CLOUDS We Are Above You (Hydra Head) 2lp 21.00
NOW AVAILABLE ON VINYL!
And like all Hydra Head stuff, the packaging is amazing, incredibly beautiful printed sleeves, the the jackets SO heavy, the vinyl nice and thick, holding one of these in your hands, it has weight, and heft, it's absolutely an objet d'art, in addition to being a kick ass record!
The first Clouds record, the project of Cave In guitarist Adam McGrath, was a freaked out hodgepodge of stoner rock, hardcore, prog rock and seventies boogie rock with definite nods to Beefheart, Zappa, Comets On Fire, the Cave In mothership, it all worked, the result a heavy slab of FX laden riff heavy RAWK with lots of twisted detours.
If anything, this newest Clouds record takes all that same stuff a little further, with a bigger focus on the riffrock aspect, and a huge infusion of POP. Not always obviously so, but some of these hooks slay. Think the beefy lumbering almost grunge of Scissorfight, melded to the pounding retro metallic pound of Karp or Big Business, some of that Cave-In magic and voila!
The second track, "Feed The Horse" sounds like it was yanked off a late era Cave-in disc and given a serious metal makeover, while the opener "Empires In Basements" gives Torche a run for their sludge pop money.
And then the band go all strange and angular and off kilter with "The Bad Seat", sounding almost like Randy Newman if he was 20 years old and signed to Hydra Head, and we know that sounds weird, but it's actually quite cool.
The record is all over the map for sure, exploding into frenzied punk rock as often as sprawling out into huge lumbering sludgey doom, offering up soaring metallic pop gems, or stripping it down to chugging classic rock grooves, but no matter what these guys do, or what sound they're tackling and making their own, the songs rule, and the band kick out the jams big time. And like we've said before, in a perfect world, instead of Green Day and the Foo Fighters, you'd be hearing Torche and Clouds all over the radio. Ahhh, maybe some day...
MPEG Stream: "Empires In Basements"
MPEG Stream: "Feed The Horse"
MPEG Stream: "The Bad Seat"

CLOUGH, DANIEL A Trip To The Mountain Shark (Sentient Recognition Archive) cd-r 8.98

CLOUTER, ISOBEL & ROB MULLENDER Myths Of Origins : Sonic Ephemera From East Asia (And/OAR) cd 13.98
File this one right next to your Alan Lamb discs of singing telegraph wires and the Broken Hearted Dragonflies album on Sublime Frequencies, as the British sound art duo of Isobel Clouter and Rob Mullender have presented us with some seemingly implausible recordings of 'booming sand.' These are monotone frequencies generated by an avalanche of a sand dune under just the right environmental conditions. Such sounds have been reported in numerous times and places with Marco Polo recounting them on his excursions to China, and with Charles Darwin finding similar sounds in the deserts of Chile! At the onset of one of their recordings, we hear Isobel huffing and puffing up to the top of a massive sand dune, before she puts her ears to the ground (quite literally) in order to locate the origin of the rumbling drone. Such a bracketing episode of human presence is very useful to frame the stillness of the desert even as the booming sound resonates through the landscape. It also helps to distance these natural sounds from their manmade doomscape kin of a lowslung bass slumped in subharmonic stupor against a rumbling amplifier. Aside from these impressively heavy recordings, Clouter and Mullender offer some additional recordings from elsewhere in Asia: hissing textures from windswept sand comingling with cicadas buzzing in the summer sun, and a Tibetan prayer wheel revolving through its wooden cycles of creaks and moans. These are good extracts of pure phonography, but pale next to the thoroughly impressive booming sand phenomenon.
MPEG Stream: "Baoritaolegainuoer Natural Booming"
MPEG Stream: "Dune 3 Descent"
MPEG Stream: "Kotohiki-Hama/Kotogo-Hama Beaches"
MPEG Stream: "Tibetan Prayer Wheels, Xiahe"

CLUBROOT s/t (LoDubs) cd 14.98
One of two discs vying for our personal dubstep disc of the year. The other is the recent Mordant Music disc, which we'll try to review next time, an unlikely collaboration between Mordant and the Skull Disco crew, and this, the first full length from mysterious atmospheric dubstep soundscaper Clubroot.
We know nothing about this guy (or these guys?), other than he takes that dubbed out skitter we love so much and sets it in expansive fields of swirling ambience, creeped out dronescapes and all manner of super evocative and gorgeously textural soundworlds. Where as most dubstep is super spare and stripped down, skeletal even, the sound here is lush and sprawling. Thick layers of synths whir and shimmer and buzz, deep swells throbbing and pulsing, everything hazy and gauzy and washed out, every song some sort of otherworldy dreamscape, shot through with some super bad ass bit of pounding churning dubstep stutter. The massive basslines and fluctuating synth buzz that usually adds texture to typical dubstep, here just becomes another element in Clubroot's mysterious mist shrouded sonic landscape.
The cover features a lonely tree, set atop a rocky outcropping, the sky dense with clouds, the picture all misty and hauntingly lonely seeming, which perfectly reflects the mood of the music here. Strip away the beats, and you'd still be left with an incredible bit of blackened new age swirl, of abstract kosmiche krautdrone, but add the beats, and these sounds become something entirely other. This is definitely not dancemusic, this is mind expansion music. Late night, lights off, starting at the stars drifting off, other dimension, spaced out, dream dub music.
Clubroot taps into the same darkside as Burial, and Kode9, and the more atmospheric beatmakers, but where those guys pull back before the fog grows to thick, Clubroot pushes forward, traveling through the dark forest, into some forbidden zone, some land lost in time, lost from time, a massive emptiness, as beautiful as it is lonely and ominous, and this is the soundtrack to that lost world. So intense and haunting and unlike any other dubstep, or electronic music even, that we've heard before. The rare sort of record that lets even the most jaded and heard-it-all listener get totally, and fantastically lost.
And if you need more than our effusive gushing praise, look no further than Fenriz, 1/2 of legendary black metal duo Darkthrone, a long time lover of techno and electronic music, who has this to say about Clubroot:
"This is the sort of soaring dubstep I'd never expect to come out of the US! I just transferred the adorable "Embryo" track to my MP3 player FAVES 09 list, as I am going tenting and swimming in a forest lake tomorrow with some connoiceur-friends [sic]. It's sleek and not nasty, the melodic kind and not the grimy. But wait a minute, it seems like the newest tracks are on first, as the last songs drift into some de-tranced balearic style, even with vocals stabs and 90s synths! Blimey."
And if you can't trust Fenriz on matters of dubstep, then who can you trust? WAY recommended. And quite possibly dubstep record of the year!
MPEG Stream: "Low Pressure Zone"
MPEG Stream: "Embryo"
MPEG Stream: "High Strung"
MPEG Stream: "Dulcet"

CLUBROOT s/t (LoDubs) 2lp + cd 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
One of our favorite records of the 2009 so far, and definite contender for dubstep jam of the year, has just been reissued as a super deluxe double lp, BUT, not only does it include the original cd as a bonus, the tracks on the vinyl are completely different mixes, so vinyl fiends are in luck, you get both versions, and if you missed out before, now's your chance, we got about 20 copies, it's already sold out, so once these are gone we won't be able to get more EVER.
Here's our review from when we first listed this back in June:
One of two discs vying for our personal dubstep disc of the year. The other is the recent Mordant Music disc, an unlikely collaboration between Mordant and the Skull Disco crew, and this, the first full length from mysterious atmospheric dubstep soundscaper Clubroot.
We know nothing about this guy (or these guys?), other than he takes that dubbed out skitter we love so much and sets it in expansive fields of swirling ambience, creeped out dronescapes and all manner of super evocative and gorgeously textural soundworlds. Where as most dubstep is super spare and stripped down, skeletal even, the sound here is lush and sprawling. Thick layers of synths whir and shimmer and buzz, deep swells throbbing and pulsing, everything hazy and gauzy and washed out, every song some sort of otherworldy dreamscape, shot through with some super bad ass bit of pounding churning dubstep stutter. The massive basslines and fluctuating synth buzz that usually adds texture to typical dubstep, here just becomes another element in Clubroot's mysterious mist shrouded sonic landscape.
The cover features a lonely tree, set atop a rocky outcropping, the sky dense with clouds, the picture all misty and hauntingly lonely seeming, which perfectly reflects the mood of the music here. Strip away the beats, and you'd still be left with an incredible bit of blackened new age swirl, of abstract kosmiche krautdrone, but add the beats, and these sounds become something entirely other. This is definitely not dancemusic, this is mind expansion music. Late night, lights off, starting at the stars drifting off, other dimension, spaced out, dream dub music.
Clubroot taps into the same darkside as Burial, and Kode9, and the more atmospheric beatmakers, but where those guys pull back before the fog grows to thick, Clubroot pushes forward, traveling through the dark forest, into some forbidden zone, some land lost in time, lost from time, a massive emptiness, as beautiful as it is lonely and ominous, and this is the soundtrack to that lost world. So intense and haunting and unlike any other dubstep, or electronic music even, that we've heard before. The rare sort of record that lets even the most jaded and heard-it-all listener get totally, and fantastically lost.
And if you need more than our effusive gushing praise, look no further than Fenriz, 1/2 of legendary black metal duo Darkthrone, a long time lover of techno and electronic music, who has this to say about Clubroot:
"This is the sort of soaring dubstep I'd never expect to come out of the US! I just transferred the adorable "Embryo" track to my MP3 player FAVES 09 list, as I am going tenting and swimming in a forest lake tomorrow with some connoiceur-friends [sic]. It's sleek and not nasty, the melodic kind and not the grimy. But wait a minute, it seems like the newest tracks are on first, as the last songs drift into some de-tranced balearic style, even with vocals stabs and 90s synths! Blimey."
And if you can't trust Fenriz on matters of dubstep, then who can you trust? WAY recommended. And quite possibly dubstep record of the year!
MPEG Stream: "Low Pressure Zone"
MPEG Stream: "Embryo"
MPEG Stream: "High Strung"
MPEG Stream: "Dulcet"

