SHIRAISHI, TAMIO & SEAN MEEHAN In The City (Fusetron) 12" 14.98

SHIT, MARK Video Anthology (SPAME) dvd 11.98
When Brentley of SF's finest nerd-rock band Three Day Stubble brought these homespun dvds into AQ, he recommended wearing a diaper while viewing it -- i.e, 'cuz you're gonna shit yerself laughin'! While we didn't quite have that exact experience when we watched it, we did find ourselves put through the full spectrum of mental states -- shock, bummer, boredom, agitation and elation. The dvd is divided into five chapters that span fifteen years, and each one offers a home video glimpse into the life of the lad who calls himself Mark Shit. And we can tell you he was one intense kid! Sometimes hyper, sometimes bratty, often punk as fuck, but always completely focused on the video camera. In Cup's opinion, the high point musically is the second chapter named TDRtones Session -- intentionally or not, it features a claustrophobic performance of some pretty great, tightly wound propulsive post-punk. Songs include "Spratley Went To The Bathroom", "She Didn't Know I Was A Midget", "Gah Gah's Coming Out" and an odd very Hendrix-icated "Star Spangled Banner". The low point in every sense is the 'reunion'. You'll have to see for yourself.

SHUDDER TO THINK Curses Spells Voodoo Mooses (Sammich / Dischord) cd 12.98
This review comes courtesy of former Outpunk label head, current A.C.R.O.N.Y.M. label mastermind, gay gangsta and AQ pal Matt Wobensmith!
First time ever on CD, after being out of print for over a decade! Before "emo" was a noun, it was an adjective used to describe the sensitive, post-hardcore stylings of artistic DC punkers, who weren't afraid to cry in public and dedicate songs to trees. Some say Rites of Spring's 1986 self-titled debut album (Dischord Records) is the holy grail of emo. However, this album may well be that genre's defining document. The operatic wailings of Craig Wedren's falsetto -- not unlike Pere Ubu's David Thomas -- were a peculiar contrast to the band's more aggressive punk leanings. Says Craig of this era: "I joined a 'hardcore' group, we did not like each other's sound, they banged, I screeched ... [it] came out sounding, a little like, Ozzy?" From a time when "US hardcore" was mired in socio-political aggression and macho posturing, STT were perhaps a reaction -- ironically from within the ranks of DC bands that were so influential to that movement in the first place. This is a beautiful and enthralling album, impossibly melancholic, with perplexing lyrics from someone who's "heart is filled with 'All May Rise' and 'X Ray Eyes'". Lots of people know Shudder to Think's bizarre, dramatic alt-rock material from subsequent recordings for Dischord and later, Epic, from which most of their fan base is likely drawn. But this record -- while technically inferior and unpolished from a production standpoint -- is still many fans' favorite STT release. Reissue includes four bonus tracks from their first 7" and one unreleased cut as well.
MPEG Stream: "A Vampire's Proposal"
MPEG Stream: "Abysmal Yellow Popcorn Wall"

SMALLCOCK, DJ Yinyue (Dual Plover) cd 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Don't know much about this artist, but "Yinyue" is supposedly an hour long journey through Beijing via static laden radio transmissions collected and manipulated by DJ Smallcock. Essentially, these recordings (all clocking in at 3:33, by the way) are split second snippets cut together via pressing pause / unpause on a tape recorder whilst flipping through various stations on the FM dial. Totally fucking stupid. Any asshole can do this bullshit. I just can't believe Dual Plover actually pressed this (presumably in large quantities) on an actual factory pressed disc and not on a cd-r in a small run. Too bad someone has too much money to throw around and no good sense to put out something somewhat interesting.
RealAudio clip: "Piece Of Shit"

SMIGEL, JACOB Eavesdrop: A Wealth Of Found Sound (self-released) cd 8.98
Remember the first time you heard a crank call tape, or a compilation of found sounds, or an answering machine tape you bought at a thrift store? You probably don't remember exactly what it was you heard, but you definitely remember the feeling. The thrill of hearing someone else's private thoughts, glimpsing into the lives of complete strangers. It almost didn't matter what was on the tape, just the fact that you weren't meant to hear it was enough to make it funny and crazy.
But since then, we've been barraged with mediocre crank call records and boring collections of random phone calls. Like anything else, people don't seem to realize that it's not as easy as just slapping some recordings onto a tape and presto. If you're a crank caller, you need to have style, charisma, the whole idea is to push the limits while keeping someone on the phone long after a sensible person would have hung up. Give a listen to Longmont Potion Castle for the ultimate in "Why the hell don't these people just hang up"? If you're compiling a collection of found sounds, you have to have a good ear, a sense of what is actually interesting to listen to. Voices, subject matter, cuz it's not all that fascinating to listen to someone calling the dry cleaners or making a reservation to get their hair cut. But it IS totally fascinating to hear two women talk about the fact that they won't eat at Hamburger Hamlet because it's owned by a Lesbian, or hearing an instructional tape teaching women how to sell dildos door to door Tupperware style. Thus we have Jacob Smigel, a deft archivist with a keen ear for human foibles. This collection isn't necessarily laugh out loud hilarious (although it is sometimes) but what it is, is bizarre, curious, demented, poignant, and yeah funny. And it's not just what's on the tapes, it's the recording quality, some of the dialogue is difficult to hear, but the timbre and the weird tape hiss is interesting in its own. But ultimately, it's the wonderfully wide world of weird people that make collections like this worthwhile, and this is one of the best ones we've heard in ages. From the opening Hamburger Hamlet track, to the ultra brief second to last track where a woman calls to leet someone know she's happy they are pro choice and then asks him how his lawn is. In between is a totally baffling, completely mesmerizing procession of strange, confusional, cute and crazy conversations and messages. One man discusses the infection in his cock and how it swelled up to 2 and a half times its size, a girl painfully tries to reach a way too high note, a couple does some cocaine, argues a bit and listens to some country music, a woman balls out a deadbeat ex-boyfriend, a woman describes a truly disturbing relaxation technique, a man performs various jingles he's written, a woman sends her friend to the store, and needs her fuckin' Pepsi, a girl performs possibly the most painful karaoke EVER, a not very bright woman tries to rent 3 Men And A Baby on BETA, the Hamburger Hamlet women discuss the downside of charcoal broiling, a young man takes a French Horn lesson, various couples make tapes for far away relatives, boyfriends and girlfriends make tapes for their significant others, some really amazing square dancing announcing to "Elvira", a stammering young man reads his book report, and on and on and on. Each vignette, whether 30 seconds or 5 minutes, is completely riveting. Funny and fucked, weird and wonderful, a totally addictive listen.
Gorgeously packaged in a full color multi panel digipak with extensive liner notes.
MPEG Stream: "Hamburger Hamlet"
MPEG Stream: "The "Hee-Ahhh""
MPEG Stream: "Fun Ladies"
MPEG Stream: "Fuck'n Pepsi Now"
MPEG Stream: "BETA Video"
MPEG Stream: "Charcoal Taste?"
MPEG Stream: "How Can Women Do It?"
MPEG Stream: "Pro-Choice / How's Your Lawn?"

SOUND GUIDE TO THE TAILLESS AMPHIBIANS OF FRENCH GUIANA (CHRISTIAN MARTY / PHILIPPE GAUCHER) (CEBA/Centre Bioacoustique) cd 21.00
We're total suckers for frog records. And you all are too, judging from how many we sell. And why the hell shouldn't we be? Frogs are probably the greatest and most varied noisemakers in nature. In fact most of our favorite frog records, this one included, effortlessly surpass most of the thousands of meticulously crafted electronic records released every year. A gorgeous head spinning cacophony of squeals and shrieks and trills and hums and clicks and about a million other sounds that sound like they couldn't possibly be made by a tiny little frog. But here they are, in all their audial glory. A veritable symphony of strange sounds, separated by type of amphibian for your listening convenience. But these frogs aren't solo, they're nestled amidst a glorious world of crickets and wind and burbling brooks and various other insects and creatures. However, they are the featured performers on their tracks and you don't have to worry about not knowing which is the particular creature in question. Beautifully recorded, and meticulously documented, this is a treasure trove of amazing sounds, for the nature obsessed, the field recording connoisseur as well as lovers of strange sounds.
Hard to describe exactly what these beasts sound like, other than to say most of them don't sound like frogs. Some sound mechanical, some like other animals, there are frogs that sound like video games, like quacking duck, like Geiger counters, like the ping of undersea sonar, like woofing dogs, like ringing cellphones, like creaking bed springs, like someone rubbing on a washboard, like tiny little sirens, like a mewling baby, like an old fashioned alarm clock and yes, some of these frogs actually do sound like frogs...
So totally fascinating and amazing.
Comes with a huge booklet, with text both in English and French, about the recordings, each species of amphibian, and tons of gorgeous full color photos!!
MPEG Stream: "Allophryne Ruthveni"
MPEG Stream: "Dendrophryniscus Minutus"
MPEG Stream: "Bufo Guttatus"
MPEG Stream: "Bufo Margaritifer"
MPEG Stream: "Bufo Marinus"
MPEG Stream: "Colostethus Baeobatrachus"
MPEG Stream: "Dendrobates Ventrimaculatus"
MPEG Stream: "Hyla Boans"

