DUNCAN, JOHN Tap Internal (Touch) cd 16.98
"Tap Internal" firmly addresses a question that has been tangential to a number of John Duncan's previous releases: "What is the sound of energy?" Starting with the basic scientific method of breaking down a substance to reveal its structure, the character of its parts, and the taxonomic position it holds in relation to other elements like it, Duncan researches sound by crumbling it into its subatomic particles. "Tap Internal" is an ambitious project that mirrors the raw energy of white-hot VLF cracklings, shortwave radio buzz, and tectonic-plate rumbles. While Duncan's experiments have a willful cruelty to them, his static laden pulsations and incendiary ambient environments aren't merely theatrics of aural confrontation. The metaphoric hammer that Duncan takes to his sound sources softens in the presence of sublime yet beautiful moments of mesmerizing drones. In the process of obliteration, Duncan may have stumbled onto bigger more metaphysical questions that he may not be willing to answer quite yet, like "What is the sound of Duncan's soul?"

DUNCAN, JOHN The Nazca Transmissions (Planazca) lp 30.00
The sound constructs of John Duncan almost exist as a residue of his own personal research into esoteric realms of knowledge, existential bouts of continuous questioning, and transgressive acts against himself and society at large. Here was a man who claimed to have sex with a corpse as a performance piece entitled Blind Date, whereby he planted his last seed in a dead body before undergoing a vasectomy. That event presumably took place nearly 30 years ago, when Duncan was emerging as an artist in Los Angeles alongside Paul McCarthy, Jim Shaw, and Mike Kelley. Blind Date has become a piece of infamy that blossomed beyond his already highly transgressive context, but he's always been an artist who is very deft at framing particular works through the process and through the context of said piece. The Nazca Transmissions is one such piece.
A few years back, Duncan received an email from a German archaeologist working at the site of the Nazca Lines in Peru. These are the massive drawings carved into an arid plateau some 2000 years ago by the ancient Nazca people. Some of these figures are representation, some are not, and some get as large of 200 yards in size, all posing the question: who was supposed to be seeing these figures, and to what end? Now, this archaeologist claimed to have been able to record sounds from those line drawings; and he presented the raw material to Duncan, having been familiar with his transmutational pieces of digital data and shortwave. Duncan was suitably perplexed and intrigued by the sounds that were presented to him, proceeding to work on a series of compositions through that material. Unfortunately, this archaeologist ceased all communications, leading Duncan to wonder if it was all a big hoax.
Eerie ringings pocked with scrabbled textures almost like clipped VLF recordings open the album set against a gaping chasm of quietness. While Duncan's penchant for abrasive noise and jarring juxtaposition is well documented, you won't find that here. By the end of the side, the textures take on an unsettled rhythm that almost resembles human speech garbled through the process. Very compelling, very unsettled. The second side begins with an interlocking series of modulated and muffled Shepherd Tones, these are the audio equivalent of a barber's pole with the tones giving the appearance of being in constant ascension or descension. It's a common artifact found throughout the shortwave bands, harkening back to one of his preferred sound sources; and Duncan puts them to excellent use amidst a sea of low end rumblings. Soon after, pierced tones push to the foreground as those low end rumblings mutate into grotesquely deformed growlings only to fade against a hushed coda of grey noise. This is limited to less than 300 copies, and it remains to be seen if we'll be able to get more than the handful we have now. Recommended no matter how you look at it.

DUNCAN, JOHN & CARL MICHAEL VON HAUSSWOLFF Our Telluric Conversation (23five) cd 21.00
Before we get into the amazing sounds that John Duncan and C.M. von Hausswolff have created for this album (which we have to say is pretty fucking incredible), we have to drool over the artwork. Sure, it's always nice to get one of those handmade packages, loving assembled by the musician from scraps of wallpaper or gesso smeared across heavy card stock; where the investment is paid through blood and sweat. But at the same time, it can sometimes be pretty fascinating to go all the way to the other end of the spectrum, to see what happens when money is no object, and thus nearly any vision can be realized. So, there's Our Telluric Conversation, which employs a seriously and gloriously reckless design sensibility. Unfortunately, jpeg reproductions of this cd's cover will never translate how amazingly cool the packaging is. The white O-card / slipcover which wraps around the cd and the accompanying 40-page booklet is printed on a rubberized paper dotted with Braille, making it strangely tactile, and thus not a little unsettling just to touch the album! Which is appropriate considering the musical content...
John Duncan and Carl Michael von Hausswolff have made an dark and unsettling album in Our Telluric Conversation, the second collaboration between these two AQ-favorite sound artists, opening with ominous bleeping, sort of sounding like sonar or a life support system barely keeping someone alive. An electronic turbulence gradually swarms around these mechanized pulses and explodes in a torrent of furious magneto noise, sounding very similar to the recent Duncan collaboration with Mika Vainio and Ilpo Vaisainen. Abruptly, the track comes to a halt as the whispering voice of Hausswolff begins reciting a presumably fictional tale in which the protagonist has been infected with maggots and tries to rid his body of the parasites by communing with lizards and snakes through a combination of occult rituals. Hausswolff's whisper is all that one hears, with his lips closely pressed up to the microphone making saliva, lips smacking, and teeth gnashing all audible. Upon the conclusion of Hausswolff's spoken excerpt, the two proceed with a long-form construction for brilliantly shimmered drones and flickering sinewaves that's as good as anything by Phill Niblock, Mirror, or The Hafler Trio. Our Telluric Conversation concludes with another extended composition that bridges the signature aesthetics of the two artists, with a deadened monotone of processed 60-cycle hums (that's Hausswolff) and a seductive processing of shortwave static (that's Duncan). By themselves, Duncan and Hausswolff have crafted amazing records; but together, these two have really tapped into something eerie, psychologically unstable, and sublimely beautiful. Highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Like A Lizard"
MPEG Stream: "Entry (Enhanced)"
MPEG Stream: "Yet Another (Very) Abridged And Linear Interpretation"

DUNCAN, JOHN & EDVARD GRAHAM LEWIS Presence (All Questions) cd 17.98
The bulk of John Duncan's exceptional catalogue of sonic provocation and sublime post-minimalism has been collaborations. CM Von Hausswolff, Francisco Lopez, Bernhard Gunter, Asmus Tietchens, Peter Fleur, Max Springer, Giuliana Stefani, and Elliott Sharp have all worked with Duncan in recent years; yet at the same time, each of those collaborations exhibits the inescapable gravitational pull of Duncan's conceptual and aesthetic agendas. This collaboration with Edvard Graham Lewis is no exception. Lewis, of course, is the legendary bassist / vocalist from Wire and has often ventured into the netherworlds of the avant-garde with fellow Wireman Bruce Gilbert in various guises. Like Duncan, Lewis is quite comfortable with the role of collaborator.
The human voice has been the springboard for a number of Duncan's records including the recent collaborations with Tietchens and Sharp. Not surprising, the most obvious contributions that Lewis makes on Presence are a few choice spoken word bits highlighting his elegantly sinister baritone voice (which in our opinion is more interesting than Colin Newman's). Broken into variable streams of timestretched anxiety during the album's introduction, Lewis' voice slips away beyond recognizablility, falling into an abyss of shortwave hum and crackle that have long been the divining rod for Duncan's epistemological inquisitions. The centerpiece of the album is a 30 minute piece fusing those same gray timbers of shortwave with monochromatic vocal compositions, presumably birthed from Lewis' lips and later manipulated by Duncan. Even if Lewis did have a greater hand in the mix, Presence sounds much like Duncan's masterpieces Phantom Broadcast and Palace of Mind, which is not a bad thing at all. The album ends with Lewis' unmistakable voice offering a naked piece of advice: "Take a step forward and tell the truth." As narcotizing as the album becomes, this whispered text booms out of the speakers as a startling conclusion to this excellent album.
MPEG Stream: "Purpose Stimulated"
MPEG Stream: "Fall"

DUNCAN, JOHN & ELLIOTT SHARP Tongue (All Questions) cd 17.98
Once in a while, Aquarius has definitely put forth opinions that some folks didn't like. It goes without saying that those negative reactions seem to always be in response to a negative review of some band someone loves and is very sensitive about. Fair enough. We've gotten crap for a Butthole surfers review as well as our continuing indifference to house music. Well, brace yourself for another one, maybe no surprise: we have no desire to suffer through another Elliott Sharp album. Even though the Downtown New York veteran wanker has teamed up with one of our favorite sound reseachers John Duncan, we were skeptical to say the least, simply because the presence of Mr. Sharp could potentially ruin this album.
Yeah, this album could have been a total disaster. But it's not... not at all. In fact, Tongue is a fantastic document of mulched shortwave and vocalizations, and will probably be one of the better sound art recordings to come out in 2004. Either we've always only heard the really terrible Elliott Sharp records or John Duncan is wholly responsible for the album's success. Either way, Tongue is really a superb piece of work. Duncan has long praised the human voice as the most powerful instrument that he's encountered, even above his beloved shortwave which has been central to almost all of his compositions. Here, Duncan and Sharp manipulate sustained vocalizations from both artists as well as quiet gurglings of saliva coagulating within the cavities of their respective mouths. While these sounds acquire a delicate tactility that recalls the likes of Steve Roden and Toshiya Tsunoda, Duncan's shortwave interrupts and ruptures the quiet passages of this record with caustic static, twin blade flutterings, and electrocuted drones. Much could be said about the dislocation of the voice by a transmitter / receiver machine, but we'll leave that for the post-structuralist, academic types. That said, Duncan's recent work has shifted toward monumental compositions of minimalism (e.g. Phantom Broadcast, Stun Shelter, Keening Towers, etc.); but with Tongue, his work privleges the fragment (perhaps in deference to Sharp), making this an album closer to his previous masterpieces Tap Internal and River In Flames. Another recommended John Duncan record, and perhaps the first and only Elliott Sharp album we'll endorse wholeheartedly.
MPEG Stream: "Tongue 1"
MPEG Stream: "Tongue 3"
MPEG Stream: "Tongue 5"

DUNCAN, JOHN & FRANCISCO LOPEZ Nav (All Questions ) 2cd 24.00
Hmm. These experimental ambient drone electronics guys sure keep themselves -- and each other -- busy. Elsewhere on this list you'll find another double cd that sees Lopez teaming up with Zbignew Karkowski. And there's also a Karkowski/Xopher Davidson disc too. Etc. But if they can't get enough of the drones, well, that's 'cause neither can you, right? So check this out... Both artists collaborated in collecting all of the source material found on "Nav" (mostly very obscure acousmatic field recordings, datastream broadcasts, and shortwave transmissions) and then took those recordings to their respectives studios to construct very distinct compositions. For his composition "Gate", Lopez buries all of the original sounds within his slow moving, deep sonorous drones that are quietly audible, but do reward the listeners who crank up the volume. Duncan, on the otherhand, is far more dynamic in his sound constuction "Flex", beginning with a discordant organ blast which steadily fades into a silence which in turn is disrupted by a quiet steady bass throb (a heartbeat?). That organ blast returns with a menacing slash that melds into nervous washes of processed data / shortwave recordings. While the Lopez piece is certainly nice for Lopez, it's a little tough to comprehend why it's a collaboration. Duncan's piece really does attempt to bring the silences of Lopez to the tense, psychological investigations that Duncan prefers. Nevertheless, another fine effort from two of the more interesting contemporary composers.
RealAudio clip: "Flex"
RealAudio clip: "Gate"

DUNCAN, JOHN & GIULIANA STEFANI Palace Of Mind (All Questions) cd 17.98
BACK IN STOCK!
Palace Of Mind is the 2000 recording collaboration between John Duncan and Giuliana Stefani. Mr. Duncan has long been one of AQ's favorite experimentalists, having started things out back in the '70s LA performance art community only to quit the US to pursue his own intense psychological research into sound, projection, installation, photography, and the like. Stefani is a mathematician by training and became acquainted with Duncan through a collaborative project they began in Amsterdam in 1996. For this album, the two sifted through digital treatments of shortwave transmissions, wire-tapped data streams, and voice. In turn, they work the album into labyrinthine composition that can hold any number of potent metaphors: the neural synapses of the human brain, the schematics of a computer, or simply an architectural set of overlapping resonant spaces. Rareified tones set with motoric vibrations transition through the fluttering of (or rather the lack there of, as this sounds like the empty spaces between the bands marked by a mechanoid oily hiss) and onto slashing digital drone. Here, one can think to Duncan's exceptional field recordings made at the Stanford Linear Accelerator in the early '90s. Within the movement from an irritable data-stream purity to the gossamer haze of shortwave distortion to gaping drones of treated vocal vibrato, Duncan and Stefani have set a trajectory deep into the heart of their sonic architecture, with each 'room' saturated with an anxiousness for what may be on the other side of the door. You won't find Duncan firing a gun at your head (seriously, he did that as performance piece called Scare back in the late '70s, using blanks mind you), but Palace Of Mind revels in an interlocking network of chambers that resonate and breathe with a profound beauty. Highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Extract 1"
MPEG Stream: "Extract 2"
MPEG Stream: "Extract 3"

DUNCAN, JOHN & MAX SPRINGER The Crackling (Trente Oiseaux) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Making full use of the unintentionally dynamic acoustic phenomenon occurring within the Stanford Linear Accelerator, John Duncan and Max Springer have collaborated on this haunting collage of semi-processed field recordings made within the monolithic structure 2 miles long and several stories high. For those unfamiliar with Duncan's extraordinary shortwave experiments, this is a excellent introduction to one of the best dronologists / sound artists of the past two decades! From the liner notes: "The accelerator is full of contradictions: structures built to dwarf and outlast their creators, designed to generate subatomic events that take place in a time scale that is impossible to imagine, using forces that are hostile or lethal to human life, yet are entirely human-created. A 'city of the dead' that seems to have an existence of its own with or without its operators. For this work, the electon is understood as a metaphor for the process of life: isolated, compelled by a system that uses the electron's own energy to force it into a path that leads at a constantly increasing pace to certain destruction -- to a point of certain change, of complete resolution and the beginning of a new process."

