MUFFS Hamburger (Sympathy For The Record Industry) cd 11.98
Oh my! This is a totally awesome collection of 7" and compilation tracks from LA punk-pop vets The Muffs. With the often-hilarious liner notes written by queen bee vocalist/guitarist Kim Shattuck and bassist Ronnie Barnett, it's quite an entertaining historical overview. Many of the 30 (yes, 30!) punchy cuts here show the Muffs in their truest, rawest, rockin'est, take-no-shit-from-anyone form. Jangling guitar melodies, solid rock riffs and enough of Kim's vocal harmonies to make any g.b.g. (that's "girl band groupie" by the way) positively swoon. With covers of Kim Wilde's "Kids In America" (from the Clueless soundtrack) and Elvis Costello's "No Action" among others, plus special guest appearances from C.C. Deville of Poison, the Bangles' Susanna Hoffs and Steve McDonald of Redd Kross, how can you go wrong?

MUG/RUINS/MOLECULES/ALBOTH/BELLY BUTTON (Pandemonium) 7" 3.99
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
R: Hyper kinetic bass/drums prog.
M: Bay Area jazz prog.
A: Swiss Young Gods style arty bombast.
BB: Noisey post rock.
M: Jazzy art brut funk rock.

MUGGS Presents Soul Assassins II (RuffLife) cd 16.98

MUGISON Little Trip (Ipecac) cd 17.98

MUGISON Mugimama! Is This Monkey Music? (Ipecac) cd 16.98
Mugison is already a big star in his native Iceland; he recently beat Bjork for Best Pop Album and Best Song at the Icelandic National Music Awards. Mugimama! Is This Monkey Music? is a like a super rummage sale disco....his technique seems to use a bit of alchemy; a bit of a Stone Soup, throw-noises-in-a-pot until a magical rainbow appears method that is not unlike a that of the younger Beck. The album sounds more like something from a meeting of mid-'90s Los Angeles and bedroom-rock indie Midwest than the blips and glacial swirls we've become more accustomed to hearing from Iceland. Comparable at other moments to the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, to a cleaner shaven (on track one, he sings, "Guess what! I shaved off my beard!") Devendra Banhart, or toward the end of the album, to Will Oldham. Mugison's vocals swing from scratchy-surly to cheek-to-cheek sensitive, the latter highlighted when he pairs up with his girlfriend, Runa, on some tracks. On "Salt," the skating violins, seashell castanets and childlike spoken poetry performed by Mugison's sister call forth an Iceland we're more familiar with musically.
This is someone to look out for. He could become a musical pioneer, taking things in a totally new direction as his career progresses, or, with this third album, he may have just stumbled into an eclectic attic of happy accidents. Either way, this album is diverse, adventurous, and quite enjoyable overall.
MPEG Stream: "I Want You"
MPEG Stream: "Salt"
MPEG Stream: "Hold on 2 Happiness"

MUGSTAR Ad Marginem OST (Agitated) lp + dvd 16.98
The latest from aQ beloved psychedelic space rockers Mugstar is not a proper new album, but is instead a soundtrack to a film called Ad Marginem, Mugstar providing a brooding and moody score, their usual space-prog heaviness dialed back a bit, the group weaving lush landscapes of tribal drumming, and low slung riffage, a perfect match for the film, shot mostly in black and white, with dramatic burst of abstract color in the beginning, and at certain points throughout, Mugstar spend much of the record/film locked into a sort of hypnorock mesmer, that most fans of Circle will find immediately appealing, a single riff, looped and layered and repeated, while the group wreathes that main groove in subtle sonic colorations, the vibe is definitely post rock, or very minimal psych rock, the guitar slipping from jangle to muted chug, the drums driving and propulsive, but the whole thing tense and dramatic, a very slow build, swirling organs drifting in and out, Slint like minor key melodies, quite effective and intense, it's not until near the end of the first side, and obviously at an appropriate place in the film, that the band lets loose, exploding into a stretch of rollicking psych rock, laced with soaring leads, pounding drums, the sound fierce and heavy, before slipping right back into the more pensive sonic brooding.
The B side follows a similar pattern, spending most of its time in loping cyclical dirge mode, still minor key and moody, this time, near the films end, slipping into a long stretch of slow, hushed, near ambience, a drifty bit of psychedelic shimmer, brooding and ominous, until finally, the drums slowly creep in, the guitars build to a roar, the sound explodes into something more heavy and hypnotic, super intense and dramatic, a sort of space psych Godspeed moment, a noisy super intense sonic coda, as the film fades to black.
The film might be something you watch only once or twice, but like the best scores/soundtracks, Mugstar's music for Ad Marginem, even separated from the visuals, still sounds amazing, and essentially plays like a Mugstar record proper, albeit a slightly more mellow one, but fantastic nonetheless!

