FINGERS, THE Bomb The Space (Celebrate Psi Phenomenon) cd-r 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The latest blast of free-noise-out-rock from Campbell Kneale's always reliable Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label comes courtesy of The Fingers, a duo that takes free jazz and dips it in a boilng, churning vat of 100 proof Fushitsusha and then wraps it in some Harry Pussy. Wild and wooly guitar freakouts, drenched in reverb, careen wildly amidst some splattery, chaotic and very loose free drumming, that crashes and pounds relentlessly, only occasionally tighting things up into almost-straight-ahead-rhythms, before crumbling back into the thick and gorgeous mess of this drum/guitar battle. But the guitar is definitely in control, laying a thick, viscous layer of six string skronk and atonal no-wave clatter over EVERYTHING. Noisy and nice. Fans of Japanese psychedelic noise freakouts, and all things chaotic and free will dig this like crazy.
MPEG Stream: "One"

FIRST COSMOSIS ARTCHESTRA ON VLUBALAND, THE Cokmok (Ruralfaune) cd-r 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
There's nothing we love quite as much as discovering a new weird band we had never heard of, and then discovering that the band in question is in fact a side project of yet -another- weird band we hadn't heard of either.
Such is the case with The First Cosmosis Artchestra On Vlubaland (quite a mouthful!) who happen to be an offshoot of the much more simply monickered Vluba.
Not sure what Vluba are all about but we are definitely digging the strange sounds of TFCAOV. The first track ("Cok") is a super abstract soundscape, a sort of free noise drift, lots of high end, feedback, cymbal sizzle, strange whistles and distant squeals, but underpinned by strange simple insistent rhythms, peppered with muted thumps and random blasts of crunch and shimmer. Like a more unhinged, less static Sunroof! or Hototogisu. Or like if someone took a super dense Dead C track and pulled it a part and stretched it out until it was almost transparent.
The second track ("Mok") is an ultra minimal soundscape of mostly percussion. Rattles and shakers, bits of clanging metal, little squalls of manic hand drumming, what sounds like various objects being rolled along other objects, very chaotic but subtle and with a certain elegance, a kitchen sink percussion jam transformed into a strangely meditative rhythmscape. Really cool.
Packaged in a very cryptic color sleeve, with a printed insert, a gorgeous transparent leaf and sealed with a bit of green string tied in a knot.
LIMITED TO 77 COPIES!!!
MPEG Stream: "Cok"
MPEG Stream: "Mok"

FIRST FLESH Zombie Rave (Unknown) 12" 15.98
Don't be fooled by the promotional DJ sticker, this is in fact a proper full length from weirdo witch house / ghost drag outfit First Flesh, the dead eyed seventies zombie hottie on the cover your first clue as to what lurks inside Zombie Rave, and actually, the jams here sound less Zombie Rave, and more warped new wave chopped and screwed eighties house pop, which is not a bad thing at all. Imagine some Rick Astley style cheesy eighties pop vox slowed way down, to a ghostly, almost Antony (And The Johnsons) sounding dramatic baritone, then lay those vocals over some woozy slo-mo house music, some HI-NRG grooves, sapped of most of their energy, and recast as a sort of symphonic gloom house, woozy and warped and pretty fuckin' cool. The second track takes those same vocals and wraps them around pulsing synths and ominous tolling bells, the whole thing rife with a 'wrong speed' vibe, a dark drowsy drag, a ghostly house music pop ballad that sounds like it could be the music from some cheesy montage in a seventies zombie arthouse flick.
The flipside starts out with another slab of ghostly draggy gloom pop, the vocals sounding auto-tuned, but instead of tuned up, tuned WAY down. The final track is more pounding and industrial, but mixes in a crazy poppy chorus, a sped up Kesha style radio pop chorus, which sounds so weird with the otherwise gloomy pound, but somehow sounds so cool at the same time! Fans of weirdo witch house will dig for sure, and folks who like the warped pop of Ariel Pink, John Maus and the like, might also find themselves getting into FF quite a bit...
MPEG Stream: "Moonlight Shadow"

FIVE ELEMENTS MUSIC VarunaGhat (Mystery Sea) cd-r 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Yet another installment in the Mystery Sea label's ongoing series of "night-ocean drones", and none maybe more appropriate then this disc from Russian drone outfit Five Elements Music. Based on the Vedic concept of five elements air, fire, water earth and of course ether. Yup. However, here we're mostly concerned with water, as it seems that most, if not all the sounds on VarunaGhat are sourced from recordings of water.
It's hard to tell at first, as the sounds is just a whispered glimmer, a shimmering high end glint way off in the distance, hovering like fireflies over a vast expanse of hushed ambience, long drawn out barely audible tones, ultra minimal but quite lovely. Eventually, the tones grow louder and more pronounced, melodies surface, and the sound of water solidifies, and suddenly the drones are drifting along side a burbling stream, or the lapping of water on the shore of a lake, slightly percussive, hissing and gently frothing, adding a whole other layer of sound to the already carefully arranged soundscape. Each track here follows a similar pattern, from barely there, to a tangible exploration of some water based soundworld. The second track begins with a microscopic rumble, but soon, we're wandering through a rain forest, the sound of rustling branches, rain on leaves, streams and gently running water, all suspended in a strange glacial swirl of near static shimmer and soft blurred drones.
The final track is much more active, much more percussive, with the sounds processed into almost rhythms, dark and ominous, eventually building to what sounds like it could be the sound from some movie, leaves crunching underfoot, rain falling, foot steps, leaves and branches in the wind, all manner of water, splashing and dripping, again, all wrapped within a haunting smear of muted harmonics and deep rumbling whirs...
Definitely one of the nicest in the series, and certainly the most evocative, perfect late night drifting off music, the sound of rain combined with deep dark shimmering drones, pretty impossible to resist.
Like all Mystery Sea releases, strictly LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each disc numbered on the tray card, and gorgeously packaged with striking full color artwork.
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 1"
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 2"

FIVE ELEMENTS MUSIC / ANDREA MARUTTI / JIM HAYNES Tri-Ton (Observatoire) cd 13.98
Three drone-centric artists from three different parts of the world... Five Elements Music is a Russian isolationist / ambient project spawned by one of the members of the similarly minded Exit In Grey; Andrea Marutti is an Italian dark ambient practitioner with a number of occultish recordings under the moniker Amon; and Jim Haynes is a Bay Area artist who "rusts things" and also happens to work here at aQuarius. Both Marutti's and Haynes' compositions are responses to the piece made by Five Elements Music. A massive tectonic rumble emerges from the onset of the Russian track, as if the resonant echo from a meteor striking the heart of Siberia were captured through the felling of a million trees. Out of these frequencies, Five Elements Music evolves this sound into a growling dissonance more dialed into those rasping drones that Oren Ambarchi or Birchville Cat Motel might broadcast from time to time. Over the 23 minutes, this track becomes steadily more placid and inviting, eschewing the desolate horror at the beginning for something beautifully introspective. Marutti builds from the bleak horror where Five Elements Music began, producing cavernous hues of black and grey on amorphous clouds of mist and fog. Marutti's work parallels those blackened static movements of Yen Pox and Inade. For Haynes' part, the theatrical cloak and dagger of Thomas Koner's isolationism comes to mind in his response to the Five Elements Music track, albeit constructed from his distressed textures and fluttering shortwave radio manipulation. Easily the most dynamic piece of this triptych, Haynes deftly transitions pools of nocturnal drones into snarling crescendos of volatile motors, turbines, and Kevin Drumm-esque guitar dissonance which morph into an evocative movement of super-slow-motion heartbeat rhythm and radio frequencies detuned into sweeping, ghostly sinewaves, captured from within one of those WWII era bunkers that dot the California coast. Haynes presented a version of this at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in a collaborative, expanded cinema piece involving a massive diorama, lots of old scientific gear, a couple of surveillance cameras, and a toy train. Alas, there's little video documentation of that performance, but the audio here works amazingly well on its own.
Limited to 400 copies (although some websites claim this to be limited to 300)...
MPEG Stream: FIVE ELEMENTS MUSIC "Tibetan Waves"
MPEG Stream: ANDREA MARUTTI "Revolving Doors On Inward Promenades"
MPEG Stream: JIM HAYNES "Signal Mountain"

FJELLSTROM, MARCUS Schattenspieler (Miasmah) cd 15.98
Miasmah debut (after a couple previous releases on the similar label Lampse) from this young Swedish composer, whose affecting, abstract cinematic soundscapes are part modern classical, part electro-acoustic ambience, hallucinatory and haunting. Reference has been made to Angelo Badalamenti and John Cage, Autechre and Jerry Goldsmith. If you're already a fan of Miasmah's marvelous, moody, murky output (Jacaszek, Elegi, FNS...) you should be eager to hear this. Likewise if you enjoy the likes of Leland Kirby and Indignant Senility.
The eleven tracks here are rife with subtle electronic pulsations, Jeckian surface crackle, gentle chimes and shivering drones... all with sad, pretty melodies buried beneath. It's mysterious, quite lovely music. Fjellstrom's sounds conjure images of surf wracked, rain swept shores at dusk, ancient pianos and grandfather clocks crumbling slowly (and somehow rhythmically) into dust, and the sleeping forms quietly dreaming such things. Indeed, anyone making a dreamlike and slightly sinister film would be wise to consider Fjellstrom for the soundtrack (as some have already done, tracks 6-9 here, forming the "House Without A Door" suite, having originally being commissioned for a film of the same name).
MPEG Stream: "The Disjointed"
MPEG Stream: "Antichrist Architect Management"
MPEG Stream: "Monolith And Bunker"

