the Storm Bugs or the Homosexuals, but don't you worry, there's plenty of Throbbing Gristle to be heard within The Pump's anti-songs. Ayers claims that he released four or five cassettes as The Pump, before shifting into Nocturnal Emissions; and this disc collects various tracks from various cassettes, although nothing is annotated as to where anything originated. It probably doesn't matter, as those cassettes had probably all disintegrated from their structural shittiness. Anyway, The Pump loosely splattered electronic noise and distortion upon cheap drum machine programs, slapped on asynchronous basslines which lurch through the treble crashing production, and even displayed a surprisingly sophisticated use of dub collage techniques to provide some ghostly flourishes of voice, media samples, and scratchy guitar noise amidst the dishevelled sound. This is Industrial Music in the way the Industrial Records released Industrial Music, by way of Throbbing Gristle, Clock DVA, and Cabaret Voltaire all circa 1979; but they also seemed to run parallel to the fucked-up, heroin-splattered noise of Destroy All Monsters as well. It should be noted that there's way more material from The Pump on this disc than found on the Nocturnal Emissions 4lp boxset Lest We Forget from Vinyl On Demand. A gritty free for all from way down deep in the British underground.
MPEG Stream: "Instant Truth"
MPEG Stream: "Futures Unlimited"
MPEG Stream: "I Wanna Be A Living Dead"

PURE The End of Vinyl (Mego) 3"cd 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Pure has also recorded for Disko B and Tension as Ilsa Gold, and does not make any proclamation for the death of the 12" in favor of digital media. Actually the title refers to the source material of this album being the runout grooves on vinyl, being amplified and processed into digital clicks and ominous drones reminiscent of Ryoji Ikeda or possibly Nurse With Wound's Thunder Perfect Mind.

PURLING HISS Public Service Announcement (Woodsist) lp 14.98
WOW, did this record pretty much immediately blow us away! We had never actually heard these guys (this guy actually, he also plays in Birds Of Maya), but had always thought Purling Hiss was a pretty awesome name, so not expecting too much, we threw this on and then BAM, we were sold, smitten, obsessed even, finding ourselves playing this to death, getting these songs stuck in our heads, and not just the songs proper, but even the weird little recording anomalies and random bits of musical glitchery. For a record that sounds, and is maybe meant to sound, so lo-fi and tossed off and just sort of half assed, a druggy murky muddy home brewed pop record, it's impossibly catchy and well crafted and AMAZING.
A heady mix of classic pop songsmithery, blown out psychedelic drift, abstract tape experiment fuckery and fragmented bedroom 4 track alchemy, Public Service Announcement plays at times like some classic rock record that's been dubbed a million times and then played back in your crappy car stereo, the one with only one speaker and no bass knob, and at other times like some inspired Guided By Voices mini pop epic, and occasionally like some super baked, basement psych jam blowout, wasted and lazy and drifty and divine.
The record opens with "Run From The City", which within 5 seconds establishes itself as some impossible instant classic, with a totally killer guitar lick that IS the song's hook, the track sounding like some lost punky pop gem from the seventies or eighties that somehow got left off of every compilation since, the verses crunchy and muddy and melodic, those guitar leads just sealing the deal. In fact, we could barely get to the rest of the record cuz we just wanted to keep playing the first track.
"Porch Dude/Slight Return" offers up our first glimpse of Purling Hiss as wasted and stoned psych jam drifters, shuffling drums, swirling flanged guitars, everything hazy and wreathed in pot smoke, little spidery leads surfacing here and there, bit otherwise a blurred and bleary drift, the slight return of the title being the revisited melody from the album opener.
And then there's "Don't Even Try It", the other song we can't seem to keep from just playing on repeat, with it's folky guitar and vocal intro, the tape speed constantly shifting, the sound warped and warbly, like someone with their finger on the record as it spins, and then the chorus comes in, with it's "woo ooo ooo" refrain, and the song suddenly reveals itself as some pretty perfect pop. Lo-fi yet lush, vocal harmonies, guitar melodies, a hook to die for, all hazy and sun dappled and catchy as all get out.
After a brief (but AWESOME) minute long Van Halen loop, that manages to be totally twisted yet totally catchy, the record slips right back into fuzzy lo-fi pop, more oooh's and aaah's, summery steel string strum, dreamy harmonies, and sweet pop hooks, before unfurling some serious psychedelia in the form of "Gypsy", a sprawling droned out chunk of druggy spaciness, and at that point if you're not already under the record's spell, you bliss out and drift off and let the record carry you wherever it will, whether it be to "Zor" a thick buzzing, swirling, yet still dreamily melodic bit of dark drone, or to "Beautiful Earth Creature" which is another perfect chunk of jangly pop, replete with those warped speed fluctuations that end up becoming irrevocably part of the song, or to the heady spacepsychjam freakout of "Malice In Wonderland" or to the twisted Ariel Pink-ish warbly fuzzy FM radio pop of album close "1976".