MUGSTAR Axis (Agitated) cd 15.98
Recently we reviewed a soundtrack from psychedelic space rockers Mugstar, for a film called Ad Marginem, and we remarked that the band's sound was appropriately moody and brooding, appropriate for the film certainly, and thus weren't too surprised that in this context, the band's usual progged out bombast was tamped down a bit. And while we assumed that this shift toward brooding moodiness was perhaps a one off for the film, their most recent record displays something sonically similar, perhaps displaying an overall new direction for the band, but on Axis the band manage to bridge the gap, infusing their sonic brooding with a bit of their earlier bombast (Lime, Sun Broken), but only a bit.
Opener "Black Fountain" (originally on a split with SF spacepsych combo Carlton Melton) is a churning sprawl of mesmering hypnorock, dirgey and murky, the drums dense and busy and driving, driving the whole song, a relentless tribal pound that pulses beneath the chug and churn of the bass and guitar, building tension, but never totally exploding, instead slipping back into another stretched of brooding minimal mesmer. The second track "Hollow Ox" opens with a very This Heat sounding electronic melody, before bursting into some serious progginess, but again, the band seem to stretch out and let the sounds drift and drone, the keyboards heavy here, hence the progginess, but the sound remains locked in an almost looped sounding expanse of seventies progginess by way of Circle's relentless repetition. We're not knocking it at all, in fact we quite like it, and find ourselves listening to these tracks constantly, getting lost in their hypnotic heaviness. "Tangerina" also channels Circle, but adds more warmth, and more organic proggy swirl, even building an almost epic post rock coda part way through.
The sort-of title track "Axis Modulator" is the band at their heaviest, chuggy and mathy and proggy, the riffs churning, the drums relentless and driving, the sound washed out by thick swaths of droney keyboard thurm, building to a seriously rocking sprawl of krautrocky space-psych, that definitely harkens back to previous Mugstar records. "Upturnsidedown" returns the band to that new brooding murk, before finishing off with the almost Stereolab-ish "Vehicles Of Spain", which weds playful psychedelic keyboard melodies to dense drumming, and heavy clouds of woozy washed out psychedelia.
While at first blush, Axis most definitely seems like a departure, much broodier and moodier, darker and a bit less rocking, on repeated listens it reveals itself as the perfect follow up to their last full length Lime, and the more we listen, the more we can't seem to get enough.
MPEG Stream: "Black Fountain"
MPEG Stream: "Hollow Ox"
MPEG Stream: "Tangerina"

MUGSTAR Axis (Agitated) lp 17.98
NOW ON VINYL!!!! We've been digging the cd version for a month or two now.
Recently we reviewed a soundtrack from psychedelic space rockers Mugstar, for a film called Ad Marginem, and we remarked that the band's sound was appropriately moody and brooding, appropriate for the film certainly, and thus weren't too surprised that in this context, the band's usual progged out bombast was tamped down a bit. And while we assumed that this shift toward brooding moodiness was perhaps a one off for the film, their most recent record displays something sonically similar, perhaps displaying an overall new direction for the band, but on Axis the band manage to bridge the gap, infusing their sonic brooding with a bit of their earlier bombast (Lime, Sun Broken), but only a bit.
Opener "Black Fountain" (originally on a split with SF spacepsych combo Carlton Melton) is a churning sprawl of mesmering hypnorock, dirgey and murky, the drums dense and busy and driving, driving the whole song, a relentless tribal pound that pulses beneath the chug and churn of the bass and guitar, building tension, but never totally exploding, instead slipping back into another stretched of brooding minimal mesmer. The second track "Hollow Ox" opens with a very This Heat sounding electronic melody, before bursting into some serious progginess, but again, the band seem to stretch out and let the sounds drift and drone, the keyboards heavy here, hence the progginess, but the sound remains locked in an almost looped sounding expanse of seventies progginess by way of Circle's relentless repetition. We're not knocking it at all, in fact we quite like it, and find ourselves listening to these tracks constantly, getting lost in their hypnotic heaviness. "Tangerina" also channels Circle, but adds more warmth, and more organic proggy swirl, even building an almost epic post rock coda part way through.
The sort-of title track "Axis Modulator" is the band at their heaviest, chuggy and mathy and proggy, the riffs churning, the drums relentless and driving, the sound washed out by thick swaths of droney keyboard thurm, building to a seriously rocking sprawl of krautrocky space-psych, that definitely harkens back to previous Mugstar records. "Upturnsidedown" returns the band to that new brooding murk, before finishing off with the almost Stereolab-ish "Vehicles Of Spain", which weds playful psychedelic keyboard melodies to dense drumming, and heavy clouds of woozy washed out psychedelia.
While at first blush, Axis most definitely seems like a departure, much broodier and moodier, darker and a bit less rocking, on repeated listens it reveals itself as the perfect follow up to their last full length Lime, and the more we listen, the more we can't seem to get enough.
MPEG Stream: "Black Fountain"
MPEG Stream: "Hollow Ox"
MPEG Stream: "Tangerina"