DUNCAN, JOHN & PAOLO PARISI Conservatory (San Sebastiano) (Maschietto Editore / All Questions) cd+book 48.00
The work of John Duncan should need no introduction, as he has long been one of Aquarius' favorite sound artists; however, Paolo Parisi is something of a mystery to us. An Italian sculptor, painter, and installation artist, Parisi commissioned Duncan to compose a sound component for one of Parisi's installation. The themes behind Parisi's installation for plastic tubes and eviscerated cardboard sentry houses are far too convoluted to recount within this review; but in a shocking display of Aquarian restraint, we'll merely mention that the Panopticon, Hitchcock, Deleuze, and Duchamp all get name checked throughout the book's text celebrating Parisi's installation. The CD is all Duncan; and it's well worth the price of admission. Duncan has long been known for his use of shortwave radio sounds as the springboard for his psychologically intense compositions; but slowly, he has been introducing the human voice into his pantheon of sound sources. For Conservatory, voice is the only source he is using, in particular he's amplifying and stretching the gasps, wheezes, and hisses that occur during the act of breathing. Through his manipulation of these sounds, Duncan cultivates a vast network of gaping blasts of air that collectively build into a ghastly, frigid drone emanating from a unscrupulous cryrogenics laboratory. Another epochal release from Mr. Duncan!
MPEG Stream: "Conservatory (extract)"

DUNCAN, JOHN / C.M. VON HAUSSWOLFF Stun Shelter (All Questions / Nicola Fornello Gallery) cd 40.00
Earlier in 2003, long time colleagues John Duncan and C.M. von Hausswolff collaborated on an installation at the Nicola Fornello Gallery in Prato, Italy. Judging from the massive 50 page, full color book that accompanies the cd of "Stun Shelter," the two artists presented individual installations whose sound elements bled together within the space to form the collaborative aspect of their work. Duncan revisted the pornographic "John See" films he produced in Japan during the mid-80s. That series accurately followed the strict Japanese rules about the visual representation of sexuality, in which no penetration or pubic hair can be shown. As for the soundtrack to those films, Duncan combined distant shrill orgasms from the actresses and his own claustrophobic, breathy vocalizations, slowly uttering optimistic phrases in Japanese. Despite their content, Duncan's renderings of language take on an aura of mechanical monstrosity. Hausswolff's installation was equally disturbing, having designed a haute couture bar and lounge for the sole purpose of huffing glue and paint thinner. The Hausswolff soundtrack featured several tone generators droning toward infinity. The amalgamation between the Duncan and Hausswolff soundtracks works incredibly well, offering a backbone to Duncan's vocalizations and contextually specific details to Hausswolff's numbing minimalism.
With Duncan having a whole slew of releases that have just come out at the end of 2003, "Stun Shelter" is easily the best of the lot, and certainly ranks as one of his best records alongside "Phantom Broadcast." At the same time, this album (especially with its highly informative book) encapsulates many of the ideas and themes (i.e. the transgressions of cultural norms, the never-ending inquisitions of power structures, the experiential realizations as existential proofs, etc.) that makes Duncan and Hausswolff such amazing artists. One of the best experimental records of 2003, though pricey.
MPEG Stream: "Stun Shelter"

DUNCAN, JOHN / C.M. VON HAUSSWOLFF / DITTERICH VON EULER-DONNERSPERG s/t (Die Stadt) 7" 7.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This is an ultra limited split seven inch on Die Stadt, featuring stalwart sound researcher John Duncan, conceptual artist C.M. von Hausswolff, and Ditterich Von Euler-Donnersperg, who is often described as a cranky writer. Duncan offers 6 locked grooves of his white hot electrical pulses. Von Euler-Donnersperg presents a nervous drone of atonal church organs and distant pipe fighting, sounding much like the recent output from The Hafler Trio. And Von Hausswolff offers a very low end frequency pricked with sporadic high energy squeals. Limited to 300 copies.

DUNCAN, JOHN / KONTAKT DER JUNGLINGE / C.M. VON HAUSSWOLFF Untitled (Die Stadt) cd 22.00
Three excellent pieces from three excellent sound artists that Die Stadt lumped onto one CD, with no real thematic connection to speak of. John Duncan's piece is a recording of the jawdropping live set he did at The Compound here in San Francisco in 2006. The hissing shortwave and noxious datastreams which have been signature source materials for Duncan continue here, with Duncan displaying a considerable amount of restraint in the slippery juxtaposition of softened white noise, periodic accelerations and crescendos, and subharmonic rumblings. This climaxes with a tempestuous 8 second blast of hurricane-shock noise. Kontakt Der Junglinge (aka Thomas Koner & Asmus Tietchens) also present a live piece, but then again haven't all of their recordings been live presentations? This one from the Mutek Festival in 2003 is an isolationist gem of shadowy ambience and deep deep drones (the Koner half of the equation) with electronically treated recordings of clanking machines (the Tietchens half of the equation). Hausswolff seems to have revisited the source material from his There Are No Crows Flying Around The Hancock Building installation / cd document, with a loop of an electronically treated screeching birds (not a crow, mind you... there's a red-tail hawk and the chirp of what could just be a blackbird), monotonously sitting on top of gradient build of amassed gray noise.
MPEG Stream: JOHN DUNCAN "Live At The Compound"
MPEG Stream: KONTAKT DER JUNGLINGE "Montreal Solution 1"
MPEG Stream: CM VON HAUSSWOLFF "Circulating Over Square Waters (Framed Nature)"

DUNCAN, JOHN / MIKA VAINIO / ILPO VAISANEN Nine Suggestions (All Questions) cd 19.98
When John Duncan sent us this collaboration with the members of Pan Sonic, he warned us that the first two tracks would be a little hard to take on headphones. Oh yes, that warning should be heeded by all, headphones or not; especially if you're expecting the electric seduction of Duncan's Phantom Broadcast. But don't let the warning scare you off; as this is an incredible fusion of caustic electronics, shortwave radio signal manipulation, and the hammering arpeggiations which have become a trademark of the Finnish techno minimalists. So Nine Suggestions begins with some 15 minutes of white-knuckle noise tightly composed from siren squall electronics, volatile data streams from shortwave utility signals, and plenty of sawtoothed abrasiveness. In this introduction, Nine Suggestions harkens to the Pan Sonic masterpiece 4cd box set Kesto, which expressed plenty of noxious intensity in its rhythmic overload. Even as the album calms considerably in the expanse of the album, Kesto still stands the most accurate comparison as that album shifts from aggression and explosion to contemplation and eerieness. In the shadowy half-melodies, tectonic rumblings, nocturnal drones, dental drill vibrations, submariner sonar pings, and delicate modulation of electronic tones found within the latter two-thirds of Nine Suggestions, Duncan, Vainio, and Vaisanen have created something that really is as one would expect from these high-calibre artists. Highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Volume"
MPEG Stream: "Eliminated: The Stress"
MPEG Stream: "The Deepening"

DUNCAN, JOHN / PETER FLEUR The Scattering (Edition ...) cd 14.98
The Scattering is a collaborative release from the exemplary John Duncan and the little known sound artist Peter Fleur, who had a few minor league successes as L.O.S.D. with Radboud Mens. Here, the two artists collaborate on one long track and offer solo works to round out the album, always using data files and shortwave as the source material. Each of the tracks have been severely manipulated with loads of DSP effects, feedback accumulation, and resampling techniques to form plastic drones rippling with a dramatic psychic tension. As on Duncan's previous album Da Sich Die Machtgier..., the dominant sounds are the dissonant fillibration from densely packed samples that have all been timestretched towards oblivion. The collabortive piece builds dramatically through those cracked drones with a mechnized bass pulse ominously crawling below. Fleur's solo work splits itself between a Francisco Lopez-esque low end rumble and a cascade of digitized textures amassing into frigid wall of noise. The final track is a signature John Duncan piece, where he amplifies the unsettling nature of shortwave's liminal spaces between the active broadcast frequencies. Shortwave has long been a favorite medium for Duncan, not only for its aesthetic qualities but its allegorical properties of psychological unrest, hidden communications, information wars, etc. In this piece for The Scattering, Duncan contextualizes shortwave static as a parallel to somatic fluctuations, where the sounds breathe, ebb, and contract in response to a subconscious intellect. Very very nice.
MPEG Stream: JOHN DUNCAN / PETER FLEUR "The Scattering"
MPEG Stream: PETER FLEUR "Aggregate"
MPEG Stream: JOHN DUNCAN "Threshold"

DUNCAN, JOHN / Z'EV / MICHAEL ESPOSITO There Must Be A Way Across This River / The Abject (Fragment Factory) lp 24.00
Really fucking spooky! Of course, we wouldn't expect much less from John Duncan, whose sound research specifically seeks out the most intense of psychological states. As the most infamous case, Duncan's Blind Date performance piece tells of his presumed experience with necrophilia as a masochistic ritual for depositing his last seed in a dead body before undergoing a vasectomy. While the audio documentation of Blind Date is cold and precise in what it says, Duncan neither confirms nor denies any of the details beyond what is told in that recording. It could have been a fabrication; but he plants the idea that he *might* have broken the most significant taboo of human civilization. Since then, Duncan's psychological research through sound, visual art, and performance has become far more sophisticated in approach and content. For example, there's his convoluted Pynchonesque album Our Telluric Conversation with CM von Hausswolff, and there's the masterful recapitulation of the sounds from the Stanford Linear Accelerator into The Crackling - a cavernous, sublime electric chorale which magnify the smallest of particles into massive discordant drones.
There Must Be A Way Across This River was a performance / installation that Duncan presented inside a refrigerated basement at a performance hall in Bologna, where he presented a slow-developing soundtrack of arctic drones layered with darkly vibrating shortwave patterns, whispered declarations from Duncan himself, and these strange violent bursts of electronic noise. While he never stated this to be the case, we wonder if he demanded that the audience be naked, as he has done for a handful of his other claustrophobic, black-box performances. That might have been even too cruel for Duncan! The sounds of There Must Be A Way Across This River are relatively subtle for Duncan's catalogue of work, but they are darkly evocative, eerie, bleak, and ominously threatening. Another very strong piece in his ever impressive body of work.
The flip side of the record is a strange collaboration between Duncan, Z'ev, and the EVP hunter Michael Esposito. Originally, Esposito, Duncan, and the medium Heidi Harman set out to make recordings in Duncan's childhood home outside of Chicago. Despite making arrangements with one of the occupants at the house, they were refused access, all the while Esposito was recording their conversations. During those recordings, 18 EVP invocations occurred, one of which addresses Duncan by name - an allegation that Harman confirmed through her own psychic contact. These 18 invocations were then given over to Z'ev who manipulated them into a suitably frightening set of interwoven drones and spectral undulations. If that particular EVP citation of Duncan's name is on these recordings, Z'ev has thoroughly eradicated the syntax into a slippery, ectoplasmic sound. It's one of the best things we've heard from Z'ev outside his kinetic percussive assaults, and rounds out a terrifyingly great piece of wax!