SOUNDS FOR LITTLE ONES s/t (Dish Records) cd 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SOUNDS OF AMERICAN DOOMSDAY CULTS The Church Universal and Triumphant Inc. feat. Elizabeth Clare Prophet (Faithways International) cd 17.98
NOW AVAILABLE ON CD!!! Here's some of what what we wrote about this way back when it first came out as a vinyl release:
It's hard to believe this is real. In fact, it took a lot to convince Andee, who was sure this was some sort of elaborate prank. But it's one of those things that just makes you proud / embarassed to be an American. Elizabeth Clare Prophet purchased 24,000 acres in Paradise Valley, Montana and started The Church Universal and Triumphant, a creepy new age doomsday cult in which Prophet channeled spirits such as Jesus, Buddha, K-17, Morya, Quan Yin, Afra, Hercules, Mighty Victory, Astrea, Shiva, Pope John XXIII, and more. (Sort of like J.Z. Knight of Yelm, Washington and her channelling of "Ramtha" except even more scary.) Prophet and her husband stockpiled arms, built giant bomb shelters, and coerced their devotees to purchase their own survival equipment at exorbitant prices. Throughout its existence various members of CUT were indicted for kidnapping, lost custody of the children who belonged to the church and were investigated for tax exempt status and firearms violations. In 1995 former member Joeseph Pietrangelo Jr wrote a book condemning CUT entitled "Lambs to Slaughter: My Fourteen Years with Elizabeth Clare Prophet and Church Universal Triumphant".
But the thing that really puts CUT on the map for us is their way of conducting their religious services. The tapes of these services have been floating around for years already. Those of you familiar with Negativland's 1989 album "Escape From Noise" will already be familiar with an excerpt of one of the tracks on this album, as they used it for the track "Michael Jackson", and Steve Fisk has been using these tapes for years as well. This record features live recordings of Clare Prophet 'speaking' out against the evils of rock music. She sounds perfectly normal as she introduces her 'psalms' or 'songs' or 'speeches' or whatever they are. But when she gets going, it's amazing. And so goddamn insane sounding. Her rapid fire high pitched testifying sounds a bit like an impossible mix of an auctioneer, a yodeller, the guy who sings the directions at a square dance, Neil Hamburger huffing helium and variations of baseball's 'hey batter batter' chant only faster. It's like that sound you make when you sort of hum/breathe out and move your finger up and down between your lips making a sort of 'bebubebubebubebubebubebubebubebu' sound. It's one of the most amazing things we've ever heard! A must for all cult fanatics, new age withdrawal victims, seekers of the truly strange, and fans of extended, trancelike vocal techniques. Ever so highly recommended! We'd almost have made this cd edition our Record of the Week if we weren't certain that it would probably bug the heck out of more people than (like us) would love it!!
MPEG Stream: "Dedication To The Of The Beast And The Dragon - The Momentum Of Rock 'N' Roll"
MPEG Stream: "Call For Protection"

SOUNDS OF AMERICAN DOOMSDAY CULTS VOL. 14 The Church Universal and Triumphant Inc. feat. Elizabeth Clare Prophet (Faithways International) lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
It's hard to believe this is real. In fact, it took a lot to convince Andee, who was sure this was some sort of elaborate prank. But it's one of those things that just makes you proud / embarassed to be an American. Elizabeth Clare Prophet purchased 24,000 acres in Paradise Valley, Montana and started The Church Universal and Triumphant, a creepy new age doomsday cult in which Prophet channeled spirits such as Jesus, Buddha, K-17, Morya, Quan Yin, Afra, Hercules, Mighty Victory, Astrea, Shiva, Pope John XXIII, and more. (Sort of like J.Z. Knight of Yelm, Washington and her channelling of "Ramtha" except even more scary.) Prophet and her husband stockpiled arms, built giant bomb shelters, and coerced their devotees to purchase their own survival equipment at exorbitant prices. Throughout its existence various members of CUT were indicted for kidnapping, lost custody of the children who belonged to the church and were investigated for tax exempt status and firearms violations. In 1995 former member Joeseph Pietrangelo Jr wrote a book condemning CUT entitled "Lambs to Slaughter: My Fourteen Years with Elizabeth Clare Prophet and Church Universal Triumphant".
But the thing that really puts CUT on the map for us is their way of conducting their religious services. The tapes of these services have been floating around for years already. Those of you familiar with Negativland's 1989 album "Escape From Noise" will already be familiar with an excerpt of one of the tracks on this album, as they used it for the track "Michael Jackson", and Steve Fisk has been using these tapes for years as well. This record features live recordings of Clare Prophet 'speaking' out against the evils of rock music. She sounds perfectly normal as she introduces her 'psalms' or 'songs' or 'speeches' or whatever they are. But when she gets going, it's amazing. And so goddamn insane sounding. Her rapid fire high pitched testifying sounds a bit like an impossible mix of an auctioneer, a yodeller, the guy who sings the directions at a square dance, Neil Hamburger huffing helium and variations of baseball's 'hey batter batter' chant only faster. It's like that sound you make when you sort of hum/breathe out and move your finger up and down between your lips making a sort of 'bebubebubebubebubebubebubebubebu' sound. It's one of the most amazing things we've ever heard! A must for all cult fanatics, new age withdrawal victims, seekers of the truly strange, and fans of extended, trancelike vocal techniques. Ever so highly recommended! We'd almost have made this cd edition our Record of the Week if we weren't certain that it would probably bug the heck out of more people than (like us) would love it!!
RealAudio clip: "Invocation For Judgement Against And Destruction of Rock Music"
RealAudio clip: "Decree"
RealAudio clip: "Dedication To The Tackling Of The Beast And The Dragon-The Momentum Of Rock And Roll"

SOUNDS OF FROGS AND TOADS OF BOLIVIA (R. MARQUEZ, I. DE LA RIVA, J. BOSCH & E. MATHEU) Sounds Of Frogs And Toads Of Bolivia (Guia Sonora De Las Ranas Y Sapos De Bolivia) (Alosa / Fonoteca Zoologica) 2cd 37.00
We love frogs!!! Although the AQ website only offers two records of frogs (not counting the awesome and problematic musical group the Frogs), both HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, our personal collections seem to be bursting at the seams with field recordings of frogs. Never has there been a creature capable of producing so many impossibly unanimal like sounds. This gorgeously packaged and super deluxe collection comes from the wonderful Sittelle (it's not on their label, but they do distribute it) who in the past have brought us the sounds of rutting red deer, hillsides of pastoral cowbells and recordings of bats! So we knew this was going to be good. We were just a little unprepared for how good! It comes in a massive oversized jewel case with a 50 page booklet with extremely extensive liner notes, both in English and in Spanish, the amazing thing is there are almost 200 tracks, each one a different frog, and each track has specific liner notes as well as a full color photo of the frog! WOW!
But it's the sounds that have us all smitten with the world of frogs, and they don't get much more wild and weird and incrdibly varied than this collection right here.
There are of course a few of instantly recognizable 'croaking frogs', sort of nature tape style, but the majority here are completely bizarre and otherworldly (but without being aggravating). The frog calls typically sound nothing like frogs, here's a random sampling of what some of these frog call sound like to us: metal ping pong balls clinking together, a rapid fire mechanical woodblock like on one of those crazy pizza joint one man band player piano thingies, high pitched metallic scrapes and squeals, clinks and clanks like a broken music box, a barking seal, chirping birds, the sound of a stick hitting a tin can, a rusted hinge, a creaking door, a quacking duck, a strange looped industrial rhythm, a crying child, a bicycle horn orchestra, Tuvan throat singing, shortwave interference and it just goes on and on. It's almost like listening to some avant music concrete sound artist. But just to prove this is indeed the sound of nature, you also get the surrounding ambient sounds, rushing water, children playing, wind blowing, birds chirping, crickets, rustling leaves, it's quite a gorgeous and perplexing musical journey through nature. And quite possibly our favorite frog record yet!!!!
MPEG Stream: "Bufo Castaneoticus"
MPEG Stream: "Bufo Granulosus Major"
MPEG Stream: "Bufo Paracnemis"
MPEG Stream: "Melanophryniscus Rubiventris"
MPEG Stream: "Hyla Andina"
MPEG Stream: "Hyla Boans"
MPEG Stream: "Hyla Lanciformis"
MPEG Stream: "Hyla Leali"
MPEG Stream: "Osteocephalus Sp."

SOUNDS OF JAPANESE DOOMSDAY CULTS Music By Aum Shinri Kyo Leader Shoko Ashara (Faithways International) 7" 6.50
This all time favorite, a primo slab of WTF weirdness, available again, and a bit cheaper too, but who knows for how long...
From Faithways, the label what brought us that extreme example of American religious fuckery The Church Universal And Triumphant, comes two songs from the leader of the Japanese Cult Aum Shinri Kyo. The cult made history in 1995 when they set off sarin nerve-gas in a crowded Tokyo subway, killing 11 people and injuring 5000 (they were later charged for the murder of another 14 people -- some quite gruesomely, as described within the accompanying booklet.) The nearly blind leader Shoko Ashara fancied himself a bit of a singer / songwriter, much like fellow cult leaders Charles Manson, David Koresh (whose rock band is featured on the label's first release) and even the lovable Anton LaVey. Musically, Shoko's songs most resemble the latter cultist's works, but with an even greater whimsy that he could be jokingly referred to as Casiotone For The Pathologically Deranged. Better yet, take Nagisa Ni Te, drop the vocals a couple octaves, change the instrumental accompaniment to casio keyboards, throw in melodic hints to "It's A Small World After All" and you can almost hear the weird world of Shoko Ashara.
Comes with a 6 page booklet detailing the cult's history.
RealAudio clip: "Sonshi's March"
RealAudio clip: "Lord Death's Counting Song"

SOUNDS OF NORTH AMERICAN FROGS Sounds Of North American Frogs (Smithsonian Folkways) cd 12.98
First "The Conet Project", now this. Well, okay, this isn't spooky like those shortwave spy broadcasts, but the sounds these frogs make have some similar qualities to the morse code or "noise stations", and like The Conet Project is both bizarre and fascinating. The 92 tracks of the croaks, trills, screams, mating calls, and other forms of amphibian vocalisations were conceived, narrated, and documented by Charles M. Bogart. Travelling from the far reaches of Alaska to the deserts of Arizona to the foothills of Tennessee, Mr. Bogart presents a labor of love in selecting these field recordings and their descriptions. The dry delivery of Mr. Bogart's indexical texts is unnervingly and humorously dissimilar to these frogs calls. Just like The Conet Project's unintentional (?) aural terror, The Sound of North American Frogs features a wide variety of drones and clicks that could be from some RLW or Pierre Henry experiment with tape loops. So highly recommended that several unnamed staff members of AQ have been over heard "singing" along with the Pig Frog and the Carpenter Frog.

