FELT Crumbling The Antiseptic Beauty (Cherry Red) cd 14.98
Don't know too much about Felt or their history. In fact, I always just assumed that I didn't like Felt. Not sure why. A lot of it had to do with the time these records originally came out, the early eighties, precisely when I was just getting into punk rock or metal. Same goes for some other folks here at AQ. So it kind of makes sense that we never discovered this stuff, or if we did, we sure as heck weren't ready for it. So imagine our surprise when we finally actually heard Felt (umm..several months ago, I know I know...give us a break) and realized just how darn good this stuff was. So good that I'm not sure I can do them justice in a review. Crumbling The Antiseptic Beauty is the first in a 10 cd comprehensive reissue of all of Felt's records. Originally released in 1982, Crumbling is a minimal indie jangle pop masterpiece, simple guitar figures soaked in jangly reverby, crystalline melodies picked out on shimmering electric guitars over whispery mumbled vocals buried in the mix. So completely mesmerizing and hypnotic. Shades of Factory records, the Smiths, and definitely the Durutti Column. Imagine a more cerebral, minimal version of Icicle Works or Modern English or any of that eighties new wave stuff. Not at all what we expected or imagined but pretty amazing. Can't wait for the next nine!
MPEG Stream: "Evergreen Dazed"
MPEG Stream: "Birdmen"

FELT Forever Breathes The Lonely Word (Cherry Red) cd 14.98
Felt are such a weird band. Totally mysterious album art, cryptic album titles, bizarre lyrics and song titles, everything shrouded in mystery, but the actual music of Felt is anything but mysterious or cryptic. Forever Breathes The Lonely Word released originally in 1986, is a lush eighties indie pop record swathed in warm warbly organs and jangly keeing guitars. A surprisingly upbeat outing for Felt, who are more often maudlin and dreary and dark. Forever is filled with subtly propulsive rhythms, minor key arrpegiated guitars, chiming melodies, thick washes of synth blur and lots of vocals, delivered in a Lou Reed / Mark Knopfler sort of singspeak drawl that adds a world weary quality to Felt's already melancholy indie jangle.
MPEG Stream: "Rain Of Crystal Spires"
MPEG Stream: "Down But Not Yet Out"

FELT Let the Snakes Crinkle Their Heads To Death (Cherry Red) cd 14.98
I always wanted to love this record just for the title. I mean, what a great album title, mysterious and creepy and a bit nonsensical. And surprisingly not at all representative of the sounds found within. Originally released in 1986, Let the Snakes Crinkle Their Heads To Death perfectly coincided with my descent into metal, which explains how I managed to miss Felt entirely as well as sidestepping all things Creation and 4AD and jangly new wave in general. But it's probably just as well, since at the time, I probably wan't in a position to appreciate the ephemeral, ethereal beauty of Felt. Sonically very reminiscent of the Smiths, Durutti Column and the mellower side of Factory Records, Felt are a warm, shimmery musical blanket, woven from warbly synthesizers, shufflng rhythms, jangly guitars, chiming melodies, all moody and melancholy, muted and minor key. Sometimes jazzy and lounge-y, sometimes dark and lugubrious, Let the Snakes Crinkle Their Heads To Death is a perfect eighties late night instrumental bliss out record. So nice.
MPEG Stream: "Song For William S. Harvey"
MPEG Stream: "The Seventeenth Century"

FELT Splendour Of Fear (Cherry Red) cd 14.98
Don't know too much about Felt or their history. In fact, I always just assumed that I didn't like Felt. Not sure why. A lot of it had to do with the time these records originally came out, the early eighties, precisely when I was just getting into punk rock or metal. Same goes for some other folks here at AQ. So it kind of makes sense that we never discovered this stuff, or if we did, we sure as heck weren't ready for it. So imagine our surprise when we finally actually heard Felt (umm..several months ago, I know I know...give us a break) and realized just how darn good this stuff was. So good that I'm not sure I can do them justice in a review. Splendour Of Fear is the second in the Felt reissue series, originally released in 1984. It takes the minimal crystalline indie pop jangle of 1982's Crumbling The Antiseptic Beauty and adds a little darkness, and a little more low end, and becomes a bit more brooding and serious compared to its predecessor's sunny sparkling sheen. But only a little. The drums and the bass are more present giving the tunes a bit more heft and the vocals are still mumbled and way down in the mix, but it's still all about the guitars, shimmering and crystal clear, mantra like meldoies stream from electric guitars like rivers of sparkling diamonds. Again sonically reminiscent of the Smiths and Factory records. In fact Felt sound like late night chill out music for the Factory set. So great!
MPEG Stream: "The World Is As Soft As Ice"
MPEG Stream: "The Optimist And The Poet"

FELT Train Above The Ciy (Cherry Red) cd 14.98

FEMALE CONVICT SCORPION, DJ Constance Towers (self-released) cd-r 9.98
We love the mix tape. Or maybe now it's the mix cd. Regardless, it's hard to beat a killer mix of obscure sonic weirdness, the best mixes being the ones where the various tracks and elements blend into a new musical experience entirely. With the occasional glimpse of a recognizable tune, melody or sonic snippet surfacing here and there, the sort of collection that rewards close listening, but sounds just as good in a background music capacity. Such is the case with the latest disc from local DJ / turntablist DJ Female Convict Scorpion (who also manages whistle, sampler and theremin!). Anyone who names themselves after Shunya Ito's classic series of Japanese woman in prison / revenge flicks is definitely on the right wavelength.
Constance Towers is more mix than turntable experiment, but there are plenty of subtle sonic mysteries lurking beneath the excellent song choice and deft mixing. Beginning all soulful and jazzy, groovy and laid back, a slowed down funk work out, sun baked and washed out, peppered with subtle effects and bits of dialogue, the disc soon morphs into blessed out dub, transforming quickly into some haunting soundtrack, all swooning strings and drawn out drones, before exploding into some super kick ass blown out 70's cop show funk, with buzzing synths and fuzzy guitar. And that's just the first few tracks, the rest of the disc veers wildly all over the map, somehow managing to sound perfectly cohesive. Freaked out percussion jams, creepy exotica, propulsive krautrock, wild afrojazz, super distorted post punk jams, honkey tonk country, but all tangled and woven into each other, shifting speeds and tempos, drifting voices and effects, multiple tracks piled on one another, a gorgeous, hypnotic, sonic trip. Funky and groovy enough to jam at your next dance party, but dark and varied and mysterious enough for headphone deep listeningŠ
MPEG Stream: "12:00 am - Prologue / Mozart And The Dolomites"
MPEG Stream: "1:00 am - Constance Towers"
MPEG Stream: "2:00 am - Emergeth... Borts Minorts"

