AAN Salamaa (Ikuisuus) cd-r 15.98
Strange atmospheric forest folk from Finland from the dup of Uton and Kulkija, their first meeting back in 2004 and it is a divine noise indeed!

ABRASION ENSEMBLE Music For The Same 500 People (Beta-Lactam Ring) cd 14.98
The self-effacing title is an elaboration of a quote from the No Neck Blues Band's David Nuss, who stated that the first cd-r from the Abrasion Ensemble was "music for the same 50 people." Now the Abrasion Ensemble is thinking really big with that album's proper release with a run of 500 copies. Masterminded by Texas free-noise improvisationalist Rick Reed, the Abrasion Ensemble has a revolving door policy that has seen Mr. Nuss as well as members of Charalambides, Ash Castles on the Ghost Coast, and Brekekek koax koax passing through the Abrasion Ensemble. Reed describes the work of the Abrasion Ensemble as "pretty much anchored in waters that Organum or AMM would fish in as well." The Organum comparisons are definitely hard to hear, but AMM is right on the money, with overamplified cable buzz, mottled guitar haze, and playful pipe fightin' percussive textures.
RealAudio clip: "Quadrangle"

ABRUPTUM Casus Luciferi (Regain / Blooddawn) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Four tracks 39 minutes 21 seconds of EVIL. That's what this so-long-awaited-it's-unexpected cd from Swedish black metal improvisors Abruptum provides. And if Abruptum aren't already your favorite black metal band they sure should be. One member is a dwarf (or so we thought, he may just be really REALLY short). And past releases have included a whole record made up entirely of field recordings of band members whipping themselves and howling in agony! When they do get down to actual metal, it's of the grimmest, vilest variety. And since we were kind of under the assumption that Abruptum were no more, this sudden return is pretty darn exciting. So in keeping with Abruptum's confounding and perplexing history, this new release is definitely not "metal". Still evil of course, but sonically it's much more of an experimental dark ambient drone record. And a great one at that! Press play...a distant, martial drum cadence underpins dark droning feedback, grinding tortured low end, haunting minor key chords and distant melodies buried under slabs of distorted crunch. It's like a blackened mix of Total, Der Blutharsch, Lustmord and Corrupted, perhaps. Sweet female vocals soon (barely) emerge from the murk...a heavily reverbed chorale, chanting, with tolling bells, all buried under a thick grimy layer of grinding grit. Like a Merzbow / Dead Can Dance mashup. Soon the vocals fade into the mist as the grinding throbbing low end begins to pulse and loop and shimmer, distant explosions crack through the darkened skies, the echoes spreading out like ripples in a pond, creating hypnotic almost-rhythms, while underneath it all weird little looped melodies scurry about looking for shelter from the throbbing malevolence. Imagine Philip Jeck, in spikes and full corpse paint, set up in the middle of the forest beneath a full moon, with a hundred turntables, all black and moss covered, playing the warped and slowed down records of Troum, Dead Can Dance, William Basinski, Skullflower and all manner of rumbling drones...
MPEG Stream: "Casus Luciferi"
MPEG Stream: "Ex Inferno Inferiori"

ABRUPTUM De Profundis Mors Vas Cousumet (Regain / Blooddawn) cd ep 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Returning from a long absence, here's a three song ep from Sweden's infamous improv-black metal band Abruptum. None blacker! The first track, dating from way back in 1991, starts with gothic keyboards and has a lot of Satanic screaming, but with its gothic keyboard intro and straight-ahead drums, actually sounds like "normal" song-based black metal. But the 8+ minute track two is the reason to get this. This year 2000 recording is where Abruptum reveal themselves to be the Hijokaidan (to make a Japanoise reference) of black metal, a clanging bell heralding some supremely evil chaos that sounds closer to Merzbow (to make another) than Mayhem. Wrapping things up, track three's marching boots (doubtlessly sampled from some WWII movie) morph into a distorted industrial rhythm that terminates in a finale of soundtrack synths. It's all about the atmosphere, and Abruptum is indeed the blackest. 16 minutes of (mostly) unstructured metallic madness that only the truest will like or understand.
RealAudio clip: "Dodsapparaten"

ABRUPTUM Evil Genius (Southern Lord) cd 14.98
Ah Abruptum, how we've missed you. Nary a peep since 2004's killer black ambient masterpiece Casus Luciferi, which while an amazing gorgeously bleak slab of droning mystery, really barely scratched the surface, only hinting at the harsh, hateful, bizarre black metal beast Abruptum once was.
That's where Evil Genius comes in. And evil Genius is exactly what it is. A collection of old demos, it was originally released with an actual razor blade inside and a sticker instructing the listener to kill themselves. There were also loads of strange rumors surrounding the band, including the one about mainman It being a dwarf, who tortured himself in the studio, in order to capture true anguish. After all, Abruptum were, according to their own edict, "the pure audial essence of evil"... Who knows how much of that stuff was true (we like to think ALL of it), and ultimately it doesn't really matter, the proof is in the pudding, and in this case the pudding is a sludgy, filthy, crusty, primitive chunk of harsh, stumbling, lurching, distorted psychedelic black metal. Or maybe black doom would be more appropriate. There are no blast beats or blazing buzzing riffs, instead, Evil Genius is a confusional garbled outsider mess, but a glorious one, keyboards lurch in and out of the mix, usually atonal and off kilter, the drums plod and pound, tortured and strangled vocals howl and grunt, belching out strange black growls, tons of thick black ambience surround everything, seeping into every bit of music like some strange black mold, weird squeaks and groans, and all sorts of random sounds pepper the entire record, hard to say if they are footsteps or the cracks of a whip or creaking hinges, but they all sort of get sucked into Abruptum's dizzying blurry and buzzy soundworld. And guitars of course, lots of them, tuned way down, sometimes not tuned at all, occasionally spewing out some strange black shaped riff, but other times just buzzing or droning, roaring or squealing, often sounding less like a guitar than some sort of hellish demon speaking in tongues.
But as fucked up and bizarre as Evil Genius is, it's still eminently listenable, even catchy at times, almost pretty at others, but always, a totally baffling, fucked up and completely damaged way out black metal what-the-fuck blast of, well, EVIL GENIUS!!
All new artwork, with brand new liner notes from It, and while it's hard to tell for sure, we're led to believe that there is at least one extra track, as EG compiles the first two Abruptum demos ("s/t" and "The Satanist Tunes") as well as the "Evil" 7" and their track from the long out of print Tribute To Euronymous compilation cd (which we think is the bonus track).
So absolutely and utterly RECOMMENDED!!
MPEG Stream: "Honores Vultus Mutares Ex Aeris Campi"
MPEG Stream: "Icendio Fulminis Telis"
MPEG Stream: "Animum, Mentem Alcis Iuventutem Largitionibus, Hostes Ad Dimicandum, Commotis Exita Sacris Thyias"
MPEG Stream: "De Profundis Mors Vas Cousumet"

ACCELERA DECK Addict (Blackbean and Placenta / Betley Welcomes Careful Drivers) cd 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

ACCELERA DECK Sunstrings ep (Scarcelight) cd ep 8.98

ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE & THE MELTING PARAISO U.F.O. In C (Eclipse) lp 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The heavily lauded, AQ fave, psychedelic hippie Japanese collective led by Makoto Kawabata now graces us with two excellent side-long pieces on this LP-only release. The first is a well-executed version of Terry Riley's famous conceptual composition "In C", wherein the musicians are instructed to play a series of 53 repetitive sections over and over as long as they wish (the 53 patterns are conveniently printed here on the back cover). Almost all the renditions of In C that I've heard are light, meditative, and chaotic yet pleasant (due to everything being in the friendly key of C), and this version is no exception -- except that light and meditative are relative terms, and for an Acid Mothers Temple track to be relatively light and meditative still means it's going to be heavier, more chaotic and psychedelic and guitarfilled than any other rendition of In C. Really nice, and the cleverly titled flipside jam "In E" will be familiar to those who've seen them live. Heavy and wonderful.
That said, we have a bone to pick with the packaging of this album. If you're going to fetishize a band (and let's face it Acid Mothers Temple is the fetish band of the moment), then for heavens sake do the packaging right! It's not bad looking, just shoddily constructed. Eclipse pressed the album on impressively weighty vinyl, and it boasts commendably pretty artwork, but unfortunately the gatefold cover is printed on glossy yet flimsy cardstock that doesn't fold right, will not lay flat, and is already coming apart at the seams. Furthermore, there's only one LP but two empty compartments in the sleeve, making for an inevitable small disappointment when said empty sleeve doesn't even have an insert or anything. Sigh. Of course, it would have cost more to do the packaging better, but for the $17 we have to charge for this you think Eclipse could have afforded it! Oh well, maybe they didn't know that it was going to turn out so poorly. And packaging aside, this *is* a great AMT album.

ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE & THE MELTING PARAISO U.F.O. In O To Infinity (Important) cd 14.98
It's really hard to keep up with these guys. We love pretty much everything they do, but they are quite possibly one of the most prolific bands around, and it can get frustrating, trying to take it all in, and sometimes that frustration can manifest itself as not giving a shit, which would be a shame, cuz whenever we find ourselves not giving a shit, and we manage to overcome that reaction, we are always totally blown away by the magical musical mysteries these guys are capable of conjuring up.
In O To Infinity marks two milestones of sorts for the bands, and for fans, one is the return of Cotton Casino to the fold, the other is the group's musical progression from their seminal cover of Terry Riley's "In C", the band figuring that the denotation of a specific key is mostly arbitrary, thus we have these 4 extended sonic explorations, each in their own key, those 'keys' being 'O', 'A', 'Z' and of course 'Infinity'.
And as much as we love all the different facets of AMT, this might be our favorite, their blissed out cosmic space drift, long form dronescapes, otherworldly kosmiche ambience, lush clouds of swirling effects, muted churning rhythms, guitars transformed into mysterious noisemakers, long tones layered and intertwined, the swoop of processed backwards sounds, but heck, this is AMT, so the do end up rocking out, launching into a propulsive krautrock groove, jamming away within that constantly swirling and shifting cloud of swirling psychedelia.
"In A" is all chants and grunts and weird vocalizations, some sort of alien ritual, performed in yet another cloud of shimmering drones and grinding muted hiss, a demonic barnyard emitting mewls and squeaks and groans, all bathed in reverb and delay, building to a dizzying outer space swirl. "In Z" is a futuristic freak out of strange bleeps and bloops, laid over some sort of abstract cosmic jazz drift, subtly rhythmic, but way free, a shimmering fog of glistening electronics and malfunctioning effects, which gets downright crunchy and chaotic near the end.
And finally, "In Infinity", which contrary to what we were expecting, is the most 'rock' of the bunch, a wild sprawling avant jazz, space rock, future funk groove that goes on and on and on, a motorik beat, underpinning wild electronic squiggles, woozy synths and organs, all manner of tangled instrumental freakout, culminating in a total heart of the sun, bleary eyed prismatic sonic blowout.
Another AMT winner, to add to that dedicated shelf in your house that by now must be bowing beneath the weight of the previous hundred or so winners. Regardless, WAY recommended.
MPEG Stream: "In O"
MPEG Stream: "In A"

ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE & THE MELTING PARAISO U.F.O. In O To Infinity (Important) lp 27.00
It's really hard to keep up with these guys. We love pretty much everything they do, but they are quite possibly one of the most prolific bands around, and it can get frustrating, trying to take it all in, and sometimes that frustration can manifest itself as not giving a shit, which would be a shame, cuz whenever we find ourselves not giving a shit, and we manage to overcome that reaction, we are always totally blown away by the magical musical mysteries these guys are capable of conjuring up.
In O To Infinity marks two milestones of sorts for the bands, and for fans, one is the return of Cotton Casino to the fold, the other is the group's musical progression from their seminal cover of Terry Riley's "In C", the band figuring that the denotation of a specific key is mostly arbitrary, thus we have these 4 extended sonic explorations, each in their own key, those 'keys' being 'O', 'A', 'Z' and of course 'Infinity'.
And as much as we love all the different facets of AMT, this might be our favorite, their blissed out cosmic space drift, long form dronescapes, otherworldly kosmiche ambience, lush clouds of swirling effects, muted churning rhythms, guitars transformed into mysterious noisemakers, long tones layered and intertwined, the swoop of processed backwards sounds, but heck, this is AMT, so the do end up rocking out, launching into a propulsive krautrock groove, jamming away within that constantly swirling and shifting cloud of swirling psychedelia.
"In A" is all chants and grunts and weird vocalizations, some sort of alien ritual, performed in yet another cloud of shimmering drones and grinding muted hiss, a demonic barnyard emitting mewls and squeaks and groans, all bathed in reverb and delay, building to a dizzying outer space swirl. "In Z" is a futuristic freak out of strange bleeps and bloops, laid over some sort of abstract cosmic jazz drift, subtly rhythmic, but way free, a shimmering fog of glistening electronics and malfunctioning effects, which gets downright crunchy and chaotic near the end.
And finally, "In Infinity", which contrary to what we were expecting, is the most 'rock' of the bunch, a wild sprawling avant jazz, space rock, future funk groove that goes on and on and on, a motorik beat, underpinning wild electronic squiggles, woozy synths and organs, all manner of tangled instrumental freakout, culminating in a total heart of the sun, bleary eyed prismatic sonic blowout.
Another AMT winner, to add to that dedicated shelf in your house that by now must be bowing beneath the weight of the previous hundred or so winners. Regardless, WAY recommended.
MPEG Stream: "In O"
MPEG Stream: "In A"

ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE & THE MELTING PARAISO U.F.O. Live In Occident (Essence Music) cd 14.98
This long out of print slab of heavy Japanese psych from aQ faves Acid Mothers Temple (or more accurately, Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O.), originally released on vinyl, via the Detector label, WAY back in 2000, is one of a handful of new reissues from Brazilian label Essence (along with two Circle cds, reviewed elsewhere on this week's list), and is presented in a super swank mini-lp style gatefold sleeve, with the original sound of the lp, totally remastered, and revved up, heard for the first time the way it was meant to be heard. 'Cause according to the band, the guy who originally mastered the vinyl said the sound was "too heavy" to be mastered for vinyl, hence the sub par sound. And while the cd version definitely does sound better, it's still plenty murky and muddy and lo-fi, raw and in the red, with the band a wild chaotic squall of psychedelic sound, with lots of buzz and feedback, you can hear people in the audience talking here and there, the band offers up some funny between song banter, all of that non musical stuff woven into some of the band's fiercest rocking ever.
The record starts off all drifty and shimmery, the band unfurling lush layers of whirling sound, wreathed in clouds of sci-fi swoops and bleeps, it doesn't take long for them to launch into it, and they never let up. Channeling High Rise and White Heaven and all the Japanese psych greats that came before, Kawabata Makoto and company tear it up, the guitars a constant barrage of wild Hendrixian blow outs, and tangled sprays of furious shred, the drums pound desperately in the background, the bass is nothing more than a low end thrum, and EVERYTHING is doused in effects, rendering all the sounds washed out and woozy and druggy. Occasionally the band do lock into some more krautrock like grooves, and its then that the bass comes to the fore and definitely drives the group, but most of Live In Occident is spent in full of freaked out psych-noise blow out mode, sounding like a modern version of the avant Japanese jazz noise of folks like Takayanagi, albeit run through a million fuzz pedals and transmitted from the furthest reaches of the galaxy.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
MPEG Stream: "Acid Milk Milky Way Also Jupiter 888"
MPEG Stream: "Rising From The Cool Fool Inferno"
MPEG Stream: "Astrological Overdrive"

ACRE 17:34 (EMR) 3" 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.
We listed the debut release from the mysteriously monickered Acre recently and people flipped out, including us! It's easy to set all your instruments to stun and just let 'em drone away, but it takes something special to make those drones listenable, compelling and evocative, there's a magic to it, and as hard as it may be to believe, it's definitely not as easy as some of these guys make it sound.
Acre is a one man 'band' from the Pacific Northwest, who uses mixer feedback, a sampler and various effects to create deep vibrant thick drones, the kind that feel otherworldly, that transport the listener to some other place. Over the course of a 20 minute track, Acre's drone will have changed shape and tone, allowing different layers to be revealed, or alternately, hidden, to allow various overtones to create the impression of rhythm, to subtly alter the timbre and tone. A cursory listen is not enough to understand or feel what's going on here.
When we play this in the store, people think it's someone upstairs vacuuming or a low flying plane overhead or the workmen out front doing construction or a particularly loud air conditioning unit, but closer listening reveals all manner of sonic subtleties, rhythms and pulses, notes and even melodies, that only reveal themselves gradually. It's sort of like the sonic version of those strange pixelated paintings, that if you star at enough shapes begin to emerge...
The music on this 3" is thick and dense and dark and rich and lovely and relentless and vibrant and layered and complex and so completely mesmerizing.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, packaged in a cool mini 3" jewel case with trippy psychedelic artwork, each one hand numbered...
We only got a handful from the man himself when he was here on tour, so we're not sure if we'll be able to get more. You know what that means...
MPEG Stream: "17:34 (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "17:34 (excerpt 2)"

ACRE A Shield Of Air / Born Of Light (Eolian) 7" 6.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Found a little handful of these stashed away in a corner. Pretty sure this is out of print, so these are probably the last copies ever:
One of our favorite purveyors of what we've taken to calling FLOORcore (short for crouched-on-the-floor-core), the constantly evolving genre, which is marked by live shows featuring performers on their knees, surrounded by a kitchen junk drawer's worth of equipment, coaxing all sorts of noises from a battered assemblage of broken effects pedals, old synths, and homemade noisemaking devices.
Acre tends to weave all of his random noisemakers into gorgeous undulating walls of slow shifting drone, and on this two track 7", he does just that, but in dramatically different ways.
The A side is a creeping, thick, gnarled, grinding, looped, hypnotic, crumbling and superdistorted glacial riff, not sure if it's guitar or synth, but either way it sounds like sonic tar, it oozes and shifts and grinds and creeps, a thick black mass, a deep filthy doom-ed drone. It's the kind of sound we could listen to forever. Pretty sure that if we had this on cd, we'd just set it to repeat and listen to nothing else for a month!
The flipside is a dense slab of that sort of vacuum cleaner / hair dryer high end drone, upper register tones drifting in a field of ringing feedback and blurred white noise. The intensity builds and builds as if one at a time, some new appliance was being added to the mix, like a department store gone haywire, the result though is a very dreamy Sunroof!-like mighty high end ur-drone. Super minimal but with close listening strangely ultra maximal, with all sorts of stuff going on within the layered skree.
Packaged in cool white on yellow hand screened sleeves. Pressed on thick white vinyl with yellow labels, and of course VERY VERY LIMITED, ONLY 300 COPIES...

ACRE Artifact (Black Horizons) cassette 7.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
A brand new slab of epic slow moving drone from the mysteriously monickered one man band Acre.ÊFolks went nuts for the two Acre cd-r's we carried a while back, both now sadly out of print, but we've got this brand new slab of glacial stasis, a cassette no less, to satisfy your craving for monolithic walls of chest rattling, speaker punishing dronemusic.
The best way to sum up the sound of Acre would probably be to try and imagine if Phill Niblock was raised on Wolf Eyes and punk rock, metal and noise, instead of classical and modern minimalism. The music of Acre IS modern minimalism for sure, but filtered though a more sort of postpunk/noise aesthetic. Simple tones, thick and slowly shifting, are layered and arranged, allowed to drift at practically zero rpm, the sounds swelling and shimmering almost imperceptibly, the overtones creating subtle rhythms, occasionally clashing and causing amazing super intense rhythmic pulses.
SoÊdark and dense and meditative. Acre is definitely making some of our favorite drone music...
And this is one of the most gorgeously packaged cassettes we've ever seen. Clear tape, with black streaks, in a folded over clear plastic j-card, also adorned with black streaks, held shut by a black streaked greenish gold obi on gorgeous thick textured paper.Ê
Recorded live, and limited to 80 copies...

