MISS KITTIN & THE HACKER First Album (International Deejay Gigolo) cd 16.98
Joining the international ranks of the new wave / electro resurgence are Germany's Miss Kittin & The Hacker, alongside Fischerspooner, and Adult. The foul-mouthed Miss Kittin fronts this duo as the Teutonic ice diva complete with an omnisexual appetite driven by fame and cocaine -- or at least that's who she wants us to believe she is. At the opposite end of the spectrum is The Hacker, a wallflower technician who crafts a relentless electro minimalism of jet black grooves somewhere between the disco production of Giorgio Moroder and the jackbooted synthesis of Nitzer Ebb. Much like the grand jokes told in utter sincerity by Alec Empire and his Atari Teenage Riot, Miss Kittin & The Hacker succeed in realizing irony by constructing a larger-than-life facade that plays with the stereotypes of new wave - as a sterile and quite often vacuously stupid form of music easily dated from the '80s. Yes, Miss Kittin & The Hacker do make sterile, vacuous, and utterly stupid music; but they present it as an overblown hyperbole of theatrical nonchalance and slinky panache. There's no way you can take Miss Kittin seriously with her desires to be Frank Sinatra as she coldly beckons for her lover to "Suck my dick. Lick my ass. In limousines we have sex with my famous friends. So nice." So dumb and so good.
RealAudio clip: "Life On MTV"
RealAudio clip: "Frank Sinatra"
RealAudio clip: "Stripper"

TROUM Tjukurrpa: Part Two Drones (Transgredient) cd 16.98
Troum's second installment in their "Tjukurrpa" trilogy is self-evidently subtitled "Drones" (and makes us ask, the first one wasn't?). Since their days in the prolific isolationist ensemble Maeror Tri, the two members of Troum continue to masterfully craft incredible dronework through densely processed sounds, mostly originating from guitars and bass, but have also used vocal chants, lutes, accordion, and percussion. "Tjukurrpa" translates as the physical, spiritual, and psychological state of dreamtime for the Australian Aboriginals, symbolizing Troum's intention to construct a cathartic transcendence through their hypnogogic drones. Such agendas may hedge themselves into the earnest flakiness of New Age-isms, but the dreams that Troum externalize through their music are incredibly grim, but not without their ashen beauty. Such nightly visions translate as an ever-shifting fog of shadowy sound, that billows, pulses, and fluctuates with the same fluid invasiveness of a wintery fog through a forest. Troum's success comes from the revelation of details within these miasmic drones, which at times are simple sonic whisps that decay through washes of digital reverb, and at others are massive harmonies which emphatically protrude from the ambience below. Troum's "Tjukrrpa: Part 2" stands as darker versions of the buried folk of Flying Saucer Attack or the sleepytime bliss of My Bloody Valentine. Very highly recommended work from one of the most consistently great bands working today!
RealAudio clip: "Trahan"
RealAudio clip: "Tiefenrausch"
RealAudio clip: "Dhren"

SURFACE OF THE EARTH (Corpus Hermeticum) cd 16.98
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New New Zealand noise, courtesy of Bruce Russell's fine label.

DEATH SQUAD Intent (Spastik Kommunications) video 20.00
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Right off the bat, I'm not sure whether this video from Death Squad is more of a stupid spectacle like MTV's "Jackass," or an Industrial production worthy of comparisons to autopsy-film era SPK, or as a very sad piece of confrontationist art that purposefully seeks to terrify its audience. The simple fact that Death Squad -- the former moniker of San Francisco's Michael 9 -- can invoke such nebulous responses is indicative of his theatrical prowess.
The first portion of this video is a live documentation of a performance Death Squad gave at The Lab back in 1999 called "Intent." After starting off with a backing tape of  blasting screeches and power electronics / death industrial noise accompanied by two video projections of medical footage, war atrocities, and putrefaction, Michael switches on lamp revealing that he is at a desk, with a small box of razors, a syringe, a gun, and a box of bullets. The assumption is that the needle is for heroin, and Michael taps his arm and shoots up. As the backing noise increases in intensity with higher frequencies, he picks up the razors and begins slicing his forearms. Michael then proceeds to load the gun, knocks the desk over, and menacingly stalks through the space, screaming and pointing the loaded gun at members of the audience. At this point, the documentation of the performance gets rather vague, as you can't really see Michael acting out his agressions on the audience. Yet, there are plenty of people quickly leaving the space, and the video also contains several written confessionals from members of the audience decrying this performance. The second video is almost tame in comparison, situated much more within the aforementioned SPK agenda of exposing society's "cathedral of death" as public spectacle in which catharsis is actively pursued, but never actualized.
Michael 9 seems to truly believe that there are *no* absolutes in culture and society, thus there is no one that can wield a moral judgement, claiming that his performances are not art. If Linda Montano and Tehching Hsieh can qualify their shared life from 1983-1984 in which they were physically bound together by a rope, as art, then shouldn't Michael 9 be able expose his nightmares in a public venue? As art? I can't honestly say whether I approve or disapprove of this work, which left me quite uncomfortable and disturbed, even in witnessing it through the safety of a television. And I can't say if I would have shit my pants had I personally witnessed Death Squad's "Intent" performance at The Lab. But it's quite possible. Proceed with caution.

ILLUSION OF SAFETY In Opposition To Our Acceleration (Die Stadt) cd 17.98
Back in the early '90s, a 19 year old kid made his first mark upon music as "the guitarist from Illusion Of Safety." That kid then went on to produce a couple of interesting records amongst his huge catalogue of sonic eccentricities, always seeming to be in the right place at the right time. It's unfortunate that Jim O'Rourke (the kid in question) would become the darling of the alt.rock and electronica circuits, while most of his fans would slight Illusion Of Safety as a second rate Industrial act. While the comparison between O'Rourke's pop-dork persona and Illusion Of Safety's explorations into sonic phenomonology is like apples and oranges, the overall quality of this Illusion of Safety album is completely superior to O'Rourke's adequate Mego album and to his dreadful "Insignificant." As this comparison may be falling apart while I write this, I'll end on the note that a bad orange will always suck next to a good apple!
Anyway, Dan Burke founded Illusion of Safety in the mid '80s as a schizophrenic continuation of Industrial Culture as a theatrical means of exposing the cracks within culture and human nature. It is true that a good number of the early Illusion Of Safety albums haven't aged all that well (including a number that O'Rourke worked on!); but Burke and his rotating core of collaborators certainly learned what worked (manipulated field recordings and disturbed ambience) and what didn't (grim media sound bites and hamfisted electro-shock rhythms). "In Opposition To Our Acceleration" finds a matured Illusion Of Safety deftly constructing psycholological tense atmospheres from amplified electrical currents, found sounds, microtonal guitar pluckery, and unnerving drones. The pinnacle of the album occurs during a collage from the chinese water torture of a very slow leak dripping into a bucket, alongside a distant choral chant and some nervous sustained tones. A few of the tracks do vector off into the MAX / MSP territory of timestretching samples and glitch fragmentation, but fits nicely into the textural potency of the album as a whole. Along with "Cancer" and "Probe", "In Opposition To Our Acceleration" is one of the best Illusion Of Safety albums.
RealAudio clip: "Stillpoint"
RealAudio clip: "2.15.96 Live In Evanston, WNUR"
RealAudio clip: "4.26.01 Live In Hamburg"

ESO STEEL Technology Of Sleep (20 City) lp 12.98
Armed with a couple of microphones and a DAT recorder, New Zealand ex-pat Richard Francis can be found scouring the late night desolate streets of Tokyo, captured various textural striations and quiet electrical hums while the rest of the city sleeps. Working under his moniker Eso Steel, Francis transforms his field recordings into a bristling catalogue of experimental minimalism through a poetic and almost intuitive sensibility. "Technology Of Sleep" is an exceptional album of fizzing environmental drones and crispy textural grit, sounding much like the recent work from M. Behrens or the contextualized recordings from Loren Chasse.