SOUNDS OF THE EARTH : FROGS (Oreade Music) cd 12.98
"The ceaseless croak of frogs creates an immensely penetrative and authentic environment... Offers pure natural sounds, no voices are added. No music is added." (From the back of disc.) The perfect companion to the 'Sounds of North American Frogs' if you didn't care for the vocal interruptions or if you want to test your knowledge by identifying the frogs on this recording...
We find this to be best when played LOUD!

SOUNDS OF THE EARTH : LOONS (Oreade Music) cd 12.98
Loons! Andee was immediately like, automatic Record Of The Week! Allan had to be the voice of reason. But let's talk about the voice of the loon...
We've always been of the mind that no matter how amazing some music sounds, nature has most likely produced sounds that are just as cool. Whether it's the gentle droning rumble of winds, or the clatter of stones, or the bizarre polyphony of a frog filled swamp, or the jagged sound of melting / cracking ice. It's all completely and utterly music to our ears. We get the same thrill from a bunch of frogs that we get from a bunch of guitars. Beautiful sounds are beautiful sounds. So after reviewing records of the sounds of caves, the sounds of frogs, purring kittens, barking sled dogs, insects in stored foodstuffs, recordings of the Earth's magnetic fields, melting ice, the bioelectrical impulses of plants, crackling woodfires, chirping dolphins, the songs of forest blackbirds and more, we come to the Loon. Yes, the loon, with it's strange whippoorwill like call, a bizarre resonant trill, one that is instantly recognizable, but that at the same time is completely alien sounding. This is pretty much a straight field recording. Random birds, and insects, and the occasional sound of water, but the occasional call of the loon is what is most distinct. This is a gorgeous, lazy, sun dappled slice of creek life, makes us want to hang up the ol' hammock, stick the fishing pole in the dirt and just doze the afternoon away. Or for those of you too grim or evil for lazy afternoons in the hammock by a stream, and have two cd players at your disposal, this record would sound just perfect mixed with some funereal doom like Skepticism, adding just the right amount of foresty flavor!
MPEG Stream: "Loons"

SOUNDS OF THE EARTH: DEEP INTO THE EARTH (Oreade Music) cd 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
From the same folks that brought us the frogs recording reviewed in list #83, comes another in their "Sounds Of The Earth" series. "Explore the passages of the vast caverns deep down into the earth. Experience the mysterious atmosphere with echoey waterdrips and clear trickles, combined with a strange wind-tunneling effect" --culled from the liner notes to this disc of subterranean recordings. No additional production, no musical interludes, just cave recordings. A very nice field recording piece. Drip drip drip...

SOUNDS OF THE EARTH: SEA & DOLPHINS (Oreade Music) cd 12.98
From the same company that brought us Frogs, Woodfire, Deep Into The Earth and Whales comes another appropriate nature recording: dolphins. Everybody loves dolphins, they're the clowns of the sea. And yet something's not quite right here. Oreade music is a little disingenuous about the recording's execution. Like their other releases in the series, Oreade claims this recording "offers pure nature sounds; no voices are added, no human-induced noises are heard". Which is true, I suppose, but the implication is that this is somehow a pure, unfettered, field recording. But it seems that the producers weren't happy with Flipper's performance on a dry mike and decided to soak him with a little 'large hall' reverb. And I guess just plain a cappella squeals weren't good enough either so they mixed in some above water recordings of lapping swells to keep people interested: hence, the "Sea & Dolphins" title. Which is all a bit disappointing. But enough uptight, uber-purist, nature sound bitching, it does at least come with a nice poem about dolphin love.
RealAudio clip: "Sea & Dolphins"

SOUNDS OF THE EARTH: WHALES (Oreade Music) cd 12.98

SOUNDS OF THE EARTH: WOODFIRE (Oreade Music) cd 12.98
We've been stocking selected titles in this import nature sounds series (croaking frogs, dripping caves, singing whales) while ignoring the cheesier entries (wind chimes I, wind chimes II, evening birds, etc.). Here's another disc in series that makes the AQ-cut: 72 minutes of a crackling woodfire. As always, best if listened to at an unnaturally loud volume. "Warm your hands and thoughts to the woodfire sound on this album" is the suggestion, but we think this might also be a good purchase for black metal fans eager to sonically picture an authentic church burning (you'll have to imagine the cries of the priests though). Or, if you have two stereos, play this simultaneously with Oreade's "Deep Into The Earth" cave-sounds disc and simulate life as a prehistoric caveman. Roasting frogs is another, somewhat sicker possibility.

SPOONBENDER 1.1.1 Stereo Telepathy Academy - 2nd Edition (Studio Version) (The Helen Scarsdale Agency) cd 15.98
Edition 2 (studio version) of the Spoonbender 1.1.1 Stereo Telepathy Academy trilogy...
Simply put, this is a weird-as-hell, warped, late night, difficult-listening 'trip' for all you AQers looking for truly strange atmospheres... Okay, first things first; Spoonbender 1.1.1 is not a side-project of I Am Spoonbender. The duo of Dustin Donaldson and Cup consider Spoonbender 1.1.1 to be a self-contained project that ventures outside the 'populist avant-tronics' of I Am Spoonbender into the realms of sidereal soundtrack music, the transmission of ideas through subliminal means, manifestations of 'third mind' techniques, and the non-logic of chance operations. Not so different on paper, but put another way: there are no drums, singing, or 'songs' in the 1.1.1 project. The material for Stereo Telepathy Academy was debuted during a live performance in which Spoonbender 1.1.1 performed with (appropriately enough) Psychic TV; however, for the second edition of Stereo Telepathy Academy, Spoonbender 1.1.1 recomposed all of the material in the studio -- expanding and elaborating on their live performance, and making for a distinctly new and different listening experience that stand on its own with or without the visual accomaniment. That said, as in the first edition, Stereo Telepathy Academy features "text taken from one film, overlaid on images from another, and the audio score was written around a different, third film... the results appear to be intentional" for a sort of 'Wizard Of Oz/Dark Side Of The Moon' for telekinetics.
The J.G. Ballard-esque text was taken from David Cronenberg's 1969 student film 'Stereo', a faux-documentary detailing the work of a Dr. Luther Stringfellow, which concerns surgical procedures for the advancement of telepathic communication, while the visuals came from 'Crimes Of The Future' (another Cronenberg film, which transpires in an urban dystopia populated by pedophiles and oozing victims from a female-eliminating cosmetics related catastrophe). As creepy and sterile as the images were, we have to say that its Canadian-ness was positively charming, somehow. In their score, Spoonbender 1.1.1 lunges ominously forward with an otherworldly radiance of slow motion electronic pulses and melodies that retain an even darker hue than that of Klaus Schulze, Coil (e.g. Coilans / Time Machines), and Alan Splet, who are probably Spoonbender 1.1.1's closest sonic neighbors. Given the nature of their intense, masterfully detailed sea of electric sound, Spoonbender 1.1.1 hedged their bets that Cronenberg's pseudo-scientific spoken text would situate nicely against their audio. And indeed, this freakish document of prepared-chance context, atmosphere and appropriation works exceptionally well.
PLEASE NOTE: In keeping with the numerological-binding-of-3 theme, there will be 3 released versions of Stereo Telepathy Academy, all with different packaging. The first version arrived as a cd-r edition of 111 copies sporting a white glove as an allusion to 'Crimes Of The Future.' (only a few remaining in stock!!). This is the second edition, a proper disc that comes with letterpressed artwork in an edition of 333. The final edition will be in an edition of only 3 copies!
MPEG Stream: "Edition 2 Excerpt 1"
MPEG Stream: "Edition 2 Excerpt 2"

