MCGINTY, KATHY s/t (Hamburger Records) cd-r 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY. REAL CD VERSION W/ BONUS TRACKS COMING SOON, HOWEVER!!
You ever have that problem where you're in an internet sex chat room, and you make a date with some pervy girl for a phone sex session, and then when you call her up it's actually some jerk with a sampler loaded with a sexy female voice telling you things like "Taco Bell is sooo good?" Well if you did, chances are you're one of the crank call victims on this extremely funny and fucked up cd-r. We guarantee, if you hear this stuff you'll die laughing (unless you're a total prude, of course). It's really unbelievable how pathetic the guys are who attempt to carry on a phone sex chat with "Kathy McGinty", who is pretty obviously a recorded voice triggered by someone's Yamaha SU10 sampler. They don't seem to mind that she sounds like she's talking to them over a CB radio, or that most of what she says is absurd and nonsensical, like a random sound collage from a porno movie. Her Taco bell comment just gets a moan of agreement from the hapless caller.
A few of the callers figure it out, and then it gets even more pathetic as they continue to masturbate, being such geeks that they're turned on by the technical details of the joke (one guy asks, excitedly, about if the sampler is triggered by keyboard or mouse). But most of the guys are so clueless and horny that they're completely unfazed by Kathy's bizarre comments ("I think you might be racist", "I want to have your retarded babies", "I've got a pickle in my ass") and limited vocabulary (she says "Yesssss!" the same way every time), or her deafeningly noisy, Merzbow-level obviously-looped screams of orgasmic ecstasy. We could go on, but we don't want to reveal too much. Just get this, it's the best crank call disc we've heard in a long time. You'll be playing it for everyone you know, except maybe your mom. Absurdly funny.
RealAudio clip: "I'm Jamming It In Deep, Baby"
RealAudio clip: "I'm Not A Child Molestor, But I'll Fuck You"

COIL Horse Rotovator (World Serpent) cd 15.98
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We here at Aquarius haven't agreed with the critical acclaim that's greeted the recent output of Coil; however, we do agree that their second proper album "Horse Rotovator" should still be viewed as one of the great electronic albums of the 1980s. Immersed in Industrial Culture's transgressive ideologies, and thus intended as perversions of contemporary media and politics, Coil produced "Horse Rotovator" in 1986 as a glorification of lysergic apocalypses within Jean Genet's reversed pantheon of Catholic imagery. Within this convoluted narrative, Coil crafted an unsurpassed album of macabre tales gilded with baroque and at times carnivalesque details. Unlike the majority of their Industrial contemporaries (such as their Wax Trax cronies), Coil's plunge into the realm of the abject wasn't hamstrung by technology. As Coil was one of the first ensembles to be well equipped with early sampling technologies (specifically, the Fairlight Emulator), they masterfully hybridized their dark intentions with the synth-based craft of the new wave pop song (it should be noted that Soft Cell's Marc Almond has been a longstanding friend and guest vocalist for Coil).
With bands like Peaches and Trans Am trawling the '80s solely for the purpose of irony, Coil's work from that decade may appear today as excessively bombastic, too homoerotic, or downright dated. However, "Horse Rotovator" and the (no longer!) criminally unavailable "Love's Secret Domain" undeniably stand at the apex of Coil's extensive career.
RealAudio clip: "Anal Staircase"
RealAudio clip: "Who By Fire"
RealAudio clip: "Golden Section"

KONTAKT DER JUNGLINGE 1 (Die Stadt) cd 13.98
Two noted German electronic composers Thomas Koner (of Porter Ricks) and Asmus Teitchens gave this collaborative project a hybridized name of two compositions by Karlheinz Stockhausen -- "Kontakt" and "Gesang Der Junglinge." Their first documentation is a bit unusual for both artists, as it is a live recording taken from a performance in Bremen, Germany in late 1999. While both artists have made quite a number of live appearances throughout Europe, their focus has always been in the studio production of their work. In terms of stage presence, I can only assume that Kontakt Der Junglinge is downright dull, with Koner hunched over his powerbook and seeming incredibly active when compared to Tietchens, who merely presses "play" on a DAT player and looks serious.
Fortunately, Die Stadt didn't issue "1" as a video, effectively removing the physical presence (or lack thereof) of Koner and Tietchens from the listening experience, and simply leaving the amazing sounds behind. The 45 minute Kontakt Der Junglinge begins as a slow 'n' steady series of deep rumbles which are gradually accompanied by very distant Arvo Part-like choral elements. Later still, oceanic swells of processed static and granular synthesis fluidly encroach into the mix and take over the low end rumblings. As Tietchens' DAT whirrs ahead, fragments appear from his "A-Menge" album of asynchronous computerized clicks. Koner treats these sounds with a considerable amount of isolationist reverb, eroding some of the sharp edges of Tietchens' clinical sounds. Altogether, this is an exceptional record easily on par with anything that either artist has produced to date. Well worth checking out!
RealAudio clip: "1 snippet 1"
RealAudio clip: "1 snippet 2"

MIRROR Islands (Die Stadt) 2lp 17.98
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With a pressing of 1000 copies, Mirror's "Islands" may stay in print a little bit longer than all of the previous outings from this magnificent drone ensemble. Beginning as a duo of hermetic Andrew Chalk and part-time Nurse With Wound collaborator Christoph Heemann, Mirror has officially expanded into a trio with the addition of Andreas Martin -- Heemann's former partner in the cinematically Dadaist collage outfit HNAS. While all of the Chalk / Heemann outings as Mirror are totally breathtaking, the first outing for this Mirror trio was the shakey "Nightwalkers" album, which was dominated by perfunctorily isolationist washes of e-bowed guitars.
"Islands" finds Mirror returning to the guitar with much more successful results. Sprawling across four sides of translucent blue vinyl, "Islands" seemlessly melts both studio sessions and live recordings from a series of recent shows in Austin, Texas. Like all of Mirror's albums, "Islands" appears as a fragment of a much larger composition which extends well beyond the temporal constraints of any given media. Complex ever shifting drones and mercurial tonalities belie the instrumentation being solely guitars, as field recordings of rainstorms and shadowy metallic striations emerge within Mirror's thick ambient wash. Of course, it's recommended. But don't expect this to last, despite the larger pressing.

ZOVIET FRANCE The Decriminalization of Country Music (Tramway) cd 18.98
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We first heard of Zoviet France's latest offering "The Decriminalization of Country Music" back in December; yet it has taken until now for the distribution channels to get into place for this record to finally make its way here to Aquarius. With almost all of their back catalogue out of print and a notable decline in activities throughout the past decade, this delay in distribution is certainly not out of the ordinary for a collective that prides themselves on their well groomed sense of mystery.
Zoviet France began 20 years ago as an anonymous collective of musicians who embraced the DIY attitudes of Punk and Situationism, yet found inspiration in Terry Riley's tape mechanisms, Lee 'Scratch' Perry's schizoid dub production, and the wonders of non-Western instruments (tablas, bouzoukis, Tibetan bowls, Egyptian reeds, etc.). While each of their albums hold very distinct aesthetics, the basic ZF sound is a eerie cyclical drone built from a interlocking network of tape loops with dubbed intrusions of the aforementioned ethnic instruments. One of the subtle ties between all of the Zoviet France records is the process of recycling material, in which a handful of discreet sound elements repeat throughout the album within a broad spectrum of recognizability. For an album like "Hessian" it would be the surreal chant "OK, Boys!" and for "Feedback" it would be the distant whir of a sputtering drum machine.
"The Decriminalization of Country Music" is one of the more obvious examples of Zoviet France's recycling process, as they had been commissioned by the Tramway Gallery in Glasgow, Scotland to re-interpret the sounds of the gallery's extensive redevelopment from a desolate warehouse to a workable exhibition hall. While ZF utilizes various construction site sounds and the resonant properties of the room itself, the dominate theme for "Decriminalization" is the sound of a languorous slide guitar, making comparisons to Ry Cooder inevitable. At the beginning of the record, Zoviet France boldly introduces the haunting guitar sounds against quiet static loops and rich drone synthesis. Yet as the album progresses, the guitar's presence becomes more diffuse, with only a few fragments of muffled twangs hovering amidst the post-industrial ambience by the end of the album.
"The Decriminalization of Country Music" stands as Zoviet France's most minimal piece to date, and like all of their records is an amazing, if not required listening experience.
RealAudio clip: "Something Spooked The Horses"
RealAudio clip: "Pyroclastic Flow"