FJELLSTROM, MARCUS Schattenspieler (Miasmah) lp 19.98
Miasmah debut (after a couple previous releases on the similar label Lampse) from this young Swedish composer, whose affecting, abstract cinematic soundscapes are part modern classical, part electro-acoustic ambience, hallucinatory and haunting. Reference has been made to Angelo Badalamenti and John Cage, Autechre and Jerry Goldsmith. If you're already a fan of Miasmah's marvelous, moody, murky output (Jacaszek, Elegi, FNS...) you should be eager to hear this. Likewise if you enjoy the likes of Leland Kirby and Indignant Senility.
The eleven tracks here are rife with subtle electronic pulsations, Jeckian surface crackle, gentle chimes and shivering drones... all with sad, pretty melodies buried beneath. It's mysterious, quite lovely music. Fjellstrom's sounds conjure images of surf wracked, rain swept shores at dusk, ancient pianos and grandfather clocks crumbling slowly (and somehow rhythmically) into dust, and the sleeping forms quietly dreaming such things. Indeed, anyone making a dreamlike and slightly sinister film would be wise to consider Fjellstrom for the soundtrack (as some have already done, tracks 6-9 here, forming the "House Without A Door" suite, having originally being commissioned for a film of the same name).
MPEG Stream: "The Disjointed"
MPEG Stream: "Antichrist Architect Management"
MPEG Stream: "Monolith And Bunker"

FJORDNE The Last 3 Days Of Time - Folio Series (Dynamophone) cd-r 11.98
Freshly reissued as part of the Dynamophone Folio series! Fjordne's The Last 3 Days Of Time album was previously released as part of the label's special Parcel series - each volume came packaged in a round metal tin. The Folio series comes in a full color single-fold cardboard sleeve. Just as lovely the second time around!
Here's what we said about the release back in 2008...
Wonderful! As is reflected in the icy blue cover art, this is a wintry album - contemplative and shimmering soundscapes populated by acoustic guitars, piano, fleeting vocal gasps and seemingly microscopic electronics. Imagine a not so distant Japanese cousin of the Diskont album by Germany's Oval. Yes, it's that good! Winding and unwinding like the delicate clockwork mechanics revealed amid the feathers of the diminutive birds on the cover, these ten tracks are simply gorgeous from start to finish... as has been pretty much everything released to date by this fine, young SF independent label. Needless to say, very recommended! A perfect fit for those who've also been enjoying the soothing immersion into the releases on labels such as A Room Forever and Mystery Sea.
MPEG Stream: "Dazing Off"
MPEG Stream: "Everyone Has A Season"

FLAHERTY, PAUL & CHRIS CORSANO The Beloved Music (Family Vineyard) cd 14.98
Not sure what it is, but a lot of the new wave of post-hardcore improvised jazz leaves us really cold. Naysayers and squares have always described free jazz as just a bunch of noise, a bunch of honking skronking non-music. And as much as we fancy ourselves lovers of free jazz AND diggers of all manner of noise, we have occasionally lamentedly found ourselves playing that role, you know, the grumpy and bitter old music man, reflecting on the glory of the good ol' days, admonishing the younguns "That's nothing but noise, give that dangnabbit rackit a rest!" Or something appropriately crotchety like that.
But every once in a while, for whatever reason, one of those records sneaks through and kicks our ass. This is one of those records.
It helps that Corsano and Flaherty have been honing their improvisational mind melds for years now. Their interplay is fluid and fierce, a free jazz freakout as sublime as it is pummeling. Corsano (who also does time in free folk weirdos Sunburned Hand Of The Man) and Flaherty (a legend amongst free jazz fiends) spar and weave, Flaherty's sax spewing thick gushes of corrosive sound, a downright Borbetomagusian cascade of shreiks and groans, sputters and wheezes, but it's Corsano who holds it all together, an incredible gush of dense and delirious drumming, from impossibly subtle shuffle and skitter to an avalanche of percussion pummel unrivalled. Holy shit! So massive and emotionally charged, freaked out and wild and free. But Corsano and Flaherty manage to imbue each white hot burst with strangely soothing atonal melodies and rhythms that manage to be downright catchy, so much so that on repeated listens we find ourselves almost humming along to Corsano's solo stretches. Amazing stuff!
MPEG Stream: "The Great Pine Tar Scandal"
MPEG Stream: "A Lean And Tortured Heart"

FLAHERTY, PAUL / CHRIS CORSANO / C. SPENCER YEH A Rock In The Snow (Important) cd 14.98

MPEG Stream: "We Have To Check Your Equipment For Bombs"
MPEG Stream: "Do You Have Any Prurient Releases?"

FLAMING TUNES (GARETH WILLIAMS AND MARY CURRIE) s/t (ReR) cd 21.00
Finally one of the legendary lost This Heat related recordings gets its first proper release! Originally released as a tape in 1985, recorded by This Heat's Gareth Williams and Mary Currie and friends, shortly after Williams left This Heat, Flaming Tunes is a gorgeous, quirky collection of lo-fi experimental moody textural avant pop, originally conceived as something totally removed from the much more abrasive and rhythmic music he made in This Heat. Unavailable ever since its original cassette release, minus a bootleg which included the tape in its entirety but described it as This Heat's final demo recordings, Flaming Tunes in some ways reminds us of Charles Hayward's Camberwell Now project, in that some of the sounds are familiar and still somewhat This Heat sounding, but the record is much more vocal based, and song oriented, resulting in a sound, that while appealing to This Heat obsessives, offered a whole new window into Williams' approach to sound and songwriting, and in that, a once removed glimpse of some of the elements that helped make This Heat what it was.
The record opens with a looped piano wrapped in sizzling electronic buzz, peppered with strange bursts of sonic crunch, stuttery fragmented rhythms, not hard to see why folks believed this could be a blueprint for new This Heat material. But the second song is more of what Flaming Tunes is all about. Tunes. Sing songy weary vocals over plonked piano, squeaking horns, skittery percussion, lots of drones, plenty of tape hiss and amp buzz, definitely lo-fi, some cool synth melodies, the sound definitely reminiscent of the first two Brian Eno records or that classic Flying Nun sound, bands like the Tall Dwarfs or the Pin Group or This Kind Of Punishment or The Children's Hour or even the Dead C at their most poppy. And that's the sound that makes up most of Flaming Tunes, a hazy, gauzy, low fidelity (but strangely lush) bedroom pop, lots of piano, wreathed in reverb, warm warbly bass, occasional strings, programmed rhythms, detuned tangles of minor key guitar, plenty of jangle and chime, with intermittent forays into cool abstract experimentation, but even then, those tracks still sound a little song-y and don't at all disrupt the flow of the record. "Raindrops From Heaven", with a field recording of rainfall, insects, beneath some clattery, muted parlor skitter, or the brooding muddy piano drone of "It's Madness" with its disembodied vox and haunting creepy creaking Victorian vibe, with sampled strings and mysterious textures, before the record closes with a surprisingly Beatles-esque ballad called "Generous Moon", that sort of classic pop, rendered a little bit warped and woozy, the guitars twangy, and the background melodies a sea of whirring keyboards, locking into a looped dreamlike dirge before finally fading out.
So nice. This Heat fanatics will flip for sure, and no doubt some have tapes or bootlegs of this already, but it sounds so much better now, and comes in a super deluxe digipak, with tons of photos, artwork and liner notes. And even if you've never heard This Heat (what the hell is wrong with you?), this will still appeal to folks into twisted dark lo-fi pop.
MPEG Stream: "Another Flaming Tune"
MPEG Stream: "A To B"
MPEG Stream: "Raindrops From Heaven"

FLANGE DU MAL, LE s/t (self-released) cd-r 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Holy smokin' haz-mat howdoyoudo's! This is the debut release from SF art-noise project Le Flange Du Mal... and quite an introduction it is. Despite their moniker, as far as we can tell none of the participants are French. A quick'n'dirty translation of their name is The Flange Of The Evil, but that's not quite as poetic, is it? Doesn't really slip as gracefully off the tongue. Anyways, the leader of Le Flange pack is Mr. Chris Rolls. He's the head honcho of the very varied SF indie label Kimosciotic Records (home to art-noisies Ezee Tiger and Crack W.A.R., electronic experimentalists Not Breathing, and hip hop lone wolf Unagi), and he's also been in the ranks of SF shit-disturbers Ziegenbock Kopf and Earwicker. He's joined by Chris Cones (also of Earwicker and Subarachnoid Space), Crack We Are Rock's Jason Stamberger and MurderMurder's Liz Allbee, and they make music that runs the gamut just as much as the artists whom he releases on his label. With their multi-barrelled toxic industrial-bootybass-sludge assault, they come careening right at you with their foot nowhere near the brakes, swerving woozily to avoid other vehicles in their path, cruising through the no wave and art rock zones, and through a musty gothy batcave (check out the track "Nightcrawler") too.
MPEG Stream: "Silent Cock"
MPEG Stream: "Nightcrawler"

