BLUE SABBATH BLACK CHEER Prossneck, Germany 1629 (Gnarled Forest) cassette 5.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Right now, everything released by these Northwestern dealers of doomdeathdirgedrone, is out of print, EXCEPT for these two cassettes, Prossneck, Germany 1629, and the split with fellow noisemakers Drowner. But these won't last long. These two tapes are both tour only, limited to 100 copies, we got 20 of each, and judging from past Blue Sabbath Black Cheer releases, those won't last long at all, needless to say, one per customer, and even more needless to say, if you want one of these, don't dawdle! Blink and you'll miss 'em.
This one features two looooong blasts of caustic blur and buzz, murky slowed down vocals, thick waves of hiss, everything churning and roiling, heavy and noisy and brutal, heavy on the drone, built a bit like a low end Whitehouse, some strange demon with a tracheotomy proselytizing over a hellish din, soon joined in by what sounds like terrified screams, and the sound of flames on flesh. Really really creepy. The flipside is a bit more abstract, a drifting sea of crumbling distortion and blurred hiss, some grinding rumbles and buried almost-melodies, sort noise tangled up with deep black industrial dronemusic. As always, heavy and frightening and black as pitch.
Once again, LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!! We have 20, that is it!!

BLUE SABBATH BLACK CHEER Rats (Doom Mantra) lp 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Latest in the Doom Mantra series of super limited lps comes from black noise duo Blue Sabbath Black Cheer (after previous installments by Colossloth, Worship and Wicked King Wicker, as well as future releases planned for Dead Raven Choir and The Throes Of Darkness) and is split between previously released ultra limited and now way out of print rarities and new unreleased material, as well as featuring a handful of guests including Mason Jones and Rubber O Cement!.
Unlike the last few BSBC releases, this time the guys dial back the noise assault, focusing instead on texture and mood, still plenty noisy, but this time the noise is doled out much more judiciously.
The opening track sounds like it was composed using busted electronics and field recordings of actual battles, sirens wail and explosions erupt under cloud of static and glitch, wrapped in thick billows of black thrum.
The rest of the side plays out in swells of washed out minimal drift, shot through with streaks of caustic noise, intercepted voices, groaning detuned guitars, melting synths, building gradually to a full on industrial chaos-scape
The flipside begins with a looooong blast of caustic blur and buzz, murky slowed down vocals, thick waves of hiss, everything churning and roiling, crusty and noisy and brutal, heavy on the drone, built a bit like a low end Whitehouse, some strange demon with a tracheotomy proselytizing over a hellish din, soon joined in by what sounds like terrified screams, and the sound of flames on flesh. Really really creepy. As the side progresses it grows a bit more abstract, a drifting sea of crumbling distortion and blurred hiss, some grinding rumbles and buried almost-melodies, soft noise tangled up with deep black industrial dronemusic., before stumbling back into a blown out hiss drenched dronescape, harsh and heavy and intense and BRUTAL.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Packaged in super nice silkscreened covers, with a printed insert inside...

BLUE SABBATH BLACK CHEER The Boundary Between The Living And The Deceased Dissolved (Equation) lp + 7" + cd 33.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
As more and more folks (foolishly & unfortunately in our view) choose to forgo physical media for immaterial downloads, it seems like it's as important as ever to make records special, as much collectible objects and storage devices for sound, as much cool tangible artifact from a band we care about as simply a conveyance for that band's music. And we're constantly amazed at the sort of incredible and unique packaging we see pass through aQ. Perhaps none more so that Equation Records who are constantly pushing the design envelope, with no regard for profit, hell, no regard for even breaking even, for them it's all about the art, the object, every release something special, that will be treasured, both for the sounds within, and all the amazing craziness that surrounds those sounds.
Which brings us to this. Amazing and crazy just scratches the surface. Three years in the works, an extended production rife with problems and complications, some deftly (and cleverly) incorporated right into the artwork. The record is in fact being sold significantly -below- its actual cost, which was appropriately exorbitant, based on the ridiculous and fantastical packaging. But before we get to that, let's talk music. This extreme packaging couldn't have been paired with a more appropriately extreme band, the Seattle doomdronedirge duo Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, whose infamous live Halloween night set is the focus of this release, presented here on a one sided silkscreened lp, a sidelong expanse of harrowing blackened minimalism, crashing gongs and billowing clouds of cymbal shimmer, buzzing metallic thrum, that reminds us of an Organum record gone haywire. The metal buzz gradually processed into deep rib cage rattling drones and ominous low end tones, eventually melodies creep in, and the sound is transformed into an abject tarpit doom, peppered with blown out blasts of percussive crunch, and bursts of Merzbowian white noise, but always settling back into a deep, ominous thrum. Lion roar rumbles give way to keening moaning black buzz, downtuned and crumbling, all weirdly mournful and melodic, the whole thing laced with tortured vox, seriously harrowing and amazing. And as if that weren't enough, there's also a single sided 7", with an etched B side, the music a crumbling wall of super distorted power electronics style crunch, grinding slabs of corrosive textures and heaving buzz blurred into a weirdly meditative, but still seriously corrosive drone. And as if that STILL weren't enough, there's also a cd (not a cd-r), collecting a handful of rarities from various tape releases and splits, as well as some unreleased jams, the sounds varying from percussive post industrial pipe fight bombast, to droned out feedback drenched ambience, and from militaristic minimalism, to grinding blacknoise blowouts. Phew.
NOW we can talk about the packaging, which we should preface with the word MAGNETS!!! ("Fucking magnets, how do they work?!"), more on that in a second, but if you want a visual accounting of the packaging, check this out: http://youtu.be/ZthdRUqd68w
So yeah, there is a one sided lp, with a silkscreened B side. There was an issue with the silkscreening, so there's an insert affixed to the sleeve, explaining the situation. There's also a red vinyl 7", one sided, etched on the B side, and the aforementioned cd of rarities. The 7" comes in a proper picture sleeve with two 7"x7" pro-printed card inserts, the cd comes in it's own proper sleeve as well. Also includes is a silkscreen turntable slipmat, as well as a 12" by 24 poster. Add in 4 stickers, a 2-sided 12" pro-printed card insert, and two separate silk screened covers, each one affixed with magnets, the two sleeves magnetically adhered! There's also a 2" pin, a numbered certificate, all of this is housed in a thick PVC sleeve, sealed with a circular sticker, and on the front, is a sticker, with a description of the record in Latin, and a translation in English. Wow. Needless to say, this is a beauty, an extravagantly conceived and executed labor of love, that is even more impressive when you hold it in your grubby little paws.
LIMITED TO 235 COPIES!!! Guessing this won't be around for long!
MPEG Stream: "The Boundary Between The Living And The Deceased Dissolved"
MPEG Stream: "The Sense Of Violence"
MPEG Stream: "Man Is The Bastard"
MPEG Stream: "Demise"

BLUE SABBATH BLACK CHEER The Endless Blockade (Gnarled Forest / What We Do Is Secret) lp 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Another missive from some grim otherworld, the latest in a hellish black flow from the brackish depths, a never ending glacial eruption of blackened sonic filth and blown out white noise brutality from this despicable duo, this latest, a three song 12", is currently, due to the insanely limited nature of their releases, the only thing these guys have available, but not for long we predict, as this too was limited to a mere 525 copies, we got about a tenth of those, but as with past releases, we can't promise they'll be around for long.
More of the BSBC caustic black ambience, a cacophony of junkyard clatter, the clang of pipes, all sorts of crunch and grind, under a thick wash of high end buzz, and shifting clouds of blurred hiss, monstrous vocals buried in the murk, some riffage too (we think), but those riffs mostly exist as simply another layer of blacknoise, a never ending wash of grinding static heaviness. The second track ups the heaviness, the vocals more bellowing, more surges of black tar low end, still cloaked in sheets of white noise, but churning violently beneath the surface, a rumbling, rib cage rattling drone, that seems to be splintering and crumbling to pieces before our ears.
The flip side is much more tranquil (it's all relative though), a minimal driftscape of distant whir, twisted fragmented melodies buried way down in the mix, the grinding of alien machinery, peppered with squalls of speaker shredding buzz, the track quickly escalates, the noise getting noisier, the buzz getting buzzier, the vocals more howled and anguished, the whole thing pushing toward a Merzbowian white noise blowout. Imagine sitting in a concrete bunker with a thousand transistor radios tuned between stations, with the volume all the way up, an ear shredding symphony of static, while in another concrete bunker Wolf Eyes and Khanate play at full volume, barely audible through the suffocating cloud of hiss all around you.
Brutal, punishing, abject, harrowing, hateful, heavy, and pretty fucking awesome. As if we even needed to tell you.
LIMITED TO 525 COPIES. Amazing woodcut paste on front cover, with a printed insert and postcard inside.

BLUE SABBATH BLACK CHEER Untitled (Gnarled Forest) lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Blue Sabbath Black Cheer have become the band du jour of the deathdirgedronedoom scene, their records disappear in a heartbeat, we were lucky to get 25 of this new one, it's already out of print and sold out at the label.
This sick love for BSBC makes perfect sense the second the first filthy note comes oozing out of your speakers, this is harsh, hellish, abstract black black ambience. Take the slowest sickest Khanate song, strip away the drums, slow down the vocals to a raspy gurgle, add later after layer of filth and crust and grime and you'd be getting closer to whatever subterranean pit these anti-musical miscreants crawled from.
There's two side long tracks, each previously released as insanely limited cassettes, remixed and remastered for this release, with additional sounds from Chris Dodge of Spazz and aQ pal Matt Waldron from Irr. App. (Ext.). The A side begins with slowed down vocals, a monstrous demonic murmur, slithering over a grim landscape of high end hiss and deep tectonic rumbles, distant tones pulse and throb, all manner of crash and scrape and crunch, the track building slowly to a frenzy of hellish howls, thick sheets of white noise, crumbling walls of distortion, grinding washes of thick, dense buzz and whir, a seriously fucked up, freaked out expanse of post industrial noisemusic, thick with drones and haunting textures and undulating layers buried beneath the skree. The B side begins with a low resonating drone, a thick, serpentine rumble, that is eventually subsumed by a symphony of buzz saws and crackling fires and collapsing buildings and grinding scrapes and processed vocals and malfunctioning tape machines, all wound into some sort of hellish high end ur-drone, before slipping back into another shimmering expanse of upper register skree, eventually drifting back into something much more mellow but no less ominous and intense, a creepy low end drone, field recordings, crackle, whispers, evokes hiding in the woods, terrified, as something stalks you, muted growls, the crack of dried branches underfoot, the whisper of leaves falling to the ground, all set to the boom of distant explosions. Intense, and in its own way, sort of sickly beautiful.
Akin to Gnaw Their Tongues, Khanate, Wolf Eyes, Alkerdeel, the more abstract and dismal end of the doomdirgedrone spectrum.... this definitely takes all that and pushes it even further, darker, noisier, more dismal and way more grim.
Packaged in plain white sleeves, with a screened image affixed to the front, a black and white printed inserts, pressed on white vinyl, plain white labels. SUPER LIMITED. ALREADY OUT OF PRINT. We only got 25 COPIES, once these are gone that's it!