DUNN, KYLE BOBBY A Young Person's Guide To Kyle Bobby Dunn (Low Point) 2cd 16.98
Following in the footsteps of Phill Niblock and Jim O'Rourke, the Brooklyn based composer Kyle Bobby Dunn presents his own Young Person's Guide into an immersive arena of fluid minimalist gestures and post-classical ambience. Dunn sources his compositions from guitar, brass, and strings, some of which have been extracted from sessions with small ensembles of classically trained musicians; and everything is worked out in the digital studio, with the swells of a violin and timbre of a trombone elongated into introspective, somber compositions of elegant dronescaping. While this process does appear similar to Niblock's approach with his source material, Dunn is far more poetic and much more of a romantic than Mr. Niblock and presents bleary mirages revel in impressionistic images of cinematic landscapes. Tranquil organic tones manifest through gaseous shimmers, occasionally graced by a repetitive half-melodic interlude or a deep-end reverberant rumble. Much of Dunn's work could easily nestle next to one of Rhys Chatham's more placid guitar symphonies, or any of the cinematic soundscapists that Type has been championing for many years now, or the compositions of John Luther Adams, or even the narcoleptic mood engineering of Stars Of The Lid. Really beautiful stuff. Unfortunately, we only have limited stock on this title!
MPEG Stream: "Butel"
MPEG Stream: "There Is No End To Your Beauty"
MPEG Stream: "Empty Gazing"

DUNN, KYLE BOBBY Ways Of Meaning (Desire Path) lp 16.98
Ways Of Meaning is a beautifully serene ambient album from the classically trained composer Kyle Bobby Dunn. In sourcing much of his weightless tones, gossamer half-melodies, and immersive atmospherics from guitar and organ, Dunn develops a number of almost baroque flourishes throughout the haze and mist of his warm rich sounds that lean more to the sound of a medieval chorale pitched at quarter-speed than to the contemporary narcoleptic sounds of today's ambient practitioners. The looping interplay between the golden guitar tones on his "Canyon Meadow" begins to resemble an impressionist orchestration for French horns, albeit run through William Basinski's tape machinations that push all of the sounds in and out of focus. His charmingly titled "Movement For The Completely Fucked" is hardly the epithet that one might assume; rather, Dunn's placid composition for somber guitar mesmerism offers solace to whomever may be deemed completely fucked. Fans of Eno's Music For Airports, anything from Stars Of The Lid, and even some of the contemplative works of Arvo Part would be well served to check out this album. Vinyl only!

DUNN, TREVOR TRIO-CONVULSANT Sister Phantom Owl Fish (Ipecac) cd 17.98
The former Bungle and current Fantomas bassist unleashes the second album of spazz-jazz from his Trio-Convulsant (following up one from long ago that we can't get anymore). Ranging from hard (almost metallic) to soft (cocktails, anyone?), and generally pretty high on the notes-played-per-unit-of-time count. Complex compositions and loose improv coexist here, and the playing is at a very high level, from Dunn as well as his cohorts Mary Halvorson (guitar) and Ches Smith (drums). If you have Zorn, Cline, Ribot, that sort of stuff in yr "jazz" collection, you'll find that the Trio-Convulsant fits in there quite nicely too.
MPEG Stream: "Liver-colored Dew"
MPEG Stream: "The Single Petal Of A Rose"

DUOZERO Esperanto (Small Voices) cd 10.98
We managed to get a small handful of these from a distributor, they're priced super cheap, as the label has since folded, so these are the very last copies we'll ever be able to get, and we have just EIGHT of these...
We tried to find out more about this record, but all we could find online was a bunch of crazy super academic babble that talked about the roots of the Esperanto language, the texts of Borges and Calvino, the art of Dubuffet, heavy metalinguistics, and other stuff that really shed no light at all. But yeah, while this is definitely coming to us from the world of academic sound, the actual SOUND is quite pleasing, the opener is a dark droney, softly rhythmic psychedelic landscape of layered tones, and soft sonic pulsations, swirling effects, and muted glitches, over which a voice in French recites the lyrics, the result a sort of abstract minimal Chain Reaction sort of Portishead, that same rainswept moonlit city downtempo moodiness, the second track sounds a bit more like recent outings by Byetone or Alva Noto, that sort of machinelike electro, but a bit more organic, lots of cinematic tension, cold dark grooves that are surprisingly hypnotic. And so it goes, a series of strangely abstract, and slightly academic groovescapes, a few super abstract, a couple sort of noisy, but for the most part, darkly hypnotic, lushly textured, sonically dense and lushly layered, strangely sultry and weirdly mysterious, a fantastic surprise, that just might be the perfect late night avant academic chill out disc we've ever heard.
MPEG Stream: "Prana"
MPEG Stream: "The Moving Box"
MPEG Stream: "Esperanto"

DURAND, SOPHIE & MANU HOLTERBACH Verres Enharmoniques : Un (Clouds Of Static) cd 13.98
Good things most definitely come to those who wait! Those with good memories may recall that I (Jim) had trumpeted about a Sophie Durand & Manu Holterbach album as being one of finest sound art pieces of 2005 alongside the ephemerally beautiful Keith Berry disc The Ear That Was Sold To A Fish. Unfortunately, the label that had released the Durand / Holterbach collaboration had disappeared before any copies could make their way from the label's base of operations in Switzerland. Fortunately, the virtues of vigilance and patience held true, and Aquarius Records can now offer this magnificent recording to our discerning listeners.
The instrument behind what is hopefully the first installment to the Verres Enharmoniques series is a device that modifies the parlor trick of rubbing a wet finger across the rim of a wineglass to produce a continuous harmonic frequency. While the glass harmonica applied this same principle to a series of tuned glass bowls to produce several octaves of those harmonics, Manu Holterbach's invention hooks up four modified wine glasses to four foot pedals which control the water level within the glasses. Thus as water is pumped into the glass or drains out, the harmonic notes ascend and descent correspondingly. Holterbach and his partner Sophie Durand have performed with this instrument for several years now, with renowned sound artist mnortham making the bold claim that their performance was the loudest that he's ever experienced. Considering that their performances are unamplified, mnortham's claim is all the more astounding, but not impossible given that the purity of the frequencies from vibrating glass can rattle inside the human head. In rattling around the human head, these frequencies give the impression of high volumes without the sound pressure of a mountain of Marshall stacks. Durand and Holterbach apply these sounds as deep drones in subtle minimalist compositions with undulating movements and periodic phase patterns that have all of the majesty of LaMonte Young or Phill Niblock.
Sure the record is brilliant, but here's the other selling point: it's out of print and we only got a handful.
MPEG Stream: "Verres Enharmoniques : Un (excerpt)"

DURAND, WERNER & ALIO DIE Aqua Planing (Soleilmoon) cd 17.98

DUST Ballet (Phaserprone) cassette 8.98

DWARR Animals (Brand X Recordings) cd 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Eccentric outsider doom metal from the '80s, from waaaaaay down underground. Now hold up, if the words "doom" or "metal" make you think, not for me, think again (maybe). This isn't like any metal you've ever heard, really. More like spaced out '60s heavy psychedelic guitar rock (one song's called "Heavy Vibrations", man), overloaded also with shrill synth symphonics and trippy effects... That's where the "outsider" tag comes in, Dwarr being a one-man band, all the work of South Carolina multi-instrumentalist (but especially guitar!) Duane Warr (hence the name Dwarr), whom we get the impression is quite a character. It's so DIY that the cds have his phone number on 'em, in case you want to get in touch. His privately pressed music comes off like a cough-syrup dosed mixture of Black Sabbath and Todd Tamanend Clark (whom you should know from the double cd anthology we raved about a few years ago). Or, The Happy Dragon Band playing Pink Floyd, from beyond the grave. Maybe a lo-fi Captain Beyond, on even more drugs than Captain Beyond were ever on. Or imagine if Bobb Trimble was an '80s metaller, perhaps (and worked out in the gym a lot more?). Sorry to use so many almost equally obscure references, but it's hard to compare this confusional beast to anything else.
Look at that insane cover painting, a surreal post-apocalyptic landscape (that's a malevolent-looking Statue of Liberty sunken in polluted looking water next to a cave populated by long-haired, skull-faced cannibalistic mutants, with an avatar of Dwarr himself, we're guessing, striking a heroic he-man pose in the upper right hand corner). The music itself is as surreal and apocalyptic and ridiculous as that image, matching up to it much more than most other "metal" albums ever match up to their cover art, both in subject matter and, ah, execution.
Just from the cover painting, let alone the music, this Dwarr album is SO perfectly Aquarius, you'd almost think we made it up. But no, Dwarr's for real, something we'd vaguely heard tell of and been curious about for years, and finally went to the trouble of tracking down (not so hard, thanks to the Internet, now that everybody and their grandmother's bands are on MySpace). And lo and behold, it turned out Dwarr had issued ALL four of his albums (two from the '80s, two from the '00s, believe it or not!) on compact disc. So we had to get a bunch of this one, his second, from 1986, probably his best and "heaviest". A Record Of The Week, easy.
There's 13 tracks, each one incredible (or incredibly strange). There's nothing that's NOT freaked out about this. Even the poppiest songs (like the title track "Animals") are full of sluggish grooves, druggy lyrics, buzzing electronics, melodic stoned vocals, acid rock guitar (and acid WTF synth). Elsewhere it gets away from rock/metal song structure entirely, with interludes of eerie atmospherics, spacey soundscapes overlaid with ominous whispered declamations, and weirdass instrumentals, like the squirrelly, proggy bombast of "Chocolate Mescalyne", a track that if you sped it up a lot would almost fit in on a Orthrelm album.
And then there's the DOOM. Oh yeah, while it's not "normal" doom it IS doom. Sludgy, Sabbath-riffed doom indeed, despite the trebly production. "Ghost Lover", for instance, gives us the feel of both the Sabs' "Iron Man" and "Electric Funeral", and Duane's vocals are particularly Ozzy-ish on the uber-heavy "Evil Lures" too... Great stuff if you really really appreciate the stranger, more psychedelic aspects of true doom artistry, the spirit is HERE.
Three cheers for avant garde new wave downer rock hippie heavy metal weirdness! That gives special thanks "to the Columbia High School Band for the use of their percussion instruments". We are so pleased to play a role in sharing this culter than cult classic with you, which by the way comes in fairly no-frills packaging, the cd in a thin cardboard sleeve with full-color album art front and back but no lyrics, liner notes, nothin' like that. It's pretty cheap though. Not that you should need any further incentive to pick this up, after reading our ravings above...
MPEG Stream: "Animals"
MPEG Stream: "Cannabinol: The Function"
MPEG Stream: "Ghost Lovers"
MPEG Stream: "Evil Lures"
MPEG Stream: "Heavy Vibrations"

DZIEWANSKI, ADRIAN Orbital Decay (Vacant Tapes) cd 14.98
The author of the exceptionally well-written Scrapyard Forecast blog which focuses on all things droned-out, Adrian Dziewanski has also been slowly developing an exceptional sensibility of his own tonefloat minimalism from acoustically sourced drones. There were a couple of cassettes and cd-rs which had been floating around, mostly under the moniker Empress; but Orbital Decay is the first one that has made it to aQ. In perusing his blog, it can be something of a Nurse With Wound list of stellar minimalists and dronologists who have all informed Dziewanski on how to proceed with his own music: Pandit Pran Nath, Andrew Chalk, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Manu Holterbach, Barn Owl, Organum, etc. The warm cascading shimmer that pours from the speaker is a timeless drone, reminiscent of those sustained harmonic intervals that any number of the high-holy minimalists from the '60s might have produced, complete with the rasping buzz of strings that could have been sourced from a sitar, a hurdy gurdy, or even a well-tuned piece of sheet metal. Dziewanski laces this central drone with monochromatic, airy passages of levitated white noise bathed in reverb. These wisps ebb and flow in melodic currents that work into a beautifully rendered hypnosis. Does anybody remember Jim O'Rourke's 1993 album Remove The Need, of prepared guitar drones? Orbital Decay is somewhere between that record, those Keith Fullerton Whitman albums of bliss-out on Kranky, and the Nurse With Wound ambient opus Soliloquy For Lilith. Very well done and very limited. Just 125 copies of this professionally replicated cd (not a cd-r!).
MPEG Stream: "Orbital Decay"

E-MAN s/t (The Tapeworm) cassette 7.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
A long lost eighties artifact from UK tape label The Tapeworm, released along with three other strange and wonderful tapes, to be found elsewhere on this week's list.
E-Man is probably not a name familiar to most folks, and Geir Jenssen might not be either, but odds are, most aQ customers and drone obsessives do know Jennsen by his 'other' name, Biosphere!
But before you freak out and nab one of these expecting some sort of icy grim minimal ambience, be prepared, this was originally released in 1984, and is a whole 'nother beast. E-Man specializes in gloomy synth driven new wave, with crooned dramatic vocals, programmed electronic percussion, Joy Division-y basslines, Kraftwerk like melodies, wicked cool, but definitely of its time. Although folks who have been digging on the recent resurgence of new wave / cold wave, should for sure check this out, cuz this is the real deal, warm whirring swooshes of synthesizer, "Rockit" like rhythms, electronic drums, even some scratching, a little bit funky, but also cold and clinical, space-y here and there, with haunting snippets of found sounds, mysterious voices, but all would around the groups propulsive sound. There are some moments that hint at the Biosphere to come, a little more spacey and abstract, but even those tracks are strangely new wave-y, almost new age-y actually, and often lead right into some stiff outerspace robo-funk, usually overlaid with the above mentioned reverb drenched croon. Not at all what we expected, but we're totally digging it.
LIMITED TO 350 COPIES. Bad ass Savage Pencil artwork too...

