COIL The Ape Of Naples (Threshold House) cd 26.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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"

COIL The Golden Hare With A Voice Of Silver (Eskaton) cd 22.00
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"The Golden Hare With A Voice Of Silver" collects all of the tracks that been previously released on two Russian compilations, essentially documenting the history of the transgressive British group Coil. Throughout their 20 year career, Coil has defined the pinnacles of both Industrial Culture as well as contemporary electronica through an evolving use of electronics as the vehicle for pagan rituals, apocalyptic languages, plunges into the abject, and celebrations of their homosexuality. While "The Golden Hare" would make for an excellent introduction into the work of Coil as it samples from all of the major periods ("Scatology," "Horse Rotovator," "Love's Secret Domain," "Moon's Milk," "Musick To Listen To In The Dark," etc.), die-hard Coil fans should be intrigued to know that 2 of the tracks ('A Cold Cell' and 'A.Y.O.R.') are rumored to be cuts from their ill-fated 'Backwards' album, which has been long slated for release on Nothing Records since the mid-'90s.
RealAudio clip: "Amethyst Decievers"
RealAudio clip: "The Lost Rivers Of London"

COIL Time Machines (Eskaton) 2lp 25.00
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COIL / THE NEW BLOCKADERS / VORTEX CAMPAIGN The Melancholy Mad Tenant (Important) lp 29.00
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In the early '90s, I (Jim) remember seeing a peculiar cassette listed in the RRR catalogue for several years. It was some sort of collaboration between Coil (who I was enthralled with), The New Blockaders (who I was curious about through their work with Organum), and Vortex Campaign (who I thought had a cool name, but knew nothing about). Foolishly, I never picked up that cassette, especially since the damn thing was limited to 50 copies. Oh well. Thankfully, Important Records is doing their best Vinyl-On-Demand impersonation with a hefty reissue of an terminally obscure piece of early noise culture. There's still no background information as to the identity of Vortex Campaign, other than that they are Belgian and that they invited both Coil and The New Blockaders to collaborate on that one off cassette back in 1984. Since then, Vortex Campaign did make an appearance on the Broken Flag 5lp anthology released by Vinyl-On-Demand; but beyond that, they're still a mystery. Coil had gone on to great things in all realms of occult electronics mired in psychedelic darkness; and The New Blockaders had manifested explosive recordings of hellish noise in their pursuit of anti-art.
This lp collects the two sprawling collaborative tracks from that cassette, leaving off the solo Vortex Campaign tracks - just to make me kick myself even more for not buying that cassette back in the day. These are two complex collages of snarling loops, dragged through shit, vomit, and blood leaving a bruised and stained mess of obsessively repetitive growls, blisters, and blurts of industrial noise. The energy on these two tracks is profoundly negative, and could be easily confused with anything that Prurient or Wolf Eyes might muster in this day and age. Supposedly there was a cd version of the cassette, but that too is out of print, leaving this vinyl-only production from Important as a rare glimpse back at these recordings. Limited to 500 copies. We only got a paltry few and that's IT.

COIL SEA s/t (Thrill Jockey) lp 14.98

COILANS s/t (Threshold House) 3cd + dvd 66.00
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There's a bright orange sticker on this new Coil release says: "WARNING. Contents may make you spazz out." Definitely not the sort of sticker you would expect to see on a Coil record. And most certainly not this one. Coilans find the extended Coil family, Johnn Balance, Ossian Brown, Peter Christopherson, Thighpaulsandra and Ivan Pavlov, composing for a 1930's mechanical device called the ANS, a machine designed to convert graphic designs into sound. The text describing the machine is quite dense and technical, and some folks here are convinced it's all a big hoax. The liner notes do however reference two works actually composed for the machine, "Flow" by Alfred Schnitke, and Edward Artemiev's music for Tarkovsky's Solaris, which perhaps does lend some credence to the existence of the machine. Whether Coil actually have a version of the ANS machine as they claim, or are merely making sounds that they imagine might be produced by an ANS is still maybe debatable. But it hardly matters, as the results are sublime. Long, slowly evolving pieces spread across three cds. Gorgeous and minimal, hissing distant drones, insect-like shimmers that pulse and throb into warbling sinewaves, and chiming smears of upper register skree spread into keeing sonic ripples of warbling decay. A series of lush minimal mesmers worthy of Coleclough, Mirror, Arcane Device, Sachiko M, Rafael Toral and other practitioners of fragile high end exploration. The DVD is equally as compelling, a series of beautiful and strangely hypnotic animations by Peter Christopherson, that pulse and squirm and slowly shift along with the music. The whole thing is beautifully packaged in a full color box, inner sleeves depicting details of the ANS machine on one side and the images fed into the machine to produce the sounds on the other.
MPEG Stream: "Coil ANS 1"

COLD CAVE Etsel And Ruby (What's Your Rupture?) 12" 11.98
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On one end of the Cold Cave spectrum, there is the blistering terror of low-fi electronics with sparse hints of new wave flecked through a sound better suited to Wolf Eyes; and on the other, Cold Cave can effortlessly toss out a darkly pop-eyed, minimal wave gem that wouldn't out of place next to Depeche Mode or Gary Numan. So far, Cold Cave (aka Wes Eisold) has not done us wrong no matter what he ends up producing. The hyper limited Etsel And Ruby 12" is of the latter, poppier sensibility, in the footsteps of the terminally catchy single The Trees Grew Emotions And Died from 2008. The production values here are a little higher than the gutter-punk scratchiness found on the Cremations collection; and while punchier drum machines and upfront vocals give Cold Cave a gloss with a broader appeal, we seriously hope that he doesn't leave the nastier sound behind.
The A side "Love Comes Close" is a jangly, jaunty number that could very well be a lost track from The Cure's The Head On The Door, with Eisold's croon almost sounding like Stephin Merritt. The first of two B sides finds Eisold handing over the vocal duties to an unknown female singer, whose detached, cold vocals fit perfectly with the Cure / Joy Division basslines laced around the darkened electronics. The cut is like the best Fad Gadget song you've never heard before, with an insistent electroid melody that builds and builds throughout the track. Great stuff. Limited to 300 copies!!! Available only from the label and right here at aQ!

COLD CAVE / PRURIENT Stars Explode (Hospital Productions) 12" 19.98
We listed this a month ago, it went out of print right away, and still is, but we just got a handful from a supplier who still had some, unfortunately that means the price has gone up a bit, and when these are gone, they're gone.
Originally released as an insanely limited cassette tape to coincide with a tour, this collaborative recording is now available as a spiffy, and still limited, lp, and includes a bonus track NOT on the original tape.
What might one expect from this match up, some cool cold wave grooves with howling noise drenched vocals, or better yet some heavy harsh noise shot through with dark moody melodies, and cold synths? Well, the weird thing is, this doesn't sound like either band, together or separate. Instead, this is swirling psychedelic synth space drone ambience, a little blissed out, a little brooding and ominous, all starry shimmer and blackly abstract, but plenty dark and definitely a little malevolent. Huge expanses of muted feedback, processed rumbles and whirs, buried melodies, all softly heaving in deep black swells, shot through with ever shifting textures. The B-side though gets downright poppy, still space-y and abstract, but infused with some seriously shoegazey shimmer, melodies much closer to the surface, glimmery and gauzey, with a distant rhythms, skittery and hushed, that over the course of the side, builds to a fairly aggressive industrial pound, while the sounds around it grow more and more bleak and caustic.
And then there's the extra track, which is easily the poppiest of the bunch, a soft focus M83 / Nadja / Jesu bit of blissy pop ambient drift, swirly and abstract, with wordless vocals adding to soft space-y psychedelia until some super strange vocals come in, a little harsh, heavily processed, distorted and menacing, wrapped around distant grinding guitars, and for a few moments it suddenly does sound very much like we imagined it would.
And of course, EXTREMELY LIMITED.