BLUE SABBATH BLACK CHEER / DRIED UP CORPSE split (Gnarled Forest) 10" 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Originally released as a super limited cassette (only 50 copies), this 10" (also way too limited at 300 copies) teams up our favorite demonic duo, with the awesomely monickered Dried Up Corpse for some deep dire noise drenched heaviness.
The BSBC side is about the prettiest thing they've ever done, which means it's still vile and sick and murky and ominous and fucked up, it's just that it's not so harsh, more muted and blurred and black ambient, than some of their other outings. A sprawling deeeeeeeeep doomscape, creeping black rumbles, demonic gurgles, distant foghorn like melodies, bits of muted percussion, plenty of buzzing grit and distorted feedback, but all smeared and woozy and subterranean sounding, a darkly demonic drift, that infuses what might otherwise be warm shimmering blackened ambience, with some seriously abject miserablism and gloom.
Dried Up Corpse counter BSBC's sensitive side with a caustic chunk of chaotic crunch. Beginning with some deep whirring rumbles, the track soon splinters into full on blunted white noise, skittery and fractured and totally blown out, all the while underpinned by that initial rumbling whir, eventually the noise peels back leaving a long stretch of deep softened buzz to play us out.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!! Gorgeous super thick hand screened sleeves, with nice two sided printed inserts.

BLUE SABBATH BLACK CHEER / DROWNER split (Gnarled Forest) cassette 5.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Right now, everything released by these Northwestern dealers of doomdeathdirgedrone, is out of print, EXCEPT for these two cassettes, Prossneck, Germany 1629, and the split with fellow noisemakers Drowner. But these won't last long. These two tapes are both tour only, limited to 100 copies, we got 20 of each, and judging from past Blue Sabbath Black Cheer releases, those won't last long at all, needless to say, one per customer, and even more needless to say, if you want one of these, don't dawdle! Blink and you'll miss 'em.
The BSBC side is another sea of harsh his and caustic buzz, thick waves of distortion and blurred vocal damage, squealing feedback, a million amps with AM radios blasting white noise through busted speakers, strangely beautiful, but that severed limb, horrible car wreck, utter disaster sort of beautiful. A near static expanse of washed out heavy black noise, once again managing to be surprisingly listenable, at least for those who are into that sort of thing!
Drowner offers his own chunk of thick corrosive heaviness, the sound much fuller and seemingly guitar based than BSBC, churning downtuned crumbling black buzz, shot through with shards of feedback, a monstrous low end sludge, peppered with strange buried melodies, bits of electronic shimmer, and various other sonic bits, but at its very black heart, this is a wall of blown out blackened heaviness, oozing glacially, and destroying everything in its path. The two groups make a pretty good match. And while we know we're gonna hear more from BSBC before too long, we definitely want to check out some more Drowner...
Once again, LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!! We have 20, that is it!!

BLUE SABBATH BLACK CHEER / GRIEFER split (Gnarled Forest) lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
It's definitely weird to call something like this 'pretty', but what can you do? Of all the Blue Sabbath Black Cheer records we've heard, this one is definitely the prettiest. Of course it's all relative, one man's pretty, is another's harsh head caving blacknoise, and perhaps another's ear shredding doombuzz brutality, and weirdly enough, it's sort of all of those things, but in the realms of doombuzz blacknoise, this sidelong sprawl is indeed, a strange shade of tranquil, at least at first.
It's BSBC so the ingredients should no doubt be familiar by now, the sound equal parts blackened crumbling, distorted buzz, and glacial hellish downtuned crawl, but here the crunchy, crumbling surface layer hides a slow shifting sonic interior, a whirling buried shimmer, soft sheets of crackle and whir, everything constantly bombarded by huge heaving industrial booms, like mortar shells, along with strange creaks and distant crashes, like some strange Wolf Eyes / Skinny Puppy hybrid, being broadcast through rusted out Soviet era loudspeakers, as the city literally crumbles all around you. Ambient but abrasive, tranquil but harrowing, a field recording of collapsing tectonic plates, rendered in 'music'. Near the end, the sound takes on a power electronics vibe, due in no small part to the creepy, bellowed guttural processed vocals, but still the sounds behind the demented caterwauling, continue to ooze and crumble and throb and crunch and creep.
BSBC are teamed up with an outfit called Griefer, who use their side of the lp to offer up a strangely cinematic stretch of buzz and glitch, lots of super distorted synth fuzz, peppered with strange machinelike creaks and groans, wrapped around super processed alien vox, all draped over a continuously throbbing synth pulse. Hypnotic and almost soundtracky, Griefer slip from heaving speaker destroying crumble, to whirring spaced out synthscape to blurred electronic crunch, often all three colliding in a thick noise-drenched psychbuzz synthdrone blowout, not so much harsh and brutal as intense and evocative.
Pressed on sick swirled green and brown sewage colored vinyl, housed in hand screened sleeves, with two printed, two sided cardstock inserts. LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!

BLUE SABBATH BLACK CHEER / IRR. APP. (EXT.) Skeletal Coupla Remains (Gnarled Forest) lp 16.98
BACK IN STOCK, AFTER WE THOUGHT THIS TO BE LONG OUT OF PRINT!!!
Skeletal Coupla Remains finds Blue Sabbath Black Cheer teaming up and collaborating, and what makes that idea even more interesting is that it's with none other than Dadaist soundscaper and long time Nurse With Wound collaborator Matt Waldron, aka Irr. App. (Ext.). Seems like a strange pairing, but only until you actual hear what these guys can pull off together.
Unclear if they actually jammed together, or worked in the studio, or if BSBC just sent Waldron sounds to fuck with, but however they did it, the results are pretty fantastic.
Waldron has transformed BSBC's black noise into something way more tripped out and surreal, there's still plenty of buzz and rumble, grinding low end and roiling black ambience, but there are also swooping sound effects, warped production, tinkling melodies, sounds flipped backwards, layered and then pulled apart, huge chunks of heaviness, gradually transforming into weird bits of rhythmic churn, epic swaths of pulsating synths, all spaced out and almost krauty, looped voices, twisted samples, cinematic and creepy, it's almost like some black drone Nurse With Wound, and shit, if that doesn't sound good to you, then we have no idea what would.
The B side is a single sidelong dronedoomjam, that slips from hushed minimal drift to chugging SUNN-like riffage, all tangled up with spacey synth squiggles, bleating horns, warped FX, interrupted briefly by a stretch of near silence, laced with a series of field recordings, crunches and creaks, footsteps, and some monstrous gurgling growls underneath it all.
Super cool black and white jackets, with a massive fold out poster of the same artwork, as well as a printed insert with original artwork by Waldron.

BLUE SABBATH BLACK CHEER / PENETRATION CAMP Bleak Village / Mob Rules (Drug Front Productions) lp 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We'll keep this short, since we wanted to get 20 or 30 of these, ended up getting 10, and by the time this hits the list, we'll probably have less than that. We have way more copies of the forthcoming BSBC already reserved, but for this one, only the first lucky handful of you will likely score one of these.
Blue Sabbath Black Cheer teams up with a band called Penetration Camp for two sides of crushing abstract low end heaviness (as if you were expecting something else?). The BSBC side is 33rpm, for maximum sloooooooowness, a whirring crackling hissing rumbling drift, like the wash of helicopter rotors, the crackle of burning torches, this almost sounds like some strange field recording, and is definitely the prettiest thing we've heard from these guys. At least at first. Deep swells, warm and weirdly melodic, building to a coda of abrasive crashing chaos, thick and prickly and crunchy, before settling back down into a second movement, which sounds like the first, only the sounds have been doused in extra treble and skree, everything sharper and more jagged, laced with inhuman screams and the hellish sounds of dying electronics.
The flipside is at 45, and no matter what the title or the bastardized insert artwork might lead you to believe, sadly this is NOT a cover of Black Sabbath's "Mob Rules", or if it is, kudos to Penetration Camp for rendering it 100 percent unrecognizable. The perfect match for BSBC, a bleak bit of creeped out black ambient crawl, fucked up stretched out heavily effected vocals wrapped around bit bursts of industrial crunch, thick swaths of sinister buzz, the grinding scrape and crumbling crunch eventually overtaking the deep rumbling drones.
SUPER LIMITED, already out of print, we have less than 10 copies, cool silkscreened paste on covers, two printed inserts, sorry we couldn't get more.

BLUE SABBATH BLACK CHEER / WICKED KING WICKER split (Gnarled Forest) lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
One of two new lps from Northwestern blackdrone heavies Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, one a split, one a collaboration.
The split is almost too perfect, teaming up BSBC with what is essentially the East coast equivalent, Wicked King Wicker, a one man doom combo who definitely traffic in a similar sort of blackened industrial droned out doom, in fact, some folks could very well have trouble telling who was who. Not us!
Blue Sabbath Black Cheer start things off with a sidelong slab of caustic black drone, a heaving slab of brutalist industrial buzz, dense, and black hole heavy, the sounds blown out, the distortion crumbling and decaying before our very ears, it's classic BSBC, that is until the surprise of the second half, where all the heaviness is pulled back, revealing a sprawl of super abstract minimal drift, a muted stretch of creepy ambience, all processed voices, heavy chunks of buzz, the sound of foot steps, distant creaks, orchestral bursts, and lots and lots of space, almost like some strange tape experiment. But somehow it sounds logical coming after that initial black blast.
Wicked King Wicker counter with their own chunk of blackened buzz, super distorted, all rumbling low end, flecked with a weird metronomic pulse, strange heavily effected voices, buried melodies, effects everywhere, almost less like doooooom and more like some sort of metalized and Merzbowized modern minimalist drone music, the sounds layered and constantly shifting, creating overtones, and fragmented bits of melody. A little bit industrial, a little bit metal, a lot drone, HEAVY, and blackened, and finally near the end, the buzzed out drone seems to coalesce into churning sludgy riffage.
Super nice screen printed covers, with a printed insert.

