BRADLEY, PAUL pastandpresentcollide (Shining Day) cd 15.98

MPEG Stream: "pastandpresentcollide (excerpt)"

BRADLEY, PAUL Sketches From Dust (Twenty Hertz) cd 16.98
Taking a cue from fellow British drone alchemist Andrew Chalk, Paul Bradley offers an elegant miasma of elongated tones from guitar and piano, the latter of which was contributed by Current 93's Maja Elliott. The overall feel of Sketches From Dust is thoroughly amorphous in its strategy for a pure ambience (in keeping true to the Brian Eno ethos of such early masterpieces as On Land and Thursday Afternoon). After stretching the timbral monochrome from piano and guitar into a shimmering chorale, Bradley gingerly places these sounds in a loosened compositional framework that shares some similarities to how Mr. Chalk arranged his abstracted piano on Blue Eyes Of The March. On occasion, Bradley allows for clusters of Elliott's piano to flicker within the freefloating drone breathing with the quality of billowing clouds and transient early morning fog whose refracted light through water vapor makes everything obfuscated and luminous at the same time. Very nicely done.
MPEG Stream: "Extract 1"
MPEG Stream: "Extract 2"

BRADLEY, PAUL & COLIN POTTER The Simple Plan (ICR) 2cd 17.98
Colin Potter and Paul Bradley have been collaborating over the past eight or nine years, between Potter's ongoing involvement in Nurse With Wound. On previous releases, Potter and Bradley have mustered monolithic, clinical studies in tectonic low-end rumblings and unsettled drone vibration work. The drone is still the principle sound element for The Simple Plan; but, here the two set out to record in real-time with synths, guitars, and a bunch of effects. The five extended renderings are dreamy driftscapes that certainly harken to the '70s mantras of psychedelic ambience touched with phased guitar dissonance, glistening surfaces of reflecting-pool ambience, and meditative looping jams. The massive 18 minute "Gloaming" is the center piece of the album with sitar-like harmonic overtones arching out of a pastoral set of interwoven loops with smaller glistens, shivers, and sparkles glowing from the underbelly of this cinematically expansive piece of psychedelidronemusik. Certainly, those Eno collaborations with Cluster and Robert Fripp come to mind (especially Evening Star); but even the recent crop of psychedelic dreamscapers like Emeralds, Celer, and William Fowler Collins draw comparisons to this nice piece of work. Lovely!
The first 135 copies of The Simple Plan also come with a bonus disc with solo reworkings of this material from both artists.
MPEG Stream: "Gloaming"
MPEG Stream: "Alta Mesa"

BRAIN AND, THE s/t (Fuck It Tapes) cass 8.98

BRAN (ANOTHER PLIGHT OF MEDIC'S...) POS, THE Amantis Incongrue (Chitah! Chitah! Soundcrack) cd 11.98
Surrealistic solo artist The Bran (Another plight of medic's...) Pos, aka AQ-customer Jake Rodriguez (who helps to run & book the Clit Stop venue here in SF), has released what I think is his actual debut cd, after a variety of cd-r releases. Experimental to the core, in live performances Jake's a veritable Tasmanian Devil of insane vocal manipulations and electronic effects. Here, the vocals take a back seat (or can't be differentiated from the electronics!), it's pretty much all outer-space distortion and chaos-collage, like a Masonna intent on making 'weird' noises instead of painful ones. One track features his free improv duo Compomicro-Dexall. For fans of Mike Patton and other John Zorn-approved avant garde noise craziness. Good stuff. Comes packaged in one of those clear plastic clam-shell cases.

BRAN FLAKES I Don't Have A Friend (Lomo) cd 14.98
Aaah, the fountain overflows with a facetious flood of tweaked tunes from Mr. Mildred Pit and Mr. Otis F. Odder. Together they are the Bran Flakes from Seattle, WA. Giving a tip of the hat to Irwin Chusid (radio host and champion of musical eccentrics everywhere ---Raymond Scott to name but one), they plunder and paste melodic incongruities (what was that?! a tv show theme? and that?! a Nancy Sinatra song? Lawrence Welk? Mickey Mouse?), children's voices, broadcast announcements, frantic beats, and exotica flourishes together like a giant demented pinata. At once, fluffily silly, yet strangely menacing. Features a collaboration with our pal Wobbly. Fabulous fans of Bruce Haack, People Like Us, Quintron, and Negativland, take note.

BRAN FLAKES, THE Bounces! (Happi Tyme) cd 11.98
Seattle-based duo The Bran Flakes have put together another cherry of an album. Sonic plunderers who must have ridiculous amounts of thrift-store $1 records, The Bran Flakes painstakingly yet assuredly cut everything up -- macabre children's songs, sleigh bells, latin percussive rattles, afro cuban drumming, tooting horns, minor key strings, occasional drum 'n bass, bad disco, some goofy approximations of dub, wurlitzer organ, noir film samples, oompah oompah in the left channel, funky drummer-style breakbeat on the right -- and arrange everything into precise sonic juxtapositions, resulting in a very confident and enjoyable trip from beginning to end (in fact the end is a three minute long recitation of people's names, jesus how long did it take them to cut *that* stuff together?)
The album's highest point comes when they cut up (Terry Riley "You're Nogood"-style!) everyone's favorite muppets Kermit and Fozzie Bear singing "Movin' right along...". It's so frickin' wonderful and happy go lucky -- can't you just see 'em in the Studebaker? While most comparisons to fellow cut 'n pasters involve names like Wobbly and Negativland, I think the group will fit nicely right next to your Kid Koala tape, your People Like Us cd, and maybe even your 12" collection of solemn DJ Shadow, who uses the same tools -- vinyl -- but never cracks a smile, whereas The Bran Flakes are all about hilarity. Look at what moog pioneer Jean Jacques Perrey says about 'em:
"I enjoyed your record very much, it is so fresh, so cool, made for people who have a 'child soul' and at the same time perfectly elaborated harmonically and technically with some funny winks to other composers."
Recommended for the lighthearted!
RealAudio clip: "Good Times a Go Go"
RealAudio clip: "Autumn"
RealAudio clip: "If She Was a Spy"
RealAudio clip: "Bottom"

BRANCA, GLENN Symphony Nos. 8 & 10 - Live At The Kitchen (Atavistic) dvd 21.00
There's been quite a little resurgence of interest in the eighties downtown NY scene, specifically the guitar orchestras and proto-post rock of Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca. This DVD features two live performances recorded in 1995 with an unknown (at least to us) ensemble with Branca at the helm conducting. The music is fantastic, dark and propulsive. Repetitive and trance-like, with churning guitars and tribal drums. Sound remarkably similar to AQ favorites Circle or Salvatore. Visually, there's not a whole lot to see, although it is cool to hear what sounds like your basic rock band, but is in fact a large ensemble, with guitar players struggling to 'rock out' but stuck behind their music stands. The visuals do reflect the music quite nicely though, dark and brooding, with spare lighting and lots of empty space on the screen.