SPOONBENDER 1.1.1 Stereo Telepathy Academy - Live In San Francisco 2004 (Seismic Seance Recordings) cd-r 11.98
Edition 1 (live version) of the Spoonbender 1.1.1 Stereo Telepathy Academy trilogy...
Simply put, this is a weird-as-hell, warped, late night, difficult-listening 'trip' for all you AQers looking for truly strange atmospheres... Okay, first things first; Spoonbender 1.1.1 is not a side-project of I Am Spoonbender. The duo of Dustin Donaldson and Cup consider Spoonbender 1.1.1 to be a self-contained project that ventures outside the 'populist avant-tronics' of I Am Spoonbender into the realms of sidereal soundtrack music, the transmission of ideas through subliminal means, manifestations of "third mind" techniques, and the non-logic of chance operations. Okay, not so different on paper, but put another way: there are no drums, singing, or 'songs' in the 1.1.1 project. The Stereo Telepathy Academy cd-r documents Spoonbender 1.1.1 live in SF while performing with (appropriately enough) Psychic TV.
The J.G. Ballard-esque text was taken from David Cronenberg's 1969 student film 'Stereo', a faux-documentary detailing the work of a Dr. Luther Stringfellow, which concerns surgical procedures for the advancement of telepathic communication, while the visuals came from 'Crimes Of The Future' (another Cronenberg film, which transpires in an urban dystopia populated by pedophiles and oozing victims from a female-eliminating cosmetics related catastrophe). As creepy and sterile as the images were, we have to say that its Canadian-ness was positively charming, somehow. Spoonbender 1.1.1 composed a musical accompaniment for these texts and images to a third film whose identity is both unknown and irrelevant. As Donaldson announces in the introduction to this performance / recording (a sort of 'Wizard Of Oz/Dark Side Of The Moon' for telekinetics), Stereo Telepathy Academy features "text taken from one film, overlaid on images from another, and the audio score was written around a different, third film... the results appear to be intentional". In this score, Spoonbender 1.1.1 lunges ominously forward with an otherworldly radiance of slow motion electronic pulses and melodies that retain an even darker hue than that of Klaus Schulze, Coil (e.g. Coilans / Time Machines), and Alan Splet, who are probably Spoonbender 1.1.1's closest sonic neighbors. Given the nature of their intense, masterfully detailed sea of electric sound, Spoonbender 1.1.1 hedged their bets that Cronenberg's pseudo-scientific spoken text would situate nicely against their audio. And indeed, this freakish document of prepared-chance context, atmosphere and appropriation works exceptionally well.
Special handmade packaging comes with a single white glove (as seen in the film) for your edification.
PLEASE NOTE: In keeping with the numerological-binding-of-3 theme, there will be 3 released versions of Stereo Telepathy Academy, all with different packaging (versions 2 and 3 will be non-cd-r, and on a proper label, with pressings of 333 and 3 copies respectively). Available here at AQ exclusively, this first version is limited to 111 cd-r copies only, so you know what to do!
MPEG Stream: "excerpt 1"
MPEG Stream: "excerpt 2"

SS HELL CAMP: CULT CLASSICK VOL. 1 OST (Cult ClaSSick) cassette 7.98
We wish we had a million of these, and we wish it was a cd instead of a cassette, cuz this is so weird and freaked out and creepy and awesome that had it been a cd and not probably already out of print, we most definitely would have made it a record of the week.
The lost soundtrack to an obscure video nastie, SS Hell Camp, one of those Nazi prison movies, lots of nudity, torture, violence, and while many of us here consider ourselves to be experts in all things fucked and freaky old movies, none of us had ever heard of or seen this glorious piece of cinematic trash.
But based on the soundtrack alone, it sounds like it's probably the greatest bad movie EVER. Manic pianos, buzzing synths, creepy ambient music, weird seventies keyboards, orchestral percussion, the sounds of marching jackboots, German soldiers, machine gun fire, babies crying, women screaming, super bad acting dialogue, and inexplicably, a grunting panting beast right in the beginning. Maudlin, and cheesy, cinematic and overly dramatic, lots of this sounds like extra low budget Goblin, and if you can imagine Goblin scoring a Nazi prison flick, well, we barely need to say anything else. The recording is murky and lo fi, as if it was dubbed right off of an old VHS tape (which it probably was) but only adds to the mood and feel and flavor. When we first threw this on, it sounded exactly like some of the music from those fake trailers between the two movies in the Grindhouse double feature. Which is obviously what those guys were going for.
We are gonna track down this movie eventually, but until then, we're watching it in our heads every time we play this chunk of trashy cheesy awesomeness.
Super low budg packaging, and crazy limited so these will probably fly out of here, and odds are that'll be it...

STURM, BOB. L. Music From The Ocean (Composer Scientist Recordings) cd 9.98
This record seems like it was made for AQ. A scientist, Bob Sturm, attaches microphones to buoys to record different oceanic events. These events translated into sound become gorgeous deep drones, and haunting alien soundscapes. Right up there with the singing telephone wires of Alan Lamb or the subtle vibrations recorded by Toshia Tsunoda. A natural phenomenon that can be studied and explored as sound. That would be enough right there, since the sounds speak for themselves. Gorgeous shimmery ripples, dark muted metallic buzz, if we didn't tell you, you'd probably believe this was some strange limited drone cd-r or a new release from Jonathan Coleclough or Andrew Chalk. But Sturm is a scientist, and these sounds are just one part of his study of the ocean, the atmosphere and their behaviors. So the booklet is packed with serious scientific data, graphs, measurements, algorithms and photos. Included is a research paper AND a Flash presentation on the "sonification of ocean buoy spectral data" originally presented at the 2002 International Conference On Auditory Display held in Kyoto, Japan. Holy crap. This is some dense stuff. But even if the science is way over your head, or all you want is some deep dark mysterious music, then dig in. The track lengths tend to be short, but they manage to blend into long stretches of drifting dreamy drone, very minimal and soft focus, many of the tracks have a strange metallic tang, that sounds more like some alien reverb, giving the drones a steel string like buzz, a few tracks are much more active, high end hiss, and prickly fuzz, but for the most part, the oceanic data translates into huge cavernous rumbles, delicate glistening murmurs, or soft billowing clouds of whirring vibration. So completely captivating. And for the drone obsessed among you, absolutely essential!
MPEG Stream: "5000V"
MPEG Stream: "3000V"
MPEG Stream: "35000v + 30"
MPEG Stream: "2800v - 1330"
MPEG Stream: "15000v - 10360"
MPEG Stream: "Flipl(Cumsum(Randn(1,64)))"
MPEG Stream: "9-Band"
MPEG Stream: "Random Spectral Bins"

SUN CITY GIRLS High Asia Lo-Pacific (Abduction) 2cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
"High Asia Lo-Pacific" comprise volumes 9 and 10 of the Sun City Girls' Carnival Folklore Resurrection series. High Asia, disc one, finds the Girls returning to their quasi-ethno folk which they seem to do so well. Using primarily stringed instruments -- guitars and lutes, bowed and plucked -- augmented with some nice harmonium work and a bit of piano. Middle Eastern flavored melodies are the vehicle of choice for most of these tracks with the Girls using their trademarked falsettos and nasal murmuring. Gocher's drumming remains low in the mix throughout with the exception of the sort of rocking "Philly SOUL LAO" and "Old Glory's Fade". Three tracks of the Sun City Girls' alter ego as a dark-hippy jam band are the exception to the rule in this collection and their presence represents more of a refreshing change than the wearying endlessness that an entire album of such No Neck Blues Band-esque skronkery can be. Disc two, Lo-Pacific, is a 40 minute mix-track of short wave and field recordings. With the exception of a section in the middle entitled "Blood of Guadalajara" -- contributed by John Vallier -- featuring a radio play of a 'cock' fight (get it?) , all the recordings were made by the Sun City Girls during their travels throughout Asia between 1988 and 1998. Quite a nice montage of street scenes, odd animal noises, calls to prayer, arguments, strange radio transmissions and more. There's even a snippet of a numbers station (Russian maybe?) slipped into the mix. The inclusion of this second disc definitely pushes this release near the top of the list of our favorites in the C.F.R. series.
RealAudio clip: "Draco Kilik"
RealAudio clip: "Qator Sidaan Yong"
RealAudio clip: "Ruby SOUL LAO"
RealAudio clip: "Lo-Pacific (excerpt 1)"
RealAudio clip: "Lo-Pacific (excerpt 2)"
RealAudio clip: "Lo-Pacific (excerpt 3)"

SUZUKI, DAISUKE D.D.D. (Idea) lp 18.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Daisuke Suzuki is mostly known as the proprietor of Siren Records in Japan, home to some amzing drone records from the likes of Jonathan Coleclough and Andrew Chalk (including the universally acclaimed "Sumac" album). But Daisuke has also contributed sound works on occasion to Ora (the loose collective of Chalk, Darren Tate, Colin Potter, Coleclough, and others). "D.D.D." marks Daisuke's first solo project as well as the debut release from Idea records, beginning a series of vinyl only field recording releases. The first side of this album features two recordings that Daisuke made at Zenpukuji Lake in Tokyo, where the winter ducks had been congregating, quacking, splashing, and generally being obnoxiously cute. The ducks themselves seemed to have been very interested in Daisuke's recording gear, as you hear them closing in on the microphone, bumping into it, and diving off into the lake. The second side of the album features the choral chirps and striations of late night crickets. Great care has been taken to get these recordings to be as good as they can be, and puts "D.D.D." up with the Douglas Quin and Bernie Krause field recordings. Be warned this is a super limited production, and we got the *last* five copies available.