Warped and wonderful and definitely one of our new favorite records.
MPEG Stream: "Run From The City"
MPEG Stream: "Don't Even Try It"
MPEG Stream: "Beautiful Earth Creature"
MPEG Stream: "Bedroom"
MPEG Stream: "Gypsy"

PUSHUPS Sommer Jammz 2007 (Ormolycka) cassette 5.98
BACK IN STOCK!!!
We got a whole bunch of tapes from our pal Jason's Ormolycka label, one of our favorite tape labels going, and certainly one of the coolest and weirdest, with an insanely varied roster that evades any sort of easy classification. There was the tape version of the Liturgy record (which featured a remix by our very own Andee!), as well as the Death Grips Exmilitary tape (relisted elsewhere on this week's list), which speaks to the label's obsession with fucked up weirdo hip hop, as does this one, by a 'band' called Pushups, written with a little infinity symbol before the bandname, but it's a seriously cracked slab of super distorted radio style hip-pop, more of a mix really, a dizzying mashup of soul, hip hop, pop, electro, a relentless barrage of booty shaking grooves, the sound super blown out and in-the-red, as if it was being blasted from a booming system with blown speakers. There's a serious footwork vibe too, with loops repeated over and over and over, stuttering samples, maddeningly mesmerizing, some of it totally bumping, some of it cheesy and fun, all of it ruling and while it may be Sommer Jammz for 2007, they'll sound pretty good this Sommer too!

PUSSYFINGER Chew & Swallow (Dielectric) cd 12.98
We're pretty sure that Drucifer (Aq pal, turntablist Die Elektrischen, head of Dielectric records, etc.) named his new band, a laptop duo with Dielectric labelmate Carson Day, ahem... Pussyfinger, just so we'd have to keep saying it out loud, inevitably causing the speaker, and the speakee, to either wince or giggle or both. It's been a running joke around the shop. "Hey did we get more of that new Dielectric record, you know, the one with Drucifer and Carson...you know... um..." We've come to embrace the name now. Pussyfinger. See? PUSSYFINGER! So besides the provocative monicker, what's all the fuss about? Well, Pussyfinger is the scientific laptop duo of Drew Webster aka Drucifer (see above) and Carson Day, who have melded their individual approaches to music and the laptop in particular and come up with something skittery and electronic enough to keep Boards Of Canada fans in a tizzy, but fucked up enough to keep 'em seriously confused. Pussyfinger's sound is an organic clatter, it IS glitchy laptronica, but it's arranged and presented like songs, you know like real songs. The elements are distinctly organic, but chopped and sliced and diced in a totally inorganic way. Strings resonate and buzz, but are processed into weird ambient smears of sound. Vocals are all over the place, but they are so fucked with they end up sounding like just another random sound element. The core sound is still electronica, IDM even, there is an Autechre streak a mile wide running through Chew And Swallow, and that's definitely not a bad thing. Things do get noisy at times, thick washes of digital feedback and some full on harsh noise, but there are also some truly lovely moments of tranquil ambience that sort of balance the equation. Ultimately it's the skittery shuffle that is the framework for Pussyfinger's electronic world, think BoC, Autechre, a little Aphex, a bit of Chris Clark, Pussyfinger would not be at all out of place on Warp, but they would definitely bring a bit of black humor and some serious sonic dissent along with them.
Beautifully packaged, with truly horrific, but somehow strangely striking cover art, the perfect complement to Pussyfinger's oh so problematic sobriquet!
MPEG Stream: "Kurenai (Samul Nori Mix)"
MPEG Stream: "Mala Gente"

PUSSYGUTT Gathering Strengths (Olde English Spelling Bee) lp 23.00
The return of Pussygutt, a male/female duo from Idaho, who traffic in slow brooding black ambience and ultra doom, and whose last two records have been huge favorites around here, which makes sense as we really can't get enough of sidelong tracks, and sprawling expansive stretches of slow rumbling drones, and minimal slabs of blackened doomic crawl, and gathering Strengths does NOTHING to disappoint, offering up a single two part track, spread out over two sides, beginning with what sounds like oboes or some sort of woodwind (it's in fact a clarinet), long layered tones, emitting endless overtones, laid atop a barely there bit of low end rumble, strange melodies emerging from the constantly shifting layers, eventually joined by mysterious strings, chiming bells, super cinematic and soundtracky, and yet another instance of 'why don't these guys score movies', the music sublime and emotional, not what you'd expect necessarily, slowly building in intensity, until finally, the hammer falls, and a black cloud of rumbling doom descends, hardly overwhelming, but instead wrapping around those keening strings, creating a haunting otherworldly bit of black doom chamber music.