BLUE SABBATH BLACK CHEER PIG HEART TRANSPLANT s/t (Phage Tapes) cd 11.98
A seriously grim blackened doomdronedirge songsuite from these two outfits, both of which are perfectly capable of kicking up a serious din on their own, so you might be expecting a skull splitting ear piercing onslaught, but the first track at least is downright beautiful, in a bleak and sinister sort of way, lots of space, and texture, some caustic feedback and rumbling low end, some weird demonic voices, and some glitched out electronics, but all laid over a bed of hiss and hum, and eventually morphing into a strange series of moaning chordal swells, all woven together by a barely audible sinewave tone. And the same sort of ethereal abstract ambience extends into the second track, which unfurls like some sort of super minimal abstract rhythmscape, the rhythm in this case a barely there assemblage of murky pulses and concentrated bursts of soft focus static, but it's only the first half of the track, by part two, the sound have splintered into filthy shards of blunted noise, the low end oozing and bleeding into long black streaks, the vocals a FX drenched bellow, all the elements again held together by a strange tangled bit of high end that sounds a bit like air escaping from a balloon.
Track three (they're all untitled) is the first really noisy bit, but even here, it's tempered by some serious dynamics, and some cool abstract production, with the initial onslaught soon dialed back into a strangely rhythmic textural backdrop, before exploding once again, into a churning, rhythmic blackened dirge, the vocals this time around a monstrous growl WAY down in the mix, the shards of feedback strangely melodic, the whole track with a darkly hypnotic looped vibe, super mesmerizing, and the sort of noise that ends up being more tranced out than brutal. After a short stretch of glitched out skeletal doom, which sounds like some sort of experimental death metal run through a bunch of busted FX pedals and spinning at 16rpm, the record finishes off with a nearly 14 minute epic, that spends most of its time all delicate and barely there, lots of processed electronics and strange glitches, but all smeared into the background, some creepy bellowed slowed down vox the only thing that really makes this more noise than some haunting dark dronemusic, it's not until after a long stretch of near silence, that the song finally erupts into some full on crushing and crumbling NOISE, an avalanche of roiling low end crumble, that blossoms into a speaker shredding squall of blown out amp damage and abject sonic decay. Nice!
MPEG Stream: "I"
MPEG Stream: "II"

BLUE WATER WHITE DEATH s/t (Graveface) lp 16.98
There's nothing on the gatefold cd sleeve to tell you much about who/what this is, besides the name Blue Water White Death (which for some reason makes us think of Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, though as it turns out they're not at all similar). There's just illustrations of a few frightening looking fishies, and some quirky song titles like "This Is The Scrunchyface Of My Dreams", "Nerd Future" and "Rendering The Juggalos". Hmm. Well it's enough to have made us curious about this, anyway, and that curiosity was worth it! This proved to be a weird and lovely, very dark avant pop record, quite compelling, indeed the first time we played this one morning, the only customer in the store at the time ended up buying it. Later we found out that BWWD is a collaboration between two singer/songwriter types from bands we certainly had heard of, none other than Jamie Stewart of SF's Xiu Xiu (and Former Ghosts) and friend Jonathan Meiburg from Texan band Shearwater. Should have guessed.
Together as Blue Water White Death (named after a '70s nature doc about the undersea dangers off the coast of Australia, apparently) these two have created an album that's gorgeous, shivery, and just a bit eerie. The delicate, breathy vocals carry fragile melodies over sparse sedate arrangements with ghostly background echoes, drones, and choirs. Acoustic guitars glitter in the darkness. Sudden bass notes twang reverberantly, expectantly, out of the near-silence. It's intimate, moody, emotive, hushed, and ultimately dramatic, with much "somber beauty" as we've previously noted about Shearwater's folky rock. For fans of them, and Xiu Xiu too, of course. Also we're reminded of Richard Youngs, for sure. (So if your name happens to be Loren Chasse, you definitely want this.) But it's recommended to everyone, actually!
MPEG Stream: "This Is The Scrunchyface Of My Dreams"
MPEG Stream: "Song For The Greater Jihad"
MPEG Stream: "Grunt Tube"

BLUES CONTROL Local Flavor (Siltbreeze) lp 14.98
The puzzlingly (and pleasantly) abstract New York duo known as Blues Control is back, making the jump to Siltbreeze with this new record, a spacey hybrid of Suicide/Velvet Underground droned out rock with more dreamy moments along the lines of Windy & Carl. They weave a lush tapestry of meditative sound collages warped with wavering piano flutters and beaming drones, all rising steadily toward the hazy sky. It's four songs, but almost 35 minutes, so dunno if this is a long ep or a short album. In any case, we'll take what we can get from Blues Control, and what we get here is quite nice indeed, a fine addition to their brief discography that includes the AQ recommended releases Puff on Fusetron and the eponymous one on Holy Mountain.
"Good Morning" (as in, little school girl?) opens up the disc with what must be the most actually blues-like thing that these guys have ever controlled. Kicking off with a single piano note (a la "I Wanna Be Your Dog"), they really shake it here, the track turning into a driving instrumental onslaught of gorgeously distorted guitar/bass fuzz, with honky tonk piano skittering o'er pounding drum beats... and then, horns! And electronic effects echoing the 13th Floor Elevators' famous jug. Badass. In part 'cause apparently garage-rock fiend Kurt Vile helps out.
The piano takes the fore on the next cut, the ambient jazz flecked loveliness of "Rest On Water". More a hazy soundscape than an actual song, it's like a lost transmission of a loose piano melody, with slow strings fading in alongside some acoustic strumming. More rhythmic is "Tangier", and more and more distorted and dubbed-out it also gets, as its eight mesmeric minutes proceed. It opens with a cool, lo-fi Casio kalimba sound, soon building upon itself before a huge wave of cloudy ambience comes in, along with a simple, steady rhythm with a dreamy keyboard melody floating on top. A thing of throbbing beauty. And then "On Through The Night" (which we don't think is meant to be a Def Leppard reference, though that would have been cool) takes up pretty much the entire second half of the disc, a 16:50 trip deep into Blues Control land, a realm of rumbling echo-effected dubbiness, woozy hints of string orchestration, creepy carnival organ, droned out drama, and pulsating mystery, their music looping like the multiple hoop earrings piercing the ear of the "primitive" person depicted on the cover, caressing YOUR ears though, rather than piercing them. The melody is murky, yet easy to detect, BC taking a thankfully melodic approach that many experimental bands ignore entirely.
Even at their most aggressive ("Good Morning") there's something gentle about Blues Control. That first track we'd especially recommend to the Wooden Shjips fans, and then elsewhere on here there's stuff to offer folks into the likes of everyone/thing from Eno to Sun Araw to Alice Coltrane Moolah to Expo '70. Elements of all of which combine uniquely within Blues Control's cracked and krautrockish DIY avant-blues experiments. A nice blend of pop catchiness and free-psych trippyness, the perfect record for a summer walk around town or a sunny BBQ burn out, this one is recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Good Morning"
MPEG Stream: "Tangier"

BLUES CONTROL Puff (Fusetron) cd 14.98
The lp version waited for the cd to come in before revieedhfghes Control takes some time to digest, since they're so... different. And, we think, pretty darn cool.
You kind of have to listen to instrumental duo Blues Control as much for what's not going on, than what is. What's missing from the equation that suddenly makes 2+2 not equal 4 in Blues Controls' unusual math. Not by that to suggest that they're a "math rock" band. Nope, the name don't lie (nor does it tell the truth), they are a blues band. Of sorts, sort of. But playing the blues in an alternate, warped universe, where fragmentary fuzz guitars are friendly with tick-tocking clocks.
Sometimes they're subtracting stuff, leaving out the vocals and other usual blues signifiers and song structures and so forth. Or sometimes they work their magic by addition and multiplication (the layered looping of "Behind The Skies" ferinstance). It's all about abstraction, repetition, distortion. Suddenly 2+2 is an interesting problem to work out. And often, a pretty one.
The title track that opens the album features echoey percussive loops over which electronic notes gently cascade, reminding us of both Moolah and Cluster. Next, "Always On Time" proceeds similarly, with a recurring piano riff as centerpiece for soloing amidst a warm and gauzy bed of sound. That's followed by "Behind The Skies", which takes the disc to its darkest, grindingest depths. And then, "End Zone" is the sort of thing that Jimi Hendrix (if appropriately dosed with dowers) wouldn't mind jamming along to. Sleepy whale call electric blooze guitar from the other side. So much spaced out ambience, which gets even mellower, or mellowest, on the lovely album-ender "Call Collect".
RealAudio clip: "Always On Time"
RealAudio clip: "End Zone"

BLUES CONTROL s/t (Holy Mountain) cd 13.98
Don't let the punny name fool ya, this surely isn't "blues rock". Nor blues. Nor rock. Not really. Nor is it of Yugoslav origin, despite the biographical misinformation posted on the Holy Mountain website that claims Blues Control to be an obscure '70s psych band from Yugoslavia. Nope, Blues Control are an instrumental Brooklyn duo on guitar and synths and drums, making a wonderfully fucked up yet pleasantly listenable psych-squabble of a sound that's not super easy to describe, actually... let's just say that if it were blues rock, it'd be druggily confused, utterly EXPERIMENTAL blues rock. The eight tracks found on this eponymous debut wander through mellow, spacey passages, interludes of seasick synth symphonics, and blown-out epic episodes full of fuzzed-up motorpsycho guitar leads, drunken and damaged sounding. Blues Control's two-man trash team are up to something strange here, counter-intuitive creativity that can make a cool track out of some pretty piano dropped into a droney wash, followed up by a broken-amp bass solo and some off-kilter beats, ferinstance. This totally fits in on the out-there Holy Mountain label alongside the likes of Residual Echoes and Aufgehoben, especially considering how fractured and distorted they can get, almost like a fuzzed-out Starfuckers on the very first track. We're digging this a lot.
MPEG Stream: "Blues Control"
MPEG Stream: "Boiled Peanuts"
MPEG Stream: "No Sweat"

BLUES CONTROL Valley Tangents (Drag City) lp 15.98
Another WTF? release from this very much non-blues weirdo duo. As usual, but more so than ever, we're not quite sure what to make of it. Opener "Love's A Rondo" really threw us for a loop. A meandering rock groove jam lead by jaunty jazzy piano, ivories being tickled here in the vein of Vince Guaraldi of Peanuts fame, or even Bill Evans. The sprightly piano then mixes it up with distorted but mellow psych guitar wail. It's like Schroeder from Peanuts jamming with Wooden Shjips or something. Kinda confusional but we like it, an assessment that applies to the whole album. There's a soundtracky vibe to the heavier throb of track two, "Iron Pigs", which features happy but slightly dissonant sounding synth-horns and a steady drum machine thwack-thwack amongst other noises. As the album progresses, all these elements - piano, drum machine, guitar, electronics - woozily weave in and out, kind of mellow, kind of strange, kind of pretty, kind of queasy... It's tough to tell if it's "good" or not, but, well, we guess it IS, in that we like to listen to it, in fact it gets played in the shop quite a bit, and we're talking about it, even... Valley Tangents makes an impression as being not quite like anything else. They've successfully captured a true 'outsider' vibe here. It's like Blues Control decided to make a record today that, had it come out in the '70s, would for sure have wound up on the infamous Nurse With Wound 'list'. Or imagine Vince Vince Guaraldi making a krautrock record, with Brian Eno's help perhaps, one that's both pleasant -and- weird.
If you liked Blues Controls' recent collab with Laraaji, or their previous Local Flavor lp, well, you just might like this too. Or maybe not. We doubt BC are bothered much, they're just gonna keep doing their 'thing', whatever it is!
MPEG Stream: "Love's A Rondo"
MPEG Stream: "Iron Pigs"
MPEG Stream: "Gypsum"