THAI ELEPHANT ORCHESTRA Elephonic Rhapsodies (Mulatta) cd 15.98
If there's one record that seems to be most identified with Aquarius Records, other than the infamous Conet Project (those recordings of shortwave spy transmissions) lots of folks would pick the Thai Elephant Orchestra, an ensemble of elephants who play gamelans and gongs and harmonicas and all sorts of custom made, super-sized instruments. So here we are three years later, and we get a little sonic update on what Phong, Mae Kot, Aet, Jo Jo, Chapati, Prajuab, Prathida, Luuk Khang, Tao, Wanalee and Gaew, the elephants responsible for one of our favorite records ever, have been up to. Quite a bit it seems as the elephants have just released their sophmore record (which is farther than most human bands make it!), and have made huge progress in their musicianship, playing short composed tunes and long drawn out meandering pieces with improvisation. Elephants have always been popular with children, and well, elephants playing musical instruments that's every child's fantasy right? Well project directors Dave Soldier and Richard Lair obviously think so as they've seemingly geared this record specifically toward children, with some bubbly rainbow lettering on the cover, and a cringeworthy introduction from "your Uncle Dave and Uncle Richard" as they introduce each elephant and describe their personalities. But don't let that stuff keep you from getting into this record. It's even better than the first. Beautifully recorded and of course masterfully played.
The first third of the record are the elephants playing on their own, some of Soldier and Lair's 'compositions' and the sound is divine. Hypnotic and spare, tinkling and clattering chimes, thumping drums, booming gongs and gamelan melodies, all meandering lazily through a hazy dreamy percussive soundscape. As with the first record, if you weren't told, you'd most definitely think this was some sort of avant tribal minimal outift, maybe No Neck Blues Band or one of the many foresty Finnish folk groups. It's totally primal and mesmerising, weirdly melodic and sonically soothing.
The next chunk of the record features the elephants again playing composed pieces, this time playing with human musicians, and the aforementioned effect is even greater, with Soldier's keeing violin, or Jami Sieber's moaning cello, or any of a handful of traditional Thai instruments played by the elephant's mahouts (trainers) perfectly complimented by the spare clattery backdrop. The effect of listening to some out rock, avant folk group makes it almost impossible to believe these are elephants playing this beautiful music. It also begs the question of how we have progressed and moved musically forward for centuries, yet the people furthest out on the edge, pushing the limits the farthest (NNCK, SHOTM, and any one of hundreds of avant musicians) seem to be aspiring to sounds that nature has been making for millenia or is capable of making without humans or electricity, or any of the stuff most of us rely on to play music. Pretty awe inspiring.
The final portion of the record seems yet again directed at children as it is famous songs about elephants ("Baby Elephant Walk" etc.) played by small ensembles and accompanied by the elephant orchestra. Cute but not absolutely essential elephonic listening. Thankfully, in the liner notes Soldier and Lair explain that in the future they plan to "revert to the 'classical' format: long elephants-only instrumentals with minimal 'chamber music' mixing." We can't wait. But that said, there is so much good stuff on Elephonic Rhapsodies, definitely don't be put off by the young person vibe. Also in the liner notes, there is an invitation to bands and musicans all over the world to come and record with the elephants. We can hardly contain ourselves we have so many good ideas....Boris and the Thai Elephant Orchestra? Sunburned Hand Of The Man and the Thai Elephant Orchestra? Peter Brotzmann and the Thai Elephant Orchesta? Bjork and the Thai Elephant Orchestra? Hatebeak and the Thai Elephant Orchestra???
MPEG Stream: "Phong's Solo"
MPEG Stream: "The Birth Of Ganesh"
MPEG Stream: "Little Elephant Saddle"

THAI ELEPHANT ORCHESTRA s/t (Mulatta Records) cd 15.98
First it was Frogs of North America invading our record bins, then it was Antarctic Seals and Penguins, followed by Insects in Stored Foodstuffs... now it's Elephants from Thailand! Brilliant recordings by non-human, um, sound-artists that we just can't get enough of here at Aquarius. In this case, the elephants are not just making their natural noises, they are indeed playing instruments! You may have read about this project in the New York Times -- when we found out about it we immediately contacted the label and ordered a whole bunch (based also on the on-line sample we heard at www.mulatta.org) and now here they are. These are elephants from a elephant preseve in Thailand who have been trained to play specially-built instruments (many marimba-like instruments similar to the traditional Thai renat, as well as such things as harmonicas, drums, and even a stringed "electric bass"), but they haven't been trained *what* to play, it's all improvised with minimal human guidance! Yet it's definitely music. It was kind of an experiment to find out how the creatures might express themselves, and we'd say it was very successful indeed. If we didn't know these were elephants, we'd think this was a strange No Neck Blues Band recording or something. Imagine a stumbling, primitive hippy folk jam on gamelan instruments, but not one that's random or erratic. The elephants play steady beats, the struck gongs or chimes interspersed with their vocalizations as well. With no overdubs and few edits this is certainly a very impressive recording!
The Thai Elephant Orchestra was dreamed up, and this disc produced, by David Soldier (New York musician and academic) and Richard Lair (American expatriate elephant expert, who advises the Thai Elephant Conservation Center where this project goes on). The two came up with the idea that elephants, being social animals, might enjoy playing music together, and proceeded to investigate... Happily, not only did the elephants enjoy playing, they were good at it, demonstrating that they were able to decide what sounded good (to them) and what didn't.
The booklet features photos and detailed, fascinating liner notes by both men. Here is what Soldier says the criteria was for the construction of the instruments, which were made by New York instrument builder Ken Butler (of "Gravikords, Whirligigs..." fame):
"1. The instruments must be suitable to the elephant's anatomy, which means large instruments operated by the trunk.
"2. The instruments must withstand jungle heat, humidity -- and the elephants.
"3. The instruments should require minimum upkeep.
"4. The instruments should have a Thai sound, because the regular daily audience is Thai, the mahouts would enjoy the music more, and the elephants have heard Thai music all their lives."
Some more great tid-bits from the notes: "The elephants took easily to the harmonica, which sparked the first elephant music fad: one morning I arrived to hear the sound of harmonicas from all over -- from the hills and from the river. The elephants were walking in from the forest playing harmonicas, which they hold easily in the tip of their trunks."
"The elephants didn't seem interested in the bells or theremin. At first they were spooked by the synthesizer keyboard, but later two animals were entranced by it. They disliked playing Ken's reed instruments with a large mouthpiece, or rather, trunkpiece. A mahout told me they were afraid that a snake might jump into their nostrils!"
As sort of bonus tracks, in addition to the forty-plus minutes of elephant improv, there's also some non-instrumental elephant field recordings, several tracks of humans and elephants playing together, and even a few traditional Thai songs played by humans, about elephants.
Sure there's a bit of simple amusement to be found here just from the concept alone, but in actual fact the music these elephants make is, to our ears at least, quite beautiful. We could go on and philosophize about how this project speaks to the relationship between man and animals in this world, but we'll leave those thoughts for you to explore if you chose to check out this album, which we highly recommend! Amazing and wonderful.
RealAudio clip: "Jojo"
RealAudio clip: "Duo For Renats"
RealAudio clip: "Harmonica Music"
RealAudio clip: "Heavy Logs"

THUJA All Strange Beasts Of The Past (Emperor Jones) cd 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Thuja, beautiful Thuja. While around here (San Francisco) this group of quiet, psychedelic improvisors doesn't get quite the attention we feel they deserve, they do have a devoted, international following of fans. Fans who will be thrilled with these two new releases: a new full-length cd (their third for the Emperor Jones label after one on tUMULt) and a cute lil' 3" cd-r installment in their own Jewelled Antler "Library Series".
All Strange Beasts Of The Past, the full-length, is also a record that should make Thuja some new fans if only folks get exposed to it. It's certainly their most acoustic instrument based, melodic, and folky sounding record to date, veering close to the territory explored by Thuja member Steven R. Smith on his Hala Strana releases. Not that they've abandoned their sticks and stones and drone, in fact you'll find that the last track -- they're all untitled as usual -- is entirely full of ambient grit and rattle and clank and the abstract drone sounds of undisclosed detritus found in the woods. This mellow, maybe menacing, dark forest epic takes up almost half of the disc's running time, and could easily have stood as a fine 3" release on its own. But it makes a great finale, after the shorter, more musically 'conventional' (by Thuja standards) instrumentals that preceeded it. It's as if they finally reached the dragon's lair suggested by the album's title (and wonderful cover photo and other graphics). They're creeping about, exploring a hopefully uninhabited cave, littered with strange glittering treasures and terrible old bones.
MPEG Stream: "track 2"
MPEG Stream: "track 7"

TSUNODA, TOSHIYA O Respirar Da Paisagem (SIRR.ecords) cd 14.98
We got this sometime last year, but our supplier ran out before we had a chance to list it. Now we've gotten some in again direct from the label, so any Tsunoda fans who missed this have another chance to grab a copy now. It's another installment of his amazing field recordings, microscopic sonic examinations of everyday vibrations -- everything from a signboard creaking in the wind to the rumble of a fishing pier and the tide. (And yes, if you've never heard Tsunoda before, it's good listening, opening up a whole new world that your ears aren't normally focussed enough to hear). The booklet provides information on each track, like notes on location, technical details of microphone placement and such. In addition, there's some more general words from Tsunoda about how he catagorizes the sounds he's documenting here: events on "boundary lines", spacial context, and "observation and object"... giving some conceptual insight into Tsunoda's interest in the meticulous recordings of the seemingly mundane with which he's made his career.
MPEG Stream: "Cicada and window"
MPEG Stream: "Deck of a wharf"