FLASH LIGHTS Eckords (Students Of Decay) cd-r 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We made the most recent record by Grouper record of the week a while back. A dizzying mix of Paart, Feldman, Skullflower, all rendered in washed out fuzz and indistinct shades of shimmer and whir.
Here we have a new group called Flash Lights, which features Liz Harris aka Grouper along with sound sculptor Jorge Behringer. Harris offers up her angelic ghostlike vocals, ethereal and gauzy, sometimes so barely there, they just sound like instrument hum, while Behringer contributes the music, a heady swirl of found sounds, field recordings, dreamlike guitar, processed viola and all manner of electronics. The sound is dark and moody and glacial. Harris' vocals definitely act more as another layer in the overall soundfield, often just a steady reverberating hum, or a slowly modulating warble, drenched in reverb so the whole sound is like being lost in a dense musical fog. The final half hour track is a massive dronescape of fuzz and hiss and whir and rumble, like drifting on some alien sea, about halfway through a series of clattery creaking sonic happenings are introduced, almost like the rigging of the ship stretching and settling, very reminiscent of Nurse With Wound's Salt Marie Celeste. So haunting and creepy and captivatingingly lovely. Anyone who dug that grouper ABSOLUTELY needs this.
Limited to 200 copies. Featuring cover art by Liz Harris.
MPEG Stream: "One"
MPEG Stream: "Three"

FLASKAVSAE Celestial (Milkweed) cd-r 7.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Another UNblack gem, this from one of the mainstays of the scene, Flaskavsae. Celestial, originally recorded in 2005, and finally released in 2007, then out of print, only now getting reissued (albeit in another way too limited run).
But holy crap, another disc of totally wacked, bizarrely produced unblack madness. Grim and buzzing and primitive, the drumming super straight ahead, not blasting as much as a sort of relentless Dbeat pound, but the guitars, they sound ghostly and alien, and whatever effect they're running through, renders them all blurred and pixilated and makes them sort of stutter in this super hypnotic blissed out way. This predates the whole new-gaze craze by years, but somehow, however it happened, this record is total dreamlike noise drenched UNblack metalgaze. At first the sound was so blown out and buzzy that it has us thinking of Canadian black metal weirdos WOLD, but as the record progressed, the sounds seemed to soften and blur, the guitar parts crazy catchy and weirdly melodic, the vocals a strange rumbling gurgle, that really do sound like just another layer of buzz.
That effect infuses every bit of the record, the whole thing seems to shimmer and shuffle and vibrate, almost like the sonic version of a strobe light, sending strange vibrations from the speaker into your bones. A few tracks are doomy crawls, with that impossible fucked up guitar beautifully damaged, unfurling in gorgeously stuttery loops, the bass thick and even more melodic than the guitar, pulsing beneath the swirls and whirls of FX and guitar fuzz.
But the final track is the ultimate, a furious black blast, so densely effected that the whole track seems to pulse in time with the drumming, it has some crazy effect on your ears as you listen, and your body as you feel the vibrations, like a black metal dream machine, the vocals a hissing insectoid whisper, the drums chaotic and stumbling, but it's that effect, we can't explain it, but it just freaks us out, in a really good way, it turns Flaskavsae's grim buzz into something totally and inexplicably transcendent.
MPEG Stream: "Rock Of Celestiia"
MPEG Stream: "Without War"
MPEG Stream: "Raised By Fire"

FLASKAVSAE Eclipse In Tides (E.E.E. Recordings) cd-r 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Super raw, lo-fi black metal
brutal, buzzing US un-BM....
MPEG Stream: "Head First Into Oblivion"
MPEG Stream: "Wars Developed From Ignorance"

FLEURETY Department of Apocalyptic Affairs (Supernal Music) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We've heard a lot of strange black metal related discs, but this is among the strangest...On this album, metal is only one (important but small) component of the whole, which also involves free jazz and trip hop...Released on the same label that brought us the infamous Benighted Leams, and you can see how this truly fucked-up "so bad it's weird and so weird it's bad and so weird and bad that it's kind of amazing" band would appeal to the same minds that thought the Leams were genius. Formerly a medieval 'forest-is-my-throne' epic black metal band a la Ulver (and we think still sharing some members with that Norwegian Ulver/Ved Buens Ende/Dodheimsgard axis), now these guys are wearing suits, carrying automatic weapons, and programming beats. But they've gone beyond the Mr. Bungle tendencies of say, an Arcturus (who seem "ordinary" in comparison!), and created something that even we at AQ can't quite understand, or judge. Every time we put this on, our reactions vary from being blown away at how bizarre and great it is to being appalled at the (same!) dismally bad and wrong moments. Great packaging, with the lyrics in the form of a miniature intelligence "dossier". Essential for those compelled to always increase the utter weirdness quotient of their cd collections, and very definitely for fans of Arcturus, Solefald, and recent Dodheimsgard.
RealAudio clip: "Fingerprint"

FLEURY-STEINER, BEN Keep A Weather Eye Open (Infraction) cd 16.98
Longtime readers of the aQ list should be familiar with Ben Fleury-Steiner even if they don't realize it. There's been three discs of freaked out avant drone drenched rhythmic psychedelia as Light Of Shipwreck, which is in fact, Ben Fleury-Steiner, tons of releases on the Gears Of Sand label, which BFS just so happens to run, but this is the first proper solo record under his own name, and it's gorgeous.
Unlike Light Of Shipwreck, which was typically a dizzying assemblage of repeated rhythms, layered and collaged samples, careening chaotic drum damage and dubbed out industrial weirdness, on Keep A Weather Eye Open, Fleury-Steiner traffics in something much more tranquil, a series of dark and dolorous dronescapes, some thick and textured, corrosive and chordal, others hushed and minimal smooth and crystalline, a sound that veers from dense cavernous black ambient rumbles to shimmering shoegazey drift, from Troum to Lovesliescrushing. "Tender Is The Opaque Morning" is delicate yet ominous, long streaks of distant high end sound underpin reverbed plinks, and moaning strings, a smoldering lightly blackened haze, while "Purple As The Dawn" is a wispy smear of hushed new age etherea, "Feedback Of Day" sounds like it was recorded in the hull of a rusty old ship, "Blue Sonar" is a blue sky full of sun dappled clouds, the sound of light dancing on leaves. The cool thing about all these songs is the distinction is not all that distinct. The pretty delicate numbers bleed right into the more haunting mysterious tracks, and both are infused with elements of the other. A sound not so much perfectly balanced between light and dark, but one that is both simultaneously, depending on the track, on the context, a hidden battle beneath the surface, the result, a strangely otherworldly collection of ever evolving, totally mesmerizing, and strangely mysterious dronemusic, dark enough to require active listening, but blissed out and tranquil enough to be the soundtrack to late nights and slow drifts into oblivion.
MPEG Stream: "Tender Is The Opaque Morning"
MPEG Stream: "Purple As The Dawn"
MPEG Stream: "Feedback Of Day : Sunlit In Stop Frame (Part 1)"

FLIES INSIDE THE SUN Burning Glass (Metonymic) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

FLIES INSIDE THE SUN Le Mal D'Archive (Metonymic) cd 14.98
Flies Inside The Sun is the out-rock / free-jazz trio comprised of New Zealand stalwarts Kim Pieters, Peter Stapleton, and Brian Crook. Collectively, they've worked in a number of projects that have varied from the angry-pop of Scorched Earth Policy to the Kranky label approved drone-rock of Dadamah to the angular improvisations of Rain. By and large, each of the bands carries over a signature lugubriousness which certainly migrates into the Flies Inside The Sun. Imagine Movietone or Crescent turning even further to the tropes of jazz, than you come close to the sounds of Flies Inside The Sun.

FLITTERMICE OF ELD s/t (self-released) cd-r 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Flittermice Of Eld are another band that, if were we not actually listening to it right now and holding the disc in our hands, we would be tempted to think that this was just made up -- one of those 'amazing' ideas you have that is just too nuts to actually bring to fruition. It's too perfect. One of those records, that were someone to ask, we would have to say epitomizes the perfect AQ record. Killer band name, amazingly bizarre concept, fucked up sound. Hard to believe it wasn't just some fever dream. But nope, here it is. Flittermice Of Eld, according to the band, "both a musical tribute to and critique of black metal." Sonically this is not at all black metal, but it is infused with the spirit of black metal. There are no riffs or vocals, no pounding drums, instead it's a strange concoction of noise and texture, drone and ambience, but with all the basic pitches for the guitar and bass parts generated from a few specific collections of notes from the Darkthrone song "As Flittermice as Satan's Spys" from their classic Transilvanian Hunger album. Whatthefuck? So basically we have this bizarre ambient dronoise record based on a handful of notes from a Darkthrone song?! Fuck yeah!
The first few minutes are a dense clattery improvised skree, clanging and grinding and super chaotic, but this gives way to a dark, slow shifting reverberant drone, that pulses and throbs beneath a smattering of high end twinkles and streaks of glistening feedback. The final 'movement' is a wild atonal no-wave tangle of angular guitar riffing and stumbling bass, an abstract progscape of buzz and twang, a sort of damaged shredfest, loosed from its metal moorings.
Darkthrone would be proud.
Packaged in a hand screened fold over card stock cover, with handwritten liner notes on the back cover. ULTRA LIMITED OBVIOUSLY!
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 1"
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 2"