INTERNATIONAL HARVESTER Sov Gott Rose-Marie (Silence) cd 17.98
Finally available again!! The late sixties Swedish musical aggregation that was Parson Sound / International Harvester / Harvester / Trad, Gras Och Stenar (really all one evolving band) was basically an example of the genre we've decided to call "international krautrock". Like a Scandinavian Amon Duul, these freaks tap into some decidedly cosmic psychedelic sounds, and aren't on some sunshiney '60s flowers and beads trip. No, their sound certainly acknowledges death and darkness. We've already raved about the Parson Sound collection released earlier this year. "Sov Gott Rose-Marie" ("Sleep Tight, Rose-Marie") was the next step for this group, recorded under their new name International Harvester (taken from the American heavy machinery company, but also intending a Harvester / Grim Reaper double-meaning, with International giving it a political bent). This album, released in 1969 on the Finnish label Love Records, now makes a long-awaited cd appearance on Silence (along with their follow-up under the shortened name Harvester). It's pretty fucking great. If you've heard and loved the Parson Sound like we did, just come and buy this now! It's got grinding cello, baying horns, hippie percussion, mesmerizing jams *and* sudden jarring juxtapositions, from total mellowness to the very heavy. International Harvester mix folk music (though not to the extent they did on their next album, "Hemat"), jazz, field recordings (singing birds, barking dogs), lullabies, and more into their mind-blowing stew of psychedelic "free rock", which is also full of Terry Riley / Eastern inspired repetition and drone. Lyrically, this is just as radical, not shying from religion and politics.
Silence has added an incredible, lengthy (24 minute!) bonus track called "Skordetider" ("Harvest Times") that the band originally intended for an album B-side but never used. It's hypnotic, powerful jam that could have fit well on that Parson Sound release. In other words: wow! Additionally, this cd features extensive liner notes documenting the group's history (the same essay is also found in Silence's reissue of the Harvester album, but with different photos). A perfect companion to that Parson Sound double cd, this is definitely one of the reissues of the year for us.
MPEG Stream: "Sov Gott Rose-Marie"
MPEG Stream: "There is No Other Place"
MPEG Stream: "Skordetider"

BEHRENS, M. Transition (edition...) 2x3"cd 16.98
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As on the preceding album "Elapsed Time" for Intransitive Recordings, German composer M. Behrens has been digging through his archival recordings and digitally reworking them. Lately, Behrens has been veering away from the delicate minimalism of his earlier work (paralleling Francisco Lopez and Bernhard Gunter), in favor of the jump-cut collage techniques employed back in the '80s by The Hafler Trio, in order to articulate a decentralized narrative through the fragmentation of time and space. Behrens' retro-grade shift is like the lowercase equivalent to electronica groups like Adult. and Fisherspooner reclaiming 'new wave'. Across this double 3" cd, Behrens contextualizes an ever shifting series of manipulated field recordings into densely collaged material with abrupt cuts between all of his transient sounds. Thus, fluctuating time-stretched textures are coupled with deep low end rumbles before Behrens forces them into muffled environmental recordings, or blisters sound from turntable grit into explosive screeches and turgid blasts of noise. Beautifully packaged, as with all of the Edition... releases.
RealAudio clip: "Decaying Study 1"
RealAudio clip: "Statics"

SACHER-PELZ Mutation For A Continuity (E'est / Alga Marghen) 4cd 43.00
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"Sacher Pelz offered up burnt offerings, and finally they began to say to the other: 'The true MB is the giver of acts of vengeance to us," quoting Maurizio Bianchi from the obtusely apocalyptic liner notes to his 4 CD box of his earliest material as Sacher-Pelz. In the late '70s, the enigmatic Bianchi produced four cassettes as Sacher Pelz that he had given to a handful of his friends and to the very few proponents of experimental music in his native Italy. These recordings were self-described as musique concrete albums, but are clearly situated outside of the realm of academia and the institutionally driven music of Pierre Schaeffer or Pierre Henry. Instead, Bianchi had fused the most primitive application of musique concrete (music composed with tape and a razorblade) with the principles of Throbbing Gristle's "entertainment through pain" and William Bennett's extremist Come / Whitehouse projects. Within the Sacher-Pelz cassettes -- which have been resurrected this box set on E'est / Alga Marghen -- Bianchi could easily be crowned as one of the '70s forefathers of 'anti-music' alongside Lou Reed for his legendary "Metal Machine Music" and Boyd Rice with his "Black Album."
Stephan Kraus' well researched website on the history of Bianchi (which can be located at Brainwashed) indicated that much of the original source material from these cassettes was taken from Bianchi's abused Kraftwerk vinyl, then vastly recontextualized into monotonous loops, completely devoid of anything sounding like Kraftwerk. I guess it could be the music of Kraftwerk, but if "Autobahn" had been exhumed from a lengthy burial in a murky swamp.
"Cainus" is Bianchi's very first outing, finding him enthralled by the looping technology of a varispeed tape machine. An entirely decentralized affair, this recording takes those post-mortem tones from his beaten Kraftwerk albums and warbles arrhythmically through several repetitions then shifts into a different loop. "Venus" is similar in the arrhythmia of looping textures, but finds Bianchi experimenting with the varispeed and with an additional synthesizer bleeding through the turgid noise. Even within these recordings which are decidedly primitive, Bianchi makes it very clear that the monotony and dullness of his records are an intentional pursuit for his music, as exorcisms of the existential frustrations of life. "Cease To Exist" progresses more into the sinister dense collage work that precedes his masterpieces as MB, "Endometrio" and "Carcinosi." The final Sacher Pelz recording "Velours" is the most advanced of the four with the loops showing a much broader spectrum from clarity to abstraction, with some of his samples coming directly from Neu! "2" (an interesting choice as that album was a remix of Neu!'s earliest recordings!), but most distorted into a bass-heavy muddle of Merzbow proportions.
It must be stated that while this Sacher-Pelz boxset is an fascinating document of Bianchi's earliest work, this box isn't nearly as good as the truly depressing but totally overwhelming MB recordings.
RealAudio clip: "Crime Uberall (from "Cainus")"
RealAudio clip: "Venus (from "Venus")"
RealAudio clip: "Exterminans (from "Cease To Exist")"
RealAudio clip: "Sans Sang (from "Velours')"

ESO STEEL Ina (Last Visible Dog) cd-r 8.98
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Working with contact microphones and field recordings, Richard Francis -- the New Zealander now living in Japan who has claimed the moniker Eso Steel -- emerges as an interesting member of the lowercase aesthetic, somewhere between the sonic intensity of Francisco Lopez (that is when Lopez hasn't consigned himself to arenas of silence) and the empathic resonances of Loren Chasse or Steve Roden. All of his recordings are based upon his late night excursions through Tokyo, where he is left alone to record the sound artifacts of a giant city that has fallen asleep. Pulsing loops of electrical hums, timestretched drones, and peripheral buzzings build into kinetic motifs of gritty distortions, that nevertheless maintain an overall hypnotic sensibility.
RealAudio clip: "The Scattering Order"
RealAudio clip: "Noachian Drift"

CURRENT 93 Earth Covers Earth (Durtro / World Serpent) cd 20.00
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Recorded in 1988, "Earth Covers Earth" marks one of more haunting moments in the late-period Current 93 "apocalyptic folk" sound. At this time David Tibet's project features the rotating core of Rose McDowell (Strawberry Switchblade, Sorrow), Douglas P (Death In June), and Tony Wakeford (Sol Invictus) who collectively add a touch of malice to the shimmering guitar strum which Tibet requested in his admiration of Comus and Shirley Collins. Certainly one of the better C93 releases.

ADAMSON, BARRY + PAN SONIC The Hymn Of The Seventh Illusion (Kitchen Motors) cd 15.98
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From its beginnings, the Icelandic arts organization Kitchen Motors has been pairing off interesting cross-platform artists who may not have otherwise had the opportunity to work together. "The Hymn Of The Seventh Illusion" was a commission by Kitchen Motors for Pan Sonic and Barry Adamson to score a composition for the Hljomeyki Choir from Iceland. Surprised yet delighted to be working together, Adamson (best known for coining the term "imaginary filmscore" within his amazing noir albums such as "Moss Side Story) and Pan Sonic (the Finnish pioneers of ultra-minimal techno) had arrived an amazing piece that could have been a snippet from the eerie GYoRGY LIGETI chorales that were so instrumental to the sense of alienation within Kubrick's "2001." Utilizing the natural reverberation from Digraneskirkja church in Reykjavik, Pan Sonic and Adamson gently fluttered sustained vocal tones amidst the space, occasionally allowing for the choir to delve into a simple haunting melody, whilst Pan Sonic sets down a very subdued electronic back beat. Hopefully, the Kitchen Motors collaboration between Adamson and Pan Sonic won't end here!
Compounding the collaborative spirit, Kitchen Motors employed The Hafler Trio (whose solo member Andrew McKensie now lives in Iceland) to remix "The Hymn Of The Seventh Illusion." As McKensie has been moving further away from the fictional research projects and more towards the electro-acoustic studies from Luigi Nono, The Hafler Trio is a perfect fit. This remix has stretched and abstracted the polyphony of the chorus into a very creepy extended drone collage. Very nice work!
RealAudio clip: "The Hymn Of The Seventh Illusion"
RealAudio clip: "The Hymn Of The Seventh Illusion (Hafler Trio Remix)"