FEMALE CONVICT SCORPION, DJ Frosoblomster (self-released) cd-r 10.98
Mix number two from mysterious local turntablist and DJ, the brilliantly monickered DJ Female Convict Scorpion, whose mixes are less DJ mash-ups and more haunting artistic assemblages, incorporating free jazz, fuzzy funk, found sounds, bits of dialogue, sampled instruments, stripped down beats, pretty much no genre is off limits, but those genres are basically meaningless once everything is mixed together.
From the opening track, with its ominous chiming bells beneath Tom Waits' gravelly voice spinning a yarn, the mix slips smoothly, into a deep laid back minimal grooves, surrounded by swirling sheets of soft focus effects, before the mix shifts, and wailing female vox are draped over a thumping beat, a sea of record crackle, bits of hum and distant whir, Shadow wouldn't be all that far off as a reference, but imagine if Shadow was raised on prog and punk rock and art films and free jazz, then how would a mix of his sound? A bit like this perhaps.
The tracks veer wildly from super rhythmic workouts, to drifting minimal soundscapes, strange electronics drift in and out, mournful horns, spidery guitars, strings are bowed and plucked, deep rumbles surface from below, tribal drumming is laid beneath tangled world music voices, creating gorgeous and unintended harmonies, dense clouds of blooping bleeping effects over skittery free jazz skronk, dark reverbed noir-ish guitars shimmering beneath subtle percussion, breathless vocalizing and steel string scrape, deep ritualistic chanting drifting over the sound of sirens, funky drumming and subtle barely there dronemusic in the distance, Really good stuff. Made even better by the fact that we weren't able to identify a single source for any of the sounds within!!
Beautiful packaging. Full color printing on thick matte paper, super haunting and tripped out imagery, pressed on black cd-r's each with an actual postage from some other country affixed to the face.
MPEG Stream: "Dum Sechs Unt Glum eine Rum"
MPEG Stream: "Floorshow At The Top OF The World"
MPEG Stream: "The Peaches 'n' Herb Of Freak Folk"

FEMBOTS Small Town Murder Scene (Paper Bag Records) cd 14.98

FEN Ancient Sorrow (Northern Silence) cd ep 11.98
While ostensibly a black metal band, the UK's Fen, are so much more than that. In fact, take away the vocals, and in a blind taste test we would have been hard pressed to describe them as black metal at all.
The sound is all loping rhythms, soaring chords, the sound majestic and epic, minor key and mathy. The first track sounds more like Isis or Pelican than it does Darkthrone or Deathspell. Well, actually, it does remind us a bit of Deathspell's most postrock moment, the genius Kenose. The band are described as 'atmospheric black metal / post rock' which would be a tad more accurate if you swapped the two descriptors. Even the riffs sound more like something off a Polvo or Pitchblende record, which is not a bad thing at all. In fact, we're a little bit obsessed with Fen. Another band whose sound is one we had always sort of wished for. Nineties math rock black metal! It's really uncanny listening to these three songs how often our ears catch a little Archers Of Loaf or Rodan or Don Cab or Bitch Magnet. And the thing is, the sound may be a bit heavier and more distorted, it's really only the vocals that turn this into black metal. If Fen were an instrumental band, they wouldn't sound all that out of place on Touch And Go. But they are heavy, and they are a bit black, and as if to prove it, the closer is the heaviest, and the least overtly mathy of the bunch. A plodding churning doomy chunk of loping blackened crush. And near the end of the 12+ minute track, the band even actually explode for the very first time into a furious blast beat, and finish off the track thrashing blackly, but even that brief burst is not enough to hide their true sonic soul, the whole track is rife with mathiness, with soaring majestic post rock-ness, just wrapped in a bit of blackness.
None of this is meant to sound apologetic, not in the least, this is absolutely one of our favorite new records, metal, mathy or otherwise. We just wanted to give fair warning to the troo grim hordes out there, who might have been put off a bit by the dearth of true blackness. But for the rest of you, this comes highly recommended. If you ever dreamed about a black metal Polvo (and who didn't) or wished Deathspell had continued on their more post rock path, or if you just can't get enough of that metallic post rock, and maybe wouldn't mind if it sometimes got a bit blacker, well then this is definitely for you...
MPEG Stream: "Desolation Embraced"
MPEG Stream: "The Gales Scream Of Loss"

FEN Ancient Sorrow (Northern Silence) 12" 11.98
While ostensibly a black metal band, the UK's Fen, are so much more than that. In fact, take away the vocals, and in a blind taste test we would have been hard pressed to describe them as black metal at all.
The sound is all loping rhythms, soaring chords, the sound majestic and epic, minor key and mathy. The first track sounds more like Isis or Pelican than it does Darkthrone or Deathspell. Well, actually, it does remind us a bit of Deathspell's most postrock moment, the genius Kenose. The band are described as 'atmospheric black metal / post rock' which would be a tad more accurate if you swapped the two descriptors. Even the riffs sound more like something off a Polvo or Pitchblende record, which is not a bad thing at all. In fact, we're a little bit obsessed with Fen. Another band whose sound is one we had always sort of wished for. Nineties math rock black metal! It's really uncanny listening to these three songs how often our ears catch a little Archers Of Loaf or Rodan or Don Cab or Bitch Magnet. And the thing is, the sound may be a bit heavier and more distorted, it's really only the vocals that turn this into black metal. If Fen were an instrumental band, they wouldn't sound all that out of place on Touch And Go. But they are heavy, and they are a bit black, and as if to prove it, the closer is the heaviest, and the least overtly mathy of the bunch. A plodding churning doomy chunk of loping blackened crush. And near the end of the 12+ minute track, the band even actually explode for the very first time into a furious blast beat, and finish off the track thrashing blackly, but even that brief burst is not enough to hide their true sonic soul, the whole track is rife with mathiness, with soaring majestic post rock-ness, just wrapped in a bit of blackness.
None of this is meant to sound apologetic, not in the least, this is absolutely one of our favorite new records, metal, mathy or otherwise. We just wanted to give fair warning to the troo grim hordes out there, who might have been put off a bit by the dearth of true blackness. But for the rest of you, this comes highly recommended. If you ever dreamed about a black metal Polvo (and who didn't) or wished Deathspell had continued on their more post rock path, or if you just can't get enough of that metallic post rock, and maybe wouldn't mind if it sometimes got a bit blacker, well then this is definitely for you...
MPEG Stream: "Desolation Embraced"
MPEG Stream: "The Gales Scream Of Loss"

FEN The Malediction Fields (Code 666 / Aural Music) cd 17.98
First proper full length from these UK black metallers, who we once described as a black metal Polvo! There are definitely still hints of that here, but the metal this time around is also more furious. With the ep, we stressed that maybe troo grim metalheads might not find a lot to like, as much of that record sounded more like Pelican or Isis than Darkthrone or Deathspell, and even here, the first track begins with some post rocky clean guitar, but almost immediately launches into a seriously blown out squall of blasting buzz. But then a few seconds later, the band slip back into that loping post rock, only to again, explode into epic blackness. The track flits back and forth, and part way through there's even some Katatonia like clean vocals, which adds a definite pop element, and hints at what's to come. So, it's at once heavier and more black than the ep, but still manages to incorporate plenty of post rock rhythms and math rock arrangements, which basically makes this a massive favorite around here, but also means this is probably not black or brootal enough for some metalheads.
And since the opening track might just be the heaviest of the bunch, barring brief bursts here and there, this is the perfect record for the aQ metalhead, who when not enjoying true grimness, likes their black metal fucked up or freaked out or all shoegazey or all post rocky, which means odds are you'll dig this like crazy.
Much of the record follows the same pattern as the opener, long loping instrumental passages with simple drumming and clean crystalline guitars, peppered with bursts of frenetic riffing and wild blasting beats, but there's also plenty of strange haunting folkiness, bits of rainy day sad boy indie jangle, subtly complex math rock rhythms, all perfectly blended with chunks of intense riffery and buzzing black metal fury. And the thing is, the metal this time around IS way more furious, if you stripped out all the clean guitars and croony vocals, this would be some seriously paint peeling blackness, but those parts sound even MORE aggressive and heavy when butted up to some shimmery drift, or some jangly poppiness.
The closer is the other heavyweight here, nearly 12 minutes of roiling ultra heavy black metal, intense and frenzied, but still with plenty of loping midtempo grooves, occasional doom-ed out interludes, a brief flutteryfolky break, and a minor key string-ed outro, that manages to be super dramatic, and the perfect way for this strangely varied and super kick ass record to wind down.
Packaged in a super striking 8 panel digipak, and damn if Fen don't have one of the coolest logos...
MPEG Stream: "Exile's Journey"
MPEG Stream: "A Witness To The Passing Of Aeons"
MPEG Stream: "Colossal Voids"