ACRE Candyflipping (Yarnlazer) 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.
A common practice amongst the modern noisemakers, the free folkies and the drone set, is to use everything they can lay their hands on, from run of the mill musical instruments, to random bits of furniture, to strange noise making devices. Lots of cd-r's these days feature "instrument" lists longer than a metal band's thanks list! Often including toothbrush or stained pair of pants, or handful of hair or whatever. A lot of the time it works, and that speaks to the artist's skill in transforming a jumbled mess into something listenable, but just as often, it can become just a massive chaotic cacophony, which again, is not always bad. But there is definitely something to be said for the whole 'less is more' angle. Look at Niblock for example, letting instruments and their overtones create the music, allowing minimal shifts in sound and subtle alterations in melody, duration and timbre to transform those sounds into subtly complex soundscapes. This less is more approach is specially suited for dealing with the drone.
Such is the case with Acre, whose Candyflipping was just released on Honey Owens' (aka Valet) Yarn Lazer label. Using just mixer feedback, a sampler and various filters and phase-shifters, Acre whips up some seriously delirious ultra minimal drone. A hypnotic trance like pulsing buzz, that is constantly shifting, the overtones drifting and swirling subtly, soft shimmers that build into thick streaks of downed power line buzz. The strange thing is, it almost sounds like a guitar a lot of the time, certain bits are definitely reminiscent of that sort of Spacemen 3 style raga drone. Especially on the second track, where the sounds become more active, the different drones falling out of phase and beating hypnotically against each other, creating strange rhythms, and barely discernible melodies.
The third and final track takes that same sort of static buzz, but drops the pitch and ups the distortion, turning the dreamy drift of the previous tracks into some seriously ominous low end rumble, the sort of dirgey drone that would most definitely appeal to fans of more metallic downtuned lower register exploration.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!! Hand screened with glow in the dark covers!
MPEG Stream: "Together We Are Posion"
MPEG Stream: "Drifting"

ACRE Isolationist (Isounderscore) cd 12.98
There's just something so magical about the drone. For the music we love, and the sounds we love to hear, the drone seems to always be an element, whether it's black metal or dubstep or country, mix in a bit of drone, and it just does something magical to the mix. But you can't just pull the drone out, to display it bare, on its own, without knowing what you're doing. Like modern art, everyone thinks "Oh I could do that", but they can't in fact, it takes something or someone special to be able to wrangle a drone, to create dronemusic that unadorned can be lovely, harrowing, even riveting, and one of our favorite drone wranglers goes by the name Acre, and for several years now has been offering up some of the most compelling, and disarmingly simple drone music we've heard.
A casual listener might mistake the sounds of Acre for a swarm of insects, or the buzz of a faulty air conditioner, or the muted roar of a vacuum cleaner, and honestly the sound is really not that far removed for that, but to be fair, we've all found ourselves entranced by the sounds of everyday drone, helicopters passing overhead, the roar of an engine, the deep rumble of thunder, the static on the TV between channels, right? So strap on some headphones and let Acre take you into the heart of the drone.
Remember that ride at Disneyland, where you got strapped into a little car and went through the microscope which shrunk you down so you could explore atoms and molecules? Sometimes the music of Acre can be like that. With close listening, what on the surface seems static, comes alive, like a roaring river of sound. Dunk your head in, and you can hear the layers, and the overtones beating against each other, the buried melodies, the subtle nuances, that make drones like this seem almost alive.
Three long tracks, 15 minutes, 12 minutes and 22 minutes, each one a single drone, but each one also a journey through sound, into sound. It's strange that music this seemingly simple can be so enthralling, so hypnotic and entrancing, but it is, and once again Acre manages to create a minimal world of sound that is not as minimal as it seems.
WAY RECOMMENDED!
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 1"
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 2"

ACRE Monolith (Arbor) lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We heart Acre, Dronelord from the Northwest. And this, his very first foray into vinyl. And it's a doozy, A single track, appropriately titled "Monolith", taking up both sides of the 12", sounding great at both 33 and 45, but of course we prefer 33 as it's slower and lower and thus thicker and heavier.
Those familiar with Acre know just what he's all about. Drone. Or DRONE.
Big, thick, endless stretches of sound, layers and overtones, seemingly simple but dense with texture and timbre.
"Monolith" is more of the same. Even more. It begins as a single tone, simple, minimal, and gradually builds and builds and builds until it is a subtly undulating stretch of singular sound. A deep pulsing synth drone, that seems to move and change shape, melodies and harmonies drift from within its nearly static mesmer, it's all very subtle, but so gloriously thick and fuzzy and textural and yeah HEAVY. Slap on some headphones and crank this and you're in for a sound induced headtrip of the highest order.
Not sure what else to say. For the drone obsessed this is ESSENTIAL, if you dug that Drone Drug record by the Skull Defekts we listed recently, if you love Phill Niblock, if you're already the proud owner of some of the Acre cd-r's, you know what you need to do.
Limited to 200 copies. How do we know? Because the artwork consists of the band name, the track title and the legend "Edition of 200". We got a bunch, but even a bunch isn't usually enough...

ACRE Sacrifice (Digitalis Industries) cd 12.98
Two years in the works, Sacrifice is the most fully realized record yet from this Northwestern dronelord, a gorgeously crafted collection of layered sonic dronescapes, that beyond sounding gorgeous and hazy and hypnotic, are also curious for the fact that the liner notes explicitly state "No synths, No looping, No laptop, No guitar" which most definitely raises the question of how the heck this record was made. But maybe it's best to leave that mystery intact, and allow these 5 tracks to just exist, as if they were miraculously spawned from starlight or birthed from some strange glowing orb, which is precisely the vibe these tracks exude, throbbing, repetitive swells, warm washed out melodies, like a Reich or Riley piece played by autonomous robots on some defunct space station, sending their signals into the ether. A series of simple, slowly expanding soundfields that definitely sound looped, the various tones and melodies spinning weightlessly, wrapping around one another, warm and fuzzy, a swirling expanse of glimmering pulses wretched in a growling sheen of rumble and buzz, a celestial game of Pong slowed down and sequenced into a sort of spacekraut drift.
Three long epics, each a smoldering exploration of some rhythmic inner space, separated by shorted bits of shimmery ambience, one a sea of swirling high end like a symphony of rubbed glasses, slowly unfolding bits of feedback blurred into sun dappled smears, the other a crunchy bit of timestretched electronic doom buzz, almost riffy, definitely the heaviest track here, add some drums and you'd have some sort of dirgey doomic crush. The long tracks though are more contemplative and expansive, letting the sounds breath and expand, where the opener is a softly pulsing robotic symphony, a hazy assemblage of muted melody, the second long piece is a Niblock-ian sprawl, an endless stretch of buzz and fuzz and ever shifting overtones, a seemingly static soundfield, exploding with energy on a microscopic level, serious headphone bliss, some glorious extended next level ur-drone dreaminess for sure. And finally, the closer, another bit of riffy spacekraut drift, that sounds like some weird mix of Emeralds, Expo 70 and Oneohtrix Point Never, a super cinematic kosmische drift rendered in glacial fuzz drenched repetitive 'riffage' wound around a primal mesmerizing, and constantly evolving super nova pulse, all viewed from across the universe, the sounds bent like light, the resulting sound, woozy and otherworldly, like a Spacemen 3 track stripped down, stretched out, and let out through the airlock to drift endlessly through the glimmering expanse of the ever expanding universe...
MPEG Stream: "Badlands"
MPEG Stream: "Citadel"

ACTRESS R.I.P. (Honest Jons) cd 16.98
Welcome to the next bejeweled terrace in the hypnogogic sonic cave that is the music of Darren Cunningham, aka Actress! And holy shit, R.I.P., his third full length, is a wonderful terrace indeed! A beautiful and unique sound world in which subtly detailed, psychedelic sonic prisms drip playfully onto murky haunted fuzz-drones, other worldly squelches and squiggles interplay with analog drum machines, and science fiction melodies get tangled up with hazy, half remembered samples, creating an electronic alchemy that of which this world has never seen!
R.I.P is a musical expedition through a bizarre alien landscape. Starting off with the title track and moving into the second, titled "Ascending", you feel as though your entering some sort of strange galactic portal. The kind of "relaxation" music you might hear if you were stuck on the space station from Tarkovsky's Solaris. The soothing synths rub up against analog hiss, everything ping ponging blissfully inside the caverns of your space brain head, headphone magical to be sure. "Holy Water", the third track, starts to introduce a stronger rhythmic element, although we haven't entered the club yet. As the title suggests, everything is dripping and cascading on this one. There's a consistent hi-hat upbeat, and a load of squelchy hyper color drifting atop. Its all blippy and beautiful, clicky and ice cavern reverberated. The sounds transporting and trance inducing, rippling outward, and perfectly easing the listener in to the first beat we hear, "Marble Plexus".
This one is all hiss and dub, with a four on the floor pulse to anchor the proceedings. That warm hiss is the glue to the R.I.P. sound. In a lot of ways "Marble Plexus" is classic Actress. We hear all the echoes of ghostly rave-tones that made their former Record Of The Week Splaszh and earlier Hazyville so special. Inhabiting similar territory as Burial, albeit from a more dreamy dark Detroit kind of perspective (as opposed to UK Garage ghosts). It's not so much dance music, but more of an extraterrestrial reinterpretation of the common tropes. There's equal amounts of glistening bubble as there is dirty texture. And it organically flows along, a beautiful synth solo floating over the rhythmic miasma, adding a lovely touch of personality to the tune.
Before long we are back out on the open Martian frontier, where the cricket chirping and plucked strings of days on Earth long gone remind us of our isolation in this desolate new world. "Jardin" is a gorgeous respite, plinking and plonking electric piano melodies whirling around the mind's ear as bits of lovingly placed static provide the rub. Honestly reminding us of a more brightly hued and less earthbound approach that Circle took to cinematic soundscapery on their double cd Miljard from a few years back. An infectious sonic cloudburst, enveloping and strangely emotional.Ê
"Shadow From Tartarus" is by far the heaviest tune of the bunch. And by heavy, we mean HEAVY!!!! This is another 4/4 adventure, but the chord progression is wrought out with a sort of droney, dare we say it "metallic" fuzz bass line. Imagine a buzzing SUNNO))) like monolithic noise underpinned by a dirty bass drum thump, laced with the kind of cosmic synth drift arpeggio sounds propagated by the likes of Oneohtrix Point Never and Pulse Emitter, flying upward and upward into an endless heaven of sound. A beautiful and unique combination to be sure!Ê
Cunningham's work is always solid and original, but as is widely recognized by the blogosphere as well as the critical vanguard (blogosphere elite), R.I.P. represents his finest work to date. It is an album that is constructed as a whole work, a true piece of modern electronic music. We kind of imagine this music arriving on Earth buried deep within the remnants of a wayward meteor, clicking and pulsing from inside the cosmic rock, beckoning the discoverer to chip away until the full sonic transmission is exposed! Or better yet, R.I.P. would make the perfect time capsule of jams to be discovered by some highly intelligent, and futuristically funky race of alien space travelers, perhaps long after we're gone, if only to prove that in the year 2012, on this rock called earth, there was a dude by the name of Actress making some super groovy and hyper evolved, deeply personal yet transcendentally universal, glistening, yearning, and overall BEAUTIFUL sonic tapestries for his fellow earth dwellers (and perhaps for said Martians as well)! TIP! BEYOND RECOMMENDED, ESSENTIAL ACTRESS!!!
MPEG Stream: "Holy Water"
MPEG Stream: "Jardin"
MPEG Stream: "Shadow Of Tartarus"
MPEG Stream: "Tree Of Knowledge"