EA 11'00 (Drone Records) 7" 6.50
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Drone Records -- run by Stefan Knappe of Troum and Maeror Tri -- exclusively produces seven inches mostly by emerging artists who specialize in expressive drone work (hence the label name). While there is something to be said for Drone's dedication to unknown artists, the work that comes from the ongoing series tends to be some of the best work from each of the artists' respective catalogues. This definitely includes more familiar names such as Reynols (with their infamous '10,000 Chicken Symphony'), Francisco Lopez, Spear, and Osso Exotico; but also lesser known artists such as Klood and Tarkatak. Drone tends to make small runs of these singles (usually about 250 copies and with handmade covers) and they always go fast.
EA is a Polish artist who only has a couple of cd-r releases under his belt, but has succeeded in developing a very nice amorphous version of late '80s Zoviet France, albeit without Robin Storey's trademarked looping structures. "11'00" is a delicate strain of manipulated feedback that complements a battery of distant gongs, extended guitar tones, and reverberated textural scrapings. Nice.

EAGLE KEYS s/t (Even Stilte) cd 12.98
Eagle Keys (which is probably just the name of the record, not the name of the band, but since it's on the spine we're calling 'em Eagle Keys) is two dudes, one whom we know and one whom we don't. Respectively, there's electric bassist Tim Olive, who we most recently heard in the Supernatural Hot Rug And Not Used duo recording from EM Records. He's been in some other bands over the years, including Nimrod and Soap-Jo Henshi, best known to Japanese-music nerds like ourselves. The other fella is Francisco Meirino, responsible here for "computer and acoustics". Together they have produced two long tracks, "Eagle Keys Part One" and "Eagle Keys Part Two", about 50 minutes total of crinkly-crankly improvised soundscapes, littered with abstract, atmospheric detail. Part One begins with shuffling clicks and whirring hum and rattling gurgle, sounding a bit like some sort of shaggy electronic beast snuffling through its dinner. Long quiet drones and sizzling hissing and ominous creakings and chaotic clankings occur as this duo rummage about with their instruments and and objects and microphones, the whole process finally building into a dense, satisfying distorted drone-howl at almost the very end of its 34 minutes. Then, the 15 and a half minute Part Two is more about gentle flutter and whispered feedback. It's spooky and hissy and whistle-y (enough so that at points, dogs might not like it!). It comes to an end with a sudden, satisfying "clunkgluntch"!
MPEG Stream: "Eagle Keys Part One"
MPEG Stream: "Eagle Keys Part Two"

EARN Lacewing (Ekhein) cassette 5.98

EARN / SECRET ABUSE split (Agents Of Chaos) cassette 6.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

EARTH 070796LIVE (Autofact) cd 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We obviously don't need to say much to convince all the Earth / Sunn 0))) / doom-dirge-drone obsessives out there that this disc is ESSENTIAL. Most of them are willing to shell out $50 or $100 or even more for limited vinyl releases by any band even tangentially related to Sunn 0))) or Earth, anyway. But for those of you who are new to the Earth phenomenon, as long as you already own their ALL TIME CLASSIC album Earth 2, you might also want to check this disc out (and the OTHER, NEW Earth cd reviewed elsewhere on this list!). 070796LIVE collects the WAY out of print, one sided live lp from a few years back, the equally WAY out of print tour only split 12" with KK Null, an unreleased live recording on WNYU, and a remix by James Plotkin (O.L.D. / Khanate / Phantomsmasher, etc.) In terms of eBay value alone this disc is worth at least $100 if not more!!! But so what? More importantly it's another essential slab of crushing, mesmerising, slow motion drone-metal! The first two tracks are "070796" (from the live lp) and the live radio recording "Dissolution III (Oversaturated Intervallic Collisions)". These tracks are classic Earth, stumbling, droning, rambling, and endlessly heavy. The funny thing with Earth though, is sometimes they sound like they must be taking the piss. A couple scraggly haired dudes, wacked out of their minds, tuning and fumbling for twenty minutes, sometimes sitting there in a stupor, letting the feeding-back guitar do all the work, sometimes plucking and scraping and manipulating the sound into rumbling sheets of drone and skree. But sometimes, that fumbling becomes absolutely divine, which is, we suppose, the magic of Earth. The ultimate outsider drone outfit. Who somehow manage, with the same amps and guitars and effects as the rest of us, to simply stumble into dronerock nirvana! The third track, from the KK Null split tour 12", features the current incarnation of Earth with Adrienne Davies on drums. Bookended by that classic stationary Earth feedback-drone, this track eventually morphs into an actual song, with a fuzzed out, minor key riff, and simple hypnotic drumming, falling sonically somewhere between moody post rock and midtempo Burzumic black metal. Throbbing and loping, and totally mesmerizing. The last track, the Plotkin remix, takes the live track and stretches it into thick ropy drones, with the original track's constituent parts blurred into indistinct smears of fuzz and rumble, a slowly shifting glacial crush, with occasional squalls of buzzy white noise and electronic filligree. Really really nice. And of course as we now know, the rumour we had been hearing, about a BRAND NEW Earth record has proven to be the truth, with the release of Living In The Gleam Of An Unsheathed Sword (read all about it elsewhere on this list), which IS a new record, but features live tracks recorded in 2002. And while one of the tracks here is inexplicably duplicated on the new cd, both discs are well worth the price, with 070796LIVE including three tracks essentially unavailable anywhere else, and Living In The Gleam containing an epic one hour track only available on that cd.
MPEG Stream: "Dexamyl"
MPEG Stream: "070796 (Reconstruction By James Plotkin)"

EARTH 10 1990 (Ajna) lp 12.98
THIS LP IS COMPLETELY OUT OF PRINT AND WE WILL NEVER HAVE IT AGAIN BUT WE THOUGHT WE'D LEAVE IT IN THE CATALOG FOR POSTERITY'S SAKE. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This is the shit. Earth were the masters of the downtuned slow motion dirge, boasting both Joe Preston of the Thrones and Kurt Cobain as one time members. Their second record, 'Earth 2' (which we also carry) is an absolute classic and essential for lovers of doom, metal, sludge, or any sort of heaviness.
This lp collects an alternate version of their first album as well as the two ultra rare '16 rpm' 7"s. It is clear vinyl, housed in a breathtaking hand screened clear sleeve, and limited to 360, of which we only got 20. So don't dawdle or you'll be kicking yourself later.
Crushing and glacial tar pit metal. Like your Melvins records at 6 rpm. Like listening to Black Sabbath on a walkman with dying batteries at the bottom of a swimming pool. Like the last 10 seconds of your life, played out in slow motion, as tons of 'rock' crushes you to death.
You must buy this.
Totally fucking essential if you already like Earth, but definitely for fans of the Melvins, Corrupted, Esoteric, Skepticism and the like.

EARTH 2 (Special Low Frequency Version) (Sub Pop) cd 10.98
(For some reason we never listed this before, so rather than just adding it quietly to the website we thought we'd put it on our email, timely since we're also listing the reissue of Earth's "Sunn Amps..." cd.)
Earth. The band that launched a thousand drones. The band that started it all. The heaviest band ever (maybe). Earth was the singular vision of only-permanent-member Dylan Carlson, the long haired guy pictured on the back cover wearing the Morbid Angel longsleeve (whom you might remember from the Kurt & Courtney movie). For 1993's Earth 2, Dylan's guitar was joined by the bass of Dave Harwell, who is pictured holding a cup of coffee on the back cover (and who would go on to disappear completely).
All you kids who thrive on an unhealthy diet of the Corrupted, Boris (who even borrowed the Earth 2 tagline "Special Low Frequency Version" for the Southern Lord version of their "Absolutego" album), the Melvins, Thrones, and sludge like that, as well as you avant-art rockers who enjoy 'dronology' and stuff like Mirror and Jonathan Coleclough and even those of you who sit at home in front of your dream machines and wallow in the historical drones of Angus Maclise and Tony Conrad, need look no further than Earth 2 to experience the drone the way it was meant to be heard: huge downtuned guitars playing riffs so slow that each one lasts forever, LOW END that slides and lurches like a blackened glacier of fuzz and hiss, slow motion notes stretched so far that they become a single note washing over you like a sticky wave of tar and molasses, melodies that are indistinguishable because the notes are pulled so far apart they threaten to come apart completely. When we tell someone that a record is heavy, Earth 2 is the barometer by which all other supposedly 'heavy' music is measured. Even recent AQ faves SUNNO))) are an Earth tribute band (they will even say as much) named for Earth's amp of choice. There are very few records that are 'classics', that stand the test of time, that remain as vital now, as when they originally came out, ten, twenty, or even thirty years earlier, that have influenced so many bands so much, or that have been unequalled, even with so many people trying so hard to be the heaviest or most extreme. The drug addled, accidental brilliance that is Earth 2, to this day remains a complete and utter classic.
MPEG Stream: "Seven Angels"
MPEG Stream: "Teeth Of Lions Rule The Divine"
MPEG Stream: "Like Gold And Faceted"

EARTH 2 (Special Low Frequency Version) (Sub Pop) 2lp 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY. IT'S JUST BETWEEN PRESSINGS, SO HOPEFULLY WE'LL RELIST IT SOON.
Finally, all of the legendary and long out of print Earth records are available again on vinyl (including the classic Phase 3: Thrones And Dominions also just reissued on cd)!!! It was only a matter of time really with the recent explosion of deathdoomdronesludge mania, SUNNO))), Corrupted, Boris and of course Earth, the forefathers and undisputed masters of all things slow and sludgey.
Earth. The band that launched a thousand drones. The band that started it all. The heaviest band ever (maybe). Earth was the singular vision of only-permanent-member Dylan Carlson, the long haired guy pictured on the back cover wearing the Morbid Angel longsleeve (whom you might remember from the Kurt & Courtney movie). For 1993's Earth 2, Dylan's guitar was joined by the bass of Dave Harwell, who is pictured holding a cup of coffee on the back cover (and who would go on to disappear completely).
All you kids who thrive on an unhealthy diet of the Corrupted, Boris (who even borrowed the Earth 2 tagline "Special Low Frequency Version" for the Southern Lord version of their Absolutego album), the Melvins, Thrones, and sludge like that, as well as you avant-art rockers who enjoy 'dronology' and stuff like Mirror and Jonathan Coleclough and even those of you who sit at home in front of your dream machines and wallow in the historical drones of Angus Maclise and Tony Conrad, need look no further than Earth 2 to experience the drone the way it was meant to be heard: huge downtuned guitars playing riffs so slow that each one lasts forever, LOW END that slides and lurches like a blackened glacier of fuzz and hiss, slow motion notes stretched so far that they become a single note washing over you like a sticky wave of tar and molasses, melodies that are indistinguishable because the notes are pulled so far apart they threaten to come apart completely. When we tell someone that a record is heavy, Earth 2 is the barometer by which all other supposedly 'heavy' music is measured. Even recent AQ faves Sunn 0))) began life as an Earth tribute band (they will even say as much) named for Earth's amp of choice. There are very few records that are 'classics', that stand the test of time, that remain as vital now, as when they originally came out, ten, twenty, or even thirty years earlier, that have influenced so many bands so much, or that have been unequalled, even with so many people trying so hard to be the heaviest or most extreme. The drug addled, accidental brilliance that is Earth 2, to this day remains a complete and utter classic.
MPEG Stream: "Seven Angels"
MPEG Stream: "Teeth Of Lions Rule The Divine"
MPEG Stream: "Like Gold And Faceted"