BLUES CONTROL & LARAAJI FRKWYS Vol.8 (RVNG International) cd 14.98
When this latest Frkwys collaboration was first announced between New York psych rockers Blues Control and experimental new age composer, Laraaji (Edward Larry Gordon), we were curious as to what this would sound like. But ever since we got it in the store, it's fast becoming our favorite pairing in the series, which is no small feat, since we absolutely adored the Arp & Anthony Moore collaboration as well as the Juliana Barwick & Ikue Mori release. Blues Control has toned down their usual rollicking psych kraut chug, and instead create four long-form interconnecting pieces with tempered down cosmic guitar and electronic atmospheric manipulations, while Laraaji plays treated zither and African string instruments over them. Building from quiet oceanic ambiance to slowly evolving cosmically focused and tripped out deep spiritual meditations which feature choral and resonant vocal accompaniment provided by Laraaji. On the third song, "City of Love", a percussive momentum with a heavier guitar drone foundation briefly intensifies, while clouds of kora, kalimba and mouth harp vibrational tones bounce back and forth across the aural field to gently lilting psychedelic effect. For late night devotional listening for any fan of modern day psych and new age, this is simply stunning!!
MPEG Stream: "Awakening Day"
MPEG Stream: "Light Ships"

BLUES CONTROL & LARAAJI FRKWYS Vol.8 (RVNG International) lp 22.00
When this latest Frkwys collaboration was first announced between New York psych rockers Blues Control and experimental new age composer, Laraaji (Edward Larry Gordon), we were curious as to what this would sound like. But ever since we got it in the store, it's fast becoming our favorite pairing in the series, which is no small feat, since we absolutely adored the Arp & Anthony Moore collaboration as well as the Juliana Barwick & Ikue Mori release. Blues Control has toned down their usual rollicking psych kraut chug, and instead create four long-form interconnecting pieces with tempered down cosmic guitar and electronic atmospheric manipulations, while Laraaji plays treated zither and African string instruments over them. Building from quiet oceanic ambiance to slowly evolving cosmically focused and tripped out deep spiritual meditations which feature choral and resonant vocal accompaniment provided by Laraaji. On the third song, "City of Love", a percussive momentum with a heavier guitar drone foundation briefly intensifies, while clouds of kora, kalimba and mouth harp vibrational tones bounce back and forth across the aural field to gently lilting psychedelic effect. For late night devotional listening for any fan of modern day psych and new age, this is simply stunning!!
MPEG Stream: "Awakening Day"
MPEG Stream: "Light Ships"

BNSF Object 6 (Locust) cd 14.98

BODUF SONGS s/t (Kranky) cd 13.98
This mysterious release is the work of UK musician Mat Sweet, who sent a rough demo to the guys at Kranky, who in turn loved it so much they decided to release it without any tweaking or re-recording at all, for fear of sacrificing any of the intimacy or immediacy! A gorgeous chunk of neo folk, acoustic guitar, cymbals, percussion, violin bow, toy piano, manipulated field recordings and computer. At its heart though, this is just a simple and lovely folk record, reminiscent of Iron & Wine or Sentridoh, with its fingerpicked steel string guitar and hushed melancholy vocals, but unlike most of his folk brethren, Sweet adds all sorts of unlikely bits to his heartfelt songs, a swath of reverberating chimes, clanking cymbals, bells and woodblocks, occasional backwards melodies, dogs barking, shimmering drones, never so much that it detracts from the overall beauty, but more as a sort of filigree that adds depth and mystery to Sweet's gorgeously lilting folk. Fans of droney dreamy folk will dig this for sure, but Iron & Wine fans especially may find a new band to love!
MPEG Stream: "Puke A Pitch Black Rainbow To The Sun"
MPEG Stream: "Claimant Reclaimed"

BODY HAMMER Jigoku (The Path Less Traveled) cd 9.98
We're not entirely sure where we first heard about Body Hammer, and we're not really sure if it's a band or a guy, what we do know, is that this is some seriously fierce and fucked up hypergrind / math metal / black drone weirdness. 18 songs, all but 6 less than a minute long, some of those as short as a matter of seconds, every one an awesome chunk of sonic mayhem. The 1:41 opener is all creep and creak, moan and drift, downtuned guitars and tinkling melodies, some sort of Wolf Eyes / Goblin hybrid, which leads right into 31 seconds of ultra technical, super distorted, gnarled and chaotic noise drenched metallic grind that should hit the spot for Discordance Axis fans and anyone who digs all that drummachinegun grind. The 14 second follow up is a brief white hot squall of harmonized guitars and malfunctioning drum machines, which leads directly into another industrial drone drift.
The first 2/3 of the records pass in a blur, lurching from haunting droney ambience to chugging churning grinding metal madness and back again, stopping for brief forays into blacknoize, dreamy lo-fi ambient drift, as well as some under 20 second hypergrind workouts, all tweaked FX and lightspeed blast beats, high end feedback laced dronescapes, and rumbling guitardronebuzzandblur.
With 5 songs to go, Body Hammer lets the songs sprawl, and pushes the sound in even more fractured and fucked up directions, a super distorted in-the-red, lurching black doom trudge through a haze of glitched out distortion and howled vokills, thick crumbling post industrial dirgescapes, all reverbed clank and clatter, thud and pound and crunch, hypnotic static guitar drifts built from layered drones and laced with clean guitar twang, warped bass, and buried vox, until the final 7+ minute track, a harrowing blackened doomic dirge, groaning guitars, and distant vocals, which leaves 5 minutes of silence, before a minute or so of white noise hiss and intercepted voices from the ether.
Fucked up and fucking awesome. Packaged in a dvd case, with a printed insert, and while they last we have the super limited deluxe version that comes with a bunch of extra goodies and is wrapped in a sumo cloth and sealed with a sticker.
MPEG Stream: "Severe Aural Torture"
MPEG Stream: "The Bystander Effect"
MPEG Stream: "Red Pyramid"
MPEG Stream: "When Mental Anguish Exceeds the Physical Capability For Pain"

BODY LOVERS Number One Of Three (Atavistic) cd 15.98
The Body Lovers was the first project that Michael Gira established after dissolving his stalwart abject rock ensemble Swans. For this project (which presumably will be a trilogy of albums, if the title is an indication), Gira has chosen to concentrate on the production techniques which culminated so magnificantly on Swans "Great Annihilator" album - dominated by epic song structures built out of increasingly dense tape splices of archetypal Swans' rock grooves. Here, Gira has all but done away with the song (leaving that for his folk etherialism on Angels of Light) in favor of a beautifully ornate if nervously bleak drone album. Multiple layers of sustained organ chords resonate violently against each other as distant choruses of Branca like single note guitars and anguished non-linguistic chants build in intensity, sounding very much like a claustrophobic and highly controlled version of Hermann Nitsch's monumental Aktion pieces.

BODY VEHICLE Being Being (Black Horizons) 2xcassette 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Only got one of these, long out of print, LIMITED TO 50 COPIES, this one is inexplicably numbered #51. On the kick ass Black Horizons label, Body Vehicle offer up a sprawling collection of buzz and drone, of dark minimalism and creeping ambient shimmer, a little bit modern space synth abstraction, a little bit electro acoustic experimentation...
Housed in a super swank oversized vinyl case, with a full color printed cover insert, and pasted on linernotes inside printed on shimmery blue metallic paper.

BODY, THE & BRAVEYOUNG Nothing Passes (At A Loss) cd 13.98
Rhode Island avant doom duo The Body just swung through town, with their pals in Braveyoung in tow, the two groups touring as a single unit, the increased firepower of this newly formed two headed beast harnessing some serious black energy. And for those who were unable to witness said energy in the flesh, comes this, an audial document of the collaboration, and while we'd never heard Braveyoung before, the resulting sonic onslaught speaks to the two groups' compatibility, the result a sprawling blackened soft cacophony, a series of surprisingly melodic and impossibly lush blackened doomscapes replete with a choir (the very same choir from The Body's epic All The Waters Of The Earth Turn To Blood), and an unlikely cover of a song by sixties voodoo groovers Exuma!!
The opening track explodes with black gouts of crumbling low end, murky blurred riffage, and churning black hole crush, but as the song unfolds, all manner of melodic subtleties blossom, what sounds like soaring strings, muted tangled melodies, moaning low end rumbles, the buzz and crunch peeling way right at the end revealing the swirl of melodies that lurked underneath all along.
The factually titled "Song Two" seems to be the centerpiece, a massive epic clocking in at 15+ minutes, a brooding slow build, long droning tones over a bed of hiss and crackle, the sound quickly growing more melodic, laced with deep throaty cello, tinkling chimes, and lush female vocal harmonies, the sound downright liturgical, hints of Godspeed and other brooding post rockers, eventually the drums kick in, the guitars begin to buzz, and the song is transformed into a fantastic dirge, peppered with long stretches of crumbling low end, keening guitar tones, more ethereal voices, finally building to a massive coda, the drums cranked WAY up in the mix, the guitars too, the sound so in-the-red, you can almost hear all the meters peaking, everything wreathed in clouds of feedback, until finally disappearing in a haze of crumbling buzz.
The title track is the prettiest of the bunch, the two groups laying down a thick fog of blackdrone and hiss drenched rumble, muted streaks of feedback, all blurred into one heaving undulating stretch of corrosive low end, while over the top, Christmas carol like melodies drift and shimmer, the crystalline tones hovering weightless above the black sonic chasm below.
And then finally, the band finish off with their Exuma cover, trading the over-the-top swamp shaman vocals of the original with some gorgeous folky female vox, transforming the sound into a weird sort of dirgey atmospheric doom folk, the sound woozy and warm, washed out and dreamy, the main vox backed up by the lush harmonies of the choir, while The Body and Brave Young, wrap everything in a thick coruscating black haze, a blackened background that more than anything, adds a bit of dreamily sinister texture to the proceedings.
Fantastic stuff, and well worth experiencing live too if you get the chance...
MPEG Stream: "Song Two"
MPEG Stream: "Nothing Passes"