COLDSTREAM South Island (Under The Spire) 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.
This mysterious gem was sent to us in the mail, and all it took was a quick listen to be totally smitten, and to know that probably lots of aQ folks would dig this as much as we did. So we got as many as we could, which was the last dozen or so copies of the super limited pressing of 150 copies, and here it is, the first we've heard from Coldstream, aka Daniel Mumford, four extended tracks of thick layered drone music, hazy shimmery drift, and mysterious minimal krautdrone ambience. The opening track is an almost static stretch of thick gnarled buzz, blurred into a slowly shifting expanse of dense drones, deep and mesmerizing, the sort of sound that we could listen to forever. The second track is much more melodic, spacious and abstract, with a cool skittery rhythm that surfaces about halfway through, epic and cinematic, super dramatic and ethereal, laced with muted buzz and soft sonic swells. The next track is also quite cinematic, like the soundtrack to some British nature documentary, hushed and dreamlike, fluttery flute like tones draped over undulating low end pulses, you can almost imagine time lapse images of clouds flitting across the sky, or plants blossoming and the closing up again, a musical dusk, all warm and wispy and dreamlike. Finally, the closing track smolders darkly, laced with minor key piano melodies, a brooding minimal drone ballad, again, haunting, and mysterious, and very very lovely.
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES, these are the LAST ones, housed in a cool origami like cardstock sleeve, with a full color insert, each one hand numbered.
MPEG Stream: "South Island"
MPEG Stream: "Golden Road"

COLECLOUGH, JONATHAN Cake (Robot/Siren) cd 16.98
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Coleclough's droning aesthetic was also heard on a collaboration done with Andrew Chalk last year, with an emphasis on surprisingly rich and beautiful tones emerging out of a very dark, quiet amplification. A clatter of distant pianos fades into bleak reverberations that hint at the catacomb recordings of Lustmord with field recordings filtering through. Coleclough's work seems to fall somewhere in between Organum's acoustic drones and Bernhard Gunter's requests for careful listening. Recommended drone work!

COLECLOUGH, JONATHAN Cake (version 2) (Siren / Robot) cd 15.98
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While the UK drone ensemble Ora dissolved a little over a year ago, its scattered members have been incredibly active with like-sounding projects: Andrew Chalk has been busy in Mirror, Darren Tate now works as Monos, Colin Potter has been collaborating with Nurse With Wound, and satellite member Jonathan Coleclough has built up what looks to be an amazing schedule of releases. The first of such releases is the second version of Coleclough's fantastic early solo work "Cake," which has been out of print for some time now. On the surface, "Cake" appears simply as the second pressing of this record with a similar cover (it's just the inside of the booklet turned outside), yet the minimalist drones within are noticably different than the original album. Instead of the backwards masked piano of the first "Cake," Coleclough introduces this album with a field recording of various chirps from sparrows, finches, and crows. At a very deliberate pace, Coleclough begins to filter these recordings into glistening flanges that reflect into an incrementally building drone. In fact it is the sustained drone that Coleclough sculpted for the original version of Cake, rich with sustained metallic timbres that breathe with the scraped pulse of bowed metal (possibly a steel strung cello or a bowed cymbal or even a prepared piano). Where Coleclough had originally been interested in finer points of quiet listening, the second version of "Cake" accentuates the minute glissandos and textural variations of those metallic drones. Compositionally, Coleclough gets relatively aggresive in the volume after starting out at very quiet levels. As a whole "Cake" (version 2) retains a similar feel as the first with an expansive sound evoking a peculiar sadness and obtuse mystery, but is different enough to be certainly worthwhile if you have the original. And if you don't, this is a wonderful introduction to one of our perennial favorite drone artists. You bet this is recomended!
RealAudio clip: "Cake 2 (excerpt 1)"
RealAudio clip: "Cake 2 (excerpt 2)"

COLECLOUGH, JONATHAN Casino (Idea) lp + cd 24.00
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Another gorgeous release, both visually and sonically, from Idea records, this time from one of our favorite composers, Jonathan Coleclough. Coleclough has been responsible for some of the most beautiful drone records we have ever heard, and along with occasional partner Andrew Chalk produced one of Aquarius' all time favorite recordings, the breathtaking Sumac. Casino is the second entry in Idea Records series of unaltered field recordings and features two sidelong recordings, presented in their raw, unedited, and unprocessed form. Side one is a recording of a casino in Las Vegas and is a woozy, hypnotic wash of overlapping melodies swirled into a dense polyphony, the clicking and clattering of coins, the whir of slot machines and the rumble of muted conversations. While not necessarily soothing by themselves, all of those disparate elements blend into a dreamy, shimmery soporific whole. Side two is a recording of tree frogs in Antigua and displays a similar, albeit much simpler pattern as the Casino recordings, with a litany of high end squeaks over warbly lower pitched chirps all over a dense bed of shimmery distant scree. The accompanying cd further demonstrates the sonic similarities between the two recordings, by gradually mixing and crossfading the pleasing din of the casino into the latenight clamour of chirping and croaking frogs, and then eventually into the sound of crashing surf. The lp is on audiophile 220 gram vinyl, and the lp and cd are housed in a nice, thick gorgeously designed sleeve!
MPEG Stream: "Casino / Tree Frogs"

COLECLOUGH, JONATHAN Makruna (ICR) cd 21.00
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After a number of beautifully designed albums (i.e. Period, Low Ground, Sumac, etc.), Jonathan Coleclough appears to have caught the same anti-packaging bug as fellow British drone artist David Jackman, by merely housing a CD in an empty case. Well at least, there's a touch of novelty to it, as he's used the same prest-o-matic plastic case with built-in ejector lever that Raster-Noton employed for the Cyclo collaboration between Ryoji Ikeda and Carsten Nicolai. As clever as this device is, it nevertheless seems rather cheap. And some of us worry that it might scratch the cd although there has been no proof of that so far.
If you look as the packing design as something which could unduly influence an interpretation of the music within, then design would be superfluous and unnecessary. I say bollocks to that! Give us something to look at while we drool over your music, Mr. Coleclough! And drool we did over the exquisite drones and atmospheres that Coleclough produced for Makruna. Tumbling through a langorous loop of deep piano notes entombed in thick washes of reverb, Makruna is a much darker album than what Coleclough typically produces. Throughout the pieces, Coleclough extracts fragments of those piano tones and elongates them into sympathetic harmonizations amidst additional textures of metallic scrapings and field recordings of bird choruses. Also featured on Makruna is the the entire Minya recording, which originally came out about five years ago as a super limited CDR. Featuring contributions from Colin Potter and Andrew Chalk, Minya is a worthy complement to the bleak isolationism of Makruna as shadowy drones flutter amongst subtle feedback vibrations and ominous low-end frequencies. The questionable packaging aside, this is another Coleclough record that comes highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Makruna"
MPEG Stream: "Minya"

COLECLOUGH, JONATHAN Period (Anomalous) cd 14.98
You may have noticed that we reference the British sound artist Jonathan Coleclough when talking about the pinnacle of dronemusik or attempting to draw comparisons to another artist whose work shares a similar depth; but if you're not familiar with Coleclough (as he's been less than hyper-prolific in recent years), Period is the quintessential album for Coleclough and remains one of the all time greatest drone records to find its way into our hallowed halls. Out of print for many years, Period is available yet again. Here's what he had to say when it originally came in 2001:
Jonathan Coleclough began collecting field recordings and transforming them into emphathic dronescapes back in 1989, around the same time he began corresponding with Colin Potter about his ICR cassette projects. Since then, Potter and Coleclough have worked closely on a number of projects starting with Andrew Chalk and Darren Tate in Ora, and culminating more recently with their well-received Low Ground collaboration. Period again finds Coleclough employing the production / engineering talents of Potter (who has also been working quite intently with Steven Stapleton in Nurse With Wound). Throughout his career, Coleclough has defined himself as a sound organizer, modifying acoustic events and field recordings to enhance the emotional resonance that he finds in those sounds. Here on Period, Coleclough draws all of his sounds from a Bluthner grand piano, surrounding the spartanly placed clusters of impressionistic notes with a complementary set of delicately fluctuating drones. Coleclough does well to accentuate the sublime reverberant decay that follows the piano's sustained tones. Furthermore, Potter offered his interpretation of the source material entitled "Periodic" which effectively erases the obvious references to the piano and leaves behind a densely tangled web of calm reverberations. As a whole Period stands as an amazingly rich and balanced piece of work on par with Brian Eno's Thursday Afternoon and the Cindytalk piano improvisations.
MPEG Stream: "Period"
MPEG Stream: "Periodic"

COLECLOUGH, JONATHAN Period (Anomalous) lp 14.98
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Quite happy in releasing sporadic productions in painfully small pressings, Jonathan Coleclough has been one of Aquarius' favorite dronologist / deep listening composers and one who deserves a place in the experimental ambient pantheon that glorifies the work of Pauline Oliveros, Brian Eno, and Zoviet France. "Period," a vinyl only release, draws all its sounds from a Bluthner grand piano. With each key that Coleclough strikes, he has rigged up an unknown set up (a series of interlocking delay pedals creating a delicate feedback loop? an acoustic device of various strings and springs which act as modified aeolian harp? it probably doesn't matter) to generate beautifully resonating tones, which appear at first to sustain indefinitely yet almost imperceptibly begin to show signs of decay. When a spartanly placed cluster of impressionistic notes trickles from the piano's sound board, Coleclough has an amazingly rich drone to gradually shift and modulate until another series of gentle piano notes is required. While this piece would be enough to warrant high praise from all at AQ, the flip side of the record is an exceptional piece on which Nurse With Wound and Ora collaborator Colin Potter reworked the original source material. Potter's contribution entitled "Periodic" effectively erases the obvious references to the piano, leaving behind a densely tangled web of calm reverberations. Totally amazing!!!