EARTH 2 : Special Low Quantity Version (Autofact) 3lp 53.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Super limited triple lp version of this all time classic. And we mean VERY LIMITED. As in we only have 1 copies. SUPER EXPENSIVE, but the only way to get this on vinyl at this point. In plain white sleeves, sealed with a sticker, with an insert. Supposed to be numbered but our copies aren't. Sleeves are not in perfect condition as these were dragged around Europe by Earth on their 2003 European tour with KK Null, originally the only place you could buy this sucker! Her's our review of the cd version:
Earth. The band that launched a thousand drones. The band that started it all. The heaviest band ever (maybe). Earth was the singular vision of only-permanent-member Dylan Carlson, the long haired guy pictured on the back cover wearing the Morbid Angel longsleeve (whom you might remember from the Kurt & Courtney movie). For 1993's Earth 2, Dylan's guitar was joined by the bass of Dave Harwell, who is pictured holding a cup of coffee on the back cover (and who would go on to disappear completely).
All you kids who thrive on an unhealthy diet of the Corrupted, Boris (who even borrowed the Earth 2 tagline "Special Low Frequency Version" for the Southern Lord version of their "Absolutego" album), the Melvins, Thrones, and sludge like that, as well as you avant-art rockers who enjoy 'dronology' and stuff like Mirror and Jonathan Coleclough and even those of you who sit at home in front of your dream machines and wallow in the historical drones of Angus Maclise and Tony Conrad, need look no further than Earth 2 to experience the drone the way it was meant to be heard: huge downtuned guitars playing riffs so slow that each one lasts forever, LOW END that slides and lurches like a blackened glacier of fuzz and hiss, slow motion notes stretched so far that they become a single note washing over you like a sticky wave of tar and molasses, melodies that are indistinguishable because the notes are pulled so far apart they threaten to come apart completely. When we tell someone that a record is heavy, Earth 2 is the barometer by which all other supposedly 'heavy' music is measured. Even recent AQ faves Sunn 0))) are an Earth tribute band (they will even say as much) named for Earth's amp of choice. There are very few records that are 'classics', that stand the test of time, that remain as vital now, as when they originally came out, ten, twenty, or even thirty years earlier, that have influenced so many bands so much, or that have been unequalled, even with so many people trying so hard to be the heaviest or most extreme. The drug addled, accidental brilliance that is Earth 2, to this day remains a complete and utter classic.
MPEG Stream: "Seven Angels"
MPEG Stream: "Teeth Of Lions Rule The Divine"
MPEG Stream: "Like Gold And Faceted"

EARTH A Bureaucratic Desire For Extra-Capsular Extraction (Southern Lord) cd 15.98
We made this a Record Of The Week on our special Halloween in-between list last week, here it is again in case you were out trick-or-treating and missed it:
Man, were we ever bummed when Sub Pop told us that Earth's first album (or ep?), their seminal doom-drone debut Extra-Capsular Extraction, had gone out of print (again). WTF? How could that be? That's so wrong. Well, thankfully, it hasn't stayed OOP for long. Southern Lord has just repackaged, remastered, and reissued it, incorporating a whole bunch MORE music recorded at the original Extra-Capsular sessions back in 1990, material that previously appeared only on bootleg 7"s long ago (and/or showed up as bonus tracks on the also-quite-out-of-print Sunn Amps And Smashed Guitars Live disc). So what you get here is the COMPLETE Extra-Capsular album as Earth mainman Dylan Carlson originally intended it. So if you don't have the Sunn Amps disc, this is totally worth getting again even if you already have the Sub Pop version! Plus, the packaging is aces, with gorgeous new art by Simon Fowler, designed by Stephen O'Malley, and there's new 2010 liner notes from Carlson. He talks about how they got signed by Sub Pop after opening for L7 at a show in Seattle, fortuitously 'cause they had been having no luck up 'til then finding a label interested in putting out the record they'd recorded, this one. Apparently it cost just $300 to make at Smegma studios, and the "guest musicians worked for Pabst and Percodan"... Earth back then consisted of Dylan Carlson (guitar/vocals), plus Dave Harwell (bass) and Joe Preston (bass/percussion). Joe of course later went on to fame and fortune in the Melvins, and later, his one man band Thrones (and High On Fire, and Harvey Milk, etc.). Oh, and this is the Earth record that one Kurt Cobain (spelt "Kobain" here), sings on as well, which we know confused and dismayed a lot of frat/jock guys back in the day, who bought this hoping for something that smelled like teen spirit and instead got what turned out to be the inspiration for SUNNO)))!
So, here's what we said about this when we reviewed the prior version, back on list #135 in 2002, when Sub Pop repressed it (at our urging, we like to think):
Kind of a holy grail for those who didn't pick up the long-out-of-print original version of this when it was first released, the 1991 debut cd by the Pacific Northwest's late great drone/doom masters Earth. Originals sell for big $$$ on eBay. And those who DO have one consider it an old friend. Now Sub Pop has finally got their act together (prodded by the pleas of many an Earth fan, including Allan here at AQ, who takes full credit, so you can thank him) and have reissued it at last - this time in a jewel case instead of the mere cardboard sleeve of the original version (another triumph for Allan). The artwork is the same, though: the medical-text inspired 'Postgraduate Seminars: Eye Surgery - Concepts and Problems' graphics. There's no extra tracks or anything, but the original three tracks ("A Bureaucratic Desire For Revenge Parts 1 & 2", "Ouroboros Is Broken") are more than enough: 32 minutes of downtuned dirge, metallic slow-motion sludge riffery that goes to extremes of low, slow heaviness that even the mighty Melvins never achieved. The lengthier, airier follow-up "Earth 2" might be Earth's masterpiece, but "Extra-Capsular" was their devastating opening act, sounding like the grand, ominous martial music meant to accompany an invasion by malevolent Underearth Dwellers. We remember when I first got this, most of our friends thought it was the most retarded record ever. Now they know better. Well, actually, they probably don't, but WE know. So recommended.
So NOW thanks to Southern Lord, this album by the still great (and no longer late!) Earth is back in print, as God and/or Satan intended, in its complete version for the first time, extended to seven tracks over 55 minutes. The extra stuff fits right in, more-Melvinsy-than-thou slow-mo sludge riffery that outshines almost anything that came after. Also "Geometry Of Murder" seems to sneak in a Saint Vitus riff!
An obvious Record Of The Week, and perfect for our special Halloween list, as it's super heavy and menacing, as well as such a long-time fave - and also the eye-surgery theme of the cover art always gave us the chills.
And FYI, Southern Lord will also being doing this on double vinyl, due out November the 22nd!
MPEG Stream: "A Bureaucratic Desire For Revenge, Part 1"
MPEG Stream: "Ouroboros Is Broken"
MPEG Stream: "German Dental Work"

EARTH A Bureaucratic Desire For Extra-Capsular Extraction (Southern Lord) 2lp 23.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Now it's here on vinyl, sweet!!
We made the cd version of this a Record Of The Week on our special Halloween in-between list a couple weeks ago, here's the review again in case you were out trick-or-treating and missed it:
Man, were we ever bummed when Sub Pop told us that Earth's first album (or ep?), their seminal doom-drone debut Extra-Capsular Extraction, had gone out of print (again). WTF? How could that be? That's so wrong. Well, thankfully, it hasn't stayed OOP for long. Southern Lord has just repackaged, remastered, and reissued it, incorporating a whole bunch MORE music recorded at the original Extra-Capsular sessions back in 1990, material that previously appeared only on bootleg 7"s long ago (and/or showed up as bonus tracks on the also-quite-out-of-print Sunn Amps And Smashed Guitars Live disc). So what you get here is the COMPLETE Extra-Capsular album as Earth mainman Dylan Carlson originally intended it. So if you don't have the Sunn Amps disc, this is totally worth getting again even if you already have the Sub Pop version! Plus, the packaging is aces, with gorgeous new art by Simon Fowler, designed by Stephen O'Malley, and there's new 2010 liner notes from Carlson. He talks about how they got signed by Sub Pop after opening for L7 at a show in Seattle, fortuitously 'cause they had been having no luck up 'til then finding a label interested in putting out the record they'd recorded, this one. Apparently it cost just $300 to make at Smegma studios, and the "guest musicians worked for Pabst and Percodan"... Earth back then consisted of Dylan Carlson (guitar/vocals), plus Dave Harwell (bass) and Joe Preston (bass/percussion). Joe of course later went on to fame and fortune in the Melvins, and later, his one man band Thrones (and High On Fire, and Harvey Milk, etc.). Oh, and this is the Earth record that one Kurt Cobain (spelt "Kobain" here), sings on as well, which we know confused and dismayed a lot of frat/jock guys back in the day, who bought this hoping for something that smelled like teen spirit and instead got what turned out to be the inspiration for SUNNO)))!
So, here's what we said about this when we reviewed the prior version, back on list #135 in 2002, when Sub Pop repressed it (at our urging, we like to think):
Kind of a holy grail for those who didn't pick up the long-out-of-print original version of this when it was first released, the 1991 debut cd by the Pacific Northwest's late great drone/doom masters Earth. Originals sell for big $$$ on eBay. And those who DO have one consider it an old friend. Now Sub Pop has finally got their act together (prodded by the pleas of many an Earth fan, including Allan here at AQ, who takes full credit, so you can thank him) and have reissued it at last - this time in a jewel case instead of the mere cardboard sleeve of the original version (another triumph for Allan). The artwork is the same, though: the medical-text inspired 'Postgraduate Seminars: Eye Surgery - Concepts and Problems' graphics. There's no extra tracks or anything, but the original three tracks ("A Bureaucratic Desire For Revenge Parts 1 & 2", "Ouroboros Is Broken") are more than enough: 32 minutes of downtuned dirge, metallic slow-motion sludge riffery that goes to extremes of low, slow heaviness that even the mighty Melvins never achieved. The lengthier, airier follow-up "Earth 2" might be Earth's masterpiece, but "Extra-Capsular" was their devastating opening act, sounding like the grand, ominous martial music meant to accompany an invasion by malevolent Underearth Dwellers. We remember when I first got this, most of our friends thought it was the most retarded record ever. Now they know better. Well, actually, they probably don't, but WE know. So recommended.
So NOW thanks to Southern Lord, this album by the still great (and no longer late!) Earth is back in print, as God and/or Satan intended, in its complete version for the first time, extended to seven tracks over 55 minutes. The extra stuff fits right in, more-Melvinsy-than-thou slow-mo sludge riffery that outshines almost anything that came after. Also "Geometry Of Murder" seems to sneak in a Saint Vitus riff!
An obvious Record Of The Week, and perfect for our special Halloween list, as it's super heavy and menacing, as well as such a long-time fave - and also the eye-surgery theme of the cover art always gave us the chills.
MPEG Stream: "A Bureaucratic Desire For Revenge, Part 1"
MPEG Stream: "Ouroboros Is Broken"
MPEG Stream: "German Dental Work"

EARTH Angels Of Darkness, Demons Of Light I (Southern Lord) cd 14.98
The further Earth evolves, the harder it is to believe they were once THEE progenitors of the doomdronedirgesludge sound that's so prevalent these days. They began life as a sludgey, druggy, slo-mo avant riff behemoth, no one could have imagined they would have turned into this, a dusty, twangy, deserty, moody minimal slowcore combo, with a sound that has essentially evolved into a score to some stark, spare, imaginary black and white independent film, more soundtrack, imagined or not, than proper rock band, let alone, METAL band, which is how they have been traditionally categorized. But Angels Of Darkness, like the last few Earth records before it, is most definitely not metal, not even heavy really, at least in the traditional sense, this one even in the NON traditional senses, instead, it's again dark and brooding, evocative and emotional, cinematic and soundtracky, the core sound has again been expanded to include strings, which only adds to the whole moody minimal soundtrack vibe. But hell, it still suits them, we now have enough other bands doing the whole slow and low dirge and drone thing, and if anything, Angels Of Darkness might be Earth's most full realized stab and capturing their 'new' sound. No pretenses, no strings attaching them to the old Earth, very few allusions, sonic or otherwise, to the ghost of doom past, they're even more secure on the new path they set out on years ago, and it shows, each of the long tracks here unwinds gradually, a slow, swirling smoldering bit of twang flecked slowcore, a little bit droney, the guitars spidery and crystalline, the bass and drums super minimal, the cello doing much of the heavy lifting this time around, its deep throaty buzz, the perfect compliment to the band's sun baked shimmer, and bleak drowsy moodiness. Not a huge shift in sound, but then nobody wanted that, we just wanted more, more slithery, sun dappled darkness, more summery shadowy twang, and that's what Angels Of Darkness is, more just a honing and perfecting of a sound that's already pretty perfect, and exactly what you'd want to be playing in the background as you wandered down the dusty street of some old ghost town, and a perfect fit alongside the rest of your 'Ghost Town' mix alongside Scenic, Tulsa Drone, Barn Owl, Calexico, Sixteen Horsepower, and the rest.
MPEG Stream: "Old Black"
MPEG Stream: "Father Midnight"
MPEG Stream: "Descent To The Zenith"