BRANCA, GLENN The Ascension (Acute) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
I only ever knew Glenn Branca as "the guitar orchestra guy" responsible for assembling huge groups of guitarists (often well known rock guitarists), to perform huge, throbbing, hypnotic and repetitive compositions -- some for ten guitarists, fifty guitarists, even one hundred guitarists. The recent Rhys Chatham box, reviewed a few lists back, suggested that perhaps Branca's guitar orchestra concept was 'borrowed' from Chatham, as Branca had performed in many of Chatham's multiple guitar ensembles. But in much the same way that we were surprised by the rock-ness of the early Chatham material, this early recording from Branca and his four guitar/bass/drums outfit has much more in common with noisy post punk/post rock: Bastro, Bitch Magnet, Slint and the like, than Ligeti, Penderecki, Messiaen or any of the other names dropped in Lee Ranaldo's liner notes. Extended drony, atonal rhythmic explorations stretch on and on, building horror-movie-minor-key tension, building and building and building, before bursting into unrelenting rock rhythm/riffs. Lots of the more rock parts sound like an instrumental version of North Western punk rockers The Wipers, but with lots of odd dynamics ala Bastro or Slint and with the extended riff repetition of modern minimalism stretching the songs into droning, hypnotic master works. Throbbing and relentless, pounding and intricate, weaving back and forth between ferocious, unrelenting rock-action, and epic, complex geometric stop/start, hypno-minimalism.
MPEG Stream: "The Spectacular Commodity"
MPEG Stream: "Lesson No. 2"

BRANDLMAYR, MARTIN / WERNER DAFELDECKER / STEFAN NEMETH / MARTIN SIEWERT Die Instabilitat der Symmetrie (Grob) 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 Vienna improv-glitch squad strikes again! From some of the same folks in the bands Radian and Trapist, including the duo responsible for the Too Beautiful To Burn disc on Erstwhile, Die Instabilität der Symmetrie (The Instability of Symmetry) is another freakin' great disc of what we might call laboratory jazz. You know, improv music where the notes played on instruments are suspended over what sounds like crackling chemical reactions and Geiger counter clicks. These four live musicians (playing guitar, double bass, lap steel, synth, drums and percussion) interact with each other and their own electronic/computer processing, creating a beautiful low-key soundscape, full of ominous doomful droning and abstract minimal melody, like gathered stormclouds sending down glitchy streaks of rain... There's a quiet, haunting beauty to much of this, with circling tones and the rattle of bells, restrained percussion sketching broken grooves. It's lulling, but beware the sudden pulsing squall of static. Definitely recommended, specifically to all into the likes of the aforementioned Radian/Trapist, Starfuckers, Supersilent, and Spring Heel Jack's Blue Series recordings. And while a brief liner note from Siewert says something academically cryptic about this being a site-specific audiovisual project, the sound on this disc is completely sufficient for home listening enjoyment!
MPEG Stream: "Part 2"
MPEG Stream: "Part 5"

BRANDON LABELLE & STEVE RODEN Site of Sound (Errant Bodies Press) book & cd 18.98
Edited by West Coast sound artists Brandon LaBelle and Steve Roden, "Site of Sound" is a compendium of theoretical discourses within conceptually based sound art. Along with the rather dense and at times poetic texts, the book also features a cd of work by the authors. Featured both on cd and in print are Achim Wollscheid, Christina Kubisch, RLW, John Hudak, Toshiya Tsonuda, Christof Migone, Steve Peters, m/s, and others. Text only contributers include Loren Chasse, Giancarlo Toniuitti, CM von Hausswolff, Leif Elgrenn, David Dunn, etc.

BRANDSDAL, KJETIL D. Freedom--Waaaoh Waaoh (Corpus Hermeticum) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Of Norwegian decent, though a current resident of Northern Ireland, Kjetil D. Brandsdal constructs ominous lo-fi droning tape loops similar to a gritty variant of Omit accompanied by throbbing de-tuned bass and occasional post-VU strum. A very nice introduction / documentation on the perennially great Corpus Hermeticum!

BRANDSDAL, KJETIL D. Rogalands Lydigste + Gitar Fingling (Metal Art Disco / Voices of Wonder) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This compiles two hard to find vinyl only records from the Norwegian experimentalist Kjetil D. Brandsdal. With a freefloating agenda of subconsciously exploring sound (not far from Nurse With Wound's earliest sonic freakouts but with the sound of NZ freenoise artists), Brandsdal giddily wallows in the muck of cable buzz, overblown 4-track recordings for organ & guitar, and feedback from malfucntioning amplifiers. All the while managing to elicit simple melodic passages. Difficult but enjoyable listening.

BRANDSDAL, KJETIL D. s/t (Ecstatic Peace) 2lp 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace presents the fourth album from the mysterious experimentalist Kjetil D. Brandstal who hails from Norway. Brandsdal's gritty lo-fi dinscapes for cracked guitar feedback drone and turntable damage (don't expect any Skratch Piklz wizardry, rather it sounds as though he's applying thick balls of dust to the needle to force skips and loops) appear devoid of structure, beginning, or end. Freefloating stuff along the same lines as Gate, Total/Skullflower, and No Neck Blues Band.

BRANDSTIFTER Rauschgiftengelloops (Gruenrekorder) cd-r 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We recently discovered this little label in Germany called Gruenrekorder, who specialize in "Phonography and Audio Art" which translates to field recordings, turntablism and audio installations, which definitely sounded right up our alley. We then discovered that they had 60 or 70 releases, probably more by the time of this review, most cd-r's and all incredibly limited, usually to 50 or less. Yikes. Had to do some quick thinking, so we picked two of the most promising sounding and got a bunch of those (a bunch meaning 25 copies, which is half of the pressing). So elsewhere on this list you'll find the other Gruenrekorder release, a field recording of bats (and you know our love of bats is second only to our love of frogs!), which somehow seems to perfectly balance this one right here, a live recording of a sound installation for turntables, records and... plastic angels.
The set up goes like this, a bunch of turntables, all set up on a small dais, each with a plastic angel spinning in the middle of the lp, and each angel with a weight hung between its wings, which shifts with each rotation, and causes various loops to alter, drift, shift, change duration, overlap, all the while, Brandstifter, the man responsible, crawls around moving the angels, replacing the records, changing speeds, the result is pretty magnificent, a looped hypnotic soundscape of operatic voices, fluttering flutes and fiddles, droning whirs, hiccupping song snippets, skipping stuttering rhythms, the vibe very festive, as most of the discs are choral, the voices locked into hypnotic mantras, the various cracks and skips adding percussive filigree. Some passages are epic and triumphant, voices soaring, while others are murky and mumbled, sounding like they could have been yanked from some mysterious Finnish free folk record or from some blurred Philip Jeck turntable landscape.
Haunting and eerie, like some damaged funhouse mirror holiday soundscape, Christmas carols twisted and gnarled, holiday favorites scratched up and looped, bits of opera looped into fuzzy repetitive seasick mantras, you can almost imagine some Tim Burton-ish mad scientist armed with a bunch of dusty scratched up records and weird old fashioned turntables and all those painted angels, hovering in a dark cobwebby corner of some old seventies mall, families and children steering clear of the crazy man in the corner and his murky muddy choral din. SO AWESOME!!!
Beautifully packaged, printed cd-r, full color sleeve, but again, LIMITED TO ONLY 50 COPIES!!! So once these are gone, that's it...
MPEG Stream: "Rauschgiftengelloops (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Rauschgiftengelloops (excerpt 2)"

BRASIL AND THE GALLOWBROTHERS BAND The Band Plays On, The Dunes Move On (Caught Me With My Eyes Closed) (Last Visible Dog) cd 12.98
Polish "lounge-psych" on Last Visible Dog.