COLECLOUGH, JONATHAN Period (Limited Double Disc) (Anomalous) 2cd 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
One of Aquarius's favorite drone compositions, Jonathan Coleclough's "Period" was originally released early in 2001 as a limited edition piece of vinyl on Anomalous Records and has now been reissued with an extended mix of the title track that is better suited to the CD format. Coleclough began collecting field recordings and transforming them into emphathic dronescapes back in 1989, around the same time he began corresponding with Colin Potter about his ICR cassette projects. Since then, Potter and Coleclough have worked closely on a number of projects starting with Andrew Chalk and Darren Tate in Ora, and culminating more recently with their well-received "Low Ground" collaboration. "Period" again finds Coleclough employing the production / engineering talents of Potter (who has also been working quite intently with Steven Stapleton in Nurse With Wound). Throughout his career, Coleclough has defined himself as a sound organizer, modifying acoustic events and field recordings to enhance the emotional resonance that he finds in those sounds. Here on "Period," Coleclough draws all of his sounds from a Bluthner grand piano, surrounding the spartanly placed clusters of impressionistic notes with a complementary set of delicately fluctuating drones. Coleclough does well to accentuate the sublime reverberant decay that follows the piano's sustained tones. Furthermore, Potter offered his interpretation of the source material entitled "Periodic" which effectively erases the obvious references to the piano and leaves behind a densely tangled web of calm reverberations. As a whole "Period" stands as an amazingly rich and balanced piece of work on par with Brian Eno's "Thursday Afternoon" and the Cindytalk piano improvisations.
Aquarius has also gotten in a limited number of the double CD sets of "Period" which features a third mix of "Period" by both Coleclough and Potter, and a gorgeous track called "Summand," which is a re-working of some of the source material that Coleclough brought to the "Sumac" sessions with Andrew Chalk. There's only 300 of those double CDs in print. Don't blame us when they sell out!
RealAudio clip: "Period"
RealAudio clip: "Periodicity (with Colin Potter)"
RealAudio clip: "Summand"

COLECLOUGH, JONATHAN Windlass (Korm Plastics Introductory Paperback) cd 14.98
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Jonathan Coleclough has become AQ's favorite newly discovered sound sculptor with three outstanding releases "Cake", "Sumac" (in collaboration with Andrew Chalk), and now "Windlass". In the end, it's probably irrelavant that the source material for "Windlass" is a slow moving crank which controls water flow on a dam, as Coleclough's metamorphosis of the original sound results in a deep sturnum rumbling bass drone paired with field recordings of distant twittering birds (a la Messaien). Swells of slowly churning resonance may be the only sonic reference to the metallic cycling of the source material. Highly recommended!!!

COLECLOUGH, JONATHAN & ANDREW CHALK Sumac (ICR/Robot) cd 17.98
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Released a few years back as a one-sided piece of vinyl, Jonathan Coleclough and Andrew Chalk's "Sumac" has been one of those hidden gems within the deep listening realms of music that has continuously amazing us. Fortunately, "Sumac" has re-emerged from obscurity with this lengthy 70 minute cd version. Andrew Chalk is a veteran of the noise / drone scene who has recorded with Organum, Ora, and Feral Confine. Working with upstart dronologist Jonathan Coleclough, Chalk has conjured a breathtaking memser of bowed metal wires, cymbals, and other pieces of metal with shifting chunks of backward masked slow aerated sound. "Sumac," shrouded in a glistening darkness, is one of the all-time great drone records.

COLECLOUGH, JONATHAN & LETHE Long Heat (ICR) cd 17.98
Jonathan Colecough sure does like his collaborations! (And so do we.) We were first transfixed by his luminous dronescaping on the masterful Sumac album (currently unavailable) which paired his talents with Andrew Chalk who later went on to found the equally epochal drone ensemble Mirror. Since then, Coleclough has worked with Colin Potter on numerous ventures, Bass Communion, Tim Hill, and now with Japanese improviser Kuwayama Kiyoharu (aka Lethe). Kiyoharu is best known for his duets with violinist Kijima Rina in which the two respond to the reverberations and environmental ambience of warehouse spaces, highway underpasses, and other industrial zones. As Lethe, Kiyoharu's work concentrates more on the spatialization of actionist gestures in which he scrapes, shuffles, and bristles found objects in various locations and proximations to his microphones. Together, their work operates on a fairly simple trajectory as Coleclough sets forth an underlying drone upon which Kuwayama overlays his clamourous gestures. Starting off with a lulling isolationist tone, Coleclough's subtle shifts settle upon a lumbering sea of low frequencies; Kuwayama quietly introduces his scrabblings. Together, they add more and more sounds upon each other, as Coleclough offers some ring modulated electric frequencies not unlike Klaus Schulze's classic '70s desolation and as Kuwayama increases the density of his aggregate sounds. This builds up to a dramatic climax of clanging metals against concrete floors and psychoacoustically agitated drones that come to an abrupt halt. Afterwards, Coleclough sends the rest of the piece along a steady fluctuation of twin tones, and Kuwayama presents a delicate foray of acoustic clicks. It all makes for a wonderful album!
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 1"
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 2"

COLECLOUGH, JONATHAN & MURMER Husk (ICR) cd 15.98
It's been far too long since we've heard anything new from the venerable British drone composer Jonathan Coleclough, so we figured we'd grab a few more copies of the his brilliant collaboration with Murmer (aka Patrick McGinley). Back in the early oughts, Coleclough began making regular contributions to McGinley's weekly radio series Framework for Resonance FM in London; and their continued communication sparked the interest for a collaboration. Much of the music found on Husk originated from semi-improvised sessions using source material as refrigerators, thunderstorms, sheep, car horns, ferryboats, windblown sand, and crackling charcoal; and it's a crap shoot to discern which of these electrically blurred drones hails from an overheating kitchen appliance or from farm animals. Not that any of that really matters, as the art of Coleclough and McGinley is in their alchemy, transforming the commonplace into the celestial (albeit, a very dark and very cold heavenly body). Throbbing drones of low end harmonics are joined by secondary sustained timbres which undulate as polyamorous tangles, spreading rhizomes, and slippery knots bristling with tactility and spotted with plenty of hints of the organic. Each of the four tracks proposes a variation on glassine drones counterpointed by rasping textures, at times hedging for the subdued drama of smoldering crescendos and others the sublime stare at glacial immobility. Coleclough's work has always been exceptional, and his collaboration with Murmer is no different! Highly recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Husk"
MPEG Stream: "Fieldwork"
MPEG Stream: "Germ"

COLECLOUGH, JONATHAN & MURMER Husk (ICR) 2cd 24.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
NOW AVAILABLE: THE DOUBLE CD VERSION!!!
We've made hundreds of references to Jonathan Colecough when alluding to quality drone work that has passed through the store. That said, it's been a while since we've had any new recordings from Mr. Coleclough, so we thought we'd dig up one of his best records. And what do you know? ICR had a handful of the DOUBLE DISC versions of Husk that we thought went out of print years ago! Here's what we have to say about the original disc (the 2nd disc is just as good!):
Jonathan Coleclough and Patrick McGinley (aka Murmer) met around 2003 after contributing works to the same compilation. Soon after, Coleclough began making regular contributions to McGinley's weekly radio series Framework for Resonance FM in London; and their continued communication sparked the interest for a collaboration. Much of the music found on Husk originated from semi-improvised sessions using source material as refrigerators, thunderstorms, sheep, car horns, ferryboats, windblown sand, and crackling charcoal; and it's a crap shoot to discern which of these electrically blurred drones hails from an overheating kitchen appliance or from farm animals. Not that any of that really matters, as the art of Coleclough and McGinley is in their alchemy, transforming the commonplace into the celestial (albeit, a very dark and very cold heavenly body). Throbbing drones of low end harmonics are joined by secondary sustained timbres which undulate as polyamorous tangles, spreading rhizomes, and slippery knots bristling with tactility and spotted with plenty of hints of the organic. Each of the four tracks proposes a variation on glassine drones counterpointed by rasping textures, at times hedging for the subdued drama of smoldering crescendos and others the sublime stare at glacial immobility. Coleclough's work has always been exceptional, and his collaboration with Murmer is no different! Highly recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Husk"
MPEG Stream: "Fieldwork"
MPEG Stream: "Germ"