ACTRESS R.I.P. (Honest Jons) 2lp 22.00
Welcome to the next bejeweled terrace in the hypnogogic sonic cave that is the music of Darren Cunningham, aka Actress! And holy shit, R.I.P., his third full length, is a wonderful terrace indeed! A beautiful and unique sound world in which subtly detailed, psychedelic sonic prisms drip playfully onto murky haunted fuzz-drones, other worldly squelches and squiggles interplay with analog drum machines, and science fiction melodies get tangled up with hazy, half remembered samples, creating an electronic alchemy that of which this world has never seen!
R.I.P is a musical expedition through a bizarre alien landscape. Starting off with the title track and moving into the second, titled "Ascending", you feel as though your entering some sort of strange galactic portal. The kind of "relaxation" music you might hear if you were stuck on the space station from Tarkovsky's Solaris. The soothing synths rub up against analog hiss, everything ping ponging blissfully inside the caverns of your space brain head, headphone magical to be sure. "Holy Water", the third track, starts to introduce a stronger rhythmic element, although we haven't entered the club yet. As the title suggests, everything is dripping and cascading on this one. There's a consistent hi-hat upbeat, and a load of squelchy hyper color drifting atop. Its all blippy and beautiful, clicky and ice cavern reverberated. The sounds transporting and trance inducing, rippling outward, and perfectly easing the listener in to the first beat we hear, "Marble Plexus".
This one is all hiss and dub, with a four on the floor pulse to anchor the proceedings. That warm hiss is the glue to the R.I.P. sound. In a lot of ways "Marble Plexus" is classic Actress. We hear all the echoes of ghostly rave-tones that made their former Record Of The Week Splaszh and earlier Hazyville so special. Inhabiting similar territory as Burial, albeit from a more dreamy dark Detroit kind of perspective (as opposed to UK Garage ghosts). It's not so much dance music, but more of an extraterrestrial reinterpretation of the common tropes. There's equal amounts of glistening bubble as there is dirty texture. And it organically flows along, a beautiful synth solo floating over the rhythmic miasma, adding a lovely touch of personality to the tune.
Before long we are back out on the open Martian frontier, where the cricket chirping and plucked strings of days on Earth long gone remind us of our isolation in this desolate new world. "Jardin" is a gorgeous respite, plinking and plonking electric piano melodies whirling around the mind's ear as bits of lovingly placed static provide the rub. Honestly reminding us of a more brightly hued and less earthbound approach that Circle took to cinematic soundscapery on their double cd Miljard from a few years back. An infectious sonic cloudburst, enveloping and strangely emotional.Ê
"Shadow From Tartarus" is by far the heaviest tune of the bunch. And by heavy, we mean HEAVY!!!! This is another 4/4 adventure, but the chord progression is wrought out with a sort of droney, dare we say it "metallic" fuzz bass line. Imagine a buzzing SUNNO))) like monolithic noise underpinned by a dirty bass drum thump, laced with the kind of cosmic synth drift arpeggio sounds propagated by the likes of Oneohtrix Point Never and Pulse Emitter, flying upward and upward into an endless heaven of sound. A beautiful and unique combination to be sure!Ê
Cunningham's work is always solid and original, but as is widely recognized by the blogosphere as well as the critical vanguard (blogosphere elite), R.I.P. represents his finest work to date. It is an album that is constructed as a whole work, a true piece of modern electronic music. We kind of imagine this music arriving on Earth buried deep within the remnants of a wayward meteor, clicking and pulsing from inside the cosmic rock, beckoning the discoverer to chip away until the full sonic transmission is exposed! Or better yet, R.I.P. would make the perfect time capsule of jams to be discovered by some highly intelligent, and futuristically funky race of alien space travelers, perhaps long after we're gone, if only to prove that in the year 2012, on this rock called earth, there was a dude by the name of Actress making some super groovy and hyper evolved, deeply personal yet transcendentally universal, glistening, yearning, and overall BEAUTIFUL sonic tapestries for his fellow earth dwellers (and perhaps for said Martians as well)! TIP! BEYOND RECOMMENDED, ESSENTIAL ACTRESS!!!
MPEG Stream: "Holy Water"
MPEG Stream: "Jardin"
MPEG Stream: "Shadow Of Tartarus"
MPEG Stream: "Tree Of Knowledge"

ADAMSON, BARRY + PAN SONIC The Hymn Of The Seventh Illusion (Kitchen Motors) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
From its beginnings, the Icelandic arts organization Kitchen Motors has been pairing off interesting cross-platform artists who may not have otherwise had the opportunity to work together. "The Hymn Of The Seventh Illusion" was a commission by Kitchen Motors for Pan Sonic and Barry Adamson to score a composition for the Hljomeyki Choir from Iceland. Surprised yet delighted to be working together, Adamson (best known for coining the term "imaginary filmscore" within his amazing noir albums such as "Moss Side Story) and Pan Sonic (the Finnish pioneers of ultra-minimal techno) had arrived an amazing piece that could have been a snippet from the eerie GYoRGY LIGETI chorales that were so instrumental to the sense of alienation within Kubrick's "2001." Utilizing the natural reverberation from Digraneskirkja church in Reykjavik, Pan Sonic and Adamson gently fluttered sustained vocal tones amidst the space, occasionally allowing for the choir to delve into a simple haunting melody, whilst Pan Sonic sets down a very subdued electronic back beat. Hopefully, the Kitchen Motors collaboration between Adamson and Pan Sonic won't end here!
Compounding the collaborative spirit, Kitchen Motors employed The Hafler Trio (whose solo member Andrew McKensie now lives in Iceland) to remix "The Hymn Of The Seventh Illusion." As McKensie has been moving further away from the fictional research projects and more towards the electro-acoustic studies from Luigi Nono, The Hafler Trio is a perfect fit. This remix has stretched and abstracted the polyphony of the chorus into a very creepy extended drone collage. Very nice work!
RealAudio clip: "The Hymn Of The Seventh Illusion"
RealAudio clip: "The Hymn Of The Seventh Illusion (Hafler Trio Remix)"

ADERLATING Devotional Hymns (Shadowgraph) cd-r 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
It's unclear what it is exactly that differentiates Aderlating from Gnaw Their Tongues, both are masterminded by mysterious noisemaker Mories, both feature garish frightening artwork, both feature extended wordy song titles like "And Thou Shall Breathe Sulfur As Last Breath" and "Travel The Fog As Death Reaping The Lands" and "The Ravenous Bloodlust Of Fallen Angels", and both bands are grim and blown out and epic and cacophonous and blackened and harrowing and loud as fuck. The key differences seem to be these: Aderlating is in fact a duo, whereas GTT is a one man band, and Gnaw Their Tongues is much more cinematic, and atmospheric, while Aderlating seems to be more dense and dark and layered.
Which is evidenced by the opening track here, a seemingly static wall of undulating layered dronemusic, the sound of 100 Sunroof!s playing simultaneously, a noise drenched ur-raga, a furious white hot sprawl of trancelike crumbling crunch, which over the course of nearly nine minutes goes from Merzbowian blast, to haunting black ambient creep, exploring all sorts of sonic mysteries in between. Devotional Hymns is a collection of sounds black and bleak, hymns perhaps, but to some fallen lord, grinding black shards collide with creaking ambient drifts, epic industrial wastelands, roiling, churning, every track a black hole of sound, when melody and light do escape, they are damaged, limping along, like some charred beast, some damaged machine, crawling through a soundscape of apocalyptic decay.
A few of the tracks here get rhythmic, sounding a bit like a blackened Wolf Eyes, a rotting sea of sounds supported by a rickety industrial skeleton, while others get almost black metal, but are so blurred and obscured that any riffage or blast beating, becomes blown out smears of grim sound, culminating in the hellish fury of the 12 minute title track, a sort of black industrial noise jam, that is simultaneously hypnotic and trancelike, filthy and raw, black and brutal. Incredible stuff as always.
Essential for Gnaw Their Tongues fans obviously, and anyone into buzzing black filth or crushing industrial black ambience. And these Shadowgraph cd-r's are in super swank digipaks, but are usually still quite limited, often to 100 or less, which means these will be gone before you know it...
MPEG Stream: "And Thou Shall Breathe Sulfur As Last Breath"
MPEG Stream: "Devotional Hymns"
MPEG Stream: "The Shallow Waters Of The Styx"

ADERLATING The Nectar Of Perversity Springs From The Well Of Repression (Shadowgraph) cd-r 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
A quick glance at this, the first release from the strangely named Aderlating, will reveal some very telling clues, the record is called The Nectar Of Perversity Springs From The Well Of Repression, the cover features a terrified figure, clad only in a bit of cloth, cowering from the darkness, and on the other side some sort of ritual that involves a naked woman with burning candles inserted in her ass, laying on an altar in front of mysterious cloaked figures. The songs are titled things like "Cut Off My Penis In Praise Of Black Satan", "Rope, Pig's Blood, Dead Flesh And Two Candles", "Death Knell" and "Doodstorm", so even before we get to the caustic gritty blackened filth on the disc, we're feeling a pretty heavy Gnaw Their Tongues vibe, which makes perfect sense as Aderlating is in fact another project by Gnaw mastermind Mories.
It's a little unclear what differentiates this from a proper Gnaw Their Tongues release, there's plenty of harsh black noise, rumbling mysterious drones, buried riffage and mysterious chanting, creepy almost choral sounding voices, pounding percussion, harsh hissing feedback, crumbling distortion, buzzing black metal guitars smeared into blurred buzzscapes, howling harsh vocals buried in the mix, static, whir, glitch, all doused in effects and buried under layer after layer of distorted noise and noisy distorted. Hell, even sounds like we're describing a GTT record. Fuck it, anyone into Gnaw Their Tongues, you're gonna want this, it could essentially be the new GTT record, the only difference we can hear really, is that it's a little more harsh, a little less orchestral, where GTT employed all sort of almost cabaret like sounds, Aderlating is a much more furiously aggressive and abrasive beast, but even amidst all the white noise and grinding feedback drenched distortion, there lurks all sorts of sonic mystery, be it buried melodies, haunting disembodied voices or fucked up fragmented loops. Needless to say, we dig it. Heavy and harsh and droney and dark and just what we needed to tide us over until the next Gnaw Their Tongues record...
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!! We got about a quarter of those but judging by past Gnaw Their Tongues releases, those won't be around for long...
MPEG Stream: "Death Knell"
MPEG Stream: "Rope, Pig's Blood, Dead Flesh And Two Candles"
MPEG Stream: "Doodstorm"

AE Love Your Smile (Fresh Air) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

AELTER Dusk-Dawn (Wolvserpent) lp 23.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
One half of epic cinematic ambient black chamber doom soundscapers Pussygutt strikes out on his own to create an epic bit of abstract doom creep, that strips down the Pussygutt sound to its essence, and creates something equally as haunting and harrowing. Clean spidery guitars unwind over squalls of distorted rumble, drums offer the occasional thud, feedback streaks and shimmers, the sound subtly intensifying, but never really moving beyond a slow motion moonlit drift. It almost sounds like Slint at 16rpm, a glacial post rock, laced with hints of doom, allowed to creep and crawl through an ever shifting field of whir and buzz and shimmer.
The song(s) continues on the B side, the drums and guitar dropping out leaving just a high end shimmer like a soft focus Sunroof! ur-drone, until some of the doom drifts back in, lush swells of ominous keyboard, muted chugs, sloooow minor key guitars, distant vocals, the overall affect way more pop and pretty than Pussygutt, but still retaining the same overall grim vibe, eventually finishing off with another soaring sheet of harmonized high end which gives way to that original spidery guitar line, drifting all by it's lonesome in an epic expanse of black, only to be joined by delicate pointillist piano for the slowly slipping away outro. So nice.
Beautiful packaging, a silver on black silkscreened tri-fold sleeve, released on Pussygutt's Wolveserpent label. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, hand numbered...