TSUNODA, TOSHIYA Pieces Of Air (Lucky Kitchen) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Lucky Kitchen -- those bright-eyed and bushy-tailed purveyors of anthropologically minded, but nevertheless cutiepie electronica -- has commissioned Japanese field recording minimalist Toshiya Tsunoda to do an album for their "Sparkling Composer" series (though he's not exactly a composer, more of a conceptual recordist). Tsunoda's previous releases "Extracts From Field Recording Archive Vol. 1" and "Vol. 2" were incredibly stoic offerings of amplifications of very quiet resonant frequencies, and stand as some of the most challenging, unprocessed field recordings we've ever heard here at Aquarius. Some of us here prefer those discs to this new recording but others really like this new album too. We all agree that this album has all of the prerequisites to be interesting, with Tsunoda's elaborate explanations of the technical set-up and circumstances of his recordings (such as the reflection of prepared test signals of very specific frequencies against a wall, or the placement of microphones in bottles or pipes, exposed to radio broadcasts or the sea). The liner notes certainly make for interesting reading, we'll not try to paraphrase them here. We were touched, though, by this comment: "Track 14 exceeded the input level at the time of recording and thus needed the technical help of my best friend and engineer Yukiharu Higashioji."
And the results of these recordings are fascinating and indeed beautiful listening. Much of "Pieces of Air", though proclaimed by Lucky Kitchen as an example of Tsunoda's sense of "child-like wonder", might actually make for a great horror movie soundtrack. Vaguely sinister thumps, humms, splashes, and drones abound. One of the best tracks is the last, recorded in Istanbul during the noontime call to prayer. Half-audible chants, drifting throught the air from across the city, mingle and merge in an ambient haze.
RealAudio clip: "inside of a pipe - radio and water level"
RealAudio clip: "inside of a pipe at the seashore 1"
RealAudio clip: "inside of a pipe at the seashore 2"
RealAudio clip: "echo of a room"
RealAudio clip: "Islamic chant"

V/A Americana Volume I: Vox Populi (Citizen Kafka Productions) cd-r 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
True "Outsider Music" lovingly culled from the thousands upon thousands of bad records out there, and don't get us wrong, these are certainly very bad too, but bad in a good way. By Outsider Music we don't mean music made in the Great Outdoors, we mean music made on the fringes often without the support of any established label or industry behind it, music made by amateurs and weirdos and wannabes. You gotta love 'em. There's a brilliance to the energy and hard work and passion found in these tracks, which were compiled by Citizen Kafka for his WFMU radio show (Kafka works a lot with Pat Conte, better known as the legendary guy behind the Secret Museum of Mankind compilations.)
Contained herein: solo warblings courtesy Howard Finster (better known for his fantastic outsider art sculptures), multi-track tape manipulations sounding like early cartoon music a la Raymond Scott, singer songwriter fare performed in a van to an audience of one dog, amateur poems set to music by seasoned "pros", vanity songs played by hired orchestras, Beat poetry performed over psychedelic squiggles, hotel-bar bands playing Smokey Robinson, kids tunes, retarded young adults performing "This Little Light of Mine", music performed on the 1973 Comet (an instrument that has 400 notes per octave!), even a bonus track from electronic children's music pioneer Bruce Haack, himself the object of several recent reissues. 25 tracks in all, 71 minutes of either great listening or aural torture (it's up to you to decide.)
Lots of liner notes and pictures, just be aware that this is a cd-R (and given that, we are sorry about the excessive price of this disc, but it's based on what the compiler is charging us). This recording is for those of us folks who think The Shaggs are all that.
RealAudio clip: BOBBY BROWN "Macho Joe Medley"
RealAudio clip: SPECIALISTS "Groovin'"
RealAudio clip: EDITH BOXHILL AND STUDENTS "This Little Light of Mine"

V/A Animals of Africa: Sounds of the Jungle, Plain & Bush (Nonesuch) cd 12.98
We're pretty damn excited about Nonesuch's decision to reissue the entire Explorer Series on CD. The series was spearheaded by Nonesuch chief Teresa Sterne who ran the label from 1965 to 1975 (when she was canned by Warner bean counters who had just acquired the label and its parent Elektra.) Sterne earned her stripes through her championing of modern American composers Edgard Varese, Elliott Carter, George Crumb and Scott Joplin. The Explorer Series was another undertaking entirely, and was the first time anything close to a thorough collection of recordings of world music had been attempted for commercial release. Dating as far back as 1966, with David Lewiston's recording of Balinese "kecak" chant, the entire series is nearly 100 discs in total! Broken up into 8 regions there are recordings from Africa, Indonesia/South Pacific, Tibet/Kashmir, Latin America/Caribbean, East Asia, Central Asia, Europe and India. Quite and undertaking. All the discs include the original liner notes that were included with the LPs so, as the editor warns at the beginning of each booklet: "general cultural perceptions or specific factual information may have occurred since then." Each release comes with a handsome outer sleeve, the liner notes are accompanied by nice black & white photographs and though the lengths of the CDs are generally between 30 & 40 minutes, the nice price fairly makes up for it.
More fuckin' weird animal sounds? Fuck Yeah!!! You must have noticed by now that we here at Aquarius go a little nuts when we get a good recording of some animals kicking out the hella mad squeals, growls, hoots, clicks and snorts. And when their sounds are unlike anything we're likely to hear on a walk through the Marin headlands or in Tilden Park, we get pretty excited. What's more, many of the animals on this collection -- for those who haven't heard them before -- sound nothing like what one's intuition would suggest. For instance, who would think that the rhinoceros, weighing in at 2000 pounds and capable of goring any one of us like a twinkie with its horn, would have a larger vocabulary than a series of menacing snorts? But au contraire, the rhino -- as captured here -- has, in its mating call, one of the cutest inquisitive mewls you'll likely ever hear. It sounds almost like it's on the phone giving positive reinforcement to the hippopotamus on the other end complaining about the way the lion has been acting of late. Or how about the Hyrax, a small East African mammal about the size of a rabbit (and a distant relative of the elephant of all things), that makes a loud growling noise not unlike someone trying to start a chainsaw. But that's not all, you get the Vervet monkey with its complex vocabulary announcing to all its mates that a leopard is on the prowl. And not to seem biased towards the primates' side of the story, the producers also included the leopard's growling complaints about the monkeys' behavior. And that's just the beginning! You also get Zebras (they sound a lot more like coyotes or dogs than horses), Wildebeest (think frogs), Lion (say no more), Hyena (god, hyenas are freaks! no matter how many times you hear them, they never lose their charm), Wild-Dog (someone scrubbing a plate glass window clean with a gerbil), Silver-Backed Jackal (parrot?), Elephant (elephant), and last -- but certainly not least -- the hippopotamus (on the other end of the line with the rhino.) Originally released by Nonesuch as part of their Explorer series in 1973, it'd take the most tenacious DJ to find a copy of this on vinyl so pick it up on disc today. Absolutely essential!
RealAudio clip: "Hyrax"
RealAudio clip: "Rhinoceros"
RealAudio clip: "Hyena"

V/A Art Of Field Recordings Vol 1 (Dust-To-Digital) 4-cd box 68.00
Dust To Digital is the new Smithsonian Folkways, every one of their releases fantastically complete, meticulously researched, gorgeously presented, often in a way that has you digging music you might have assumed you wouldn't otherwise.
In the past they've given us the Goodbye, Babylon collection of gospel music, packed in a silkscreened wooden box and snuggled up next to clumps of raw cotton, the Fonotone Records collection, old time bluegrass, blues and folk, housed in a cigar box, with a hardcover book and a bottle opener, the I Belong To This Band compilation of Sacred Harp Recordings, and now this, The Art Of Field Recordings, a 4 disc set, culled from 5 years of field recording, collected by archivists Art and Margo Rosenbaum, and collecting all manner of musical Americana, blues, rhythm and blues, gospel, country, gospel, spirituals, religious hymns, ballads and almost anything they stumbled across.
If you LOVE Harry Smith's Anthology Of American Folk Music set, and have been hankering for more, this will absolutely hit the spot. Or if you always think about buying the Harry Smith box for someone and wish they didn't already have it so you could, well here's the answer to your problem. The recordings are amazing, super intimate and personal, many of them a cappella, lots of them including the various bits of conversation that took place before and after, making it feel like you were sitting right there on the porch. The discs are separated onto four discs, each with a particular focus, instrumental and dance, blues, religious, and one disc that is a sort of sampling of all of the above and more, even including some Mexican folk, a German traditional, and other songs that maybe didn't fit perfectly into those genres.
Includes a massive book, with a huge essay and tons of notes on every song and each performer.
The packaging is a little strange, maybe not up to the D2D standards we're used to. A super nice thick box, housing a big perfect bound book, but the cds are in paper sleeves, and laid on corresponding colored squares, separated only by a weird little foam 't' adhered to the bottom of the box. But it hardly matters as the music inside is so completely fantastic. Recommended bug time. And pretty much the ideal gift for your blues/folk/country obsessed loved ones (especially the ones who own and love the Harry Smith anthology)!