COLECLOUGH, JONATHAN & TIM HILL Beech For John and Miho (Sea Pool) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Managed to get a handful of these back in! Here's what we had to say about it before:
Of all of the drone artists that Aquarius has championed, Jonathan Coleclough is one of our (and our customers') favorites. "Beech for John and Miho," another collaboration for Coleclough with saxophonist Tim Hill, does nothing to change our high opinion of this composer, and we highly recommend everybody who has been interested in Coleclough to pick this one up!
Coleclough was originally commissioned to construct a short piece for a private wedding CD compilation alongside Joe Weismann, If Thousands, Jliat, and Space Machine. From what I can gather, there were a few copies of that compilation circulating around eBay at extremely high prices; thus, the release of "Beech" at this normal price should be a welcome relief for die-hard collectors. Furthermore, Coleclough has unravelled the original 15 minutes of sound into an epic 74 minutes, a time frame much better suited to the material at hand. Despite the lack of information about this composition, the sounds that Coleclough and Hill have been able to muster resemble those found on their previous collaborative album with Nurse With Wound's engineer Colin Potter entitled "Low Ground," opening up the possibility that the sources for "Beech" are saxophone and cello. Regardless of origin, Coleclough has stretched out the source material's intrinsic tonalities into a Phill Niblock-meets-Organum piece of maximalism. Coleclough presents a steady flux of sustained drones that may have been doubled, tripled, and quadrupled from a bow rippling across the strings of a cello. It's a beautiful hum that waxes and wanes on top of a constant background field of rapidly streaming glistens, shimmers, and miniature ruptures. This undercurrent of sound clangs like a distant school bell that rattles indefinitely, but situates itself as a transcendent, environmental complement rather than a toxic abrasion. "Beech" ultimately is an exceptional piece of dronemusic that is as good as Coleclough's universally acclaimed collaboration "Sumac" with Andrew Chalk.
MPEG Stream: "Beech For John and Miho (excerpt)"

COLECLOUGH, JONATHAN / ANDREW LILES Torch Songs (Die Stadt) 2lp+cd 54.00
Much like the entire back catalogue of John Duncan, British avant-drone artist Jonathan Coleclough has often buttressed his work through an ongoing set of collaborations, each of which push his work into interesting territories while maintaining that essence of Coleclough that makes all of his albums so enthralling. His 2006 collaboration with Murmer was easily one of the best drone albums of that year, twisting field recordings and quiet sessions with electric objects into a gauzy, crepuscular blur that even made those at Artforum perk up their ears and listen. Torch Songs came to fruition when both Coleclough and Liles performed in Preston (probably at the request of the ever-charming Colin Potter) in 2005. In fact, much of the source material for Torch Songs originated from Coleclough's performance to which Liles went on to "add, subtract, multiply, and divide" further. The fundamentals of Torch Songs are primarily Coleclough's signature moves: swelling, resonant drones manipulated from acoustic sources and distilled into tonally vibrant beams of pure sound. Yet, Liles (who in and of himself is a fine technician of sonic alchemy to the point where he has often graced the stage alongside Steve Stapleton, Colin Potter, and Matt Waldron in Nurse With Wound) interjects his own sidereal gestures with wooden creaks, digital time stretching, radiant eruptions of dissonant couplings with Coleclough's drones, and occasional jaunts of heavily filtered tin-can and rubber-band rhythms that parallel much of the output from Liles' recent 12 part Vortex series. Yet for all of Liles' baroque flares for the sonically surreal, it is Coleclough who authors the strongest material on Torch Songs through his sublime use of the drone. The first 300 copies of Torch Songs comes with a bonus CD that documents Coleclough's aforementioned Preston performance back in 2005.
MPEG Stream: "Live at St. Peters (Extract)"

COLECLOUGH, JONATHAN / COLIN POTTER / BASS COMMUNION s/t (ICR) 2cd 24.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Despite our allegiance to all things produced by British drone masters Jonathan Coleclough and Colin Potter, this double disc co-produced with Bass Communion (the solo project of No-Man's Steven Wilson) made us wince at the possibility that Coleclough and Potter had unwittingly stumbled down the path of New Age banality. To be fair to Bass Communion, our only previous encounter with him was a subpar remix album he did for Muslimgauze; providing a lasting impression of Bass Communion as something of a droll ambient contemporary of The Orb. Perhaps we were wrong, as the sprawling collaborations and mixes found here don't exhibit the fluffiness of New Age; but at the same time, some of the source materials do seem quizzically thin, with just a couple of woefully obvious synth tones looping indefinitely through a few eq filters. However, Bass Communion's mix of work by Potter and Coleclough is one of the stronger pieces, with a glacial pall settling upon fluctuating drones and downpitched miasma. Coleclough's first of two mixes is another of the album's highlights, with frozen elements chattering amidst a set of deep, dark ambient passages that would make Lustmord and Thomas Koner jealous. Andee's new favorite going-to-sleep album.
MPEG Stream: COLIN POTTER / BASS COMMUNION "Raiser"
MPEG Stream: BASS COMMUNION / POTTER & COLECLOUGH "Yossaria"
MPEG Stream: JONATHAN COLECOUGH / BASS COMMUNION "Pethidine"

COLECLOUGH, JONATHAN AND COLIN POTTER Low Ground (ICR) cd 17.98
Through his exceptional career that spans work in Ora, a handful of fantastic solo projects, and the AQ-favorite "Sumac" collaboration with Andrew Chalk, Jonathan Coleclough has mastered the harder-than-it-looks art of disguising how he constructs his epic droneworks. His recordings have always been marked by a vigilantly maintained resonance of acoustic phenomena, which appear not as ephemeral sonorities but rather as epochal, monumental tones. "Low Ground" -- recorded in collaboration with engineer extraodinaire Colin Potter (also of Nurse With Wound fame) and saxophonist Tim Hill -- is no exception to the Coleclough blueprints. That said, Coleclough has been slowly moving away from the Ora / Chalk purity of sound, with an increased interest in digitizing his drones.
Under most circumstances, the presence of a saxophone on a drone album would make me cringe in agony; but thankfully, Coleclough's alchemy is so complete that you would be hard pressed to hear anything remotely sounding like a saxophone on "Low Ground." Instead, beautiful slowly aerated pulsations of ringing tones open this album, recalling the strangely comfortable sounds of a radiator pushing hot steam through archaic pipes on a cold winter eveneing. Coleclough and Potter gradually treat these sounds with some DSP actions (mostly timestreching and EQ-filtering) that pixelate into digital buzzings. "Low Ground" shifts from these sedate, transcendent metaphors into far more malevolent sci-fi scores, with the introduction of deep, menacingly low-end frequencies smattered with natural events of snapping twigs and trickling water. As the album draws to a close, Coleclough and Potter twist tiny slashes from the dark, slightly wavering drone into a majestic coda of those digitized radiator wheezes which opened the record.
As wonderful as anything else that Coleclough has done. Very highly recommended.
RealAudio clip: COLIN POTTER "Sinister Dexter"
RealAudio clip: JONATHAN COLECLOUGH "Tunnel"
RealAudio clip: COLECLOUGH, POTTER, AND TIM HILL "Beech Shadow"

COLEMAN, JAMES Zuihitsu (Sedimental) cd 14.98
Boston thereminist James Coleman comes from the very spartan school of improvisational "new music" alongside John Wall, Phil Durrant, and the Durian label. Coleman's spartan wisps of tones from the theremin (that early electronic instrument played without touching it, rather by manipulating the electrical waves emitting from it) accompany a number of guest musicians including Greg Kelley (trumpet), Tatsuya Nakatani (percussion), Vic Rawlings (cello and electronics), Bhob Rainey (saxophone), Liz Tonne (voice), and the undr quartet.

COLLECTIONS OF COLONIES OF BEES Six Guitars (Table Of The Elements) 12" 17.98

COLLEEN ET LES BOITES s/t (Leaf) cd 10.98
Colleen is the only music maker we can think of who can so perfectly crawl into our hearts, curling up and making it feel like home, with such delicacy and the softest sweetest touch. While not the official follow up to her gorgeous sophomore outing, The Golden Morning Breaks, this is a collection of recordings she made when commissioned by the French national radio station to record music for a special broadcast of Atelier De Creation Radiophonique (Radiophonic Workshop Of Creation). In taking on this commission Colleen decided to use the opportunity to further explore her love of and work with music boxes. Using everything from miniature music boxes hidden in 1940's birthday cards to huge Victorian parlor boxes, she hijacks and tweaks these boxes to create even more melodic, haunting, and beautiful creations. Whether playing them with her fingers or using a mallet, resampling, adding delay, reverb or pitch shifting, Colleen is one of those rare souls who can somehow make the sound of music boxes even more precious, delicate and dreamlike. Luckily she was happy enough with the results that she allowed Leaf to release this under the name Colleen Et Les Boites (Colleen and the Music Boxes). And once again we wish we could commission Colleen to make music for all of our dreams. So totally beautiful!
MPEG Stream: "The Sad Panther"
MPEG Stream: "Your Heart Is So Loud"

COLLEY, JOE 8 Phased Loops (Mixer) 2 x 7" 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
For this double 7" set, sound artist Joe Colley (who recently dropped his longstanding Crawl Unit moniker) presents an exercise in conceptual minimalism, even if the end results aren't entirely keeping in the minimalist tradition. On each composition, Colley manipulates only two tape loops, allowing them to phase in and out of rhythm, slowing them down, speeding them up, and crossfading between the two. Considering that his source materials are ominous electronic field disturbances and hotwired drones, the cross-pollenization of the two loops creates a sonic friction that is intentionally caustic and mechanical. Even the drones are noxious enough as to create a very tense environment for the mantra of looping crackle and hum.