AELTER Dusk-Dawn / Follow You Beloved (Crucial Blast) 2cd 14.98
It's getting a little bit hard to keep track of their various permutations, but in a nutshell, first there was Pussygutt, a male/female duo from Idaho who trafficked in sprawling blackened folk flecked dronescapes. That band transformed into Wolvserpent, with the sound remaining essentially the same, weaving blackened drones, fluttery folk, and corrosive doomic dirges into something heavy and psychedelic, cinematic and atmospheric. So now we have Aelter, which just so happens to be the solo project of Blake Green, one half of Wolvserpent / Pussygutt, who takes the sound of WS/PG as a starting point, crafting something much more melodic and soundtracky, eschewing much of the metallic crush of the former in favor of shimmery deserty twang, swirling strings, lush layered drones, choral vocals.
This double disc collects two super limited lps, and weirdly enough, the first half of disc one, sounds a little bit like Barn Owl, but infused with the spirit of Goblin, and with vocals (!), breathy and ethereal. The label mentions that this sounds more like something you'd find on 4AD, and we can definitely hear that, it's a delicate almost shoegazey dreamfolk blackdrone drift, which is less heavy than it is mesmerizing and hypnotic, the guitar twang, delicate piano and swoonsome synths woven deftly into the minimal downtuned riffage that again is less about metal, and more about mood. In fact, for folks who were looking for more Wolvserpent, this might be a bit of a let down, cuz this is something else entirely, a sort of soundtracky post rock, or atmospheric black ambient soundscape, the second disc offers up more of the same, hushed shimmer, melancholy melodies, distant drones, the drums do come into play on disc two, and there is a bit of a slowcore doom vibe, but even then, it's more darkly ominous than doomy, more haunting than heavy, but as a gorgeous lab of abstract ambience and cinematic soundscaping, it's pretty tough to beat. Fans of the current crop of Goblin / Carpenter worshippers who are after something a bit darker and a lot less synth heavy, might find this is just what they were looking for.
MPEG Stream: "Dusk"
MPEG Stream: "Beloved"

AELTER Follow You Beloved (Wolveserpent) lp 17.98
We recently listed a double cd reissue from this blackened experimental soundscaper, which compiled two supposedly out of print lps, but good news for you vinyl fiends, after we posted that review, the band got in touch with us to let us know they had a stash of the Follow You Beloved half of that reissue, on vinyl, which we had never had before, so we got a handful of copies for the store...
It's getting a little bit hard to keep track of their various permutations, but in a nutshell, first there was Pussygutt, a male/female duo from Idaho who trafficked in sprawling blackened folk flecked dronescapes. That band transformed into Wolvserpent, with the sound remaining essentially the same, weaving blackened drones, fluttery folk, and corrosive doomic dirges into something heavy and psychedelic, cinematic and atmospheric. And now we have Aelter, which just so happens to be the solo project of Blake Green, one half of Wolvserpent / Pussygutt, who takes the sound of WS/PG as a starting point, crafting something much more melodic and soundtracky, eschewing much of the metallic crush of the former in favor of shimmery deserty twang, swirling strings, lush layered drones, choral vocals.
The label mentions that some of this sounds more like something you'd find on 4AD, and we can definitely hear that, it's a delicate almost shoegazey dreamfolk blackdrone drift, which is less heavy than it is mesmerizing and hypnotic, for folks who were looking for more Wolvserpent, this might be a bit of a let down, cuz this is something else entirely, a sort of soundtracky post rock, or atmospheric black ambient soundscape, on Follow You Beloved, it's all hushed shimmer, melancholy melodies and distant drones, and drums too, which don't normally play a big part in Aelter's sound, that rhythmic component adding a bit of a slowcore doom vibe, but even then, it's more darkly ominous than doomy, more haunting than heavy, but as a gorgeous lab of abstract ambience and cinematic soundscaping, it's pretty tough to beat. Fans of the current crop of Goblin / Carpenter worshippers who are after something a bit darker and a lot less synth heavy, might find this is just what they were looking for.
Gorgeous red on black packaging, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, each one hand numbered...
MPEG Stream: "Beloved"

AELTER III (Handmade Birds) lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We just reviewed the double disc reissue of Aelter I and II, a double cd reissue of two lps from this Wolvserpent / Pussygutt offshoot, the sound a sort of shoegazey dreamfolk blackdrone drift (as we described it in that review), so really we were expecting more of the same on the latest Aelter, his first for boutique outsider metal label Handmade Birds, but we were pretty surprised by what it actually ended up sounding like, both sides, part one and two of one album long song, dramatically different, and neither like anything we'd heard from Aelter before.
The A side was maybe the biggest surprise, as it's all synths, no drums, no guitars, just swirling dreamy synths, a sort of Tangerine Dream / Emeralds style drift, hushed and layered and new agey, dreamily droning, the layers softly pulsing, all hazy and washed out, minimal and mesmerizing, until the last minute or so, where things turn dark, and the sound gets low and distorted, sounding almost like throat singing, which is right where the B side takes up, those throat singing like drones a backdrop for some dirgey woozy metal, definitely the most metal we've heard Aelter get, all low slung bass and dreamy almost shoegazey vox, peppered with almost atonal sounding crescendos, tense and haunting and quite dramatic, but that metal blossoms into something entirely different for the second half of the track, a gorgeous sprawl of hazy gloom pop, fuzzy bass, and swirling synths, and dreamy female vox, the shoegaze element in full effect, a gorgeous, surprisingly pop final movement!
packaged in super swank purple and black covers, with a printed full color 12"x12" insert.
And be warned, we got VERY FEW of these, way less than we wanted, and we won't be getting any more, they're out of print already, so grab one quick if you can (apologies if they're gone by the time you order).

AEMAE And Tongueless, I Can Conjure You At Will (Black Horizons) cassette 8.98
It's always been an easy criticism to make of people like Christian Marclay, Michael Gendreau, Otomo Yoshihide, or any artists whose main instrument is the abused turntable, that they should be only releasing their work on vinyl. The Bay Area's tactical noisenik Brandon Nickell (aka Aemae and the mastermind of the stalwart Isounderscore label) has taken to addressing this criticism through a different medium, with this recording, loaded with tape warble, presented on, yep, you guessed it, tape. Given the fate of all cassettes to eventually fail through tape breaks or jammed wheels, the sound of a warble always causes the listener to pause: is the tape gonna break? Is there something wrong with the tape deck? It is that sound with its lurching gate which opens And Tongueless, I Can Conjure You At Will. Applied to an uneasy drone splayed with harmonic undercurrents, this seasick swelling of tape warble abruptly stops upon a mangled collage stitched together from the results of some vocal exorcism. These guttural utterances and demonic utterances are intensely fucked-up expressions of digital manipulation. The closest thing we could think as a comparison would be Stalaggh reworking their infernal screams through the Hafler Trio's early collage techniques. After this nightmarish assault, Nickell is more restrained through a series of crumbling drones that again work well with the medium's noise, hiss, and static. Supposedly, this is going to be the final recording that Nickell will produce as Aemae, instead recording from here on out under his own name. Only 111 copies of this cassette-only release are in existence.

AEMAE Maw (Isounderscore) cd 5.00
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
Second full length full length from East Bay sound technician (and AQ customer) Brandon Nickell, who spent the last year painstakingly assembling the sounds that would eventually become this here disc.
His previous full length, a big AQ fave was a blissed out collage of deep drones and thick soundscapes of high end skree, soft focus whispery minimalism and dense squalls of swirling noise. Even some shuffling skittering rhythms found there way into the mix.
On Maw, Nickell's approach is similar, although the first track threw us for a loop. A strange spacious slab of music concrete, the focal point being a strange grunting gasping reverb drenched animal sound. Like some mysterious electronic beast, confined to a tiny pen and registering his displeasure as it ruts and calls out to others of its kind. Creepy but pretty dang cool. The second track returns to more familiar waters, a super tranquil drift of burbling barely there rumble and subtle electronic pulses. A slow lugubrious crawl beneath and within the tiny sounds that make up a mysteriously indistinct low end world. After that it's another visit to the strange electronic zoo, to observe the insect enclosure, where some seriously angry winged creatures buzz wildly as they careen back and forth in front of the glass.
We move on into another long form stretch of abstract ambience, sparkling and glimmering like the glassy surface of a pond in the late afternoon, and then it's one more quick glimpse into the final enclosure, the beasts within are much more calm, lazing in the fading sunlight, their cooing and snorting, like some sort of shortwave radio static, interrupted by electronic birdcalls and the manufactured whoosh of a warm electronic breeze. So weird but strangely compelling and beautiful.
There's some definite Nurse With Wound worship here, as well as nods to Coleclough, Hafler Trio, and the like, but Nickell knows enough than to just ape his heroes, instead he takes what he needs and does some serious exploring on his own... and we like it.
Packaged in a super simple and striking white on white sleeve.
MPEG Stream: "PDE"
MPEG Stream: "Confound Me"

AEMAE The Helical Word (Isounderscore) cd 10.98
First record from longtime AQ pal / customer Brandon Nickell aka Aemae, two long years in the works and we dare say it was well worth the wait. A gorgeous and exquisitely crafted abstract free noise drone record. Dark and deliriously dense, a perfect amalgamation of the experimental dronework of the Hafler Trio, the sweeping skreescapes of Sunrooof! and Vibracathedral Orchestra and the abstract minimalism of Mirror or Jonathan Coleclough. As well, this has plenty of distinctly unique sonic elements. Heavily reverbed chimes and bells are smeared into a twinkling fog, slowly thickening into a dense slab of electrical impulses, woven together so tightly it resembles a buzzing ball of hornets, a throbbing thrumming drone. Strange steel drum like electronic pulses, an alien gamelan, pickes out a tranquil melody beneath swooping and blooping spaciness, sheets of industrial shuffle, scrape and rumble, leaving sparkling trails of dense and complex almost IDM skitter in their wake, albeit wrapped in thick gauzy veils of warm reverberant flutter. All stretched into distant, soft focus soundscapes of warbling whir and creaking ambience. Quite lovely and sublime!
MPEG Stream: "Walking Along Edges"
MPEG Stream: "41667"