BRETHEREN OF THE FREE SPIRIT The Wolf Also Shall Dwell With The Lamb (Important) lp 27.00
Now available on vinyl!!!
The hermetic concern with dualities, whether they be natural and spiritual, mysteries veiled and revealed, fertility and drought, or as the the title of this disc alludes to the religiously symbolic wolf and lamb, greatly inform this collaboration between avant-lutist Jozef Van Wissem and twelve-string wunderkind James Blackshaw. Named after a 13th century cult of Northern European heretics, this is the second installment for the duo, who give us four more pieces to mirror the four from the first installment. Where on their debut disc we felt the sonic fullness of Blackshaw's cascading twelve string repetitions and on one track Van Wissem's progressive use of distorted electronics, on this new album, the sound is more ascetically restrained, favoring Van Wissem's use of reconfigured medieval and classical renaissance compositions into spiraling but lyrically melodic motifs in which Blackshaw adds interlocking labyrinthian figures in DADEAD tuning. This is sacred music for mad monks!
MPEG Stream: "The Wolf Also Shall Dwell with The Lamb"
MPEG Stream: "Into The Dust of The Earth"

BRETHREN OF THE FREE SPIRIT All Things Are From Him, Through Him And In Him (Audiomer) cd 14.98
Brethren indeed. This is the work of two consummate stringed instrument manipulators working in the improvised avant-folk idiom... Brother #1, from England, AQ fave James Blackshaw (who just blew us away with an amazing solo instore performance two weeks ago!), a dexterous master of the 12 string guitar. Brother #2, from Belgium, Renaissance lute player Jozef Van Wissem (who was also recently scheduled for an AQ instore alongside his pal Tetuzi Akiyama but unfortunately had to cancel due to a bad cold or flu). Van Wissem has received acclaim from us and others for his solo recordings incorporating electronics and field recordings alongside his innovations on classical lute improvisation.
Together, it's a perfect pairing, Blackshaw and Van Wissem conjuring a delicately dense intertwining of forward-flowing fingerpicked minimalist melodies... stately spiritual praises that are all instrumental but for a brief Current 93ish spoken coda to track one, "...The Lifting Of The Veil". And track three, "How The Unencumbered Soul Advises That One Not Refuse The Calls Of A Good Spirit", is more of an electrically-charged, expansive soundscape of moody string-strike. Electronics, "tennis edits" (??) and the "feline vocals" of one Bun Bun are also woven into the mix with Blackshaw's 12 string and Van Wissem's baroque lute.
To sum up: alchemical loveliness, utterly mesmeric! Really our only complaint about this is also a compliment: at just under a half hour total (28:39), we wish it were longer! The trance-like reveries this induces are too soon interrupted unless we set our cd player on repeat... (not an option with the super-limited vinyl version of this of course.) That's right, the lp version is LIMITED TO 330 COPIES. Whereas the cd is limited to a mere 1000. And we only have a few of the vinyl...
MPEG Stream: "...The Lifting Of The Veil"
MPEG Stream: "All Things Are From Him, Through Him And In Him"

BRETHREN OF THE FREE SPIRIT All Things Are From Him, Through Him And In Him (Audiomer) lp 30.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Brethren indeed. This is the work of two consummate stringed instrument manipulators working in the improvised avant-folk idiom... Brother #1, from England, AQ fave James Blackshaw (who just blew us away with an amazing solo instore performance two weeks ago!), a dexterous master of the 12 string guitar. Brother #2, from Belgium, Renaissance lute player Jozef Van Wissem (who was also recently scheduled for an AQ instore alongside his pal Tetuzi Akiyama but unfortunately had to cancel due to a bad cold or flu). Van Wissem has received acclaim from us and others for his solo recordings incorporating electronics and field recordings alongside his innovations on classical lute improvisation.
Together, it's a perfect pairing, Blackshaw and Van Wissem conjuring a delicately dense intertwining of forward-flowing fingerpicked minimalist melodies... stately spiritual praises that are all instrumental but for a brief Current 93ish spoken coda to track one, "...The Lifting Of The Veil". And track three, "How The Unencumbered Soul Advises That One Not Refuse The Calls Of A Good Spirit", is more of an electrically-charged, expansive soundscape of moody string-strike. Electronics, "tennis edits" (??) and the "feline vocals" of one Bun Bun are also woven into the mix with Blackshaw's 12 string and Van Wissem's baroque lute.
To sum up: alchemical loveliness, utterly mesmeric! Really our only complaint about this is also a compliment: at just under a half hour total (28:39), we wish it were longer! The trance-like reveries this induces are too soon interrupted unless we set our cd player on repeat... (not an option with the super-limited vinyl version of this of course.) That's right, the lp version is LIMITED TO 330 COPIES. Whereas the cd is limited to a mere 1000. And we only have a few of the vinyl...
MPEG Stream: "...The Lifting Of The Veil"
MPEG Stream: "All Things Are From Him, Through Him And In Him"

BRETHREN OF THE FREE SPIRIT The Wolf Also Shall Dwell With The Lamb (Important Records) cd 14.98
The hermetic concern with dualities, whether they be natural and spiritual, mysteries veiled and revealed, fertility and drought, or as the the title of this disc alludes to the religiously symbolic wolf and lamb, greatly inform this collaboration between avant-lutist Jozef Van Wissem and twelve-string wunderkind James Blackshaw. Named after a 13th century cult of Northern European heretics, this is the second installment for the duo, who give us four more pieces to mirror the four from the first installment. Where on their debut disc we felt the sonic fullness of Blackshaw's cascading twelve string repetitions and on one track Van Wissem's progressive use of distorted electronics, on this new album, the sound is more ascetically restrained, favoring Van Wissem's use of reconfigured medieval and classical renaissance compositions into spiraling but lyrically melodic motifs in which Blackshaw adds interlocking labyrinthian figures in DADEAD tuning. This is sacred music for mad monks!
MPEG Stream: "The Wolf Also Shall Dwell with The Lamb"
MPEG Stream: "Into The Dust of The Earth"

BRETSCHNEIDER + STEINBRUCHEL Status (12K) cd 14.98

BRETSCHNEIDER, FRANK Rhythm (Raster-Noton) cd 17.98

MPEG Stream: "A Soft Throbbing Of Time"
MPEG Stream: "The Big Black And White Game"
MPEG Stream: "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale"

BRIGITTE & THE HANSEN EXPERIENCE Frau Hansen Am Bass (Psychedelic Pig) cd 15.98
Psychedelic Pig has had a great track record of uncovering wonderful and rare recordings of avant-esoterica. The first PP reissue was the Metgumbnerbone album which found The New Blockaders' Richard Rupenus working with a bunch of occultishly minded individuals for a fantasticly creepy ritual music for found percussion and Tibetan horns. Then, there was the unreleased material from the idiot-savant-garde ensemble Die Todliche Doris; but now, they've chosen to dig up this album from the Dadaist realm of the Hirsche Nicht Aufs Sofa. It's unclear who Brigitte is but supposedly she had worked with H.N.A.S. at sometime, and the Hansen Experience does feature the H.N.A.S.' mainstay Achim P. Li Khan. Let's just say that if you like H.N.A.S. then you'll love this album, as it sounds very similar to The Book Of Dingenskirchen and Kuttel Im Frost with lots of asynchonous tape loops whirling sickly in elliptical patterns, prog-rock basslines, fumbled drum-kit workouts, and a ubiquitous delay pedal that casts every sound in the pedestrial, Experimental 101 atmosphere of ECHO, Echo, echo, e-c-h-o, ECHO, Echo, echo, e-c-h-o, etc. If you're simply curious about how Surrealism and Dadaism can be applied to sound, look to Nurse With Wound and irr. app. (ext.); otherwise this is mostly for adventurous listeners and H.N.A.S. fans / completists.
MPEG Stream: "Meine Abende Im Haupquartier"
MPEG Stream: "Illegales Kindergartnern"