COLLEY, JOE Anthem (Misanthropic Agenda) lp 23.00
Anthem collects two sets of long out-of-print 3" inch singles from Joe Colley's earlier days, right after he shed the Crawl Unit moniker in the early oughts. There's the titular track which was originally released on C.I.P, which came out in 2001 and which we had been able to stock back in the day through Mr. Colley himself. The flipside contains all of the material from the uncomfortably packaged triple-business-card cd-r entitled Triptych For Paranoia Calibration, released through the terminally underground California noise label Banned Productions. The first side, subtitled "Static For Empty Life", lifts itself out of deep rumblings with streaming, cold gray ribbons of electrical fizzings that subtly phase across the stereo field. These physically active drones build up to a sublime chorus of electrical field hummings, that deflate into silence before throbbing mechanical stabs of low-bit-rate noise drive to the end of the piece. Where moments of "Anthem" are relatively placid and almost pretty (for a Joe Colley track, that's saying something!), "Triptych" is a torturous affair of brutalist squiggles, damaged circuit-bending techniques, mistreated electronics, and dead-line tones, all of which get caught in out of phase tape loops. Brilliantly toxic work, as always. Limited to just 200 copies.

COLLEY, JOE Anthem: Static For Empty Life (Crippled Intellect) 3" cd 7.98
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While he may have permanently dropped his industrialist moniker Crawl Unit, Joe Colley continues to impress with his ominous compositions of mistreated electronics, tonally pleasing feedback mantras, and abrasive physicality. "Anthem: Static For Empty Life" lifts itself out of deep rumblings with streaming, cold gray ribbons of electrical fizzings that subtly phase across the stereo field. These physically active drones build up to a sublime chorus of electrical field hummings, which abruptly jump-cut to throbbing mechanical stabs of low-bit-rate noise. Often alluding to less specific metaphors of urban decay or social collapse, Colley's aesthetic choices are just as strong as work by John Duncan or Francisco Lopez. It's a bit of shame that it's 18 minutes long, but it does make for a great ride!
RealAudio clip: "Anthem (excerpt 1)"
RealAudio clip: "Anthem (excerpt 2)"

COLLEY, JOE Desperate Attempts At Beauty (Auscultare) cd 12.98
Here's one of the finest albums from one of California's best sound+noise artists. Since the album came out in 2003, Colley's only released a handful of releases, including one that was awarded a Grand Prix at Ars Electronica. He's also the proprietor of the Issues magazine shop in Oakland, which you should check out if you're in the neighborhood or even if you're not. Anyway, Colley's recorded works and performances continue to amaze even after many years. Here's what we had to say about this one, way back when.
If you hold the cover at just the right angle, a misanthropic and self-loathing text emerges from what might appear at first to be simply just another austere, all white package housing another austere album of micro-glitch minimalism. This well-executed design strategy (courtesy of Randy Yau) works to complement Joe Colley's transgressive agenda, which might even end up undermining his own intentions. For all of the macho posturing of the text (e.g. "REMEMBER HOW WE DESTROYED THE THINGS THAT MADE US HAPPY AND HOW WE STILL DO? LETS DAMAGE EACH OTHER BEYOND REPAIR..." and so on) and the opening 8 second jolt of unnecessary noise, Colley's sound constructions speak of an inquisitive spirit. Throughout this record, Colley pokes and prods various sonic-making situations that often hold fascinating textural detailings. The most obvious example of this is found in his recordings of water being absorbed by modeling clay, which results in a dense chorus of tiny squeaks and squiggles. Colley almost allows himself to be seduced by these sounds; but just before he does, that misanthropic urge deep within his being instructs him to obliterate those curious textures though harsh digital noises, piercing arpeggiations, and noxious jump-cuts. This strategic hammering of sound certainly keeps the listener alert to what may be coming next; thus making the intricate detail work far more enjoyable... if "enjoyable" can in fact be a description attributed to Colley's solo output or his earlier, bruitist work as Crawl Unit.
MPEG Stream: "January Broken Statis"
MPEG Stream: "Claysound 07.02"
MPEG Stream: "Headache (Diagnostic Testpulse For Blown PA)"

COLLEY, JOE Hive (Ferns) 3" cd 9.98
A few months ago, the French label Ferns published a brilliant 3" CD from mnortham who created an homage to his father, the race car driver, through a ecstatic droning collage of racetrack recordings. The very next release from the label happens to be from the Bay Area's Joe Colley, who in turn, composed a unsettling piece dedicated to his father as well, the beekeeper. We simply could not help notice the coincidence of the fatherly inspiration found on these two recordings, and wonder if the next couple (i.e. Small Cruel Party and Giancarlo Toniutti, if you must know) will follow the same pattern in creating sonic portraits. As you probably could ascertain, Colley's Hive is sourced from beehives, with many of the recordings processed and mangled. With the resultant sounds being much less destructive / misanthropic than those heard on Psychic Stress Soundtracks or Desperate Attempts At Beauty, Colley pursues a relatively subtle composition through the anxious energy of bees rattling within a hive and swarming drones that have been hushed into a peculiarly dreamy cloud of soft white noises. Hive is incredibly well executed, but the lack of anything overtly abrasive, toxic, or downright meanspirited in a Colley piece can be a little unsettling, as we had braced ourselves for the swarm of bees to erupt from the speakers in a nightmarish attack of razor-sharp distortion. But after the second and third listens to Hive, we sank into the rich buzzing sounds wondering if this is how it sounds to have a colony of bees placidly crawling over one's head. Very nicely done.
MPEG Stream: "Hive 1"
MPEG Stream: "Hive 2"

COLLEY, JOE Lonely Microphone (Senufo Editions) lp 21.00
Some 10 years ago, there was Joe Colley hulking over a four-track on the floor of 964 Natoma - a performance space in San Francisco that hosted the monthly Field Effects series by Aaron Ximm (aka Quiet American). Ximm populated the very large loft in that converted autobody shop into one of the best places to experience live music, by encouraging the audience to sprawl out on futons, couches, bean bags, and pillows in order to better zone-out and focus on the sounds at hand. While much of the work that Ximm would curate focused on sound ecology and phonography, he would bring in some more intense acts such as R.H.Y. Yau & Scott Arford's legendary Infrasound, Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson, and Joe Colley. At the time of this performance in 2002, Colley was just starting to record under his own name after a stint using the far more abject moniker Crawl Unit. As the explosive and negating power of his earlier noise constructions matured into complex, more conceptual pieces, Colley began to develop into something akin to the Bruce Naumann of sound art - with repetitive, occasionally self-destructive actions that investigated psychological, behavioral, and cultural codes.
"Lonely Microphone" is a reconstruction from the original tape-piece that Colley presented at 964 Natoma; and our memory of the night doesn't recall much more than the view of the lumbering Colley crouched over his gear and the impact of his signature jolts of sonic juxtaposition. Here, Colley masterfully puts together an album that looks to the woolly electronic scrabblings of David Tudor, the expressive environmental collage work of Eric La Casa, and the dead-line feeds of CM von Hausswolff. Ugly buzzes from gutted consumer electronics, terse piezo chirps, blasts of wind-shearing noise, monstrous din from some infernal machine belching beneath the San Francisco urbane crust, and plenty of watery field recordings threatening to short out Colley's haphazardly constructed microphones and hand-soldered circuits. That sense of threat is a constant in Colley's work, the threat of disaster, the threat that nothing will be resolved, the threat of another dead end, the threat that 'no' might be the only answer. "Lonely Microphone" is one of the more subtle presentations of Colley's work, and more self-contained than the post-structuralist ellipsis of his opus "Disasters Of Self." Recommended as with pretty much everything he's ever done.