MUGSTAR Bethany Heart Star / Bilkas Crib (Trensmat) 7" 7.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Back in stock! Brand new 7" from UK space rockers Mugstar, who pack some serious spaced out psychedelia into these two short sides.
The A side begins with a weird drone-y chant-like whir, along with some tribal drumming and distant guitar plinks, gradually building and building, the minimal vocals transforming into some serious howling, when suddenly everything drops out, leaving just the drums and some super processed guitar strum, very rhythmic and strangely spacy, eventually the rest of the band kicks back in and locks into a cyclical angular groove, looping and repetitive, a furious grinding riff over the relentless drumming. Epic and exhausting.
The flipside is way more synth heavy, some weird sort of post punk noise rock, almost kind of mathy, a bit like a supercharged, way more metallic Stereolab, which intensifies until it explodes into wild psychedelic squalls of acid fried synths and freaked out guitarnoise.
Packaged in a fold over full color sleeve, with a 45 sized hole and one of those old school yellow turntable adapters already in the hole!

MUGSTAR Centralia (Agitated) lp 18.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Like the Carlton Melton double live lp reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, this new one from aQ beloved UK psychedelic space prog combo Mugstar, was also a special ultra limited (300 copies!!) Record Store Day release, and like the Carlton Melton, we ordered as many copies of the Mugstar as we could get. We sold most of them already, and are left with less than ten, so any of you who still want one of these, best act fast, cuz once these are gone, they are gone for good.
Centralia is the first release we've managed to get on the Cardinal Fuzz label, and it's definitely an auspicious introduction, with Mugstar blending kinetic psychedelic progginess, with wild drumming, swirling guitars, loops and samples and FX, and blissed out cosmic minimalism. The B side starts off super mellow and blissed out, sounding almost like a way more tripped out Pink Floyd, before building to some seriously dense riffing, thick swells of chordal buzz, and more wild drumming. The record finished off with some seriously kick ass post rock infused psychedelia, that kills!!! As we mentioned above, we have less than ten copies, of only 300 pressed. These are the very last copies we'll be able to get EVER, so act fast!

MUGSTAR Flavin Hot Rod + Man With Supersight (Critical Mass) 7" 4.50
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Another killer blast of blown out mathy space rock freak out from one of our new favorite UK combos...

MUGSTAR Lime (Important) cd 14.98
We said it before, and we might as well say it again, these guys should really be WAY more popular than they are, everything we've heard from them has totally ruled, a few singles, two full lengths, one of which we made our Record Of The Week, and let's not forget their bad ass Hawkwind cover in the Sonic Attack 7" series (reissued on cd, one of THIS week's Records Of The Week!), so it should come as no surprise that full length number three is just as good, if not better than all the stuff that came before. Not as blown out and super rocking as Sun Broken, Lime is 4 tracks clocking in at 40 minutes, and is a bit more subdued than past efforts. That's not to say there isn't some seriously psychedelic ferocity on display here, it's just judiciously doled out, and set amidst some more minimal psychedelia. Although opener "Sunburnt Impedance Machine" might have you convinced otherwise, exploding right out of the gate with a killer fuzzed out Hawkwindy riff, chanted vocals, some soaring spidery leads, some killer staccato mathy breakdowns, huge squalls of spacepsych freakout, until finally at about the halfway mark, the track shifts gears and locks into a churning chugging krautrock groove, the instruments locked in tight, only the organ let loose, to whir and warble and buzz, laying thick undulating swaths of chordal buzz over everything, intense and hypnotic, and definitely the sort of thing that should appeal to Circle obsessives.
Which becomes even more obvious on the second track, the 13 minute "Serra", which is a dead ringer for our Finnish hypnorock pals, a sprawling motorik groove, you sort of almost keep expecting Mika Ratto to start singing over the top, but instead, synths swirl and shimmer, horns bleat and skronk, effects swoop and sway, organs get all proggy adding melodic counterpoint, but the main groove never wavers, mesmerizingly epic and relentless, 13 minutes is not nearly enough, could/should go on for hours...
"Radar King" returns Mugstar to the realm of the rocking, locked into another hypnokraut groove, this one minor key and mathy, before breaking down into some spaced out psychdrone drift, all clouds of cymbal shimmer, little melodic squiggles, swirling effects and hushed synths, barely there guitar jangle, eventually the build begins, pulsing, throbbing, growing louder, and more intense, the effects more frantic, the drums heavier, finally exploding in a climax of tangled guitar freakout, and splattery drum pound, all wreathed in dense spaced out FX.
Finally, the band finish off with a gorgeously hazy psychedelic dronedrift, that lays a woozy bassline, under a thick droning organ, the drums minimal, skeletal, like the tracks before, the organ takes control, adding all sorts of rhythmic texture to the proceedings, a total drugpsych tripout, all anchored to the seriously solid groove at its core.
Some seriously epic and proggy psychedelic spacekraut to the max, fans of Circle especially should dig these guys if they don't already, and like the last record, absolutely recommended for anyone even remotely into Salvatore, Magyar Posse, White Hills, The Heads, Burnt Hills, Gnod, 3 Leafs, Bardo Pond, Gunslingers, Eternal Tapestry, Heavy Winged, Sleepy Sun, Plastic Crimewave, Titan and the rest of the current crop of modern psych rockers...
MPEG Stream: "Sunburnt Impedance Machine"
MPEG Stream: "Serra"

