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 / 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 Clear (Holy Mountain) lp 14.98
It's been a while since we've listed anything Skaters related, and not for lack of action on their part, they have an avalanche of new cd-r's, that we'll try to get to eventually, but for now, let's tackle this, the latest lp from half of the Skaters, James Ferraro. Pretty sure this is an lp reissue of some out of print tapes or something, but it hardly matters, cuz wherever it came from it's pretty damn cool. The sticker calls the sounds within "tropical drones". But if we had to describe it, NEW AGE seems way more accurate. And we don't meant that in a bad way at all. We love new age, as long as it's like this, gorgeous blissed out crystalline shimmer, long slow moving tones, delicate melodies, everything glistening and glimmering, reflective and prismatic and hypnotic, but then about halfway through the song shifts and things get freaky, in come the muted crunchy eighties sounding guitars and the muffled buried rhythms, the original tones get a little fuzzier as the song evolves into an imaginary eighties new wave cop show theme song. Which is awesome.
The flipside definitely sounds tropical, with squiggly fake flute melodies, the chirp of dolphin calls buried in the ooze and warble of the shimmery underwater warble, the sound gorgeously warped and washed out, trippy and almost otherworldly, it's a bit like the sound you hear when you wake up on the couch in the middle of the night, all groggy and half asleep and you left the TV on and some bizarre nature program or softcore porn is playing, but all you can hear is the sound, and then you suddenly open your eyes and all you can see are clouds and pyramids and your living room seems to have sunken into the deep blue, it sort of sounds like that. Awesome.
Comes with a download card too, so you can get your self another digital chunk of underwater tropical new age-y bliss.

FERRARO, JAMES Discovery (Holy Mountain) lp 14.98
Don't be confused, it may look the same, but in fact, it's the second of two lp reissues from James Ferraro, one half of floor core legends the Skaters. We reviewed his Clear lp on our last list, this time it's Discovery, almost the exact same cover, the alien pyramids floating in some strange sea, only the name of the record is different (and don't trust the sticker, on about half of the lps we got the stickers were all switched up), although really it barely matters, as the sounds on Discovery, sound very much like the ones on Clear, which make sense as they are archival recordings from about the same time period.
Two side long jams, exploring that alien new age only those Skaters guys seem capable of, this one sounds like two parts of the same jam, equal parts new age swoosh, staticky old AM radio and alien soap opera theme music, all blurred and smeared into a weirdly organic warped and warbly drift. Bleary and blown out, glistening and glimmery, a buried krautrock groove, that seems to fade out and return at random, all imbued with a cool psychedelic eighties B-movie Goblin vibe.
The flipside is more of the same, only a bit more rocking, more feedback and distortion, but just barely, the guitars a tad more noodly and spidery, but all the sounds still washed out and sun dappled and hypnotic. Like Clear before it, Discovery is a fantastic chunk of blissed out Baywatch new age, and here's hoping Holy Mountain keeps digging up and reissuing these tripped out artifacts.
Comes with a download card too, so you can get iPod-able versions of these tracks as well!!

FERRARO, JAMES K2-Chameleon Ballet (Olde English Spelling Bee) lp 17.98

FERRARO, JAMES Multitopia (Olde English Spelling Bee) lp 17.98

FERRER, IBRAHIM Bue0na Vista Social Club Presents (Nonesuch) cd 17.98
You may have already heard Ibrahim Ferrer on the spectacular second track off the Buena Vista Social Club record, his high, light voice soaring over the expert Cuban instrumentalists backing him up. How lucky are we to have an entire album of Ferrer's lovely voice?

FERRER, IBRAHIM CON CHEPIN Y SU ORQUESTA ORIENTAL Mi Oriente (Tumbao) cd 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Here's a recording of Buena Vista Social Club fave Ibrahim Ferrer in his salad days, singing with Electo "Chepin" Rossell's orchestra. Recorded in Havana, mostly in 1960 & 1961, this lineup of Chepin's orchestra also features: Pastor Manzano on trumpet; Remberto Ibarra on alto sax; Emerido Ferrera on percussion; Loreto Vistel, Epifanio and Faustino on trumpets; Luis Castell on piano; J. Guerra on tenor & baritone sax; Enrique Acosta on tenor sax, Ismilbo Correa on tumbao; Chepin on violin; and along with Ferrer on vocals there's Carlos Quintana and Isidro Correa.

FERRIO, GIANNI Big Guns (Easy Tempo) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Soundtrack to the italian film directed by Tony Arzenta is super-spy-alious and breaks down to sexy-ville. For fans of other easy tempo releases and the Vampyros Lesbos.