The flipside starts off a bit folkier, shimmering drones drift over simple hand drums, the melodies simple and melancholy, a muted firelit psychfolk, smoldering and dreamlike, eventually building to something much more epic and intense, never exploding into a frenzy of doom, or exploding at all, instead, just hovering, and ratcheting up the tension, again, totally cinematic and dramatic, like some timeless ritual being performed by cloaked figures gathered before a fire, while in the background cities crumble and the sky turns to ash.
Intense, and intensely beautiful. LIMITED TO 550. Each one hand numbered, and housed in super striking, silkscreened heavy sleeves.

PUSSYGUTT Sea Of Sand (Olde English Spelling Bee) 2lp 29.00
A mysterious duo from Idaho, here expanded to a trio, offer up 4 sidelong tracks of damaged and mysterious outsider doomdrone on the always reliable Olde English Spelling Bee label. We weren't too sure what to expect, and we missed their performance here a few months back unfortunately, but just have a gander at the list of instruments: bass, violin, crystal goblet, tractor, forest samples, clay pots, tubular bells, organ, synth, gong, drums, bowed cymbals, guitar, sound manipulations, electronics, LEAD guitar, amplifiers and feedback. Those last few are your first clue that this isn't just any old drone record. Although the first few minutes had us fooled. A gorgeous expanse of shimmering low end, glistening harmonics, and a soft distant doomic plod, little bits of static and hiss, a slow slithering blackness, which eventually builds to a stumbling groovy doom jam, with big boomy practice space drums, some seriously downtuned riffage and thick swirls of Hawkwind-ed FX, that lopes and lurches until it fades out into a long slowly unwinding smear of softly buzzing bass.
The second side is a sprawling heavy industrial soundscape of collaged sounds, wind, that tractor mentioned above, all looped and layered, clanging percussion, everything constantly shifting and changing shape, a dark meandering journey through a black forest of sound, a bit like Nurse With Wound meets Wolf Eyes, a chunk of surreal dark ambience, haunting and ominous and while not heavy per se, still distinctly doomy...
The second lp begins with creepy gypsy violins (one of the band members is a classically trained violinist) over a back drop of creaks and moans, a sort of haunted house mood music, beneath abstract riff fragments and random bits of effects building into a slowcore crawl, a mellow doom, each note ringing out and drifting off before the next one hits. Doomy, funereal, soft focus, with those strings a constant presence, super dark and emotional, adding a weirdly cinematic element to Pussygutt's sound.
The final side is another doomy crawl, distant drums, massive slow motion slabs of downtuned guitar, very simple and hypnotic, dark and creepy, not so much heavy as moody and intense, finishing off with a harrowing Hitchcockian string outro which gives way to the sounds of the forest, birds and wildlife, all coming to life beneath the full moon...
LIMITED TO 550 COPIES. Each one hand-assembled copies. Packaged in heavy-duty gatefold sleeves with four spraymounted panels that were custom offset-printed on silver stock with two coats of black ink for extra darkness, so much black ink in fact that, it almost makes your eyes water. Maybe a few huffs inside the sleeve will better prepare you for the mind altering weirdness inside...

PUSSYGUTT She Hid Behind Her Veil... (20 Buck Spin) cd 13.98
A brand new single-track of sprawling blackness from this mysterious Idaho duo, offering up their own version of the template laid down by Earth way back around their album 2. Which as you probably already know means, metal riffs slowed down to tarpit tempo, the various notes struggling to move forward through a field of crumbling distortion and near static buzz, the riffs allowed to ring out and fade away almost completely, before the next one comes lumbering up behind it.
The strange thing is that live, Pussygutt are a full on band, much more traditionally heavy, with a drummer and everything, even on their last record the epic double lp Sea Of Sand, the band was a lurching doomic behemoth, bordering on the industrial at times, but here, their sound is stripped way way down, and it suits them. They're able to evoke all sorts of moods with their carefully constructed downtuned ambience. This is some seriously sinister shit for sure, sweeping and darkly cinematic, the soundtrack to the eventual collapse of the universe, the sound of dying stars, or of some long slumbering beat awakening after millennia, or maybe Goblin at 16rpm, some haunted house music way too scary for any haunted house you'd ever want to visit.