FLOATING WORLD, THE Unda (Barl Fire) cd-r 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
From the same label that brought us The Lamp Of The Universe, James Blackshaw, Robert Horton and Rameses III comes the equally amazing Unda from The Floating World, the work of a Canadian flautist named Amanda Votta, who uses her affected and electronically altered flute to conjure music drawn from some mysterious lost religious rite. An ethereal folk music of the ages. One can imagine wandering through the hillsides in some far off country, and being lured by the haunting melodies drifting like tendrils of smoke, only to find the ruins of a church, where the music can somehow still be heard. It's that heavy and emotional and timeless. Every melody is wreathed in lush reverb and diffuse sonic overtones, drifting and floating, barely there but at once heavy with the weight of a million souls, soaring effortlessly over a strange backdrop of barely audible rumbles and shimmers. Some of the tracks are a little bit droney giving those tracks the feel of some sort of raga, but the sound of the flute and the arrangements are too delicate and airy, and at the end of each phrase it feels like the wind carries it heavenward where it is lost in the clouds before the next phrase begins. Absolutely lovely.
Packaged in a hand glued digipak.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. NOT SURE WE'LL BE ABLE TO GET MORE WHEN THESE ARE GONE!
MPEG Stream: "Rainfall"
MPEG Stream: "Beneath The Waves"

FLOSSIN Lead Singer (Ache) cd 11.98
Three instruments/instrumentalists undertake this blending of a band that is Flossin. Zach Hill (Hella) on drums, Miguel Depedro (aka Kid 606) on laptop and SF guitarist/multi-media explorer Christopher Willits join forces to create a noisy, free-form album, Lead Singer. The result is a dense sonic wash of varying forms, through which percussive patterns emerge and fall away. The album's live and alive sounding. Not so much a formal excercise in pattern and composition, Lead Singer is much more akin to an improv gig set up in their practice space recorded for all to enjoy.
MPEG Stream: "Track 1"
MPEG Stream: "Track 3"

FLOWER MAN Exotic Cameo (Upstairs) cd-r 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
BACK IN STOCK! But not for long, managed to get a very few of these back in, so grab one while you can...
Flower Man is the work of Chris Bush from the Kentucky based electron revivalist ensemble Caboladies. While we've failed to hear any of his work from that outfit, the constant comparisons to Emeralds and Oneohtrix Point Never was more than enough to pique our interest. As Flower Man, Bush doesn't stray too far from what we would assume Caboladies to sound like, squiggling and squirming around his analogue synths and some pretty murky tape production that triangulates his sound somewhere between Grouper, a really druggy Bruce Haack, and a happy-go-lucky Omit. With its clunky Ikue Mori-styled drum-kit leaden dance around the rhythm, the opening track laces itself around two harmonized '80s / sci-fi melodies that fragment into squelchy percolations and lazer beam vibrations. The next batch of tracks could easily originate in any number of BBC Radiophonic projects with playful yet somewhat detached bleepity-blooping interwoven with some of those spooky synth sounds that Richard D. James mustered on his really early Aphex Twin tracks from Selected Ambient Works Vol. 1. Bush slows everything down to a turgid crawl of introspection through a lonesome, moping piece of bedroom electronics on the suitably titled track "Swirling" coming across as Delia Derbyshire on Quaaludes; and then makes a quick turnabout with some spasmodic electroid flashes which dissipate into nothingness as if sucked in various directions into outer space.
It makes perfect sense that Daniel Lopatin (aka Oneohtrix Point Never) would release this on his newly launched cd-r imprint Upstairs. Limited to 75 copies, and already sold out at the label!
MPEG Stream: "Behind The Habit Wheel"
MPEG Stream: "Swirling"
MPEG Stream: "Perhaps We're Floating On"

FLOWER-CORSANO DUO The Four Aims (VHF) cd 13.98
We were all ready to hate this, not cuz we don't dig the players, we love Michael Flower (Vibracathedral, Sunroof!) and Chris Corsano is a ruling drummer, it's just that for some reason we thought this was gonna be some of that new fangled indie free jazz, which always leaves us a bit cold. Not sure why, maybe it was the 'duo' thing. But then it's on VHF, home to much of our favorite dronemusic and outrock, and the instrumentation definitely looked like anything but free jazz: Japan banjo, tanpura, organ, melodica, cello and drums. So we figured, okay, what the heck, let's give it a try, and BAM, this totally knocked out socks off and our teeth in, at once exactly what we had hoped for, but something we never would have imagined, some impossible hybrid of frenetic chaotic drumming, and strange super distorted looped melodic mantras, like some impossible sonic hybrid of Mick Barr and Dan Higgs, or Orthrelm covering Zomes, tripped out and psychedelic, wild as fuck, but weirdly hypnotic and totally mesmerizing.
The opener is a mad blowout of wild melodies super distorted and all tangled up, like some strange sped up bagpipe, wound around Corsano's non stop drum workout, the banjo here ends up sounding like the guitars on Amps For Christ records, unfurling intense abstract runs of notes and fragmented melodies, sometimes locking into little trills, other times getting all wavery and woozy, the drums somehow remaining totally free but staying locked in with Flower's wild psych freakouts. It's so inherently chaotic and raw and primal and by all rights should be difficult to listen to, but after a few minutes, we find ourselves totally lost, and we never want it to end.
The follow up is more of a percussive free jam, reminding us of groups like Avarus and Anaksimandros and No Neck and Sunburned Hand, very free, but with the metallic shimmer spreading out over the warm low end whirs and the abstract gamelan like melodies. "The Drifter's Miracles" is the most obviously VHF of the batch, a long languorous slow burning ur-drone, all bowed stings and wheezing organ, very raga like, overtones shifting and beating against one another, bits or percussion clink and clank beneath the gloriously heaving sea of rich lustrous tones, this definitely could be a whole record, as it is, it's easily the most 'listenable' of the bunch.
"The Beginning Of The End" sounds like a field recording of some ritualistic musical performance, the sound muted and lo-fi, a sort of crazed dance, the drums a wild tribal patter, sometimes splatter, Flower again offering up dense tangles and billowing squiggles, there is definitely a free jazz element, but the duo manage to take the loose free drumming, and the manic looped sounding melodies and create a another, sort-of abstract, ultra free ur-drone, it's quite magical actually, the parts are so frenetic and tense and relentless, that it seems impossible that combining them would create something soothing and spiritual, but that's precisely what it does.
The closer, the nearly 18 minute "The Main Ingredient" is like a more jubilant, ebullient version of the record opener, the drums muted and minimal, still skittery and feral, but Flower's banjo weaving magical crystalline shapes in the air, melodies, notes, tones, harmonies, overtones, all shimmering and hovering and looping and stuttering and glistening, total Amps For Christ / Higgs / Orthrelm sun baked lysergic spiritual raga drone free jazz out-rock blowout. So completely heavy, and epic, and dreamlike, and tripped out, and intense and so so beautiful.
MPEG Stream: "I, Brute Force?"
MPEG Stream: "The Drifter's Miracles"
MPEG Stream: "The Main Ingredient"

FLOWER-CORSANO DUO The Four Aims (VHF) 2lp 17.98
NOW ON VINYL!
We were all ready to hate this, not cuz we don't dig the players, we love Michael Flower (Vibracathedral, Sunroof!) and Chris Corsano is a ruling drummer, it's just that for some reason we thought this was gonna be some of that new fangled indie free jazz, which always leaves us a bit cold. Not sure why, maybe it was the 'duo' thing. But then it's on VHF, home to much of our favorite dronemusic and outrock, and the instrumentation definitely looked like anything but free jazz: Japan banjo, tanpura, organ, melodica, cello and drums. So we figured, okay, what the heck, let's give it a try, and BAM, this totally knocked out socks off and our teeth in, at once exactly what we had hoped for, but something we never would have imagined, some impossible hybrid of frenetic chaotic drumming, and strange super distorted looped melodic mantras, like some impossible sonic hybrid of Mick Barr and Dan Higgs, or Orthrelm covering Zomes, tripped out and psychedelic, wild as fuck, but weirdly hypnotic and totally mesmerizing.
The opener is a mad blowout of wild melodies super distorted and all tangled up, like some strange sped up bagpipe, wound around Corsano's non stop drum workout, the banjo here ends up sounding like the guitars on Amps For Christ records, unfurling intense abstract runs of notes and fragmented melodies, sometimes locking into little trills, other times getting all wavery and woozy, the drums somehow remaining totally free but staying locked in with Flower's wild psych freakouts. It's so inherently chaotic and raw and primal and by all rights should be difficult to listen to, but after a few minutes, we find ourselves totally lost, and we never want it to end.
The follow up is more of a percussive free jam, reminding us of groups like Avarus and Anaksimandros and No Neck and Sunburned Hand, very free, but with the metallic shimmer spreading out over the warm low end whirs and the abstract gamelan like melodies. "The Drifter's Miracles" is the most obviously VHF of the batch, a long languorous slow burning ur-drone, all bowed stings and wheezing organ, very raga like, overtones shifting and beating against one another, bits or percussion clink and clank beneath the gloriously heaving sea of rich lustrous tones, this definitely could be a whole record, as it is, it's easily the most 'listenable' of the bunch.
"The Beginning Of The End" sounds like a field recording of some ritualistic musical performance, the sound muted and lo-fi, a sort of crazed dance, the drums a wild tribal patter, sometimes splatter, Flower again offering up dense tangles and billowing squiggles, there is definitely a free jazz element, but the duo manage to take the loose free drumming, and the manic looped sounding melodies and create a another, sort-of abstract, ultra free ur-drone, it's quite magical actually, the parts are so frenetic and tense and relentless, that it seems impossible that combining them would create something soothing and spiritual, but that's precisely what it does.
The closer, the nearly 18 minute "The Main Ingredient" is like a more jubilant, ebullient version of the record opener, the drums muted and minimal, still skittery and feral, but Flower's banjo weaving magical crystalline shapes in the air, melodies, notes, tones, harmonies, overtones, all shimmering and hovering and looping and stuttering and glistening, total Amps For Christ / Higgs / Orthrelm sun baked lysergic spiritual raga drone free jazz out-rock blowout. So completely heavy, and epic, and dreamlike, and tripped out, and intense and so so beautiful.
MPEG Stream: "I, Brute Force?"
MPEG Stream: "The Drifter's Miracles"
MPEG Stream: "The Main Ingredient"