MUGSTAR Lime (Agitated) lp 16.98
This Record Of The Week from last year, previously cd-only, now on vinyl!!!
We said it before, and we might as well say it again, these guys should really be WAY more popular than they are, everything we've heard from them has totally ruled, a few singles, two full lengths, one of which we made a Record Of The Week, and let's not forget their bad ass Hawkwind cover in the Sonic Attack 7" series, so it should come as no surprise that full length number three is just as good, if not better than all the stuff that came before. Not as blown out and super rocking as Sun Broken, Lime is 4 tracks clocking in at 40 minutes, and is a bit more subdued than past efforts. That's not to say there isn't some seriously psychedelic ferocity on display here, it's just judiciously doled out, and set amidst some more minimal psychedelia. Although opener "Sunburnt Impedance Machine" might have you convinced otherwise, exploding right out of the gate with a killer fuzzed out Hawkwindy riff, chanted vocals, some soaring spidery leads, some killer staccato mathy breakdowns, huge squalls of spacepsych freakout, until finally at about the halfway mark, the track shifts gears and locks into a churning chugging krautrock groove, the instruments locked in tight, only the organ let loose, to whir and warble and buzz, laying thick undulating swaths of chordal buzz over everything, intense and hypnotic, and definitely the sort of thing that should appeal to Circle obsessives.
Which becomes even more obvious on the second track, the 13 minute "Serra", which is a dead ringer for our Finnish hypnorock pals, a sprawling motorik groove, you sort of almost keep expecting Mika Ratto to start singing over the top, but instead, synths swirl and shimmer, horns bleat and skronk, effects swoop and sway, organs get all proggy adding melodic counterpoint, but the main groove never wavers, mesmerizingly epic and relentless, 13 minutes is not nearly enough, could/should go on for hours...
"Radar King" returns Mugstar to the realm of the rocking, locked into another hypnokraut groove, this one minor key and mathy, before breaking down into some spaced out psychdrone drift, all clouds of cymbal shimmer, little melodic squiggles, swirling effects and hushed synths, barely there guitar jangle, eventually the build begins, pulsing, throbbing, growing louder, and more intense, the effects more frantic, the drums heavier, finally exploding in a climax of tangled guitar freakout, and splattery drum pound, all wreathed in dense spaced out FX.
Finally, the band finish off with a gorgeously hazy psychedelic dronedrift, that lays a woozy bassline, under a thick droning organ, the drums minimal, skeletal, like the tracks before, the organ takes control, adding all sorts of rhythmic texture to the proceedings, a total drugpsych tripout, all anchored to the seriously solid groove at its core.
Some seriously epic and proggy psychedelic spacekraut to the max, fans of Circle especially should dig these guys if they don't already, and like the last record, absolutely recommended for anyone even remotely into Salvatore, Magyar Posse, White Hills, The Heads, Burnt Hills, Gnod, 3 Leafs, Bardo Pond, Gunslingers, Eternal Tapestry, Heavy Winged, Sleepy Sun, Plastic Crimewave, Titan and the rest of the current crop of modern psych rockers...
MPEG Stream: "Sunburnt Impedance Machine"
MPEG Stream: "Serra"