FERRIS, D.X. 33 1/3 Series: Reign In blood (Continuum) book 10.95
We've only read the first half so far, but c'mon, it's Reign In Blood, one of the greatest thrash metal records ever. And music obsessives, you should already be reading this series, up close and intimate looks at not bands, but your favorite records, interviews with the bands, the fans, and all sorts of awesome behind the scenes drama!
Anyway, Reign In Blood is still an amazing record two decades later, and metal bands are still finding influence there, some WAY more than others.
This volume digs deep into maybe the most influential 29 minutes of metal EVER. Interviews with the bands, the producers, the engineers, the roadies, and most interestingly, the fans, a who's who of rock luminaries including: Tori Amos, Phil Anselmo, Page Hamilton of Helmet, Danzig, Jack Endino, Larry from Pelican, Angela from Arch Enemy, Kurt from Converge, Charlie from Anthrax, Sean from White Zombie, Matt from High On Fire, Gene Hoglan, rapper Ill Bill, Nergal from Behemoth, Buzz from the Melvins, Ripper Owens, Devin Townsend, Kat VonD, all the dudes from Mastodon, and tons more.
So far a super fun read, most of the series is, we've probably read about half of 'em, but as soon as we finish this review, first thing we do when we get home is to finish reading about REIGN IN BLOOD!

FESTIVAL OF DEAD DEER The Many Faces Of Mental Illness (Three.One.G) cd 13.98
Loud, disjointed and full of youthful rage and angst. This is raw, noisy, twisted music constantly on the verge of combustion. On the super cool San Diego-based record label run by The Locust's Justin Pearson.

FETISH 69 Dysfunctions and Drones (Trost) 2cd 26.00
Fetish 69. The name says everything, right? Well, perhaps not on this double CD of remixes and collaborations. With a name as bad as Fetish 69 (implying some horrid diva-house disaster or worse a My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult sex-horror-shock industrial parody), it's quite a relief to discover the deep dub electronics of Austria's Fetish 69 sound almost exactly like Scorn -- right down to the big rolling basslines, isolationist atmospheres, and slinky trip hop beats. On this double CD, the first chapter ("Dysfunctions") is comprised of the more beat oriented material (with contributions / remix work from James Plotkin, Spectre, Scorn's Mick Harris, Toxic Lounge, etc.) The second CD ("Drones") isn't so much drones (like Hazard or Andrew Chalk) as it is sort of downtempo noir sound not unlike Barry Adamson, with Tribes of Neurot, Fritz Ostyermayer, and Krupica contributing. Pita adds the most notable and intriguing exception to the set with a digitally obliterated remix of the original, that really has nothing to do with what Fetish 69 sounds like (or what they used to sound like, 'cause when we first encountered this band back in the early '90s they were a metallic/industrial noise-rock outfit responsible for a few fairly heavy and now deleted cds on the Nuclear Blast label, so it was quite a surprise to find them still active, and with such friends).

FEU THERESE Ca Va Cogner (Constellation) cd 15.98
The second full length from Feu Therese, the Montreal group captained by Jonathan Parent (former guitarist for Fly Pan Am), continues along the dark mysterious path they explored on their 2006 self-titled debut, but it's not without stretches of levity. In fact, the album opens with an unexpected jaunty guitar and synth line and a charming gent singing in French. Far more melodically inclined than its predecessor and far less bleakly brooding, Ca Va Cogner draws much inspiration from classic kraut, prog and space rock with some tracks being quite reminiscent of vintage works by Richard Pinhas, Kraftwerk and Cluster. Layers of synthesizers and electric guitars sweep across the steady, pulse-like drum beats and occasional male utterances and croonings. Nice.
MPEG Stream: "Visage Sous Nylon"
MPEG Stream: "La Nuit Est Une Femme"

FEU THERESE s/t (Constellation) cd 14.98
Yet another somber (mostly) instrumental ensemble from the Godspeed You Black Emperor collective! This new group's sound is distinguished by layers of rich tremoloed guitar, organ drones and jazz inflected horns. Their closest kin in that Montreal music community is easily the heady improv jam driven Fly Pan Am, and their sonic resemblance is no coincidence. Feu Therese is the project of FPA guitarist Jonathan Parant, and as with most every branch of the mighty GYBE tree, folks from the other groups join in. Their self titled debut is a brooding dedication to Luc Ferrari. Five stormy disparate tracks ranging from six to twelve minutes.
MPEG Stream: "Ferrari En Feu"
MPEG Stream: "Tu N'Avais Qu'Une Oreille"

FEUD, THE Versus yr Unuiverse (Rosewood Union) cd 13.98
Tripped out, jazzy post rock from New York City: super varied and intersting; from droning Kraftwerkian electronica work outs to full bore free jazz freakouts to dirgey Slint rock instrumentals. On Rosewood Union, a British label that has become the new home for really cool and fucked up underground 'post rock.'