FLOWERS, MICHAEL Returning To Knowing Nothing (Qbico) lp 26.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

FLUE Beyond The Edge Of Nowhere (Charnel Music) cd 11.98

FLUE Beyond The Edge Of Nowhere (Charnel Music) cd 11.98

FLYING CANYON s/t (Soft Abuse) cd 14.98
How can you resist a record with a sticker on the front proclaiming it to be "California doom folk"? Well, we sure as heck can't. And what if that sticker was pasted over a huge floating white-bearded head floating in the clouds like some spirit of Yahowha back from the dead to haunt our musical dreams? Well, you'd have us again. So we were pretty much sold before we got the disc to the player. But in all fairness, we should also mention that not only is Flying Canyon the project of one half of Golden Hotel, who we raved about on a past list, but that half also happens to be AQ regular Cayce Lindner, who you can see on the AQ customers page, and who haunts the hallowed halls of AQ on an almost daily basis.
But the fact that Cayce is a friend of ours isn't the reason we were so enamored of Golden Hotel, or the reason this slab of California doom folk has been kicking our asses. Nope. It's because Cayce has a way with a guitar and a killer knack for abstract free folk songsmithery. It helps too that in Flying Canyon he's teamed up with members of The Skygreen Leopards and Kelly Stoltz's band. Where Golden Hotel was dark and lugubrious, dreamy and droney, Flying Canyon is much more druggy and desert-y, twangy and sun baked, laid back and lysergic.
From the opening track, "In The Reflection", a dead ringer for Terry Reid's "Seed Of Memory", you're already wandering in a dreamlike daze, across some dusty windblown musical world, a wounded wasteland, that while inhospitable and rife with death and misery, is still strangely warm and safe, you find yourself clearing away some dust and rubble, dead leaves and brittle branches, laying back, eyes closed, the sun turning the inside of your eyelids a blood red, and letting the sun burn you away, bleaching your bones, as you become part of the landscape, your dust part of the swirling storm, the sound, a disembodied floating free folk, perfectly captured by the Flying Canyon.
The label website describes Flying Canyon as the Eagles on Robitussen, but it's a little closer to Crosby, Stills, Nash And Young on horse tranquilizers. A super lo-fi arid expanse of murky late afternoon haze and stoned fuzzy fug. The strainer on the snare drum rattles and drifts like the warning of a snake coiled up in the hot summer sun. The bass is thick like melted tar, a fuzzy fat rumble, warm warbly melodies wrapped around a soft focus folk drift, in the distance, fluttering flutes and warm swells of shimmering organ, like a musical mirage. All left all to hover in a lush field of room sound and drifting fuzz, above which float Lindner's ghostly vocals, an about-to-crack Neil Young warble, emotional and rich and honest, so much so that Lindner even manages to sing the words "rock and roll" in a song, without it sounding wrong. Instead, you can imagine that this is some sort of rock and roll. A rock and roll that was left in the sun too long, allowed to melt and change shape, a dusty, almost forgotten relic, that still retains some mysterious inner glow, a beauty that transcends the ravages of time. Go ahead. Sit back. Rest those weary bones, close those tired eyes. This is just about the perfect place for waitin' around to die...
MPEG Stream: "In The Reflection"
MPEG Stream: "Down To Summer"
MPEG Stream: "Crossing By Your Star"

FLYING LUTTENBACHERS, THE The Void (Troubleman / ugEXPLODE) cd 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
As the Luttenbachers fly on and on into the void, they just get more and more metal, don't they? Now a Bay Area based trio (including one of the Mikes from Burmese on bass), they offer up their thirteenth album! This latest episode of Flying Luttenbacher insanity features nine tracks of feedback-filled, drum-blasting, chaotically complexified, metallic skree that can't be topped by almost anyone in the known universe -- heck parts of this even remind us a bit of Keiji Haino's Fushitsusha, which is a comparison we don't make too often. The Void is an all-instrumental tour-de-force that believe it or not could be the missing link between black metal and no-wave, surely band leader Weasel Walter's life's work. Track after track, each cut here builds and builds without much in the way of release, racheting tension to head-bursting levels. Judging from comments in the liner notes, perhaps this is Weasel's howling response to the Republican take-over of the United States. In any event, it's a serious dose of heavy, frenzied, jazz-damaged, post-rock, post-metal, mathy mayhem!
MPEG Stream: "The Void Part Five"
MPEG Stream: "Sword Of Atheism"

FLYING SAUCER ATTACK P.A. Blues (VHF) cd-r 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
P.A. Blues is a super limited cd-r that's been out for a while, but we haven't been able to get enough to list until now. A selection of unreleased live material hand picked and edited by FSA's Dave Pearce. Blissed out and dense, thick washes of guitar ambience and slowly shifting, dark and droning swoosh and shimmer. The focus of this disc is the lengthy title track, a massive collage of live recordings chopped and edited into a single huge swelling throbbing movement. As with most things Flying Saucer attack, this is epic and gorgeous spaced out, dreamy and mesmerizing drone rock of the highest order!
MPEG Stream: "FSA Tapes Vol. 1: Unreleased Pt. 2"

FLYING SWEETY DOG Songs About Men (Celebrate Psi Pheomenon) cd-r 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Another batch of super limited and beautifully packaged cd-r's from Campbell Kneale's (Birchville Cat Motel) Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label. The finest in underground free noise / drone, culled mostly from New Zealand but all around the world as well. For those of you new to the CpsiP label, imagine classic Siltbreeze (Dead C, etc.) mixed with Jewelled Antler (Thuja, Blithe Sons etc.), dark and deep listening that sometimes verges on all out noise, but more often than not remains subtle experiments in avant drone and abstract sound. And when we say limited we mean LIMITED. Thes babies come in pressings of 30-80, out of which we get a whopping 10 copies!!
Flying Sweety Dog is a London based noise duo, of Danish / Japanese origin, and are a bit of a tough proposition to figure out. Twenty seven tracks, titled either "Cinema", "Inside" or "Outside". On a couple tracks they mix things up with tracks titled "Anders Outside, Take Inside" and "Take Outside, Anders Inside". Not that the song titles tell you anything about the sounds contained within. They do at least give you an idea that you're dealing with something well outside the realm of the ordinary. All the tracks are relatively short, super spare and minimal with ambient clatter, occasional sort-of rhythms, far away whistles, squeaks of ear piercing feedback, and what sounds like the duo hard at work assembling or dismantling various broken musical instruments. Weird.
MPEG Stream: "Cinema"
MPEG Stream: "Inside"

FLYNT, HENRY Back Porch Hillbilly Blues Volume 1 (Locust) cd 14.98
Even packaged to look strikingly similar to an old Folkways LP release, this pair of Flynt releases on Locust sure do fit the "Hillbilly Blues" label more than any other release we've heard yet from him. And what's more, they're fucking great! No, you won't find any pseudo-ragas on either of these discs. This is wild and relentless, drone-y and hypnotic, sonically overwhelming neverending foot stomping, finger picked blues work outs. But as one might expect the workouts are static, shifting minutely and almost imperceptably if at all. Like a redneck hillbilly Terry Riley or La Monte Young.
The tracks on volume one go a little like this:
Track 1: Three and a half minutes of solo electric blues guitar, thankfully stripped of that awful standard blues chord progression.
Track 2: a short two and a half minute blast of nasal auctioneer style vocals, over a primitive country electric guitar riff.
Track 3: A massive twelve minutes of retarded toe tapping, to a hillbilly pizzicato on the fiddle that develops into increasingly manic sawing on just three notes.
Track 4: A gorgeous chunk of primitve, droney minimal blues, with humming vocals clocking in at a whopping 16 minutes.
RealAudio clip: "The Snake"
RealAudio clip: "Blue Sky, Highway And Tyme"

FLYNT, HENRY Back Porch Hillbilly Blues Volume 2 (Locust) cd 14.98
Even packaged to look strikingly similar to an old Folkways LP release, this pair of Flynt releases on Locust sure do fit the "Hillbilly Blues" label more than any other release we've heard yet from him. And what's more, they're fucking great! No, you won't find any pseudo-ragas on either of these discs. This is wild and relentless, drone-y and hypnotic, sonically overwhelming neverending foot stomping, finger picked blues work outs. But as one might expect the workouts are static, shifting minutely and almost imperceptably if at all. Like a redneck hillbilly Terry Riley or La Monte Young.