EARTH Angels Of Darkness, Demons Of Light I (Southern Lord) lp 23.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Here, at last, the vinyl version of the latest Earth opus. We were expecting these for Record Store Day, but they only just showed up this week!! Heavy duty gatefold sleeve double vinyl, 180 grams, with "special etching"... Limited of course, we have the red vinyl, of which they only pressed 1000.
The further Earth evolves, the harder it is to believe they were once THEE progenitors of the doomdronedirgesludge sound that's so prevalent these days. They began life as a sludgey, druggy, slo-mo avant riff behemoth, no one could have imagined they would have turned into this, a dusty, twangy, deserty, moody minimal slowcore combo, with a sound that has essentially evolved into a score to some stark, spare, imaginary black and white independent film, more soundtrack, imagined or not, than proper rock band, let alone, METAL band, which is how they have been traditionally categorized. But Angels Of Darkness, like the last few Earth records before it, are most definitely not metal, not even heavy really, at least in the traditional sense, this one even in the NON traditional senses, instead, it's again, dark and brooding, evocative and emotional, cinematic and soundtracky, the core sound has again been expanded to include strings, which only adds to the whole moody minimal soundtrack vibe. But hell, it still suits them, we now have enough other bands doing the whole slow and low dirge and drone thing, and if anything, Angles Of Darkness might be Earth's most full realized stab and capturing their 'new' sound. No pretenses, no strings attaching them to the old Earth, very few allusions, sonic or otherwise, to the ghost of doom past, they're even more secure on the new path they set out on years ago, and it shows, each of the long tracks here unwinds gradually, a slow, swirling smoldering bit of twang flecked slowcore, a little bit droney, the guitars spidery and crystalline, the bass and drums super minimal, the cello doing much of the heavy lifting this time around, its deep throaty buzz, the perfect compliment to the band's sun baked shimmer, and bleak drowsy moodiness. Not a huge shift in sound, but then nobody wanted that, we just wanted more, more slithery, sun dappled darkness, more summery shadowy twang, and that's what Angles Of Darkness is, more just a honing and perfecting of a sound that's already pretty perfect, and exactly what you'd want to be playing in the background as you wandered down the dusty street of some old ghost town, and a perfect fit alongside the rest of your 'Ghost Town' mix alongside Scenic, Tulsa Drone, Barn Owl, Calexico, Sixteen Horsepower, and the rest.
MPEG Stream: "Old Black"
MPEG Stream: "Father Midnight"
MPEG Stream: "Descent To The Zenith"

EARTH Extra - Capsular Extraction (Sub Pop) cd ep 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Kind of a holy grail for those who didn't pick up the long-out-of-print original version of this when it was first released, the 1991 debut cd by the Pacific Northwest's late great drone/doom masters Earth. Originals sell for big $$$ on eBay. And those who DO have one consider it an old friend. Now (now being 2002!) Sub Pop has finally got their act together (prodded by the pleas of many an Earth fan, including Allan here at AQ, who takes full credit, so you can thank him) and have reissued it at last -- this time in a jewel case instead of the mere cardboard sleeve of the original version (another triumph for Allan). The artwork is the same, though: the medical-text inspired "Postgraduate Seminars: Eye Surgery - Concepts and Problems" graphics. There's no extra tracks or anything, but the original three tracks ("A Bureaucratic Desire For Revenge Parts 1 & 2", "Ouroboros Is Broken") are more than enough: 32 minutes of downtuned dirge, metallic slow-motion sludge riffery that goes to extremes of low, slow heaviness that even the mighty Melvins never achieved. The lengthier, airier follow-up "Earth 2" might be Earth's masterpiece, but "Extra-Capsular" was their devastating opening act, sounding like the grand, ominous martial music meant to accompany an invasion by malevolent Underearth Dwellers. I remember when I first got this, most of my friends thought it was the most retarded record ever. Now they know better. Well, actually, they probably don't, but WE know. So recommended.
Earth on this disc consisted of mastermind Dylan Carlson (guitar/vocals) plus Dave Harwell (bass) and Joe Preston (bass/percussion). Joe of course later went on to fame and fortune in the Melvins, and later, his one man band Thrones.
Oh, and this is the Earth record that one Kurt Cobain plays on as well, which I know confused and dismayed a lot of frat/jock guys back in the day!
RealAudio clip: "Ouroboros Is Broken"

EARTH Extra - Capsular Extraction (Sub Pop) lp 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Finally, all of the legendary and long out of print Earth records are available again on vinyl (including the classic Phase 3: Thrones And Dominions also just reissued on cd)!!! It was only a matter of time really with the recent explosion of deathdoomdronesludge mania, SUNNO))), Corrupted, Boris and of course Earth, the forefathers and undisputed masters of all things slow and sludgey.
Extra - Capsular Extraction is definitely an all time sludge / doom holy grail, having spent the majority of the last almost 20 years out of print. But the cd was reissued a little while back and now the vinyl is back in print too! Originally released in 1991, Extra - Capsular Extraction was the debut cd by Pacific Northwest drone/doom masters Earth, who were thought by most folks to be defunct before resurfacing recently with a new lineup and a new twangier sound and an amazing record in the form of the breathtaking Hex.
So, Extra - Capsular Extraction! Needless to say we all love this record, it's Allan and Jason's favorite Earth record for sure, Andee's third, maybe even second (behind '2' and sometimes 'Phase 3'), but we are so psyched for this to be available again, especially on vinyl.
The artwork is the same: the medical-text inspired "Postgraduate Seminars: Eye Surgery - Concepts and Problems" graphics. There's no extra tracks or anything, but the original three tracks ("A Bureaucratic Desire For Revenge Parts 1 & 2", "Ouroboros Is Broken") are more than enough: 32 minutes of downtuned dirge, metallic slow-motion sludge riffery that goes to extremes of low, slow heaviness that even the mighty Melvins never achieved. The lengthier, airier follow-up "Earth 2" might be Earth's masterpiece, but "Extra-Capsular" was their devastating opening act, sounding like the grand, ominous martial music meant to accompany an invasion by malevolent Underearth Dwellers. I remember when I first got this, most of my friends thought it was the most retarded record ever. Now they know better. Well, actually, they probably don't, but WE know. So recommended.
Earth on this disc consisted of mastermind Dylan Carlson (guitar/vocals) plus Dave Harwell (bass) and Joe Preston (bass/percussion). Joe of course later went on to fame and fortune in the Melvins, and later, his one man band Thrones.
Oh, and this is the Earth record that one Kurt Cobain plays on as well, which I know confused and dismayed a lot of frat/jock guys back in the day!
MPEG Stream: "Ouroboros Is Broken"

EARTH Hex; Or Printing In The Infernal Method (Southern Lord) cd 14.98
It's all been leading up to this. In the early nineties, when most of us heard Earth for the first time, our minds were totally blown. What was that massive slab of fuzzy sludge doing on Sub Pop? Why didn't it sound like Soundgarden or Mudhoney or Tad? It didn't take long before we stopped asking questions like that and began wondering where the hell were all the other bands that sounded like Earth. Well, it took 10 years, but now that whole downtuned slow motion sludge thing is an actual genre. With more and more new bands popping up every day. All honoring the mighty sludge that was Earth. But those of you who were into Earth the first time around, might remember the band changing directions pretty dramatically, adding a drummer, and playing actual songs, even doing a Hendrix cover at one point, the Earth of old having mutated into a groovy sort of stoner post rock, propulsive swinging riffs, relentless chugging guitars, all wrapped in a druggy spacy swirl. Back then we were all a bit bummed out, as Earth became, well, more normal, at least to our ears. It was as close to selling out as Earth were liable to get.
Back to the present day. Recordings started popping up here and there, along with rumors of actual Earth shows, limited 7"s and tour only 12"s, all filling us with an impossible anticipation. Earth was back. But if they were back, why were all the recordings from live shows and all several years old? It made sense, the sound of the new Earth practically picked up right where they left off, stretched out, spaced out, druggy post rock with simple drumming and wavering distorted riffs, not heavy per se, but dark and dreamy and mesmerizing. But none of that could have prepared us for the desolate, sun baked, slow crawl, shuffle and twang beauty of long-awaited new studio album Hex. Definitely hewing closer to Earth's more recent post rockisms, Hex is warm and expansive, slow building and contemplative, with simple drums, heavily reverbed, not distorted, guitars, occasional lapsteel, the whole thing unfurling into a haunting twang, a ghost town desert lullaby, a Cormac McCarthy novel in song, tumbleweeds, miles of scrub and windblown landscapes, old dead trees, plenty of space for the cymbals to sizzle and each riff to drift into black clouded skies. Drone / doom / dirge / sludge purists (if there can be such a thing) may well be a bit disappointed, or at the very least confused. And Earth's history / reputation for black hole heaviness might be an albatross at this point as this new sound falls squarely within the territory of groups like Low, Codeine, Friends Of Dean Martinez, Calexico, Scenic, Torrez, Sixteen Horsepower, even Mazzy Star or Godspeed You Black Emperor. But ultimately none of that has anything to do with the fact that Hex is just simply beautiful. A dark and mysterious and truly haunting record. Huge swells of instrumental tension dissipate into warm washes of drift and shimmer, melodies are slowly uncoiling snakes, waking drowsily and slithering off sun baked rocks, every note and every drum beat, every slippery lapsteel swoop, every stretch of near silence, are all draped lazily over broken fences, fallen power lines, rusted out tractors, fallow fields. Dark clouds drift above, across a steel grey sky, sending small shadowy shapes scurrying across the landscape like mysterious creatures, the breeze is warm and smells of death and desolation. Every one is lost and alone, out of money, out of time, just waiting around to die. The mood is bleak, but the sound of Hex is so so beautiful. Somehow hopeful and full of joy, but the sort of joy that comes from being powerless and close to despair, and simply choosing joy over misery, finding happiness the way animals in the desert seek out moisture. The heart of Hex is heavy, the sound appropriately heavy as well, but in a way few conventionally heavy records can manage. A brooding, storm about to break, dam about to burst, soul about to loose itself from its earthly moorings and escape to a better place kind of heavy. The sound of the desert, and the human spirit, of death, of sadness and horror, of loneliness, of abandonment, of hearts breaking, lovers lost and drifting apart, of life. The sound of laying in the dry dirt, the breeze stretched across you like a moth eaten old blanket, eyes closed, the sun sending all sorts of shapes spinning behind your closed eyelids, memories becoming fuzzy and drifting away, your whole body and soul wrapped in a warm darkness, the world fading into nowhere, you fading into nothing.
MPEG Stream: "Lens Of Unrectified Night"
MPEG Stream: "An Inquest Concerning Teeth"
MPEG Stream: "Raiford (The Felon Wind)"