FENNESZ Black Sea (Touch) cd 15.98
Which came first Tim Hecker or Christian Fennesz? If one is to merely look at the discographies of the twin kings of digitally tricked out guitar sculpting, the chronological answer is obvious: Christian Fennesz. But in the four years that have transpired between his brilliant album Venice and the 2008 opus Black Sea, Fennesz must have seen a younger protege in Tim Hecker coming up in the rear view mirror with his own dramatic sound for smeared guitar whose beauty is similarly rendered through error. Not only does Black Sea feel like a response to Tim Hecker's work, it also stands as Fennesz' most fully realized album, perhaps even more so than the sunburst explosion of meta-pop on Endless Summer.
Fennesz works best in the cold, with ice, snow, and frost dusting the strings of his guitar and seeping into the circuitry of his computer; and the cold landscape is exactly where he situates himself on Black Sea. Not surprisingly, Touch's Jon Wozencroft perfectly matches a photograph of an abandoned train track set onto a barren wintry landscape, looking a hell of lot like the photographs that Anselm Keifer uses as a background over which he dumps tar, paint, cement, lead, ash, and whatnot into his alchemical paintings.
Black Sea opens with the fizzling crunch of digital errata getting mangled even further by digital means, with Fennesz sculpting a sea swell of a half melody in the distance. Considering the contemplative and cold nature of the rest of the album, this track is a bit discordant; but Fennesz isn't going for the Menche / Merzbow attack, just something of a wake-up call. But gradually, even this first burst of noise quells in a plaintive round of finger picking on the guitar, out of which a beautiful cloud of vaporized drone begins to amass and a subharmonic throb of distortion settles in. These sounds become the template for the rest of the album, all wrapped in gray, muted timbres. When noise bursts through Fennesz' circuits, the attack almost immediately blurs into clustered loops, drones, and sympathetic noises to smooth the edges into a shimmered glisten of remarkable beauty that exhibits a cold, overcast, and gray soundsmear, certainly on par with the sleepytime shoegaze of My Bloody Valentine. After an exceptional collaborative track with Rosy Parlane of lunar landscape ambience riddled with dust before opening into a hymnal melody, Black Sea comes to an end with one of Fennesz' best tracks ever in "Saffron Revolution," with its soaring vapor trail of tone-bent guitar drone and a majestic crescendo of sustained, soft focus distortion. A truly marvellous piece of work.
MPEG Stream: "Black Sea"
MPEG Stream: "Glide"
MPEG Stream: "Saffron Revolution"

FENNESZ Black Sea (Touch) lp 16.98
Now available on vinyl, this recent Record Of The Week!
Which came first Tim Hecker or Christian Fennesz? If one is to merely look at the discographies of the twin kings of digitally tricked out guitar sculpting, the chronological answer is obvious: Christian Fennesz. But in the four years that have transpired between his brilliant album Venice and the 2008 opus Black Sea, Fennesz must have seen a younger protege in Tim Hecker coming up in the rear view mirror with his own dramatic sound for smeared guitar whose beauty is similarly rendered through error. Not only does Black Sea feel like a response to Tim Hecker's work, it also stands as Fennesz' most fully realized album, perhaps even more so than the sunburst explosion of meta-pop on Endless Summer.
Fennesz works best in the cold, with ice, snow, and frost dusting the strings of his guitar and seeping into the circuitry of his computer; and the cold landscape is exactly where he situates himself on Black Sea. Not surprisingly, Touch's Jon Wozencroft perfectly matches a photograph of an abandoned train track set onto a barren wintry landscape, looking a hell of lot like the photographs that Anselm Keifer uses as a background over which he dumps tar, paint, cement, lead, ash, and whatnot into his alchemical paintings.
Black Sea opens with the fizzling crunch of digital errata getting mangled even further by digital means, with Fennesz sculpting a sea swell of a half melody in the distance. Considering the contemplative and cold nature of the rest of the album, this track is a bit discordant; but Fennesz isn't going for the Menche / Merzbow attack, just something of a wake-up call. But gradually, even this first burst of noise quells in a plaintive round of finger picking on the guitar, out of which a beautiful cloud of vaporized drone begins to amass and a subharmonic throb of distortion settles in. These sounds become the template for the rest of the album, all wrapped in gray, muted timbres. When noise bursts through Fennesz' circuits, the attack almost immediately blurs into clustered loops, drones, and sympathetic noises to smooth the edges into a shimmered glisten of remarkable beauty that exhibits a cold, overcast, and gray soundsmear, certainly on par with the sleepytime shoegaze of My Bloody Valentine. After an exceptional collaborative track with Rosy Parlane of lunar landscape ambience riddled with dust before opening into a hymnal melody, Black Sea comes to an end with one of Fennesz' best tracks ever in "Saffron Revolution," with its soaring vapor trail of tone-bent guitar drone and a majestic crescendo of sustained, soft focus distortion. A truly marvellous piece of work.
MPEG Stream: "Black Sea"
MPEG Stream: "Glide"
MPEG Stream: "Saffron Revolution"

FENNESZ Endless Summer (Editions Mego) cd 16.98
Way back in the summer of 2001, we made Fennesz' Endless Summer a Record of the Week. Little did we know how influential the album would become, and how much of an impact it would have on the realms of the avant-garde and electronic music at large. Here's what we said with the linguistic aplomb of an era now past:
While the label that Fennesz calls home is certainly guilty of propagating a specific aesthetic (harsh digital soundscapes based upon the flotsam of cybernetic errata), Fennesz has always produced what we had imagined should be the salvation for experimental electronica -- an ever vigilant, but necessarily shifting search for balance. As Fennesz does incorporate the guitar quite a bit into his creative process, there is a finely tuned balance between rock and electronica archetypes. However, his egalitarian views of intention and execution, dissonance and melody, metaphor and metonym, structure and arrhythmia, analogue and digital, warm and cool, etc. are exactly what electronica needs.
Fennesz' third album -- the aptly titled Endless Summer -- picks up where his ep of Rolling Stones / Beach Boys covers left off with a digital dispersion of "fun in the sun" rock mythologies. While there are no obviously discernible pop culture references, Fennesz builds a sound that really is quite summery from odd duets between disintegrating acoustic guitar strums and the coalescence of digital errata. Thus, this album has the feeling of the classic Beach Boys sound, but very little of that structure. These are NOT Beach Boys covers; but if he said they were, we'd have no basis to call him a liar. Regardless, Fennesz's Endless Summer is a stunning record.
Repackaged with vastly improved artwork, and two extra tracks not on the original. One of which was from the Fat Cat split series of 12"s and the other being unreleased.
MPEG Stream: "Endless Summer"
MPEG Stream: "Happy Audio"