It's not all heaviness though. Long stretches of sound dip into hushed shimmer here and there, while elsewhere the low end slips away leaving a creepy string section do drift spectrally, like some secret Satanic classical music, but even these moments are always tense with the knowledge that right around the corner, could be lurking another churning black wave of slow motion doomdrone crush. Really fantastic, and more than most of this stuff, infused with a deep otherworldly beauty.
Definitely require listening for folks whose cd racks/record crates/iPods' are packed with Earth, SUNNO))), Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, To Blacken The Pages, Hum Of The Druid, Expo '70, Nadja, Vulture Club, Hjarnidaudi, Monument Of Urns, Fear Falls Burning, Half Makeshift, Tunnels, Seconds In Formaldehyde, KTL, Light Of Shipwreck...
MPEG Stream: "She Hid Behind Her Veil... "

PUZZLE PUNKS BuduB (Time Bomb) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We can never get enough Boredoms. But unfortunately, there's never enough Boredoms. We hate waiting years between releases. Thankfully there are plenty of side projects and offshoots to hold us over. One such Boredoms related outfit is Puzzle Punks, featuring Eye from the Boredoms, along with his PP partner Shinro Otake. We carried the limited picture disc of this release years and years ago, but for some reason were never able to get the cd. We recently discovered that there is a NEW Puzzle Punks record (we're not sure if it is indeed new, or just a new collection of old material, but we'll hopefully have it in time for the next list) and at the same time we discovered we could finally get this, the cd version of the Puzzle Punks' 2nd album Budub.
And we forgot just how great this stuff was. Even after a decade the sounds on Budub sound fresh. Weird and fucked too (it is Eye after all) but fresh enough that you could be forgiven for thinking this was some weird Excepter record or No Neck side project. Which just goes to show you how much influence Eye and his gang had and still have on modern music.
The sound of Budub is less caustic and spastic than the first Puzzle Punks records, or the Boredoms records released around the same time. Instead it's a series of experiments in rhythm, maybe hinting at the direction Eye would take the Boredoms on late albums.
Imagine some impossible jam session between the Boredoms and This Heat, or a lobotomized Hawkwind left to jam with the infant versions of the No Neck Blues Band. Or even a room full of musical toys, possessed and allowed to run amok. Dark and deliriously playful. Sometimes creepy and dark, but more often sort of strange and hypnotic. And always some bizarre world of rhythm and rhythmic wonder. Every track a strange sonic trip: analog synth squelches over dreamy chimes and tinkles, processed fuzzy krautrock grooves beneath strange chanted and muttered vocals, murky percussive plod and thud, over which a tiny sped up voice drenched in reverb mews and warbles, haunting vocal and percussion duos, very tribal and mysterious, thick washed out expanses of fuzzy spacerock FX and distant feedback, skittery almost techno shuffles, with bizarre vocalizations, deconstructed melodies played on a toy guitar, accompanied by a slowly wound jack in the box, a grinding wash of super thick distorted throb, a wall of low end whir, a murky world of jungle sounds like a lo-fi Perry And Kingsley and every random rhythmic stop in between.
Boredoms freaks who never picked this up NEED THIS BAD. And all you modern free folks and random rock weirdos into No Neck, Excepter, Sunburned Hand and the like might just dig this a lot!
MPEG Stream: "Ouck Nuff"
MPEG Stream: "Unlimited Toothpicker"
MPEG Stream: "Pep & Kep"
MPEG Stream: "Xicotepecker"

PUZZLE PUNKS Puzzoo (Time Bomb) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The Boredoms were always about rhythm, even if it wasn't overt, theirs was a sound based on rhythm. From the splattery chaotic hardcore of early records like Soul Discharge, to their later incarnation as a modern hippy drum rock jam band, every bit of their music was concerned with pulse and throb, it was propulsive and hypnotic, looped and cyclical, sometimes herky jerky and chaotic (but still precisely choreographed), other times serene and abstract, but always with some internal mechanism that tapped into all of the rhythms of life, which is precisely what made the Boredoms' music sound so alive and vibrant and often completely brilliantly baffling.
Last list we reviewed Budub, the 2nd album by Boredoms offshoot Puzzle Punks, which was the duo of Eye of the Boredoms and artist Otake Noboru. A fascinating very Boredoms-esque concoction of cracked rhythms and krautrock grooves, but super spare and stripped down. A garage rock This Heat maybe, traversing an abstract soundscape of loops and broken drum lines, pulsing and plodding, weaving skeletal song frameworks, and just leaving them like that, barebones and full of space. And the result was divine. Hypnotic and dreamlike. Some weird space rock broken down to its base rhythmic element, would up and allowed to stumble and lurch on its own.