BRINKMANN, THOMAS Klick (Max Ernst) cd 16.98
We recently made Thomas Brinkman's Klick Revolution an AQ Record of the Week, and have been listening to it pretty much non stop. So much so that we almost forgot that we had previously reviewed his first "Klick" record from 2000, which while maybe not some strange tribute to pinball, still manages to be a glorious collection of clicks and pop and whir and hiss. Anyone who has been digging Klick Revolution will definitely want to pick its precursor up as well. Here's what we had to say about it when we first listed a while back:
On Klick, Thomas Brinkmann borrows Christian Marclay's technique of literally slicing the grooves of his records with a razorblade to add some new elements to his sterile techno minimalism. While this may be Brinkmann's most sonically unsettling record, it manages to retain his trademark techno structuralism, albeit sounding as if the needle is struggling through a thick layer of grime. The erratic glitches of surface noise and the lulling stutter of run out grooves stand much more in the forefront of Brinkmann's Klick than on previous works. His sterile dub techniques dissolve fragments of surface noise into ghostly decay and generate a delicate flutter much like distant helicopter blades or the choral chatter of locusts. All in all, this is a successful departure for Brinkmann, one that takes him outside of the cold rigidity of most techno minimalism and into the sloppiness of the natural world. Fans of Philip Jeck will definitely appreciate.
MPEG Stream: "0001"
MPEG Stream: "0010"
MPEG Stream: "0011"

BRISE-GLACE When In Vanitas (Skin Graft) cd 14.98
Jim O'Rourke has never been shy in announcing who is the primary muse for each of his multi-faceted musical adventures. There was Bad Timing, which pretty much appropriated wholesale John Fahey's idiosyncratic bluegrass style; his Eureka record tapped into the '70s AM radio sounds of Steely Dan and Bread; and then there was the often overlooked Brise-Glace, now reissued. Around the time that he formed the tape-spliced avant-rock project Brise-Glace, O'Rourke released a collaborative album with KK Null entitled A New Kind Of Water, which also happens to be the name of a mighty fine This Heat song. Couple that reference with the name Brise-Glace also being the title of a composition of musique concrete by Luc Ferrari, and you might have a pretty good idea of where O'Rourke's mindset was during the recording of When In Vanitas. Then living in Chicago, O'Rourke gathered together Darin Gray of Dazzling Killmen and Dylan Posa & Thymme Jones of Cheer-Accident in crafting a muscular buzz-saw field of sound that O'Rourke radically cut up (with a razor blade!) into the math-rock structures found on When In Vanitas. So yeah, Brise-Glace does sound a lot like This Heat especially in the tense, angular riffs, balanced with plenty of languid strumming pointing back to Slint; but more often than not, Brise-Glace eeriely predates the jagged art-rock epics of Laddio Bollocko. Originally released back in 1994, When In Vanitas remains the only record from Brise-Glace, although O'Rourke did also produce a similar project with similar people (including members of Zeni Geva) called Yona Kit, again released on Skin Graft and currently out of print as far as we know. But thankfully, Skin Graft have been wise enough to at last reissue this, one of the very best records in their back catalogue.
MPEG Stream: "One "
MPEG Stream: "Two"

BROTHERS OF THE OCCULT SISTERHOOD Enter The Cult Until The Dust To Represent The World Has Discovered The Hallucinogens And Bent Us To Their Use (Music Your Mind Will Love) 3cd-r 24.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Latest expansive excursion into the wild forests of sound and the unexplored sonic wilderness of this Australian outfit. We first heard Brothers Of The Occult Sisterhood back in 2005, when they released a disc on Campbell Kneale's Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label, and since then a slow but steady stream of releases have surfaced on other underground labels like Root Strata, Digitalis, Students Of Decay and now Music Your Mind Will Love. Fans of any or all of those labels will undoubtedly know what to expect, a ramshackle assemblage of fractured folk, abstract ambience, and rambling shambling free rock drift. Much like the title, Enter The Cult Until The Dust To Represent The World Has Discovered The Hallucinogens And Bent Us To Their Use, this musical missive is looooong, a massive triple disc sonic sprawl, the band's sound allowed to unfurl and spread out unchecked, and as with most bands of this ilk, it suits them, they definitely flourish given enough space, their music like weeds in a garden, getting all tangled up with everything, and then when you least expect it, blossoming with multi colored flowers and gorgeous foliage. 
A dizzying swirl of stumbling acoustic guitar, fluttering flute. simple childlike rhythms, voices chanting and shouting as often as singing, primitive FX, analog synths, hand drums, shakers and chimes, handmade electronics, crumbling distortion, industrial clatter, psychrock guitars, all cobbled together into a super inventive, Rube Goldberg-esque musical contraption held together by vines and branches, sticks and twigs and stones, that emits, delicate spidery folk rock, intense damaged psychedelic freakout, wandering ambient clatter, percussive free noise, primitive tribalism and every variation in between. 
No Neck Blues Band, Sunburned Hand Of The Man, Avarus, Kemialliset Ystavat all travel a similarly shambolic and spiritual sonic path... so amazing. 
Super limited, packaged in a massive eight panel handpainted fold out sleeve, every one unique, with two printed inserts and held shut by a textured paper obi.
MPEG Stream: "1"
MPEG Stream: "2"
MPEG Stream: "3"

BROTHERS OF THE OCCULT SISTERHOOD Goodbye (Digitalis) cd 12.98
After a series of super limited cd-r releases, this Australian brother/sister duo return with their first actual proper real-cd full length. Don't expect any White Stripes or Carpenters or whatever brother/sister musical ensemble comes to mind. These siblings are high on PCP and armed with a wicked arsenal of psychfuzz guitar, and splattery tribal acid fried drumming. Wide open expanses of space rock drift, shimmery woodwinds and abstract guitar figures floating above a dense whirl of Amon Duul like rhythms, this is NNCK lost in the Australian outback desperately jamming in the hopes of some passing plane overhead hearing the ruckus and coming in for a closer look, or Sunburned Hand Of The Man gone native, trying to appease the Gods with their mysterious musical offering. Free forest folk hovering in a dense cloud of bong smoke, krautrocky jams that just sort of splintered into pieces and became a weightless jumble of chimes and clatter and guitar rumble and twang. The final track is a near twenty minute epic that begins life dense and jumbled, thick with buzz and growl before dissipating into a hazy shimmer of instrument buzz and warm ambient swells.
The first 500 copies come in hand screened sleeves printed by New Zealand art/music collective United Fairy Moons.
MPEG Stream: "Vrawarc"
MPEG Stream: "In The Corner Of Her Majik Vision"