CLUSTER Grosses Wasser (Water) cd 15.98
The later Cluster records, Grosses Wasser and Curiosum, recorded after the Cluster and Eno collaboration in 1977, often undeservedly get short shrift. Marked by a move back to Berlin to work with former Tangerine Dreamer, Peter Baumann, 1979's Grosses Wasser shows Cluster moving forward expansively in their "nature-man-machine" aesthetic while at the same time harkening back to the unformed melodies of their debut. This album is quite the grower, five short pieces with a nineteen minute closing track that is always a dramatically different listening experience each time we play it. Slippery and evasive, shifting subtlety from oceanic piano passages to lurching bell rhythms, trumpet call and responses, woozy funk, hints of klezmer, machine dub, even whale song, all soaking in an elementally warm haze that only Cluster could conjure. Soooo Nice!!!!!!!
Hopefully Water will consider reissuing Curiosum as well. AQ customer Wobbly, who is an avid Cluster fan, noticed that in the liner notes for this, that Water included the Cluster photo from the Curiosum album, sparking fears that a Curiosum reissue is not in the works. We can only hope this isn't so.
MPEG Stream: "Avanti"
MPEG Stream: "Prothese"
MPEG Stream: "Grosses Wasser"

CLYDE-EVANS, JOHN Apetal Thunderfall (Digitalis) cd 11.98

CLYDE-EVANS, JOHN The Smell Of The Burning Empire (Sloow Tapes) cassette 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
A name that seems to be popping up more and more among the new breed of new folk / free folk underground noisemakers is Tirath Singh Nirmala, who has released a series of limited cd-r's on various microlabels, as well as a handful of lps and cds, the only release we've had was an lp collaboration with longtime AQ fave Richard Youngs, and even in that review we were lamenting the fact that we had yet to review a Tirath record proper. Well, while this isn't a proper Tirath record, per se, it is a brand new recording by John Clyde-Evans, who just so happens to be the man behind Tirath Singh Nirmala, and while the name may be different, the sound is quite similar. 
Asian instruments are bowed and coaxed into unfurling long dreamlike drones, shrouded in Sunroof!-like clouds of glistening sparkling high end skree, like a sky full of shimmering metallic confetti, simple percussion peppering the gauzy swirl, haunting melodies wrapping themselves around thick sheets of crystalline feedback, a fantastic slab of shimmering trance-like upper register ur-drone drift. 
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Already SOLD OUT and OUT OF PRINT at the label. We have a bunch, but they obviously won't last long. The tapes are all psychedelic and hand painted, with tripped out full color covers. 

COACH FINGERS One For The Road (Sound @ One) cd 9.98
We love the No Neck Blues Band. And we're always eager to hear everything any of those guys do. Most of them have their fingers in so many pies it's hard to believe NNCK get anything done at all. Coach Fingers' One For The Road, released on No Neck's Sound@1 label, is the latest from this unlikely underground combo featuring 3 members of the No Neck collective.
And while the first few seconds might convince you you're about to bee treated to more of the usual abstract No Neck free stumble, don't let the backwards guitars and FX drenched swirls of sound fool you, soon you'll find yourself in bell bottoms, wearing a head band and a paisley shirt, smoking pot, standing in the middle of a field somewhere in the seventies, soaking up Coach Fingers' boozy, countrified rock. That's right. Country rock. Think the Allman Brothers, the Band, Grateful Dead, Skynyrd, ZZ Top, a groovy, jammed out, slightly psychedelic boogie rock, and you know what, it's pretty bad ass. Sloppy and loose, stoned and laid back, guitar leads everywhere, lots of strum and shuffle, lots of crunchy guitars and bluesrock riffage even some horns, but c'mon, this is No Neck related, so between the glorious bouts of hippy jam rock twang, are plenty of strange ambience, lots of backwards guitars, stretched out bits of propulsive rhythmic grooves and all manner of sonic weirdness.
But be well, aware, this is NOT weird, if the above bands send a shudder down your spine, this is not for you, but if you're up for some twangy foot stomping groove rock, channelling all the best bits of seventies rock into one tight ass slab of RAWK, then check it out.
TOUR ONLY RELEASE, we managed to get a handful, not sure how limited, but they're hand numbered, and ours seem to be in the 40's so guessing these won't be around for long. Packaged in nice chipboard sleeves, hand screened in metallic gold ink.
MPEG Stream: "The Meaning Of This Song"
MPEG Stream: "Splinters! Shut Down The Heat"

COCONUTS s/t (No Quarter) cd 13.98
The quietly menacing, and curiously mesmeric, NYC-by-way-of-Australia trio Coconuts (that's plural, not to be confused with SF band Coconut, singular... nor should it be confused with what you probably THINK a band called Coconuts might sound like, either!) offer up what we'll assume to be their debut, on the always interestin' No Quarter label (home to Burning Star Core, Circle, Psychic Paramount, and many other faves). This self-titled disc comprises 5 tracks, mostly all but one of 'em pretty long (but not in the double digits or anything), 34 minutes or so total. When it's on, though, you'll sink pretty deep into their sounds, that it'll seem like it would take much longer to swim back to the surface, helplessly drifting with the wave-action of their heavy plodding rhythms, Coconuts' semi-skronked, but not un-melodic, keening guitars like the plaintive calls of homeless, strung-out whales...
We noticed they thank Blues Control, we can see how they'd fit in with those guys, this has got an abstract, similarly droned-out vibe, darker though, and more spare, maybe like void-travelling Moon Duo, stripped down and spooky, a downer-dosed slo-mo krauty psych groove, spacey and druggy. The vocals are hushed moans, drafty exhalations to go with the droney murk and mope of the music, which slowly throbs and buzzes, the percussion an echoing thud, the electric guitar an avant acid blues wash... The confusional element of all this is perhaps accentuated by the digipak packaging, which is oriented with the spine on the longer side, what's normally the top, or bottom... some of us here (ok, it was Allan) griped that this means when you file it on a standard cd shelf, you won't be able to fit it there with the spine facing out, you'll have to have it facing either up or down, so the name of the cd won't be visible, which is normally one of the functions of the spine, but whatever, not a big deal, at least it fits on a cd shelf at all unlike a lot of other cd packaging options. In any case, it's a cool disc!
MPEG Stream: "Lost Bitches"
MPEG Stream: "Dark World"
MPEG Stream: "Dean's Blues"