AEMAE / ARASTOO s/t (Isounderscore) lp 9.00
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
A long in the works collaboration from two aQ favorites, Aemae and Arastoo. We've listed both Aemae releases, but Arastoo has been a bit more elusive, with tons of super limited vinyl and cd-r releases, of which we've only ever managed to review 3.
Well, the two have come together, to produce this, the first in a new salvo of Bay Area sound art from Aemae, aka Brandon Nickell's Isounderscore label. And a pretty fantastic start. Arastoo plays the piano, and then the two shape and mold the piano into two side long pieces, both quite impressive.
The A side is mostly straight piano all the way through, some gorgeous fluid playing, some stunning arrangements, but the two subtly shape and twist throughout, adding mysterious little music box flourishes, sudden squalls of super high end skree, but those moments are actually quite controlled, the sounds sculpted onto dog whistle melodies, and haunting upper register textures. The subtle production tweaks really only augment, creating complimentary sounds, or add bits of ambience, allowing the piano to drift and sway and unfurl its melody, seemingly oblivious to what's going on around it.
The B side however, finds the sound of the piano obliterated, transformed completely into long shimmering streaks of layered metallic reverberation, a bit industrial sounding, layers of constantly shifting whir and rumble and hiss and roar, like a choppy sonic sea, building to a buzzing crescendo before settling back down into a tranquil sea of black ambience, as the piano returns, unfurling gentle, yet ominous minor key melodies, all very creepy and cinematic, but also quite lovely.
LIMITED TO 320 COPIES. Super striking silkscreened covers, with original artwork by Arastoo.

AEOLIAN STRING ENSEMBLE Eclipse (Robot) cd 16.98
In our review of the first Aeolian String Ensemble records, we attempted to discern who or what this British conglomerate was, postulating that perhaps Nurse With Wound's Steven Stapleton may have been involved with the Ensemble at some point. The truth is that we still have no clue who these people are or what else they've worked on. If he contributed anything to the Ensemble, Stapleton's contributions were in all likelihood minimal. Regardless, that first Aeolian String Ensemble record Lassithi / Elysium has long been one of our favorite drone-based albums. Similarly, we can again wholeheartedly endorse the second Aeolian String Ensemble album Eclipse.
What is so striking about this album (and the Aeolian String Ensemble in general) is the single-minded approach to sound making that spans almost 20 years. Eclipse features 3 extended tracks from 1981, 1986, and 1998 respectively; and all of them share a very similar timbral quality in their melancholic, sweeping ambience rippled with generous amounts of reverb and delay. The Ensemble claims to generate everything from Aeolian Harps, which are stringed instruments designed to be excited by the wind; yet, the resulting sounds have a post-Kraut / late'70s prog-ambient sensibility closely resembling the synth and guitar driftspaces of Klaus Schulze and Popul Vuh, rather than actual aeolian harps. No matter, as their sonic poetry is utterly beautiful. Eclipse will certainly rank as one of the best drone records of 2005.
MPEG Stream: "Eclipse"
MPEG Stream: "K1"
MPEG Stream: "Espacios"

AEOLIAN STRING ENSEMBLE Lassithi Elysium (Robot) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
It's a little hard to say who or what the Aeolian String Ensemble is, but a few references point toward the Nurse With Wound emcampments, as Christoph Heemann takes some credit for this album (as both a contributor to the ensemble and as the cover artist), as David Kenny (longtime Nurse With Wound / Current 93 collaborator) produced and engineered the album, and as United Dairies was originally scheduled to release this album. Yet the most intriguing reference came from the Audion Pages of the Nurse With Wound site at Brainwashed (http://www.brainwashed.com/nww/words/audion.html), which pointed to Steven Stapleton himself as being the man behind the Aeolian String Ensemble. While all of these personnel details are interesting puzzles to attempt to solve, they shouldn't distract from an exceptional album!
Presumably the source material for the Aeolian String Ensemble is the aeolian harp, an antique instrument which gained popularity in the nineteenth century in English country gardens. The aeolian harp is fitted with a number of strings with different thicknesses but all tuned to the same key on top of a resonator box. Wind sets the strings in vibration in such a way that their harmonics are heard, rather than the fundamental note; thus creating an impressionistic chorus of droning sounds. From these harps and the subsequent post-production of judicious delay pedals and sustained reverb, the Ensemble coaxes some of the most beautifully immersive drones from these harps, on par with the Andrew Chalk / Jonathan Coleclough "Sumac" album, any of the Troum recordings, and the score to Tarkovsky's "Stalker." A truly fantastic album that is fortunately enjoying its second pressing!
RealAudio clip: "Elysium"
RealAudio clip: "Lassithi"

AERO-MIC'D I Think You're Great (Aero-Mic'd records) cd 7.98
Artist/Designer/Musician Wayne Smith's third outing as Aero-Mic'd (not including last years collaboration with the Sadnesses, Cloud Mama) is a family affair but not in the usual familial way. Made to coincide with a exhibition of new artworks at Queen's Nails Annex in San Francisco, I Think You're Great, includes many guest appearances from friends and local luminaries, including video artist Anne McGuire on vocals, writer Kevin Killian (intoning a series of tai chi movements on opening track "Cloud Hands"), and performer/painter Cliff Hengst, all of whom have been collaborating on each others' projects off and on for at least the past ten years. Smith is a master of mining magical significance through the filtering, manipulating and repetition of found sounds and images (celebrity, the cultic and the mundane play against each other constantly). On the title track, clocking in at over 15 minutes (an epic by Aero-mic'd standards whose songs normally clock in at under 2 minutes), he expands his sound from previous efforts by including excerpts from a live performance at the Headlands last year with William Collins from Mire on guitar and tibetan bowls and Cliff Hengst on percussion. Intermixed with the live and programmed bells and filtered guitars, Smith includes one of his signature sound pieces, "Hello", recorded by calling people randomly from the phone book and recording their standard but delightfully varied greetings. With I Think You're Great, the feeling is definitely mutual!
MPEG Stream: "Last Four Shakers"
MPEG Stream: "I Think You're Great"

AERO-MIC'D s/t (Aero-Mic'd) cd ep 7.98
From local musician Wayne Smith comes this *excellent* little slip of a 25-minute album. A record this genre-hopping might in lesser hands be a chore to listen to, but with Aero-Mic'd the first few minutes are just so good that you easily put your trust in wherever he's going to take you. It starts with echoing layers of nefarious percussion, then seamlessly moves into fucked up dub and then lots of gorgeous treated and looped guitar that sounds like the arty instrumentalism of Gastr del Sol mixed with the melodic electronica of Mouse on Mars. It also occasionally reminds us of His Name is Alive and Fennesz. Yeah, it's that good, and that fun to listen to. The arrangement and juxtaposition of the pieces is the key. With the aforementioned Gastr del Sol and Mouse on Mars leanings, plus droning layers of metallic tinny guitarness and shimmering pure, vibrating tones, this album displays so many of the general sounds and separate sub-sub-genres that the AQ-staff likes to listen to whole albums of, yet here they are compacted into short segments that build up to a perfect whole. A very good record, sez Windy, and the price is right too. (Fans of the Brian and Chris record will like this too.)
RealAudio clip: "A Flat Tax"
RealAudio clip: "Dead Ends"
RealAudio clip: "Cold Dust"

AESTHETIC MEAT FRONT Embalmer Tapes (Dissected) (Old Europa Cafe) 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.
As you probably well know by now, we here at AQ have long been fans of manipulated found sounds and field recordings -- dogs barking, ice melting, whatever -- either on their own, captured just as they were heard, or better yet, twisted and smeared into drones and soundscapes, reimagined as completely alien worlds of sound. And while the source material may not be obvious, just knowing where the sounds come from, can make the listening just that much more thrilling. And the creepier and more unlikely the source sound the better. And it sure doesn't get any creepier than this. Sure Matmos used the sounds of rhinoplasty and various other procedures to concoct their abstract electronica, but Aesthetic Meat Front used only the sounds of a corpse being embalmed for Embalmer Tapes. Every single sound, whether it's the casual whistling of the embalmer, the slow rumble of processed suction sounds or the clang of metal instruments dropped in bloody metal trays, each and every sound was captured deep in the sublevels of a funeral home, while an embalmer removed all the fluids from a corpse. Euuuw. But sonically, WOW!
Sometimes the sounds are instantly recognizable, the above mentioned whistling and clatter of surgical instruments, snippets of conversation heavy with the reverb of a small tiled room, small motorized pumps, footsteps, but more often, the sounds of suction, and the sounds of the machines pumping, are stretched out into warm whirring rumbles, or chopped up and reassembled into hissing blasts of fuzz and grrr. But mostly this is a weird warped world of drones, from dreamy and shimmery, to harsh and jagged, all imbued with the specter of mortality, life most fleeting, the great abyss, the sounds already sonically ominous and foreboding enough, but even more so on a psychological level, knowing the source of every sound, engendering a creepy dark ambient atmosphere thick with the heavy hanging shroud of death. So awesome.
SUPER LIMITED!!! WE GOT THE LAST 20 COPIES. ONCE THESE ARE GONE THEY ARE GONE FOR GOOD!
MPEG Stream: "Post Mortem Sludge"
MPEG Stream: "Sectional Injection (Is Necessary)"

AESTHETIC MEAT FRONT Temple Of Flesh (Old Europa Cafe) cd/cd-r/dvd-r 26.00
A while back we reviewed a record called Embalmer Tapes, from mysterious sonic terrorists Aesthetic Meat Front. That cd was a collection of processed sounds culled from the sounds of an actual embalming session, those sounds, scraping and suction and whatever other sorts of things go on during the process were collected and tweaked into a strange and haunting dronescape, and of course we sold out of them immediately (we actually got a handful back in if you missed out, see elsewhere on the site).
But the man behind AMF read our review and got in touch to see if we were interested in getting copies of a super limited releases celebrating the 10th anniversary of Aesthetic Meat Front. So here we have it, Temple Of Flesh a massive gathering of sights and sounds, a cd, a cd-r and a dvd-r, containing sounds and songs and sights and visuals, performances and rituals, all set to the glorious haunting soundscapes of Aesthetic Meat Front. This was limited to 180 copies world wide, we got 25 and we will NOT be able to get more.
So let's go one disc at a time. The first disc features the text from AMF's Temple Of Flesh ritual, translated into 12 languages, and then processed into a world of mysterious invocations and chants, industrial drones and dark ambience. A truly creepy, harrowing sonic journey, deep dark resonant smears of low end drift beneath martial drumming, and haunting chants, swirling snippets of sound, warbling and whirring, growled animalistic voices, bizarre ambient FX, jagged shards of industrial detritus, bursts of fuzzed out hiss and grinding slabs of rhythmic chaos, creepy chorales stretched into seasick soundscapes, disembodied voices drift and hover, snippets of found sound and conversation, all of these disparate elements woven into an epic, monstrous sonic tale of death destruction and mayhem, of blood and death and rebirth. So intense and strangely beautiful.
This limited edition version also includes a cd-r, that features tons of remixes as well as rare unreleased material. Also included is a dvd-r chronicling one of AMF's live rituals, an extensive modern primitive ritual featuring beautiful women in corsets, piercing, bloodletting, animal carcasses, suspensions, shaving, lots of blood and bodily fluids, very intense and graphic, all set to the creepy otherworldly dronescapes of Aesthetic Meat Front. Not for the squeamish or easily offended. As if that weren't enough, all three discs are packaged in a DVD style case, with full color covers, the bonus cd-r is housed in a hand numbered paper sleeve (numbered and decorated in blood!) as well as a handful of full color inserts, with photos from the rituals, text and assorted AMF related information.
SUPER LIMITED!!! Once these are gone they are gone for good....
MPEG Stream: "1"
MPEG Stream: "3"
MPEG Stream: "4"