COLLEY, JOE Psychic Stress Soundtracks (Antifrost) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Once known as Crawl Unit, the Californian misanthrope Joe Colley has never been as prolific as many of his contemporaries such as Francisco Lopez, Daniel Menche, and The Hafler Trio. While this is not to say that none of those artists exhibit much in the way of quality control (quite the contrary!), Joe Colley's constant fussiness coupled with a self-identification with failure lends his recordings to readings as these fringe elements of sound research touching on psychological issues into the nether regions of the human psyche as well as mechanical engineering gone awry. It's been a little over two years since Colley's previous album Desperate Attempts At Beauty, and we have to say that Psychic Stress Soundtracks is a step up from that impressive piece of work. Refreshingly devoid of digital effects and techniques, the Psychic Stress Soundtracks feature five lengthy compositions in which a handful of surplus electronics, motors, and mechanical objects have been rewired to exaccerbate their collapse. Within the hiss of circuits meltings and gears jamming, Colley coaxes a toxic array of hums, clicks, pings, and drones, and in turn, sculpts them into an amazing set of electro-shock minimalism confounded by numerous compositional detours and ruptures. This is well worth checking out!
MPEG Stream: "A Melody of Failure"
MPEG Stream: "Rehersal For Highspeed Paralysis"

COLLEY, JOE Waste Of Songs (Oral) cd 16.98
Earlier in 2006, Joe Colley won an Award of Distinction at the 2006 Prix Ars Electronica in Digital Music for his album Psychic Stress Soundtracks. The jurors of Ars Electronica grafted a political sentiment onto Colley's work by drawing parallels between Psychic Stress Soundtracks and the use of extreme sound as a method of interrogation pushed to the brink of what can be defined as torture under the Geneva Convention. While Colley's previous work has intentionally blurred the boundaries between noise, sound research, and psychology, all of his investigations (including Psychic Stress Soundtracks) appear as exercises in self-negation and existential failure manifested through maltreated electronics (as opposed to what those at Ars Electronica saw in his work as a mimetic work of external horror). Waste Of Songs is a blunt follow up to Psychic Stress Soundtracks, and true to Colley's demeanor, he's not particularly inclined to resolve any questions about the intentions of his album or its relation to the outside world. Rather, it's another brilliantly executed album of his own "negative reactions to an environment" as realized through jittering electronic feedback, overdriven servo-motors smoldering with too much voltage pushed through their dynamos, volatile drones extracted from the ether, and field recordings rendered toxic with choice use of DSP treatments. The exact synthesis between Xenakis' precision and Wolf Eyes' malaise; yeah, that's close enough to describing this. Highly recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Internal Apocalypse and Half Asleep"
MPEG Stream: "Lung Crack and Tuning Sickness"

COLLEY, JOE & JASON LESCALLEET Annihilate This Week (Brombron) cd 15.98

MPEG Stream: "Prayer"
MPEG Stream: "Nervous Laughter"

COLLEY, JOE / CRAWL UNIT Sound Until the World Ends (Staalplaat / ERS) lp 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This is not a split release as Joe Colley is the individual behind Crawl Unit, and perhaps should be seen as an indication that Joe is phasing out his Crawl Unit moniker. Regardless, "Sound Until The World Ends" is another great addition to the often overlooked / underappreciated catalogue of Mr. Colley, whose work has always been as good / if not better than Francisco Lopez, Zbigniew Karkowski, and other manipulators of physical sound. This vinyl only LP (as is the case for everything released so far on ERS) is broken into discrete sections which begin quite benignly with low-end drones and the delicate flutter of delay pedals feeding back upon themselves. But any tranquility these sounds offer quickly dissipates amidst noxious distortions and chopped white noise that steadily build up into a crescendo and quickly drop off into an abyss of deep tonal floats. This is the pattern that Colley follows through 4 or 5 sections throughout the record. Constructed at Colley's base of operations in Sacramento during the much ballyhooed California power crisis in the summer of 2001, "Sound Until The World Ends" alludes to the hyperboles of apocalyptic literature (found in the title and the pseudo-luddite note that this album was "mixed by hand (without a computer)". Given how incredibly hot Sacramento can get in the summer, such references may be warranted. Nevertheless, this is a great album.

COLLINS, NICOLAS Devil's Music (EM) 2cd 26.00
Some experimental music is more experimental than other experimental music. Nicolas Collins' Devil's Music, it's safe to say, was (and is) an Experiment. One that tests a theory described in the liner notes: "I have long assumed the radio to be the world's cheapest, yet most powerful synthesizer: you can find any sound out there; the only question is, can you find the sound you want when you want it?" Naturally, the results of this experiment fall into that realm of unusual sounds that would be reissued by Japan's ever-eccentric EM Records label, and glad we are of EM's diligent efforts to dig up such artifacts!
Devil's Music hails from the heyday of sampling music (late '80s), so it bears some similarity to the works of Christian Marclay and Steinski, but Collins is (as per his theorizing) using radios, not turntables. It also reminds us of stuff by John Oswald, the Tape-Beatles, and other "plunderphonic" artists, but in John Cage like fashion, Collins has introduced an element of chance into the genre of sample-basic music making. Inspired also by hip hop DJs, Collins' music here is performed live, in a spontaneous, improvisatory mode, at the mercy of whatever he can snatch from the local airways at that very moment to weave into his stuttery sound-collages. Every performance was thus very different in audio content, if not structure and rhythm.
Further explanation, from the liner notes to the original Devil's Music LP (1986): "[F]ragments of radio broadcasts are digitally sampled, looped, re-triggered and occasionally reversed or de-tuned. All material is taken from FM and AM transmissions occuring at the time of the performance. The performer plays off of certain musical ground-rules intrinsic to the sampling system (which consists of two modified inexpensive effect devices) to develop the quirky rhythmic interplay that characterizes the piece."
Conceptually (and chaotically) interesting, definitely, but difficult listening too. You know best your own tolerance for this sort of thing. People into rhythmic noisiness ought to like it. The density of this "music", and the element of repetition, makes it mesmeric, maybe. But for many, it might be maddening - ferinstance, hearing some anonymous announcer man say "outdoor swimming pool" over and over and over again, nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nineteen style, amidst a barrage of (drum machine?) beats, before the track shifts, ADD-like, to another non-sequitur sample randomly snatched from the airwaves, is sure to drive some folks nuts!
Though the first side of Devil's Music is supposed to be "dance" oriented (he tuned into his favorite of New York's urban dance stations, like a DJ looking for breaks), the inclusion of voices from radio advertising tends to dominate. The second side of Devil's Music is maybe a bit more, um, musical seeming in its source material. "More rock, less talk" would be the motto, except it's not rock, actually easy listening and classical radio stations being plundered. Both sides are featured on the first disc of this two disc set, along with a previously unreleased 1988 tape music piece utilizing lots of voices scanned from police band radio, ship-to-shore transmissions, taxi dispatch, etc., which aren't all cut up and stuttery like on Devil's Music, but patched together into more of a "narrative" exercise.
The second disc here consists of yet more delirious variations on the Devil's Music concept, realized at live concerts in Europe and the USA, originally released on a 1987 cassette release entitled Real Landscape. And also, in addition, on this disc you'll find a computer program Collins wrote recently that's essentially a software "recreation" of his original hardware set-up and compositional strategy so that YOU can plug a radio into your computer and try making the Devil's Music yourself!! There's both Mac and PC versions provided. (Not included on the vinyl format, obviously.)
And there's extensive liner notes (complete with footnotes) from Collins about his ideas, methods, and equipment (with color photos of the latter, for all you tech geeks). EM, as always, has certainly done a thorough job with this release, which deserves the attention. Difficult listening it may be, but put into historical context, you can see how some consider Collins a bit of a techno pioneer, and certainly hear how his work foreshadowed the digital "glitch" music of Oval and Lesser and the like later on.
MPEG Stream: "Devil's Music A"
MPEG Stream: "Devil's Music B"