HAZARD Wind (Ash International) cd 15.98
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Having difficulties in making wind recordings for his new project, Benny Jonas Nilsen (aka Hazard) asked field recording specialist Chris Watson for some help. Coincidentally, Watson had just finished, of all things, a radio program all about wind for the BBC (isn't the BBC cool!), and was happy to supply his tapes to Nilsen. With the incredible clarity of Watson's recordings and Hazard's own raw documentations made using much less professional gear (mostly contact microphones on branches and grass to produce an eerie glistening crackle), Hazard had the material to create this new disc, "Wind".
Following the approach of juxtaposing natural acoustic phenomena with synthetic computer based processing that he utilized on his "North" and "Wood / Bridge / Field" albums, Hazard here generates a wide miasmic range of deep drones and dark looping passages from the manipulated wind recordings, but not overly-structuring the material, instead favoring an organic presentation of the sounds. The addition of Watson's pro recordings add a great deal of color to Hazard's otherwise cold grey timbres, with his dynamic recordings of wind whistling through creaky window frames, environmental recordings of westerlies whipping around mountainous peaks, and violent thunderstorms! The result is a fantastic record on par with Andrew Chalk's "East Of The Sun" or Zoviet France's "Mohnomische."
RealAudio clip: "Stream"
RealAudio clip: "Anemo"
RealAudio clip: "Sough"

SIGMARSSON, SIGTRYGGUR BERG Ship (Trente Oiseaux) cd 16.98
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Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson is a member of the transplanted Icelandic trio Stilluppsteypa, whose work has evolved over the past decade from avant-rock wackiness to studied drone / glitch work but has always maintained an off-kilter and at times absurdist approach toward their concepts. "Ship" is Sigmarsson's debut solo recording and continues in the minimalist direction that Stilluppsteypa has taken recently. Sigmarsson's album uses the metallic hull of a half buried ship as the source material for this album. Sigmarsson's "Ship" austerely floats through a gradually shifting topography of delicate, complementary harmonics, which come close to the more active drone moments from the latest Bernhard Gunter records.
RealAudio clip: "Ship"

I AM SPOONBENDER Teletwin (Little Army) 12" 11.98
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Please note: there are plans in the works for this record to be reissued as a picture disc. Stay tuned.
A tricky 3-sided vinyl release, that is, one side has two concurrent grooves -- allowing chance to dictate what you hear.
This 41-minute ep starts with an altered version of "Stopwatch Static" (here titled "Clocks Grow Old" to expand the meaning of the original), one of the avant-pop numbers from their 1998 album Sender / Receiver which fades into "Infinity Limiter", a Steve Reich-ian tune for synths,
which has become a staple in the I Am Spoonbender live 'Dream Set'. "Where Do Words Go?" at first appears to be a pretty straightforward cover of Berlin's new wave classic "The Metro" -- but upon closer inspection you realize that it is a 'tele-twin' of sorts, with completely different lyrics exactly set to the original melody! This makes IAS' version an imposter -- passing for the original, but actually completely different. Lyrically and conceptually, this now places the song entirely within the IAS ethos (Illusion / reality, etc). Furthermore, the song eventually detours into layers of melodic deconstructions and time signature shakeups which somehow reconvene back into the original song structure for its finish. For "Frozen Dog Futurist", IAS generate Heldon-esque synths with an obsessive bassline matching the disorienting punch of Dustin Donaldson's live drumming. This decomposes into digital glitch manipulated organ drones which could easily have origins in the soundtrack to the classic, freaky film Carnival Of Souls. That is followed by "October Blurred By", a hypnotic rhythmic track of flanged bass repeating a complex anti-funk groove that could be mistaken for a Tones On Tail out-take! "They Don't Have Mirrors" continues the aural relay with a caustic electronic wash which gives way to a blast of percussive math cluster bombs topped by slippery bass distortion before breaking down into thick recordings of steam engine horns with backwards digital skittering... and then erupts back into the aforementioned structure.
For all of the plastic / new wave sheen that I Am Spoonbender applies to their songs, their structures may in fatc be closer to This Heat or Funkstorung's experiments with fracturing electronica by shifting rhythmic elements in and out of atmospheric moods.
Released on the record label run by Chunklet Magazine's Henry Owings.

ABRUPTUM De Profundis Mors Vas Cousumet (Regain / Blooddawn) cd ep 8.98
Returning from a long absence, here's a three song ep from Sweden's infamous improv-black metal band Abruptum. None blacker! The first track, dating from way back in 1991, starts with gothic keyboards and has a lot of Satanic screaming, but with its gothic keyboard intro and straight-ahead drums, actually sounds like "normal" song-based black metal. But the 8+ minute track two is the reason to get this. This year 2000 recording is where Abruptum reveal themselves to be the Hijokaidan (to make a Japanoise reference) of black metal, a clanging bell heralding some supremely evil chaos that sounds closer to Merzbow (to make another) than Mayhem. Wrapping things up, track three's marching boots (doubtlessly sampled from some WWII movie) morph into a distorted industrial rhythm that terminates in a finale of soundtrack synths. It's all about the atmosphere, and Abruptum is indeed the blackest. 16 minutes of (mostly) unstructured metallic madness that only the truest will like or understand.
RealAudio clip: "Dodsapparaten"

LAMB, ALAN Primal Image / Beauty (Dorobo) cd 15.98
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Alan Lamb is a biologist who entered the realm of music after discovering the complex choral harmonics of the telephone wires that span his native Australia. Lamb's allegiance to both biology and the spectral sounds of the frequencies of a long thin wire reacting to natural events isn't that odd as Lamb himself explains, "that these principles (in wire frequencies) have much in common conceptually with those underlying the generation of coherent patterns in biological systems... and it is probably not too far fetched to suggest that wire music is an aural embodiment of some of the most fundamental dynamic laws of the universe."
"Primal Image / Beauty" is the culmination of 7 years of field recordings, during which Lamb discovered the best meterological situations for certain timbres, the best wires that emanated these harmonics, and good microphones to capture the sounds (for this phenomenon is externally ampified by the wires under the right circumstances). Even in listening to the incredible textural dronework from Organum or Xenakis, it is pretty awe-inspiring that this is simply the sound of the wind resonating a wire.
For those who live around the Bay Area, this phenomenon can be heard on occasion at Point Reyes, especially when the wind is coming straight down the coast from the north and strikes the wires which run east-west along the barren peninsula.
RealAudio clip: "Beauty"