COCONUTS s/t (No Quarter) lp 15.98
NOW ON VINYL!!!!
The quietly menacing, and curiously mesmeric, NYC-by-way-of-Australia trio Coconuts (that's plural, not to be confused with SF band Coconut, singular... nor should it be confused with what you probably THINK a band called Coconuts might sound like, either!) offer up what we'll assume to be their debut, on the always interestin' No Quarter label (home to Burning Star Core, Circle, Psychic Paramount, and many other faves). This self-titled disc comprises 5 tracks, mostly all but one of 'em pretty long (but not in the double digits or anything), 34 minutes or so total. When it's on, though, you'll sink pretty deep into their sounds, that it'll seem like it would take much longer to swim back to the surface, helplessly drifting with the wave-action of their heavy plodding rhythms, Coconuts' semi-skronked, but not un-melodic, keening guitars like the plaintive calls of homeless, strung-out whales...
We noticed they thank Blues Control, we can see how they'd fit in with those guys, this has got an abstract, similarly droned-out vibe, darker though, and more spare, maybe like void-travelling Moon Duo, stripped down and spooky, a downer-dosed slo-mo krauty psych groove, spacey and druggy. The vocals are hushed moans, drafty exhalations to go with the droney murk and mope of the music, which slowly throbs and buzzes, the percussion an echoing thud, the electric guitar an avant acid blues wash... The confusional element of all this is perhaps accentuated by the digipak packaging, which is oriented with the spine on the longer side, what's normally the top, or bottom... some of us here (ok, it was Allan) griped that this means when you file it on a standard cd shelf, you won't be able to fit it there with the spine facing out, you'll have to have it facing either up or down, so the name of the cd won't be visible, which is normally one of the functions of the spine, but whatever, not a big deal, at least it fits on a cd shelf at all unlike a lot of other cd packaging options. In any case, it's a cool disc!
MPEG Stream: "Lost Bitches"
MPEG Stream: "Dark World"
MPEG Stream: "Dean's Blues"

CODE Resplendent Grotesque (Tabu) cd 16.98
We'd been trying to get copies of this record for ages, but couldn't find it anywhere. We loved the first Code record so much, a record we described as sounding a bit like a black metal Interpol, and we had heard bits of the new one, and if anything the two disparate elements that made the first record so good, the strange croony gothic component, and the blasting classic Norwegian style black metal, were both somehow MORE and BETTER, if that was even possible. Well finally, we managed to get in touch with the band directly, and ordered a bunch from them, and it's just as good as we hoped or imagined.
Like the first record, the root sound is full bore, super tight and polished Norwegian black metal, a la Satyricon, incredible blackened riffs, insane super technical drumming, majestic melodies, dense convoluted arrangements, but here, those elements have a strangely industrial vibe, not to mention that weird coldwave goth pop influence that so infused their debut. The arrangements this time around are impossible, constantly shifting and twisting, dizzying song structures that manage to baffle and confuse, but remain fierce and furious and most importantly catchy. The band are not shy about their black metal, often lurching into furious bursts of black blasts, howling shrieking thrashing mayhem, but just as often, they shift gears, and the music stretches out and in come the clean vocals, very much like later Borknagar, and like we mentioned before, Interpol, although on Resplendent Grotesque if we needed to break it down comparison-wise, we might describe the sound as Satyricon meets Katatonia meets Deathspell Omega, the pop element is certainly undeniable, but even at its poppiest, the guitars are still grinding away underneath, or the band is lurching through mathy breakdowns or seasick rhythmic changeups, there's plenty of other weirdness too, spaced out collaged interludes, with processed vocals, and delayed acoustic guitars, super hooky Khold-like riffing, but it's the songwriting that really makes Resplendent Grotesque so transcendent, "The Rattle Of Black Teeth" almost sounds like black metal Morrissey, and "Jesus Fever" has a super impassioned wailing clean vocal finish, that is as dramatic and emotional as any of the blacker more metal moments, if not more so, and "A Sutra Of Wounds" starts out as pure pop, before the clean vocals are teamed up with harsh vokills, for a seriously demonic harmony, that extends throughout the whole track. The whole record is a constant battle between light and dark, pretty and ugly, harsh and melodic, and that battle is exactly what makes the sound so unique, so intense, so weird, but so utterly enthralling and fucking brilliant.
Definitely a weird record, and probably not for everybody, grim TROO metalheads might scoff, but we're all about pushing the boundaries of the genre, and moving beyond the typical tropes, hearing sounds and songs that confound and confuse and perplex, we love pure black metal, the grimmer and colder the better, but we also love the endless hybridization of that sound, seeing where it can go, and how far out it can be taken, and these guys have taken the sound somewhere entirely new, and we're loving it. Definite contender for black metal record of the year...
MPEG Stream: "Smother The Crones"
MPEG Stream: "In The Privacy Of Your Own Bones"
MPEG Stream: "The Rattle Of Black Teeth"

COELACANTH Mud Wall (The Helen Scarsdale Agency) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
For those versed in all things Jewelled Antler, Loren Chasse should need no introduction thanks to his magnificent elemental scraping and poetic hymnal minimalism in Thuja, The Blithe Sons, The Franciscan Hobbies, and others. As prolific as Jewelled Antler have been, Loren has somehow still managed to find the time to continue his Coelacanth collaboration with AQ's very own Jim Haynes. There are a lot of similarities between Coelacanth and Jewelled Antler stuff, as Loren and Jim do perform with a mess of rocks, moss, twigs, rust, wind, water, copper, metal, etc. and apply that source material to their own imagined sciences and areas of sound research. Through their expressive performances, hermetic field recordings, and site-specific events, Coelacanth transmits empathic swells of organic textures nestled into immersive droning sounds.
Mud Wall marks the third album for Coelacanth; and rumor has it that Mud Wall may have been partially recorded in what we call "The Slaughterhouse", the storage area behind Aquarius which acts more as a damp repository for grit and dust than for anything macabre. Mud Wall nevertheless is Coelacanth's darkest album to date, begining with intense low rumblings that inevitably give way to sustained tones encrusted with shadowy textures. It's one long 60 plus minute adventure of sonorous physicality, which moves in a number of different directions yet all the while maintains a singleminded focus. So beautiful.
This is actually the second pressing of Mud Wall, and we desperately tried to get our hands of some copies of the first pressing which came out as a CDR on some label from Belgium. That first pressing proved to be prohibitively expensive (who wants to pay $22.00 for a bloody CDR?). Fortunately, the enigmatic Helen Scarsdale Agency, who released Jim's first album Magnetic North, decided to repress Mud Wall as a proper CD. The second pressing is a vast improvement, not only featuring 20 minutes of extra material culled from the original sessions seemlessly interwoven into the composition, but also some very nice silkscreened artwork.
MPEG Stream: "Mud Wall excerpt 1"
MPEG Stream: "Mud Wall excerpt 2"

COELACANTH The Chronograph (The Helen Scarsdale Agency) cd 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Once known simply as "the rust record", this is the debut recorded collaboration between AQ-fave sound artist Loren Chasse (id battery, Thuja, himself, etc.) and AQ-fave staffer Jim Haynes! Jim, known for his decay-oriented visual art, provided the each-one-unique rusted cover art for The Chronograph, in addition to melding his audio ideas with those of Loren. The result isn't too far removed from Loren's solo or id battery efforts -- abstract magnifications of natural sounds manipulated for maximum dronological effect. In addition to the chemical reactions and metal vibrations that were recorded as part of The Chronograph's initial "rusting" concept, you'll hear bells, shortwave radio static, feedback, and more, all processed into what both Jim and Loren accurately describe as a "phosphorescent" sound. Rustings, and rubbings, and rustlings, like some arcane ceremony involving broken miniature machines and electric underwater pulsations. Ominous rumblings full of tension, and sudden dis-connections. Lovely stuff. By the way, this disc is not only the first release for the Coelacanth duo, but also for Jefre Cantu of Tarentel's new Partition label.
RealAudio clip: "Mirrors/Needles"
RealAudio clip: "Fossil And Transmitter"
RealAudio clip: "Chronograph In Phosphorescence"

COELACANTH The Glass Sponge (23five) cd 14.98
BACK IN STOCK!! Given that Loren Chasse continues onward in the Jewelled Antler pantheon of alchemical minimalism and occluded psychedelia in current projects as Thuja, Of, Ov, and Softwar, we're revisiting an earlier project that Chasse's a part of -- Coleacanth. Released back in 2003, The Glass Sponge was the second release from this smeared drone and sound art duo, which also features our very own Jim Haynes. The four extended tracks of gorgeous almost-ambience are stained with growling undercurrents, soft pocks of noise, and unsettled field recordings. Forests of cricket-like chirps are blurred into smeary ambient washes of cool greys and pale whites, beneath smatterings of clinking clicking clatter. Keening, indistinct moaning tones sound like distant foghorns, reflected from the slowly shifting terrain. Underwatery warped sonic shudders billow outward as vague melodies drift and float, chiming and reverberating, eventually dissipating into misty clusters of ethereal almost transparent notes. Hissing, fuzzy high end buzz whirs machinelike over industrial clatter that has been smoothed out into pulsing, barely-there rhythms. All of the sounds were collected from various public and private Coelacanth performances, before being assembled into The Glass Sponge. Coelacanth sonically bridges the crystalline energy of Axolotl, the mechanized dynamics of Machinefabriek, and the long-form ether of Andrew Chalk. This record is so so nice and gets our highest recommendation.
MPEG Stream: "The Electric Hydrometer"
MPEG Stream: "The Hexactinellidae"
MPEG Stream: "The Violet Shell and Its Raft"