BROTHERS OF THE OCCULT SISTERHOOD Odalisque At Secret Vortex (Akoustic Desease) cd-r 13.98
More mysterious and otherworldy sounds from our favorite Australian free folk brother / sister duo, and it sounds just as good as ever. Their sound is still like a down under cousin to the foresty folk of Finnish groups like Avarus and Anaksimandros, which makes a lot of sense since both groups end up releasing records on many of the same labels.
This is BOTOS's first release for Italian cd-r label Akoustic Desease (another AD release, Siddhi, is reviewed elsewhere on this list) and it's a beaut. Mixing soft shimmery strum, convoluted glitched out electronic stutter, dark ominous drones, tribal rhythms, abstract ambience into a sprawling exploration of lost sonic rituals and stumbling noise making free for alls.
The percussion is mostly found (at least it sounds that way), clanks and clunks, rattles and scrapes, here and there some actual drumming surface, but even then it's simple and muted, various strings buzz and creak and scrape, bits of twang, atonal strum, detuned chords, all wound into stretched out melodic tangles, above it all, flutes flutter, horns moan and whistle, it's all gloriously ramshackle, the vibe is a bunch of folks gathered around a pile of noisemakers, in the shade of a big tree beneath a blue sky and Summer sun. It's not at all dark or creepy or ominous, it's more festive and celebratory, voices drift in and out, chimes tinkle, bells ring, drums skitter, occasionally everything locks into a distinct groove, sounding almost like some skeletal krautrock, but for the most part, the sound meanders and drifts, lazy and lost, laid back and content, carefree and happy.
Housed in an oversized ultra thick fold over cardstock sleeve, the cd affixed to a nub inside, LIMITED TO 116 COPIES, each one hand numbered!!
MPEG Stream: "I See The Buddha In Your Eyes"
MPEG Stream: "Humming Key"

BROTHERS OF THE OCCULT SISTERHOOD Preying In Circles (Root Strata) cd 12.98
This mysterious Australian free folk, abstract noise rock combo, once a brother/sister duo and recently expanded to include an ever shifting lineup of like minded noise makers, finally returns with a brand new cd, this time on Root Strata, the label of Tarentel head honcho Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. And everything we loved about these ramshackle noiseniks is still in full effect, but if anything, they sound better than ever, more polished, a bit weirder, the sound a lot more lush, but without losing any of their stumbling charm. Much of the record sound like it would have been just as at home in the Finnish forest, with it's slow motion Dead C kitchen sink clatter percussion, crackle and hiss production and detuned guitar strum, but the record is rife with distinctly Brotherhood moments, like the strangely tranquil wash of softly strummed angelic strings, slightly out of tune and warbling hypnotically in the first track, or the dueling alien FX and duck call drones of track two, the hushed falsetto vocals on track six, or the wild tribal free for all, with dense drumming and fluttering flute that finishes off the disc. Elsewhere it's lots of sonic elements we can't seem to get enough of, No Neck like jams stumbling drunkenly through shadowy glades, long shimmering stretches of whirring drones and muted melody, strange chimes and splattery abstract percussion, snippets of female vocals floating on swirling swells of gentle guitar thrum, dreamy twang flecked folk, moaning strings and swirls of low end rumble, and wide open expanses of slow burning dark ambience, shifting and drifting beneath delicate sonic glimmers and glistening layers of buzz and hiss.
We always complain about bands releasing a cd-r every few weeks, but to be totally honest, if we could afford it, we'd hire these guys to record a new disc for us every day, a fresh batch of beautiful abstract sounds, and one day, eventually, we'd have enough music so that we could play them all in a row, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, forever and ever and ever...
MPEG Stream: "Ornamentum Dust Raga"
MPEG Stream: "They're Riding A Cross Hare"
MPEG Stream: "Thought Flickering Eyes Swallow The Forest"

BROTHERS OF THE OCCULT SISTERHOOD Run From Your Honey Mind (Celebrate Psi Phenomenon) cd-r 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We finally managed to get a handful more of these back in stock. This will most likely be your last chance. Pretty sure we won't be able to get more!!!
Definitely one of the best band names ever, this Australian group channels much of the same sonic spirituality as the No Neck Blues Band, Sunburned Hand Of The Man, cobbling together four lengthy tracks of transcendent free folk, avant rock clatter. Creepy and sun dappled, like a furtive glimpse past the drawn shades in the window of the old creepy house on the hill, offering up the briefest peeks into past lives, creaking doors, distant footsteps, a rusty music box, all set to mysterious otherworldly musicks, nonsensical vocals coupled with detuned guitars, tiny xylophone melodies arranged haphazardly between shuffled snare drums and woozy acoustic guitars. Druggy and drowsy and dreamy, a stumbling musical meander through free folk, modern minimalism, DIY noise, and drunken indie jangle. SUPER LIMITED AS ALWAYS!! NOT SURE WE'LL BE ABLE TO GET MORE WHEN THESE ARE GONE!
MPEG Stream: "Our Minds Blow Like Prayers In The Wind"
MPEG Stream: "Temple Of The Sloth"

BROTHERS OF THE OCCULT SISTERHOOD Suppress (Detached Orchestra) (Students Of Decay) lp 17.98
For this latest lp, the Australian brother/sister duo Brothers Of The Occult Sisterhood have expanded their ranks a bit (for one of the two tracks here) and it definitely sounds like it. Sprawling and expansive, this limited lp only release on Students Of Decay give the Brothers a chance to spread waaaay out over two sides of vinyl, one song per, each a gorgeous abstract drift, the sort you could imagine going on and on and on and on long after they pushed stop on the tape recorded. For those new to the Sisterhood, the sound falls somewhere between the natural ramblings of Jewelled Antler, the Finnish forest folk of Avarus and Anaksimandros and Kemialliset Ystavat, and the extended ur-drone of groups like Birchville Cat Motel and Vibracathedral Orchestra. And while they do in fact touch on elements of all those sounds, they tend to wander through their own special soundworld, unstructured and alien, drifty and dreamlike.
The A side, with the extended lineup, is all kitchen clatter and abstract drum circle shuffle, bits of guitar here and there, snatches of piano, melodies sometimes, but mostly melodic fragments. It almost sounds like Hototogisu or Sunroof! but instead of amps and guitars, the Brothers just used whatever they found lying around the house, random household debris, junk, whatever. The result is the same sort of transcendental raga like droning tribal drift, but much more unhinged and rhythmic, some sort of primitive sonic ritual.
The flipside finds the Brothers as a duo again, and is another epic, less clattery this time and way more soft focus and ethereal, chimes and delicate drifting melodies, warbling drones, the tape changing speed sloooooowing down and speeding up, it sounds like floating through some sea of alien wind chimes. So lovely.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!! Packaged in cool handscreened sleeve with a printed insert.

BROTZMANN, CASPAR Mute Massaker (Thirsty Ear) cd 16.98
This latest cd of Caspar Brotzmann's uber-heavy post-Hendrix guitar explorations is now released domestically, although that doesn't make it any cheaper (but it's in a jewel case now instead of a digipak, and if you're a digipack hater like Allan, that's a plus). Beautiful, psychedelic, very good, go Caspar!