FENNESZ Field Recordings 1995:2002 (Touch) cd 15.98
Over the past couple of years, it has become apparent that there are two modes of production for the esteemed Austrian electro-glitch artist Christian Fennesz. On one hand, there are the studio driven productions where he focuses on the digital decomposition of various guitar signatures (exemplified within the "Plays" single whose beautiful cover of The Rolling Stones' "Paint It Black" was originally commissioned for the ill-fated "Painted Black" compilation -- due soon on tUMULt), and on the other, there's the live improvisation techniques he brings to any number of European free-jazz / new music ensembles (i.e. MIMEO, FennO'Berg, Polweschel, Golden Tone, Orchestra 33 1/3, etc.). While his technical prowess and expressive immediacy can be quite graceful on those electro-improv recordings, Fennesz excels in the studio.
"Field Recordings 1995:2002" -- which is NOT a collection of Chris Watson-esque field recordings -- picks up some of the studio driven scraps that had been released on compilations, special projects, and film soundtracks during the past 7 years. Of particular note, "Field Recordings 1995:2002" features all of the cuts from his amazing "Instrument" debut EP released on Mego in 1995. Even before such incredibly powerful programs as SuperCollider and Max/MSP had been as widely available as they are now, Fennesz has always been interested the atomization and disintegration of digital recordings at their most basic level. While all of these tracks from "Instrument" still sound great by today's standards, there is a strong connection with the sampledelica guitar trickery of '90s UK post-rock of Seefeel, Main, and Disco Inferno as hyperactive, time-stretched kaleidoscopes of post-MBV distortion and skittering electronica rhythms. The other tracks include reworkings of the soundtrack composed for "Blue Moon," remixes Fennesz did for Ekkehard Ehlers and Stephan Mathieu, and compilation tracks from "Decay" (Ash International), "RKKCD13" (Reckankreuzungklankewerkzeuge), "Clicks and Cuts 2" (Mille Plateaux) and "Krev X" (Ash International) -- that last contribution being a digitally fuzzed-out cover of America's "A Horse With No Name."
While many 'loose-end' collections run the risk of being full of cast-away tracks from the proper albums, Fennesz' "Field Recording" is as good as any of his previous albums, and shouldn't be missed!
RealAudio clip: "Instrument 3"
RealAudio clip: "Instrument 4"
RealAudio clip: "Surf"
RealAudio clip: "Name With No Horse"

FENNESZ Hotel Parallel (Mego) cd 16.98
Originally released in 1997, now finally available again, the debut full length from Viennese experimentalist guitarist Christian Fennesz. Long before the fuzzed out blurry sounds of folks like Tim Hecker and other DIY dronesters were everywhere, and the technology for processing sound was super readily available, Fennesz was a laptop alchemist, a guitar deconstructionist, transforming his axe into a strange sound making device, capable or producing the most gorgeous and alien of sounds.
Hotel Parallel is a lot different than later Fennesz releases. Where those were soft focus and sun baked, glistening and shimmering, Hotel Parallel is much darker, more abrasive, harder edged, the sounds much more intense and brutal, but without losing any of their beautiful mystery. 
Listening to this again now, it's kind of mind blowing to believe the sounds here are all guitar. From dense swirls of speaker clogging hiss, to glimmering Niblockian stretches of static high end blur, to tangled swirls of glitch and swoop, backwards fffffft and gnarled melody, to grinding low end chunks of sound, angular and abrasive, to barely there billows of whispery low end, streaked with muted melody, to epic My Bloody Valentine like cacophonies of distorted pop ambient almost house music to super minimal Chain Reaction throb and pulse. Some of these tracks sound like the recent Field record, or some of the more abstract Kompakt stuff, but this was 10 YEARS AGO! AND IS ALL GUITAR! How the fuck do all of these sounds come out of a guitar? Who the hell cares? An absolutely gorgeous breathtaking epochal work of guitar experimentation, that few have rivaled in the decade since...
This reissue is super swank, six panel digipak, printed in green on white with subtle spot varnish, it includes some extra stuff too, a bonus track from a long out of print 7" (limited to 100 copies) from 1996, a super beautiful droney blurry murkscape, and an absolutely breathtaking video, perfectly reflecting the sound of Fennesz visually, all glitchy and grainy and so gorgeous...
MPEG Stream: "Sz"
MPEG Stream: "Nebenraum"
MPEG Stream: "Blok M"

FENNESZ Il Libro Mio (TanzHotel) 3" cd 7.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
4 short compositions on an adorable little 3" compact disc by this brilliant electronica / guitarist from Vienna. Shards of processed guitar noise filtered into the tropes of musique concrete that end up sounding like a more active Achim Wollschied. Further on the composition, Fennesz allows the delicate strum of the guitar to infiltrate the barrage of noise, giving nods to John Fahey, but in a much more interesting way than the recent interpretations of Fahey by the Chicago post-rockers.

FENNESZ June (Table Of The Elements) lp 15.98
Latest in Table Of The Elements' series of 'Guitar' 12"s, and this is the one everyone has been waiting for, Christian Fennesz' June. Hot on the heels of Black Sea, which was a recent aQ Record Of The Week, comes this single sidelong drift of gnarled guitars and pixelated soundscapes. But unlike the blurred beauty of Black Sea, June is something else entirely, a creaking, clanging, chiming post industrial landscape of processed guitars, rendered here in the shape of distant pulsing buzz, in shards of jagged chords ringing out and dissipating into the ether, and deep groaning waves of blackened Wolf Eye-d rumble, imagine even a super softened Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, this is less blissed out shoegazey dreamscapery, and more carving dark sonic figures from deep shadow, ominous, sinister, haunting, all words that most definitely apply to past Fennesz recordings, but usually those elements were lurking beneath a shimmery sun dappled exterior, a soft patina of whirling muted buzz draped over a roiling black sea of sound below, but here, those sounds are allowed to creep to the fore, creating a seriously dystopian chunk of cinematic black ambience, the guitars unleashing a murky black fog, that while lovely cloaks all the other sounds in a mysterious blackened grit, but it is Fennesz after all, so the corrosive crumbling darkness does eventually get smoothed out, transformed into into a soft, rolling, burnished shimmer, deep tones dreamily undulating and floating weightless in an expanse of hushed thrum, but by then, the track is winding to a close. Dark stuff from Fennesz, and we like it. A lot!
Pressed on super thick, swirled milky brown vinyl. One sided, the other side with an awesome etching by Savage Pencil, housed in a thick PVC sleeve, and of course, as always, VERY LIMITED!

FENNESZ Live At Revolver, Melbourne (Touch) cd 11.98
Austrian electronic glitch-guitar superstar Christian Fennesz does his thing in Australia, and this live limited edition cd (not cd-r, unlike other similarly plainly-packaged releases on Touch) is the documentation. "Live at Revolver" picks up where Fennesz' masterful "+47° 56' 37"" left off with rich buzzing tonalities forming melancholic almost-melodies topped with sporadic events of domestic clatter. A requiem for a microwave oven, perhaps? Nonetheless this may be for fans only, as it's not quite 17 minutes long! Still, this is recommended, as those 16 minutes and 34 seconds are quite good.