COELACANTH & KEITH EVANS Wrack Light In Copper Ruin (Seal Pool) cd+dvd 19.98
BACK IN STOCK!!! Plenty of other drone based groups have unleashed hundreds of cd-rs of extended vibrations, treated field recordings, and fucked-up droning noise; and Coelacanth could have easily fallen into that camp, releasing any number of perfectly adequate live recordings. But they didn't. Instead, Loren Chasse (Thuja, Blithe Sons, Of, Child Readers, and many things Jewelled Antler) and aQ's own Jim Haynes chose to labor on the details of their recordings so that every timbre, every drone, and every tactile grain of sound was perfectly aligned with the sounds of their elemental objects and particular environments. In the world of Coelacanth, there are rocks, rust, sand, leaves, strobe lights, weird electrical devices, shortwave, and plenty of oceanic field recordings (in honor of the fish they're named after); and from those sounds, Coelacanth creates multiple layers and deep textures, all together in a mesmerising tapestry of sub-aquatic abstractions and chiming reverberations. Perfecting their tactile dronework was just the beginning in preparing for their fourth album Wrack Light In Copper Ruin, as they also began collaborations with the film/sound artist Keith Evans in finding a visual corrolary for their sonic abstractions, utilizing breathtakingly hypnotic film and video installations to compliment Coelacanth's music and vice versa. Evans is also a member of Silt, a multimedia collective that specializes in elaborate multi-projection / kinetic-sculpture installations -- one of which was featured at the Whitney Biennial back in 2002. Given that Evans has previously worked with Chasse for a Thuja performance in Scotland a couple years back, a Coelacanth / Keith Evans pairing seemed logical.
So, Wrack Light In Copper Ruin is both a CD and DVD, with the audio portion finding Coelacanth not only collaborating with Evans on some of the recordings, but also Matmos who had asked Chasse and Haynes to join them for part of their 96 hours of performances at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Underwater bell tones, raked stringed instruments, ringing glass harmonics, and gaping drones saturated in a density of texture so complex that it almost sounds like an acoustic version of a Fennesz album! The DVD features Evans' jaw-dropping video work: abstract undulating landscapes of refracted light, all scored to a subtle Chasse / Evans remix of the sounds on the CD. The rippled linear patterns seem innocuous at first; but like the hypnotic primal power of fire, it totally sucks you in. So gorgeous!
MPEG Stream: "Nerine"
MPEG Stream: "Sessile Rotifer"
MPEG Stream: "Alluvial Dust"

COFFEE Hex Vex Lavender (Elica) 2 x 10" 26.00

COH 0397post-pop (Mego) 2cd 24.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Of all the folks involved in the world of ultra stark, minimalist techno and barely there click and glitch, we've always been pretty partial to Ivan Pavlov, aka COH. Not sure exactly what it is, but he always manages to take his stark minimalism somewhere full of life and emotion and energy. What in other hands would be nothing but a sonic experiment, in Pavlov's becomes a song, or a groove, or just a big chunk of sound that resonates with energy and creativity and power. Not sure if the title is supposed to intimate something about the music within and it's supposed relation to classic pop constructs. But in no way is this Pavlov's poppiest material, not by a long shot. That's not to say it isn't great, it is, it's just much more barebones and barely there. Disc one sounds like Neu! after being dipped in acid, so all the flesh and organs have liquified and sloughed off, leaving just a skeletal framework, an intricate assemblage of static and stutter, hiss and click, with an innate funkiness that might just be flecks of melody clinging desperately to the already picked clean bones. Disc B is a reissue of a 1997 release originally released in a limited run of SEVEN copies and given only to friends. This disc is a little more all over the place, while the recurring theme is still definitely Pavlov's microscopic glitch funk minimalism, there are random moments of Ikeda like test tones, stuttering synth squelch, and once in a while even a little bleeping blooping outer space swoosh. Packaged in a cool geometrically abstract double digipak.
MPEG Stream: "Da Kota Rap"
MPEG Stream: "Apex (Twig)"
MPEG Stream: "Post-Pop Reprise"

COH 20' to 2000 (Raster-Noton) cd 14.98
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The fourth in the monthly series of 20 minute compositions that countdown the end of the Millenium. COH has provided perhaps the most 'listenable' so far (which isn't to hard after the gut wrenching sine waves of Ryoji Ikeda's contribution for March)... slippery layers of soothing drones. Drifting and dreamy minimalism.

COH Above Air (Eskaton) cd 16.98
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Russian sound artist Ivan Pavlov aka COH returns with a new album of ultra minimal, ultra pristine electronic ambience, a tribute to recently passed Coil mainman Jhonn Balance, who was a good friend and frequent collaborator of Pavlov's. COH, for us, is best when Pavlov is manipulating organic sounds into warm rich swells of sound, most notably on the LP-only Seasons (now out of print). But while Above Air is a much more clinical affair, Pavlov manages to somehow imbue each song with all manner of warmth and emotion. He may be a master of the glitch and the click, and the digital squelch, he proves once again that he can create art, feeling and emotion with the slightest of sounds. Above Air is a subtle, dark, contemplative mix of whispery sine waves, distant chimes, speaker static and white noise, tolling bells, gently ringing chimes, an ultra subtle glitch here and there, creating fetal rhythms, that never quite mature, remaining just another layer of sound, haunting electronic drones that waver and drift as if being broadcast from afar, pulsing chopped melodic fragments, all deftly woven into a dark but somehow surprisingly sanguine elegy for Balance. The whole record is minimal, but active and alive, subtle, but infused with disarmingly complex arrangements and dark emotion, a bit like the best Coil records, which we're sure is exactly the sort of memorial Pavlov intended.
MPEG Stream: "Faster Than Sound"
MPEG Stream: "Between Heaven And Earth"

COH Enter Tinnitus (Noton/Rastermusic) cd 15.98
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A lot more action packed and a bit more accessible than most Noton / Rastermusic releases (like Noto, Miko Vainio, Kim Cascone, and Signal) but still just as minimal as fuck in places. After a minute of ear shredding schreech and a few downright 'poppy' moments, the record settles down into looped out bliss. Beeps, clicks and stuttering tones coalesce into a soothing minimal whole. An exceptional record for fans of Oval.

COH Iron (Wavetrap) cd 15.98
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Raster-Noton contributor Coh (aka Ivan Pavlov) has dedicated his Wavetrap album "Iron" to heavy metal fans all over the world and has even given some of the tracks metal puns for titles ('For Whom The Dell Falls' and 'Rubbing Free' for example). Of all of the electron modulators populating the Raster-Noton roster, Coh has always had the keenest pop sensibility, often infusing his near catchy melodies with static-laden feedback bursts and pure sinewaves. "Iron" is Coh's most aggressive recording to date, filled with staticky melodies that soften (only a little) his morass of digital black box effects and synthetic noise. While you'd be hard pressed to hear anything definitively metal on this record (i.e. guitar solos, double bass-kick blastbeats, wailing vocalizations, Satan), the massive ebb and flow of the music takes its starting point from the epic heaviosity of metal and turns it into something uniquely Coh. Recommended!
RealAudio clip: "Annum Per Annum"

COH Love Uncut (Eskaton) cd 10.98
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"Love Uncut" is the newest EP from Russian electron engineer Coh and it features vocal contributions from various members of Coil. More so than any of the other Raster-Noton artists, Coh is not afraid of the power of the pop song, turning Pan Sonic minimalist techno into tense post-New Wave soundscapes. Coh has in effect updated the early sound of Coil that peaked around "Love's Secret Domain," as a funhouse distortion of sexually explicit club anthems and investigations into what is "hidden" beneath mainstream culture. This short EP opens with a track credited as a cover of Soft Cell's "Meet Murder My Angel," yet with Coil's Peter Christopherson malevolently muttering in subterranean caverns, it sounds more like a remake of the early Coil track "The Sewage Worker's Birthday Party." Coh deconstructs another '80s iconic classic in the cover of Vicious Pink's "Fetish" with significantly more references to the original with the Morroder like synth arrpegiations intact, but replacing the big Disco whip cracks with rapid fire glicth pops. By the time Balance begins his lunatic ranting about the unclean hospitals on "Love's Septic Domain" (ha!), the Dennis Cooper-esque allegories of abject sex and medicinal hallucinations start to become apparent, yet sadly the EP comes to an end far too quickly. While this is an excellent EP, I hope that Coh and Coil will collaborate for a full album!
RealAudio clip: "Health and Deficiency"
RealAudio clip: "Fffetish"
RealAudio clip: "My Angel"