Puzzoo was supposedly recorded right after that record, in secret, and recorded almost as you hear, not culled from hours and hours of jamming, rather a wholly realized organic musical happening, captured alive and kicking. Puzzoo finds the Puzzle Punks expanded to a trio, with the addition of an extra guitar, and includes some guest performances from two of the other Boredoms, one of them being Boredoms / OOIOO heartthrob Yoshimi. The result is like a much more beefed up Budub. A little more aggressive, a little more propulsive, but still stripped down and tripped out.
The opening three track salvo is worth the price of admission alone. A solid 40 minutes of damaged abstract spaced out krautrockiness. In fact, just the opener "Puzoo Lunch", a seventeen minute outer space tribal space jam was all we needed to hear. one of those tracks we wish would go on forever. And if the technology existed, we guarantee we'd spend the next 2 weeks listening to the extended 336 hour version, staying home from work, phone off, lights off, drapes drawn, just sort of drifting off in some body rhythm trance. But as it is we'll just have to continually press repeat on the cd player, and just imagine all that other stuff. But what kind of sound would have us in such a frenzy? Some some super bizarre seventies prog rock all tangled up in an alien percussive temple worship ceremony, like a roomful of deranged wind-up toys each given a little tiny set of drums and cymbals, rocking out in miniature to some acid fried psych rock guitar drift. The guitar weaves a deconstructed lo-fi garage rock, with angular no-wave riffs that drift over a motorik clangscape of clockwork thumps and a cacophony of tinkling bells and chimes and cymbals. Above it all hovers some blown out fuzzy blues guitar, weaving lazily in and out of the tangled rhythms. A dense swirl of warbling melodies and strange little sound effects wrap the proceedings in a mysterious spaced out conic cloak, the various guitar lines and melodies constantly mutating and shifting pitch. An impossible alien krautrock groove, an improbable junkyard space rock symphony, like some stripped down garage rock super jam with members of the Boredoms, This Heat, and No Neck Blues Band. Phew. And that's just the first track.
Track two, "Puzoout" follows a similar blueprint, but wraps its rhythms in fuzzy clouds of 8-bit video game sounds, whorls of primitive lo-fi synth and damaged guitar, all over a dizzying splatter of simple shuffle and propulsive skitter. Like a (more) outsider Acid Mothers Temple, but recorded on some sort of children's tape recorder. Track three, "Puzzub", the final part in the unbeatable one-two-three punch, is another druggy rhythmic workout, this time even more stripped down, a blissed out slow burning tribal jam, the main element being mouth harp which gets distorted and twisted, and stretched into a raga like buzz, in the background simple tablas and primitive metallic percussion, all wrapped in a super thick fuzzy veil of staticky haze, and warm warbling shimmer.
The final four tracks, ranging from under three minutes to a little over five minutes, are stunning little fragments of what must be (or could have been) monumentally epic lo-fi space jams, each one a dense little assemblage of deconstructed rhythms, melodic shards, fuzzy ambience, motorik propulsion, machine-like whir and druggy psychedelic atmospheres. All of them could have been stretched into hours instead of minutes without losing any of their mysterious power.
The sound of Puzzle Punks is very reminiscent of groups like No Neck Blues Band, Sunburned Hand Of The Man, but especially the Finnish contingent of the neo-tribal forest drone folk sound, Avarus, Kuupuu, Kemialliset, Anaksimandros, but infused with a distinctly Japanese aesthetic, as well as a gloriously unhealthy obsession with krautrock, space rock, This Heat and all of the various permutations of the word Puzzle (Puzunk, Puzzdozer, PuZZ-Top, ZZ-Topuzz) So dementedly recommended. As is the previous disc Budub, which we still have a few copies of...
MPEG Stream: "Puzzoo Lunch"
MPEG Stream: "ZZ-Topuzz"
MPEG Stream: "Puzz-Top"

PYE CORNER AUDIO The Ever-Present Hum (The Tapeworm) cassette 9.98
We've yet to get enough copies of ANYthing from this mysterious one man band, Pye Corner Audio, aka a mysterious man behind the curtain called the Head Technician, and this Tapeworm tape is no different. We tried to order 20 copies, and instead got 5, too few to list, but figured we'd give you tape nerds a chance to snag one, so here it is, a super limited cassette from this strange electronic audio alchemist, whose sound is equally mysterious, from sci-fi futuristic soundscapery, to blurred slomo Caretaker-ish drift, from home brewed IDM style skitter, to crackle drenched hum and psychedelic zoner bliss out. Fans of Demdike Stare, the Modern Love, Pre-Cert and Dead-Cert labels, odds are you'll dig this a LOT. And again, be warned, we only have FIVE copies, it's already out of print and sold out, so once these are gone, that's IT.