MUGSTAR s/t (Sea) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We first heard from UK spacerock outfit Mugstar on a super limited 7" we listed a while ago, where we described them as sounding like a supercharged, way more metallic Stereolab, but HOLY SHIT, that 7", as much as we loved it, just did not do these guys justice. They are so much weirder and heavier than that ep let on, it makes sense that it took a full length record for us to see that, their sprawling drone drenched FX doused instrumental metallic space rock is way more suited to the extended format, with the tracks being allowed to stretch waaaaaaaaaaaaay out, locking into mind blowingly cyclical psychedelic spacekraut blowouts. It's hard not to hear a lot of Loop, as well as some Spacemen 3, and yeah some Stereolab, definitely some Circle, but as much as it may be hard to believe, and a little sacrilegious to even say, lately we're digging this a whole lot more than any of that other stuff. A lot of it has to do with not just the sounds, but what these guys are able to do with them.
The opener is a planet crushing, skull caving slab of glorious Hawkwind worship, propulsive, relentless rhythms, dense swirls of FX, churning bass lines, over nearly static, looped sounding riffs, it's a gloriously unholy tangle of space rock and krautrock. And while that tends to be the basic template for most of the record, it manages to veer dramatically in all sorts of different directions. A handful of the tracks devolve into dense blown out noise jams, that are so distorted and washed out and in the red, they sort of sound like M83 being broadcast through a vacuum cleaner. Awesome!! Some tracks get all blissed out and sort of lope along lazily, still spacey and druggy and trippy, but sounding more like some sort of hard rocking Necks, albeit with a serious doom bent, lurching and trudging through dense blackened clouds of acid fried shimmer. Some tracks are jagged and hyper rhythmic, the drum pulse and guitar crunch locked into mesmerizing loops of pulse and throb, reminding us of a metallicized Neu! Elsewhere the guitars get tangled up in dense little melodic snarls, or are spread into diaphanous sheets of gauzy thrum, but always wrapped around a dense core of relentlessly rocking rhythms and killer heavy riffing. So fucking awesome! Fans of any of the above mentioned bands need this for sure, as does anyone into blown out spaced out freaked out drugged out heavy rock spacegroovekrautpsych!! So recommended.
MPEG Stream: "My Baby Skull Has Not Yet Flowered"
MPEG Stream: "Crempog Smultron"
MPEG Stream: "Good Posture Vs. Bad Posture"

MUGSTAR s/t (Sea) lp 15.98
We first heard from UK spacerock outfit Mugstar on a super limited 7" we listed a while ago, where we described them as sounding like a supercharged, way more metallic Stereolab, but HOLY SHIT, that 7", as much as we loved it, just did not do these guys justice. They are so much weirder and heavier than that ep let on, it makes sense that it took a full length record for us to see that, their sprawling drone drenched FX doused instrumental metallic space rock is way more suited to the extended format, with the tracks being allowed to stretch waaaaaaaaaaaaay out, locking into mind blowingly cyclical psychedelic spacekraut blowouts. It's hard not to hear a lot of Loop, as well as some Spacemen 3, and yeah some Stereolab, definitely some Circle, but as much as it may be hard to believe, and a little sacrilegious to even say, lately we're digging this a whole lot more than any of that other stuff. A lot of it has to do with not just the sounds, but what these guys are able to do with them.
The opener is a planet crushing, skull caving slab of glorious Hawkwind worship, propulsive, relentless rhythms, dense swirls of FX, churning bass lines, over nearly static, looped sounding riffs, it's a gloriously unholy tangle of space rock and krautrock. And while that tends to be the basic template for most of the record, it manages to veer dramatically in all sorts of different directions. A handful of the tracks devolve into dense blown out noise jams, that are so distorted and washed out and in the red, they sort of sound like M83 being broadcast through a vacuum cleaner. Awesome!! Some tracks get all blissed out and sort of lope along lazily, still spacey and druggy and trippy, but sounding more like some sort of hard rocking Necks, albeit with a serious doom bent, lurching and trudging through dense blackened clouds of acid fried shimmer. Some tracks are jagged and hyper rhythmic, the drum pulse and guitar crunch locked into mesmerizing loops of pulse and throb, reminding us of a metallicized Neu! Elsewhere the guitars get tangled up in dense little melodic snarls, or are spread into diaphanous sheets of gauzy thrum, but always wrapped around a dense core of relentlessly rocking rhythms and killer heavy riffing. So fucking awesome! Fans of any of the above mentioned bands need this for sure, as does anyone into blown out spaced out freaked out drugged out heavy rock spacegroovekrautpsych!! So recommended.
MPEG Stream: "My Baby Skull Has Not Yet Flowered"
MPEG Stream: "Crempog Smultron"
MPEG Stream: "Good Posture Vs. Bad Posture"