BODYCHOKE Cold River Songs (Relapse) cd 14.98
You might not expect a band featuring former members of Whitehouse and Sutcliffe Jugend to sound a bit like some twisted noiserock hybrid of old Today is The Day, the crushing bombast of the Swans, and the ominous brooding doom and gloom of Joy Division, but that's precisely what Bodychoke conjure up on this, their long out of print final album, circa 1998, now reissued by Relapse.
We always assumed we didn't like Bodychoke all that much, the other records we heard we really not that good, and their version of "Painted Black" was even left off the tUMULt comp featuring multiple version of that iconic song, but holy shit has this record knocked our fucking blocks off. There's plenty of noise for sure, jagged and processed and crumbling and crunchy and blown out, but noise is just one element here, the band in full on noise rock / post rock. Unfurling low slung bass lines, jagged riffing, some cool complex drumming, the arrangements super dynamic, the vocals slipping from ominous deep Michael Gira like croon, to strangled punkish wail.
Opener "Control" pretty much has it all, beginning with a weird cacophony of fractured fragmented noise, the band soon slip into a minimal bass groove, before the guitars kick in and lock in with the snares, the song transformed into a brooding almost Angels Of Light sounding jam, until the chorus, which EXPLODES, and the noise from the beginning returns, wrapping the churning loping crush in a swirling field of feedback and crumbling grit and grime. It's just so intense and heavy and weirdly catchy, and so much better than we ever remember Bodychoke being.
And so it goes, the rest of the record continues to display a sound that's almost more slow building post rock than noise, but most of the tracks are laced with heaping doses of caustic crunch. There's also a cello player in the band, who offers up some gorgeously moaning ambience, and subtle strings here and there. Many of the tracks spread way out, sprawling lugubriously, expansive minimal post punk soundcapes, skitter and whisper, burning slowly until the song is engulfed in tangled riffage and wild tribal pounding, and even the noise, it's so deftly crafted and well placed, it's hard to imagine anyone into heavy music being put off at all, it's just like another layer of heaviness, another level of dynamicism, it's weird, we all had the exact same response when this record came on. "Oh I don't like Bodychoke", but gradually, it seemed everyone was listening to this, ALL the time, even now, as this is being written, not only is it playing on the stereo in the back room, but also in the store, this record just slays. So dark and heavy and brutal and melodic and epic and AMAZING. Based on nothing but how often this gets played in the store and how often we've listened to this since it came in, we're beginning to think maybe we should have made this Record Of The Week, so consider this an EXTREME highlight, and thus overwhelmingly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Control"
MPEG Stream: "Cold River Song"
MPEG Stream: "Your Submission"

BOGHOSSIAN, HERVE Mouvements (Raster-Noton) cd 15.98

BOGNER, URSULA Pluto Hat Einen Mond (Mass Media Verlag) 7" 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Another archival bit of lost sixties synthesizer music from the very mysterious Urusula Bogner. Or is it? We made the Ursula Bogner full length our Record Of The Week a while back, a collection that purported to be the music of a British housewife, who was basically a secret one woman BBC Radiophonic Workshop, spending her time at home during the day, collecting and building analog synthesizers, constructing soundproofed recording studios, inventing strange instruments, and most importantly, creating some incredible spaced out, subtly psychedelic electronic music. But the catch is, she just might not be real, and in fact, might just be the construct of Jan Jelinek, whose Faitiche label 'discovered' Bogner and assembled that collection. You can read more about Mrs. Bogner in our review of the full length, but as far as we were concerned, it hardly mattered, if she was in fact real, it's an amazing discovery, if it is actually a hoax, then it's an incredibly and meticulously pulled off hoax indeed, and after all, it all comes down to the music, which in either case, is absolutely fantastic.
This super limited 7", was released to coincide with a show / exhibit of music and drawings by the mysterious Mrs. Bogner, the sleeve features what we would assume is a photo of the lady herself, as well as a drawing of hers on the backside, as well as some postcards, the music though, is again, awesome, sci fi new age, primitive space music, analog synth explorations, a gorgeous starscape of squiggly high end shimmer, flurries of warbly black hole muted melodies, streaks of hiss, everything wreathed in reverb and echo, primitive FX, even some super stripped down robotic drum machine, total Lost In Space otherworldly cinematic sixties sci fi space wave bliss. So whether it's archival and historical, or modern and a bit cheeky, we'll still happily proclaim Mrs. Ursula Bogner our favorite sixties sci fi synth pioneer!
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!

BOGNER, URSULA Recordings 1969-1988 (Faitiche) cd 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
So when you were a kid, what do you think your Mom got up to while you were at school, or out playing with your pals? Doing laundry? Cleaning the house? Doing the dishes? A little gardening? Or maybe playing bridge? Canasta? Going to the grocery store? How about collecting and building analog synthesizers? Building a soundproof recording studio in the extra room? Recording strange space-y minimal electronic music on reel to reel tapes? Or building an 'orgon accumulator' in the backyard? Such were the activities of a mild mannered housewife named Ursula Bogner, who in addition to being a pharmacist, as well as a loving wife and mother, just so happened to also be obsessed with electronic music and analog synthesizers, but unlike others with similar interests (were there other 30 something housewives so obsessed?), Bogner didn't just read about electronic music, she attended seminars, followed the activities of various groups and musicians (even apparently sharing her children's enthusiasm for new wave pop!) eventually deciding to create music herself.
She never released any recordings, didn't even really make public her hobby, instead, she simply spent her free time, creating, composing, recording, experimenting, for over 20 years, amassing an incredible body of work. All of that wouldn't merit anything but a cursory glance and maybe a chuckle, if the music weren't amazing, but it is, fantastical and inspired, primitive and raw, playful and childlike, but also, haunting and mysterious, otherworldly, and so incredibly varied, from spare academic sounding minimalism, to Perrey & Kingsley style playfulness, to super stark click and skitter that would be right at home on Raster-Noton, to swirling fantastical spaced out soundscapes that could have been sixties sci-fi soundtracks. The sounds are so evocative, so mysterious, it almost seems impossible that they were recorded by a Mom in a spare room in a house in the suburbs.
The collection opens with "Begleitung Fur Tuba", which indeed features tuba-like tones, locked into a playful grove with a bleepy bloopy rhythm, which is eventually joined by streaks of static, and a warbly main melody. From there, highlights include "Proto" which is kaleidoscopic and groovy with a super minimal click-track rhythm. "2 Ton" is almost like space age lounge music, with it's reverbed guitar like shimmer, and slithery tempo. "Speichen" is another playful number, the burbles and bloops, and definitely predicts groups like James Bong, Luke Vibert, Boards Of Canada and the like. "Punkte" is another minimal groover, with a hissy static rhythm, a bloopy bassline, and all manner of descending and ascending electronic tones, as well as pizzicato bleeps that almost sound like an alien thumb piano. The longest track is "Soloresonanzen" and is maybe the dreamiest, taking the minimal click of Raster-Noton, and draping it over slowly shifting layers of electronic whir and buzz, peppered with bits of click and glitch, textural hiss, woozy melodic fragments, very dreamlike and meditative. And finally the record finishes with a brief burst of tangly scribbly electronic whir and skree, all mad scientist machines gone haywire, but deftly arranged into a pretty alien lullaby, weird and wonderful.
Bogner's music was discovered via some pretty incredible happenstance, Jan Jelinek, who runs the Faitiche label, met Bogner's son on a plane and the two got to talking, Jelinek was an electronic musician, so was Bogner's deceased Mother weirdly enough, and well, the rest is history. Or is it? There has been much talk that this is all a massive hoax, or more correctly, the ultimate concept album. Carefully crafted down to the tiniest details, photos, back story, Bogner's artwork, everything. In some ways it doesn't really matter, in fact, it's almost more impressive if the whole thing was in fact fabricated, but you know what, fuck it, it's so much more fun to just go along with it...
The cd is gorgeously packaged in a thick book-like digipak, with extensive liner notes from Jan Jelinek, notes on each song, lots of photos, as well as various reproductions of Bogner's various outer space linocuts.
MPEG Stream: "Begelitung Fur Tuba"
MPEG Stream: "Inversion"
MPEG Stream: "Metazoon"
MPEG Stream: "Atmosphare 1"
MPEG Stream: "Punkte"

BOGNER, URSULA Recordings 1969-1988 (Faitiche) lp 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
So when you were a kid, what do you think your Mom got up to while you were at school, or out playing with your pals? Doing laundry? Cleaning the house? Doing the dishes? A little gardening? Or maybe playing bridge? Canasta? Going to the grocery store? How about collecting and building analog synthesizers? Building a soundproof recording studio in the extra room? Recording strange space-y minimal electronic music on reel to reel tapes? Or building an 'orgon accumulator' in the backyard? Such were the activities of a mild mannered housewife named Ursula Bogner, who in addition to being a pharmacist, as well as a loving wife and mother, just so happened to also be obsessed with electronic music and analog synthesizers, but unlike others with similar interests (were there other 30 something housewives so obsessed?), Bogner didn't just read about electronic music, she attended seminars, followed the activities of various groups and musicians (even apparently sharing her children's enthusiasm for new wave pop!) eventually deciding to create music herself.
She never released any recordings, didn't even really make public her hobby, instead, she simply spent her free time, creating, composing, recording, experimenting, for over 20 years, amassing an incredible body of work. All of that wouldn't merit anything but a cursory glance and maybe a chuckle, if the music weren't amazing, but it is, fantastical and inspired, primitive and raw, playful and childlike, but also, haunting and mysterious, otherworldly, and so incredibly varied, from spare academic sounding minimalism, to Perrey & Kingsley style playfulness, to super stark click and skitter that would be right at home on Raster-Noton, to swirling fantastical spaced out soundscapes that could have been sixties sci-fi soundtracks. The sounds are so evocative, so mysterious, it almost seems impossible that they were recorded by a Mom in a spare room in a house in the suburbs.
The collection opens with "Begleitung Fur Tuba", which indeed features tuba-like tones, locked into a playful grove with a bleepy bloopy rhythm, which is eventually joined by streaks of static, and a warbly main melody. From there, highlights include "Proto" which is kaleidoscopic and groovy with a super minimal click-track rhythm. "2 Ton" is almost like space age lounge music, with it's reverbed guitar like shimmer, and slithery tempo. "Speichen" is another playful number, the burbles and bloops, and definitely predicts groups like James Bong, Luke Vibert, Boards Of Canada and the like. "Punkte" is another minimal groover, with a hissy static rhythm, a bloopy bassline, and all manner of descending and ascending electronic tones, as well as pizzicato bleeps that almost sound like an alien thumb piano. The longest track is "Soloresonanzen" and is maybe the dreamiest, taking the minimal click of Raster-Noton, and draping it over slowly shifting layers of electronic whir and buzz, peppered with bits of click and glitch, textural hiss, woozy melodic fragments, very dreamlike and meditative. And finally the record finishes with a brief burst of tangly scribbly electronic whir and skree, all mad scientist machines gone haywire, but deftly arranged into a pretty alien lullaby, weird and wonderful.
Bogner's music was discovered via some pretty incredible happenstance, Jan Jelinek, who runs the Faitiche label, met Bogner's son on a plane and the two got to talking, Jelinek was an electronic musician, so was Bogner's deceased Mother weirdly enough, and well, the rest is history. Or is it? There has been much talk that this is all a massive hoax, or more correctly, the ultimate concept album. Carefully crafted down to the tiniest details, photos, back story, Bogner's artwork, everything. In some ways it doesn't really matter, in fact, it's almost more impressive if the whole thing was in fact fabricated, but you know what, fuck it, it's so much more fun to just go along with it...
The cd is gorgeously packaged in a thick book-like digipak, with extensive liner notes from Jan Jelinek, notes on each song, lots of photos, as well as various reproductions of Bogner's various outer space linocuts.
MPEG Stream: "Begelitung Fur Tuba"
MPEG Stream: "Inversion"
MPEG Stream: "Metazoon"
MPEG Stream: "Atmosphare 1"
MPEG Stream: "Punkte"