AETHENOR Betimes Black (VHF) lp 14.98

AETHENOR Deep In Ocean Sunk The Lamp Of Light (VHF) cd 13.98
What do you get when you cross SUNNO))), Swiss metallic post rockers Shora and UK proglords Guapo? At the very least we got your attention now don't we? Well, Aethenor is a collaboration between Stephen O'Malley (SUNNO))), Khanate, etc.) Daniel O'Sullivan from Guapo and Vincent De Roguin from Shora and sounds nothing like you might expect.
SUNNO))) might be the closest, but don't be expecting any crushing down tuned drones or slow moving sludge, instead Deep In Ocean Sunk The Lamp Of Light is a series of ambient explorations, slow moving sonic floes, very tidal sounding, thick washes of warm whir in a wide open soundscape of murky industrial percussion, and soft sonic wells, All three guys are credited, along with their usual instruments, with 'room', so as you might expect, these tracks are enormous sounding, spacious and grand, epic drifts through a dark landscape of creaking timbers and whirring wind. It's almost like a doomier version of Nurse With Wound's Salt Marie Celeste. An old rickety ship, creaking and groaning as it traverses some haunted pass, replete with moaning demons and all manner of creepy sonic incursions. And that's just the first song! The second song, another lengthy moody crawl, is super minimal, very reminiscent of seventies kraut prog like Tangerine Dream or Popol Vuh, thick keyboards that churn and slowly shift, over a backdrop of percussive clatter and keening high end melody.
The last two tracks are both around 5 minutes but somehow embody the same sort of epic spaciousness. As a pair they are a bit like the musical version of one of those paintings that from one angle shows the portrait of a person, but from a slightly different angle shows the same person as they appear in death!
The first angle is all crumbling distorted organ and tinkling music box melody over an intricate web of tape hiss, record crackle and analog synth splutter, dreamy and dark, like some sort of late night lullaby. The other deathly angle sounds like the track before it but with all the life sucked out, the warm glow dimmed, leaving a gaunt shell, the fuzzy slowly decaying, desiccated skeletal remains of a pretty song. The final few minutes offer up a super creepy haunted house melodic coda, a weird minor key music box melody over a strangely mechanical hissing rumbling rhythm. So spooky! And so nice!!!
MPEG Stream: "Untiltled 1"
MPEG Stream: "Untiltled 2"

AETHENOR Deep In Ocean Sunk The Lamp Of Light (VHF) lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
What do you get when you cross SUNNO))), Swiss metallic post rockers Shora and UK proglords Guapo? At the very least we got your attention now don't we? Well, Aethenor is a collaboration between Stephen O'Malley (SUNNO))), Khanate, etc.) Daniel O'Sullivan from Guapo and Vincent De Roguin from Shora and sounds nothing like you might expect.
SUNNO))) might be the closest, but don't be expecting any crushing down tuned drones or slow moving sludge, instead Deep In Ocean Sunk The Lamp Of Light is a series of ambient explorations, slow moving sonic floes, very tidal sounding, thick washes of warm whir in a wide open soundscape of murky industrial percussion, and soft sonic wells, All three guys are credited, along with their usual instruments, with 'room', so as you might expect, these tracks are enormous sounding, spacious and grand, epic drifts through a dark landscape of creaking timbers and whirring wind. It's almost like a doomier version of Nurse With Wound's Salt Marie Celeste. An old rickety ship, creaking and groaning as it traverses some haunted pass, replete with moaning demons and all manner of creepy sonic incursions. And that's just the first song! The second song, another lengthy moody crawl, is super minimal, very reminiscent of seventies kraut prog like Tangerine Dream or Popol Vuh, thick keyboards that churn and slowly shift, over a backdrop of percussive clatter and keening high end melody.
The last two tracks are both around 5 minutes but somehow embody the same sort of epic spaciousness. As a pair they are a bit like the musical version of one of those paintings that from one angle shows the portrait of a person, but from a slightly different angle shows the same person as they appear in death!
The first angle is all crumbling distorted organ and tinkling music box melody over an intricate web of tape hiss, record crackle and analog synth splutter, dreamy and dark, like some sort of late night lullaby. The other deathly angle sounds like the track before it but with all the life sucked out, the warm glow dimmed, leaving a gaunt shell, the fuzzy slowly decaying, desiccated skeletal remains of a pretty song. The final few minutes offer up a super creepy haunted house melodic coda, a weird minor key music box melody over a strangely mechanical hissing rumbling rhythm. So spooky! And so nice!!!
MPEG Stream: "Untiltled 1"
MPEG Stream: "Untiltled 2"

AETHENOR En Form For Bla (VHF) cd 13.98
Latest record from this ever shifting sonic collective, still comprised of the core duo of Stephen O'Malley (SUNNO))), KTL, etc.) and Daniel O'Sullivan (Guapo, Mothlite), although this time the group is rounded out by Kristoffer Rygg, aka Garm from Ulver, plus percussionist Steve Noble.
En Form For Bla is the result of several performances in Norway earlier this year, and finds the group shedding much of their previous heaviness in favor of a sound much more haunting and abstract, spaced out and introspective, the guitars less murky and muddy and massive, and more spidery and ethereal and minimal, laying out deep low end thrum and keening upper register shimmer. Rygg operates like a dub producer, electronically treating the sounds, while adding some of his own, the result is a constantly shifting landscape of drift and doom and pulsing heaviness and whirling almost free jazz sounding sonic exploration.
The big surprise here is Noble, who is all over the record, without overplaying, letting the record remain unstructured and abstract, while still moving it beyond mere static ambient improv, whether it's scattered bits of subtle skitter, thick clouds of shimmery cymbal or pulsing rhythmic pound, the band tend to creep and crawl, but when they do let loose it borders on Bitches Brew style jazz psychedelia, albeit a bit more blackened.
The overall sound is quite atmospheric and soundtracky, the melodies subtle, but the feelings they evoke not so much, stirring up dark clouds of sinister brood, and epic soaring cinematic mesmer, occasionally slipping into some minimal krautrock throb, like on the mesmerizing "Vivarium", and sounding a bit like a more low end heavy Necks (or maybe Supersilent), and then lurching into some giallo style mood music, on "Vyomagami Plume" and sounding like a deconstructed Goblin, a gently chaotic assemblage of heaving bass and twisted keyboards, of clattery percussion, and spaced out electronics, but all deftly woven into something moving and emotional and darkly compelling. Fantastic stuff.
MPEG Stream: "Jocasta"
MPEG Stream: "One Number Of Destiny In Ninety Nine"
MPEG Stream: "Something To Sleep Is Still"

AETHENOR En Form For Bla (VHF) 2lp 21.00
Latest record from this ever shifting sonic collective, still comprised of the core duo of Stephen O'Malley (SUNNO))), KTL, etc.) and Daniel O'Sullivan (Guapo, Mothlite), although this time the group is rounded out by Kristoffer Rygg, aka Garm from Ulver, plus percussionist Steve Noble.
En Form For Bla is the result of several performances in Norway earlier this year, and finds the group shedding much of their previous heaviness in favor of a sound much more haunting and abstract, spaced out and introspective, the guitars less murky and muddy and massive, and more spidery and ethereal and minimal, laying out deep low end thrum and keening upper register shimmer. Rygg operates like a dub producer, electronically treating the sounds, while adding some of his own, the result is a constantly shifting landscape of drift and doom and pulsing heaviness and whirling almost free jazz sounding sonic exploration.
The big surprise here is Noble, who is all over the record, without overplaying, letting the record remain unstructured and abstract, while still moving it beyond mere static ambient improv, whether it's scattered bits of subtle skitter, thick clouds of shimmery cymbal or pulsing rhythmic pound, the band tend to creep and crawl, but when they do let loose it borders on Bitches Brew style jazz psychedelia, albeit a bit more blackened.
The overall sound is quite atmospheric and soundtracky, the melodies subtle, but the feelings they evoke not so much, stirring up dark clouds of sinister brood, and epic soaring cinematic mesmer, occasionally slipping into some minimal krautrock throb, like on the mesmerizing "Vivarium", and sounding a bit like a more low end heavy Necks (or maybe Supersilent), and then lurching into some giallo style mood music, on "Vyomagami Plume" and sounding like a deconstructed Goblin, a gently chaotic assemblage of heaving bass and twisted keyboards, of clattery percussion, and spaced out electronics, but all deftly woven into something moving and emotional and darkly compelling. Fantastic stuff.
MPEG Stream: "Jocasta"
MPEG Stream: "One Number Of Destiny In Ninety Nine"
MPEG Stream: "Something To Sleep Is Still"