FENNESZ Live In Japan (Headz) cd 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Live record from everybody's favorite laptopping guitarist (or guitar playing laptopper) Christian Fennesz, released on the new (to us at least) Japanese label Headz, in a gorgeous sleeve designed by Touch's Jon Wozencroft. A little over 40 minutes of gorgeous, squelching, hazy shimmer. The disc starts off with a burst of scratchy barbed wire static, before the submerged melodies and summery warmth slowly rise to the surface. As the disc progresses Fennesz's guitar surfaces more and more, as lazily strummed acoustic guitars dodge digital crunch, and fingerpicked notes are captured and sent careening wildly through the thick wash of digital whir, crackly sputter, and gritty fuzz. Moments of melodic tranquility bob weightlessly on a sea of crackling glitches and resonant flickers of crumbling distortion, as the melodies struggle to stay afloat. So completely lovely and at the same time so ferocious and harsh, a dichotomy of sound that seems to define the glorious sonic explorations of Fennesz.
MPEG Stream: "Live In Japan"

FENNESZ Live In Japan (Autofact) lp 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Previously released only as a pricey and now out of print Japanese import cd, this is now available on vinyl, with new artwork, pressed on thick vinyl and packaged in nice thick sleeves! We only got a handful and most likely will NOT be able to get more once these are gone. Here's what we had to say about cd when we first got it in:
Live record from everybody's favorite laptopping guitarist (or guitar playing laptopper) Christian Fennesz. A little over 40 minutes of gorgeous, squelching, hazy shimmer. The record starts off with a burst of scratchy barbed wire static, before the submerged melodies and summery warmth slowly rise to the surface. As the record progresses Fennesz's guitar surfaces more and more, as lazily strummed acoustic guitars dodge digital crunch, and fingerpicked notes are captured and sent careening wildly through the thick wash of digital whir, crackly sputter, and gritty fuzz. Moments of melodic tranquility bob weightlessly on a sea of crackling glitches and resonant flickers of crumbling distortion, as the melodies struggle to stay afloat. So completely lovely and at the same time so ferocious and harsh, a dichotomy of sound that seems to define the glorious sonic explorations of Fennesz.
MPEG Stream: "Live In Japan"

FENNESZ Plus Forty Seven Degree 56' 37" Minus Sixteen Degrees 51'08" (Touch) cd 15.98

FENNESZ Plus Forty Seven Degrees 56' 37" Minus Sixteen Degrees 51' 08" (Touch) cd 16.98
Strange that we've never written anything about this album, the second album from Vienna's guitar 'n' laptop rock star Christian Fennesz. Originally released on Mego back in 1999, this album has gone through several pressings, fortunately always preserving the same core tracklisting, although the art has shrunk down to a digipack for the 2008 edition on Touch. The two albums that came after this album - Endless Summer and Venice - may stand as his perfect albums, one obviously summery and the other decidedly wintery; if anything, this is his shoegaze record, as he deftly wrangles with hurricane-strength distortion and tempers that with a post-MBV blur of narcotic auditory bliss. Throughout, Fennesz merely alludes to melody buried beneath all of the fuzzy drones and tempestuous noise, with pixel pointed interludes indicative of the signature Mego inflorescence for digital errata that he and Pita helped define. This is clearly the album that was the major inspiration for Tim Hecker and his digiscapes of guitar drones and 8-bit noise; but this album also bridges back to earlier pioneers of electronic adventurousness such as Main (especially Motion Pool) and The Hafler Trio (like Intoutof). If you've not checked this out, there's no better time than the present.
MPEG Stream: "010"
MPEG Stream: "013"
MPEG Stream: "014"

FENNESZ Transition (Touch) 7" 8.98
The master returns. To teach the young ones a thing or two about the guitar. And about turning that guitar into something wholly other.
It's been a while since we've heard from Christian Fennesz, but thankfully, very little has changed, he can still take a guitar and a laptop and create a dense world of dreamlike shimmer, with a deftness that puts most other soundmakers to shame. So here's a brief two song taste of what Fennesz has been up to lately. And if this single is any indication, the upcoming full length is going to be the drone-y dreamy disc of the year!
But for now, we'll take these two, and just play them over and over. The A side finds the guitar completely transformed into muted smears, the overall sound a shifting sea of corrosive crumbling distortion, but rendered in breathless whispers and washed out hues. The metallic thrum is spread out into soft shimmers, a murk that would almost sound industrial if it wasn't so pretty.
The flipside is more guitar oriented, a steel string acoustic, the melodies branching out in simple softly strummed strands, a skeletal framework for swirls of soft hiss and chunks of fragmented melody drifting by like leaves on a forest stream. The sound is like some simple folk music, broadcast via a staticky short wave radio, but beneath the guitar, and the dreamy hiss, are lush, stately swells melodic and cinematic, that infuse the track with a dark, but sweetly sorrowful elegiac quality. Gorgeous.

FENNESZ Venice (Touch) cd 15.98
Christian Fennesz' 2001 album Endless Summer firmly established him as one of the electronic avant-garde's greats with his delirious balance of hotwired digital glitches and a nostalgic revisitation of summery pop sensibilities. The assimilation of overloaded digital filtering technologies and guitar driven song fragments has continued to be Fennesz' strongest asset through his celebrated arrangements for David Sylvian's Blemish album, and has even earned him a curious forthcoming collaboration with Sparklehorse! Venice is his fourth studio album and clearly stands as his best work to date. According to Asphodel's Naut Humon, Venice was almost a doomed project, as Fennesz' hard drive crashed less than a month before he needed to deliver the record to Touch. With about a quarter of the album salvagable, he scrambled to reassemble the album from memory. While it's hard to say if this time constraint benefitted or detracted from his process, the album itself is stunningly good. Just as Endless Summer channelled the acid fried spirit of Brian Wilson, Venice also finds itself an album with a muse: Kevin Shields. There have always been short-circuited elements of My Bloody Valentine shot from Fennesz' tricked out guitar sound; but Venice pushes Fennesz affection for shoegazer's buccolic atmospheres and sublime melodies to the forefront with marvelous results. Each song appears to be nerve-rattlingly familiar; yet just as Endless Summer invoked Brian Wilson without ever resorting to selfconscious quotation, each of his tracks glides along the same oceanic currents authored by Slowdive, AR Kane, Ride, Loveliescrushing, and The Cocteau Twins. Again, no direct references can be heard in Venice; rather Fennesz taps directly into the hopelessly romantic sentimentality of shoegazer music and replicates it perfectly behind a light dusting of digital pixels.
The one track which gives us pause on Venice is the single collaboration with David Sylvian. While this track on its own works as good if not better than anything on their aforementioned Blemish album, it sticks out like sore thumb against the sublimely textured ambience which dominates the remainer of the record. If every album only had one minor miscalculation, the world would be much better off; thus, we're more than willing to look beyond this track and tell you that this will undoubtably be the best electronic record of 2004 and one of the all around best records of the year!!
MPEG Stream: "City Of Light"
MPEG Stream: "Circassian"
MPEG Stream: "Point Of It All"

FENNESZ / DAFELDECKER / BRANDLMAYR Till The Old World's Blown Up And A New One Is Created (Mosz) 2cd 16.98

FENNESZ / JECK / MATTHEWS Amoroso (Touch) 7" 7.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Remember that Spire record on Touch a while back? A series of Organ works, by a handful of the usual avant drone suspects: Fennesz, Jeck, Biosphere, Tsunoda, Ambarchi, Watson and othersŠ
Well, this 7" is part of a series of limited eps, based on the Spire recordings. The first we think. And is a tribute to Arvo Part, and to "mystic minimalism". Charles Matthews who was featured on the original Spire recordings, playing the massive pipe organ, is the player here as well, and both Jeck and Fennesz get a side to do what they want with those original sounds.
Fennesz turns the sound of the organ into a minimal whir, gentle washes of grit and whispery buzz, long tones subtly pulsing, deep rich chords, soft swells, gently effected and transformed into haunting alien drones. Those drones infused with melancholic melodies and deep metallic reverberations. Truly mystical and minimal.
Jeck however is much less reverent. Choosing much like he did on the original Spire recording to try something more aggressive, more dark, more noisy, and much less soothing, his side is an almost industrial soundscape or crunch and buzz, the organ's notes transformed into bell like tones, chopped up into jagged melodies, almost like someone is flipping stations, the melody lurching suddenly from note to note, jarring and uneasy, but at the same time hauntingly compelling. The tones are dense and distorted, lots of smeared feedback, thick clouds of pixilated grit and deep droning walls of whir, a super intense and extraordinarily noisy approach from Jeck, something we're definitely interested in hearing much more of in the future.
As always, comes houses in an immediately recognizable Touch style sleeve, with gorgeous Jon Wozencroft photos and design.