PYLON Not Cobras (Last Visible Dog) cd 9.98
We've been exploiting the writing talents of Jewelled Antler's Loren Chasse a bit lately, and now Glenn Donaldson (Thuja, Skygreen Leopards, Blithe Sons...) wants to get into the action too, volunteering to write something about this here disc, an archival release on Last Visible Dog of the clanging and banging of the pre-Avarus outfit Pylon (which is NOT to be confused with the Athens, GA Pylon of the early '80s). Or, to be accurate, he offered to let us use what he wrote about it on the Jewelled Antler email-list, as follows: "Damn, another breath of fresh air blowing over from the Finnish cloudfort. Pylon sends echoing flutes & ram's horn trumpets over fragmented folk & space-rock marching junkshop drums. Maybe there's a detuned guitar flailing along or a fuzzy Casio organ, someone beating out a Morse code on an oven tray or a an old typewriter. Muffled abstract vocals are performed with earnest by muppets, zombies & monks & are shrouded in effects pedals. This shares something in common with related-groups Avarus/Anaksimandros/Maniacs Dream, but with just two members there's more space around each clang & groan. With its joyous clatter, pylon seems to be urging us to dance with goats & green maidens, run wild with robots & monsters." Pretty much sums it up, thanks Glenn!
MPEG Stream: "[Track 1]"
MPEG Stream: "[Track 6]"

PYRAMIDS s/t (Hydra Head) 2cd 14.98
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 love that Hydra Head sound, huge churning riffage, pummeling drums, crushing metallic dirges and all things heavy heavy heavy, we're becoming more and more obsessed with the releases that don't fit so comfortably on HH, don't necessarily embody that classic Hydra Head sound. Although that's not necessarily fair, as the more bands HH sign that sound different, the more diffuse and varied that HH 'sound' becomes, which renders this whole theory moot. But whatever, stick with us for a second, there is a point. It's sort of how we were with Sub Pop, sure we loved Green River and Soundgarden and Mudhoney, THAT sound, but we got crazy obsessed with stuff like Rein Sanction and Hardship Post, the stuff that stuck out, that sounded WEIRD, maybe almost more than the regular Sub Pop stuff.
It might be just that for a band to kick someone's ass SO much, that they're willing to release a record by them, even though sonically it's a whole different ball of wax, means that the record in question is that good, that fucked up, that unique, or could be that we just like to be contrary. Either wayÉ
Whatever. We love Isis and Cavity and Pelican, but lately, we, like a lot of you, have been obsessing over Jesu, Hayaino Diasuke, Austerity Program, Torche, Pet Genius and now Pyramids, who hail from Denton Texas, and who sound like nothing on Hydra Head. If we had to pick one band, it might be Jesu, but even then, the similarities are minimal. Pyramids are blissy and fuzzy and gauzy and pretty, almost ambient at times, drifting dreamily, their sounds shimmering and glistening, everything blurred and washed out and totally fucking gorgeous, BUT, they do have some surprises up their sleeves. And it's those surprises that make this record such a mind blower.
But let's start at the beginning. The first three tracks here are totally lovely, guitars are wisps, vocals are fluttery shadows, melodies are delicate and fragile, the production is warm and sun dappled, rhythms are muted shuffles, effects swirl and sway, here and there, the sound thickens into something almost heavy, but never quite gets there, remains on the pretty drifty side of heavy. It's like a more avant freaky version of Mazzy Star or Galaxie 500, that same sort of windblown washed out blissy vibe. Until the fourth track.
Beginning with some minimal guitar buzz, amidst a whirl of chiming harmonics, shortwave interference, and blown out buzz, the drums kick in, and the riff locks into an insectoid buzz, and suddenly the Pyramids are some sort of black metal band, still bleary and blissy, but with pounding drums and buzzing guitars, eventually vocals come in and it's like a metalgaze Sigur Ros, which is most definitely awesome.
The next track too offers more of the same, a sort of swirling chaotic shoe gaze-y black metal, and in fact the rest of the record continues on in that vein, each track a twisted convoluted take on blissed out black metal, sometimes grinding and furious, but even then swathed in a warm sonic glow, sometimes more poppy and swirly, like a more abstract Swervedriver. As you can tell, it's pretty hard to describe. Not sure it's really black enough to appeal to black metallers, it's more like some shoegaze ambient metal pop band just borrowed some black metal tropes and wove them into their gorgeous blown out soundworld.