GUENTNER, MARKUS In Moll (Kompakt) 2lp 16.98
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Another of our staff-chosen Records of the Week with a vinyl version now also available. Here's what we said in AQL#126 about this fabulous record: Squelches and whirrs nestle in rolling hills of fuzzy dreamy drones as clicks and pops struggle for air beneath a downy blanket of suffocatingly gorgeous billowy clouds of synth wash. Sound good? It does.
It's German electronica artist Markus Guentner's debut cd for the Kompakt label. For those of you who don't know, the Kompakt label has developed an almost timeless aesthetic, not unlike the 'heroin house' sound of Chain Reaction. The Kompakt sound is an application of the often invoked but rarely successful working model of 'ambient techno'. A good example of this sort of thing that AQ-customers probably know about ('cause we sell so many of 'em) is the Wolfgang Voigt project Gas. His minimalist techno releases (in particular the Gas album "Konigsforst") are some of the few electronica albums that all Aquarians can agree on and strongly endorse.
In creating "In Moll," Markus Guentner has done more than his part to fill the void created by Voigt's unusual absence, with a disc that captures much of the feel we liked so much about the Gas records, a sort of dreamy melancholy that manages to be both wistful and hopeful, lonely and warm. Jeff thinks it has a real "change of seasons" vibe, that harkens, again, to Gas. And while the Gas comparison is surely accurate (if you haven't caught our drift already, let's state: fans of Gas should pick this up without a second thought!), Guenter does add his own flair to Voigt's signature sound though, creating a more varied and more dynamic soundscape than Voigt's pastoral hum and thump.
RealAudio clip: "In Moll 3"
RealAudio clip: "In Moll 5"
RealAudio clip: "In Moll 7"

V/A Anthology 2: Come Organisation Archives 1981-1982 (Susan Lawly) cd 16.98
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Along with Throbbing Gristle's Industrial Records, William Bennett's Come Organisation was one of the seminal publishing entities for transgressive British art in the late '70s and early '80s, mostly for his own projects Come and Whitehouse, but also a few other recordings from Maurizio Bianchi (recording under the Leibstandarte SS MB moniker), Sutcliffe Jurgend, 150 Murderous Passions (a collaboration between Bennett and Nurse With Wound), and probably some other projects that have eluded my research (if anybody has a discography from Come Organisation, please let me know!). While the Come Organisation is no longer active, Bennett has founded Susan Lawly to continue publishing Whitehouse material. This document is the second collection of material from the Come Organisation vaults, comprised of the last Come album "I'm Jack," highlights from the conceptually based compilation "Fur Ilse Koch," and a two tracks from Bianchi's "Weltanschauung" album.
For the Come album "I'm Jack," Bennett had worked with Foetus' Jim Thirwell to create two very odd pieces of primitive anti-punk. On one track Bennett took up the drums, with Thirlwell on guitar, electronics, and vocal duties; and the other track found the two switching yet performing similar pieces. Starting off with the sludgy guitar feedback that has since become the staple for bands like Earth, the Melvins, and Harvey Milk, Come sporadically drop in unstructured double kick drum beats before unleashing a belligerent feedback / synth noise.
Ilse Koch was the wife of the commandant at the Buchenwald concentration camp during Nazi era Germany, and had developed an unsavory fashion aesthetic of furnishing her lampshades with the skin from dead prisoners. Obviously the material from the Come Organisation compilation that is dedicated to her is certainly not for the squeamish. The anonymously produced tracks from Musique Concrete and Etat Brut both employ similar methods of media appropriation into bizarre collages with lots of Jim Jones references. But it is the Nurse With Wound track "Fashioned To A Device Behind A Tree" that is the highlight to both "Fur Ilse Koch" and "Anthology 2" on which a little German girl pleads for her father accompanied by an ever intensifying psychoacoustically irritating high frequency drone. Very creepy. The MB tracks are also quite impressive, with his signature aesthetic of sinister electronic dirges that are continuously collapsing under the weight of an existential gloom.
Bennett indicated in the liner notes the possibility of reissuing "Fur Ilse Koch" at a later date, pretty much all that is missing from that compilation and these highlights are the shock tactic insertions of Nazi speeches, Manson gibberish, and the Japanese Imperial War anthem. The tracks featured here do well enough to frighten and horrify without such obvious references.
RealAudio clip: NURSE WITH WOUND "Fashioned To A Device Behind A Tree"
RealAudio clip: COME "President, Your Prick's Stiff"
RealAudio clip: LEIBSTANDARTE SS MB "Endoradiaion"

AUTECHRE Chiastic Slide (Warp) lp 14.98
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This isn't even remotely new, but it does happen to be perhaps the best Autechre record to date. And as it is only now being released domestically and at a decent price (it was $20 until now) we figured it was time to give this record its due. Besides being my favorite Autechre record, it is also their least melodic (which could be why I like it so much), eschewing much of their flair for sad simple little melodies in favor of crunching digital crush, with maniacally skittering breakbeats and super intense walls of digital distortion. Harsh and brittle but somehow warm and 'catchy' at the same time. Some of the melodies -do- remain, but they are buried under an avalanche of chopped up beats and angular glitch. Listening to this record, it's easy to see why these guys inspired such a massive wave of imitators. If you love any of the Autechre albums or are fans of any of the many wannabes (Funkstorung, etc...) then do yourself a favor and check this shit out.

ORA Final (ICR) cd 16.98
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Many moons ago, Darren Tate and Andrew Chalk found their way to Colin Potter's IC Studios, where the three initiated the humble yet eccentric drone project Ora, with occasional help from the likes of Jonathan Coleclough, Daisuke Suzuki, MNortham, and Lol Coxhill. The majority of the Ora releases have been small editions of CD-Rs following in the tradition of the UK underground cassette culture, where artists would simply release things themselves whenever the albums were finished and without having to adhere to the timetable of a record label. The obvious disadvantage in Ora's case is that their limited nature discouraged many from ever discovering the beautiful sounds found on Ora's odd CD-Rs. Fortunately, Ora has compiled several anthologies from those CD-Rs, the first being the Streamline 2LP "Aureum" (which has unfortunately received the same fate of the CD-Rs and has gone out of print), and more recently, the "Final" CD released on Colin Potter's ICR label.
With Darren continuing on as Monos, Andrew working in Mirror, and Colin busy engineering / collaborating with Nurse With Wound, Current 93, Monos, and dozens of other projects, Ora has ceased to be, and "Final" is probably the last Ora document to be released. Culled mostly from the CD-Rs "Live," "Distances," and "New Movements In G," this anthology does also include a couple of unreleased tracks. As the more recent Monos and Mirror recordings reflect, Ora's specialty has been the construction of the opiated drone that implores a sort-of calmness but at the same time actively confronts the listener with its sound rather than floating to the back as aural wallpaper. Built from field recordings, bowed metals, and various electronics, Ora situates their drones within a wide spectrum of textures -- ranging from the sporadic use of angular blurts from Lol Coxhill's sax and accompanying dense scrapes like a huge boulder getting pushed across a concrete floor, to tiny fluctuations from flutes and sitars. "Final" stands as yet another exceptional record from this small aesthetic circle of UK drone artists.
RealAudio clip: "Distances"
RealAudio clip: "New Movement In G"
RealAudio clip: "Roses?"

AUTECHRE Chiastic Slide (Warp) cd 13.98
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This isn't even remotely new, but it does happen to be perhaps the best Autechre record to date. And as it is only now being released domestically and at a decent price (it was $20 until now) we figured it was time to give this record its due. Besides being my favorite Autechre record, it is also their least melodic (which could be why I like it so much), eschewing much of their flair for sad simple little melodies in favor of crunching digital crush, with maniacally skittering breakbeats and super intense walls of digital distortion. Harsh and brittle but somehow warm and 'catchy' at the same time. Some of the melodies -do- remain, but they are buried under an avalanche of chopped up beats and angular glitch. Listening to this record, it's easy to see why these guys inspired such a massive wave of imitators. If you love any of the Autechre albums or are fans of any of the many wannabes (Funkstorung, etc...) then do yourself a favor and check this shit out.
RealAudio clip: "Chiastic Slide 1"
RealAudio clip: "Chiastic Slide 2"
RealAudio clip: "Chiastic Slide 3"

CHESSIE Overnight (Plug Research) cd 16.98
Beautifully hypnotic, guitar-driven electronica from the Virginian duo of Stephen Gardner and Ben Bailes. Their third full length and first for Los Angeles-based Plug Research, "Overnight" is quite a departure from Chessie's underachieving, experimental-electronic beginnings. Infusing a stronger approach to texture and songwriting (sans vocals), as well as emphasis on live instrumentation (at least guitars and bass, the drums are probably all electronic), it may be incorrect to classify this music as purely "electronic" as it ranks up there with the shoegazer dreaminess of My Bloody Valentine and Hood, or more recently, Fennesz and Stephan Mathieu. Another wonderful release from the groundbreaking Plug Research, continuing to blur the borders between rock and electronica as previously witnessed on the recent Dntel album, "Life Is Full Of Possibilities."
RealAudio clip: "Daylight"
RealAudio clip: "Eyes And Smiles"
RealAudio clip: "Pantograph"