FENNESZ / ROSY PARLANE Live (Mego) cd3 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Mego has been really getting into these cute litte 3" cds... They have a similar fetish object quality as the ultra limited and therefore highly collectible Drone Records series, but for the more digitally minded. This collaborative release between Rosy Parlane (former partner with Dean Roberts in Thela) and the swashbuckling Christian Fennesz is a fluid stream of digital pops and timestretched glitches. At first their duet fades from the glitch worship towards something resembling fragments of an Arvo Part vocal chorale, but returns to the rhythmic hard disc edits recalling Oval's "Systemische."

FENNESZ / SAKAMOTO Cendre (Touch) cd 15.98
Had any random drone 'n' piano album been released on Windham Hill and featured some laptop jockey blurring the lilting piano notes of George Winston, would you even consider buying it? Well, we know Andee would. But no matter how good it was, for most of you, the answer would probably be no. Even though certain factions here at Aquarius have long held the belief that there's not much sonic difference between the pastoral impressionism of Windham Hill and the pastoral impressionism of Kranky, the major contextual differences between the two institutions have prevented many from buying into this argument. The full collaborative album between Christian Fennesz and Ryuichi Sakamoto also figures into this distinctly Aquarian logic to dismantle any notions of what is 'cool.' This is an album of drifting soundscaping for pretty, pretty piano and pretty, pretty treatments, whose external contextualization drives the reading about the music more than the music itself. Christian Fennesz, of course, is the highly acclaimed guitarist with an exceptional grasp of how to digitally mangle the sounds from his guitar into impressive dynamism that brings a poetic, human touch to digital deconstruction. Ryuichi Sakamoto hails from the seminal electronic group Yellow Magic Orchestra and has more recently taken to Erik Satie-like compositions for shadowy gestures upon the piano. Furthermore, Cendre was released on Touch, a record company considered by many to be *the* elite label for sound art. Everything points to what should be a slam dunk of an album; and in many ways, this album succeeds in what it strives for. It's doubtful that Fennesz and Sakamoto would have qualified their intentions as 'New Age' but Cendre's polite piano melodies that drift amidst a benevolent ambience share more than a few parallels to the quintessential Windham Hill sound. We'll leave it in your hands, oh trusted Aquarian shopper, as to whether you'll see a comparison between Christian Fennesz and George Winston as favorable or not. Some of us certainly do.
MPEG Stream: "Oto"
MPEG Stream: "Haru"

FENNESZ / SAKAMOTO Sala Santa Cecilia (Touch) cd ep 12.98
AQ customers definitely don't need an introduction to Christian Fennesz. We've long been enraptured by his laptopped guitarscapes, all warm and fuzzy, sunny and ethereal, rich and thick and totally memerizing. And certainly no one should need an introduction to Ryuichi Sakamoto either, after fronting the Yellow Magic Orchestra for thirty years as well as producing numerous solo recordings, including his amazing recent collaborations with Alva Noto. So it's pretty exciting to see these two hook up for this lush and gorgeous laptop excursion into dreamy underwater mood music and hazy glitched out ambience. This brief twenty minute piece was recorded live in Rome in 2004 and is the precursor to a forthcoming full length. A simply perfect slab of ambient abstraction and delicate dreaminess. Moody and mysterious, drifting notes and thick chordal swells wash over shuffling minimal rhythms, sleepy summertime shimmer and soaring sheets of dramatic and deconstructed melody float and flutter, shift and sway. So beautiful.
MPEG Stream: "Sala Santa Cecilia"

FENNESZ / ZEITBLOM / RANTASA Music For An Isolation Tank (Rhiz) cd 17.98
Subtitled "an acoustic approximation of Oswald Weiner's legendary 'Bioadapter', phase one" this album offers several suggestions for the listener's environment. The lights should be dim, the listener should lie down (possibly in a tank of water with underwater speakers), and earplugs should be worn. As Aquarius Records is painfully unequipped to properly listen to this record (not even a large oil drum I could cram into, nor the time to lie down on the counter and listen to the record while tending to customers, and damn if I'll wear earplugs to listen to something this quiet), the review will no doubtably miss the mark on this one. But for sake of commerce or criticism or simply because you've read this far already, here it goes.
"Music For An Isolation Tank" is a paranoiac black box composition replete with digital fuckery and laptop squiggles (ala Mego / Rhiz) sublimated into subaquatic headrattling lowend. Pure tones
merge into slowed down somatic rhythms that attempt to bring the bodies hectic pace down to a more relaxed state. High tension flanges rupture the digitized drones and pulsate erratically as neurotic distractions to the computerized bliss. There are some definite moments where the trio successfully articulate a synergy between man and machine, but for the most part the album falls nicely within the laptop aesthetic of 'lowercase glitchery'.

FENNESZ, CHRISTIAN / SACHIKO M / OTOMO YOSHIHIDE / PETER REHBERG (Erstwhile) cd 14.98

FENNESZ, O'ROURKE, REHBERG Magic Sound Of Fenn o' Berg (Mego) cd 16.98
With just the mention of Jim O'Rourke, this will sell itself. But for those of you out there who have been taken in by his recent pop aesthetics, we should state the warning that this is not a pop album. Collaborating with powerbook geniuses Christian Fennesz and Pita Rehberg (both from the venerable Mego collective), O'Rourke sheds the pop schtick for a streaming barrage of digital splices which are predominantly needling synthetic tones and random clicks, but sporadically reference a rhythm or a melody before being mutilated into the digital cacophony.

FENNESZ, O'ROURKE, REHBERG Return of Fenn O' Berg (Mego) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The second production from the Fenn O' Berg laptop trio of Christian Fennesz, Jim O'Rourke, and Peter "Pita" Rehberg adds just a bit more structure to the previous collaboration, but falls in line with the increasing number of Max / MSP improvisations that have been coming out as of late. The general feel for the album retains some of the digitally deconstructed dreaminess found on some of the Stephan Mathieu and Ekkehard Ehlers recordings, but with the additional collaged pitter patter of digital squiggles and clicks. Where Fenn O'Berg succeeds is in their sporadic use of fuzzy rhythms, post-acid melodies, and antiquated samples from carnival music and melodramatic film scores. All of these, of course, get the pixel treatment.
RealAudio clip: "Floating My Boat"
RealAudio clip: "A Viennese Tragedy"

FENNESZ/HARDING/REHBERG Di-n (Ash International R.I.P) lp 11.98
Fennesz and Pita (ne Peter Rehberg) hail from Mego Records from Vienna, while Mike Harding runs Touch and Ash International out of the UK. Collectively, this trio (and their powerbooks) tweek digital glitches and crunchy blasts of computer noise into persistant rhythmic clashes that culminate into tumultous rumbling beats. A close listen will reveal a pretty stellar computing fuck up, when one of the three powerbooks sounded the Macintosh preset error sound 'Droplet'. Even with this, 'Di-n' is pretty fantastic digital noise record. 21 minutes on one-sided vinyl.