COH Mask of Birth (Mego) cd 16.98
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According to Raster-Noton who first released this album back in 1999, "Mask Of Birth" was the debut recording by Coh, the Russian born programmer Ivan Pavlov. Originally, this was a vinyl-only release published by Raster-Noton, who made a point of stating that they had a difficult time cutting the frequencies of these recordings onto wax. A mere three years later, Mego has taken up the task of re-issuing this album on CD, a medium more appropriate for such dynamic frequencies. Despite his origins with Raster's pristine electronics, Coh has continued to present himself as a post-techno reincarnation of the bleak industrial arpeggiations from the early-'80s, sharing the common urgency of early Cabaret Voltaire, Coil, Fad Gadget, Konstruktivitis, Skinny Puppy and the like. He's just been using much more high tech gear than abused samplers and overblown drum machines. After his recent collaborations with Coil on the "Love Uncut" EP, the revisitation to his first productions draws the same conclusion of his historical citations. The darkened loops, tremolo vibrations, and static pulsations have similar tonalities to his peers on Raster (Noto, Mika Vainio, and Komet), but the structure of the his music is fixed back in time on those aforementioned references. As many of those bands have been forgotten, marginalized, or dismissed, Coh's electronica revisionism is certainly welcome!
RealAudio clip: "Hurt Later"
RealAudio clip: "Utopia - Me Too"

COH Mort Aux Vaches (Staalplaat) cd 21.98
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For his contribution to the "Mort Aux Vaches" series of radio broadcasts commissioned by VPRO radio, Coh (the Russian laptop technician Ivan Pavlov) continues in his electronic revisionism which defined the successes on his albums "Mask Of Birth" and "Enter Tinnitus." Again, Coh offers a constant fluctuation of arpeggiated patterns that are post-techno recapitulations of '80s new wave. Be forewarned, the buzz and blurp breakdowns may trigger visions of a bathing robot (not necessarily a bad thing!) - sonic splashing and bubbling, submersion and resurfacing throughout this 38 minute track. Seemingly straightforward techno beats emerge, but as in this track's mid-stretch of whirring, sawing rhythm, before you know it Coh has drenched it in hiss and rumble until it dissolves into something altogether different. Quite pleasant reminders of Fad Gadget, Konstruktivitis, and Giorgio Moroder with all of the kitsch elements filtered out. Limited to 1000 copies and packaged in a silkscreened piece of folded woodpanel-patterned plastic.
RealAudio clip: "Excerpt 1"
RealAudio clip: "Excerpt 2"

COH Netmork (souRce) cd 16.98
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From his dedication to 'heavy metal fans all over the world' on "Iron" and his recombination of '80s synth pop on "Love Uncut," Coh (aka Russian electron engineer Ivan Pavlov) has presented some unusual concepts to guide his post-techno explorations. Less likely to invoke readings as a piece of irony, the "Netmork" album is a speculation on the hidden language of the telephone, specifically stated as "digitally encoded human emotions running through solid darkness ('mörk') of telephone wires, electromagnetic ghosts of Love and Hate haunting the network after all conversations are made, merging, interacting, turning into each other, disappearing and reborn again." Coh actualizes his concepts through buzzing feedback that gets sequentially darker and more intense over the course of the album. At the album's onset, the electronic squiggles glisten and shimmer with occasional pinpricks of glitched digital feedback, giving way to perhaps those sounds' source material - the indeterminant dialing of a series of numbers on a phone (which made Byram think that Pavlov got bored with the prettiness of those sounds and just called up some friends to get a beer). Instead, the album takes a turn towards the darkside through incrementally building arpeggiations similar to early PanSonic, making for a fine album with an intriguing conceptual framework to match the well-executed electronics.
RealAudio clip: "netmork, part i: dark inside telephone wire?"
RealAudio clip: "undercosm"

COH Patherns (Raster-Noton) cd ep 16.98
The glitchy, streaming rhythms from Russian electronic musician Ivan Pavlov (aka Coh) have always been difficult for us to write about because they are so immediate and just simply work so well. Yeah, our purple prose benefits from the context of elfin types scurrying around the forest with contact mics and then overlaying those sounds with some fucking heavy doom riffs that aim to crack the skull of Odin; so when a prolific technician like Pavlov constantly churns out an extremely consistent body of work we can be at a loss for words. Don't dismay, we'll do our best to blather on about this brilliant 24 minute EP. Over the past six or seven years, Pavlov has released tons of recordings for heavy-weight avant electronica labels such as Mego, Raster-Noton, and Eskaton (one of the labels run by Coil); and many of these recordings do essentially the same thing: generate tense yet hypnotic electronic pieces which smartly synthesize a number of electronica references. There's the futuristic Moroder arpeggiations, the erratic digital pixel smears of Stilluppsteypa's glitch-n-drone, the extravagant audio alchemy worthy of comparisons to the best Coil recordings, and the release-and-stop dynamics borrowed from the finest Model 500 techno. Given how druggy these repetitive algorithms are, it's no wonder that the sidereal psychonauts Coil were so taken by Pavlov's work. Like pretty much everything he touches, Patherns is extraordinary.
MPEG Stream: "Path #01"
MPEG Stream: "Path #02"

COH Seasons (Idea) 2lp 26.00
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Of all the glitch guys, as I like to call them -- Noto, Komet, Byetone, and the entire Raster-Noton raster -- Coh's Ivan Pavlov, has always been the one to take the glitch into uncharted territory. See Coh's bizarre 'Love Uncut' record from a while back and his bizarre 'metal tribute' record 'Iron' which was decidedly non-metallic. So while this latest record is not necessarily a surprise, it is surprisingly beautiful and once again shows Coh to be truly original. The glitch takes a back seat on these 4 seasonal recordings. Instead the computer is used Oval-style, to take organic sounds and transform them. 'The Colour Of Beauty, Summer Is Red' is by far the most beautiful track Pavlov has ever recorded, with creaking swells of violin, warm and thick, with a definite 20th century classical vibe, lots of space and dynamics. Dreamy but also ominous. Quite reminiscent of Oval's 'Diskont', but chopped up and spread out into a glacial rhythm of throbs and pulses, dramatic swells and vaccuum like silences. So nice. 'Winter Brooding Underneath' is another winner, a massive drone sculpted from slowly bowed cello, huge, rumbling, slowly-shifting low end, with the timbre of the cello stretched as far as (in)humanly possible into an oscillating sea of lower register vibrations. Breathtaking. 'As Ripe As Autumn's Tears' is a totally spare pleak-scape of single reverb drenched piano notes ringing out into space, bookended by field recordings of rain. Skeletal and lovely. Finally, 'Springs Come Shooting: Make Love, Make War', is a Pavlov guitar solo, clattery and scratchy and noodly, but chopped and recontextualized into some decidedly non-guitar-like sounds. This track is as close as this record gets to actual 'electronica' or 'techno', with a steady, gradually mutating, electronic rhythm sounding a bit like a super lo-fi Kraftwerk.
Comes on MASSIVE 180 gram vinyl in a gorgeous, super thick gatefold sleeve, with a painting for each track.
RealAudio clip: "The Colour Of Beauty, Summer Is Red"
RealAudio clip: "Winter Brooding Underneath"