ORGANUM Ikon (Robot / Siren) cd 14.98
It is quite plausible to propose that Organum is one of the many logical extentions of '60s minimalism. After all, Organum's David Jackman has maintained a longstanding friendship with AMM (whose Eddie Prevost joined Organum for a couple of records) and wrote several scores for Cornelius Cardew's Scratch Orchestra in the late '60s. Yet, Jackman has always resisted all critical categorizations of his work. During a rare interview, Jackman offered the observation that the '80s found Organum lumped in with the Industrial culture, and later in the '90s, his outfit found strange bedfellows in the Ambient revival. Despite this critical pigeonholing, the Organum sound has remained incredibly consistant. This is a re-release of the long out of print album "Ikon" which was originally released as a cassette in 1985, and later as an LP in 1987. Clocking in at under 17 minutes, "Ikon" is a mere sliver of temporal dronology in comparison to the massive compositions from LaMonte Young, Charlemagne Palestine, or even Terry Riley.
Sonically, this stands as maybe the finest work from Organum. The extended screech of bowed cymbals fits perfectly with non-verbal deep vocal chants and the hovering wisps of a flute to create a timeless and ancient sounding music. As soon as Organum sastisfactorily meets the requirements for the drone supreme with complex interlocking timbres from various tones and abrasions, Jackman orders everything to cease. The shortened program of these beautiful sounds appears as a let down at first, but Jackman's fleeting constructions say everything that needs to be said with all of economy of a three minute pop song. If you disagree, the digital format will work in your advantage as you can simply repeat this album indefinitely for extended listens. Regardless, this is highly recommended!!!
RealAudio clip: "Crawl"
RealAudio clip: "The Slaughter"

MORRIS, CHRIS Blue Jam (Warp) cd 17.98
I have become completely obsessed with Chris Morris. He makes me sad. Sad that we don't have anyone nearly as funny in the United States.
He's been a staple of British radio / television for years now. And it seems like since day one, he's been trying to get himself blackballed. Or killed. His BBC program The Day Today, was a Today Show parody. Complete with a washed up, neurotic weatherman (the also amazing Steve Coogan), a narcissistic and completely cruel host (Morris), and a gorgeous and ice cold business reporting babe that spoke in complete gibberish. After The Day Today was cancelled, came Brass Eye, one of the funniest shows I have ever seen. This time a parody of evening news programs like 48 Hours or 60 Minutes, taking things even further. The goal of this show seemed to be to publically humiliate trusted government officials and public figures (quite successfully we should add) and contributed to Brass Eye's rather brief run. Then came Blue Jam, a totally surreal and unstructured radio show. featuring bizarre (and often offensive) free association / high (low) concept skits over music from a who's who of modern electronica / trip hop (Later turned into an even more unstructured television program called Jam. loosely adapted from the radio show). The Blue Jam cd is basically the best bits from the Blue Jam radio show, featuring Chris Morris and a few other folks, eating and killing and arguing and shitting off their limbs (?) over music from Labradford, Propellerheads, Amon Tobin, Funki Porcini, Herbaliser, Brian Eno, Aphex Twin, Fila Brazillia, 9lazy9, Clifford Gilberto, Jimi Tenor, and more. Until we can get Brass Eye over here, Chris Morris comes to you only via Blue Jam, quite possibly the funniest headphone mindfuck ever.
RealAudio clip: "Blue Jam 05"
RealAudio clip: "Blue Jam 07"
RealAudio clip: "Blue Jam 12"
RealAudio clip: "Blue Jam 16"
RealAudio clip: "Blue Jam 20"

NIBLOCK, PHILL Touch Works, For Hurdy Gurdy and Voice (Touch) cd 16.98
Phill Niblock is a minimalist contemporary of LaMonte Young, Charlemagne Palestine, and Tony Conrad, yet has been seemingly overlooked, minus a few avant rock footnotes from the likes of Glenn Branca, Sonic Youth, and Band of Susans. In the liner notes, essayist Kyle Gann offers an unconvincing argument as to the reason for his relative obscurity, claiming that Niblock's work is too challenging, compared to his minimalist brothers... Well, Niblock's approach is certainly more complex than Young's static explorations of fundamental pitches or Conrad's scraping antagonism toward traditional intonation, but more challenging? I think "more interesting" is a better read of Gann's thesis. While them's fightin' words in the quick-to-slander political world of NYC '60s minimalism, Niblock's "Touch Works, For Hurdy Gurdy and Voice" is certainly a formidable album that stands firmly on its own merits, without Aquarius adding any fuel to the fire.
The first piece "Hurdy Hurry" is an extended drone, based on samples of Jim O'Rourke and his hurdy gurdy. Niblock begins the piece simply enough with a single sustained whir of the wooden machine, but thickens the mix with multi-tracked layers of more hurdy gurdy drones tuned to specific pitches. The result is a glistening audio kaleidoscope of rich ambers, oranges, and blood reds.
The two versions of "A Y U (aka As Yet Untitled)" are based upon a similar multi-tracked technique as before, but based upon recordings of baritone vocalist Thomas Buckner. These two tracks have a nasally warble to them, sounding similar to the circular breathing of Tuvan throat singers. While sonically similar, the first version is open and diffuse, and the second is lumbering and forceful.
As with all Touch releases, Jon Wozencroft offers his usual amazing design sensibility to an amazing piece of minimalist composition.
RealAudio clip: "A Y U (part one)"
RealAudio clip: "Hurdy Hurry"

NURSE WITH WOUND Automating Vol 1 (United Dairies) cd 21.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Although there is no track listing or general information on this record, "Automating Volume 1" is a collection of recordings that Steven Stapleton made for compilations between 1981 and 1986. The album starts out on a really wacky note with "Duelling Banjos" (from the United Dairies compilation "Hoisting The Black Flag" released in 1981.) An uptight drum machine relentlessly chuggs alongside whimsical farts and blurts of archetypal NWW sounds (as heard on "Alas The Madonna Does Not Function" and "A Missing Sense"). The second track, "Stick That Chick & Feel My Steel Through Your Last Meal" (from the 1986 Laylah compilation "The Fight Is On"), is a Fluxus-esque composition of creaky noise making, with spurts of groans, more fart sounds, party favors, zithers and percussion objects (a lot of the material found on "Homotopy To Marie" can be found here). The third track, "Nana Or A Thing of Uncommon Nonsense", is another silly track (featured on the 1983 X-tract compilation "Elephant Table Album"), starting out with a tasteless racial joke and then sputtering through a random collage of bongos and football chants (plus, a lot of the polka loops on the "Sylvie & Babs" lp are used on this.) The album then turns to Stapleton's dark side with his very creepy submission to the Come Organisation album "Fur Ilse Koch" (1982) on which a little German girl pleads for her father accompanied by an ever intensifying psychoacoustically irritating high frequency drone. What may in fact be more disturbing than this track is to hear my co-worker Byram muttering the little girl's words as syntatical anomalies in his already idiosyncratic vocabulary.
The remainder of "Automating Vol. 1" revolves around Stapleton's fascination with Robert Ashley's compositions in one form or another. "I Was No Longer His Dominant", taken from the 1982 United Dairies release "An Afflicted Man's Musica Box" is a creepy homage to Ashley's "Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon". While both the remaining two tracks, "Ciconia" (from the 1982 Slektion comp "Masse Menche") and "Automating (Again)" (from the 1984 Frux comp "Born Out of Dreams" -- exclusive to the cd re-issue) are themselves influenced greatly by Ashley's "Automatic Writin." A coincidence in the title? I think not! The aforementioned Ashley piece is an unsettling meditation on muffled conversations and muted electronics which mysteriously express a psychosexual overtone. Stapleton's homages to Ashley are a fortunately less academic sounding and pack more of a punch.
Certainly, this work stands with "Homotopy For Marie" and "150 Murderous Passions" as the records to document Stapleton's formative years.
RealAudio clip: "I Was No Longer His Dominant"
RealAudio clip: "Fashioned To A Device Behind A Tree"