FERENC Cronch (Kompakt) 12" 10.98

FERENC Fraximal (Kompakt) cd 15.98

MPEG Stream: "Diplodocus"
MPEG Stream: "Sandia"

FERIAL CONFINE (ANDREW CHALK) First, Second And Third Drop (Siren Records) cd 29.00
Andrew Chalk recorded as Ferial Confine for a few years in the mid '80s. At that time, all of those recordings were cassette only releases, mostly self-released / private editions of just a couple of copies with the exception of the Meiosis cassette put out by Broken Flag. That cassette and the Full Use Of Nothing LP, which Fusetron reissued from one of those private edition tapes, found Chalk embracing an acoustic teethgnashing through metallic noise junk. It was no wonder that The New Blockaders and Organum would seek him out as a future collaborator. But there were only hints on those two recordings of what would later become what Chalk would be best known for: the majestic, sublime, and beautiful drone.
Chalk's 1986 album Crescent, which was released under his own name, has long been viewed as the bridge between the Ferial Confine aesthetic of blistered noise and the softened timbral complexities of later work including that of Mirror. That said, nobody had heard First, Second And Third Drop. Also recorded in 1986, this Ferial Confine album truly is the missing link between the two polarities of the Chalk aesthetic, as the scraping metallic skree is present but often tuned in sympathy to bowed gongs and long-thin wire drones. Blossoming reverberation consumes some of these tracks, which sound even better than the classic Organum sound of that time period. It goes without saying that this album is incredible. Well, Andrew Chalk made it, of course. But the historical nature of this record makes it even all the more interesting. Oh yeah, it's also painfully limited; and already sold out at the label.
MPEG Stream: "The Flying Fish"
MPEG Stream: "Advent"
MPEG Stream: "It's Past"

FERMATA Fermata/Piesen Z Hol (Bonton Music Slovakia) cd 23.00
The first two albums (from 1975 & '76) by this hot-rockin' instrumental Slovak prog/fusion band. Rippin' stuff, with heavy guitar/keys interplay. Complex, flashy, very '70s. If we saw a band like this play today we'd be all "we're not worthy"! (Not new, but we got a couple and wanted to list it, along with the equally awesome Collegium Musicium disc, for the Iron Curtain prog freaks we know populate our mailing list!)
RealAudio clip: "Rumunska Rapsodia"
RealAudio clip: "Piesen Z Hol"

FERN KNIGHT Music For Witches And Alchemists (VHF) cd 13.98
Another gorgeous missive from the ever expanding world of modern freak folk, this time from Philly based singer, songwriter, guitarist, cellist Margaret Wienk, who with Music For Witches and Alchemists has crafted a darkly dramatic gem of moody mournful melancholia. Equal parts Pentangle, Incredible String Band, and of course some of her more modern sonic compatriots, Brightblack, Vetiver, Espers (Greg Weeks and Meg Baird both play on Music For Witches and Alchemists) and the like, Fern Knight is most definitely modern folk, but at the same time sounds so classic, the songwriting, Wienk's voice, the arrangements, a perfect combination. But the band manage to take that classic sound and infuse it with some sweet sonic mystery, due in no small part to the unlikely instrumentation, the sweet moaning cellos, dreamy swaths of harp, alien melodies on the singing saw, the twang of the Jew's harp, the wheezing harmonium, but unlike most bands, those sounds don't define Fern Knight's sound, merely add to the texture and mood of the music, which even stripped to its bare basics would still sound as sweet.
MPEG Stream: "Song For Ireland"
MPEG Stream: "Awake, Angel Snake"

FERN KNIGHT Music For Witches And Alchemists (Eclipse) lp 21.00
NOW ON VINYL!!!
Another gorgeous missive from the ever expanding world of modern freak folk, this time from Philly based singer, songwriter, guitarist, cellist Margaret Wienk, who with Music For Witches and Alchemists has crafted a darkly dramatic gem of moody mournful melancholia. Equal parts Pentangle, Incredible String Band, and of course some of her more modern sonic compatriots, Brightblack, Vetiver, Espers (Greg Weeks and Meg Baird both play on Music For Witches and Alchemists) and the like, Fern Knight is most definitely modern folk, but at the same time sounds so classic, the songwriting, Wienk's voice, the arrangements, a perfect combination. But the band manage to take that classic sound and infuse it with some sweet sonic mystery, due in no small part to the unlikely instrumentation, the sweet moaning cellos, dreamy swaths of harp, alien melodies on the singing saw, the twang of the Jew's harp, the wheezing harmonium, but unlike most bands, those sounds don't define Fern Knight's sound, merely add to the texture and mood of the music, which even stripped to its bare basics would still sound as sweet.
MPEG Stream: "Song For Ireland"
MPEG Stream: "Awake, Angel Snake"

FERN KNIGHT s/t (VHF) cd 13.98

FERN KNIGHT Seven Years of Severed Limbs (Normal) cd 14.98
Fern Knight is not a person's name as we initially thought, it is the moniker for this duo from Rhode Island whose hushed folk pop songs take a number of haunting instrumental twists, turns and detours into atmospheric soundscapes. Heavily reverbed and tremoloed guitars are interwoven with strummed and plucked acoustic guitar as deep somber strings and an occasional accordion wind their way around the unmistakable warm sound of a Fender Rhodes keyboard. So heart-baringly bittersweet and intimate, much like a cross between Julie Doiron and Mirah. Absolutely lovely!
MPEG Stream: "If I Could Write A Book About You"
MPEG Stream: "Boxing Day"

FERRANTE AND TEICHER Soundproof / Soundblast: The Sound of Tomorrow Today! (Cherry Red) cd 17.98
Anyone who scours thriftshops regularly for records will surely be familiar with the names Ferrante and Teicher. World-renowned pop-classicists and dueling pianists from the fifties to the seventies, they're often squarely associated with the Lawrence Welk and Liberace markets our grandparents dallied in. While their recorded output easily tripled the most prolific artist you can imagine, their legacy has pretty much resulted in stacks and stacks of the kind of unwanted records that make crate digging an oft-frustrating chore.
But not everything they did was so square. In the early fifties at the dawn of the hi-fi age, they were among the first composers to take John Cage's prepared piano experiments (a method of altering piano tones by wedging various objects between the strings and hammers) and apply them toward orchestrated melodies. By doing so, and then running the sounds through state-of-the-art, multi-channeled stereophonic recording equipment of the time they were able to create an illusion of multiple instrument sounds such as tympanis, marimbas, xylophones, glockenspiels, and various percussion instruments, all from playing pianos. This reissue of Soundproof and its follow-up Soundblast is the result of such experiments. While this is hardly what we think of as experimental music, it sure does sound amazing. The kind of music you can imagine with Tex Avery cartoons on the moon, or in some space lounge on Venus. Some songs sound like the far-out Afro-Cuban rhythms of Esquivel, other songs have a more impressionistic underwater quality, while others have a more Joe Meek sci-fi surfy vibe. Some tracks experiment with reverse piano and early echo effects. In fact, to create the echo effect, in a time without easy echo electronics, they wired the sound from the piano down to a tiled bathroom a floor below, and placed microphones looped to a delay outside the bathroom door. Out of the two records, Soundproof is more experimental and playful while Soundblast relies on more Latin compositional formulas albeit ones you might hear in danceclubs on Mars. If you come across these Ferrante and Teicher albums in your crate digging adventures, don't dismiss.
MPEG Stream: "What Is This Thing Called Love"
MPEG Stream: "Man From Mars"
MPEG Stream: "Siboney"
MPEG Stream: "Loose Ends Merengue"