The tracks on volume two go a little like this:
Track 1: Five minutes of minimal amplified fiddle with lots of echo/delay, like music for some sort of space rodeo.
Track 2: 13 minutes of what sounds like a similar version of the first track, although this time without the echo/delay and a little more sawing on the higher notes of the fiddle.
Track 3: very traditional sounding blues progression on the fiddle, but stretched out a little. Definitely the easiest listening on either disc.
Track 4: Ten minutes long. Revisits the melodies of track two, but the sawing is more feverish and the sound is more thick and much less minimal. Eventually mutates into a super saturated, head nodding, blissed out transcendental hoedown!
RealAudio clip: "Echo Rock"
RealAudio clip: "Jamboree"

FLYNT, HENRY Back Porch Hillbilly Blues, Volumes 1 & 2 (Bo Weevil) 2lp 38.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Finally available on vinyl, both volumes of Flynt's Back Porch Hillbilly Blues, on a deluxe double lp. And very limited!
Even packaged to look strikingly similar to an old Folkways LP release, this pair of Flynt releases on Locust sure do fit the "Hillbilly Blues" label more than any other release we've heard yet from him. And what's more, they're fucking great! No, you won't find any pseudo-ragas on either of these discs. This is wild and relentless, drone-y and hypnotic, sonically overwhelming neverending foot stomping, finger picked blues work outs. But as one might expect the workouts are static, shifting minutely and almost imperceptably if at all. Like a redneck hillbilly Terry Riley or La Monte Young.
The tracks on volume one go a little like this:
Track 1: Three and a half minutes of solo electric blues guitar, thankfully stripped of that awful standard blues chord progression.
Track 2: a short two and a half minute blast of nasal auctioneer style vocals, over a primitive country electric guitar riff.
Track 3: A massive twelve minutes of retarded toe tapping, to a hillbilly pizzicato on the fiddle that develops into increasingly manic sawing on just three notes.
And the tracks on volume two go a little like this:
Track 1: Five minutes of minimal amplified fiddle with lots of echo/delay, like music for some sort of space rodeo.
Track 2: 13 minutes of what sounds like a similar version of the first track, although this time without the echo/delay and a little more sawing on the higher notes of the fiddle.
Track 3: very traditional sounding blues progression on the fiddle, but stretched out a little. Definitely the easiest listening on either disc.
Track 4: Ten minutes long. Revisits the melodies of track two, but the sawing is more feverish and the sound is more thick and much less minimal. Eventually mutates into a super saturated, head nodding, blissed out transcendental hoedown!
Track 4: A gorgeous chunk of primitive, droney minimal blues, with humming vocals clocking in at a whopping 16 minutes.

FLYNT, HENRY C Tune (Locust) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Another gorgeous document of keening high end drone exploration from this central figure in the sixties Fluxus scene. The focus (as always) is on Flynt's electric fiddle, that squeals and scrapes and glides effortlessly between notes and deep into outerspace. Flynt's fiddle is accompanied by tamboura lending this piece a distinctly Middle Eastern flavor. Fans of Riley, Palestine, Nitsch, Cale and drone music in general will definitely want to pick this up.
RealAudio clip: "C Tune"

FLYNT, HENRY Graduation and Other New Country and Blues Music (Ampersand) cd 14.98
After hearing the excellent "hillbilly drone improv" found on the recent double cd archival release "You Are My Ever Lovin'/Celestial Power" by this obscure but fascinating Fluxus artist, we were excited to see this additional archival release (of material unreleased these past 20-odd years) see the light of day. But, our enthusiasm was dampened somewhat by the preponderance of vocals (!) found here. There's some prime drones on this disc, to be sure, but you'll have to also deal with some not-so-prime folksy singing. We couldn't. Disappointing.

FLYNT, HENRY New American Ethnic Music Volume 3: Hillbilly Tape Music (Recorded) cd 16.98
Aquarius' favorite fluxus hillbilly intellectual returns with yet another collection avant-folk. We say 'returns' and yet, with the exception of one from 1976/2001, these tracks come from 1971 and 1978. Much of the goods here are similar to his last two releases on Locust ("Back Porch Hillbilly Blues Vols. 1 & 2"). For instance track one, "Violin Strobe", begins with slowly pulsing notes scratched out on violin which, through some tape device, begin to accumulate a hypnotizing tapestry under Flynt's playing. Hillbilly tape music indeed! Track two, "Guitar Rebop", is a duet for demented tremolo laden swamp guitar and sitar-like drone. Not all Flynt's tracks here are of the hillbilly variety though. For instance, two "Leather High" compositions in A and E (recorded in 1978 appropriately enough) sound like an erstwhile disco guitarist recovering from trauma. In both, a boogying disco rhythm guitar rapidly decays into a series of reverberant swells of guitar through a volume pedal. It's these two tracks, along with the 15 minute ending track "S&M Delerium" -- a continuation of "Leather High in E" -- which make up the bulk of the play time on this disc. It's too bad as, while they're fine tracks in moderation, it would be nicer if the earlier tracks like "Violin Strobe" (which lasts a mere 5 minutes) could be left to degenerate for another 10. Or 20!
MPEG Stream: "Violin Strobe"
MPEG Stream: "Leather High in A"

FLYNT, HENRY Purified by the Fire (Locust) cd 14.98
Purified By Fire is much like a sequel to the much loved Flynt album C-Tune. Like that album, Purified By Fire features Cathrine Christer Hennix on tamboura and Henry Flynt on amplified fiddle. Over the steady metallic drone of Hennix's tamboura Flynt weaves together Hindustani and Appalachian modes in a 40 minute improvisation. At the risk of over using a tired homily these really are two great tastes that taste great together. Bringing together the modal droniness of Appalachian folk music and classical Indian music in a completely unpretentious and, dare I say, punk rock way is totally welcome here at Aquarius.
MPEG Stream: "Purified By The Fire"

FLYNT, HENRY Raga Electric: Experimental Music, 1963 - 1971 (Locust) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Fluxus mainstay and relative unknown until this recent spate of reissues, Flynt has dabbled in the supreme drone, explored hillbilly country and now on this reissue explores the 'raga' and traditional Indian music, but with his own bizarre twist. The opening track is a mutated version of the traditional Marines Hymn sung in a made up 'Hindustani' style, accompanied on simple acoustic guitar strums, creating a static almost drone. Tracks 2 through 5, titled Central Park Transverse Vocal #1-#4, are short sharp bursts (between 00:15 and 1:30) of wild howling and bizarre vocalising. The title track, Raga Electric, is a faux Hindustani raga, with droning un-tuned guitars and wild howling, supposedly recorded only hours after seeing Pandit Pran Nath perform. It actually sounds pretty great until the vocals, which become grating almost immediately. But it's still quite fascinating. The final track is Flynt playing the alto sax, an instrument he had never played, and never played again after this recording. Wild skronking and high pitched shrieks and whistles. Thirteen minutes of skreeeeeeeeeeee that definitely tests the endurance of your eardrums.
RealAudio clip: "Marines Hymn"
RealAudio clip: "Raga Electric"

FLYNT, HENRY Spindizzy (Recorded) cd 16.98
Henry Flynt's "Spindizzy" is the second volume in his series of "New American Ethnic Music," following the incredible document "You Are My Everlovin' / Celestial Power", an earlier assortment of country-fried, Fluxus inspired minimalism. Flynt had been an associate of both legendary '60s minimalist LaMonte Young and Fluxus figurehead George Macunias, finding his unique personal signature smack in between these two pillars of the '60s Fluxus scene as a conceptually / technically astute form of minimalism using the everyman aesthetic of Appalachian folk. These 10 tracks on "Spindizzy" all could be the warm-ups to front-porch hoedown stomps, yet Flynt prefers to endlessly cycle through the sustaining colorful tones of reverberant fiddle, banjo, and guitar. Really quite nice.
RealAudio clip: "Hoedown"
RealAudio clip: "Rockabilly Boogie"

FLYNT, HENRY You Are My Everlovin' / Celestial Power (Recorded) 2cd 21.00
First in this label's "New American Ethnic Music" series. "Avant-garde hillbilly and blues music" by violinist (and Fluxus conceptual artist) Henry Flynt.
Each disc documents a live improv session, the first from 1981 and the second from 1980, and both are quite lovely indeed. I guess it's "hillbilly" 'cause he's playing a fiddle, and there's echoes of Appalachian trad music amidst the drone.
For one concert/disc he's joined by a tambura player, and on the other by a guitarist (both strangely uncredited). Definitely in a Tony Conrad / fake Indian raga mode, and good at it. Fans of the aforementioned, as well as those into (Flynt associate) LaMonte Young, Ashtray Navigations and even the Dirty Three (it's actually VERY Dirty Three sounding at moments, with Flynt's melancholy, almost psychedelic violin being the dominant voice). More specifically, these are (we're told) "extended extemporizations on extended alpha-state ascension through excessive application of overtone-series note relationships/harmonics over a single chord/form". Check out www.henryflynt.org for more info on the man's art and writing (there's some strange essays to be found there). A very cool archival release, can't wait to hear more in the series.