CAMPBELL, NEIL / RICHARD YOUNGS How The Garden Is (Harpenden) lp 12.98
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Flutes. For Andee that seems to be all that really matters for a record to be incredible. But for the rest of us who need a little more than flutes to convince of a piece of music's merits, we're quite pleased that Neil Campbell and Richard Youngs seemed to have used a hell of a lot more than flutes for their exceptional new collaboration "How The Garden Is." Both Campbell and Youngs are veterans of the psych-infused UK free noise scene that counts as members, Skullflower, Total, and Ax, as well as Campbell's project The Vibracathedral and Matthew Bower's Sunroof , and all of the Richard Youngs/Simon Wickham-Smith collaborations. Violin skree, the clattering of bells, the gentle metallic hammering of guitar strings, Youngs' distinctive Scottish wail, clunky Casiotone electronics, and those flutes are all woven together into a swirling mass of trebly sound and structural effervesence. Limited 500 copies.
RealAudio clip: "Holly Bush Lane"
RealAudio clip: "Soil"

SPEAR Sapphire Flower (IGNIS projekt) cd 12.98
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Spear is a Polish post-industrial / dark ambient ensemble who appears to have picked up where the nearly forgotten Cranioclast left off with their cryptographic adventures for linguistic puzzles and deep dronescapes. Amidst glowing ripples of prepared contrabass, tape reversed bells, time-stretched ambience, and fluidly sustaining reverberations, Sapphire Flower maps out a metaphoric narrative that delves into the weighty topic of the twilight between life and death, through the sporadic intervention of computer manipulated voices. The pace of the album is suitably slow and funereal, but never gets too heavy-handed or ghastly partly due to Spear's dedicated emphasis upon the construction of crystalline electro-acoustic droneworks. Thus, the music tells the majority of Sapphire Flower's story rather than the text itself.
Certainly fans of Biosphere and the more subtle atmospheric work of Current 93 / Nurse With Wound would do well to check this out.
RealAudio clip: "No Difference"
RealAudio clip: "N:O:T:H:I:N:K"
RealAudio clip: "Away"

NERELL, LOREN Indonesian Soundscapes (Soleilmoon) cd 12.98
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Armed with a DAT and sights on a Masters in Ethnomusicology Loren Nerell had every intention of documenting temple ceremonial music, but found himself captivated by the daily ambient / environmental sounds of bamboo forests, bus depots, and muslim calls to worship. All are collected here as well as sounds of a Gamelan maker's showroom, frogs, excerpts of wayang kulit (Javanese shadow puppet plays), plus everyone's favorite, the lovable Kecak monkey chant of Bali and much more. Excellent.

GIRA, M. / D. MATZ What We Did (Young God) cd 13.98
At one time, the collaborative project between Michael Gira (Angels of Light / Swans) and Dan Matz (Windsor For The Derby) was called Ourselves, but the two had opted against that in favor of their names. While this may be a silly semantic decision, it promotes the idea of aesthetic equality between two artists instead of the creation of a band with a specific agenda. Both Gira and Matz have developed very strong signature sounds in their respective projects, and their pairing finds both artists willing to communicate with each other and explore means of how to find a common ground between their two distinct sounds. Recently, Gira has ventured more into the singer-songwriter realm, embracing polished orchestrations to support his mythological tales of abjection, sex, love, hate, etc. Matz's Windsor For The Derby has pushed the elements of US post-rock and slow-core together in such a way as to render his mathematically precise compositions emotionally powerful and subtly sublime. In many ways, Windsor For The Derby could be seen as a replication of late period Swans but with the bombastic riffs surgically removed, leaving behind elliptically repetitive structures. Thus, their collaboration isn't as incongruous as might originally appear and the merger between the two sounds never sounds contrived or forced. Gira's deep baritone voice nicely complements the hushed whispers of Matz, while the two alternate between interlocking guitar plucks and strums. Vibes, drums, droning guitars, and delicate electronics flush out the sound. Altogether, "What We Did" is a very strong release within both artists' already impressive catalogues.
RealAudio clip: "Cold Creeping"
RealAudio clip: "17 Hours"
RealAudio clip: "Forcing Mary"

FULL SWING Edits 3 (Laub / Ekkehard Ehlers) (Orthlorng Musork) 10" 5.98
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23 SKIDOO Seven Songs (Ronin) cd 16.98
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You may be familiar with hyperbole like "this is one of my favorite records" popping up throughout the our reviews and you may wonder if that declaration really means anything. Obviously, there are many of us who write this list with lots of opinions as to what "the best record ever" truly is. Yet, I (Jim) have tried to steer clear of hyperbole (well, most of the time), partially because my personal tastes have been known to change over time, but more importantly because nobody has made a record that is better than The Conet Project! Nevertheless, I am breaking my own self-imposed rule in stating that 23 Skidoo's "Seven Songs" is one of my favorite records ever. I feel confident in such an assessment since this record (which I first picked up seven or eight years ago) still kicks my ass almost a decade later!
While electronica darlings like Andrew Weatherall, The Chemical Brothers, and Gilles Peterson all proclaim "Coup" as the pinnacle of 23 Skidoo's catalogue, I boldly mutter "Hogwash! 'Seven Songs' is easily 23 Skidoo's best work!" 23 Skidoo recorded this album during a three day period in 1981 with production by "Tony, Terry, and David" (aka Genesis P-Orridge, Peter Christopherson, and Ken Thomas). With those three behind the mixing board, 23 Skidoo obviously enjoys a similiar spirit of sonic experimentation as invoked by the founders of Industrial Culture. Yet, 23 Skidoo also employs the death-disco of PiL, A Certain Ratio, and Gang of Four, often played on homemade junkyard instruments built to replicate Indonesian gamelan. This bizarre hybridization of styles has few if any parallels, but 23 Skidoo's eclecticism and experimentation are never so alien as to not also be funky, melodic, and infectiously catchy.
Just as Windy places Os Mutantes near the top of her musical pantheon, Andee proudly proclaims his infatuation with Hanoi Rocks, and Allan drools over all things Magma, I say that if you're at all like me, you won't be disappointed by 23 Skidoo's "Seven Songs"!
RealAudio clip: "IY"
RealAudio clip: "Porno Bass"
RealAudio clip: "Vegas el Bandito"

23 SKIDOO Urban Gamelan (Ronin) cd 16.98
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Originally released on LP back in 1984 on Illuminated Records, and only seeing a few seconds of shelf life as a cd re-issue in the early '90s, "Urban Gamelan" is the aptly named third album from 23 Skidoo, back again on cd! This British trio developed one of the most unique sounds to evolve from the UK's Industrial Culture -- which was self-consciously aware of its actions as critiques of control and power within Thatcherite society. Unlike Psychic TV and Coil who offered an aesthetic of extroverted abjection and vile transgressions (often to amazing results, mind you), 23 Skidoo embraced something like a bunker mentality, by preparing themselves with both body and mind for the possibility of a future attack, but more likely in defense of their own personal agendas. The group -- Fritz Catlin, Alex Turnbull, and Johnny Turnbull -- studied various martial arts along with the then little heard sounds of Indonesian gamelan. Unable to get a hold of a true gamelan (except for a Kendang), 23 Skidoo built their own out of scrap metal, kitchen wares, and water jugs. Their personal discipline from their martial arts training made for an easy transition in terms of mastering the fluid, yet complex rhythms that made for an excellent junkyard replication of true Indonesian gamelan.
"Urban Gamelan" finds 23 Skidoo addressing two distinct aesthetics, the first being their post-apocalyptic funk (which had been previously mapped out on their first album "Seven Songs") and the second emphatically pronouncing their faux-gamelan sound. The album in fact begins with a remix / reworking of their hit single "Coup," which has had the infamy of getting ripped off by the Chemical Brothers. Driven by counterpoints of bass and distant bursts of haunted trumpets, the first half of the album recalls some of Pop Group's dub fuckery, with an inclination for a more natural funk. 23 Skidoo then drops all of the electric instruments for an exhibition of their complete gamelan repetoire. If you ever thought that Einsturzende Neubauten or Test Dept. needed to get their groove on, then you definitely need to check out 23 Skidoo. The 23 Skidoo reissues may be some of the most important to come out this year. It will be well worth your while to check these out!!!
RealAudio clip: "F.U.G.I."
RealAudio clip: "Jalan Jalan"
RealAudio clip: "Language Dub"
RealAudio clip: "Urban Gamelan 1"

GEROGERIGEGEGE None Friendly (Mink) cd 17.98
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Album number 132 (or something close to that) from Japanese noise musician / sound artist Juntaro Yamanouchi. Gerogerigegege (loosely translated as simultaneous vomit-diarhhea, then the supposed sound of such a catastrophic gastrointestinal event) has gone through all sorts of sonic incarnations, noisy splatter punk, bombastic japanoise, experimental musique concrete, with some of those incarnations featuring the added bonus of mic-ed masturbating, courtesy of a geriatric 'public' masturbator befriended by Juntaro. On 'None Friendly' (actually recorded in 1987), he tackles THE DRONE and it's quite a listen. Deep and sonorous, lush and mesmerising. I was convinced it was a synthesizer until I noticed on the sleeve, that it specifically points out that there was 'No synthesizer used.' So what the sound source actually is remains a mystery although a source close to the man thinks it just may be a guitar tuner (?). But maybe it -is- processed masturbating. I mean, I hope it is. But either way, this is a fantastic record. One extended buzzing and humming, slowly developing hypnotic drone. Really great.