FEUHLER s/t (Ostinato Schallplatten/Dephine Knormal) cd 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The relative ease with which this German band outshines the post-rock-fanboy holy-grail trio Don Caballero (keeping in mind that we really like Don Cab), makes one wish that the general indie rock audience at large was harder to please. Then perhaps more bands would try to expand on the Don Cab sound instead of incessantly aping it, and more records would sound as jaw droppingly brilliant as this one. In place of Damon Che's non stop avalanche of 'Moby Dick'isms and DonCab's metal-in-post-rock's-clothing is a complex sonic tapestry of hypnotic drones and cyclical riffs. Feuhler take the droning single note repetition of Tony Conrad, the scraping stones of Loren Chasse, the heavy prog of Voivod, the dynamics of Slint, and the slowly evolving Reich-ish rock of Circle, and fashion a music at once emotive and heavy, intellectual and kick ass.

FEVER Too Bad But True (DHR) cd 12.98
Andee's favourite hip hop record of 1998, which originally came out on Alec Empire's Digital Hardcore label in Germany, has been released here in the States at domestic prices!
After a year of disappointment from big name hip hoppers (RZA, Method Man), DHR surprises us all with what may be the weirdest and best hip hop record of the year. Deep, dark, and disturbingly distorted. Murky, monotone, and menacing. Sort of like Sensational and Alec Empire having a fist fight in a dark alley!

FEVER Too Bad But True (DHR) lp 11.98
Andee's favourite hip hop record of 1998, which originally came out on Alec Empire's Digital Hardcore label in Germany, has been released here in the States at domestic prices!
After a year of disappointment from big name hip hoppers (RZA, Method Man), DHR surprises us all with what may be the weirdest and best hip hop record of the year. Deep, dark, and disturbingly distorted. Murky, monotone, and menacing. Sort of like Sensational and Alec Empire having a fist fight in a dark alley!

FEVER RAY s/t (Mute) cd 14.98
Fever Ray is the solo project for one Karin Dreijer Andersson, better known as half of the Swedish oddball electro-pop duo The Knife. Her voice, with all of the helium-tinged falsettos and pitch-shifted growlings, had always been one the most compelling aspects of The Knife. In that schizophrenia of multi-tracked voices and personalities, she sang duets with herself, adopting masculine roles in the downpitched vocals and her naturally pixie voice taking the feminine perspective, which she often affects in unnatural ways through harmonic phaseshifts and chorus effects. With the bouncing lurch of The Knife's rhythms, her tales took on seductively nightmarish proportions, with a grotesque witchiness and atypical Goth blackness which had much more Wolfgang Press to it than Siouxsie. So for her solo project, her voice with its inscrutable yet pansexual personalities finds itself even more central to the music.
This is certainly due to the more downbeat electronic arrangements that she produces on her debut album, which is wholly devoid of those awkward yet sleek big beat techno numbers which punctured The Knife's Silent Shout. Musically, she creates a plastic exoticism, which relates to no particular indigenous music but instead has been filtered from Martin Denny through Chris & Cosey to arrive here with fake bird sounds, canned congo drums and faux marimba vibes flitting amidst sweeps of digital synthesis and softened drum machine beats. It may be more low-key than The Knife, but Karin's still an oddly brilliant tweaker. There had been some rumors (you know, from the Internet) which raised questions as to if The Knife would be 'breaking up.' If that were indeed rooted in fact, Fever Ray should stand as a pretty great phoenix rising from those ashes.
MPEG Stream: "Triangle Walks"
MPEG Stream: "Now's The Only Time I Know"