MUGSTAR Serra (Distant Sun Mix) (Agitated Records) cd ep 10.98
This is yet another one of those records that seems like it was cooked up in a lab specifically for aQ, one of our favorite tracks from Lime, the most recent record from UK psychedelic space rockers Mugstar, remixed and stretched out (from 13 minutes to 37+ minutes), by Robert Hampson, member of the late great aQ beloved combo Loop, and who later went on to perform as Main, another longtime aQ fave. So while we may have been imagining Mugstar reimagined as soft swirls of abstract drift, maybe the drums stripped away, the guitars blurred and smeared into hushed rumbles and warm whirs, and on first listen, it seemed we were right, a strange bit of muted distant buzz, some twisted glitches, super abstract, until about 2 minutes in, when the original song seems to surface, a pulsing krautrock style groove, now wreathed in that opening buzz, which has grown more intense, and has been joined by all manner of mysterious electronics, the sound drifting lazily from speaker to speaker, dreamily dizzying, the vibe closer to Loop, already a huge influence on Mugstar we'd imagine, and for the first 15 minutes, it seems that Hampson may have just looped a bit of the original, that motorik groove allowed to just unwind, while all around it he applies thick dollops of buzz and swirl, of shifting textural streaks, and stuttering shards of feedback, subtle enough that it could be just some super tripped out space rock jam, but different enough from the original to keep it totally mesmerizing, but then eventually that loop drops out, the rhythm is discarded, and Hampson is left to drift freely though space, the song becomes a gorgeous abstract bit of kosmische bliss, impossible to tell what exactly he's reused from the original, but it hardly matters, as he conjures up dark crumbling swells of bristling buzz, distant swirling spaced out shimmers, a dreamlike soundscape of cosmic thrum and hushed blurred thrum, glistening and glimmering, a sonic night sky of shooting stars, hazy and hypnotic and totally fantastic.
MPEG Stream: "Serra (Distant Sun Mix) (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Serra (Distant Sun Mix) (excerpt 2)"

MUGSTAR Serra (Distant Sun Mix) (Agitated Records) 12" 15.98
This is yet another one of those records that seems like it was cooked up in a lab specifically for aQ, one of our favorite tracks from Lime, the most recent record from UK psychedelic space rockers Mugstar, remixed and stretched out (from 13 minutes to 37+ minutes), by Robert Hampson, member of the late great aQ beloved combo Loop, and who later went on to perform as Main, another longtime aQ fave. So while we may have been imagining Mugstar reimagined as soft swirls of abstract drift, maybe the drums stripped away, the guitars blurred and smeared into hushed rumbles and warm whirs, and on first listen, it seemed we were right, a strange bit of muted distant buzz, some twisted glitches, super abstract, until about 2 minutes in, when the original song seems to surface, a pulsing krautrock style groove, now wreathed in that opening buzz, which has grown more intense, and has been joined by all manner of mysterious electronics, the sound drifting lazily from speaker to speaker, dreamily dizzying, the vibe closer to Loop, already a huge influence on Mugstar we'd imagine, and for the first 15 minutes, it seems that Hampson may have just looped a bit of the original, that motorik groove allowed to just unwind, while all around it he applies thick dollops of buzz and swirl, of shifting textural streaks, and stuttering shards of feedback, subtle enough that it could be just some super tripped out space rock jam, but different enough from the original to keep it totally mesmerizing, but then eventually that loop drops out, the rhythm is discarded, and Hampson is left to drift freely though space, the song becomes a gorgeous abstract bit of kosmische bliss, impossible to tell what exactly he's reused from the original, but it hardly matters, as he conjures up dark crumbling swells of bristling buzz, distant swirling spaced out shimmers, a dreamlike soundscape of cosmic thrum and hushed blurred thrum, glistening and glimmering, a sonic night sky of shooting stars, hazy and hypnotic and totally fantastic.
MPEG Stream: "Serra (Distant Sun Mix) (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Serra (Distant Sun Mix) (excerpt 2)"

MUGSTAR Spotlight Over Memphis / I Am A Droid / Love Gasoline (Critical Mass) 7" 4.50
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
More mathy Amrep style Hawkwind worshipping Loop meets Halo Of Flies / Monster Magnet meets Scratch Acid, acid fried, hypno spaced out post rock from these bad ass UK musical drug runners...