FLYNT, HENRY & NOVA'BILLY Nova' Billy (Locust) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Out of all the various iterations of Henry Flynt's huge and wildly varied recorded output, we weren't sure what to expect with this release, the previously unreleased 1975 recording of Flynt's avant-punk hillbilly boogie outfit Nova'Billy. Wildly ecstatic and rhythmic, full of left-field honky-tonk idioms but never wonky, Nova'Billy is probably one of Flynt's most joyously rocking outings that we've heard. Different than the Velvet's-by-way-of-the-Fugs recordings of his early band incarnation, The Insurrections, Nova' Billy is tighter and much better produced. Flynt's singing is minimal but well-used and less grating than we've heard on other recordings. His vocal delivery on "I Was A Creep" is more like the Rev. Fred Lane than the Jandek-style realms it can sometimes enter on releases like Raga Electric. A fine reissue and one that should live towards the top of Flynt's surprisingly massive discography!
MPEG Stream: "Conga"
MPEG Stream: "Amphetamine Rhapsody"
MPEG Stream: "I Was A Creep"
MPEG Stream: "Double Spindizzy"

FLYNT, HENRY & THE INSURECTIONS I Don't Wanna (Bo Weevil) lp 29.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Available on lp (but very limited!!)
Wow. It's strange, after never having ever heard of this guy before like, 2 years ago, now I've practically got a whole shelf full of Henry Flynt cds -- all terrific stuff recorded at least two decades back, but only recently seeing the light of day. And they keep coming. This new one dates from way back in 1966, and is billed as a youthful Flynt's NYC art-punk garage rock band. That made us a little apprehensive (we've never really been Fugs fans, and that's what we thought it might sound like), but actually this turned out to be totally amazing! Most of the other Flynt recordings that have come out feature his violin playing, in a kind of '60s minimalism meets Appalachian folk style. But with The Insurrections (with Walter de Maria on drums, later famous for his Lightning Field scupture in the New Mexican desert) Flynt plays guitar instead of fiddle. It's weird country bluesy drone protest rock as only an academic hillbilly Fluxus artist could conceive. The Velvets meet a jug band at an acid test? Not quite, but close. No mere historical document, this is revelatory stuff, not sounding thirty years old but timeless instead. And the recording quality of this rehearsal tape is more than adequate. Somewhere betwixt hoedown and raga, these nine tracks represent a divergent strain of beat music not commonly associated with 1966 (though, that was the year of Black Monk Time, which this doesn't sound like, though you can imagine Flynt woulda liked that Monks LP, and for sure he shared their opinion of Uncle Sam). Again, a dusty tape from the vaults that puts today's crop of avant-blues-improv shitkickers to shame, whoever they are. Recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Go Down"
MPEG Stream: "Dreams Away"

FLYNT, HENRY & THE INSURRECTIONS I Don't Wanna (Locust Music) cd 14.98
Wow. It's strange, after never having ever heard of this guy before like, 2 years ago, now I've practically got a whole shelf full of Henry Flynt cds -- all terrific stuff recorded at least two decades back, but only recently seeing the light of day. And they keep coming. This new one dates from way back in 1966, and is billed as a youthful Flynt's NYC art-punk garage rock band. That made us a little apprehensive (we've never really been Fugs fans, and that's what we thought it might sound like), but actually this turned out to be totally amazing! Most of the other Flynt recordings that have come out feature his violin playing, in a kind of '60s minimalism meets Appalachian folk style. But with The Insurrections (with Walter de Maria on drums, later famous for his Lightning Field scupture in the New Mexican desert) Flynt plays guitar instead of fiddle. It's weird country bluesy drone protest rock as only an academic hillbilly Fluxus artist could conceive. The Velvets meet a jug band at an acid test? Not quite, but close. No mere historical document, this is revelatory stuff, not sounding thirty years old but timeless instead. And the recording quality of this rehearsal tape is more than adequate. Somewhere betwixt hoedown and raga, these nine tracks represent a divergent strain of beat music not commonly associated with 1966 (though, that was the year of Black Monk Time, which this doesn't sound like, though you can imagine Flynt woulda liked that Monks LP, and for sure he shared their opinion of Uncle Sam). Again, a dusty tape from the vaults that puts today's crop of avant-blues-improv shitkickers to shame, whoever they are. Recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Go Down"
MPEG Stream: "Dreams Away"

FM3 Buddha Machine (Staalplaat) battery powered soundbox 26.00
Oooooh, we got all in a tizzy when we saw this. As it seems did every one else. We're told The Sun City Girls' Alan Bishop bought 24, and Brian Eno bought 8! The first 'pressing' sold out in no time, and when we heard there was a second pressing, we got as many as we could so we could actually list it and give all of our like minded customers a chance to snatch up one of these amazing little machines before they were gone. Basically, the Buddha Machine is a little handheld soundbox, with a tiny speaker, a volume control and a line out so you can plug it into your stereo. Inside is a chip, which stores nine dreamy, drone-y, drifty, meditative loops, which can be switched using a little toggle on the side. The ultimate record nerd, collector geek, outsider music fetish object. SO COOL.
FM3 is Christiaan Virant and Zhang Jian, and they are just the first group in what is meant to be a new series of different artists composing music specifically for these tiny handheld soundboxes. Comes sealed in a very generic looking box that doesn't even begin to hint at the joyous drones contained inside! Each Buddha Machine comes in a different color, purple, white, black, blue, red, yellow. The color you get will be completely random - although, if you are really, really keen on a specific color, we may be able to special-order it for you.
[Batteries are no longer included, sorry!]

FM3 Buddha Machine 4 (Neon Green) (FM3) battery powered soundbox 26.00
We always look forward to this time of year - it's the holiday season, of course, but also it's when Christian Virant and Zhang Jian (the artistic duo known as FM3) unveil their newest Buddha Machines! And even though Christmas is not remotely a Buddhist holiday, these popular little gadgets ARE just about the best stocking stuffers ever, for all the music/sound nerds you know (after you get one for yourself, of course). If you're unfamiliar with what a Buddha Machine is, well, you should take a gander at our previous reviews of FM3's other releases in the series, but basically, it's a rectangular plastic gizmo, about the size of a pack of cigarettes, a deck of cards, or an original iPod, that plays a pre-recorded set of sound loops (composed by the FM3 duo) that reside on a chip somewhere inside, through its own speaker, or out via a jack to your stereo or headphones. You can toggle between loops, and on recent Buddha Machine models like this one, also speed up or slow down the loops by fiddling with a pitch wheel.
The idea being that these looping sounds are all dreamily meditative and relaxing, or at least quite mesmerically interesting! Forget mp3 players, the Buddha Machine is thee perfect all-in-one, pocket sized music device. And we really like this new one.
This latest iteration of the Buddha Machine concept, Buddha Machine Mark IV, not only features nine brand new loops (which we will describe in great detail in just a moment) but also comes in a selection of 4 vibrant new colors: day-glo orange, pink (they say red but it's more of a neon pink), yellow and green. Very '80s lookin'!
Ok, here's our run-down on each and every loop, based on a brief first listen (hours of listening to 'em may reveal further nuances of course, we expect)...
The first loop here consists of swirling, almost John Carpenter like synth melody, woozy and tranced out, fantastically tense and cinematic. Loop #2 features soft focus chordal swells, lush and oceanic, washed out and hazy, slowly building to near blown out psych bliss drone, before fading right back into a hushed crystalline shimmer! The third loop has keening high end tones, layered into a softly undulating soundscape of dreamlike overtones, and ghostly glimmering drift, for however long you care for it to last. Loop #4 features spare, delicate Brian Eno or Harold Budd like piano, the notes ringing out, drifting through fields of sun dappled shimmer, slowly dissipating into the ether. If you ever toggle past that one, you'll get to loop number 5, in which the aforementioned pointillist piano is draped over a glazed sprawl of bleary background thrum, soundtracky and dreamily dolorous. Loop number six has warm whorls of deep muted buzz and soft rumbles, woven into another set of slow swells, lazy and languorous, building to a glorious prismatic crescendo, before melting down into a dense low end drone. Then, loop the seventh features a haunting woodwind melody, mournful and melancholic, wreathed in a reverby haze of softly effected glimmers, moody and meditative. That's followed by loop number 8, a distorted thumb piano melody, locked into a short cyclical loop (within the loop) repetitive and stuttery, minimal and hypnotically mesmerizing. The ninth and final loop is some kind of minimal distorted dub, its gorgeous throbbing tones doused in echo and delay, building from softly pulsing to blown out, with lots of gauzy space wrapped around the keening fractured melody, lots of crumbling texture too! Wow. All in all, this Buddha Machine 4 sounds like an obvious AQ-fave album, and it's INFINITE.
Like the last few Buddha Machines, again, this one comes with a volume knob, a pitch knob (to alter the pitch of the sounds), a mini output jack (to plug into an amp or your stereo, or for headphones), and a little red power light, but this time, as mentioned, they come in eye popping NEON colors, green, pink, yellow and orange. Each box comes wrapped in a swank, embossed, textured black paper O-card, with liner notes, etc. Requires two AA batteries, which are NOT included, sorry.