POLYGON WINDOW Surfing On Sinewaves (Warp) cd 13.98
Richard D. James is better known as The Aphex Twin, yet his first recording for Warp Records was under his Polygon Window moniker. At the time of this recording in 1992, Warp started the legendary Artificial Intelligence series (which is the origin for the dubious genre title Intelligent Dance Music) to encapsulate the mutant techno sounds of Autechre, Black Dog, F.U.S.E., B12, and Aphex Twin. For better or for worse, Warp signed a deal with Wax Trax in the US for this series. At the time, a certain logic can be seen in the Artificial Intelligence series as a futuristic extension of the Wax Trax industrial sound. Yet when Wax Trax ended up getting absorbed / dissolved into TVT, a few of the Artificial Intelligence recordings (including "Surfing On Sinewaves") were lost in the legal mires of licensing deals gone awry.
Finally, Warp has reissued "Surfing On Sinewaves" for the US (the UK pressings have still been in print, but unavailable for sale in North America due to that piece of paper with Wax Trax). Most clearly inspired by the claustrophobia of Chicago Acid House and Detroit Techno, James coaxed an arpeggiating barrage of metallic clangs and hammered rhythms out of his broken samplers and rewired drum machines. The alien melodies and warm dreamlike tonalities which dominated his epic "Selected Ambient Works Vol. 2" first found their way onto these records as ghost like afterimages surrounding the electronic rhythms. Even after nearly a decade, this album is still mindblowing.
While today's contemporary discourse of the glitch / click have their clear roots in the malfuctioning sounds of computers, Richard James' early pioneering productions spoke of technological errors occuring within his broken synthesizers and Midi plug-ins. If it weren't for records like "Surfing on Sinewaves," there would be no Kid 606, Lesser, or Hrvatski.
RealAudio clip: "Polygon Window"
RealAudio clip: "Quoth"
RealAudio clip: "Ut1 - Dot"

COLECLOUGH, JONATHAN Period (Anomalous) lp 14.98
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Quite happy in releasing sporadic productions in painfully small pressings, Jonathan Coleclough has been one of Aquarius' favorite dronologist / deep listening composers and one who deserves a place in the experimental ambient pantheon that glorifies the work of Pauline Oliveros, Brian Eno, and Zoviet France. "Period," a vinyl only release, draws all its sounds from a Bluthner grand piano. With each key that Coleclough strikes, he has rigged up an unknown set up (a series of interlocking delay pedals creating a delicate feedback loop? an acoustic device of various strings and springs which act as modified aeolian harp? it probably doesn't matter) to generate beautifully resonating tones, which appear at first to sustain indefinitely yet almost imperceptibly begin to show signs of decay. When a spartanly placed cluster of impressionistic notes trickles from the piano's sound board, Coleclough has an amazingly rich drone to gradually shift and modulate until another series of gentle piano notes is required. While this piece would be enough to warrant high praise from all at AQ, the flip side of the record is an exceptional piece on which Nurse With Wound and Ora collaborator Colin Potter reworked the original source material. Potter's contribution entitled "Periodic" effectively erases the obvious references to the piano, leaving behind a densely tangled web of calm reverberations. Totally amazing!!!

ANGELS OF LIGHT How I Loved You (Young God) cd 14.98
A few years back, Michael Gira dissolved the Swans, and effectively split his band's aesthetic in two, with the soiled ambient project Body Lovers / Body Haters on one side, and the orchestrated songs of Angels of Light on the other. "How I Loved You" is the second Angels of Light album and, as could be gathered from the title, is a collection of love songs. The album begins speaking of love with elation, as in "Evangeline," where Gira pleads to his object of desire with the wistful innocence of a school boy. The following "Untitled Love Song" is a strolling duet between Gira and ex-Pain Teen's singer Bliss Blood, both of whom seem uncharacteristically full of sweetness and light. With those being the most benevolent images of love that he has to offer, Gira then guides the album down a steep slope of sexual dependency, perverse lusts, and a gristled despair in which Gira's body continuously betrays his mind's wishes to never fuck again.
From here on, each track from "How I Loved You" begins with a simple languid melody that could easily be mistaken for anything from the recent Low record but steadily builds in complexity, driving into deeper, darker, and more intense realms.
RealAudio clip: "Evangeline"
RealAudio clip: "New City Of The Future"
RealAudio clip: "My Suicide"

DUNCAN, JOHN & GIULIANA STEFANI Palace of Mind (Allquestions) cd 21.00
"Palace of Mind" -- released on his own imprint All Questions -- is a collaborative effort between longstanding experimentalist John Duncan and Italian mathematician Giuliana Stefani. In this work, he returns to the architectural metaphors that he previously explored on 1996's "The Crackling", a documentation of the aural properties found within SLAC, Stanford University's titanic particle linear accelerator. "Palace of Mind" follows a labyrinthine architectural schematic which parallels not only the minute circuitry of the computer but also the rhizomatic synaptic connections of the brain. With the movement from an irritable data-stream purity to the gossamer haze of shortwave distortion to gaping drones of treated vocal vibrato, Duncan and Stefani have set a trajectory deep into the heart of their sonic architecture. Each room is saturated with an anxiousness for what may be on the other side of the door. It is not Duncan firing a gun at your head, but an interlocking network of chambers that resonate and breathe with a profound beauty. Dare it be said that John Duncan has created something holy? Certainly, this is Duncan's best work to date!
RealAudio clip: "palace of mind fragment 1"
RealAudio clip: "palace of mind fragment 2"

MNORTHAM :coyot: (Erewhon) cd 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Aeolian harps are relatively simple devices made from of a couple planks of wood and a taut wire, which are placed in relation to a wind source to transform the speed, force, and directionality of the air itself into an extended drone. David Kenny's Aeolian String Ensemble and Douglas Quin's Antarctica recordings (using ice instead of wood and wire) are previous examples we've mentioned of the amazing sounds that an aeolian harp can generate. Portland sound artist Mnortham received a commission to install a series of aeolian harps in an abandoned bunker found on an island off the coast of Finland. (Cool!) ":coyot:" is a collection of the transmuted sounds from the recordings that Mnortham made within that bunker, as well as from various field recordings culled from the exploration of the island's landscape. While the lengthy essay contributed by Giancarlo Toniutti offers a complex thesis on the relation of these recordings to the sky / wind / air mythologies of a number of ancient Nordic races, Mnortham's recordings succeed through their beautifully droning simplicity, much like Francisco Lopez or Jonathan Coleclough.
RealAudio clip: "Effects On Atmospheric Pressure On Air-Born Particles"

MNORTHAM / JGRZINICH The Stomach of the Sky (Staalplaat) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
MNortham (who has previously been sighted on the fantastic Ora album Anagram and in recent collaboration with Francisco Lopez) and JGrzinich are sound artists investigating the properties of various organic acoustic forms, making use of long wire devices, found materials, assembled devices, aeolian wind harps, and a field recordings. Culled from years of collaborative recordings, The Stomach Of The Sky begins with extended rumble of densely layered sounds -- very much like the latest Lopez field recording work. Then the duo introduces a delicate metallic drones / scrapes / gurgles which could come from the Organum / Andrew Chalk school of bowed cymbals and gongs or from a processed field recording of water running through copper pipes. Either way, it's a beautiful magnetic tone.