EARTH Hex; Or Printing In The Infernal Method (Southern Lord) 2lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
It's all been leading up to this. In the early nineties, when most of us heard Earth for the first time, our minds were totally blown. What was that massive slab of fuzzy sludge doing on Sub Pop? Why didn't is sound like Soundgarden or Mudhoney or Tad? It didn't take long before we stopped asking questions like that and began wondering where the hell were all the other bands that sounded like Earth. Well, it took 10 years, but now that whole downtuned slow motion sludge thing is an actual genre. With more and more new bands popping up every day. All honoring the mighty sludge that was Earth. But those of you who were into Earth the first time around, might remember the band changing directions pretty dramatically, adding a drummer, and playing actual songs, even doing a Hendrix cover at one point, the Earth of old having mutated into a groovy sort of stoner post rock, propulsive swinging riffs, relentless chugging guitars, all wrapped in a druggy spacy swirl. Back then we were all a bit bummed out, as Earth became, well, more normal, at least to our ears. It was as close to selling out as Earth were liable to get. Back to the present day. Recordings started popping up here and there, along with rumors of actual Earth shows, limited 7"s and tour only 12"s, all filling us with an impossible anticipation. Earth was back. But if they were back, why were all the recordings from live shows and all several years old? It made sense, the sound of the new Earth practically picked up right where they left off, stretched out, spaced out, druggy post rock with simple drumming and wavering distorted riffs, not heavy per se, but dark and dreamy and mesmerizing. But none of that could have prepared us for the desolate, sun baked, slow crawl, shuffle and twang beauty of Hex. Definitely hewing closer to Earth's more recent post rockisms, Hex is warm and expansive, slow building and contemplative, with simple drums, heavily reverbed, not distorted, guitars, occasional lapsteel, the whole thing unfurling into a haunting twang, a ghost town desert lullaby, a Cormac McCarthy novel in song, tumbleweeds, miles of scrub and windblown landscapes, old dead trees, plenty of space for the cymbals to sizzle and each riff to drift into black clouded skies. Drone / doom / dirge / sludge purists (if there can be such a thing) may well be a bit disappointed, or at the very least confused. And Earth's history / reputation for black hole heaviness might be an albatross at this point as this new sound falls squarely within the territory of groups like Low, Codeine, Friends Of Dean Martinez, Calexico, Scenic, Torrez, Sixteen Horsepower, even Mazzy Star or Godspeed You Black Emperor. But ultimately none of that has anything to do with the fact that Hex is just simply beautiful. A dark and mysterious and truly haunting record. Huge swells of instrumental tension dissipate into warm washes of drift and shimmer, melodies are slowly uncoiling snakes, waking drowsily and slithering off sun baked rocks, every note and every drum beat, every slippery lapsteel swoop, every stretch of near silence, are all draped lazily over broken fences, fallen power lines, rusted out tractors, fallow fields. Dark clouds drift above, across a steel grey sky, sending small shadowy shapes scurrying across the landscape like mysterious creatures, the breeze is warm and smells of death and desolation. Every one is lost and alone, out of money, out of time, just waiting around to die. The mood is bleak, but the sound of Hex is so so beautiful. Somehow hopeful and full of joy, but the sort of joy that comes from being powerless and close to despair, and simply choosing joy over misery, finding happiness the way animals in the desert seek out moisture. The heart of Hex is heavy, the sound appropriately heavy as well, but in a way few conventionally heavy records can manage. A brooding, storm about to break, dam about to burst, soul about to loose itself from its earthly moorings and escape to a better place kind of heavy. The sound of the desert, and the human spirit, of death, of sadness and horror, of loneliness, of abandonment, of hearts breaking, lovers lost and drifting apart, of life. The sound of laying in the dry dirt, the breeze stretched across you like a moth eaten old blanket, eyes closed, the sun sending all sorts of shapes spinning behind your closed eyelids, memories becoming fuzzy and drifting away, your whole body and soul wrapped in a warm darkness, the world fading into nowhere, you fading into nothing.
THE VINYL HAS SUPER DELUXE PACKAGING, DIFFERENT ARTWORK AND AN EXTRA TRACK NOT ON THE CD!! The colored vinyl copies are gone. It's all black vinyl from now on.
MPEG Stream: "Lens Of Unrectified Night"
MPEG Stream: "An Inquest Concerning Teeth"
MPEG Stream: "Raiford (The Felon Wind)"

EARTH Legacy Of Dissolution (No Quarter) cd 14.98
It's been an Earth kinda year so far, eh? Once considered a going-beyond-the-Melvins joke, notable mainly for the early involvement of one Kurt Cobain, Earth's status has grown and grown over the years. They've got to be much more popular now than when their first few Sub Pop albums came out in the early '90s. Back then, only a few folks -- that'd probably be me, you, and those guys who later formed SUNNO))) -- were into Earth, and understood the immense genius of their slo-motion, drone-heavy ambient doom riffage. Now, we sell more copies of Earth 2 every week than Aquarius probably sold the year it came out (well, that might be a slight exaggeration, but we do sell a heck of a lot of Earth 2, considering). And SUNNO))), Boris and all the rest of 'em owe a lot to Earth's Dylan Carlson and his various cohorts.
So far, 2004-2005 has seen the release of two new (though, live) Earth albums and a 7". And now this. You know you've made it when the remix album comes out! Handpicked by Carlson himself, the remixers here are an interesting lot: Mogwai, Russell Haswell, Jim O'Rourke, Autechre, Justin Broadrick, and surprise surprise SUNNO)))! Now, on one hand that's an exciting line-up, sure, while on the other, it'd might be even more interesting to hear those blokes remix something like Brittany Spears, right? For subversion's sake anyway. But they're all Earth fans, and Earth is fans of them, and we're pretty sure Earth fans are gonna like what they've done here. And even if you think that the presence of SUNNO))) is a little...redundant, or that Jim O'Rourke, cool as he is, need never trouble himself with yet another remix, overall no complaints! We like how Mogwai has introduced what sound like avant-classical violin into "Teeth Of Lions Rule The Divine", we found Russell Haswell's Merzbow-ization of the almost Champs-y "Tibetan Quaaludes" enjoyable, and SUNNO)))'s sixteen-minute "Rule The Divine (Mysteria Caelestis Mugivi)" sounds the most Earth-like of all these remixes, which might be to be expected, dontcha think?
Interestingly, no one remixed anything from the first Earth album Extra-Capsular Extraction, while two mixes are from the same Earth 2 track, and three of the remixers (Haswell, O'Rourke, and Broadrick) picked songs from the out of print Phase 3: Thrones And Dominions. Autechre went even further afield and chose a song from Earth's fourth and last (also out of print) studio album, Pentastar: In The Style Of Demons. Hmmm. While I would have liked to hear something from Extra-Capsular, perhaps the presence of all those Phase 3 derived tracks will convince Sub Pop to reissue that album!
Some of the remixes, like Haswell's, feature obvious fuckery, whereas others, like Broadrick's more trebley, buzzier "Harvey" almost need to be played back-to-back with the original to tell which is the remix and which is the real Earth. Though, that "Harvey" sounds like it could also easily be a track by Broadrick's awesome new Jesu project as well! All in all, SUNNO))) excepted, this is generally a bit less riffy and "doomy" than the Earth originals, concentrating instead on Earth's drone-washed trance elements. Almost makes sense that the cd booklet art looks kinda looks like a Pop Ambient cd! Now, it doesn't usually take much of a recommendation from us to convince AQ customers to buy anything Earth-related, but we did like this, a lot!
MPEG Stream: AUTECHRE "Coda Maestoso In F (flat) Minor"
MPEG Stream: JUSTIN BROADRICK "Harvey"

EARTH Legacy Of Dissolution (Southern Lord) 2lp 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
NOW AVAILABLE ON LP!! Two slabs of gorgeous swirled green opaque vinyl, housed in a nice think gatefold sleeve, with beautiful cover art from Mr. Stephen O'Malley. And as with most things like this VERY VERY LIMITED! Here's what we had to say about the cd version:
It's been an Earth kinda year so far, eh? Once considered a going-beyond-the-Melvins joke, notable mainly for the early involvement of one Kurt Cobain, Earth's status has grown and grown over the years. They've got to be much more popular now than when their first few Sub Pop albums came out in the early '90s. Back then, only a few folks -- that'd probably be me, you, and those guys who later formed SUNNO))) -- were into Earth, and understood the immense genius of their slo-motion, drone-heavy ambient doom riffage. Now, we sell more copies of Earth 2 every week than Aquarius probably sold the year it came out (well, that might be a slight exaggeration, but we do sell a heck of a lot of Earth 2, considering). And SUNNO))), Boris and all the rest of 'em owe a lot to Earth's Dylan Carlson and his various cohorts.
So far, 2004-2005 has seen the release of two new (though, live) Earth albums and a 7". And now this. You know you've made it when the remix album comes out! Handpicked by Carlson himself, the remixers here are an interesting lot: Mogwai, Russell Haswell, Jim O'Rourke, Autechre, Justin Broadrick, and surprise surprise SUNNO)))! Now, on one hand that's an exciting line-up, sure, while on the other, it'd might be even more interesting to hear those blokes remix something like Brittany Spears, right? For subversion's sake anyway. But they're all Earth fans, and Earth is fans of them, and we're pretty sure Earth fans are gonna like what they've done here. And even if you think that the presence of SUNNO))) is a little...redundant, or that Jim O'Rourke, cool as he is, need never trouble himself with yet another remix, overall no complaints! We like how Mogwai has introduced what sound like avant-classical violin into "Teeth Of Lions Rule The Divine", we found Russell Haswell's Merzbow-ization of the almost Champs-y "Tibetan Quaaludes" enjoyable, and SUNNO)))'s sixteen-minute "Rule The Divine (Mysteria Caelestis Mugivi)" sounds the most Earth-like of all these remixes, which might be to be expected, dontcha think?
Interestingly, no one remixed anything from the first Earth album Extra-Capsular Extraction, while two mixes are from the same Earth 2 track, and three of the remixers (Haswell, O'Rourke, and Broadrick) picked songs from the out of print Phase 3: Thrones And Dominions. Autechre went even further afield and chose a song from Earth's fourth and last (also out of print) studio album, Pentastar: In The Style Of Demons. Hmmm. While I would have liked to hear something from Extra-Capsular, perhaps the presence of all those Phase 3 derived tracks will convince Sub Pop to reissue that album!
Some of the remixes, like Haswell's, feature obvious fuckery, whereas others, like Broadrick's more trebley, buzzier "Harvey" almost need to be played back-to-back with the original to tell which is the remix and which is the real Earth. Though, that "Harvey" sounds like it could also easily be a track by Broadrick's awesome new Jesu project as well! All in all, SUNNO))) excepted, this is generally a bit less riffy and "doomy" than the Earth originals, concentrating instead on Earth's drone-washed trance elements. Almost makes sense that the cd booklet art looks kinda looks like a Pop Ambient cd! Now, it doesn't usually take much of a recommendation from us to convince AQ customers to buy anything Earth-related, but we did like this, a lot!
MPEG Stream: AUTECHRE "Coda Maestoso In F (flat) Minor"
MPEG Stream: JUSTIN BROADRICK "Harvey"

EARTH Live 070796 lp 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
More sludge trickles down from heaven, giving all you Earth fanatics another reason to live. This is a one sided, live lp, recorded at the Hyperstrings Festival in Vienna in July of 1996. Anyone who bought one of those limited clear vinyl 12"s from a few months back, obviously needs one of these. Crushing tarpit sludge from the masters of all that is slow and heavy. Former Earth-lings include Joe Preston of the Melvins and the Thrones and Kurt Kobain! This is their first 'official' release since their last (Pentastar) on Sub Pop. This is VERY LIMITED. Not sure how long we'll have these.