THIS HEAT Deceit (These Records) cd 18.98
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It would be nice to think that These Records have only been releasing the reissues of "Deceit" -- This Heat's second and final proper album -- every ten years after the original release of the album in 1981. The first CD pressings arrived on 1991, and this remastered version of the album holds a released date in 2001. Regardless of These Records' coy intentions, the return of "Deceit" to the Aquarius Records' catalogue is very welcome indeed!!!
Almost all of the histories of UK avant-garde music have claim allegiances to This Heat, as Punk, New Wave, Industrial, Prog Rock, Jim O'Rourke, and even Electronica place the seminal outfit somewhere at the beginnings of their respective etymologies. To a certain extent all of these histories may be true, but then again the broad aesthetic and ideological contexts between all of those different styles may cross-each other out, leaving This Heat as one of the few artistic forces that truly exists all by itself.
Just a trio comprised of Charles Hayward, Charles Bullen, and Gareth Williams, This Heat manifested an incredibly explosive sound that hybridized all of the countercultural fury of Punk and Situationism, within a sonic context informed by technological advances of musique concrete techniques and electro-acoustic synthesis. Musically speaking, This Heat did not espouse the three chord structures or the snarling postures of Punk, instead injecting the complex pop agendas of Brian Eno (which were purposefully seeking to conflict the archetypes of rock into a new aesthetic language) with nervous tension building up to dramatic cathartic releases. "Deceit" is a record that was so ahead of its time that it has taken twenty years for artists like Fennesz and Radiohead to articulate ideas with such intensity and attention to the play between musical creation and technological advances. So highly recommended.

MATHIEU, STEPHAN Frequency Lib (Mille Plateaux) lp 13.98
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Just as Christian Fennesz transformed the canonical rock icons The Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys into sublime electronica-glitch perfection, Stephan Mathieu has pillaged the 'public domain' archives of the 20th century to create his own digital deconstruction of historical canons. It's quite possible that he could have gotten away with using recordings whose rights are held under legal lock and key, as his DSP reconfiguration is so broad as to render his tracks almost unrecognizable from the original. Never stating what the original pieces are (although he does include a really obvious Smashing Pumpkins reference... but done very well), Mathieu has transfomed those pieces into 25 small sketches of layered digital reversals, downpitched rhythmic crawls, sublime glistening tonalities, and white-hot glitch crackle. At times he emphasizes the age of the original, by manipulating the surface noise of the vinyl (or possibly, wax cylinder), others he pulls from the three notes from some High Lonesome guitarist, or the ethereal quality of an unknown vocalist. Mathieu does not present these digital reconfigurations without order. Rhythmic loops and discreet harmonies ripple throughout Mathieu's album, making for the best Oval-sounding record since Oval made "Diskont 94."

NURSE WITH WOUND Sylvie And Babs High-Thigh Companion (United Dairies) cd 19.98
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V/A Turkish Delights (Grey Past) cd 23.00
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We are all quite excited about the cd release of Turkish Delights comp (though Byram's a bit irked 'cause he bought the original vinyl and now is faced with a cd version that adds 11 extra tracks!). In total, there's 26 tracks here, dating from 1965 to 1971, of some of the best garage psych that we've ever heard -- from Turkey or anywhere else for that matter. The Turkish rock scene appears to have begun in earnest in 1956 when the English instrumental group The Shadows made their impression on Turkish teens. Given that many people in Turkey didn't even speak English, it's pretty impressive how well they assimilated a completely foreign music and excelled in it better than most of their American and British counterparts. Some of the tracks like Mavi Isiklar's "Great Airplane Strike of 1967" (a Paul Revere & the Raiders cover) are spitting images of garage-psych from the occident, but others like Cem Karaca & Apaslar's "Suya Giden Alli Gelin" are unmistakably Eastern. It's these tracks, that combine the rock n' roll structure and instrumentation augmented with Turkish instruments, scales and singing that really kick ass. Those of you that have already picked up the excellent "Hava Narghile" compilation know what we mean, but what was great about that collection is exponentially better on this one! Get it.
Along with the new cd version, we now have more copies of the "Turkish Delights" LP (which was so hard to get when it first came out that we only ever had a handful and were never able to list it). 15 tracks on this baby instead of the 26 on the cd, but what you lose in bonus cuts you gain in, uh, vinyl. And the art looks better, we think.
RealAudio clip: CEM KARACA & APASLAR "Suya Giden Alli Gelin"
RealAudio clip: SELCUK ALAGOZ "Saklan Saklanabilirsen"
RealAudio clip: CAHIT OBEN "Halimem"

ZOVIET FRANCE Loh Land (Staalplaat) cd 17.98
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While Post Modernity and its malcontent little brother Punk effectively deconstucted and ridiculed religious institutions by pointed out their hypocrisies and inconsistancies with rational thought, the two have been wholly unconcerned in addressing the possibilities of transcendence or the notions of the sublime. Zoviet France is an anonymous collective of British sound artists who have been clearly educated with the halls of Post Modernity and inspired by Punk's self-sufficiency; yet, the lack of an existential awe in the face of the Divine never settled easily with the group. Beginning back in the early '80s, Zoviet France developed a musical aesthetic for private rituals built from the artifacts and residues from what they saw as a cultural disintegration (both physically and existentially). To a certain extentw, Zoviet France was making liturgical music to a religion that never existed, but offered resemblences to what transcendent music should sound like. The hypnosis from a drone, the relentlessness of a tribal drum circle, and dub's etherial references to various nether regions are all part of Zoviet France's arsenal of quiet noise making devices.
Originally released as a cassette back in 1988, "Loh Land" is one of the few albums from Zoviet France's early days that is still in print, and encapsulates many of their ideas for a fictional music rich with amorphously spiritual connotations. The aforementioned drones, dubs, and drums alongside distanced vocal chants with have been thoroughly abstracted through a series of delay effects boxes, tape loop machines, and multi-track studio tricks, to create the album's murky atmopshere. Zoviet France's "Loh Land" succeeds in being beautifully but indeterminantly holy.
RealAudio clip: "East Taunts West"
RealAudio clip: "Nostalgie De La Boue"
RealAudio clip: "Reson Deaw Gwalch"

FULL SWING Edits 1 (Monolake / Antenne) (Orthlorng Musork) 10" 5.98
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FULL SWING Edits 2 (Autopoisies) (Orthlorng Musork) 10" 5.98
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GALLO, VINCENT When (Warp) cd 17.98
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While it's probably true that the reason this album got released on hip UK electronica label Warp is that Vincent "Buffalo 66" Gallo is a famous guy, that doesn't mean it's a bad album. Some folks here at Aquarius wanted to assume that, but repeated listenings have made even the worst AQ Gallo-skeptics willing to admit that it's not bad. And some of us (Allan, for one), think it's pretty great. After all, there's a reason why the guy is famous, and it has to do with (aside from his striking good looks) the fact that he's talented. So forget your knee jerk reactions to his celebrity status and consider the possibility that unlike most actors-turned-musicians, he's managed to make some nice music. All right all right, what does it sound like? Well, it's NOT the full on prog rock opus that some of us were hoping Gallo's overt Yes obsession would produce, but it's a lovely, lonely singer-songwriter effort (with, indeed, echoes of the mellow pop psychedelia found on early King Crimson LPs). Introspective and quiet, having just a few sonic elements per song: a whispered vocal here, a xylophone there, some wistful piano and strummed guitar there, a fragmented drum beat here. A near-ambient, melancholic, almost-folky disc full of heartbreak and longing (well, it seems that way, not that we've studied the lyrics closely as yet). There's no more of anything (vocals, beats) than is absolutely necessary (which argues well for Gallo's genuine artistry) (well, except for some shameless courting of his famous friends like the filthy rich party girl Paris Hilton who's namedropped in the first track's title). The vocals make this kinda sound like what Smog or Jandek would sound like if they recorded for Warp. We're also reminded of Tarwater and even Chet Baker. Worth checking out, after all!
RealAudio clip: "When"
RealAudio clip: "Was"