FERRARI, LUC Cycle Des Souvenirs (1995-2000) (Blue Chopsticks) cd 14.98
A tautology is a statement which is necessarily true because it cannot be used to make a false assertion by virtue of its logical form. Often tautologies involve the needless repetition of a self-evident statement in order to prove that the idea is true; it can also take the form of asserting the truth of a statement by controlling the logic itself. Thus, the authoritarian decree, "because I said so!" defines one of the most common tautological situations. The maverick musique concrete composer Luc Ferrari continues to cite both of these definitions of a tautology when discussing his own work. The liner notes hold much more of the aura of the latter, with his autocratic voice insisting that this is important art and you better believe it! Yet his music which holds elements of the former, is far more seductive with the shifting repetitions of subtle aleatory themes that reflect Ferrari's ideas on memory as always being true to the individual who remembers. It's not clear if Ferrari has picked up these ideas from Proust, but that's another ball of wax.
His work on "Cycle Des Souvenirs" is something of an extension of the psychosexual narrative found within his "Presque Rien." Here field recordings were taken of European streets, the sea, a train station, wind through a valley, etc. with various fragments of speech whispered just beneath the surface of those judiciously edited recordings. The quiet of these passages are disrupted by clipped drum crashes which explode throughout the sonic landscape, further fragmenting the continuous spoken narrative. The end result is quite evocative, recalling Robert Ashley's masterful "Automatic Writing."
RealAudio clip: "1"
RealAudio clip: "4"

FERRARI, LUC Danses Organique (Elica) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Luc Ferrari left the reptutable INA-GRM outfit in the early 70s to take his expressive electronic & musique concrete experiments to his own studio. 'Danse Organique' is one of the earliest pieces Ferrari made in his own studio. "This could be a 'strange meeting between two girls and a tape recorder' and is one of his most unorthodox, lively, and sensually charged pieces. Ferrari lent his tape recorder to two girls who are supposed to meet and start a relationship and then builds his imaginary folkloric music around their confidential dialogue... The resulting music has a groovy rhythmic quality in its surreal synthetic development and is outstandingly modern with its similarities to some very unacademic electroacoustic music.

FERRARI, LUC Interrupteur/Tautologos 3 (Blue Chopsticks) cd 13.98
The debut release on David "Gastr Del Sol" Grubbs' new Drag City-sponsored label is the cd reissue of this rare LP by French musique concrete artist Ferrari. Apparently such an important work that the label states that "any other record that sounds like this is but a pale imitation."

FERRARI, LUC Presque Rien (INA/GRM) cd 21.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Smugly qualified by Ferrari as a "poor man's concrete music," "Presque Rien" is a brilliant piece of musique concrete that reflects the turbulent psychological landscape of Paris in the late '60s and early '70s. While the liner notes make no reference to participation in or sympathy with the Parisian rebellion of May 1968, Ferrari's "Music Promenade" (which opens the "Presque Rien" album) has a rough-hewn, decentralized quality which appears to refer to the incendiary immediacy of those few weeks. Yet as soon as the "Presque Rien" suites begin, the politically charged references of grim military waltzes, impassioned revolutionary speeches, and whirling factory sounds are done away with, in favor of subtle collages of natural sounds. It is as if Ferrari set up an aesthestic antithesis between the tense, urban sounds on "Music Promenade" and the suposedly placid sounds of nature on the rest of the album, all the while maintaining a firm grip on a psychoanalysis upon the landscape. Like Robert Ashley's ultra creepy "Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon," Ferrari intertwines fragments of various whispered narratives with the steady buzzings of choral cicadas, as if each narration were that of a voyeur spying upon the intimacy of nature. Upon superficial listens, "Presque Rien" appears somewhat simple; however, do yourself the favor by listening to this attentively (preferrably on headphones) to capture the subtle theatrics of Ferrari's composition.
RealAudio clip: "Music Promenade 1"
RealAudio clip: "Presque Rien 2 pt. 2"
RealAudio clip: "Presque Rien Avec Filles pt. 1"

FERRARI, LUC Tautologos And Other Early Electronic Works (EMF Media) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Collection of early recordings from one of the pioneers of Musique Concrete. Includes "Etudes aux Accidents" & "Etudes aux sons Tendus" (from 1958), "Visages V" (1959), "Tete et Queue du Dragon" (1960), "Tautologos 1 & 2" (1961) and "Und so Weiter" (1966).
MPEG Stream: "Etudes Aux Accidents"
MPEG Stream: "Und So Weiter, Part 1"

FERRARO, JAMES Citrac (Arbor) 2lp 16.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
More warped otherworldly sound collage murky warble from one half of the late great Skaters. And like everything else we've heard from Ferraro post-Skaters, the sounds on Citrac, a two lp collection of mostly previously released material (but most so limited you probably never heard 'em anyway), are a blurred jumble of fantastically twisted time machine lo-fi anti-pop. Ferraro along with his ex-bandmate have been credited with spearheading the so called 'hypnogogic pop' movement, but pop seems to have very little to do with this. Pop CULTURE maybe. Visually, the jacket and inner sleeve are adorned with all manner of eighties cheesiness, which thankfully isn't necessarily reflected in the music. Instead, Ferraro takes his arsenal of music making devices, busted effects and falling apart 4-track, as well as a handful of samples from cop shows and after school specials and late night made for TV movies, and goes about, snipping and pasting and looping and smearing those various sounds into some totally tripped out krautdrone, psych-synth, buzz-loop weirdness.
All of the sounds here are murky and muddy and sound like they were recorded on an old VHS tape and then duped over and over and over and over. The percussion is clattery but buried in the mix, tons of reverb and delay, much of the first disc sounds like a John Carpenter soundtrack spinning lazily on a fucked up turntable while someone holds their thumb down on the vinyl, causing the record to slip and slow down, the whole thing peppered with strange howled vocals (or what sound like vocals). The end of side two features a sonic event that seems to pop up all over these two records, an awesome lurching synth-psych loop, that could have gone on FOREVER, but ends way too soon. Also, as far as we can tell, the first record is meant to play at 45, it definitely sounds like Ferraro at 45, but it sounds really cool at 33 too, even more industrial and woozy and washed out.
The second disc though, sounds like 33 is the correct speed, 45 makes it a bit manic, but still pretty intense and psychedelic, but at 33, it's way more aggressive than the first record, more industrial too, like a doom metal Wolf Eyes or something, albeit way more fucked up and fractured, loads of low end, metallic percussion, and some sick inhuman barks wreathed in effects, at 33 it's creepy, at 45 it becomes some sped up soundtrack video game alien techno. Weirdly twisted and almost proggy. Rad stuff for sure.
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