FEVER RAY s/t (Rabid Records) lp 17.98
Fever Ray is the solo project for one Karin Dreijer Andersson, better known as half of the Swedish oddball electro-pop duo The Knife. Her voice, with all of the helium-tinged falsettos and pitch-shifted growlings, had always been one the most compelling aspects of The Knife. In that schizophrenia of multi-tracked voices and personalities, she sang duets with herself, adopting masculine roles in the downpitched vocals and her naturally pixie voice taking the feminine perspective, which she often affects in unnatural ways through harmonic phaseshifts and chorus effects. With the bouncing lurch of The Knife's rhythms, her tales took on seductively nightmarish proportions, with a grotesque witchiness and atypical Goth blackness which had much more Wolfgang Press to it than Siouxsie. So for her solo project, her voice with its inscrutable yet pansexual personalities finds itself even more central to the music.
This is certainly due to the more downbeat electronic arrangements that she produces on her debut album, which is wholly devoid of those awkward yet sleek big beat techno numbers which punctured The Knife's Silent Shout. Musically, she creates a plastic exoticism, which relates to no particular indigenous music but instead has been filtered from Martin Denny through Chris & Cosey to arrive here with fake bird sounds, canned congo drums and faux marimba vibes flitting amidst sweeps of digital synthesis and softened drum machine beats. It may be more low-key than The Knife, but Karin's still an oddly brilliant tweaker. There had been some rumors (you know, from the Internet) which raised questions as to if The Knife would be 'breaking up.' If that were indeed rooted in fact, Fever Ray should stand as a pretty great phoenix rising from those ashes.
MPEG Stream: "Triangle Walks"
MPEG Stream: "Now's The Only Time I Know"

FEVERDREAMS Essaouira (Crucial Blast) cd-r 6.98
Our friend Adam who runs the super cool Crucial Blast label, has, for over 6 years now, been quietly (and not so quietly) putting out some of the coolest shit around. From crusty Finnish metal to droning electronica to sparse folk to brutal power electronics. This new series of cd-r's, limited to 100 copies and nicely packaged in oversized DVD cases will only be available via Aquarius records (unless you get them directly from Crucial Blast). So don't blow it...
Feverdreams is dark and mysterious. A rumbling and shimmering miasma of soothing low end, staticky buzz, and occasional clatter and skree. Gorgeous slow building sound scapes with subtle non-repeating rhythms and with layers and layers of drone, whir, throb, and clang. This would be nightmare music if it wasn't so damn pretty.
RealAudio clip: "One "
RealAudio clip: "Two"
RealAudio clip: "Four"

FIELD MICE, THE For Keeps (LTM) cd 17.98
We've been loving the sweet, lush and lilting sounds of the Trembling Blue Stars for ages now, but we had no idea until recently that TBS frontman Bobby Wratton was also responsible for the genius twee pop of the Field Mice. From 1989 to 1991, the Field Mice were the jewel in the legendary Sarah Records' pop crown, making three records and a handful of singles, of some of the most gorgeously effervescent indie jangle pop ever. Super twee and fey, dreamy and drifty, with crystalline fingerpicked guitar, moody melancholy melodies, over shuffling electronic beats, simple acoustic drumming, wandering basslines, otherworldly female vocals, loads of precious indie jangle and of course Wratton's reverb drenched, dreamy soft boy vocals. Even a cursory listen reveals that certain modern bands (Belle And Sebastian anyone?) owe everything they are to these long forgotten musical rodents. So obviously, fans of Belle and Sebastian, who aren't already hoarding secret stashes of long lost Sarah singles, will be in swirling soft pop heaven, but folks who like stuff like Felt, Durutti Column, the Smiths, Trembling Blue Stars (obviously), Unrest, Teenage Fanclub, The Decemberists, Arcade Fire and other similar sorts of quirky blissed out pop shimmer should most definitely check out the Field Mice. This cd reissue contains For Keeps, their final album originally released in 1991, with all the tracks from the singles September's Not So Far Away and Missing the Moon. By the time For Keeps was released, the Field Mice had expanded to a five piece, and sounded like it, with big arrangements and lush production, extended drone-y jams and blissed out ambient jangle, definitely setting the stage for Belle And Sebastian and a legion of other twee pop outfits to come...
MPEG Stream: "Five Moments"
MPEG Stream: "Star Of David"

FIELD MICE, THE Skywriting (LTM) 2cd 17.98
We've been loving the sweet, lush and lilting sounds of the Trembling Blue Stars for ages now, but we had no idea until recently that TBS frontman Bobby Wratton was also responsible for the genius twee pop of the Field Mice. From 1989 to 1991, the Field Mice were the jewel in the legendary Sarah Records' pop crown, making three records and a handful of singles, of some of the most gorgeously effervescent indie jangle pop ever. Super twee and fey, dreamy and drifty, with crystalline fingerpicked guitar, moody melancholy melodies, over shuffling electronic beats, simple acoustic drumming, wandering basslines, otherworldly female vocals, loads of precious indie jangle and of course Wratton's reverb drenched, dreamy soft boy vocals. Even a cursory listen reveals that certain modern bands (Belle And Sebastian anyone?) owe everything they are to these long forgotten musical rodents. So obviously, fans of Belle and Sebastian, who aren't already hoarding secret stashes of long lost Sarah singles, will be in swirling soft pop heaven, but folks who like stuff like Felt, Durutti Column, the Smiths, Trembling Blue Stars (obviously), Unrest, Teenage Fanclub, The Decemberists, Arcade Fire and other similar sorts of quirky blissed out pop shimmer should most definitely check out the Field Mice.
Skywriting was the Field Mice's second album originally released in June 1990. This 2cd reissue includes that lp in its entirety as well as all the tracks from the EPs The Autumn Store and So Said Kay, two rare comp tracks and three unreleased tracks.
Skywriting found the Field Mice stretching out a bit occasionally displaying influences from the then burgeoning dance / ambient scene, with sequenced rhythms, samples, and almost funky rhythms, all mixed in and amongst more classic and timeless sweet pop songsmithery.
MPEG Stream: "Triangle"
MPEG Stream: "Canada"