There's a second disc too, of remixes, by the likes of Jesu, James Plotkin, Loveliescrushing, Birchville Cat Motel, Blut Aus Nord and more, and we would have assumed that remixes by those folks, of this sort of music, would just render them more blissed out, but instead, at least the first two, transform the songs into furious blown out black jams. The first, remixed by Toby Driver of Kay Dot, Ted Parsons of Prong and Swans and Colin Marston of Behold the Arctopus, begins all soft and swirly, but by the end has added super distorted drums, and all manner of fried buzz. The Plotkin remix up next, strips away most of the bliss, and leaves a seriously fucked sounding lo-fi in-the-red black metal blast. The Jesu remix sounds just like you might imagine, a gauzy slowcore drift, with the vocals jacked way up, soaring through the ether, a fluttery falsetto. The two Loveliescrushing mixes bring out the soft blurred ambience of the originals, making them even more tranquil and serene. Birchville turns his mix into a virtual BCM track, using bits and pieces of the original, creating a thick slow growing drone, that builds to a buzzing crescendo before fading back into a dark moody drift. Blut Aus Nord is the most fucked up remix. Not sure if they added tons of stuff, or just did some crazy mix, but the guitars groan all dizzy and woozy and angular, the drums, pounding and machinelike, the vocals a hissy evil howl, the whole track a lurching black lope. All the mixes here are amazing, utterly transforming the originals, but in doing so hewing to the spirit of the original record, which was already pretty schizophrenic and all over the amp as it was.
Way way way recommended. A new aQ favorite for sure...
MPEG Stream: "Sleds"
MPEG Stream: "The Echo Of Something Lovely"
MPEG Stream: "End Resolve"

PYRAMIDS s/t (Hydra Head) lp 27.00
Available now on vinyl for the first time, the debut full length from these avant / post black metal experimentalists. Here's what we had to say about it when we first heard it, and originally listed it, way back in 2008:
As much as we love that Hydra Head sound, huge churning riffage, pummeling drums, crushing metallic dirges and all things heavy heavy heavy, we're becoming more and more obsessed with the releases that don't fit so comfortably on HH, don't necessarily embody that classic Hydra Head sound. Although that's not necessarily fair, as the more bands HH sign that sound different, the more diffuse and varied that HH 'sound' becomes, which renders this whole theory moot. But whatever, stick with us for a second, there is a point. It's sort of how we were with Sub Pop, sure we loved Green River and Soundgarden and Mudhoney, THAT sound, but we got crazy obsessed with stuff like Rein Sanction and Hardship Post, the stuff that stuck out, that sounded WEIRD, maybe almost more than the regular Sub Pop stuff.
It might be just that for a band to kick someone's ass SO much, that they're willing to release a record by them, even though sonically it's a whole different ball of wax, means that the record in question is that good, that fucked up, that unique, or could be that we just like to be contrary. Either wayÉ
Whatever. We love Isis and Cavity and Pelican, but lately, we, like a lot of you, have been obsessing over Jesu, Hayaino Diasuke, Austerity Program, Torche, Pet Genius and now Pyramids, who hail from Denton Texas, and who sound like nothing on Hydra Head. If we had to pick one band, it might be Jesu, but even then, the similarities are minimal. Pyramids are blissy and fuzzy and gauzy and pretty, almost ambient at times, drifting dreamily, their sounds shimmering and glistening, everything blurred and washed out and totally fucking gorgeous, BUT, they do have some surprises up their sleeves. And it's those surprises that make this record such a mind blower.
But let's start at the beginning. The first three tracks here are totally lovely, guitars are wisps, vocals are fluttery shadows, melodies are delicate and fragile, the production is warm and sun dappled, rhythms are muted shuffles, effects swirl and sway, here and there, the sound thickens into something almost heavy, but never quite gets there, remains on the pretty drifty side of heavy. It's like a more avant freaky version of Mazzy Star or Galaxie 500, that same sort of windblown washed out blissy vibe. Until the fourth track.
Beginning with some minimal guitar buzz, amidst a whirl of chiming harmonics, shortwave interference, and blown out buzz, the drums kick in, and the riff locks into an insectoid buzz, and suddenly the Pyramids are some sort of black metal band, still bleary and blissy, but with pounding drums and buzzing guitars, eventually vocals come in and it's like a metalgaze Sigur Ros, which is most definitely awesome.