BOGNER, URSULA Sonne = Black Box (Faitiche) lp 17.98
Several years ago, we made the first archival release from housewife turned experimental electronic musician Ursula Bogner our Record Of The Week, even knowing full well, that there probably is no Ursula Bogner. On the surface it definitely seemed like the find of a lifetime. The story involved someone's casual interaction with a man on a plane, discovering that this man was the son of a virtually unheard experimental electronic musician, a mom and pharmacist, who had built a recording studio in their home, and who had recorded for twenty years, those recordings proving to be impossibly prescient, the sort of sounds that would stand up to similar recordings at the time by Delia Derbyshire and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. That initial release was filled with all manner of documentation, photos, notes, like we said, it seemed like the real deal. But it also seemed like an ingeniously perpetrated hoax. The man in question who supposedly ran into Bogner's son on a plane, was none other than Jan Jelinek, whose music is not all that dissimilar to Bogner's. Perhaps we're just the suspicious types, but there seems to be little or no information about Bogner, other than that provided by the label, which could just speak to her absolute obscurity, but could also speak to the fact that it's all a put on. To be honest, we want to believe it. How cool is that story? But that said, as we mentioned in the review of that first release, if it IS a hoax, we like it even more. So meticulously planned, photos, hand written notes, then the musicÉ Similar to those funereal violin cds we carried a while back (that guy not only recorded all the cds, he also wrote a whole book about the history of funereal violin!), it would require a whole other level of creativity, but enough about all that, it is ultimately about the music, as much as we love the story, true or not, and like the first record, this is another fantastic collection of 'early' primitive recordings, these newly unearthed tapes featuring a focus on the voice, which was not present before, and our first actual exposure to the voice of Bogner, who supposedly passed away in 1994. Opening with piano and vox, the sound fluctuates as the tape speed falters, the sound is murky and definitely sounds old, plenty of spaced out effects, female voices processed into mysterious melodies, percolating rhythms, primitive and very low fidelity. Some of the tracks feature kitschy sounding organs and snippets of looped pop music, but they are transformed into cool sixties style tape music, occasionally lush and lovely, other timeshaunting and austere, there's one track in particular which finds Bogner reciting numbers over a backdrop of hiss and static and blurred melody, that most definitely is a nod, intentional or not, to the perennial aQ fave The Conet Project.
As with the other record, there are expertly penned liner notes, translations of original texts that Bogner wrote to accompany the pieces (especially the boxed cd version which features a massive 100+ page book of liner notes and artwork), all very cryptic and Eno-esque, tons of photos, of installations, of the reel of tape these tracks were discovered on as well as Bogner herself (again, especially in the book that accompanies the cd!). Very recommended of course, for fans of vintage sixties experimental music, of Jan Jelinek, and of impeccably crafted musical hoaxes.
MPEG Stream: "Sonne = Black Box"
MPEG Stream: "Jubilaux"
MPEG Stream: "Nach Europa"
MPEG Stream: "Trabant"

BOGNER, URSULA Sonne = Black Box (Faitiche) cd + book 42.00
Several years ago, we made the first archival release from housewife turned experimental electronic musician Ursula Bogner our Record Of The Week, even knowing full well, that there probably is no Ursula Bogner. On the surface it definitely seemed like the find of a lifetime. The story involved someone's casual interaction with a man on a plane, discovering that this man was the son of a virtually unheard experimental electronic musician, a mom and pharmacist, who had built a recording studio in their home, and who had recorded for twenty years, those recordings proving to be impossibly prescient, the sort of sounds that would stand up to similar recordings at the time by Delia Derbyshire and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. That initial release was filled with all manner of documentation, photos, notes, like we said, it seemed like the real deal. But it also seemed like an ingeniously perpetrated hoax. The man in question who supposedly ran into Bogner's son on a plane, was none other than Jan Jelinek, whose music is not all that dissimilar to Bogner's. Perhaps we're just the suspicious types, but there seems to be little or no information about Bogner, other than that provided by the label, which could just speak to her absolute obscurity, but could also speak to the fact that it's all a put on. To be honest, we want to believe it. How cool is that story? But that said, as we mentioned in the review of that first release, if it IS a hoax, we like it even more. So meticulously planned, photos, hand written notes, then the musicÉ Similar to those funereal violin cds we carried a while back (that guy not only recorded all the cds, he also wrote a whole book about the history of funereal violin!), it would require a whole other level of creativity, but enough about all that, it is ultimately about the music, as much as we love the story, true or not, and like the first record, this is another fantastic collection of 'early' primitive recordings, these newly unearthed tapes featuring a focus on the voice, which was not present before, and our first actual exposure to the voice of Bogner, who supposedly passed away in 1994. Opening with piano and vox, the sound fluctuates as the tape speed falters, the sound is murky and definitely sounds old, plenty of spaced out effects, female voices processed into mysterious melodies, percolating rhythms, primitive and very low fidelity. Some of the tracks feature kitschy sounding organs and snippets of looped pop music, but they are transformed into cool sixties style tape music, occasionally lush and lovely, other timeshaunting and austere, there's one track in particular which finds Bogner reciting numbers over a backdrop of hiss and static and blurred melody, that most definitely is a nod, intentional or not, to the perennial aQ fave The Conet Project.
As with the other record, there are expertly penned liner notes, translations of original texts that Bogner wrote to accompany the pieces (especially the boxed cd version which features a massive 100+ page book of liner notes and artwork), all very cryptic and Eno-esque, tons of photos, of installations, of the reel of tape these tracks were discovered on as well as Bogner herself (again, especially in the book that accompanies the cd!). Very recommended of course, for fans of vintage sixties experimental music, of Jan Jelinek, and of impeccably crafted musical hoaxes.
MPEG Stream: "Sonne = Black Box"
MPEG Stream: "Jubilaux"
MPEG Stream: "Nach Europa"
MPEG Stream: "Trabant"

BOGUS BLIMP Cords. Wires (Jester) cd 14.98
Bogus Blimp were nothing like we expected. I mean, they're from Norway. They release records on Garm's (from black metallers Ulver) label Jester. Who could have guessed that they would sound like circus music, or gipsy music, or sort of like Tom Waits. No one. But it is pretty cool! 'Cords. Wires' is Bogus Blimp's second record of dark carnivalesque / horror movie mini-epics with lots of samples, bizarre muttering, raspy vocals and strange sounds galore.
RealAudio clip: "Brothers of Space"
RealAudio clip: "No Cords"

BOHREN & DER CLUB OF GORE Beileid (Ipecac) cd 13.98
Our favorite Teutonic twilight doomjazz combo, the awesome Bohren & Der Club Of Gore, is back with a new, 35+ minute ep, once again released via mega fan Mike Patton's Ipecac label (as have been their past few domestic outings). It's classic Bohren we know and love, more of their usual slow, sad, sparse jazz, that's "heavy" and noirish and minimalistic. But this ep also introduces a WTF? factor we weren't expecting. Of the three (long) songs here, one's a cover. And it goes a long way to establishing their metal cred, more than the Immortal and Emperor t-shirts they sometime wear (with suits) on stage. No, rather than cover a black metal song, as you might expect, they instead proved that they're real old school metal fans by doing "Catch My Heart" by '80s German heavy metal band Warlock, you know, the outfit fronted by blonde metal siren Doro Pesch before she went solo.
It's a nice, melodic song, and Bohren successfully adapt it to their own style, extending it to over 13 slowly trickling minutes, and making it all the more emotive and moody. And... they got Mike Patton to sing it. Which is where your mileage may start to vary, depending on how much of a Mike Patton fan you are. Patton doesn't get too over the top or anything, he sticks to a deep voiced, torch-song croon that's only a little bit weird, reminding us a bit of the singer for Urfaust in fact. But, we kinda think they should have done it as an instrumental (which is of course Bohren's usual mode), and also that way the weirdness of doing a Warlock cover woulda been a bit more subtle. Or, if they had to have somebody sing it, maybe they should have just gotten Doro herself!!
Aside from the presence of Patton's vocals, though, "Catch My Heart" sounds very much like a typical Bohren piece. As do the other two songs here, quietly droning, glacially paced, utterly gorgeous, no vocals. "Zombies Never Die (Blues)" is all drifting near-ambient synth, adorned with some smokey sax which tends to give this the vibe of the soundtrack to an '80s Jonathan Demme film, wistfully perfect for a late night street corner scene between two young lovers. The final, title track, is the longest, over 14 minutes, wonderfully atmospheric, shimmering textures from the trap kit, limpid notes arising from the keys, no sax. Nice.
But, the Warlock song isn't the only thing that's really weird about this ep. Another truly WTF? element to this release is the cover art, as discerning music fans will recognize it as some sort of tribute to the album Fun At The Funeral by the band Jesters Of Destiny (you know, the late '80s LA alt-metal act beloved by our Finnish friends Circle, they reissued that album on their Ektro label!). Same logo/typeface, almost identical (but different) artwork. No explanation. We're really curious what the deal is with that, 'cause it's such an obscure thing to reference and has nothing to do with anything else about this release, if they'd have done a Jesters cover on the ep rather than a Warlock one, it would make more sense. Instead, it's a total non-sequitur that almost nobody will even "get".
And thus, Bohren are somehow even cooler now than we already thought they were!!!
MPEG Stream: "Catch My Heart"
MPEG Stream: "Beileid"

BOHREN & DER CLUB OF GORE Black Earth (Wonder) cd 17.98
We've been championing this fantastic German dirge-jazz band for years. Now Mike Patton has gotten into the act, doing a domestic release of the most recent Bohren disc, 2002's Black Earth, on his Ipecac imprint.
What we said upon its original release: Black Earth is the dark as night new album from an old AQ fave. Is it the heaviest album on this list? It is if you understand Bohren's concept of "quiet heaviness", using their self-described "horror jazz" instrumentation of subtly-brushed drums, down-tuned double bass, sparse piano, Fender Rhodes, mellotron, and melancholic saxophone to create an atmosphere of heaviness "which is otherwise only achieved using distorted guitars and lots of noise."
Our appetite was whetted for his release by an email from Bjoern Eichstaedt (of Caacrinolas), our German friend who originally introduced us to Bohren. He described a recent Bohren concert in which the band played in a cubic room, the walls painted completely black, on a black stage, without light -- all wearing black suits. Live, they used two basses for maximum bottom end. He spoke to them afterwards and learned that black metal is their main influence, noticing also that they were all wearing t-shirts from such bands as Immortal. Yet Bohren's music is far from loud and fast. Metallic or not, it's certainly DOOM. Creeping, plodding, yet gorgeously, sleepily melodic. Each note played on the piano, each hit of the snare, carries great weight, and beauty. Their music falls like thick drops of liquid into a still, dark, black pool, rippling the surface with unknown echoes. Foreboding, and entrancing. Certainly more than deserving of this disc's black on black, skull embossed packaging.
The sultry, smoky saxophone introduced on their previous album Sunset Mission is still in evidence, though not so much as before. When it's present, it only adds to the noir-ish vibe, great for wandering the rainy streets of night-time San Francisco with this playing in your Walkman, let me tell you. And compared to Sunset Mission, this new album definitely extends Bohren's methods to further extremes: slower, moodier, dronier, lovelier: "heavier". Quite quietly heavy, indeed.
MPEG Stream: "Midnight Black Earth"
MPEG Stream: "Skeletal Remains"
MPEG Stream: "The Art Of Coffins"