COLLINS, NICOLAS Devil's Music (EM) 2lp 32.00
Some experimental music is more experimental than other experimental music. Nicolas Collins' Devil's Music, it's safe to say, was (and is) an Experiment. One that tests a theory described in the liner notes: "I have long assumed the radio to be the world's cheapest, yet most powerful synthesizer: you can find any sound out there; the only question is, can you find the sound you want when you want it?" Naturally, the results of this experiment fall into that realm of unusual sounds that would be reissued by Japan's ever-eccentric EM Records label, and glad we are of EM's diligent efforts to dig up such artifacts!
Devil's Music hails from the heyday of sampling music (late '80s), so it bears some similarity to the works of Christian Marclay and Steinski, but Collins is (as per his theorizing) using radios, not turntables. It also reminds us of stuff by John Oswald, the Tape-Beatles, and other "plunderphonic" artists, but in John Cage like fashion, Collins has introduced an element of chance into the genre of sample-basic music making. Inspired also by hip hop DJs, Collins' music here is performed live, in a spontaneous, improvisatory mode, at the mercy of whatever he can snatch from the local airways at that very moment to weave into his stuttery sound-collages. Every performance was thus very different in audio content, if not structure and rhythm.
Further explanation, from the liner notes to the original Devil's Music LP (1986): "[F]ragments of radio broadcasts are digitally sampled, looped, re-triggered and occasionally reversed or de-tuned. All material is taken from FM and AM transmissions occuring at the time of the performance. The performer plays off of certain musical ground-rules intrinsic to the sampling system (which consists of two modified inexpensive effect devices) to develop the quirky rhythmic interplay that characterizes the piece."
Conceptually (and chaotically) interesting, definitely, but difficult listening too. You know best your own tolerance for this sort of thing. People into rhythmic noisiness ought to like it. The density of this "music", and the element of repetition, makes it mesmeric, maybe. But for many, it might be maddening - ferinstance, hearing some anonymous announcer man say "outdoor swimming pool" over and over and over again, nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nineteen style, amidst a barrage of (drum machine?) beats, before the track shifts, ADD-like, to another non-sequitur sample randomly snatched from the airwaves, is sure to drive some folks nuts!
Though the first side of Devil's Music is supposed to be "dance" oriented (he tuned into his favorite of New York's urban dance stations, like a DJ looking for breaks), the inclusion of voices from radio advertising tends to dominate. The second side of Devil's Music is maybe a bit more, um, musical seeming in its source material. "More rock, less talk" would be the motto, except it's not rock, actually easy listening and classical radio stations being plundered. Both sides are featured on the first disc of this two disc set, along with a previously unreleased 1988 tape music piece utilizing lots of voices scanned from police band radio, ship-to-shore transmissions, taxi dispatch, etc., which aren't all cut up and stuttery like on Devil's Music, but patched together into more of a "narrative" exercise.
The second disc here consists of yet more delirious variations on the Devil's Music concept, realized at live concerts in Europe and the USA, originally released on a 1987 cassette release entitled Real Landscape. And also, in addition, on this disc you'll find a computer program Collins wrote recently that's essentially a software "recreation" of his original hardware set-up and compositional strategy so that YOU can plug a radio into your computer and try making the Devil's Music yourself!! There's both Mac and PC versions provided. (Not included on the vinyl format, obviously.)
And there's extensive liner notes (complete with footnotes) from Collins about his ideas, methods, and equipment (with color photos of the latter, for all you tech geeks). EM, as always, has certainly done a thorough job with this release, which deserves the attention. Difficult listening it may be, but put into historical context, you can see how some consider Collins a bit of a techno pioneer, and certainly hear how his work foreshadowed the digital "glitch" music of Oval and Lesser and the like later on.
MPEG Stream: "Devil's Music A"
MPEG Stream: "Devil's Music B"

COLLINS, WILLIAM FOWLER Enter The Host (Root Strata) cassette 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
One of four new Root Strata cassettes we got in this week, William Fowler Collins debut release for the label is easily the darkest of 'em all. Trading in his electric guitar for a wholly different instrument, the shruti box (a hand-pumped acoustic drone instrument), Collins nevertheless manages to create a chillingly holistic composition that surges and delves into otherworldly realms while keeping the filtered feedback and power drones of his previous works intact. We have been huge fans of his work since his first release Western Violence and Brief Sensuality, and fans of his most recent dark desert doom epic Perdition Hill Radio released on Type last year will definitely need to get this. "Part I" has more of a cosmic upward momentum as the sped-up pulsations of the instrument seem to shimmer and float toward the sun. It's not necessarily heavenly as the composition seems to lose all air as it simmers and takes on more heat. On "Part II" however, things take a more earthbound turn. The drones grow thicker and more wooly, ringing with denser tones and urgent almost molten tonal pulses and sawtoothlike sparks of white noise. We can't help but think of Icarus, before and after his fall. A truly doomed epic. Limited to 100 copies. It'll be gone before you know it, so don't hesitate!
MPEG Stream: "Part I"

COLLINS, WILLIAM FOWLER Perdition Hill Radio (Type) cd 15.98
We were big fans of William Fowler Collins' debut album, Western Violence & Brief Sensuality, so we're very happy to see that his follow-up, Perdition Hill Radio is being released on one of our favorite experimental labels, Type. Fitting right at home between Koen Holtkamps's dreamy effervescent drift and Svarte Greiner's darkly spectral shipwreck atmospherics, Collins offers an intense nocturnal Western counterpart to the unrelenting Southwest heat of his debut. And from the image of a dim moon behind a dark looming hill on the cover, it's obvious this is a much more doom-laden outing than before. Like slow motion black holes opening in the dark desert sand, the guitar drones that Collins conjures undulate and pull us down into a nether world of enveloping starless night, the air electric with magnetic activity and static radio transmissions that churn and dissipate in an infernal ebb and flow of sonic waves. Like moving indiscernible shapes in the dim light, uncertain sounds peek out through the din, prowling animal growls, ghostly disembodied dialogue like EVP transmissions buried under sheets of noise that at times conjure images of passing trains, horse-led stagecoaches, mysterious Native American rituals, and swarms of flies. The song titles like "Grave Robbing In Texas" and "Slow Motion Prayer Circle" only add to the dread and mystery of what those fleeting sounds could allude to. On the album's 21 minute centerpiece, "Dark Country Road", the far-off echoing twang of a slide guitar can be heard fading into the distance before a mountainous dronescape rises out of the still air and crests tunnel-like into an inky pool of uneasy shimmer for much of its length (the vinyl version ends in a locked groove!). Only on the last song, "The Ghosts of Eden Trail", does the sound brighten up into a beautifully levitating and expansive drifting ambience offering just a glimpse of torturing hope. The limited double vinyl version contains a side-long bonus track, "Saturnine Reverie" not on the cd. We have often said that Earth's later records are Cormac McCarthy novels in song, but Perdition Hill Radio is the closest comparison to an imagined soundtrack for The Road that we have ever heard, and that of course means this has our highest recommendation!!!
MPEG Stream: "Grave Robbing In Texas"
MPEG Stream: "Dark Country Road"
MPEG Stream: "On Perdition Hill"

COLLINS, WILLIAM FOWLER Perdition Hill Radio (Type) 2lp 23.00
We were big fans of William Fowler Collins' debut album, Western Violence & Brief Sensuality, so we're very happy to see that his follow-up, Perdition Hill Radio is being released on one of our favorite experimental labels, Type. Fitting right at home between Koen Holtkamps's dreamy effervescent drift and Svarte Greiner's darkly spectral shipwreck atmospherics, Collins offers an intense nocturnal Western counterpart to the unrelenting Southwest heat of his debut. And from the image of a dim moon behind a dark looming hill on the cover, it's obvious this is a much more doom-laden outing than before. Like slow motion black holes opening in the dark desert sand, the guitar drones that Collins conjures undulate and pull us down into a nether world of enveloping starless night, the air electric with magnetic activity and static radio transmissions that churn and dissipate in an infernal ebb and flow of sonic waves. Like moving indiscernible shapes in the dim light, uncertain sounds peek out through the din, prowling animal growls, ghostly disembodied dialogue like EVP transmissions buried under sheets of noise that at times conjure images of passing trains, horse-led stagecoaches, mysterious Native American rituals, and swarms of flies. The song titles like "Grave Robbing In Texas" and "Slow Motion Prayer Circle" only add to the dread and mystery of what those fleeting sounds could allude to. On the album's 21 minute centerpiece, "Dark Country Road", the far-off echoing twang of a slide guitar can be heard fading into the distance before a mountainous dronescape rises out of the still air and crests tunnel-like into an inky pool of uneasy shimmer for much of its length (the vinyl version ends in a locked groove!). Only on the last song, "The Ghosts of Eden Trail", does the sound brighten up into a beautifully levitating and expansive drifting ambience offering just a glimpse of torturing hope. The limited double vinyl version contains a side-long bonus track, "Saturnine Reverie" not on the cd. We have often said that Earth's later records are Cormac McCarthy novels in song, but Perdition Hill Radio is the closest comparison to an imagined soundtrack for The Road that we have ever heard, and that of course means this has our highest recommendation!!!
MPEG Stream: "Grave Robbing In Texas"
MPEG Stream: "Dark Country Road"
MPEG Stream: "On Perdition Hill"