BROTZMANN, PETER & HAN BENNINK Schwarzwaldfahrt (Atavistic / Unheard Music Series) 2cd 21.00
Who doesn't love Peter Brotzmann and/or Han Bennink? If you're into skronky European free jazz craziness that is. Saxophonist Brotzmann is a hard-blowin' legend, and Han Bennink is not only a percussion whiz but also a strong "pro" argument in the whole does-humor-belong-in-music? debate. Teamed up here on this expanded (meaning there's a whole bonus disc with ten previously unreleased tracks!) reissue of what those in the know, know as the 1977 Bro-Ben Black Forest recordings, Brotzmann and Bennink actually did the Jewelled Antler natureboy thing here and took their instruments out into the forest to improvise amid the trees and birds and small curious animals. Along with a supply of bread and wine they toted with them an assortment of clarinets and saxophones, a banjo, a viola, some toys, birdcalls, cymbals, and suchlike sundry instruments -- Han had to make do without his customary drum kit, playing instead on tree trunks and rocks with branches and stones. Their free music got all that much freer for being loosed in the great outdoors, and these Black Forest sessions certainly brought forth all the wildman whimsy you'd expect from this duo. In some ways a precursor to the field recording aesthetic practiced today by the Jewelled Antler gang and all those Finnish free-freak-forest-folk outfits we all love, Schwarzwaldfahrt is replete with the gurgling sounds of water, birds twittering, primal yelps from Han and/or Peter, and other things you wouldn't normally hear in more "civilized" jazz recording. At one point, Han pounds (or splashes) out a stacatto rhythm on the surface of a stream or pond, and you can for sure tell how much fun they were having! So much, that they recorded a lot more music/sound than they could release at the time. They had to edit down their tapes to just one LP's worth of material for the original edition of this on FMP, but now Atavistic's Unheard Music Series has given them two whole compact discs to fill up, and it's a joy.
MPEG Stream: "NR.7"
MPEG Stream: "NR.8"
MPEG Stream: "NR.9"

BROTZMANN, PETER / KEIJI HAINO / SHOJI HANO Shadows (DIW Records) cd 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Year 2000 improv meeting betwixt European free-jazz titan Brotzmann (reeds) and Japanese improv veterans Haino (guitar) and Hano (percussion).

BROUGHTON, DAVID THOMAS It's In There Somewhere (Bird War) cd 16.98
Described as "One part Devendra Banhart and one part Daniel Johnston", David Thomas Broughton is like a nu-folk version of Ariel Pink. Earnest and heartfelt, but so so so damaged and strange. Incorporating detuned guitars, struggling malfunctioning drum machines, simple lo-fi organs, circusy keyboards, simple finger picked melodies, struggling Casio drum machines, all tangled up in expansive ultra personal folk songs, but folk bathed in lo-fi effects, backwards guitar loops, shimmering ambience, tape hiss, and pretty much whatever else Broughton could get his hands on or figure out how to get some interesting noise out of.
The opening track "The Circle Is Never Complete" is a gorgeous fractured folk fairy tale, a little cabaret, a little torch song, the vocals mumbled and dripping with reverb, the melody melancholy and lilting, the organ slowing down and speeding up, pitches constantly changing, the guitar unfurling delicate melodies, buzzing and scraping, the drums, a stumbling skitter, the vocals occasionally leap out as parts of the song suddenly attain high fidelity before slipping back into muted murk. So dreamy and sweetly sorrowful.
The whole record is an amazing, gorgeous, curious, damaged, child like, forward thinking slab of what-the-fuck folk, some tracks are drawn out and expansive, others are brief little fragments, all woven together into some twisted personal narrative, but the highlight has to be "Gracefully Silent" an 8+ minute drift of simple strum and gorgeous backwards guitar, so instantly warm and memorable, the sort of part in a song, that breaks your heart, especially when it ends and the song moves on to another part. Thankfully, that first backwards shimmer and strum continues throughout the whole track, with the addition of all sorts of mumbled vocals and random conversations, the track just drifts along as if it might continue on forever...
A cobbled together collection of old unearthed tracks, It's In There Somewhere plays as if it was composed to be this single suite of songs, every track perfectly flowing into the next, the record a gorgeous patchwork of dark and moody songsmithery, ramshackle but meticulously crafted, personal and private, a fascinating and lovely abstract bit of damaged folk dreaminess.
MPEG Stream: "Gracefully Silent"
MPEG Stream: "Circle Is Never Complete"
MPEG Stream: "I Don't Want To Believe You"

BRUCE CARKISS Slaugter Haus Definitive Edition (Skulls Of Heaven) cd-r 8.98
A greatest hits of sorts from these Wisconsin noisemakers. After several outrageously limited self released albums, mostly given to friends over the course of 4 years, this psycho redneck power electronic duo have remained almost totally unheard until now.
You did see the words power electronics above, so you know this ain't gonna be no easy listening, in fact, this is some seriously difficult listening, but surprisingly enough not in a harsh noise sort of way, this isn't just a continuous wall of Merzbowian white noise, the sounds here are surprisingly listenable, warped and cracked and damaged and fucked up, but for the iron eared, surprisingly pleasant. Jagged shards of fractured synths, chopped into strange rhythms, radio broadcasts buried in effects, loops colliding and overlapping, dense clouds of detuned instruments, amp buzz and tape hiss, howled distorted vox, some almost songs, tons of melting tones, babies crying over throbbing low end rumbles, thick billowing sheets of pulsating distorted crunch, tangled melodies so dense and blurred they become one huge squirming amorphous lump, distorted percussion, damaged tape player rehearsal tapes, and whatever the hell else these guys could come up with, all pulled apart, and jammed back together into heaping piles of thick droning, fucked up free form percussive and FX laden noise.
Definitely cool stuff, and for folks averse to truly harsh noise, Bruce Carkiss might just be your entree into a filthy, grimy, crusty soundworld you only dreamed about.
MPEG Stream: "Track 1"
MPEG Stream: "Track 5"

BRUHIN, ANTON In Out (Alga Marghen) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Using very lo-fi technology (mostly just broken tape recorders), Anton Bruhin has constructed a stunning musique concrete album of geometric irregularities, natural delay effects, and spiralling acoustic layers. A great example of lo-fi creativity.

BRUHIN, ANTON Orax / Rotomotor (Alga Marghen) cd 16.98
An archival release of '70s cassette-tape works by this odd Swiss sound artist, consisting of environmental sounds, ping-pong recording techniques, and other spatial / audio experimentation. Byram thinks most of this is the sound of good European arts funding gone to waste, except for the last piece, which is an absolute mindnumbing half-hour palindromic recitation of German words arranged by their similarity in sound. Makes the disc worth owning for this track alone. Allan agrees that "Rotomotor" is the best track, but he finds the rest of this at least intriguing, especially through earphones.
On a side note: If you come into AQ fairly frequently you may have observed this customer we have that is always knocking shit off the counter. We want to say something to him but we're too embarrassed to confront his hamfistedness, so we're passive-aggressively mentioning it here, for 6000 people to enjoy. Well, said customer has acquired a young apprentice now, and one night the two of them came in together to polish up their anti-social skills. Anyway, the younger fella comes up to the counter to ask about this cd, if we have two of them -- cuz of course these guys must be peas in a pod -- so they can both get one. Well, turns out that the nicely sealed copies we showed 'em both had ever so slight dimples on the upper right hand corner (like a light impression made by a pointed object, so slight as to be practically invisible). Because of this, annoying apprentice desired the display copy instead. But if YOU can deal with the "invisible dimple", we've still got a couple copies.
RealAudio clip: "Orax"
RealAudio clip: "Rotomotor"