EARTH Living In The Gleam Of An Unsheathed Sword aka Dissolution III (Megablade / Troubleman Unlimited) cd 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
That's right. Another new Earth record. Holy crap! Our drone doom dreams come true! But with Earth, it's not as simple as just releasing a new record. Or records. Or even new. Let us explain. Elsewhere on this list you'll find our review of the Earth 070796LIVE cd released sometime last year on Autofact records, which collected two super rare vinyl Earth records (the one-sided live lp, and the tour split with KK Null) as well as two bonus tracks -- a James Plotkin remix, and a recording of Earth mainman Dylan Carlson playing live on the radio. Earth had been hauling this disc around with them for the last year on tour (yep, they've been touring, mostly in Europe) but we were only able to track 'em down and get copies for the store last week. So already the Earth obsessed among us were in heaven, when what do ya know? ANOTHER Earth record comes out. Featuring supposedly BRAND NEW RECORDINGS. And they are brand new, sort of. Initially we were going to have to recommend this disc ONLY for total Earth obsessives, since there are only two tracks, both live, and one of them is actually *already* on that 070796LIVE disc. D'oh! Rip off we were thinking. If you get Live, then you'd be buying this disc for just one track. Thankfully though, that one track is a doozy -- an hour long! Album-length in itself, a sprawling doom dirge, recorded live in 2002. (2002!? How hard is it to get this band into a studio? Pretty goddamn hard it seems, since all of their releases since the Sub Pop days have been live recordings.) So while this is a NEW record, it's not an especially recent recording. But what the hell. We'll take our Earth where we can get it. The first track, the one that is duplicated on the Live cd, is a fourteen minute, solo guitar buzz / dirge / scrape that sounds really damaged, stumbling and clumsy, and definitely messed up. The hour-long second track features drummer Adrienne Davies, who seems to be a permanent member of Earth now, and whose spare, hard hitting style perfectly compliments Carlson's new riffier songwriting. Gone are the glacial fuzzy dirges that inspired Sunn 0))) to become Earth 2 (too) and in their place, is a massive fuzzed out riffy doom metal / post rock groove, super repetitive and totally hypnotic. Much more reminiscent of Earth's under-rated, more song-oriented final Sub Pop album Pentastar: In The Style Of Demons. Definitely still doomy and drone-y and drug-addled and head nodding, but dare we say, more rocking!
You might as well just go ahead and do it. You know you're gonna. Buy BOTH of the new Earth cds. You sort of have to. No more trawling eBay or scouring used record stores. If we had to make the call, we'd say the Live album on Autofact is perhaps more essential, but if you're anything like us, you for sure need both. And while at first we thought that'd be like getting one and a half cds for the price of two, the fact that the track unique to this release is an hour in length really dismantles that objection.
MPEG Stream: "Living In The Gleam Of An Unsheathed Sword"

EARTH Living In The Gleam Of An Unsheathed Sword aka Dissolution III (Megablade / Troubleman Unlimited) lp 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Finally in stock on vinyl! But like most of these things, probably not for long... We listed the cd version a while back, alongside another (also live) Earth cd, 070796LIVE. Here's a precis of what we had to say about Living In The Gleam Of An Unsheathed Sword then:
There are only two tracks here, both live, and you might have one of them already since it also appears on that 070796LIVE disc. Thankfully though, the track that's exclusive to this record is a doozy -- an hour long! Album-length in itself, a sprawling doom dirge, recorded live in 2002. So while this is a NEW record, it's not an especially recent recording. But what the hell. We'll take our Earth where we can get it. The first track, the one that is duplicated on the Live cd, is a fourteen minute, solo guitar buzz / dirge / scrape that sounds really damaged, stumbling and clumsy, and definitely messed up. The hour-long second track features drummer Adrienne Davies, who seems to be a permanent member of Earth now, and whose spare, hard hitting style perfectly compliments Carlson's new riffier songwriting. Gone are the glacial fuzzy dirges that inspired Sunn 0))) to become Earth 2 (too) and in their place, is a massive fuzzed out riffy doom metal / post rock groove, super repetitive and totally hypnotic. Much more reminiscent of Earth's under-rated, more song-oriented final Sub Pop album Pentastar: In The Style Of Demons. Definitely still doomy and drone-y and drug-addled and head nodding, but dare we say, more rocking!
Now, since this is a single LP and not a double, we're pretty sure that the hour-long track from the cd version must have been edited down to fit on here! But we haven't cracked one open yet to find out. And since most collector-types buying this won't be opening theirs either, we're not gonna bother. Collectors might also be curious to know that the first pressing of black vinyl was limited to 750 copies, but the ones we have might be a second pressing, dunno if they're limited. Well of course they are, but does it matter?
MPEG Stream: "Living In The Gleam Of An Unsheathed Sword"

EARTH Phase 3: Thrones And Dominions (Sub Pop) cd 11.98
This essential and pioneering slab of ambient doom back in stock again! To coincide with its vinyl counterpart...
Used to be that Earth was best known for their appearance in the Kurt and Courtney documentary. But those days are long gone. Even your Mom probably knows who Earth is (okay, probably only if you have a super hip Mom, but still, you get the point). These are indeed the days of Earth. Reissues, reunions, remixes...and of course that great new album, Hex. Sub Pop has finally figured out that there's a demand for this stuff, so they've repressed all the Earth albums on vinyl and finally reissued the cd of Phase 3: Thrones And Dominions (the vinyl is actually delayed a bit on this one).
When Phase 3 first came out, we were already BIG Earth fans, totally obsessed with the godlike Earth 2, and were a trifle disappointed by Phase 3, shorter songs, cleaner guitar tone, riffs that were actual riffs and not just slow motion smears of distorted rumble. But more recently we were reminded that Phase 3 really was a pretty darn good record by that Legacy Of Dissolution remix album, when several of the best tracks on there turned out to be sourced from songs from this record!
This still has plenty in common with its predecessor, the lugubrious tempos, the sludgy riffage, the whole Melvins on Thorazine sound, but as mentioned above, the songs are shorter and there's a whole lot more variety in sound and texture and instrumentation. Which at the time, chomping at the bit for Earth 2.5, was a bit of a bummer, but returning to it now, it's really amazing. In fact we're beginning to think track two "Tibetan Quaaludes" is one of our all time favorite Earth songs.
It's easy to see how the band ended up with Pentastar, the record that followed Phase 3, a pretty straight ahead stoner rock record with drums and piano and songs, even a Hendrix cover. This is definitely the transition record, and as such, is a little awkward, but still weird and wonderful. With the riffs more fully formed, we sometimes find ourselves expecting the drums to kick in, we can almost picture the huge fill, BOOM, BAP, BUM BUM BUM BOOM BAP and then the killer metallicized krautrock rhythm that would perfectly fit some of these riffs, but without the drums, it adds all sorts of tension. It's still droney for sure, but it's more like a blissed out guitar experiment than full on sludge. The extra melody makes for some strange referents. The opening track "Harvey" sounds like someone took just the guitar track out of a Queen song, and then slowed it down a tiny bit. Strange but cool. Track three, "Lullaby" sounds like some alternative take on Hendrix's "Star Spangled Banner". Song 6, appropriately entitled "Song 6" is acoustic guitar strum under electric guitar melody with twinkling chimes, a sort of folkdrone hoedown. It's the longer tracks that keep the drone dream of Earth 2 alive though, the aforementioned "Tibetan Quaaludes", the ambient windblown desolation of "Phase 3: Agni Detonating Over The Thar Desert..." the damaged psych drone guitar strangle of "Thrones And Dominions", it all makes for a killer slab of droning guitar weirdness and definitely qualifies as one of our favorite chunks of low end guitar grrr ever. While not as relentlessly monochromatic as 2, it's still pretty dang heavy and droney and sort of pretty too. So, to recap, Earth 2 and their debut, the amazing Extra-Capsular Extraction are both way heavier. Pentastar is way groovier and more like a regular rock band, but Phase 3 is still kinda heavy but groovy as well which maybe makes it a good introduction for the Earth novice, depending on which way you lean, drone or groove, you can decide which Earth to get next. The rest of you weird rock obsessives just assume this is absolutely essential.
Too bad they didn't spring for the deluxe packaging of the original with its sheet of red transparent plastic and multiple inserts, on the reissue it's just replicated on the digipak, funny too as the original packaging must have been pretty pricey for a band who at the time probably wasn't selling a whole lot of records, but now with the world in a sludge drone frenzy, and Earth practically a household name (well, in our house hold at least) that sort of packaging would pay for itself in no time...
MPEG Stream: "Tibetan Quaaludes"
MPEG Stream: "Phase 3: Agni Detonating Over The Thar Desert..."
MPEG Stream: "Thrones And Dominions"

EARTH Phase 3: Thrones And Dominions (Sub Pop) lp 13.98
After a slight delay, the vinyl is now finally here!
Used to be that Earth was best known for their appearance in the Kurt and Courtney documentary. But those days are long gone. Even your Mom probably knows who Earth is (okay, probably only if you have a super hip Mom, but still, you get the point). These are indeed the days of Earth. Reissues, reunions, remixes...and of course that great new album, Hex. Sub Pop has finally figured out that there's a demand for this stuff, so they've repressed all the Earth albums on vinyl and finally reissued the cd of Phase 3: Thrones And Dominions.
When Phase 3 first came out, we were already BIG Earth fans, totally obsessed with the godlike Earth 2, and were a trifle disappointed by Phase 3, shorter songs, cleaner guitar tone, riffs that were actual riffs and not just slow motion smears of distorted rumble. But more recently we were reminded that 3 really was a pretty darn good record by that Legacy Of Dissolution remix album, when several of the best tracks on there turned out to be sourced from songs from this record!
This still has plenty in common with its predecessor, the lugubrious tempos, the sludgy riffage, the whole Melvins on Thorazine sound, but as mentioned above, the songs are shorter and there's a whole lot more variety in sound and texture and instrumentation. Which at the time, chomping at the bit for Earth 2.5, was a bit of a bummer, but returning to it now, it's really amazing. In fact we're beginning to think track two "Tibetan Quaaludes" is one of our all time favorite Earth songs.
It's easy to see how the band ended up with Pentastar, the record that followed Phase 3, a pretty straight ahead stoner rock record with drums and piano and songs, even a Hendrix cover. This is definitely the transition record, and as such, is a little awkward, but still weird and wonderful. With the riffs more fully formed, we sometimes find ourselves expecting the drums to kick in, we can almost picture the huge fill, BOOM, BAP, BUM BUM BUM BOOM BAP and then the killer metallicized krautrock rhythm that would perfectly fit some of these riffs, but without the drums, it adds all sorts of tension. It's still droney for sure, but it's more like a blissed out guitar experiment than full on sludge. The extra melody makes for some strange referents. The opening track "Harvey" sounds like someone took just the guitar track out of a Queen song, and then slowed it down a tiny bit. Strange but cool. Track three, "Lullaby" sounds like some alternative take on Hendrix's "Star Spangled Banner". Song 6, appropriately entitled "Song 6" is acoustic guitar strum under electric guitar melody with twinkling chimes, a sort of folkdrone hoedown. It's the longer tracks that keep the drone dream of Earth 2 alive though, the aforementioned "Tibetan Quaaludes", the ambient windblown desolation of "Phase 3: Agni Detonating Over The Thar Desert..." the damaged psych drone guitar strangle of "Thrones And Dominions", it all makes for a killer slab of droning guitar weirdness and definitely qualifies as one of our favorite chunks of low end guitar grrr ever. While not as relentlessly monochromatic as 2, it's still pretty dang heavy and droney and sort of pretty too. So, to recap, Earth 2 and their debut, the amazing "Extra-Capsular Extraction are both way heavier. Pentastar is way groovier and more like a regular rock band, but Phase 3 is still kinda heavy but groovy as well which maybe makes it a good introduction for the Earth novice, depending on which way you lean, drone or groove, you can decide which Earth to get next. The rest of you weird rock obsessives just assume this is absolutely essential.
Too bad they didn't spring for the deluxe packaging of the original with its sheet of red transparent plastic and multiple inserts, on the reissue it's just replicated on the digipak, funny too as the original packaging must have been pretty pricey for a band who at the time probably wasn't selling a whole lot of records, but now with the world in a sludge drone frenzy, and Earth practically a household name (well, in our house hold at least) that sort of packaging would pay for itself in no time...
MPEG Stream: "Tibetan Quaaludes"
MPEG Stream: "Phase 3: Agni Detonating Over The Thar Desert..."
MPEG Stream: "Thrones And Dominions"

EARTH / KK NULL split (Important) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Originally released as a super limited colored vinyl 12", for sale only on a 2003 European tour (and limited to, depending on who you ask, either 330, or 660 copies) this amazing and amazingly limited record finally gets a proper release on cd. Which is also great considering the label that released the 12" apparently never paid the bands ANY money and actually ditched said European tour taking lots of the bands' money with them. Hopefully this will help set things right on that front, and at the same time it's a chance for those of you who missed out on the vinyl to finally check this out. KK Null, guitarist for Japanese sludge metal outfit Zeni Geva offers up a lengthy free noise exploration, guitars and electronics, abstract space-y weirdness, that gradually builds and builds into full on squalls of guitarnoise and ultra distorted electronic freakout. The cd also includes a twenty minute bonus track from Null, a sort of part two addendum to his original 12" track, and it's appropriately enough another extensive blooping swooshing analog space-out psych-free-noise epic, equal parts Merzbow and Space Machine (Masonna's space-y analog analog synth project). The Earth tracks is a single twenty minute long track recorded live at the Crocodile Cafe in Seattle in 2003 and was one of the first (if not THE first) recordings to introduce the new sound of Earth, owed in no small part to the addition of Adrienne Davies on drums. A lot less sludgey and droney than old Earth, and a lot more hypnotic and melodic that later Earth, a very minimal post rock almost, with slow motion distorted arpeggiated melodies and woozy droned out riffs, all sort of pulsing and throbbing supported by simple shuffling, drumming and lots and lots of space. As hypnotic as ever, but definitely more rocking, and certainly the first hint of Earth's slow directional sonic shift.
MPEG Stream: EARTH "Dexamyl"
MPEG Stream: KK NULL "Andromeda"