BOHREN & DER CLUB OF GORE Black Earth (Wonder) 2lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Now on (double) vinyl. "Black Earth" is the dark as night new album from an old AQ fave. Is it the heaviest album on this list? It is if you understand Bohren's concept of "quiet heaviness", using their self-described "horror jazz" instrumentation of subtly-brushed drums, down-tuned double bass, sparse piano, Fender Rhodes, mellotron, and melancholic saxophone to create an atmosphere of heaviness "which is otherwise only achieved using distorted guitars and lots of noise."
Our appetite was whetted for his release by an email from Bjoern Eichstaedt (of Caacrinolas), our German friend who originally introduced us to Bohren. He described a recent Bohren concert in which the band played in a cubic room, the walls painted completely black, on a black stage, without light -- all wearing black suits. Live, they used two basses for maximum bottom end. He spoke to them afterwards and learned that black metal is their main influence, noticing also that they were all wearing t-shirts from such bands as Immortal. Yet Bohren's music is far from loud and fast. Metallic or not, it's certainly DOOM. Creeping, plodding, yet gorgeously, sleepily melodic. Each note played on the piano, each hit of the snare, carries great weight, and beauty. Their music falls like thick drops of liquid into a still, dark, black pool, rippling the surface with unknown echoes. Foreboding, and entrancing. Certainly more than deserving of this disc's black on black, skull embossed packaging.
The sultry, smoky saxophone introduced on their previous album "Sunset Mission" is still in evidence, though not so much as before. When it's present, it only adds to the noir-ish vibe, great for wandering the rainy streets of night-time San Francisco with this playing in your Walkman, let me tell you. And compared to "Sunset Mission", this new album definitely extends Bohren's methods to further extremes: slower, moodier, dronier, lovelier: "heavier". Quite quietly heavy, indeed.
RealAudio clip: "Midnight Black Earth"
RealAudio clip: "Skeletal Remains"
RealAudio clip: "The Art Of Coffins"

BOHREN & DER CLUB OF GORE Geisterfaust (Wonder) cd 16.98
Not metal -- not remotely. So why did they get written up in Terrorizer magazine? Well this German four-piece isn't exactly a jazz band either, even though they utilize such instruments as Fender Rhodes electric piano, vibraphone, double bass, and saxophone. No, they're actually really really heavy though it's always hard to explain how something this quiet and this pretty can be "heavy". But you'll feel it when you hear it. Their special brand of Teutonic, minimalist, noir-jazz influenced "heaviness" is not to be denied. And so it makes sense that they like grim black metal and that people who like grim black metal like them. A very special band, certainly unknowable to some, but very well liked 'round here. So we were pretty excited to hear that the release of this new album Geisterfaust ("Ghostfist") was impending. And it does not disappoint. Five tracks for the five fingers of the Ghostfist (skeletally represented in the cd digipak). Almost one full hour.
Thusly, a Bohren album cannot be properly absorbed in little snippets. The time frame within which their compositions work is not conducive to quick scans or distracting environments -- even the shortest of the five tracks here isn't much less than eight minutes in length, and the opening track "Zeigefinger" is a 20+ minute experience. So, when I got my copy of this (oooh) I took it home and drew the curtains, lit the candles (well, ok I didn't really light any candles, but could have), and assumed a relaxed pose in order to let the music of Geisterfaust infiltrate my consciousness. Which it did. At Bohren's usual glacial pace, which utterly starts to alter one's perception of time. The long songs are endless...then over. Eternity telescoped. So spare and melodious. Like magnified drops of rainwater, falling on the petals of a shivering flower. The vast space of Bohren's music makes the listener concentrate, and gives each and every note (a vibraphone chime, perhaps, surrounded by a nimbus of a gentle cymbal-strike's shimmer) extra weight and meaning. The Bohren aesthetic certainly holds that less is more. Even though there's guests -- a tuba player and a choir, even -- augmenting the basic Bohren quartet on several of these tracks, you're never overwhelmed with sound, but with silence. And the sheer *subsonics* that a band with two bassists can generate. Geisterfaust flows exquisitely, the listener's pulse rate slowing. Calm. Cool. Bliss. Stupor. So gorgeous, soo heavy. There we go again. This IS heavy. You'll see.
Basically it's like some utterly slow crushing doom band (the Melvins at their most monolithic -- Khanate -- Caspar Brotzmann Massaker -- Corrupted -- Gore) with their instrumentation transposed into the "jazz" realm. The snare only brushed. The distorted electric guitar replaced with the tinkle of a Rhodes piano. Notes not riffs. Played like a dirge, with hints of drone, sombre and sad, but beautiful. There's only a smidgen of saxophone (dreaded by some) that is brought in only at the very end of the last very track, one that is almost speedy by Bohren standards, to act as the light at end of the tunnel, the sun's rays just over the horizon...
Our friend Bjoern in Germany (of Caacrinolas), who first turned Allan and thus AQ on to Bohren five or six years ago, emailed excitedly about the release this new album (that's often when we hear from Bjoern, actually!). Here's a quote from his email: "...fucking amazing!!! Better probably than anything they have done before! You need this for AQ!!! It will sell zillions of copies!" Well of course. As a follow up to the Ipecac-released Black Earth, this is an even greater triumph. Brilliant.
MPEG Stream: "Daumen"
MPEG Stream: "Kleiner Finger"

BOHREN & DER CLUB OF GORE Gore Motel (Epistrophy) cd 16.98
And, along with the long-awaited "Midnight Radio", we've also managed to import some copies of another Bohren & Der Club of Gore disc, their debut from 1994. Just like their other two albums, it's instrumental soundtracky stuff: dark, stark, slow-moving, and lovely. For those who crave comparisons, this is like a super-dirgey version of Scenic. Music for a dark-night campfire out on the plains of Mordor. Slow and beautiful, relying heavily on the ultra-heavy subsonics of the bass and the eerie wavering tones of the organ. Instead of the more appropriate late-night urban photography found on their two other albums, Bohren puzzles us with their packaging of this (Bruce Lee on the cover? A logo that incorporates an upsidedown cross and the number of the beast?). Are they being serious? Well, the music certainly sounds serious. Very atmospheric and evocative, indeed chilling. Get "Midnight Radio" first, then this and their newer disc "Sunset Mission".
MPEG Stream: "Sabbat Schwarzer Highway"
MPEG Stream: "Die Fulci Nummer"

BOHREN & DER CLUB OF GORE Gore Motel (Epistrophy) 2lp 39.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This is nice. For all you Bohren Und Der Club Of Gore fans (or at least 19 of you, as that's how many of these we were able to get), we've got a deluxe vinyl pressing, the first time ever on LP for this, the debut album from the AQ fave German instrumental dirge-jazz group. The import price is helped out by the fact that this comes in a black box with "BOHREN" stamped in silver on the lid, and within the box you not only will find two slabs of vinyl weighted down with their magnificent music, but also tucked in with those there's sundry printed ephemera of apparent Bohren-related interest (b&w art and text, mainly in German). The Gore Motel album was first released on cd back in 1994. When we discovered Borhen a few years after that and got their discs for the store, we wrote the following about this album: "...dark, stark, slow-moving, and lovely. For those who crave comparisons, this is like a super-dirgey version of Scenic. Music for a dark-night campfire out on the plains of Mordor. Slow and beautiful, relying heavily on the ultra-heavy subsonics of the bass and the eerie wavering tones of the organ...Very atmospheric and evocative, indeed chilling."
Of course, this is a very limited, numbered pressing (300 copies!) and, to repeat, we only received a handful. First come, first served on this one.
MPEG Stream: "Sabbat Schwarzer Highway"
MPEG Stream: "Die Fulci Nummer"

BOHREN & DER CLUB OF GORE Midnight Radio (Epistrophy) 2cd 24.00
Here's an old favorite -- a former AQ Record Of The Week in fact -- that we've been unable to get for a long time now, until just this week that is. So we thought we'd better relist it, especially since when we relisted the Ipecac reissue of Bohren's most recent album Black Earth we sold a whole bunch of copies to folks who'd missed it the first time, and this one is perhaps even more essential not to miss! So here's a portion of our review from the first time we had this:
At last, we've managed to import some copies of this fantastic 1995 album by this mysterious German instrumental band! I (Allan) discovered them via a friend in Germany (an AQ-customer who, like many others, has been so kind as to turn *us* on to stuff: it's a two-way street). I was visiting for the 1999 total solar eclipse (well, among other things; I was also in the land of schnitzel for a metal festival...) and heard a tape of this sprawling double cd set in the context of a late night, post-eclipse, wine-drinking get-together. But when I finally got a hold of the actual album some weeks later (we couldn't even find one in the local record stores, my friend had to special order it and send a copy to me in the States), I was happy to discover that it wasn't merely my memories of the wondrous eclipse that had imbued Midnight Radio with such a gorgeous sense of darkness and dread, but that it really was an amazing album!
After Midnight Radio, Bohren released Sunset Mission (later followed by Black Earth). If the now out of print Sunset Mission album was the ultimate noir-jazz soundtrack to a hypothetical first person shooter video game set in afterdark Berlin, then this aptly-titled previous double cd set, (sans saxophone, an addition to the Sunset lineup) is the perfect accompaniment to a late night autobahn death ride, cruise control on, cigarettes burning. There's even a moment, two hours or so into it, when sun starts to come up over the horizon (you'll hear what we mean when you get to the end of the second disc).
Now, we're always talking about "hypnotic" music here at AQ, but this is music for when you're *already* hypnotized, slumped near bed at home or cruising down that infinite highway at 3am, aware of only your own thoughts and the darkness all around made even more black by your headlights. (Maybe this is what some of those unexplicable people who I saw driving around during the eclipse were listening to...for two very long minutes anyway.) Heavy, heavy bass notes, glacially deployed, crushingly beautiful slow-motion guitar and dark, liquid pools of piano, with a narcotized drummer who must be passing in and out of consciousness to occasionally brush his snare and hi-hat. Midnight Radio enters into the tiny pantheon of somehow similarly intended doomy double cd sets beloved of AQ (Esoteric's Pernicious Enigma and Epistomological Despondency, Corrupted's Llenandose de Gusanos). Of course, Bohren is not at all metallic like those two outfits, but is knowing of the same gloombliss. Slow and low, and highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "3"
MPEG Stream: "5"