COH Strings (Raster-Noton) 2cd 23.00
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As we've mentioned in the past, the music of Coh, aka Ivan Pavlov, is quite difficult to describe. Which is probably why he tends to be one of our favorites of the many modern electronic minimalists. He releases records on Raster-Noton, yet his sound manages to both embrace R-N's signature minimal glitch and click, while at the same time subverting it, creating something simultaneously warm and familiar, alien and totally original. Every record is thematically and sonically unique, whether he's collaborating with other musicians, or simply creating a song suite based on some random idea, even a whim, once it works its way through Pavlov's brain into the computer onto disc and into our stereo, the resulting sound is more often then not transcendent, minimal in sound sure, but with maximum impact, his music emotional and personal where others creating similar sounds are cold and clinical.
For Strings, Pavlov has decided to take the sounds of certain stringed instruments, which played some part in his musical upbringing, and in some way to enrich and expand those sounds, to twist and transform, allowing the instruments to be recognizable, and sound like they sound, but to create a whole new setting for those instruments. The focus here is on the 4 instruments that Pavlov played throughout his life: piano, guitar, saz and oud.
The opener is all piano, and sounds the most at home on Raster-Noton, simple melancholy melodies are suspended in smeared shimmers of reverb, the notes stretching, stuttering, blurring into washed out whirs of dreamy chords and long drawn out tones. Sounds bent and stretched, layered and allowed to hover in long expanses of distant high end flutter. Hushed and gorgeous, the digital manipulation deftly applied so as not to distract from the gorgeous hushed drift. Really quite lovely. The piano continues on into the second track, where the sounds are much more manipulated, looped and layered, but this time into a swirl of Melnyk-like flurries, which are augmented by a stuttery techno like pulse, the whole thing skittery and hypnotic, peppered with streaks of buzzy squelch, until the final few minutes when the beat drops out and the various notes are allowed to swirl like sonic snowflakes.
The next few tracks are like a suite, beginning with what is either a saz or a lute (sorry we can't tell for sure), locked into s super rhythmic strum, and processed into a propulsive minimal almost-techno, which is soon wrapped in thick sheets of low end buzz and glitch, almost synthy sounding fuzz, eventually building to an almost metal riff, all blown out and wreathed in crumbling distorted buzz, finally erupting into a confusional tangle of crunchy riff, processed hum and rumble, and Middle Eastern sounding melodies. This leads directly into a lumbering doomy digitized metal workout, the main riff grinding its way through clouds of swirling effects and smears of squelch and buzz, distant soaring sort-of-strings, all very dramatic, until the guitars fade, leaving just a skeletal rhythm, and super dramatic slow burning electronic swell and skitter.
The next track is all Middle Eastern melody, laced with bits of glitch, a muted electronic throb, a bit like a slightly more techno Muslimgauze, but as the track develops, the sound becomes more digital, the original melody chopped up and wrapped around a propulsive beat before fading out into a shimmer of pixilated piano, which gives way to the record closer, beginning again, with moody, simply strummed strings, before being swallowed whole by a massive buzzing electronic drone, gorgeous and layered and so thick, while the strings below continue to unfurl. The track gets all old school techno briefly, skittery and stuttery, clipped notes, until again, near the end, that howling buzz drenched drone returns, this time all chopped up and even more corrosive and blown out.
It sounds all over the map, and it is, but all the tracks, as disparate sounding as they are, slip in and out of each other so perfectly, a definitely sonic suite, with more in common than just the stringed source material. The second disc features a single 17 minute track, that starts out sounding like Machinefabriek, all dark bell like tones and deep blackened shimmers, soft whirs, stretched out almost-melodies, some strings do pop up part way through, sounding again quite Middle Eastern, and again wreathed in a brittle techno stutter, before a long drawn out stretch of near silence, and a brief coda of soft strings over distant drone. So awesome. Maybe the best thing we've heard from Coh, which is saying a whole lot.
And the packaging. Holy moly! Super elaborate, die cut fold out multi panel printed sleeve, the cds held in place by various slots and slits, revealing the curved silver edges of the discs as part of the design!
MPEG Stream: "Piano Tranquillo"
MPEG Stream: "Andante Facile"
MPEG Stream: "Mezzo Forte Passionato"

COH Vox Tinnitus (Raster-Noton) cd 15.98
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Coh's take on minimalist electronica isn't all that different from his Raster / Noton labelmates (Noto, Komet, and the 20' to 2000 artists) with a pure tone bliss borrowing heavily from neo academic Germanic techno, but Coh has always had a thing for pop music. And with vocal assistance from Annie Anxiety (ex-Crass) and Coil's Sleazy & Balance, Coh's electronic modulations get even closer to a new form of twisted avant-pop.

COH (PAVLOV & COSEY) Coh Plays Cosey (Raster-Noton) cd 17.98
Ivan Pavlov (aka Coh) has been making a minor career of collaborating with the kingpins of Industrial Culture. Jhonn Balance of Coil had appeared on a number of Coh tracks over the years, Peter Christopherson and Pavlov have recently begun a project together called SoiSong, and now there's this joint venture with Cosey Fanny Tutti. We would imagine that a Chris Carter / Coh duet for old synthesizers would make for a kick-ass record; but for Genesis P-Orridge, hmmm. Anyway, the Pavlov / Cosey album began with a dialogue between the two artists, out of which Cosey supplied spoken word tracks for Pavlov to use as the source material for the album. The first few tracks are tentative collages of Cosey's breathy, sexually charged voice cut up into airy constructions that recall some of the sparse digitally treated voice pieces of AGF. By the middle of the record, Cosey & Coh quite literally say "Fuck It," and the hammering electrical streams of post-Moroder arpeggiation, digital distortion, and effortlessly simple sequencing of monophunk meets electro-crash dynamics. These latter tracks are certainly worth the price of admission, but one has to wonder why the earlier tracks don't pack such a punch. Even if they were meant to be moody and dark, those could have been pushed much farther.
MPEG Stream: "Closer"
MPEG Stream: "Near You"
MPEG Stream: "Fuck It"

COHEN, ALICE Walking Up Walls (Olde English Spelling Bee) lp 14.98
Alice Cohen is one of the cofounders of the Portland-based Olde English Spelling Bee label and here on her second release offers up an intense sketchbook of sonic seances. Recorded from home, these recordings were originally made as a musical diary, not intended for release. But their home-spun nature revealed, through a process akin to automatic writing, a kind of ghostly songcraft that would otherwise not have been created through a normal studio recording. Swathes of burning guitar, rockish organ and disembodied layers of vocals culminate in shadowy perfumed murk. Bits of fuzzy song-structures peek through the miasma reminding us of times of a more carnivalesque Grouper or a more freeform Azalia Snail. Drifting and shimmery but at times woozily unsteady or blithely romantic in it conjuration. building up to rapturous peaks and then sinking into sullen valleys. Truly exploratory music!

COIL ...And The Ambulance Died In His Arms (Threshold) cd 26.00
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COIL Astral Disaster (Loci / World Serpant) cd 19.98
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The year 2000 looks to be a busy year for Coil, after so many moons of sonic hybernation. "Astral Disaster" is the follow up to "Musick to Listen to in the Dark" and is equally as limited (only 2000). But that number is better than the original edition of "Astral Disaster" (a vinyl edition of only 99 copies!!!). Originally recorded on Samhain under the Thames River, "Astral Disaster" has been reworked into four lengthy pieces of Coil's techno-pagan ritual music that falls between the Coil aesthetic of the Solstice series of 1998 and "Time Machine"'s droning.

COIL Black Antlers (Threshold House) 2cd 26.00
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This album gives us chills; and for those of you acquainted with the turbulent history of Coil, you will probably have the same jaw-dropping reaction. Almost two years ago, Coil's psycho-pharmacologically inclined founder Jhonn Balance tumbled over a bannister in his home whilst on a several week long vodka binge. When his partner Peter Christopherson found him shortly thereafter, he was unconscious. Despite a quick response from the local authorities, Balance died from his injuries. Death has always surrounded Coil: from the post-industrial recordings of Scatology and Horse Rotovator, when themes of AIDS, the apocalypse, death, and homoeroticism all melded into a nightmarish kaleidoscope, through the later records which held an amorphous mysticism pushed to the brink by Balance's prodigious chemical abuse. But as Balance growls that "most accidents happen close to home" on Black Antlers' "Sex With Sun Ra," the words strike with such a clarity as to make us wonder if Balance himself had any foresight into his own demise. As potent as the lyrical content is for Black Antlers, it's Coil's exquisitely darkened electronica which makes Black Antlers a such an exceptional recording. To be completely honest, we've not always loved much of Coil's material after the seminal 1991 recording Love's Secret Domain; but their final recordings (Black Antlers, Remote Viewer, and The Ape Of Naples -- all of which had been completed / reworked by Christopherson after Balance's death) show just how great they really were. Black Antlers is riveted by blood-stained electronics, tensely rendered arppegiations, and sinister atmospheres that often teeter into melancholy. And yet another minor-key, marimba-driven version of "Teenage Lightning" appears on Black Antlers (marking at least the fourth time that Coil has returned to this song). Altogether, Black Antlers is a brilliant if tragic affair.
A version of Black Antlers appeared a couple years back as a limited edition cd-r, but for this 2006 cd edition, Christopherson has expanded that supposedly rougher mix with additional material and a polished production.
MPEG Stream: "Sex With Sun Ra (Part One - Saturnalia)"
MPEG Stream: "The Wraiths And Strays Of Paris"
MPEG Stream: "Black Antler's (Where's Your Child?)"

COIL Constant Shallowness Leads To Evil (Chalice / World Serpent) cd 19.98
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This has been a very productive year for Coil, with mixed results coming from so much activity after the long hibernation. "Constant Shallowness Leads To Evil" is a drastic turn for Coil away from their lunar drones and towards a more abrasive sound, with what sounds like manipulated recordings of rumbling diesel engines or malfunctioning amplifier tremolo. The clatter of cutlery and an intrusion of John Balance's seductive voice breaks up (adds to?) the dissonance of this noise production. Definitely better than the last couple of offerings from Coil, but their quality control could still see some improvement overall...
Packaged in one of those plastic clam shell cases (a la the 20' to 2000 series).