FM3 Buddha Machine 4 (Neon Orange) (FM3) battery powered soundbox 26.00
We always look forward to this time of year - it's the holiday season, of course, but also it's when Christian Virant and Zhang Jian (the artistic duo known as FM3) unveil their newest Buddha Machines! And even though Christmas is not remotely a Buddhist holiday, these popular little gadgets ARE just about the best stocking stuffers ever, for all the music/sound nerds you know (after you get one for yourself, of course). If you're unfamiliar with what a Buddha Machine is, well, you should take a gander at our previous reviews of FM3's other releases in the series, but basically, it's a rectangular plastic gizmo, about the size of a pack of cigarettes, a deck of cards, or an original iPod, that plays a pre-recorded set of sound loops (composed by the FM3 duo) that reside on a chip somewhere inside, through its own speaker, or out via a jack to your stereo or headphones. You can toggle between loops, and on recent Buddha Machine models like this one, also speed up or slow down the loops by fiddling with a pitch wheel.
The idea being that these looping sounds are all dreamily meditative and relaxing, or at least quite mesmerically interesting! Forget mp3 players, the Buddha Machine is thee perfect all-in-one, pocket sized music device. And we really like this new one.
This latest iteration of the Buddha Machine concept, Buddha Machine Mark IV, not only features nine brand new loops (which we will describe in great detail in just a moment) but also comes in a selection of 4 vibrant new colors: day-glo orange, pink (they say red but it's more of a neon pink), yellow and green. Very '80s lookin'!
Ok, here's our run-down on each and every loop, based on a brief first listen (hours of listening to 'em may reveal further nuances of course, we expect)...
The first loop here consists of swirling, almost John Carpenter like synth melody, woozy and tranced out, fantastically tense and cinematic. Loop #2 features soft focus chordal swells, lush and oceanic, washed out and hazy, slowly building to near blown out psych bliss drone, before fading right back into a hushed crystalline shimmer! The third loop has keening high end tones, layered into a softly undulating soundscape of dreamlike overtones, and ghostly glimmering drift, for however long you care for it to last. Loop #4 features spare, delicate Brian Eno or Harold Budd like piano, the notes ringing out, drifting through fields of sun dappled shimmer, slowly dissipating into the ether. If you ever toggle past that one, you'll get to loop number 5, in which the aforementioned pointillist piano is draped over a glazed sprawl of bleary background thrum, soundtracky and dreamily dolorous. Loop number six has warm whorls of deep muted buzz and soft rumbles, woven into another set of slow swells, lazy and languorous, building to a glorious prismatic crescendo, before melting down into a dense low end drone. Then, loop the seventh features a haunting woodwind melody, mournful and melancholic, wreathed in a reverby haze of softly effected glimmers, moody and meditative. That's followed by loop number 8, a distorted thumb piano melody, locked into a short cyclical loop (within the loop) repetitive and stuttery, minimal and hypnotically mesmerizing. The ninth and final loop is some kind of minimal distorted dub, its gorgeous throbbing tones doused in echo and delay, building from softly pulsing to blown out, with lots of gauzy space wrapped around the keening fractured melody, lots of crumbling texture too! Wow. All in all, this Buddha Machine 4 sounds like an obvious AQ-fave album, and it's INFINITE.
Like the last few Buddha Machines, again, this one comes with a volume knob, a pitch knob (to alter the pitch of the sounds), a mini output jack (to plug into an amp or your stereo, or for headphones), and a little red power light, but this time, as mentioned, they come in eye popping NEON colors, green, pink, yellow and orange. Each box comes wrapped in a swank, embossed, textured black paper O-card, with liner notes, etc. Requires two AA batteries, which are NOT included, sorry.

FM3 Buddha Machine 4 (Neon Pink) (FM3) battery powered soundbox 26.00
We always look forward to this time of year - it's the holiday season, of course, but also it's when Christian Virant and Zhang Jian (the artistic duo known as FM3) unveil their newest Buddha Machines! And even though Christmas is not remotely a Buddhist holiday, these popular little gadgets ARE just about the best stocking stuffers ever, for all the music/sound nerds you know (after you get one for yourself, of course). If you're unfamiliar with what a Buddha Machine is, well, you should take a gander at our previous reviews of FM3's other releases in the series, but basically, it's a rectangular plastic gizmo, about the size of a pack of cigarettes, a deck of cards, or an original iPod, that plays a pre-recorded set of sound loops (composed by the FM3 duo) that reside on a chip somewhere inside, through its own speaker, or out via a jack to your stereo or headphones. You can toggle between loops, and on recent Buddha Machine models like this one, also speed up or slow down the loops by fiddling with a pitch wheel.
The idea being that these looping sounds are all dreamily meditative and relaxing, or at least quite mesmerically interesting! Forget mp3 players, the Buddha Machine is thee perfect all-in-one, pocket sized music device. And we really like this new one.
This latest iteration of the Buddha Machine concept, Buddha Machine Mark IV, not only features nine brand new loops (which we will describe in great detail in just a moment) but also comes in a selection of 4 vibrant new colors: day-glo orange, pink (they say red but it's more of a neon pink), yellow and green. Very '80s lookin'!
Ok, here's our run-down on each and every loop, based on a brief first listen (hours of listening to 'em may reveal further nuances of course, we expect)...
The first loop here consists of swirling, almost John Carpenter like synth melody, woozy and tranced out, fantastically tense and cinematic. Loop #2 features soft focus chordal swells, lush and oceanic, washed out and hazy, slowly building to near blown out psych bliss drone, before fading right back into a hushed crystalline shimmer! The third loop has keening high end tones, layered into a softly undulating soundscape of dreamlike overtones, and ghostly glimmering drift, for however long you care for it to last. Loop #4 features spare, delicate Brian Eno or Harold Budd like piano, the notes ringing out, drifting through fields of sun dappled shimmer, slowly dissipating into the ether. If you ever toggle past that one, you'll get to loop number 5, in which the aforementioned pointillist piano is draped over a glazed sprawl of bleary background thrum, soundtracky and dreamily dolorous. Loop number six has warm whorls of deep muted buzz and soft rumbles, woven into another set of slow swells, lazy and languorous, building to a glorious prismatic crescendo, before melting down into a dense low end drone. Then, loop the seventh features a haunting woodwind melody, mournful and melancholic, wreathed in a reverby haze of softly effected glimmers, moody and meditative. That's followed by loop number 8, a distorted thumb piano melody, locked into a short cyclical loop (within the loop) repetitive and stuttery, minimal and hypnotically mesmerizing. The ninth and final loop is some kind of minimal distorted dub, its gorgeous throbbing tones doused in echo and delay, building from softly pulsing to blown out, with lots of gauzy space wrapped around the keening fractured melody, lots of crumbling texture too! Wow. All in all, this Buddha Machine 4 sounds like an obvious AQ-fave album, and it's INFINITE.
Like the last few Buddha Machines, again, this one comes with a volume knob, a pitch knob (to alter the pitch of the sounds), a mini output jack (to plug into an amp or your stereo, or for headphones), and a little red power light, but this time, as mentioned, they come in eye popping NEON colors, green, pink, yellow and orange. Each box comes wrapped in a swank, embossed, textured black paper O-card, with liner notes, etc. Requires two AA batteries, which are NOT included, sorry.

FM3 Buddha Machine 4 (Neon Yellow) (FM3) battery powered soundbox 26.00
We always look forward to this time of year - it's the holiday season, of course, but also it's when Christian Virant and Zhang Jian (the artistic duo known as FM3) unveil their newest Buddha Machines! And even though Christmas is not remotely a Buddhist holiday, these popular little gadgets ARE just about the best stocking stuffers ever, for all the music/sound nerds you know (after you get one for yourself, of course). If you're unfamiliar with what a Buddha Machine is, well, you should take a gander at our previous reviews of FM3's other releases in the series, but basically, it's a rectangular plastic gizmo, about the size of a pack of cigarettes, a deck of cards, or an original iPod, that plays a pre-recorded set of sound loops (composed by the FM3 duo) that reside on a chip somewhere inside, through its own speaker, or out via a jack to your stereo or headphones. You can toggle between loops, and on recent Buddha Machine models like this one, also speed up or slow down the loops by fiddling with a pitch wheel.
The idea being that these looping sounds are all dreamily meditative and relaxing, or at least quite mesmerically interesting! Forget mp3 players, the Buddha Machine is thee perfect all-in-one, pocket sized music device. And we really like this new one.
This latest iteration of the Buddha Machine concept, Buddha Machine Mark IV, not only features nine brand new loops (which we will describe in great detail in just a moment) but also comes in a selection of 4 vibrant new colors: day-glo orange, pink (they say red but it's more of a neon pink), yellow and green. Very '80s lookin'!
Ok, here's our run-down on each and every loop, based on a brief first listen (hours of listening to 'em may reveal further nuances of course, we expect)...
The first loop here consists of swirling, almost John Carpenter like synth melody, woozy and tranced out, fantastically tense and cinematic. Loop #2 features soft focus chordal swells, lush and oceanic, washed out and hazy, slowly building to near blown out psych bliss drone, before fading right back into a hushed crystalline shimmer! The third loop has keening high end tones, layered into a softly undulating soundscape of dreamlike overtones, and ghostly glimmering drift, for however long you care for it to last. Loop #4 features spare, delicate Brian Eno or Harold Budd like piano, the notes ringing out, drifting through fields of sun dappled shimmer, slowly dissipating into the ether. If you ever toggle past that one, you'll get to loop number 5, in which the aforementioned pointillist piano is draped over a glazed sprawl of bleary background thrum, soundtracky and dreamily dolorous. Loop number six has warm whorls of deep muted buzz and soft rumbles, woven into another set of slow swells, lazy and languorous, building to a glorious prismatic crescendo, before melting down into a dense low end drone. Then, loop the seventh features a haunting woodwind melody, mournful and melancholic, wreathed in a reverby haze of softly effected glimmers, moody and meditative. That's followed by loop number 8, a distorted thumb piano melody, locked into a short cyclical loop (within the loop) repetitive and stuttery, minimal and hypnotically mesmerizing. The ninth and final loop is some kind of minimal distorted dub, its gorgeous throbbing tones doused in echo and delay, building from softly pulsing to blown out, with lots of gauzy space wrapped around the keening fractured melody, lots of crumbling texture too! Wow. All in all, this Buddha Machine 4 sounds like an obvious AQ-fave album, and it's INFINITE.
Like the last few Buddha Machines, again, this one comes with a volume knob, a pitch knob (to alter the pitch of the sounds), a mini output jack (to plug into an amp or your stereo, or for headphones), and a little red power light, but this time, as mentioned, they come in eye popping NEON colors, green, pink, yellow and orange. Each box comes wrapped in a swank, embossed, textured black paper O-card, with liner notes, etc. Requires two AA batteries, which are NOT included, sorry.