V/A Atomic Platters (Bear Family) 5cd+1dvd box 195.00
Holy crap! This is just about the most amazing box set we've ever seen! The second we heard about it, we knew it was going to be good, but we weren't prepared for just HOW GOOD. Not sure how many of you are familiar with Bear Family Records, but they're a German label who specialize in super elaborate, incredibly detailed and well researched releases, especially box sets, running the gamut from the women of Sun Records to the Everly Brothers to Ernest Tubb to Perez Prado to Flatt And Scruggs and on and on. Always very expensive and often hard to get, but once you lay your eyes and ears on one of their releases you realize it was worth all the trouble and worth every penny. And never was it truer than with Atomic Platters. This years in the works set is a five cd, DVD, hardcover book, box set collecting "Cold War Music From The Golden Age Of Homeland Security", 5 plus hours of fifties and sixties, rock and roll, R&B and soul, either warning us of the dangers of Communism and the impending atomic war, or more playfully using the A bomb and Uranium and Communism as metaphors for love and romance and partying ("You Hit Me Baby Like An Atom Bomb", "Atomic Baby", "Fujiyama Mama", "Uranium Rock", etc.). Scattered throughout are loads of civl defense spots, most appallingly naive and utterly ridiculous, there's Groucho Marx explaining that we have a good chance of surviving an atomic war, Art Linkletter warning us to not use the phone in case of an atomic attack, and lots of other misguided warnings and advice from Bob Hope, Tony Bennett, Fred MacMurray, Tom Lehrer, Pat Boone, Connie Francis, Don Pardo, Johnny Cash, Boris Karloff and lots more, as well as tons of bizarre civil defense dramatizations and creepy little Leave It To Beaver style vignettes. Then there's the music, lots of favorites you've heard on other comps, but an amazing amount or material you've never heard (and probably never thought you'd hear) anywhere as well as totally obscure tracks from some not so obscure artists. Some of the more recognizable folks: Roy Acuff, The Sons Of The Pioneers, Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan, Bo Diddley, Dexter Gordon, The Louvin Brothers, Carl Perkins, Bing Crosby, Bill Haley, Doris Day, Hank Williams and more, but the lure is definitely the hundred or so other tracks, all catchy or bizarre or both, from a wild cast of one hit wonders.
As if that weren't enough, there is also a disc containing two full length spoken word records released in 1961, If The Bomb Falls and The Complacent Americans, both ridiculous and paranoid, laughable and goofy, but also sort of sad and creepy. Wow. Then there's the DVD which contains 9 short films, over two hours of educational films, teaching us about Communism, the impending Atomic War, and the infamous "Duck And Cover" method of surviving an atomic bomb attack (and we're fairly sure that the narrator of one of the films is none other than Thurl Ravenscroft, the voice of Disneyland's Haunted Mansion, and the singer of the "You're A Mean One Mr. Grinch"). Finally, there is the book, a massive 11" x 12" hard cover tome, chock full of illustrations, liner notes, photos, and a full page description with pictures and all sorts of extra info for every track in the box. Unbelievable. This is absolutely essential for all lovers of strange sounds and weird music as well as being perfect for history buffs too. And as it's that gift giving season, we can't possibly imagine a more perfect and amazing gift! WOW!
These are a bit too expensive to keeep a bunch in stock, but if you want one let us know and we'll be getting as many as we need next week!
MPEG Stream: GROUCHO MARX "Civil Defense Spot: Excellent Chances"
MPEG Stream: SLIM GAILLARD QUARTETTE "Atomic Cocktail"
MPEG Stream: FAY SIMMONS "You Hit Me Baby Like An Atomic Bomb"
MPEG Stream: BOB HOPE "Civil Defense Spot: Pattern Of Survival"
MPEG Stream: THE BUCHANAN BROTHERS "Atomic Power"
MPEG Stream: UNKNOWN "Take The Step (Grandma's Pantry)"

V/A Bosavi: Rainforest Music From Papua New Guinea (Smithsonian Folkways) 3cd 25.00
A fantastic package here: 3 cds (that's 193 minutes!) of musical/field recordings spanning 25 years, documenting the pre-industrial culture of the indigenous people of Papua New Guinea (y'know, it's an island to the north of Australia) and their rainforest sound-world. Recorded and compiled by ethnomusicologist Steven Feld, who also provides the very detailed, wonderfully informative text and photos found in the thick booklet accompanying these cds (all packaged together in a cardstock slipcase). Disc one starts "Bosavi" off with examples of how this ancient culture is also very much current and living -- nineteen tracks of the new, secular guitar-based "string band music" that began to flourish in the 1990s, arising from the island's relatively recent independence and the influx of Western instruments and musical forms. Gorgeous stuff indeed. Feld's notes provide translations of the lyrics and contextual information, not that any is really needed to appreciate the beauty of these string bands' music. Disc two brings us the sounds of everyday life, which involves a lot of singing and music, traditional work-songs (and accompanying work-sounds) being the focus here. Absolutely riveting, as it's not hard to allow youself to enter into the audio field with your imagination. And disc three introduces us to the ritual music of these rainforest-dwellers, from weeping funerary chants to ceremonial drumming. Kudos again to Feld and Smithsonian Folkways for their fine work in compiling these sounds and bringing them out of the forest to our stereos.
RealAudio clip: KEMULI STRING BAND "Oh no!"
RealAudio clip: GUSUWA STRING BAND "Long ago"
RealAudio clip: A MEN'S WORK GROUP "Clears a new garden"
RealAudio clip: ULAHI AND EYO:BO "Sing with afternoon cicadas"
RealAudio clip: AIBA "Seance 'gisalo' song with weeping"

V/A Broken Hearted Dragonflies: Insect Electronica From Southeast Asia (Sublime Frequencies) cd 14.98
The first recording in the Sublime Frequencies catalog to not focus on the noise people make, Broken Hearted Dragonflies gives a voice to our insect brethren in Southeast Asia, as recorded by Tucker Martine in Laos, Burma and Thailand in 2000. The disc starts off like any other "traditional" insect recording: lots of cicada-like whining and chirping, but gradually turns to sound unlike all the rest. As one particular insect in the field begins to slowly sweep up in pitch like an oscillator on a synthesizer. A short time later, the clashing buzz of insect varieties begins to grate against their own harmonies and sounds much like either a clever DSP patch or the aliasing sound of a poorly sampled instrument. In other words, it all sounds hardly organic. In fact, in the field recording genre, we'd have to place this one in the same bizarre category as Douglas Quin's Antarctica recordings. The Raster-Noton sounds of nature. We're periodically reminded of our bucolic setting only by the steady hoots and coos of the native birds. You will undoubtably share our initial skepticism regarding the purity of these field recordings, but it is emphatically stated by the recordist that "these recordings were not processed, the insects actually sound like this!" Absolutely amazing stuff! Features liner notes by none other than Hakim Bey.
MPEG Stream: "Morning Fanfare"
MPEG Stream: "Brood X"

V/A Celebrities... At Their Worst! (Mad Deadly Worldwide Communist Gangster Computer God) 2cd-r 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Completely hilarious bloopers will keep you in stitches. Andee keeps telling the story of how he had to listen to Joe from Souled American imitating the drunken John Wayne! Everyone from William Shatner to Elvis, Colonel Sanders, Tom Brokaw, Liz Taylor, Billie Holiday, The Beach Boys, Barry White, Casey Kasem (of course), Jack Palance, and more.

V/A Celebrities... at Their Worst, Volume 2 (Mad Deadly Worldwide Gangster Communist God) 2cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Guaranteed to be answering machine fodder for eternity, this is "2 1/2 more hours of bad acting, bad comedy, bad rock'n'roll, bad everything." Bloopers and profanity recorded but never ever meant for release, from 62 personalities including Barbra Streisand, Robin Williams, Stevie Nicks, Linda McCartney, Hank Williams Jr., Jim Morrison, Elton John, Tiny Tim, William Shatner, Brian Wilson, James Brown, Buddy Hackett, George Burns, Dean Martin, and the entirety of the out-of-print live Venom 7" put out by Ecstatic Peace, the one that was edited so that it consisted mainly of ridiculous between-song banter (if you can call comments like "Hell yeah!" banter).

V/A Chamanes Et Possedes (Shamans and Possessed) (Buda Musique) cd 15.98
This compelling compilation brings together tracks from a bunch of different releases in Buda Musique's Musique Du Monde series to provide a global, pan-cultural perspective on traditional shamanic ritual music. Here you'd definitely find some wild and wonderful examples of musical expression made by and for shamans and other "possessed" persons from places as diverse as Indonesia, Iran, Siberia, Haiti, Vietnam, Ecuador, Guyana, and Brazil. From the always-incredible Cak chant of Bali to Voodoo frenzies, from the anti-suicide ceremony of a Siberian shaman to the hallucinogenically-enhanced mouth-bowing of an Amazonian healer, this is both some great listening and a fascinating reminder of the universal human desire to transcend this world and find strength and succor in what to some is a very real spiritual realm. Some of the selections demonstrate the communal, celebratory energy needed to make contact with spirits, while others seem to derive their power from the depth of feeling evident in a singer's solo performance. 11 tracks, 60 minutes, an excellent international "shaman-sampler" indeed.
MPEG Stream: "Siberia: Nganasan shamanic ritual"
MPEG Stream: "Ecuador: Shuar shamanic ritual (Jivaro)"

V/A Crash! Bang! Boom! (Rhino) cd 14.98

V/A DJ Drank's Greatest Malt Liquor Hits cd-r 11.98
VERY LIMITED. And we think the blurb on the back of the cd says it best, so we'll just quote it:
Before the appropriately named Alkaholiks DJ/producer E-Swift hooked up with King Tee and DJ Pooh to work on a series of 60-second St. Ides TV and radio commercial spots that they had been commissioned to do: complete with a budget that allowed them to bring in some of the best emcees of the day. These rap commercials were really really good (they sound better than most commercial rap crap today!) and were so immensely popular at the time (early 90's when commercial radio didn't play nearly as much rap as today, esp. West Coast artists) that they resulted in listeners jamming radio station request lines at stations like Wild 107, San Francisco just to hear Cube or the Geto Boys rap about their favorite high-octane malt liquor. Not surprisingly with lyrics like Cube's "Get your girl in the mood quicker, get your jimmy thicker, with St. Ides malt liquor," it wasn't long before controversy soon overshadowed the advertising campaign. Outraged protests followed particularly in African-American and Hispanic communities where malt-liquor billboards and posters were defaced. Additionally the St. Ides commercials were publicly criticized by the U.S. Surgeon General and the New York State Consumer Protection Commission and drew fines from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, as well as the New York State Attorney General's Office. Additionally Korean grocers boycotted St. Ides, but for a different reason, for their use of Ice Cube as their spokesperson. Their protest was based on Cube's derogatory lyrical comments about Koreans in his album "Death Certificate." (Note: McKenzie River, the San Francisco-based maker of St. Ides, consequently temporarily discontinued using Ice Cube.) But the biggest criticism of the St. Ides commercials was that it used hip hop/rap music, a genre most popular with teenagers at the time, to sell malt liquor directly to underage drinkers. This was further enforced when St. Ides blatantly marketed a nonalcoholic drink for kids, boldly using the St. Ides name/logo (check out the lyrics to Ice Cube's "Crooked I For All Ages" track #30). Overall the reaction to the St. Ides ads was so intense that G. Heileman Co., the national brewer that had created the St. Ides label, disavowed any connection with St. Ides. And eventually the commercials were banned altogether and never heard/seen again.
With Ice Cube, Yo-Yo, Geto Boys and Scarface, Snoop Dogg, Wu Tang Clan, Eric B & Rakim, EPMD, and many more. 30 tracks in all. VERY LIMITED.