COIL Horse Rotovator (World Serpent) cd 15.98
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We here at Aquarius haven't agreed with the critical acclaim that's greeted the recent output of Coil; however, we do agree that their second proper album "Horse Rotovator" should still be viewed as one of the great electronic albums of the 1980s. Immersed in Industrial Culture's transgressive ideologies, and thus intended as perversions of contemporary media and politics, Coil produced "Horse Rotovator" in 1986 as a glorification of lysergic apocalypses within Jean Genet's reversed pantheon of Catholic imagery. Within this convoluted narrative, Coil crafted an unsurpassed album of macabre tales gilded with baroque and at times carnivalesque details. Unlike the majority of their Industrial contemporaries (such as their Wax Trax cronies), Coil's plunge into the realm of the abject wasn't hamstrung by technology. As Coil was one of the first ensembles to be well equipped with early sampling technologies (specifically, the Fairlight Emulator), they masterfully hybridized their dark intentions with the synth-based craft of the new wave pop song (it should be noted that Soft Cell's Marc Almond has been a longstanding friend and guest vocalist for Coil).
With bands like Peaches and Trans Am trawling the '80s solely for the purpose of irony, Coil's work from that decade may appear today as excessively bombastic, too homoerotic, or downright dated. However, "Horse Rotovator" and the (no longer!) criminally unavailable "Love's Secret Domain" undeniably stand at the apex of Coil's extensive career.
RealAudio clip: "Anal Staircase"
RealAudio clip: "Who By Fire"
RealAudio clip: "Golden Section"

COIL Live Four (World Serpent) cd 18.98
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A splendid live album! Actually this is the first in a series of four volumes of Coil live recordings - released in reverse numerical order. And if this cd is any indication of the other three, I can't wait! The series 'begins' with the last two concerts (in Prague and Vienna) of their 2002 tour, and features the Coil lineup of mainmen Jhon Balance and Peter Christopherson; Ossian Brown and Thighpaulsandra as well as Black Sun Productions' Pierce and Massimo. As opposed to most of their recent studio recordings, each of which has had a considerably singular - primarily drone-based - focus, this presents a much wider scope of Coil's sound. Incredibly vivid soundscapes, meticulous collages, grand dramatic melodic orchestrations, seething minimal spoken word. Coil expertly traverse through all of these. If you're at all acquainted with their work, you'll hear a number of familiar segments, but they're all wonderfully incorporated into the album as a whole. I'd even venture to say that this live album makes for quite a nice introduction to Coil. That said, the one track that absolutely floored me was "Amethyst Deceivers". Although the audio sample only offers a mere glimpse, please do check it out! Of course it's all beautifully recorded, and the roar of the crowd is kept contained to in between songs - allowing you to fully immerse yourself in the performance that's in turns visceral, whimsical, and totally captivating. Ten tracks: "I Am Angie Bowie", "Last Rites of Spring", "Are You Shivering?", "Amethyst Deceivers", "A Warning from the Sun", "The Universe is a Haunted House", "Ostia", "I Don't Want to be the One", "Bang Bang", "An Unearthly Red". Recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Amethyst Deceivers"

COIL Live One (World Serpent) 2cd 23.00
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Attention Coil fans... The fourth and final volume in this series of live documents has finally arrived, and it's a double cd set. A characteristically ever-evolving, dramatic montage with heaving drones, wheezing strings and sputtering electronics punctuated by John Balance's guttural shouts and moans and other ghostly effected voices. Visceral, beautiful and deeply moving. Yet another version of "Amethyst Deceivers" is included on the second disc - a slower, quieter and much more minimal rendering. Furthermore, with the recent dissolution of John Balance and Peter Christopherson's personal and artistic relationships, perhaps this will mark one of the very final releases from this astoundingly groundbreaking and deeply influential British duo. Well... then again, they've probably got a secret vault filled with as yet unreleased Coil recordings.
CD A, titled "The Industrial Use Of Semen Will Revolutionise The Human Race" features three tracks from their April 2000 performance at the Royal Festival Hall in London (please note: this UK live recording was originally released as the Time Machines limited edition cd).
CD B contains six tracks from their Barcelona concert two months later. Coil's perfoming line-up for these dates was Balance, Christopherson, Ossian Brown, and Thighpaulsandra, plus viola player William Breeze joined on in Spain.
MPEG Stream: "Everything Keeps Dissolving"
MPEG Stream: "Elves"

COIL Live Three (World Serpent) cd 18.98
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Here is the second release in this series capturing the magic of Coil in the live setting. This one presents their April 2002 performance at the Teatro Delle Celebrazioni in Bologna, Italy. For this performance Coil were Jhon Balance and Peter Christopherson; Ossian Brown, Mike York and Cliff Stapleton as well as Pierce and Massimo of the Black Sun Productions collective. Nine tracks: "Anarcadia/All Horned Animals", "Amethyst Deceivers", "Slur ", "A Cold Cell", "Broccoli", "Paranoid Inlay", "Sick Mirrors", "AYOR", and "Backwards".
MPEG Stream: "Backwards"

COIL Live Two (World Serpent) cd 19.98
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Yes, we know... although the title of this cd is Live Two, this volume is actually the third to be released in this series of live Coil recordings. To get you oriented, Live Four - the one we have listened to the most so far - was an excellent document of their most recent performances Prague and Vienna in 2002. It very effectively captured the many facets of Coil. Live Three features their Bologna, Italy concert. This is Coil's presentation in DK Gorbunova, Moscow, Russia in September of 2001. It was a much more scaled down affair in terms of personnel (as opposed to their 2002 lineup) with just four men: Jhon Balance and Peter Christopherson; Thighpaulsandra, and Tom Edwards. However in a sense it's the most raw and testosterone pumped of this series so far, and the crowd responded in kind. Six tracks in all: "Something/Higher Beings Command", "Amethyst Deceivers", "What Kind of Animal Are You", "Blood from the Air", "The Green Child", "Constant Shallowness Leads to Evil".
MPEG Stream: "What Kind Of Animal Are You"
MPEG Stream: "Constant Shallowness Leads To Evil"

COIL Love's Secret Domain (Threshold House) cd 17.98
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The re-issue of "Love's Secret Domain" from 1991 is not unlike unearthing a long lost exquisite treasure. Obsessively coveted and revered over the last decade, it re-emerges still sounding fresh and current. Sadly and strangely, this album was often pigeonholed as an industrial-dance record. Sure, it was licensed to the US on Wax Trax and Coil's longstanding association with Industrial Culture (um, they started it) certainly confused idiot rock critics who aimlessly equated industrial with the militant stomp of Front 242. Clearly, "Love's Secret Domain" is an album that stands way above the standard Wax Trax fare of the time.
During the construction of this album, Coil's core duo -- Peter Christopherson and John Balance -- had immersed themselves in the acid house culture of the UK that flourished around The KLF (I don't care what you think of "What Time is Love," The KLF were geniuses in the art of pop subversion), 808 State, and even the early bleep techno from Warp Records. To Coil, the UK rave culture reflected many of their own ideas of transgression through almost pagan rituals of communities uniting around liberating music, sexual exploration, chemical enlightenment, and the release of hidden dark energies from the body and spirit.
"Love's Secret Domain" embodied a near-perfect harmony between the dark, occultish overtones from their previous albums "Scatology" and "Horse Rotovator" and the technological futurism at the heart of rave culture. Within this synthesis, Coil has not just created a handful of singles (although "The Snow" and "Windowpane" off of this album still make great dancefloor fodder), but has articulated the entire album as a sonic narrative. Swelling through the sampledelic abstraction on "Disco Hospital" (recently covered by admitted Coil fans Matmos) and the surreal tension of "Things Happen" (with Annie Anxiety Bandez' obtuse guest vocal appearance), Coil offers "The Snow" as a magnificient techno track, with creepy cut-ups of choral elements, constantly shifting and reforming melody patterns, and an 808 techno pulse. "Windowpane" in turn is far more seductive in its low slung bassline and downtempo pace. The rest of the album continues through a darkened path of hallucinatory electronics, intricate instrumentations, and occasional bursts of subverted pop sentiment. Unlike a lot of electronica records, nothing on "Love's Secret Domain" ever feels like filler.
This is a marvelous record that even after a decade has very few rivals.
RealAudio clip: "The Snow"
RealAudio clip: "Windowpane"
RealAudio clip: "Love's Secret Domain"