MUGSTAR Sun Broken (Important) cd 14.98
It was inevitable really. After a handful of 7"s, and a single mostly overlooked and way under appreciated full length that we raved about way back when, these guys are finally getting their due. This new full length on Important should finally position these guys at the head of the class, in the pantheon of modern spacerockers. White Hills, The Heads, Burnt Hills, Gnod, 3 Leafs, Bardo Pond, Gunslingers, Eternal Tapestry, Heavy Winged, Sleepy Sun, Plastic Crimewave, Titan, we love em all, but they're all gonna have to step up their games, cuz Mugstar has definitely thrown down the drug rock heart of the sun gauntlet. Sun, Broken is a colossal slab of speaker shredding, in-the-red, druggy, psychedelic, hypnotic Hawkwind channeling space rock bliss. Heavy, lush, dense, mesmerizing, sprawling and expansive, epic and majestic, incredible drumming, tangled guitars, warm whirring organs, complex mathy almost proggy arrangements, songs that lock into looped stretches of near static throb and pulse, before splintering into convoluted freakouts only to explode moments later into black hole supernova psychspace blowouts.
"Technical Knowledge As A Weapon" pretty much sets the stage, a swirling cloud of effects gives way to a tribal chunk of primal hypnorock pound, which lurches into a killer stop start Hammond organ stutter, before launching right back into the fray, the track growing ever more urgent and explosive, peppered with organ breaks, the whole thing dense and repetitive, and so so epic. "Ouroboros" starts out all tangled and mathy, a churning hypnotic almost looped sounding sprawl of metallic prog, which slowly transforms into a sort of muted pulsing minimal space rock, swirling effects surround a static guitar melody, and dense drum flurries, and tripped out vox, before the inevitable psych-skree outro, all tangled and jagged fucking FIERCE.
"Labrador Hatchet" is the record's first breather, a two and a half minute space-y trip out, all thum and throb, through a billowing cloud of heavily effected scrapes and clicks and glitches, which gives way to "Today Is The Wrong Shape", a dead ringer for Finnish hypnorockers Circle at their leanest and meanest, the main riff and the pounding krautrock rhythm, like a super charged way revved up Circle, with a cool, angular proggy breakdown, before yet another crushing bout of extreme spaced out damaged FX heaviness.
Another brief bit of swirly psychedelic effects weirdness leads into the nearly 14 minute closer, "Furklausundbo", which begins with warm melodic swells, before the bassline slips in, then the simple stripped down rhythm, and from there it's a totally mesmerizing slow build, locked and looped, riff and rhythm in perfect sync, while all around, streaks of sound swirl and swoop, unlike the other tracks, there's no explosive climax, no freaked out space rock free for all, instead the songs twists and transforms, slipping into a doomy plod at one point, getting downright twangy at another, the main groove getting doused in clouds of reverbed high end guitar at another, but all the while, the pulse, the beat, stays solid, and unfailing, total mind trancelike hypnotic dronerock mesmer, that eventually dissipates in a blurred smear of layered organ and washed out drones.
Easily the space rock, kraut drone, buzz drug, psych swirl jam of the year!
MPEG Stream: "Technical Knowledge As A Weapon"
MPEG Stream: "Ouroboros"
MPEG Stream: "Furklausundbo"

MUGSTAR / ONEIDA Collision (Rocket) lp 22.00
The return of aQ beloved UK space rockers Mugstar, who have teamed up with another fave of ours, East Coast noise rockers Oneida, and neither side disappoints. Mugstar offer up another killer chunk of spaced out psychedelia that would have been right at home on Lime or Sun Broken, opening up with a fuzzy organ drone, which quickly gives way to a badass Hawkwindy groove, all motorik mesmer and fuzzed out space rock pound. The organ giving the proceedings a serious prog vibe, the track chugs away until about halfway through when it collapse into a super rad mathy tangle of drum / guitar freakout, all repetitive and almost looped sounding, with FX swirling all over the place, before finally resolving in a blissed out stretch of murky psychedelic shimmer, only to eventually emerge as a stripped down, more krautrocky groove, with soaring dramatic vocals way down in the mix, pounding away all druggy and dreamy and laid back.
Oneida counter with what could be their coolest / weirdest jam yet, what appears to be their twisted take on space rock, exploding immediately into a wildly chaotic freakout guitar/drum squall, the band taking their sweet time to lock into a proper groove, and in fact, they almost manage not to at all, super loose and free, the drums intricate and mathy and almost the star of the show, pounding away beneath some freaked out guitar skree, until about halfway in, when in swoops some chiming guitar, draped over thick bass buzz, even more progged out and wildly trippy, until finally, they reel it all in, and finish off with a very Wooden Shjips sounding outro, but even then, way more tripped out and space-y. Killer stuff from both bands, and some of THEE coolest packaging we've seen, eye popping pink sleeve, with lots of white and brown 'o's and 'm's!