NEGATIVLAND These Guys Are From England (Seelard) cd 14.98
Way back in the 20th century, 1991 to be precise, media pranksters Negativland got themselves into a legal tussle with Island Records when they naively released a single on SST that covered U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" and revealed Casey Kasem to be a foulmouthed ogre, all on the same track! Both SST and Negativland were subsequently sued into submission. Copies of the original U2 cd can still be had for anywhere from $75 to $100 US for the disc and bootlegged copies have been floating around ever since the track was pulled. Rather than go further into that whole can of carnuba wax I'll just refer those who are unfamiliar with this mother of all fair use lawsuits to Negativland's thorough and entertaining book "Fair Use: The Story Of The Letter U And The Numeral 2" (still in print), a 288 page document of the entire court case and Negativland's subsequent legal troubles with Greg Ginn and SST. Well now, here we are in a new millennium, on the ten year anniversary of the lawsuit where Seeland has already tested the legal waters with their re-issue of John Oswald's magnum opus "Plunderphonics" and so far the sharks aren't biting. Sensing that maybe the industry's lawyers have lost their taste for such passe copyright issues in favor of the much tastier Napster and the whole peer-to-peer fiasco, the label "Seelard" (hmmm...) has stepped in to see the return of this classic piece of copyright infringement. As a bonus to this risque reissue Seelard has included 9 extra tracks relating to the original single such as an excerpt from an Over The Edge (Negativland's Don Joyce's weekly radio show on KPFA) show from 1989 where the germination of the single began. One track is an edited version of the "Radio Edit" so that you *can* now safely play it on the radio -- all the nasty words have been covered up with a cornucopia of sound effects. The seven remaining tracks on this disc were taken from live performances by Negativland in 1990 (Knitting Factory, NYC) and 1993 (Great American Music Hall, SF) and cover Casey's "Long Distance Dedication" on up to material that wound up on the cd that accompanied Negativland's book (see above). There's an abundance of good material added to the fated single in these live performances including numerous tapes referring to "U2" that Don Joyce had picked up in the interim, plus some more serious audio forays detailing Francis Gary Powers' fateful flight over the USSR in a Lockheed U-2 spy plane. Diddley Shit!
RealAudio clip: "Special Edit Radio Mix - I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"
RealAudio clip: "Black Lady of Espionage, The"

GUNTER, BERNHARD Crossing the River (Night Music) (Trente Oiseaux) cd 16.98
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Byram once asked the rhetorical question, "What self-respecting composer doesn't have their oevre divided into three periods?" While Mr. Abbott was describing one of the many successes from the late period of Morton Feldman, Bernhard Gunter is a composer who hasn't had a long enough career to break into three distinct periods. However, I would postulate that with the trilogy of "Time, Dreaming Itself," "Then, Silence," and "Crossing The River (Night Music)," Gunter has created enough stylistic differences from his earliest recordings to warrant the claim that he has entered the second period of his life's work.
Where albums like "Un Peu De Neige Salie," and "Details Agrandis" situated barely audible pin pricks of piercing sounds against fields of Promethean silences, that aforementioned trilogy finds Gunter increasing the volume to far more perceptible levels and filling lengthy spaces with fluid passages of gradually building / decaying tonalities. He has proudly exclaimed all of his influences (Xenakis, Rothko, Feldman, Nono, and Bill Viola) through his work, and these pieces clearly show how great an influence Feldman especially has been upon his electro-acoustic minimalism. Gunter has quite literally been extending the slow motion aesthetics of Morton Feldman out of the chamber ensemble and into the language of electronic abstraction.
Gunter still maintains that all of his compositions are the manipulation of everyday sounds, yet these processed elements hold richly complex sonorous qualities that are more in common with oboes, cellos, and church organs than radiator pipes or rustled cutlery.
The problems with the argument that Gunter has entered his second period are obvious: his changes aren't terribly radical in scope, and may merely give evidence to his aesthetic malleability, he hasn't made any grand existential changes in his life that could warrant a profound change in aesthetic; and, of course, Gunter hasn't made such a proclamation.
Regardless of this silly romp into semantics, Gunter has produced his best record to date in "Crossing The River (Night Music)." Thank you for your patience.
RealAudio clip: "Crossing The River (Night Music)"

MATHIEU, STEPHAN Frequency Lib (Mille Plateaux) cd 15.98
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Just as Christian Fennesz transformed the canonical rock icons The Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys into sublime electronica-glitch perfection, Stephan Mathieu has pillaged the 'public domain' archives of the 20th century to create his own digital deconstruction of historical canons. It's quite possible that he could have gotten away with using recordings whose rights are held under legal lock and key, as his DSP reconfiguration is so broad as to render his tracks almost unrecognizable from the original. Never stating what the original pieces are (although he does include a really obvious Smashing Pumpkins reference... but done very well), Mathieu has transfomed those pieces into 25 small sketches of layered digital reversals, downpitched rhythmic crawls, sublime glistening tonalities, and white-hot glitch crackle. At times he emphasizes the age of the original, by manipulating the surface noise of the vinyl (or possibly, wax cylinder), others he pulls from the three notes from some High Lonesome guitarist, or the ethereal quality of an unknown vocalist. Mathieu does not present these digital reconfigurations without order. Rhythmic loops and discreet harmonies ripple throughout Mathieu's album, making for the best Oval-sounding record since Oval made "Diskont 94."
RealAudio clip: "Mrs. Moon"
RealAudio clip: "Some Of Today"
RealAudio clip: "Two Nights"

MICROPHONES Glow Pt. 2 (K) cd 14.98
Phil Elvrum -- the ever so shy Microphones ringleader who has also appeared in Old Tyme Relijun and D+ -- will probably never be so bold as to express his songs with all of the heartwrenching, off-key scream of a great emo vocalist, although his songs ooze with the post-adolescent grand bummer that is so common in the emo. His quivering voice holds nothing more than a few muttered melodies and a handful of whispered lyrics, yet Elvrum has always delved into baroque, if lo-fi, production tricks to augment what began as the quietest of bedroom indie strumming. While he's nowhere near the songwriter as Jeff Mangum or Bill Smog, his downer indie-rock songs filled with ramshackle rock bursts, early-Stereolab Moog-o-riffic rhythms, liltingly paranoid piano lines, big-muff distortion blasts, and big band horn flourishes sure do make you feel as Neutral Milk and Smog can do.
All of the Microphones albums have a great sound, there is always that little critical voice that wishes he would bring to the production table a set of really great songs. Elvrum is way too talented to waste his production and arrangement abilities on being just an indie-dork. This is a pretty good record, but if he continues to improve his songwriting ability - let this be a prophecy - Elvrum will write the next "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea."
RealAudio clip: "The Glow Pt.2"
RealAudio clip: "Map"

STILLUPPSTEYPA Stories Part Five (Ritornell) cd 16.98
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Who would have ever guessed that the first photo cover on the clinically sterile Ritornell label would have been this? A slickly produced cover photo of Stilluppsteypa donning faux-regal sparkling capes with huge stiff collars and one of the members (Sigtryggur?) in a fabulous/ridiculous pair of gilded boxing trunks with, of course, the ruby-red lightning bolt down the sides. In thinking of Ritornell's fascination with the glitch as both sound and methodology, this photograph is a perfect articulation of the glitch in the form of a visual mistake. This photograph shouldn't have ever been allowed to grace a Ritornell cover, but it has. And I'm very glad for it, but with the reservation that this should never become a regular occurance of the glitch community as this form of ironic self-description is almost always handled badly. Stilluppsteypa are certainly the exception to the rule.
I would hazard a guess that the visual sensibility of Stilluppsteypa has been informed by the odd conceptual agendas of Leif Elggren who is responsible in part for the Kingdoms of Elgaland / Vargaland (amongst a number of other oddball projects). Both Elggren and Stilluppsteypa play with the notions of royalty, as an residual political emblem of inflated egotism as well as of self-deprecating absurdity.
With that entire diatribe on how good the cover is, it needs to be stated that artwork completely betrays the integrity of the music within. Stilluppsteypa has developed into one of the most adventurous staples of the electronica glitch community. "Stories Part Five" deviates slightly from what is expected from Stilluppsteypa with their multipled layers of electro-acoustic minutae exploding into clinical technotic escapades, rippling with deep unwavering basstones. Stilluppsteypa's forays into techno minimalism are not the smooth tendencies of microhouse, instead preferring to enhance the skeletal grooves with a psycho-acoustic tension.
RealAudio clip: "Nice Things To File Away FOREVER!"
RealAudio clip: "When I Was Eight Years Old"
RealAudio clip: "All Drummers Shiver"