BRUHIN, ANTON Vom Goldabfischer (Algamarghen) cd 21.00

BRUME & ARTIFICIAL MEMORY TRACE 1st Encounter (Alien8 Recordings) cd 14.98

BRUMIT, JON Vendetta Retreat: Motion Picture Soundtrack (Edgetone Records) cd 10.98
Jon Brumit's last audio outing was a a sonic tour through the city dump, a dark delirious soundscape of found sounds, rickety malfunctioning equipment, all manner of scratched records and discarded tape decks, broken down computers, all cleverly and gorgeously woven together into one of the coolest weirdest records we've heard. On Vendetta Retreat, the soundtrack to a yet to be released film, Brumit seems to have honed those already impressive organizational and compostitional skills, resulting in a record that had both Allan and Andee running to the front of the store to see what the heck was playing. In fact everytime we play this in the store everyone wants to know what we're playing as well. Vendetta Retreat starts off as a super minimal slab of "skipping cd" style plunderphonia, a super intense and spare soundscape of ultra brief fragments of found record, bursts of electric guitar, the briefest snatch of a vocal line, tiny frgaments of record crackle -- not sure if Brumit's sound source is still the junkyard, but it definitely sounds like maybe it is. These sparse musical fragments create a strange disembodied melody, jagged and compellingly imprecise. Eventually, the empty space behind these bursts and shards fills up with a darkly propulsive electronic framework, minimal and murky, a distant framework for the Brumit's strange Jeck-style broken turntable workout.
The second track takes the rough edit sound collage of the first track and fills it out with wild octopoidal tribal drumming, massive swells of cymbal sizzle and percussive bombast and wave after wave of layered drones, guitars thick with distortion and other effects, hiccupping loops buried beneath, barely audible, adding more texture than anything else, a huge swirl of rumble and whir like a noisier more abstract Growing, or Finnish hypnorockers Circle at their most unhinged and densely ambient. The final track is the logical extension of the track before, taking a dense swath of droney dirge as its fundamental loop, a repeating hypntotic stuttering krautrocky groove, that goes on and on and on (and if we had our way would keep going on and on forever). Imagine your favorite Circle record or some classic Faust track, with a scratch right in the middle, so it skips repeatedly, an unintentional loop, the perfect pulsing hypno riff, the best chunk of hazy repetitive riffing you can imagine, then over the top drape bits of gentle guitar filligree and clouds of disembodied notes. So amazing. One of those tracks that need never stop, we'd be happy to just drift off and bliss out until the end of time. The track evenutally falls apart, the riffs fade and dissipate, the jagged bursts of sound fragments return, this time even more strangely obtrusive, and wreathed in dense halos of echo and delay that send those shards reverberating into the ether, while underneath, the original minimal groove returns, also a bit more affected and damaged, until the whole thing fragments into its constituent parts before finally blinking out with one final blast of disembodied sound. Wow. Can't wait to see the film. And actually the film will be a compilation of clips and shorts collected over the next year, there's information on how to submit footage inside the cd. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!
MPEG Stream: "Invisible / Hu / Man"
MPEG Stream: "Geography / Nowhere"

BRUSSELER PLATZ 10A-MUSIK/HAJSCH 1000 Fehler (Suppose) cd 16.98
"1000 Fehler" (translated as 1000 Errors) is a fusion of the spoken theory-fragments by Adilkno
(Foundation of the Advancement of Illegal Knowledge/Amsterdam) and gossamer electronica-concrete pulses by Brüsseler Platz 10a-Musik - a Cologne collective with Georg Odijk, Jan St. Werner (Mouse On Mars), and Marcus Schmickler (Pluramon). Bored of academic culture pessimism, the authors of Adilkno are "dedicated to illegal knowledge and research degenerated tendencies of the roaring every day life in media." Along with the spoken text (which you should know is in German), the ghost of Thomas Brinkmann's phase patterned techno haunts the musical contribution.

BRUTAL SNAKE Tiny Stubborn Lights Vs. Clustering Darkness (Diagnosis...Don't!) 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.
Not only do the Grey Daturas kick up a serious noiserock ruckus, they also run their own cd-r label, the mysteriously titled Diagnosis... Don't! There are three new releases, and we managed to get a handful of each.
These guys have a soft spot in their little black hearts for NOISE with a capital N, as do we, and here comes Brutal Snake to give it to us. BUT, this isn't shrieking hissing facemelting noise, no, this is dark and ominous, creepy crawly, rumbling dronelike noise, which just happens to be our favorite. Lengthy expanses of black ambience, slow burning swells of muted guitar fuzz, deep cavernous tremors rumbling in the background, like watching black clouds drift by, each a gauzy wisp of low end shimmer, slowly changing shapes and spreading out across the sky. Totally and gorgeous and foreboding.
SUPER LIMITED cd-r (aren't they all?) ONLY 50 COPIES!!! Packaged in a cool stiff textured paper sleeve, with a complicated folded over Japanese style obi holding the disc in place, with the liner notes printed on the inside.
MPEG Stream: "Tiny Stubborn Lights Vs. Clustering Darkness Pt. 1"
MPEG Stream: "Arrows/Decades"

BRYARS, GAVIN / PHILIP JECK / ALTER EGO The Sinking Of The Titanic (Touch Tone) cd 16.98
Not sure we remember much about Gavin Bryars original Sinking Of The Titanic, or at least past recordings and performances. We do remember digging it. A dark elegiac meditation on the sinking of that ship obviously, but also a musical metaphor for the failure of modern technology, the piece is open, and can be as short as 15 minutes, and as long as an hour plus, lots of low end, Bryars is a bass player after all, lots of samples and spoken text. That is one thing we do remember, that there tended to be way too much sampling and spoken text.
This latest performance, finds Bryars reimagining his pieces with two new collaborators, who help give the piece a whole new sound and feel. One is Italian avant chamber outfit Alter Ego, the other is long time AQ fave Philip Jeck. It's difficult to determine what Alter Ego contribute, much of the atmosphere and ambient sound and classical instrumentation we would assume, but it's not hard at all to hear what Jeck brings to the table, records and record players, hiss and crackle. It's perfect really, his gauzy dusty sonic smears, help transform the piece into a haunting snapshot from the past, an old yellowed newspaper clipping, a faded memory.
Right from the start, the piece begins with a thick layer of staticky crackle, laid over a murky throbbing bass, eventually, the crackles moving to the background, letting the soft drifting passages come to the surface, like sonic glaciers floating on a sea of hiss and fuzz, fragments of melody, and bowed strings lurk just below the surface. There's plenty of text in this version too, samples, sounds, voices, but they too are blurred and smeared and become more like voices from the past, calling out from the beyond, the thoughts and fears of ghosts and spirits. Throughout, the mood and timbre shifts, from deep murky minimalism, to soaring dramatic majesty, always slightly uneasy, subtly ominous, a gorgeously dark and mysterious trip into the past.
Not knowing better, you could definitely mistake this for a new Jeck solo record, a roomful of turntables with records by Arvo Part spinning at 16rpm, but it's more than a sonic collage, The Sinking Of The Titanic is a stunning composition, the melodies and movements, the mood and mystery, carry as much meaning as the players and their sound.
Housed in a deluxe oversized cardstock gatefold, with lots of liner notes in lieu of cover art. Cool.
MPEG Stream: "The Sinking Of The Titanic (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "The Sinking Of The Titanic (excerpt 2)"