MARCHETTI, WALTER Nei Mari Del Sud. Musica In Secca (Alga Marghen) cd 16.98
Beautiful calligraphic tones -- the result of a piano triggering six magnetic tapes, whose signals are displaced out-of-phase, reverberating quietly and slowly over empty space in this stunning piece by Marchetti -- dark and ominous. Along with some excessive liner notes (if you thought we could be long winded), there's an awsome photo of Walt on the back cover enjoying a martini at some dark hotel bar.

ENO, BRIAN Here Come The Warm Jets (EG) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY. Now reissued on EMI!

ENO, BRIAN Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) (EG) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY. Now reissued on EMI!

APHEX TWIN Selected Ambient Works Volume 2 (Warp) 2cd 21.00
The album from which Richard D. James' electronica genius became obvious. Selected Ambient Works 2 is as if James sonically replicated the post-slumber / pre-waking state when sunlight first strikes the dream riddled eye within the memory banks of his rewired samplers. A beautiful, synaesthetic and haunting post-techno ambient that really must be heard!

LOW I Could Live In Hope (Vernon Yard Recordings) cd 14.98

TOBIN, AMON Bricolage (Ninja Tune) cd 16.98
First album by Amon Tobin after shedding the Cujo moniker. Excellent drum & bass with hand-lifted beats from jazz to old bachelor pad lps to soundtracks. All impeccably reworked, recomposed and produced by Mr Tobin. Everything this guy has released is crucial. Very highly recommended!

BLITHE SONS Dirt and Clouds (Jewelled Antler) cd-r 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Loren Chasse, proud owner of a brand new cd-burner, began the Jewelled Antler label as an outlet to release small cd-r pressings of a variety of warbled psychedelic projects that have spun-off from his bands Thuja and Knit Separates. The Blithe Sons is the first such release, featuring Chasse and Glenn Donaldson (from Mirza as well as Thuja / Knit Separates). Despite hailing from San Francisco, Chasse and Donaldson have tapped into a vein of melancholic UK psychedelia which runs from the Wicker Man soundtrack through to the early instrumentals of Eyeless In Gaza and the pensive sounds of Richard Youngs. While Donaldson's expressive guitar lines are central to the Blithe Sons arrangements, the album's uniqueness is found in the production work which often positions the quiet instrumentation in the pronounced foreground making the songs so intimate, as to seem played right inside your ears... or brings in some quite textural noises (very common to Chasse's solo sound investigations and manipulated field recordings) as a 'duet' with the melodic lines of the guitar. Very nice work! Based on this, the next Blithe Sons release deserves be a "real" cd release on a proper label (although the musical quality, beautiful packaging and reasonable price of this release shows that cd-r labels are sometimes quite worthwhile).
RealAudio clip: "Calamus Parade"
RealAudio clip: "Crescent-Shaped Sails"

KONER, THOMAS Teimo / Permafrost (Mille Plateaux) 2cd 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Mille Plateaux has seen fit to reissue two of the three early isolationist recordings from Thomas Koner. At the time (being the early '90s), those three records (sadly there's no sight of a reissue of the best of the three: "Nunatak Gongamur") stood as a bleak dark ambient monuments that were too alien for the global hippy ambience of contemporaries like The Orb or Future Sound of London. However, Koner's membership in Porter Ricks - which defined the trajectory of the Chain Reaction washed out techno minimalism - has inspired more than a few techno boffins to look back at Koner's post-industrial roots. Very nice deep listening drones.

LOPEZ, FRANCISCO / AMY DENIO Belle Confusion 00 (Absolute) cd 14.98
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Even through his collaborations (as seen here on Belle Confusion 00 with Amy Denio), Francisco Lopez has successfully resisted procedures, craftsmanship, and semantics. What's left behind are paradoxically both ominous and serene compositions of open ended droning mysteries to be researched and investigated by the audience as they see fit. While Belle Confusion 00 uses Denio's voice (no saxophone) as the basic sound material, Lopez and Denio have built a haunted gray drone from the complex harmonics of a human voice that never utters anything except its own somatic textures. Their collaboration begins with a mirage-like sound of undefinable yet delicate fluctuations, then a silence, followed by a slow rumble of similar sounds as the first interlude but much less friendly, and then another silence. I find myself thinking that Lopez has stretched out two brief syllables from Denio's voice over the course of an hour.
RealAudio clip: "Belle Confusion 00"

LOPEZ, FRANCISCO / MICHAEL NORTHAM Belle Confusion 0247 (Absolute) cd 14.98
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Francisco Lopez's Belle Confusion 0247 with fellow field recording artist Michael Northam is certainly one of the strongest recordings to come from Lopez's encyclopedia of 'absolute concrete music' which in the past, has included investigations of the physicality of silence, the swarming sonic tapestries of South American rainforests, and the textural intricacies of death metal blastbeats. Northam and Lopez began an exchange five years which resulted in Northam's appearance on Staalplaat's release of Untitled (1993). For this album, the two apply a considerable amount of pressure to their processed field recordings which gradually increase from near silence to roaring floods of metallic noise and gives way to a hovering buzz from an indeterminant timestretched echo, striated by almost imperceptible tinklings of wooden objects. Very nice.
RealAudio clip: "Belle Confusion 0247"

NITSCH, HERMANN Harmoniumwerk Vol 9, 10, 11, 12 (Cortical Foundation) 2cd 35.00
Oh shit. It appears that the Cortical Foundation will be reissuing the complete Hermann Nitsch's "Harmoniumwerk," which totals 40 volumes. Released four volumes at a time, this looks like it may end up being 10 double cds! While Hermann Nitsch is known mostly as the Vienna Aktionist who specialized in perfomances of ritualized bloodletting, his musical accompaniments to his performances have often revealed an incredibly developed aesthetic of dynamic dissonance balanced against subtle droning passages. The "Harmoniumwerk" series stands out from all of the Nitsch recordings, as not being made in conjunction with his performative productions. Nitsch describes this work, "In 1968, I got a harmonium as a wedding present from my wife. From then on, I sat at the harmonium and played almost exclusively long notes that never wanted to end. I tried to listen into the infinite structure of the stars, into the unimaginable spaces searching for sound. The joy of beautiful colors, of (almost intoxicating) combinations of sound was most important but at the same time it was carried by the almost presumptuous task to conjure, to sing of, and measure the extent of cosmic space. The course of the stars were to be put to sound."
This is the third double cd in the 40 volume series of Hermann Nitsch's "Harmoniumwerk."