AETHENOR Faking Gold & Murder (VHF Records) cd 13.98
Not sure how it happened, but the last Aethenor full length completely passed us by. We had it in the shop, but just never got around to reviewing, not cuz we didn't want to, or because it wasn't awesome, it was, it's just that we get so much stuff, as hard as we try, we can never seem to get to it all.
Well we won't let it happen with this one, Faking Gold & Murder, the latest from the 'supergroup' known as Aethenor, featuring one Mr. Stephen O'Malley, who plays in a few other bands you've probably heard of, as well as guys from Guapo and Shora. Oh, and that David Tibet guy. Current 93, you know. Anyway, the sound is maybe not what you'd expect, eschewing the roiling crush of O'Malley's other groups, and the wild psych prog of Guapo. Instead, Aethenor traffic in some sort of otherworldly avant abstract prog, or something, black ambient free folk drift maybe, it's actually pretty difficult to describe.
Four long songs, numbered instead of titled. The group offering up a lush backdrop of rumbling guitars and keening high end, bursts of dense drumming, billowing clouds of cymbal shimmer, moaning minor key melodies, very abstract but not minimal, a very active, roiling sea of sound, over which Tibet does his thing, singing, speaking, testifying, hard not to compare it to C93, maybe if Current 93 were way heavier and splattered with wild drumming, but the same sort of primal alchemical vibe. The tracks do occasionally coalesce into something more propulsive, offering up grinding slow motion riffage, weird looped soundscapes, clattery almost free jazz, thick crumbling distorted walls of guitars, woozy minor key piano, wheezing organ, plenty of bombast and bluster, but also plenty of hushed whisper and delicate drift, all presided over by Tibet, whose high priest vocals perfectly suit the strange blackened backgrounds. Cool stuff. Fans hankering for that old Current 93 sound, well some of this might be the closest you'll get these days, and anyone into the dark and droney, the mystical and mysterious, the heavy and abstract, enter the temple and bow your head in reverence, the ritual has begun.
Gorgeous packaging, super thick three panel, metallic gold on black, letterpressed cardstock sleeves.
MPEG Stream: "I"
MPEG Stream: "II"

AETHENOR Faking Gold & Murder (VHF Records) lp 22.00
Not sure how it happened, but the last Aethenor full length completely passed us by. We had it in the shop, but just never got around to reviewing, not cuz we didn't want to, or because it wasn't awesome, it was, it's just that we get so much stuff, as hard as we try, we can never seem to get to it all.
Well we won't let it happen with this one, Faking Gold & Murder, the latest from the 'supergroup' known as Aethenor, featuring one Mr. Stephen O'Malley, who plays in a few other bands you've probably heard of, as well as guys from Guapo and Shora. Oh, and that David Tibet guy. Current 93, you know. Anyway, the sound is maybe not what you'd expect, eschewing the roiling crush of O'Malley's other groups, and the wild psych prog of Guapo. Instead, Aethenor traffic in some sort of otherworldly avant abstract prog, or something, black ambient free folk drift maybe, it's actually pretty difficult to describe.
Four long songs, numbered instead of titled. The group offering up a lush backdrop of rumbling guitars and keening high end, bursts of dense drumming, billowing clouds of cymbal shimmer, moaning minor key melodies, very abstract but not minimal, a very active, roiling sea of sound, over which Tibet does his thing, singing, speaking, testifying, hard not to compare it to C93, maybe if Current 93 were way heavier and splattered with wild drumming, but the same sort of primal alchemical vibe. The tracks do occasionally coalesce into something more propulsive, offering up grinding slow motion riffage, weird looped soundscapes, clattery almost free jazz, thick crumbling distorted walls of guitars, woozy minor key piano, wheezing organ, plenty of bombast and bluster, but also plenty of hushed whisper and delicate drift, all presided over by Tibet, whose high priest vocals perfectly suit the strange blackened backgrounds. Cool stuff. Fans hankering for that old Current 93 sound, well some of this might be the closest you'll get these days, and anyone into the dark and droney, the mystical and mysterious, the heavy and abstract, enter the temple and bow your head in reverence, the ritual has begun.
Gorgeous packaging, super thick three panel, metallic gold on black, letterpressed cardstock sleeves.
MPEG Stream: "I"
MPEG Stream: "II"

AETHER / TREPANERINSGRITUALEN Edifice of Nine Savaustikas (Black Horizons) cassette 8.98
One of two new reissues on this week's list from Swedish dark ambient alchemist Trepaneringsritualen, who on tape is teamed up with another previously unknown to us artist, Aether. It's difficult to tell from the liner notes or the packaging, which is which, but it really doesn't matter, as these two like minded dronescapers both draw from the same poisoned sonic well, thick corrosive low end rumbles, blurred blackened synth thrum, layer upon layer of black blur and grinding muted crunch, this is definitely dronemusic, but a sort of hellish minimal variant, super dense, and dark, and heavy, the sound rife with overtones, the various textures and elements constantly shifting to reveal subtle tonal variations, the sound progressing toward something much less bleak and buzz, and more blissed out, with drifting voices hovering in epic expanses of grim shimmer and hushed hazy hum.
The flipside (again not entirely sure which side is which, or even if it's a collaboration), is much more industrial, lots of booms and crashes, what appears to be a super slo-mo doom, stretched out into a grimly psychedelic landscape of long tones, and heaving rhythmic churn, lots of percussive filigree, the sound less droney, and more sort of abstract and cinematic, driven by a skeletal, but seriously crushing rhythm, the beats miles apart, making it seem even less like a proper rhythm, and more like occasional bursts of caustic crunch, the results though are intense, and gorgeous, and super hypnotic, the sound evoking some sort of otherworldly hellscape, which manages to be both beautiful, and brutal at the same time.
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!! Packaged in beautifully silkscreened gold inked three panel J-cards.

AFCGT Live Recording (Fire Breathing Turtle) 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.
Yup. A Frames and Climax Golden Twins are AFCGT, get it? And they do play out quite a bit, but rarely outside the confines of the Pacific Northwest. The five dudes of AFCGT did make an excursion down to San Francisco for a one-night only show at the lovely El Rio a few weeks back; and as great as they are on record, they kick ass live. The performance confirms a lot of things we figured about the band, that the members of A Frames set up the taut grooves on bass, guitar, and drums for the Twins to splinter away from in their dueling mutations of psychedelia, post-hardcore sludge, spy thriller licks, and punk intensity. For those not fortunate enough to have caught them at the El Rio, this live cd-r should do quite nicely; and even as an AFCGT record - live or otherwise - it's pretty damn great. Well, considering that the band probably just sets up a single mic in a room anyway to record, the presence of a live audience doesn't detract from the sound. AFCGT offers two cuts from their Dirty Knobby 10" and a track from their self-titled debut, plus two previously unreleased tracks. Hopefully, there will be more of this cd-r than the 20 copies of which we are currently aware.
MPEG Stream: "Atabat (Live)"
MPEG Stream: "Old Spy (Live)"
MPEG Stream: "Two Legged Dog (Live)"

AFCGT s/t (Dirty Knobby) 10" 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Whew! The first time we got something in from AFCGT, it was a painfully limited cd-r that exploded like a supernova and then disappeared just as quickly from the site. So, it's a damn good thing that this awesome collaboration between A Frames and the Climax Golden Twins has resulted in another batch of unbelievably good recordings. This time, it's a bit less limited, as Dirty Knobby has pressed these 8 tracks onto a 10", which should mean this thing will be around a little bit longer than the debut. The sound of AFCGT here is pretty much the same. Instrumental tunes with Mack truck rhythms, spring-loaded basslines, and giddy explosion of jagged guitar riffs that come together in what AFCGT blurts out as "New Punk." These swamp mutations of detuned Cambodian garage pop songs with an excess of stereoscopic distortion certainly have a Sun City Girls meets the Birthday vibe going on, with occasional excursions into a free noise mess of devolved noise and out of control drum fills, sort of like some of the Laddio Bolocko breakdowns. Who can complain about a Laddio Bolocko reference? Not us!

AFCGT s/t (Sub Pop) lp + 7" 19.98
Fuck! It's always a good sign when you feel the need to start the review of a record with a vulgarity; and the Sub Pop debut for AFCGT is a fucking great album, worthy of your favorite swear word that punctuates any exasperated declaration of praise. If there's any justice, this won't be the only AFCGT record that Sub Pop releases; as this band deserves great things.
AFCGT sports three guitarists, one bassist, and a drummer all hailing from two other projects - the A Frames and the Climax Golden Twins (get the acronym?). The Climax Golden Twins have long been a favorite here at Aquarius, somewhat paralleling the psycho-geographical narratives of the Sun City Girls in marrying all sorts of musical esoterica from punk, psychedelia, exotica, funeral blues, Southeast Asian pop idioms, field recordings, and audio collage tactics. A Frames are far more conventional in their agitated recapitulation of rhythmically centered post-punk, particularly looking toward Wire's Chairs Missing as a template. It seemed an unlikely match; but when it all came together, it was damn impressive, as again made evident on their second eponymous record.
The opening track "Black Mark" sports vintage Mack truck riffage of nasty sludgecore which would have been right at home on Sub Pop circa 1992 alongside Tad, Mudhoney, and that first Nirvana record; but before the riff can propel headlong into grunge-punk territory, AFCGT implodes in a frenzied jitterbug guitar solo of dosed-fuzz and amplifier damage. The low-slung swamp blues of "Two Legged Dog" sends spiralling guitar freakouts on top of a throbbing two-note bassline drone and strutting mid-tempo backbeat. "Nacht" weirds things out quite a bit; and this track certainly showcases much more of the Climax Golden Twins' doing with spindly slide guitars, a purring cat-like drone, and spectrally slashed ambience hob-knobbing with Martin Denny's post-Polynesian bachelor pad rhythms. AFCGT reprises "New Punk" which opened their first eponymous record from a few years back, and it's still as spiky and agitated as before, just with a 'new' studio polish of extra grit and distortion. Nice.
This is an lp only release that comes with the download card for mp3s of the tracks on the lp and a bonus 7" (which is not included in the download).
MPEG Stream: "Black Mark"
MPEG Stream: "Two Legged Dog"
MPEG Stream: "Nacht"

AFCGT Square Microphones Tapes (Fire Breathing Turtle) 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.
Oh, shit. Here's one of those discs that we just know we don't have enough copies of. AFCGT is an acronym for A Frames + Climax Golden Twins, a project that fortunately didn't just disappear as a one-off collaboration. The five-piece, instrumental ensemble for three guitarists, a bassist, and a drummer had knocked our socks off with a couple of awesome recordings in 2008, most notably their eponymous debut of noir-tinged noise rock girded by uncanny, propulsive grooves; and they're still doing it in 2009. The Square Microphone Tapes are cracked sessions of mutant psychedelia transposed through damaged punk-post-punk slabs of sludge, woozy noise, and art-damaged riffage. The opening cut "Strike 9" is a barnstormed of a scuzzed garage rock track with allusions to the days when Sub Pop and grunge meant something that was crafted on a shitty 4-track in some Northwest warehouse. Well, that's exactly where this was recorded! AFCGT unravels the recordings through a divergent set of x-ray guitar licks breaking off low-slung backbeats, some slo-mo tape exercises that come across as Stooges outtake played back at the wrong speed a la Neu! 2, and lots of heavy-tracks that could be the improbable sound of the Sun City Girls recording an album for AmRep. In other words, it's pretty fucking awesome. Hopefully, there will be more than the 20 copies we know exist...
MPEG Stream: "Strike 9"
MPEG Stream: "Downward Spiral"
MPEG Stream: "To The Floor"