The next track too offers more of the same, a sort of swirling chaotic shoe gaze-y black metal, and in fact the rest of the record continues on in that vein, each track a twisted convoluted take on blissed out black metal, sometimes grinding and furious, but even then swathed in a warm sonic glow, sometimes more poppy and swirly, like a more abstract Swervedriver. As you can tell, it's pretty hard to describe. Not sure it's really black enough to appeal to black metallers, it's more like some shoegaze ambient metal pop band just borrowed some black metal tropes and wove them into their gorgeous blown out soundworld.
There's a second disc too, of remixes, by the likes of Jesu, James Plotkin, Loveliescrushing, Birchville Cat Motel, Blut Aus Nord and more, and we would have assumed that remixes by those folks, of this sort of music, would just render them more blissed out, but instead, at least the first two, transform the songs into furious blown out black jams. The first, remixed by Toby Driver of Kay Dot, Ted Parsons of Prong and Swans and Colin Marston of Behold the Arctopus, begins all soft and swirly, but by the end has added super distorted drums, and all manner of fried buzz. The Plotkin remix up next, strips away most of the bliss, and leaves a seriously fucked sounding lo-fi in-the-red black metal blast. The Jesu remix sounds just like you might imagine, a gauzy slowcore drift, with the vocals jacked way up, soaring through the ether, a fluttery falsetto. The two Loveliescrushing mixes bring out the soft blurred ambience of the originals, making them even more tranquil and serene. Birchville turns his mix into a virtual BCM track, using bits and pieces of the original, creating a thick slow growing drone, that builds to a buzzing crescendo before fading back into a dark moody drift. Blut Aus Nord is the most fucked up remix. Not sure if they added tons of stuff, or just did some crazy mix, but the guitars groan all dizzy and woozy and angular, the drums, pounding and machinelike, the vocals a hissy evil howl, the whole track a lurching black lope. All the mixes here are amazing, utterly transforming the originals, but in doing so hewing to the spirit of the original record, which was already pretty schizophrenic and all over the amp as it was.
Way way way recommended. A new aQ favorite for sure...
MPEG Stream: "Sleds"
MPEG Stream: "The Echo Of Something Lovely"
MPEG Stream: "End Resolve"

PYRAMIDS WVNDRKMMER (Small Doses) 5 x cassette 35.00
This is a doozy of a release, and one that seems custom made for aQ. Weirdo black metallers Pyramids sent songs and sounds to a bunch of bands to rework, reinterpret, remix or reimagine in any way they saw fit. The list of bands alone should havemost aQ folks frothing: Tenhornedbeast, Fear Falls Burning, Windy & Cark, Wereju, Burial Hex, Yen Pox, Josh Lay, Black Seas Of Infinity, Encomiast, Bones Of Seabirds, Nicholas Szczepanik, Rise Of Because, Jeremy Bible, Amber Asylum, Bass Communion, Hoor-Paar-Kraat, Light Of Shipwreck, Mamiffer, Ulan Bator, Across Tundras, At The Head Of The Woods, Blood Fountains, Oakeater, Neuntoter Der Plage, Rabbit Girls, Wicked Messenger, Sigullum Dei, Black Roller Crop Rotation, 9922, Exit In Grey, The Spirit Dies, Luasa Raelon, Wyrm, Sin Of A Higher Strain, Drowning The Virgin Silence, Paradin, Bjerga/Iverson, Fences, Le Knell, Andrew Weathers, Mystified, Nils Helstrom, True Colour Of Blood, Teeth Collection, Great Falls, Hiroki Sasajima, Offthesky, Ala Muerte, Romance Of Young Tigers, This Will Destroy You, Ghoul Detail and Lunar Miasma. Phew. Instead of going through the whole collection song by song, group by group, we'll let you suss it out for yourself, the sounds are all over the map, noisy, heavy, pretty, ambient, rhythmic, brutal, psychedelic, some of the tracks sound like remixed Pyramids, others you'd never know, it's an epic and sprawling collection, that for the most part is pretty fucking great. The packaging is incredible too. SIX HOURS of music of FIVE TAPES, the tapes red, printed in silver, all housed in one of those plastic clamshell cases, like for language courses, but his one has a custom stamped placeholder in the otherwise empty sixth tape slot, and is covered in a full color printed glued on cover. Inside is a black on silver metallic printed insert, and all of this is housed in a red cardstock slipcover, sealed with a metallic silver wax seal! WOW. Limited to 300 copies, we're taking pre-orders for this, we're only getting as many copies as we get orders, so if you want one don't dawdle...