COLLINS, WILLIAM FOWLER Tenebroso (Handmade Birds) cd 13.98
The latest from William Fowler Collins finds this prolific soundscaper and dronologist once again delving deep into the shadows, conjuring up a world of permanent darkness, grim and austere, a black ambience that the label compares to Eno, but only if there is some alternate universe Eno, all clad in black, and hunkered down, beneath an ominous array of machines, that look to be designed by HR Giger, and whose sounds could have been designed by Giger as well.
The five part songsuite opens with a sprawl of thick whirring grey noise, a blurred droned out gristly thrum, that is suddenly snuffed out, leaving just plaintive piano, plinking out a melancholy melody, suspended in the ether, stately and hauntingly morose.
From there the sound shifts into a black ambient drift, beginning as a minimal murmur, slowly gaining momentum, piling layer upon layer, the sound growing more caustic and clattery, building to a chaotic coda, before slipping back into a hushed blur. The third movement conjures up some seriously sinister cinematic drones, deep rumbles, like some demonic orchestra tuning up, cavernous and ominous, which gives way to the even MORE minimal and ominous fourth movement, a deep Teutonic rumbling, laced with strange bits of abstract sound, the track gradually and VERY subtly growing more melodic, before finishing in a blaze of grinding chaotic white noise.
From there on out, the record seems to be winding down, the fifth part sounding like The Caretaker, a washed out sprawl of hazy occluded melancholy, buried melodies, and slow shifting textures, a haunting bit of old timey abstract sonic mesmer, which leads to the final track, the most minimal of the bunch, a hushed bit of barely there drift, a barely audible thrum, over more murky melodies, volume cranked it's quite lovely, but definitely a strangely subdued final movement, at least until the last couple minutes (be sure to lower the volume if you had it cranked), a furiously blown out in-the-red blast of face melting howl and LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
MPEG Stream: "I"
MPEG Stream: "II"
MPEG Stream: "III"

COLLINS, WILLIAM FOWLER The Resurrections Unseen (Type) lp 19.98

COLLINS, WILLIAM FOWLER Western Violence & Brief Sensuality (West Mountain Road Recordings) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Known as "The Land of Enchantment", the romantic appeal of New Mexico also harbors a thinly veiled sinister quality. Despite its prominence as an epic desert monument heralding incredible vistas and inspiring a nature-based spirituality from its large population of Native Americans, New-Agers and even Catholic Hispanics who flock to the sanctuary of Chimayo every year to take a bit of holy soil said to be blessed with healing powers, the western expansion of the US has also brought to the land massive genocide, toxic pollutants, and covert Government operations. On William Fowler Collins debut CD, the former Mills College graduate who recently relocated to New Mexico, explores the paradoxical perspective of his adopted home through his experimental guitar compositions that are equally beautiful and jarring. Collins' varied use of the guitar with the help of filters and computer programs evokes a wide range of electro-acoustic tropes, many reminiscent of field recordings. The bristling sheets of loud distorted drone that open "Dawn at McDonald Ranch" come across like an air-raid siren or a swarm of locusts before it diffuses into waves of pensive yet gossamer shimmer. The industrial crackle and whirring machine drones of "Untitled Dream 2" recall the metallic toxicity of Superfund sites, and the staticy build-up of broadcast transmissions retains a warm shifting undertone that eases the tension slightly by invoking the bucolic domiciles where such threats live in uneasy harmony. Images of magnetic storms, train engines, electrical lines, and the high-powered industry that Collins evokes through his guitar work are tempered by quietly restrained passages that harbor introspective reflection over the vast and contradictory landscape of mountains, arid deserts and broken mesas. Having previously played with Matmos, Aero-Mic'd, and in his former band Mire, it's nice to see Collins coming into his own on this amazing and accomplished debut. Fans of Tim Hecker, Steven R. Smith, and Flying Saucer Attack should check this out. Recommended!!
MPEG Stream: "Dawn At McDonald Ranch"
MPEG Stream: "Foothills' Ghost"
MPEG Stream: "Over The Mountain"

COLLINS, WILLIAM FOWLER / GOG Malpais (Utech) cd 14.98
THREE, count 'em, three new releases from Utech Records on this week's list, all of them collaborations, this one here with a sonically Southwestern focus, teaming up New Mexican soundscaper William Fowler Collins with Arizona blackdronedirgedoom outfit Gog (both big AQ faves), for some sprawling, smoldering epic black expanses of slow building glacial dirgery and blurred blacknoisedrift. Three epic jams, separated by brief sonic explorations, the longform compositions find Collins and Gog conjuring up swirling black rituals, of hazy rumble and softly churning low end thrum, the sound growing subtly more crunchy and caustic, gradually transforming from hushed ominous shimmer to thick, heaving, roiling heaviness, crumbling avalanches of smeared soft noise, wreathed in strange high end shimmers and shot through with convulsing layers and buried melodies.
"Abandonment" is a creepy bit of subterranean murk, driven by a haunting heartbeat like pulse, the swirling surrounding sounds becoming more and more active, those sounds in turn wreathed in a staticky hiss, building to a swirling psychedelic squall of blurred feedback, keening high end and dense spirals of heavy hiss, before gradually fading back out to a whisper, all the whole, that strange pulse giving the black hissy drift some glacial propulsion. The final track, a massive nearly 18 minute stunner titled "Of Ash And Wind ", begins again, with some distant rumblings, some foghorn like melodies, some groaning and creaking, and deep dark rumbles, but unlike the other three tracks, this one is not a slow build, instead, the sounds ooze and drift and congeal into a creepy pitch black bit of cinematic stasis, definitely headphones required on this one, a softly churning stretch of slow motion shimmer, a deep blackened crawl, laced with strange bits of static and industrial crunch, but those sounds so minimal that minus headphones they just bleed into the surrounding blackness.
Gorgeous stuff. A heady bit of ultra minimal ritualistic black noise / dark ambience that will sound right at home alongside the rest of your ever expanding Utech collection...
Fantastic packaging as always, this time a super intense/beautiful cover image by photographer Max Aguilera-Hellweg.
MPEG Stream: "Fire In The Valley"
MPEG Stream: "Abandonment"

COLORED MUSHROOM & THE MEDICINE ROCKS s/t (Wagon) lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Our in-house mycologist (how many record stores can claim one of those?) identified the cover star of this album as an Amanita muscaria, a very colorful and toxic mushroom found throughout the globe. While deaths are uncommon to this particular mushroom, it's also known for its psychoactive properties whose chemical compounds are not actually processed by the human body. So, after consuming one of these mushrooms, you can drink your pee and trip for days. Well, that's what Nick the resident mycologist tells us.
The cosmic trip from Colored Mushroom & The Medicine Rocks comes by way of Cleveland, starring the seemingly ubiquitous John Elliott (Emeralds, Mist, Imaginary Softwoods, Outer Space, etc.) with three other dudes who got together Christmas time of 2009 jamming out a bunch of tapes. This hyper limited LP is a best-of collection from those tapes, whose linear structures of percolating synths, post-Suicide drum machinations, and shimmered tone resembles much of the zoned out work from early Emeralds crossed with the glistening properties of those Mist LPs. Given that this album was released right before Emeralds embarked on a huge US tour opening for Caribou, most of these lps had been sold out on the road. It remains to be seen if we'll be getting any more copies from this pressing which counted less than 500 copies...

COLUMN ONE Early Apes 1993-1995 (Nefryt) cd 17.98
No, that's not a typo. The album is in fact called 'Early Apes' which is a different anthology than the earlier reviewed collection 'Early Tapes' by Column One, which is a rather strange post-industrial project that cites Dada as a technical blueprint for their collage-based actions, performances, and recordings. The band also speaks of "the politics of confusion" when describing what they're up to, and that seems about right even more so for this collection compared to the aforementioned Early Tapes with its gray masses of decentered loops loaded with psychological disturbances. But again, the spirit of Cranioclast seems to loom large in Column One's sensibility, in part due to the hermeticism of the work but also through the loose collage techniques which intertwine ritualistic rhythms into tape machinations and warbling electronics. The first three tracks on Early Apes come from the 1994 album A Dream Box Experience, which was a super limited LP printed up in an edition of 100 copies. These tracks are quite Spartan with plenty of space draped between the skeletal rhythms and with the specter of feedback resonances looming in the far distance and subtle rumblings that echo as if from some unknown dimension breaking through. The next two cuts are collaborative works with the Polish outfit Za Siodma Gora, but seem to maintain much of Column One's hypnotic patterning and buzzing sound accretions. The final cut "Great Minds Against Themselves Conspire" is an almost rock-based number, more akin to Sprung Aus Den Volken with an insistent bassline and rhythm section laced with exotic marimbas, wooden flutes, twanged guitars, and monotone vocals. This would be the kind of track that Wim Wenders would have picked for one his films back in the '80s, and it's something that would have been an interesting turn for Column One to pursue. Of course, they found other routes to take and concepts to realize, leaving this track a teasing piece of structuralism in their otherwise deconstructed amalgams. Comes in an oversized folio with a pile of postcards.
MPEG Stream: "Dream Box Soundtrack"
MPEG Stream: "Unlimited Repetition"
MPEG Stream: "The Seventh Mountain"
MPEG Stream: "Great Minds Against Themselves Conspire"