COIL Love's Secret Domain (Threshold House) cd 17.98
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The re-issue of "Love's Secret Domain" from 1991 is not unlike unearthing a long lost exquisite treasure. Obsessively coveted and revered over the last decade, it re-emerges still sounding fresh and current. Sadly and strangely, this album was often pigeonholed as an industrial-dance record. Sure, it was licensed to the US on Wax Trax and Coil's longstanding association with Industrial Culture (um, they started it) certainly confused idiot rock critics who aimlessly equated industrial with the militant stomp of Front 242. Clearly, "Love's Secret Domain" is an album that stands way above the standard Wax Trax fare of the time.
During the construction of this album, Coil's core duo -- Peter Christopherson and John Balance -- had immersed themselves in the acid house culture of the UK that flourished around The KLF (I don't care what you think of "What Time is Love," The KLF were geniuses in the art of pop subversion), 808 State, and even the early bleep techno from Warp Records. To Coil, the UK rave culture reflected many of their own ideas of transgression through almost pagan rituals of communities uniting around liberating music, sexual exploration, chemical enlightenment, and the release of hidden dark energies from the body and spirit.
"Love's Secret Domain" embodied a near-perfect harmony between the dark, occultish overtones from their previous albums "Scatology" and "Horse Rotovator" and the technological futurism at the heart of rave culture. Within this synthesis, Coil has not just created a handful of singles (although "The Snow" and "Windowpane" off of this album still make great dancefloor fodder), but has articulated the entire album as a sonic narrative. Swelling through the sampledelic abstraction on "Disco Hospital" (recently covered by admitted Coil fans Matmos) and the surreal tension of "Things Happen" (with Annie Anxiety Bandez' obtuse guest vocal appearance), Coil offers "The Snow" as a magnificient techno track, with creepy cut-ups of choral elements, constantly shifting and reforming melody patterns, and an 808 techno pulse. "Windowpane" in turn is far more seductive in its low slung bassline and downtempo pace. The rest of the album continues through a darkened path of hallucinatory electronics, intricate instrumentations, and occasional bursts of subverted pop sentiment. Unlike a lot of electronica records, nothing on "Love's Secret Domain" ever feels like filler.
This is a marvelous record that even after a decade has very few rivals.
RealAudio clip: "The Snow"
RealAudio clip: "Windowpane"
RealAudio clip: "Love's Secret Domain"

GESCOM Keynell (Skam) cd 9.98
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Nowadays, Autechre invokes the Gescom moniker whenever the IDM duo wants to experiment outside of their well-defined Autechre sound as in their contribution the "Absolute Zero" compilation and their collage friendly MiniDisc only release. Yet during the beginning of Autechre's career, the difference between Gescom and Autechre recordings weren't as discernable. I'm pretty sure that Gescom was credited as "authoring" one of the tracks on the first Autechre album "Incunabula." Regardless, Gescom has released a handful of exceptional singles (mostly on the Skam label out of Manchester) that are certainly worthy of the reverence that often follow the Autechre albums. As those singles are really hard to find now or flatly out of print, the CD reissue of their third EP "Keynell" is a welcome arrival.
Skam has also sadly retained the annoying package that housed the vinyl with the re-issue of the cd, which is just a sleeve of plastic bubble wrap. Oh well, the music inside more than makes up for it. "Keynell 1" lumbers through chopped string samples, which form a surprisingly catchy piece of understated melody to match the steady tumble of a wooden eletro beat. While most Autechre / Gescom pieces contain signature elements that easily qualify them as being by Autechre or Gescom, "Keynell 1" holds remarkable similarities to fellow IDM forefather, Aphex Twin -- especially from the "On" ep or the Phillip Glass collaboration. "Keynell 2" is a return to the Autechre sound, with sputtering mechanical rhythms, cybernetic flanges, and subtle afterhour rave melodies that have been synchronized into an unlikely groove. The third track is one of the Mancunian duo's more minimalist pieces, with the infinite repetition of a filtered hip-hop beat laced with an elegant, yet melancholic synth melody. During the five years that have passed since Gescom released "Keynell," 'intelligent dance music' has run the risk of self-parody, in losing the intelligent element of its name by stupidly searching out overly complex rhythms (i.e. Richie Devine, Otto Von Schirach) or wallowing in the irony of being dorky (i.e. Cex). There was a time when IDM was a viable musical form, and "Keynell" is one that era's highlights.
RealAudio clip: "Keynell 1"
RealAudio clip: "Keynell 3"

OUTSIDERS CQ (Pseudonym Records) cd 14.98
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'60s Dutch rockers The Outsiders (not the reportedly inferior American band of the same name) produced an album -- "CQ" -- that's beloved by collectors and critics, but never really got the recognition that it deserved outside of that very narrow market. Hopefully, this new CD reissue of that 1968 album will garner them a wider audience, especially in light of current interest in lost classics of the period (cf. the "Nuggets II" boxset, which does feature the Outsiders, though nothing from this album). "CQ" is kind of a concept album describing multiple perspectives of an unrequited romance, with the father of the girl disapproving of the boy in the scenario. The Outsiders show considerable favor to the plight of the jilted boy in the story, which ends with that protagonist snapping in psychotic violence. Fortunately, The Outsiders spent just as much time composing an economical psych / garage / beat-punk score as they did on the story itself; thus, each track is a solid pop entry of jangly melodies and punchy basslines, occasionally repeating leitmotifs somewhat like the Leaves / Standells version of "Hey Joe" or Syd Barrett era Pink Floyd. Certainly worth checking out.
RealAudio clip: "Misfit"
RealAudio clip: "C.Q."

JACKIE-O MOTHERFUCKER The Magick Fire Music (Ecstatic Peace) lp 19.98
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When this showed up at Aquarius, I made a stupid comment to a customer who was curious about this record. I said that Jackie-O Motherfucker were somewhat of a Tom Sawyer / Huck Finn communal project featuring a bunch of random No Neck Blues Band style "pipe fighting" and jazz improv. I did mention to him that I hadn't listened to it and was basing my opinion on the free-jazz / Americana-folk stylings of Jackie-O's previous outing "Fig. 5."
Now that I've actually cracked the duct-tape seal which encases the two records and immersed myself in the wonders of "The Magick Fire Music," I must gladly admit that I was very very wrong. There certainly is a rustic Tom Sawyer / Huck Finn aspect to the Portland ensemble's sound, but there is much less of the expected jazz element. Instead, Jackie-O Motherfucker has carved out a sound that is emotively quite similar to the post-rock melancholia of Godspeed / Sigur Ros but with none of their overly dramatic orchestrations.
The album opens with a buried collage of shortwave radio heterodyning and disconnected voices, but emphatically steps forward with a guitar duet between a saddened David Pajo-esque riff and an intertwining effects-laden chimed tone. After the clunky twang of Jew's harps on "Bone Saw," Jackie-O returns to the evocative, spacious, and cinematically Western riffs (especially on the breathtakingly melancholy "The Cage"), as an effective means of transcribing sound into a psychic landscape that is strangely similar to the aforementioned Godspeed. While Godspeed brackets their tight orchestrations around a social pessimism that eventually leads to cathartic enlightenment about how shitty the world is around us, Jackie-O Motherfucker settles back into a drugged stupor of oddly psychedelic grooves, something I prefer. A very, very good record!