COIL Moon Milk (In Four Phases): The Solstice And Equinox Singles Collected (Eskaton) 2cd 15.98
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During the past decade, Coil has undergone a drastic metamorphosis that began with the extravagantly dark electronica of "Love's Secret Domain" and continued up to the kosmische ambience of "Musick To Listen To In Dark Vol 2." With all of the albums since "Love's Secret Domain" moving far away from their perverse use of pop structures, these more recent recordings initially had very little immediate impact on us. Yet with the reissue of their solstice / equinox series of singles onto this double CD set, it is clear that Coil's newer "lunar music" requires time for it to settle and perhaps ripen with age. Well, it's taken 3 years for us to really warm up to these recordings, which at the time of their release in 1998 seemed merely adequate.
Coil intended to thematically correspond these songs' droning poetry to the solstices and equinoxes corresponding to when they were made. Mostly they center around a miasmic abstraction of spartan, dirge arrangements for a few instruments (cellos, church organs, spanish guitar), maintaining their solemn pursuit into sonic alchemy. For the most part, Coil's John Balance hushes his voice into mere whispers of his pagan recitations, which barely stand out of the lulling instrumentation, although "The White Rainbow" track from the Winter single stands out as a eulogaic song dominated by Balance's rich singing. The album works much better than as a collection of singles whose original release format seemed far too abrupt for the extended atmospheres that are common throughout the whole series.
And to piss off everybody who bought the original series, Coil included a bonus live track.
RealAudio clip: "A White Rainbow"
RealAudio clip: "Bee Stings"

COIL Musick To Play In The Dark (Chalice/World Serpent) cd 25.00
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While Coil has released a plethora of side-projects (Black Light District, Elph, Time Machines, etc.), soundtracks, and limited singles (including the solstice/ equinox series from 1998) since 'Love's Secret Domain' of 1992, they have finally released the fourth 'proper' Coil album. Dark brooding beatless synth chords and field recordings are slowly unveiled as John Balance delivers a menacing voice-over. Thighpaulsandra (Julian Cope's psychedelic sidekick) joins the band for this album, to effective means, with his Conrad Schnitzler-esque arpeggiated synth attack on 'Red Birds Will Fly Out of the East and Destroy Paris in a Night'. There's been much discussion as to whether 'Musick' holds up, as one of Coil's finer moments. But remove the pressure of the 'Coil legacy', taking it on musical merits alone, and you'll find it to be quite beautiful; a dark, brooding record of 'night music'.

COIL Musick To Play In The Dark, Volume 2 (Chalice / World Serpent) cd 25.00
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"Musick To Play In The Dark, Volume Two" is ... not as good as volume one. Obviously these are all of the newagey dregs that didn't make the cut the first time around. Sure, Coil is said to have put on one hell of show at Spain's Sonar festival with ultraviolet strippers and techno-pagan rituals, but that doesn't give them any excuse to release an album as unnecessary as this. I'm turning in my fanclub badge. More dedicated/diehard fans than I will of course want this, badly.

COIL Queens of The Circulating Library (Eskaton / World Serpant) cd 19.98
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The timeless electronic swoop of Coil's "Time Machines" repeats itself in the swelling warm drones of mostly analogue synthesis on "Queens of The Circulating Library." John Balance (without Peter Christopherson) had written a poem to be recited by Dorothy Lewis - the mother of Thighpaulsandra who aids in the breathy swells of sound.

COIL Remote Viewer (Threshold House) 2cd 26.00
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Much of the discussion elsewhere on this list about Coil's Black Antlers applies to Remote Viewer as well. This, too, was an album originally released as a limited cd-r, now reissued with considerable remastering, additional production, and even a bunch of new material, more of their signature spectral electronica. Just like Black Antlers, Remote Viewer's funereal tunes warped through the funhouse of chemicals, alcohol, and occultish leanings nowadays take on an eerily prescient quality, as founding member Jhonn Balance died nearly two years ago leaving romantic and musical partner Peter Christopherson with the task of completing the rough mixes found on the earlier cd-rs of Black Antlers and Remote Viewer.
While not really the "moon musick" of Astral Disaster or Musick To Play In The Dark, the slippery tunes of Remote Viewer are mostly devoid of Balance's voice. Instead, hurdy gurdy drones, electrically tinged violin, and sampled bagpipes spiral into an atonal ragas elegantly shifting into deranged and slightly maudlin melodies. As a whole Remote Viewer is much closer to the devilishly sampledelic breakbeat numbers on Love's Secret Domain. Delirious to say the least.
MPEG Stream: "Remote Viewing 1"
MPEG Stream: "Remote Viewing 2"

COIL Scatology (World Serpent) cd 15.98
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COIL The Ape Of Naples (Threshold House) cd 26.00
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The Ape Of Naples marks the end of an era for Coil, as the grand finale to a tumultuous career of psychotropic electronica, siddereal ambience, and post-industrial occultations. In November 2004, Jhonn Balance died as the result of an alcohol related accident. In the intervening months, his partner -- both creatively and romantically -- Peter Christopherson resurrected many of the tracks from the ill-fated Backwards sessions as well as unreleased recordings that date back to the beginning of Coil in 1982. It should be noted that Christopherson did not intend The Ape Of Naples to be lumped in with the Stolen and Contaminated series of rare and unreleased material; rather, he shaped the album to reflect his grief and melancholy.
The Backwards sessions were originally commissioned as a follow up to their seminal oblique dance album Love's Secret Domain, which emerged out of Coil's obsession with British acid house and rave culture. In fact, Trent Reznor had brought Coil to his New Orleans studio to record much of those sessions in hopes of releasing the album on his Nothing imprint. Unfortunately, more than a decade went by with only false starts and creative dead ends; and Backwards never emerged. While it's not all that clear if The Ape Of Naples is the album that Coil envisioned when they were making Backwards, The Ape Of Naples stands as a mighty triumph in the Coil pantheon of releases, ranking up there with Horse Rotovator and the aforementioned Love's Secret Domain.
What's so striking about The Ape Of Naples, especially in light of their recent albums of temporal minimalism, is their return to the song structure, and how Jhonn Balance could deliver his beautiful howlings with all of the poetry of Jean Genet. Throughout the album, Christopherson scores elegaic arrangements with an urgent interlocking for marimba and vibraphone, whose gasping repetition serves as a thematic link between all of the material both old and new. The album also features devilish marches of electronic arpeggiation laced with distant throbbing rhythms and Balance's omnipresent vocals, typified by such tracks as "Heaven's Blade" and the reprise of "Teenage Lightning" -- one of the highlight tracks from LSD. A tragically beautiful album through and through.
MPEG Stream: "Heaven's Blade"
MPEG Stream: "Teenage Lightning 2005"
MPEG Stream: "Going Up"

COIL The Ape Of Naples & The New Backwards (Important Records) 4lp 100.00
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Issued at the end of 2005, The Ape Of Naples marked the end of an era for Coil. It was the grand finale to a tumultuous career of psychotropic electronica, sidereal ambience, and post-industrial occultations. A year earlier, Jhonn Balance died as the result of an alcohol related accident. In the intervening months, his partner -- both creatively and romantically -- Peter Christopherson resurrected many of the tracks from the ill-fated Backwards sessions as well as unreleased recordings that date back to the beginning of Coil in 1982. It should be noted that Christopherson did not intend The Ape Of Naples to be lumped in with the Stolen and Contaminated series of rare and unreleased material; rather, he shaped the album to reflect his grief and melancholy.
The Backwards sessions were originally commissioned as a follow up to their seminal oblique dance album Love's Secret Domain, which emerged out of Coil's obsession with British acid house and rave culture. In fact, Trent Reznor had brought Coil to his New Orleans studio to record much of those sessions in hopes of releasing the album on his Nothing imprint. Unfortunately, more than a decade went by with only false starts and creative dead ends; and Backwards never emerged. While it's not all that clear if The Ape Of Naples is the album that Coil envisioned when they were making Backwards, The Ape Of Naples stands as a mighty triumph in the Coil pantheon of releases, ranking up there with Horse Rotovator and the aforementioned Love's Secret Domain.
In releasing The Ape Of Naples on vinyl some three years after the original cd, Important Records has bundled the 3LPs of The Ape Of Naples with a fourth LP comprised of Christopherson's further revisitations of the Backwards sessions onto an LP called The New Backwards. These tracks found here may be even better than what's found on The Ape Of Naples. The only drawback is that this 4LP set is a bit pricey, and painfully limited to 500 copies, most of which have already been snatched up.
MPEG Stream: "Heaven's Blade"
MPEG Stream: "Teenage Lightning 2005"
MPEG Stream: "Going Up"