ELECTRO GROUP A New Pacifica (Omnibus) cd 12.98
It should be stated that Sacramento's Electro Group has nothing in common with electro the genre - so look elsewhere for Miami jeep bass-bin rattlin' beats. Instead, this Electro Group hails from Sacramento and picks up where such contemporary US noise-pop / shoegazing bands as The Lilys and The Aisler's Set left off with their lovable reclamation of the early '90s Creation sound. While each track off of "A New Pacifica" -- their debut album -- is drenched in a thick early My Bloody Valentine distortion, it is primarily the rolling basslines which provide nearly all of the melodies for the Electro Group, thus keeping them sounding much heavier than your average shoegazing trio. Released on the Omnibus label, who was repsonsible for that fantastic Mates of State album, and, like that record, this isn't something you should pass up.
RealAudio clip: "Biped"
RealAudio clip: "La Ballena"

ELECTRO GROUP A New Pacifica (Omnibus) lp 9.98
It should be stated that Sacramento's Electro Group has nothing in common with electro the genre - so look elsewhere for Miami jeep bass-bin rattlin' beats. Instead, this Electro Group hails from Sacramento and picks up where such contemporary US noise-pop / shoegazing bands as The Lilys and The Aisler's Set left off with their lovable reclamation of the early '90s Creation sound. While each track off of "A New Pacifica" -- their debut album -- is drenched in a thick early My Bloody Valentine distortion, it is primarily the rolling basslines which provide nearly all of the melodies for the Electro Group, thus keeping them sounding much heavier than your average shoegazing trio. Released on the Omnibus label, who was repsonsible for that fantastic Mates of State album, and like that record this isn't something you should pass up.

TROUM Tjukurrpa: Part One Harmonies (Transgredient) cd 16.98
Stefan Knappe of Troum has started the Transgredient label as an outlet for CD releases, thus preserving the vinyl-only purity of his Drone Records label and its ongoing series of seven inch singles. Troum is the extention of the Maeror Tri project which was an incredibly prolific isolationist / post-industrial group throughout the '90s. Armed with a barrage of guitars, miasmic loops, and tricked out reverb / echo / delay effects, Maeror Tri undertook a bleak and at times nightmarish route in search of the drone supreme. While culling from Maeror Tri's extensive drone production techniques, Troum's sound is far lighter -- but still never sounds as gentle (or space-rock-y) as something like Windy & Carl or Roy Montgomery. Repetitive and subtly beautiful melodies rise out of the waters of Troum's cold swirling ambience, which grow in intensity throughout each of the seven lengthy pieces on this disc. While the members of Troum have been recording for well over a decade, it is still a wonder to hear new material as they continue to challenge themselves to improve on the what they seemingly have already perfected: the task of creating the ultimate drone.
RealAudio clip: "Licht Btandung"
RealAudio clip: "Wrotasfer"

NITSCH, HERMANN Harmoniumwerk Vol 1, 2, 3, 4 (Cortical Foundation) 2cd 35.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Oh shit. It appears that the Cortical Foundation will be reissuing the complete Hermann Nitsch's "Harmoniumwerk," which totals 40 volumes. Released four volumes at a time, this looks like it may end up being 10 double cds! While Hermann Nitsch is known mostly as the Vienna Aktionist who specialized in perfomances of ritualized bloodletting, his musical accompaniments to his performances have often revealed an incredibly developed aesthetic of dynamic dissonance balanced against subtle droning passages. The "Harmoniumwerk" series stands out from all of the Nitsch recordings, as not being made in conjunction with his performative productions. Nitsch describes this work, "In 1968, I got a harmonium as a wedding present from my wife. From then on, I sat at the harmonium and played almost exclusively long notes that never wanted to end. I tried to listen into the infinite structure of the stars, into the unimaginable spaces searching for sound. The joy of beautiful colors, of (almost intoxicating) combinations of sound was most important but at the same time it was carried by the almost presumptuous task to conjure, to sing of, and measure the extent of cosmic space. The course of the stars were to be put to sound."
The Hermann Nitsch "Harmoniumwerk" certainly rivals (and often surpasses) the magnificient tonal quality of such '60s drone suprematists as Charlemagne Palestine and LaMonte Young.
RealAudio clip: "Harmoniumwerk 1"

NITSCH, HERMANN Harmoniumwerk Vol 5, 6, 7, 8 (Cortical Foundation) 2cd 35.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Oh shit. It appears that the Cortical Foundation will be reissuing the complete Hermann Nitsch's "Harmoniumwerk," which totals 40 volumes. Released four volumes at a time, this looks like it may end up being 10 double cds! While Hermann Nitsch is known mostly as the Vienna Aktionist who specialized in perfomances of ritualized bloodletting, his musical accompaniments to his performances have often revealed an incredibly developed aesthetic of dynamic dissonance balanced against subtle droning passages. The "Harmoniumwerk" series stands out from all of the Nitsch recordings, as not being made in conjunction with his performative productions. Nitsch describes this work, "In 1968, I got a harmonium as a wedding present from my wife. From then on, I sat at the harmonium and played almost exclusively long notes that never wanted to end. I tried to listen into the infinite structure of the stars, into the unimaginable spaces searching for sound. The joy of beautiful colors, of (almost intoxicating) combinations of sound was most important but at the same time it was carried by the almost presumptuous task to conjure, to sing of, and measure the extent of cosmic space. The course of the stars were to be put to sound."
This is the second double cd in the 40 volume series of Hermann Nitsch's "Harmoniumwerk."

REYNOLS / PAULINE OLIVEROS Pauline Oliveros In The Arms Of Reynols (Cream Garden) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Within the Reynolsian post-rational pantheon, Pauline Oliveros holds the unique position of being the band's astral godmother. Oliveros has been in close contact with the Argentinian avant rockers since 1994 and only recently has their collaboration been documented, first as a super limited tape release, and now as this cd which is somewhat of a reworked version of that cassette release. Following the brilliant single-source-material manipulations found on "Blank Tapes" and "10,000 Chicken Symphony," Reynols reinterprets and recomposes recordings from Oliveros for just intonation accordion and voice. Reynols -- unlike most remix artists -- takes great care to add something that is distinctively of themselves without diluting the beautiful complexities of Oliveros' signature style. "Pauline Oliveros In The Arms Of Reynols" is a massive recording of the glacial swells of Oliveros' accordion which are matched with Reynols magically dark production -- adding distant (and somewhat threatening) bird choruses and glistening guitar distortion washes to the mix. This extended dronological investigation is broken near the end of the record by Reynols' Miguel Tomasin expounding his ideas about life and this recording. Even if our Spanish were better, his playful neologisms still would probably be beyond us, as our metal grasp of his idiosyncratic mythologies is somewhat limited. Nevertheless, this is an amazing document.
RealAudio clip: "We are still thinking about the title..."
RealAudio clip: "We are still thinking about the title?"