FIELD MICE, THE Snowball (LTM) cd 17.98
We've been loving the sweet, lush and lilting sounds of the Trembling Blue Stars for ages now, but we had no idea until recently that TBS frontman Bobby Wratton was also responsible for the genius twee pop of the Field Mice. From 1989 to 1991,the Field Mice were the jewel in the legendary Sarah Records' pop crown, making three records and a handful of singles, of some of the most gorgeously effervescent indie jangle pop ever. Super twee and fey, dreamy and drifty, with crystalline fingerpicked guitar, moody melancholy melodies, over shuffling electronic beats, simple acoustic drumming, wandering basslines, otherworldly female vocals, loads of precious indie jangle and of course Wratton's reverb drenched, dreamy soft boy vocals. Even a cursory listen reveals that certain modern bands (Belle And Sebastian anyone?) owe everything they are to these long forgotten musical rodents. So obviously, fans of Belle and Sebastian, who aren't already hoarding secret stashes of long lost Sarah singles, will be in swirling soft pop heaven, but folks who like stuff like Felt, Durutti Column, the Smiths, Trembling Blue Stars (obviously), Unrest, Teenage Fanclub, The Decemberists, Arcade Fire and other similar sorts of quirky blissed out pop shimmer should most definitely check out the Field Mice.
Snowball was the Field Mice's debut album, originally released in 1989 as a 10" mini lp. This cd reissue also includes all the tracks from the first three singles as well as a rare compilation track. Snowball is maybe the weirdest of the bunch, with all that sweet jangle and shimmery pop glimmer, but structured around occasional drone-y almost krautrock like rhythms, brief glimpses of studio whirr and swoosh, and once in a while extended hypnotic bliss outs. At its root though, it's still simple and sweet, dreamy dreamy pop.
MPEG Stream: "Let's Kiss And Make Up"
MPEG Stream: "You're Kidding Aren't You?"

FIELD MUSIC s/t (Chrysalis) cd 14.98
Field Music are primarily Peter Brewis and Andrew Moore, but for their self-titled debut they're joined by string players Emma Fisk, Rachael Davis and Peter Richardson as well as sax player John Steele. You might've seen/heard the two lads before though. They're in a couple bands you might be more familiar with... Franz Ferdinand and Maximo Park. Who? Never heard of 'em. Hahahaha. Ahem, this project is far less punchy and rambunctious than either of their day jobs. The tunes are still very poppy, but in a much more gentle breezy fashion. Sort of a well-crafted cross between Sea And Cake, Pinback and Brian Wilson. Nice.
MPEG Stream: "If Only The Moon Were Up"
MPEG Stream: "Tell Me Keep Me"

FIELD, THE From Here We Go Sublime (Kompakt) cd 15.98
What's release without tension? What if there's no real release, just an ongoing tension? Like you are hovering over a brink of a precipice but somehow knowing you are not going to fall and die you really get into the powerful momentum of floating fixed in space between the universal expanse above and the bottomless nothing below. That is how The Field (aka Axel Wilner) fashions his tightly edited minimal trance compositions on his Kompakt debut, From Here We Go Sublime. Like the best Kompact releases, from The Pop Ambient series to Wolfgang Voigt's Gas albums, The Field make the most out of nothing much at all. But what incredible nothings! The evolving repetitions of finely honed razor-sharp edits off of bits of samples, such as the vowel sounds of words, belied by rudimentary drum programming only occasionally reveal their source, including a bit of Lionel Ritchie's "Hello" and The Flamingo's "I Only Have Eyes For You", more famously sampled by The Fugees. Dare we say it, This is sublime!
MPEG Stream: "Sun & Ice"
MPEG Stream: "Over The Ice"
MPEG Stream: "The Deal"