BRYSON, P. MILES Alejandro's Carneceria (Illegal Art) cd 14.98
From the label that brought you Corporal Blossom, Mutated Christmas, etc. is this puzzling audio work from P Miles Bryson. Ostensibly inspired by the films of Jodorowsky, it borrows from said movies and also adds lots of ambient sounds of children at play, street music, gunshots, etc. On the whole a gentle listen, except for a few noisy parts, but just not all that interesting, even knowing the Jodorowsky connection.
Packaging includes a Mexican spice packet with some chiles.
RealAudio clip: "The empty dress that swung in the breeze like a memory of lost love"

BUCKETRIDER Le Baphomet (Dr. Jim's Records) cd 14.98

BUDD, HAROLD Avalon Sutra (Samadhisound) 2cd 17.98
The last record we listened to by Harold Budd was his collaboration with Brian Eno from 1980, reissued late last year. To Eno's shimmering ambient soundtrack world, Budd added his maudlin, melodic, sometimes syrupy piano figures. Not sure what Budd has been up to these last 25 years, but here we are in 2005 and we find ourselves with a new Harold Budd record. While we're sure he has indeed been busy these last two and a half decades, this release sort of caught our attention for two reasons, it was released on David Sylvian's Samadhisound label, and it's two discs, with the second disc being a seventy minute reworking of one of the tracks on the first disc. We love that kind of stuff!
So we're happy to report that this is an absolutely glorious, dreamy otherworldly listen. Constructed mostly from piano, synthesizer, strings, saxophone, bass flute and minimal percussion (mostly chimes and bells), Avalon Sutra is a slow moving, somber and contemplative dream world, New Age ambience smeared into a drifting world of indistinct blurs. Melancholy piano lines drift beneath warm chordal swells and distant twinkling chimes. New Age might actually be the sticking point in the above description for a lot of folks, but when you get right down to it, this is indeed New Age music. It's soft and mellow and could definitely pass as massage or meditation music, but that said, it's also lush and tranquil and hypnotic, the perfect drifting off and drifting away music. The soundtrack to a series of images, floating by on the periphery, subtle, simple and smooth. Then there's disc two, an hour plus extended bliss out. Like William Basinski, Oval, the Necks and the Balanescu Quartet all smeared and stretched into a dreamy, gauzy, slowly shifting, hypnotically looped cycle of minor key melancholia. Co-produced by David Sylvian and Akira Rabelais (who also helped mix and perform it). So gorgeous. Even if the first disc borders on being too New Agey for you (which it shouldn't necessarily), the second disc is most definitely an essential chunk of moody, mesmerizing, tranced out instrumental ambience!
MPEG Stream: "Arabesque 3"
MPEG Stream: "Arabesque 2"
MPEG Stream: "As Long As I Can Hold My Breath"

BULBS Infirmary Of Dream cassette 6.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
LAST COPIES!!! Got a few more of these in, but once these are gone, then this is gone for good!
Besides being so damn cool to look at, these see through cassettes are embedded with some of the most entrancing and drift worthy music ever, courtesy of Bulbs!
Made for an art show at 381 Projects in Toronto with visual artist Tracy Maurice, Bulbs tapped into a much more dreamlike and effervescent sound then we've heard from them previously. Using drums, oscillator, Arp, guitar and a one string talker (!), the duo of Bulbs create some serious magical alchemy akin to early '70s Klaus Schulze and the inter-dimensional music of Iasos, if those sounds were floating underwater alongside exotic sea creatures and mystical aquatic plants. We've liked everything we've heard from Bulbs up to this point, including William Sabiston's great and sadly out of print Jyrk release as Ball Lightning and his contributions to recordings by Axolotl. But this just might be our favorite Bulbs recording yet. We get the feeling that Sabiston and the other half of Bulbs, Jon Almaraz, had lots of fantastical thoughts in their heads while recording Infirmary Of Dream, as this really taps into some magical landscapes, making us imagine what this duo could create if they were tapped to produce soundtracks for surreal nature films on some sort of alternate Discovery Channel. Imagine if Seefeel were stripped to its most minimal and merged with the most dreamy aspects of Popul Vuh. Only 50 of these were made and we only have a handful so you know what that means....
MPEG Stream: "Ooryllium"
MPEG Stream: "Fish Glue"
MPEG Stream: "Hotel Hysperia"

BULBS Light Ships (Freedom To Spend) cd 14.98
Basic Channel. Jyrk. Free jazz. Put those things together and you've got an idea of what's in store with Light Ships, the band's first release on Pete Swanson's new label Freedom to Spend. Fellow noiseniks out there will definitely remember Swanson's old label Jyrk, but whereas that label seemed to revolve mostly around his Yellow Swans related releases, this seems more of a label proper. Getting back to the record at hand, Bulbs is a two man collaboration between former Axolotl member William Sabiston (some of you might have been lucky enough to get a copy of his super limited release under the name Ball Lightning) and John Almaraz, who left San Francisco earlier this year to embark on some backpacking across the globe. We checked out what a few people had to say about the record, and the one thing that keeps coming up is techno, techno, techno. Well, to be fair, there is a propulsive element to this record, which may be the only truly linear thing present. And yes, sometimes it is an electronic kick drum. Still, it seems that the greatest influences here are free jazz and African polyrhythms and syncopation. Those who checked out any of the recent Monopoly Child Star Searchers albums, then you're maybe understanding what we're talking about, though Light Ships features significantly higher production quality. Still, if this record is any indication as to what's in store for Freedom to Spend, then we're confident that we will be recommending a healthy dose of their bands and/or projects.
MPEG Stream: "Gold Ropes"
MPEG Stream: "Strickfadfins"

BURIAL s/t (Hyperdub / Cargo) cd 17.98
This record has totally knocked us for a loop. An impossible mix of grimy dubstep, murky triphop, and minimal spaced out dub. When we first threw this on we were immediately transported back to when we first heard Massive Attack, or Portishead, and a whole new world suddenly opened up to us. A creepy, muted world of barebones beats and haunting atmospheres that would go on to inform our musical tastes forever.
This is the first release on Hyperdub, a label run by grime/dubstep DJ Kode9, and we expected a blasting barrage of grimy beats, but instead, were sucked into a swirling vortex of late night groove and midnight stutter. Think those Rhythm And Sound Burial Mix eps, mixed with some Pole-like glitched out dub, and some slow burning Portishead smolder. Creepy and crawly, mysterious and moody. Beats suspended in a black shimmering fog, snippets of vocals, crooning, toasting, drenched in reverb, chopped up and let loose to drift over super dark, muffled dubscapes. Huge rumbling bass lines, like distant foghorns, dreamy ambience sort of drifting and ethereal but so so ominous. Tiny sonic sparkles glimmer like some alien sonar, drifting dreamily through fuzzy darkness. Drowned and submerged grooves, all muffled muted melody and shuffling minimal beats. Suffocating atmospheres of low end thrum, record crackle and shortwave interference. Some sort of slithering slinky dubstep shuffle slowed waaaaaaaaay down, into a blackened glacial dub jam. So fucking awesome. Our newest every night late night listen. A record of perfect dark and damaged dubbed out lullabies.
MPEG Stream: "Distant Lights"
MPEG Stream: "Spaceape"
MPEG Stream: "Wounder"