BOHREN & DER CLUB OF GORE Sunset Mission (Wonder) cd 16.98
BACK IN STOCK! The second repressing of this AQ fave... here's what we said last time it came back into print...
After being out of print for almost FIVE years, Bohren's third album Sunset Mission finally gets re-released this time in a spiffy digipak!
Back when we first listed this (the first Bohren we'd managed to get a hold of for the store), this is what we said: Allan discovered Bohren on a trip to Germany in 1999, with their '95 double-cd Midnight Radio, an amazing extended late-night autobahn driving soundscape, slow, low, instrumental "lounge" music, utterly perfect for a mesmerizing midnight listen. Sunset Mission, their third album, was originally released in 2000 and is similar to Midnight Radio, more overtly "jazzy" perhaps, with the addition of smokey tenor saxophone to their piano/drums/bass lineup. Their original US distributor (electronica/techno label Studio K-7) labeled this ambient, but that's far from the mark. From the song titles ("Prowler", "On Demon Wings", "Black City Skyline", "Darkstalker") to the packaging (photos of nighttime Berlin and dangerous weaponry) to the music (a downtempo film noir soundtrack like the slowest, dirgiest Melvins played by Morphine, darker than Photek, moody and gorgeous) this is the nightmare "ambience" of a nowhere jazz-lounge you'll never leave alive.
By now, Bohren & Der Club Of Gore are a firm AQ favorite, with their recent album Geisterfaust sure to show up in a lot our our customers' year 2005 top-ten lists. Meanwhile Bohren's Black Earth, Gore Motel and Midnight Radio have always been steady sellers, so it's nice to have Sunset Mission back in the racks as well! Of the Bohren discography, Sunset Mission seems to be the jazziest (if indeed it's appropriate to use that term), definitely with the most sax of any of 'em, perhaps coming closest to its follow-up Black Earth in sound.
MPEG Stream: "Prowler"
MPEG Stream: "On Demon Wings"

BOLLANI, STEFANO Piano Solo (ECM) cd 22.00
Bbbb-oo-rrr-ing.

BOLTON, WIL Quarry Bank (Time Released Sound) cd-r + hand sewn book + printed canvas bag 45.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Release number ten from local label Time Released Sound, a one man operation that produces some of THEE most extravagantly packaged micro releases we have ever laid eyes on, with every element of every release meticulously assembled by hand, or built, or drawn, or collaged, or whatever it takes to realize these miniature works of art. Which is precisely what these are, they are records obviously, and the music is fantastic, but that steep price tag is because this music is paired with the perfect packaging, that both represent the sounds within, the unique and ephemeral nature of sound and of music, and these works of art offer a visual analogue to the music, thematically linked in a way that's not always super obvious.
Needless to say, every release is fantastic, sonically, visually and aesthetically, and we're lucky to even get any of these considering how ultra limited they are.
Which brings us to this, the latest piece of musical art from Time Released Sound, which comes to us from musician / field recordist Will Bolton, who here indulges in his interest in the industrial revolution in the UK, by setting his miniature epics in the Quarry Bank Mill, one of the largest and most important textile mills in the UK, and is again an actual functioning mill. Bolton made repeated trips to the mill to capture the sounds of manufacture, of looms and machines, all manner of industrial whir and clatter, rumble and hum, around which he weaves lush and lovely drones and drifty bits of soft focus psychedelic folk. We're reminded a bit of Rameses III, a sort of pastoral folk, but performed on the floor of some old functioning factory.
Little bits of acoustic guitar shimmer, shards of melodic filigree, looped and fragmented, layered and woven into the sounds of machinery, Bolton's own drones deftly blurred into those of the mill, until it's impossible to tell what is field recording and what is music, until the music gradually fades leaving just the sound of the mill, which is surprisingly musical on its own. A deft application of effects, and of manipulate samples, sound reversed and layered, truncated and stretched out, creating these darkly delicate lullabies, rife with music box tinkles and folky flutter, laid out in dreamlike swells, and draped over the sounds of that aged mill. So lovely.
And as always, the packaging is top notch, a printed, hand distressed, 6" square cloth bag, made from raw unfinished cotton, at the actual Quarry Bank Mill, there's also a hand distressed, printed and numbered tag, while inside, the disc is in a full color digipak, and is accompanied by a hand worked and sewn textured paper booklet, with liner notes, as well as images from and photos of the mill. So fantastic, and SO LIMITED. JUST 100 COPIES. We have a dozen and will most likely not be able to get more.
MPEG Stream: "Quarry Bank"
MPEG Stream: "Water Frame"
MPEG Stream: "A Black Mist"

BONE SHERIFF Huh Again (Diagnosis...Don't! ) 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.
One of three new 3" cd-r releases on the Grey Daturas' Diagnosis ... Don't! label, each super limited, and housed in cool hand made packaging.
Bone Sheriff is another sort of supergroup style match up (sort a like the Stumps, made up of members of Gate, Mrtyu, Sandoz Lab Technicians, Seht, Nether Dawn, With Throats As Fine As Needles) that should have AQ customers frothing at the mouth. One part Simon Taylor of Aussie dirge sludge combo Whitehorse and Rob Mayson of the Grey Daturas and Maggoted, teaming up to make some serious noise, armed with a seriously unlikely arsenal of soundmaking implements: cymbals, glass, contact mics, bass and keytar. The disc's centerpiece is a 13 minute + wall of densely layered guitardrone, crumbling and rumbling, bits of distorted melody spread out over an expansive stretch of rough raw chordal hum. Heavy as fuck, but kinda pretty at the same time. This glorious drone is surrounded on all sides by a handful of super short tracks, tiny jagged fragments of freaked out sound, from grinding Wolf Eyes like glitchy splatter, to Merzbow-ian splintering noise, to squealing sinewaves to barely audible extreme high/low Ikeda style minimalism.
Packaged in thick textured paper black mini 3" sleeves, with a printed (band name, label info, liner notes) Japanese style obi. Nice.
MPEG Stream: "track 4"
MPEG Stream: "track 7"

BONE SHERIFF Moonee Ponds (Sabbatical) cd-r 8.98

BONE SHERIFF / 1/16TH HEADED split (self-released) 2xcassette 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Just a single copy of this in stock, a double cassette featuring Bone Sheriff, which just so happens to feature members of longtime aQ faves Grey Daturas and Whitehorse, sharing a split with the oddly named band 1/16th Headed, who we know nothing about.
Bone Sheriff do that blissed out heavy noisy guitar drone thing, no idea what 1/16th do, but we're guessing it's probably of a similarly noisy and droney ilk.
The packaging is super sweet. An oversized plastic case, silkscreened, with a sewn canvas pouch inside housing the two tapes, a silkscreened patch, and a printed cardstock insert. Nice. And the ONLY copy...

BONECLOUD Chrysalis 1951-1926 (Twonicorn) cassette 7.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Another transmission from on high, channelled through the earthly vessel known as Bonecloud, a mysterious drone duo from Ireland, who share at least one member with equally beloved outfit Quetzolcoatl. Two twenty minute slow burning epics, wide open expanses of scrape and shimmer, looped and cyclical soundscapes of metallic shimmer and blurred melody, Taj Mahal Travellers playing a piece by Phill Niblock, reinterpreted by the Jewelled Antler collective and recorded by William Basinksi. Long stretches of shapeless vocals, wheezing chords stretched out forever, woven into some glistening sonic fabric, twisting and changing shape, and color, and texture, fuzzy and warbly, blurry and buzzy, washed out and smeared, gauzy and smoky, a super abstract, ephemeral raga. The sound of an old tape dubbed over and over and over, broadcast through rusted loudspeakers mounted on trees, listened to with eyes closed, wet grass against your back and warm wind and soft rain on your face...
As with all Twonicorn, gorgeously packaged, pro printed tapes, textured paper sleeves, and of course super limited, ONLY 100 COPIES!! Each tape hand numbered.

BONECLOUD Drawing Spirits In Crystals (DNT) cd-r 5.98
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LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Already out of print at the label. Once these are gone they are gone for good.
MPEG Stream: "Drawing Spirits In Crystals"

BONECLOUD s/t (2cd-r) (Haunted Trail) 2cd-r 14.98
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Bonecloud sure is an evocative name. We can picture a big swirling black cloud cut a swath across the land lifting skeletons out of the ground, emptying graveyards, a sky full of re-animated bones, or some strange otherworldly beast that manifests itself on this plain as some sort of amorphous pile of skulls that can float skyward or crawl along the ground like some bony blob, or a grey cloud that covers a wasted landscape in soot-like dust, a huge billowing fog of ground up bones and vaporized skeletons, some sort of post apocalyptic fallout. All very creepy and haunting. Which pretty much perfectly suits the music of the Irish stoned drone ensemble that does indeed bear the name Bonecloud.
We first heard from these murk mongers on a split with Portland drifters Ghosting. And were instantly blown away. They took the droney drift of all our favorite abstract noise makers, and added a seriously ominous vibe, a hellish halo of Stygian gloom, mixing the usual subterranean shimmer with thick sick slabs of Lustmordian throb and Organumish rumble.
This is a self released double cd-r we got direct from the band and expands on the sound of the split, taking full advantage of the extra space to let their gloomy sonic sprawl as it was meant to. Huge expanses of muddled mire, a thick morass of ambient drift, drenched in a shower of grit and grime, allowed to slither and shift, a haunting glacial epic soundscape of darkness and drone. Like the Taj Mahal Travellers covering the Dead C, a disembodied noise rock, allowed to drift from speaker to speaker, floating above a barren wasteland, covering the Earth in shadow. So fucking awesome.
SUPER LIMITED... of course. Packaged between two thick pieces of cardstock, with a full color image affixed to each, all housed in an oversized plastic sleeve.
MPEG Stream: "Drowning In The Tides Of Space"
MPEG Stream: "Sea Burial"

BONECLOUD s/t (3") (Diagnosis...Don't!) 3"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.
Finally, another new missive from Irish druid-drone collective Bonecloud, a brief but glorious ep, one of three new releases in the ongoing super limited 3"cd-r series on the Grey Daturas' Diagnosis...Don't label.
Featuring members of equally loved dreamdrone combo Quetzolcoatl, Bonecloud conjure up some gorgeously expansive and disorientingly otherworldly wide open expanses of shimmer and crawl, managing to create soundscapes that are at once murky and mysterious, yet strangely melodic and mesmerizing. Bonecloud are definitely the closest any of the modern breed of abstract ambient soundscapers have come to conjuring up the primal ur-drone magic of legendary seventies Japanese psych legends Taj Mahal Travellers. Sounds drift and float, like the band was set up on a rocky outcropping on some strange alien planet, sending their hymns skyward, sonic offerings to some cosmic deity, a timeless drone ritual, performed under a blackened moon (or moons) beneath a dense canopy of skeletal branches. Crackling fires, crashing surf, bird calls and the sounds of insects are sucked up into these glacial drones, and transformed into sonic smears adding more texture to Bonecloud's already densely layered whirs and rumbles. Awesome.
Packaged in thick textured black paper mini 3" sleeves, with a printed (band name, label info, liner notes) Japanese style obi. Nice.
And as usual, these are of course SUPER LIMITED, and we're pretty sure we won't be able to get more...
MPEG Stream: "This Heart Of Sand"
MPEG Stream: "Watching The Rock Erode For A Thousand Years"