DNTEL Something Always Goes Wrong (Phthalo) cd 12.98
Dntel's "Something Always Goes Wrong" had a noble beginning back in 1994 when it was slated to be released on some Japanese boutique techno label as a concept record about "our hero and his arduous journey." (?) The presence of swords, damsels, and an evil king keep this concept album outside of the realm of Sci-Fi -- the genre of choice for techno boffins doing concept albums. This is a blatantly romantic piece of electronic abstraction which nuzzles itself right in between early '90s legends of electronica in Reload, Biosphere, and chill-out king, The Orb. The outsider electronica label Phthalo resurrected this album and added two remixes (from Seq and Languis respectively) and two new tracks. Fans of Boards of Canada who haven't heard much of Reload or Biosphere should certainly check Dntel out. Easily the most accessible record to emerge from the damaged minds of Phthalo!
RealAudio clip: "in which our hero begins his long and arduous quest"

VON HAUSSWOLFF, C.M. Operation Of Spirit Communication (Die Stadt) lp 14.98
As co-monarch (with Leif Elggren) of the Kingdom of Elgaland-Vargaland, C.M. von Hausswolff has issued an edict which abolishes death and has invited the dead to become citizens of their virtual state. In order to communicate with the dead, von Hausswolff has taken cues from the legendary EVP researcher Friedrich Jurgensen - who believed he had the telepathic ability to channel the voices of the dead onto magnetic tape or shortwave radio. Where von Hausswolff lacks in psychic ability, he makes up in the elegant production of complex electrical drones that he tunes to reach an elusive harmony that opens the door to the other side. Sure enough, as von Hausswolff slowly modulates the tonal vibrations for this recording, ethereal utterances and sonic neologisms break through von Hausswolff's miasma of electric currents. While the romantic side of me wishes this to be a factual document of modern-day spiritualism, the cynic has more proof that this is a fiction. Yet, like "The Ghost Orchid" and the aforementioned Friedrich Jurgensen recordings, C.M. von Hausswolff's "Operation Of Spirit Communication" is a marvelous record.

JACKMAN, DAVID Eisen (Die Stadt) 10" 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
"Eisen" is another installment in a series from Organum ringleader David Jackman, who consistently offers a disturbing body of work with undeniable references to the atrocities of World War II. This piece is an extended collage built from an eerie repetition of a Wagnerian theme as played by a German marching band circa 1940. Jackman handles this piece with such masterful attention to detail that the mechanical machine gun noise and grimly triumphant horn loops almost become transparent to the intrinsically problematic overtones of the source material. Yet, Jackman leaves a huge semiotic void underneath his pristine surface of sound that brings any investigation into his work back to what's referenced by his source material. While Jackman hasn't stated his intentions regarding this piece, this series appears to be an obtuse reinterpretation of historical sound... As with everything that Jackman releases, "Eisen" is first and foremost, a fascinating sound recording, but is destined to be a collector's item, limited as it is to 500 copies.

RILEY, TERRY You're No Good (Cortical Foundation) 2cd 31.00
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The unanimous AQ staff favorite of the week. Disc one is totally stuck in our cd player...it's only about 20 minutes long, but it may as well be infinite, 'cause we just keep playing it over and over. Appropriate, because, as with much of the late '60s work of American minimalist composer Terry Riley's work, repetition (with subtle changes) is the modus operandi here. The original source song "You're No Good", a pop-latin-boogaloo number released by Harvey Averne in 1968 (he's not credited in the liner notes to this, strangely) is a great tune in its own right. But soon after the original song's release. Terry Riley got his hands on it and created what oughta become one of his all time classic tracks. Riley used pedal-driven tape-loops and the Moog to take the infectious "You're No Good" chorus to extreme, abstract, mesmerizing lengths. It's looped over and under itself, at first sounding completely normal and then imperceptibly gets weirder and weirder until it's so odd that the customers in the store start looking concerned and asking if the cd player is skipping. It stutters wonderfully! Sometimes the left and right channels are playing different parts of the song simultaneously, to eerily beautiful effect.
That the original song is so insanely catchy and hook-filled (it's a "Dancing in the Streets"-style pop number) definitely contributes to the accessibility and fun of the piece. Disco minimalism? Hell yeah. Apparently it was commissioned as theme song for what must have been a very avant-garde Philly dance club, the operator of which was a Terry Riley fan present at the concert documented on disc one... Brilliant.
By the way, the original Averne song can be found on the compilation Dusty Fingers Vol. 2, and we've added a clip of the original below for you to compare.
Disc 2 of this archival set is live material from one of Terry's Poppy Nogood All Night Concerts held in Philadelphia in the fall of 1967. The lovely drones produced by his soprano sax and "time-lag accumulator" must have kept the attendees happy and hypnotized in their sleeping bags 'til dawn, and now we can experience a cd's worth of it now at whatever time of day or night we choose. Nice.
RealAudio clip: TERRY RILEY "You're Nogood"
RealAudio clip: HARVEY AVERNE "You're No Good (note: this does NOT appear on the Riley record!)"

BODY LOVERS Number One Of Three (Atavistic) cd 15.98
The Body Lovers was the first project that Michael Gira established after dissolving his stalwart abject rock ensemble Swans. For this project (which presumably will be a trilogy of albums, if the title is an indication), Gira has chosen to concentrate on the production techniques which culminated so magnificantly on Swans "Great Annihilator" album - dominated by epic song structures built out of increasingly dense tape splices of archetypal Swans' rock grooves. Here, Gira has all but done away with the song (leaving that for his folk etherialism on Angels of Light) in favor of a beautifully ornate if nervously bleak drone album. Multiple layers of sustained organ chords resonate violently against each other as distant choruses of Branca like single note guitars and anguished non-linguistic chants build in intensity, sounding very much like a claustrophobic and highly controlled version of Hermann Nitsch's monumental Aktion pieces.

CURRENT 93 Dogs Blood Rising (Durtro) cd 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
"Dogs Blood Rising" marks the pinnacle of the earliest Current 93 sound, before the band changed its sound to the recent 'apocalyptic folk and menstrual minstrals.' Current 93's ringleader David Tibet has orchestrated a horrific collage of looping Crowleyian chants, slashing noises, and deep reverberating low end rumbles. On top of these dark hallucinatory recordings, he and a number of vocalists (including Steve Ignorant from Crass and John Balance from Coil) recite nightmarish epistles proclaiming the apocalypse is upon us. The fifth track is a strange foreshadowing to the later folk sound of Current 93, as Tibet weaves an acapella chorus of "Scarborough Fair" as sung by Nick Rogers and evil recitation of "Sounds of Silence" from Tibet who affects his most gravel throated voice. Covering Simon & Garfunkel may not seem very evil, but Current 93 had a way (at least during this album) to make folk music very threatening.

ELGGREN, LEIF / THOMAS LILJENBERG Two Thin Eating One Fat (Firework Edition) cd 13.98
Swedish conceptualists Leif Elggren and Thomas Liljenberg have published "Experiments With Dreams," a book which collects a number of outlandish letters to politicians, film stars, and business leaders, positing absurdist questions and claiming that the recipients of the letters had stolen Elggren's and Liljenberg's dreams. (The two had ostensibly found their dreams were intermingling, as if they were attempting to communicate through nightly visions, and the letters in the book were attempts to address intrusions from outside.)
"Two Thin Eating One Fat" appears to be a much more personal documentation of Elggren's and Liljenberg's dream communication, as they have recorded themselves quietly mumbling meandering narratives which are marked by strange political rhetoric and the repeated phrase "let me in." Thick metallic drones, distant pounding drums, and rhythmic exercises with a piezo buzzer accompany and at times interrupt the ongoing spoken murmur. While all of these recordings found on "Two Thin Eating One Fat" were originally produced for various collaborative installations and performances, there is remarkable consistency to this collection which articulates the absurdist intellect behind this artistic pairing.
RealAudio clip: "The Animanist"
RealAudio clip: "Lebed Rules"