TWINK Think Pink (Akarma) cd 16.98
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From 1970, a brilliant album, somewhere between the heavy rock of Twink's band The Pink Fairies and the acid-fried krautrock hippy orgasms of Brainticket's "Cottonwood Hill". Here's a lengthy review of "Think Pink" that we found on Julian Cope's Head Heritage website (http://www.headheritage.co.uk), written by "The Seth Man":
No mere "Hipgnosis sleeve plus mellotrons equals greatness" gambit here--Not a whit.
"Think Pink" is one trippy, hobbity mindfuck of the highest water. It's a complex and varied album where no two songs are the same, but seem to be examples of sub-genres entire ALBUMS could be fashioned from. Come to think of it, it's probably the last high-water mark of old-school psychedelia the moment before it gave up the ghost. And Twink had steadily worked his way through a succession of bands that by the time he was in The Pretty Things, Twink had made many musical acquaintances via The Pretties' management, the Bryan Morrison Agency, who also handled The Deviants and Tyrannosaurus Rex. Soon enough they had performed enough gigs together to force Morrison to circulate a letter to these three bands requesting that they refrain from ever showing up at each other's gigs ever again. Because if there was havoc to be caused, it WAS caused, and if there was none to be found, it would be located immediately. When Twink left The Pretties, he assembled a virtual roll call of London underground musicians: Viv Prince, Wally Waller, John Povey, Victor Unitt, The Deviants, Quiver bassist Honk, John "Junior" Wood (ex-Tomorrow) and Steve "Peregrine Took". This album owes a grand debt to Paul "Black George" Rudolph--his
uncredited arrangements and outstandingly effortless yet complex Stratocaster noise guitar crunch-outs (which populate "Think Pink" in sheer and blissful abundance) are a huge and soaringly hard sound previously unhinted at on the third Deviants album. And the sessions yielded all things loose, crazy and hardened post-psychedelic; there is even a surprisingly manic funk out rare for even white dopers at the time, as well as acoustic numbers that don't sound the least bit obligatory, raga-based chants and group singalongs. Along with Rudolph, the other main inspiration for "Think Pink" was undoubtedly Twink's pretty, blonde and Kohl-eyed girlfriend Silver, who appears on the back cover and on the LP with an unforgettable vocal interlude.
The album opens with "The Coming Of The Other One", a vocal incantation as screeching backwards sitars, further vocal mantrics and randomly hit percussion float through the air and clang in a dark, incense-filled basement from "Performance" with Steve Peregrine Took emitting fear-inducing animal noises in a dark corner. It fades as sitars race back in time, and the air clears and gets brighter with the remake of Twink's minnow-psych pop Aquarian Age A-side, "Ten Thousand Words In A Cardboard Box." A celebration of "a thousand
colourful shadows dancing around my head/Rejoicing to the waking of the deadŠ" over
heavily recorded drums as Rudolph covers the drums and telephonically-phased vocals with underpinning streams of pink cirrus clouds at daybreak noise/guitar. But Rudolph winds up shanghai-ing the piece into a soaringly free-noise hurricane as he peels riff after riff out of his bottomless Strat. "Standing Tiptoe On The Highest Hill" is a chilly, overcast autumn morning with swelling mellotron, muted guitar and somber drums, bursting your heart when the grim (yet sung angelically-echoed) lines come in and it dawns on you: this is the acoustic grandfather of Joy Division's "Decades". Backward noise/guitar streaks by Rudolph transform the whole piece into a coiled and curling jam out that cuts out, letting the song descend quietly back into the sand and it's seaweed-strewn grave. "Fluid" ends the album
side, an instrumental stripped bare of everything but genitals. Slow bass, guitar and drums crack out an undulating and repeating rhythm as Twink and Silver coo to each other, barely touching and letting their vocal vibrations do the work of a thousand fingers. It's Joy Division again, only a decade earlier and this time it's "I Remember Nothing". This is just side one, but side two is just as fantastically charged up and out there, reaching its apex with the Took-damaged "The Sparrow Is A Sign".

ZOVIET FRANCE In.Version (Charrm) cd 17.98
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Throughout the '90s, the legendary post-industrial ensemble Zoviet France had experienced a handful of changes within its anonymous citizenship, with newcomers bringing forth digital technologies and propensities for that 'new' electronica sound. While Zoviet France itself maintained its aesthetic trajectory of building miasmic looping drones and radical dub deconstructions that held the most innovative and poetic use of delay since Lee Perry in the '70s, the collective allowed for several ill-conceived 'ambient techno' side projects in Horizon 222 and Ingleton Falls. "In.Version" was recorded live in Berlin in 1996 at the tail end of Zoviet France's involvement with those side projects, and thus features synth patches, tweaky samples, and other sonic elements that held uneasy similarities to the increasingly tired 'ambient techno' field of 1994 (i.e. The Orb, Future Sound Of London, etc.). Fortunately, Zoviet France itself never fully succumbed to the 'ambient techno' fad, reconstructing those sounds into extended droning passages that correctly articulated what Brian Eno meant by ambient (i.e. there are no demonstrative rhythms in pure ambient music). "In.Version" may not be the most successful Zoviet France record, but we literally may have the *last* copies of this record available. You have been warned.

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

MONOS 360 Degrees (Anomalous) cd 14.98
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A few years back, Darren Tate dissolved his Ora project (which centered around Tate's collaborations with Andrew Chalk, Jonathan Coleclough, Colin Potter, and MNortham), and considered quitting making music altogether. Fortunately, the draw back to the droning manipulations of field recordings grew to strong for Tate to remain inactive; thus, he began the Monos recordings, which have so far netted two self-released CDrs and the "360 Degrees" album for Anomalous. Initially, Monos was simply the solo moniker for Tate, but for this album, he has employed the help of longtime collaborator Colin Potter at the engineering / processing helm. Beginning with field recordings of birdsongs from the English country side, cars rushing along an overpass, and watery floes, Monos blurs the edges of these everyday sounds with an arsenal of glistening reverberations. Certainly, if you're fond of that beautiful droning aesthetic of Ora, Mirror, or any of the Andrew Chalk productions, you'll certainly go for Monos... just pay no attention to the goofy artwork of a puffy Keane-eyed cat that is even sillier than the silliest David Tibet artwork for Current 93.
RealAudio clip: "Landscape"
RealAudio clip: "Clouds"

PSYCHOPHYSICIST s/t (Side Effects) cd 15.98
Psychophysicist is a one off collaboration recorded back in 1994 between Andrew McKenzie (better known as the Hafler Trio) and Adi Newton (Clock DVA, The Anti Group Conspiracy). The two claim to be working under a Gurdjieffian approach to science and sound as a method towards metaphysical knowledge and gnostic understanding of the universe. That said, McKenzie has been known to exaggerate the theoretical statements behind his sound work and fabricate fictional conspiracies around the research of Dr. Edward Moolenbeek and Robert Spridgeon (both of which are McKenzie pseudonyms). Like the beloved Museum of Jurassic Technology, McKenzie's research is a tangled web of fact, fiction, and kooky philosophies wrapped up in faux-authoritarian language. Thus, anything that McKenzie states about his work needs to be read with a close attention to detail to discover what his true intentions may be.
Sonically speaking, both McKenzie and Newton are no slouches, although some of Clock DVA recordings are painfully dated within Industrial culture. The Psychophysicist collaboration brings together their mutual interests in psychoacoustics - the ability of sound to affect the mind and body in profound ways. Within the record, complex hypnotic sweeps of radio static are processed to resemble the tonal patterns of interlocking sinewaves, sounding much more like Hafler Trio than The Anti Group and much more than Clock DVA. Furthermore, close observers of the Hafler Trio's work will recognize elements from "Masturbatorium" and "Mastery of Money," as the recycling of sound elements within different contexts had become an increasingly important agenda for McKenzie throughout the mid-90s.
As the Hafler Trio albums - once overflowing experimental bins across the globe - are now becoming scarce, this would make an excellent introduction into McKenzie's work.

RABELAIS, AKIRA Eisoptrophobia (Mille Plateaux) cd 16.98
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Not just another member of the electronica community who programs code by day and is a Mille Plateaux superstar by night, Akira Rabelais has wonderfully romantic bone in his body that affects everything he does, including programming. If his cheerleaders are correct in their praise of his software applications, then Rabelais may in fact be programming code with the same jouissance that can be found in the magic realist writings of Borges. That's pretty heavy praise, and while we've not explored his software (the Argeiphontes Lyre - his most notable software - supposedly mutates pre-existing sound with subtle digital distortions and digitally knotted re-sampling techniques), his musical productions which employ his own programming creations are simply stunning. "Eisoptrophobia" is Rabelais' second album, consists of digital re-interpretations of piano pieces by Satie, Bartok, and Carte. Fortunately, these recordings are not wildly timestretched pieces of digital destruction (i.e. Speedranch, Janski-Noise, etc.); rather, they are incredibly spartan and dreamy. Rabelais leaves the structures of the pieces intact, at times extending into tone float drifts which merely hint at the original melody, others quietly reflect a Philip Jeck-like aura of fragile antiquity, and other resemble something far more acoustic in origin like Cage's prepared pianos. Altogether, a very successful album in terms of process, concept, and execution!
RealAudio clip: "Aposiopesis"
RealAudio clip: "Gymnopedie No.2"
RealAudio clip: "Notturno (loverly remix)"

HAINES, D Emo (Sigma) cd 14.98
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It's hard to not simply fall back upon the immediate observation that D. Haines' Emo album is the fictional remix that Wolfgang Voigt (aka Gas) should do for drone label Troum. With the Gas records (especially Konigsforst) and the Troum / Maeror Tri records holding righteous positions within the Aquarius pantheon for sustained drone bliss-outs, such a qualification should be taken as very high praise. Attesting to the music's monumentality, the lengthy tracks on Emo have been named after various geological formations -- "Kosciousko" (Australia's closest relative to an alpine region), "Peak Communism" (a massive vertical slab found in the former Soviet republic of Tajikistan), and "Gibraltar" (as in the Rock of). Throughout the album, Haines weaves sublime slashes of digital squiggles between laptop-tricked-out drones probably originating from accordions and orchestral warm-ups. The record slowly reveals the force of opposites between the analog source material and the digital processing, with Haines' strategy intent on stalemating each other. The resultant push and pull between the two processes adds a majestic tension to the swirling drones, making for a fantastic dreamy album.
RealAudio clip: "Kosciousko"
RealAudio clip: "Peak Communism"