V/A Folk and Pop Sounds of Sumatra Vol. 1 (Sublime Frequencies) cd 14.98
We're pretty damn excited by Sun City Girls 33.3 percenter Alan Bishop's new Sublime Frequencies label. "Dedicated to acquiring and exposing obscure sights and sounds from modern and traditional urban and rural frontiers" Sublime Frequencies is slipping on the shoes apparently discarded by such pioneering labels as Smithsonian Folkways, Nonesuch Explorer, et al. Unlike previous explorers in such unheard music, Sublime Frequencies is not restricted by academic or commercial purposes. The latter probably deserves a bit more explanation; for where much of the post-Explorer purveyors of "world music" shamelessly produce an endless slough of slick garbage that sounds like the crap you can hear on any U.S. top 40 radio station merely sung in another language (Christ, if I had a wooden nickel for every fuckin' starry eyed NPR music review extoling the uniqueness of some generic world music outfit that combines electronic music with traditional folk, yadda, yadda, yadda the world's forests would be clear cut by now) the recordings you'll hear presented by Sublime Frequencies come from the cracks in the pavement of the culture makers. Through field recordings (many made by Bishop himself in his travels), radio and shortwave broadcasts some of the most fucking great music and audio you've never heard has been culled together. Balls to fidelity, none of the artists here would be allowed within 10 miles of a Putamayo AR executive, this is the punk rock of field recordings!

Assembled from cassettes acquired by Alan Bishop through trade or purchase in 1989 while traveling through Sumatra, "Folk And Pop Sounds" contains some of the most obscure recordings of the three initial CD releases from Subliminal Frequencies. Located on the furthest Western edge of the Indonesian archipelago, Sumatra is big (as big as California) and widely unexplored in the audio realm in comparison with its neighboring islands to the East, Java and Bali. The disc begins with the Haba Haba Group in which a male singer is accompanied by flute, two alternating gongs and percussion and secondly by an unknown Sumatran Dangdut (crazy overdriven pop with a heavy Indian film music influence). The most immediately noticeable difference in these recordings from Sumatra to Bali & Java is the overt Arabic influence on the music. The Dangdut track even sounds similar to the music on a Somalian CD, "Jamiila" which we used to sell here years ago before it went out of print. As if to admonish us against generalizations, another later Dangdut track, with runaway farfisa organ, pleasant arppegiating electric guitar and female vocals sounds not dis-similar to the "keroncong" music of The Steps CD from Java released on Warn Defever's Time Stereo label. While the disc may begin innocently enough, the sequencing of the tracks seduces the listener into the strange world of Sumatran music. The very Arabic sounding Indang Pariaman which features a female singer who's melody line interweaves beautifully with end blown wooden flute and some more incredibly nutty buzzing electric keyboard (one can only imagine that the sound is intended to imitate a double reed instrument of old) is moved along by jovial electric bass and casio-rhythm. The combination of acoustic and archaic electric instruments is shamelessly wonderful. Later an orchestra of sorts, complete with violin, electric organ, bass, drums, female voice leads us down a fragrant path that's oddly reminiscent of a Sun City Girls track. Speaking of which, though this one technically isn't, there are a couple of tracks on here which indeed are songs covered by the Girls, can you figure out which ones? Along with the songs proper included here, there are some great excerpts from dramas. The first instance begins with sweet flute and what's supposed to be a rooster crowing, but emulated by what sounds like an old air raid siren played through a broken megaphone. A melodramatic dialogue ensues between a terribly afflicted female and a stoic male voice. needless to say, this one comes highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: HABA HABA GROUP "Sitogol #1"
MPEG Stream: UNKNOWN "Piso Somalim #1"
MPEG Stream: PIMP RUBIAH "Sri Mersing"

V/A Good For What Ails You - Music Of The Medicine Shows 1926 - 1937 (Old Hat) 2cd 28.00
This is most definitely a lost corner of old timey rhythm and blues music that we had not really thought about too much, let alone even considered there could be a huge amount of lost and undiscovered music worth collecting and releasing. But all we can say now is WOAH. It would take a lot for any collection to rival the also recently released second volume of American Primitive early 20th century gospel recordings, but this one comes darn close. Unlike American Primitive, with its haunting otherworldliness, the tracks here are more about fun and entertainment. This was post Civil War, before radio, or TV, when folks often got their entertainment (as well as elixers and whatnot) from travelling medicine shows. Two discs of fun and funny, playful, foot stomping, catchy and kooky, even a bit randy and risque. Twangy guitars, banjo, fiddle, even kazoo woven together into rollicking blues vamps underpinning tales of no good women, no good men, food, money, cars, cats and dogs, sickness, cops, parents and anything else folks might worry or obsess or want to hear songs about. Packaged in a beautiful six panel digipak, with a MASSIVE seventy page book packed with liner notes on each performer and every track, tales of old medicine shows, an eyewitness acount of travelling in a medicine show, and an amazing batch of rare and never before seen photos!
MPEG Stream: DADDY STOVEPIPE & MISSISSIPPI SARAH "The Spasm"
MPEG Stream: GID TANNER AND RILEY PUCKETT "Tanner's Boarding House"
MPEG Stream: LIL MCCLINTOCK "Don't Think I'm Santa Claus"
MPEG Stream: DALLAS STING BAND WITHCOLEY JONES "Hokum Blues"

V/A Hilarity & Despair (Sebastian Speaks) lp 11.98
Not sure if this is exactly 'hilarious' as the title implies, but it sure is creepy, and unsettling, and at times very very annoying. But in that way we can never seem to get enough of. Hilarity & Despair is a collection of found, lost and purloined answering machine tapes, an uncomfortably voyeuristic glimpse into the private telephone lives of random strangers. Hints of unseemly behavior, small town scandal, infidelity and marital strife abound, often so extreme it's funny, but more often so intense it makes you feel kind of, well, dirty. Plenty of pissed off moms and girlfriends, many calling back over and over and over, increasingly upset with each call, some apologetic boyfriends, slurring drunks, lots of drama, but there are a handful of phone calls that are just plain FUCKED UP: unexplainable weirdness, strange voices, indecipherable messages, unexplained sounds, completely irrational rants, and those are the calls that make this an essential addition to the ever growing 'what the fuck' section of your collection.

V/A Hiss (Touch) cd 16.98
New sampler from one of our favorite labels, Touch, this time round a sampler of wares previously released. This is the perfect chance for those who are unfamiliar with this truly great label's output to become acquainted. Among the cuts found here are tracks by Evan Parker vs Disinformation, an excerpt from the Santa Pod cd (recordings of the Santa Pod drag car raceway in England), another from the "Runaway Train" lp (radio transmissions between the operator of an out of control train and the home office), I Saw It All Happen... (recordings of a life support system), EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena) specialist Raymond Cass describing his contact with alien voices, Daren Seymour & Mark Van Hoen (of Scala and Locust), and much more.

V/A Hollerin' (Rounder) cd 16.98
Truly amazing and strange collection recorded in Spivey's Corner, North Carolina in 1975 & 1976 during the annual "Hollerin'" contest. Developed out of a need for communication over long distances long before walkie talkies were invented, Hollerers soon developed their own unique hollers for various emergency situations. This disk contains some of the most advanced developments in Hollerin' and as such has some of the most amazing sounds you'll ever hear coming out of a human throat at high volumes.

V/A Human Breakdown of Absurdity: MSR Madness Vol. 3 (Carnage Press) cd 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The series that started with the classic "Beat of the Traps" lp continues, with dozens more examples of "amateur lyrics ground through the song poem mill". Rodd Keith fans will weep with joy.

V/A I Remember Syria (Sublime Frequencies) cd 16.98
That it's the first double disc in the Sublime Frequencies series says something about I Remember Syria. Recorded by Mark Gergis (Monopause / Neung Phak, Porest) in 1998 and 2000, I Remember Syria is an impressive collection of sounds, interviews and music from a country that's essentially unknown to the western world. Vilified by Bush, Rumsfeld et al. There's really no access to the wonderful culture of Syria. Gergis successfully attempts to alleviate that with the two plus hours presented here. Recorded using a stereo mic. and minidisc recorder, and subsidized with excerpts from television and radio. Disc one focuses on the city of Damascus, while disc two features recordings from throughout Syria. Along with recordings of street musicians, wedding processions, prayers, mosque interiors and open air markets are brief interviews with Syrian citizens reflecting on the US Govt. and the west in general. I Remember Syria is an impressive and unique audio documentary of a country that deserves more positive exposure.