ZUMPANO Look What The Rookie Did (Sub Pop) cd 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
So by now everyone knows how great the New Pornographers record is. I mean, the label sold out of 'em in a matter of months, it got written up in the New York Times, and we've sold tons of it. And while some of the credit goes to Neko Case's sublime vocals, the songs, and the vocals of lead pornographer Carl Newman, remind us of a band we were raving about 3 or 4 years ago, and that coincidentally featured one Carl Newman on vocals and keyboards. Zumpano put out two records of absolutely perfect pop, with enough musical bite and lyrical savagery to keep it interesting, even after all this time. Unlike all the pop groups that stole liberally from the Beach Boys and the Beatles and Supertramp, Zumpano while obviously indebted to the above, dug much deeper and/or much farther back finding influences in the Zombies, Kinks, Chicago, Redd Kross, Jimmy Webb and even Neil Diamond. Amazing musicianship, crystalline production, beautiful harmonies, and some of the catchiest kick ass songs we've ever heard. While this record predates the AQ list, it's equally as amazing as recor number two, which we reviewed on AQ list 38:
"THE pop record of the year. An amalgamation of all those AM radio anthems you heard day in and day out as a child yet it's somehow still wholly original. A pinch of Jimmy Webb, a dash of Chicago, a little Kinks, a little Zombies. Horns!... Piano!... Harmonies!... Somehow it still rocks!... Andee and Byram swear by this record & even Windy loves it. Allan loves it too but Andee refuses to believe him."
All of you that love the New Pornographers record should definitely give Zumpano a try, if you haven't already!
RealAudio clip: "I Dig You"
RealAudio clip: "Platinum Is Best Served Cold"
RealAudio clip: "Temptation Summary"

ZUMPANO Goin' Through Changes (Sub Pop) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
So by now everyone knows how great the New Pornographers record is. I mean, the label sold out of 'em in a matter of months, it got written up in the New York Times, and we've sold tons of it. And while some of the credit goes to Neko Case's sublime vocals, the songs, and the vocals of lead pornographer Carl Newman, remind us of a band we were raving about 3 or 4 years ago, and that coincidentally featured one Carl Newman on vocals and keyboards. Zumpano put out two records of absolutely perfect pop, with enough musical bite and lyrical savagery to keep it interesting, even after all this time. Unlike all the pop groups that stole liberally from the Beach Boys and the Beatles and Supertramp, Zumpano, while obviously indebted to the above, dug much deeper and/or much farther back finding influences in the Zombies, Kinks, Chicago, Redd Kross, Jimmy Webb and even Neil Diamond. Amazing musicianship, crystalline production, beautiful harmonies, and some of the catchiest kick ass songs we've ever heard. Here's what we had to say about 'Goin Through Changes' way back on AQ list 38:
"THE pop record of the year. An amalgamation of all those AM radio anthems you heard day in and day out as a child yet it's somehow still wholly original. A pinch of Jimmy Webb, a dash of Chicago, a little Kinks, a little Zombies. Horns!... Piano!... Harmonies!... Somehow it still rocks!... Andee and Byram swear by this record & even Windy loves it. Allan loves it too but Andee refuses to believe him."
All of you that love the New Pornographers record should definitely give Zumpano a try, if you haven't already!
RealAudio clip: "Here's The Plan"
RealAudio clip: "The Millionaire Poets"
RealAudio clip: "The Sylvia Hotel"

CIRCLE Zopalki (Bad Vugum) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Bizarrely enough, I don't believe that we've ever listed this before, one of our favorite records by one of our favorite bands. This, the second album from these Finnish space/prog rockers, from 1996, sees them really delving into neo-Krautrock sounds and psychedelic hypnosis complete with sinister string arrangements. This one's dark and murky and heavy and a contender for our favorite Circle record ever, and that's saying something! If you don't have this one already, you should get it!

PATERNOSTER s/t (Green Tree) cd 15.98
This has been a longtime favorite around these parts but was always impossible to keep in stock. So finally we get a chance to relist it for everybody who may have blinked and missed it the first time around. Now reissued in a spiffy digipak and at a significantly lower price!
One of the saddest records ever made. Prime krautrock (from Austria), circa 1972, what goths would have listened too had there been goths back then. Complete with full-blown psychedelic guitar freakouts, coupled with somber church-like organ and a vocalist who sounds on the verge of tears throughout the album. Oh so sad. Here's the lyrics from their song "Blind Children": 'Rotten eyeballs feet between/Hanging down the cheese machine/Hew it strew it do it too/Say it slay it just to do/Try to call yourself on the phone/Surely you are not at home/Sweep the swept floor once again/Stab yourself and feel the pain/Then stand and watch the speed/Clean your eyeballs wash your feet/Listen and repeat'. Or from "Stop These Lines": 'Morning peace dusty air/Clean your teeth comb your hair/Dressed in clothes you always wear/Go to work I won't be there/Lunchtime snackbar eating chips/Ketchup's running down your lips/Deadeyed waiters selling bibs/Which you have to fix with clips/Sitting waiting find an end/Meaningless with no comment/Is this life in your own hand/People are like grains of sand/Pick up streets and pull down skylines/Ravish women blast the mines/Burn the whiskies spill the wines/Find beginnings stop these lines'.
A most melancholic, wonderful record, and it's too bad that it's the sort of thing usually relegated to the prog/psych collectors' corner (y'know, because of the distribution and press that this sort of reissue gets). More people (people without ponytails and huge record collections) should get to hear this. So, even though it's not a really new reissue at all, we ordered a bunch to turn people on to. It's an odd, but excellent, hidden treasure!
MPEG Stream: "Realization"
MPEG Stream: "Stop These Lines"
MPEG Stream: "Blind Children"
MPEG Stream: "The Pope Is Wrong"

KARKOWSKI, ZBIGNIEW Choice of Points for the Application of Force (Ytterbium) cd 12.98
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Zbigniew Karkowski has been generating physically impressive sound collages for the past 2 decades, with a number of solo projects as well as in collaboration with Merzbow, the Hafler Trio, John Duncan, Sensorband, Aube, and others. Karkowski, like Duncan, approaches sound as a pure energy that has the potential to overwhelm and control the listener with an almost totalitarian force. While his sounds resemble the pure sine waves of Ryoji Ikeda or Noto, he contextualizes such sounds not as theatrical abstractions of '60s minimalism, but as violent rips in time & space.
"Choice of Points for The Application of Force" begins with a noxious low end rumble that fills any space with huge standing waves that resonate through the body. Slowly, gritty chunks of digitized noise explode against the low frequencies, building up to mid-range static buzzing and black-hole energy. An excellent addition to any catalogue of digital clickery, with a definite emphasis on the darkside.

CHALK, ANDREW & CHRISTOPH HEEMANN The Mirror Of The Sea (Robot) lp 33.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Andrew Chalk and Christoph Heemann have been collaborating extensively as Mirror over the past year, so it seems odd that the two of them have suddenly decided to release an album under their given names. It would make sense if they deviated from their work as Mirror. The source material for this album, bowed bells, gongs, and distant guitar drones, differs, and while the overall beauty and concept reveal a definite Mirror-like desire to capture an elusive spirutual voice through the resonance of drones. Extended organ chords, gentle creaking of an old wooden floors, and long reverberations of breathy flutes make for a more baroque tonal quality than the typicalChalk / Heemann sound. "The Mirror Of The Sea" is a beautiful picture disc with drawings by Andrew Chalk on each side. Of course, it's recommended.