MUHAMMAD, IDRIS Power Of Soul (Kudu) lp 12.98

MUHLY, NICO Mothertounge (Bedroom Community / Brassland) cd 14.98

MUHLY, NICO Speaks Volumes (Bedroom Community) cd 15.98
Although young enough to be their son, Nico Muhly seems to have a great grasp of the kind of elegance in chamber music that folks like Steve Reich and Philip Glass have developed over the last several decades. The first release on a new label from Iceland, Muhly's name is no upstart in Icelandic music circles as he helped Bjork on Medulla as well as for her score to Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9. The company Muhly keeps gives pretty good insight into the majestic and moving music that he creates. As well as Bjork, Muhly has also collaborated with Philip Glass on lots of stage and film works, and Antony of Antony & The Johnsons, who appears on the last track here. Muhly has a sensitive songwriting hand which keeps the songs on Speaks Volumes subtle enough to remain riveting but with enough emotional weight to keep us coming back for more. So very nice!
MPEG Stream: "Clear Music"
MPEG Stream: "Pillaging Music"

MUINAINEN RUHTINAS Tuskanvuorten Valtaistuin (Tour De Garde) cassette 5.98
Once again, further evidence that the Finnish underground is populated by more than freak forest gnomes and droney hypno psych-rockers...
There is a whole black underworld, a land of evil underground forests swathed in clouds of buzzing riffs, beneath the snowy peaks, and wide expanses of undisturbed woodland, there is a mysterious black cavern, peopled by corpsepainted metal warriors, spikes and leather everywhere, the trees are black with soot, and the sky is lit by firelight, where blurry blasts of black metal wreath this lost world in a hazy hellish glow.
Amidst these black warriors, lurk this particular horde, the tongue twistingly monickered Muinainen Ruhtinas, who spew a gloriously murky and midtempo, raw and primitive black metal. Raw, Finnish, black metal, that should be enough for most of you, Beherit, Uncreation's Dawn, Clandestine Blaze, Pest, that glorious raw buzzing sound, but Muinainen Ruhtinas infuse that raw buzz, with a strange forlorn melodic melancholy. As sad sounding and despondent as it is buzzing and black, minor key and mournful, strangely haunting with deep chantlike vocals buried in the mix, and a warm fuzzy moodiness that seems to wrap every bit of black buzz in thick dreamlike murk.
LIMITED TO 666 COPIES!!!!

MUKAI CHIE & FUKUOKA RINJI L'energie de l'existence (Turtle's Dream) cd 18.98

MUKAI CHIE & YAMAMOTO SEICHI Live at Showboat February 25, 2000 with Lamones Young (Last Visible Dog) cd 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Ms. Mukai and her Chinese er-hu (a bowed, 2 stringed instrument) have been a part of the underground Tokyo improv psych scene since the '70s playing in the PSF "dream-psych" band Che-Shizu, while Osaka's Seichi Yamamoto is known to most AQ customers as the gonzo guitarist for Boredoms, Omoide Hatoba, Rovo and more. This live document, another real cd on the moving-away-from-cdrs label Last Visible Dog, sees the two of 'em teaming up for two long duets of late-night atmospheric rumble and squeak. It's totally dark in the Keiji Haino drone mode, or like Taj Mahal Travellers, all abstract and drifty, cries echoing out in a black, empty space. Real nice in other words. Plus there's a third, thirty-minute track where the Mukai/Yamamoto duo are joined by an all-star Japanese drone trio with the humorous name of Lamones Young (yes, their idea is 'what if Lamont Young played Ramones songs', though that's not necessarily what they sound like). Cellist Fukuoka Rinki, drummer Kosakai Fumio, and bassist Nagakubo Ryuichi (variously, members or former members of Incapacitants, CCCC, G-un, Overhang Party, etc.) add even more scraping, sawing drone to the proceedings, while Yamamoto's guitar and Mukai's voice, percussion and er-hu continue to generate sheer alienated psychedelic beauty as per their duo tracks.
NB. if you liked the Tangerine Dream Syndicate cd we had a while back from the Alchemy Label, be aware that the Lamones Young were essentially an early version of that band. The liner notes by Tokyo psych expert Alan Cummings provide further info...
RealAudio clip: "...with Lamones Young"

MULCAHY, MARK In Pursuit Of Your Happiness (Mezzotint) cd 15.98
We have recently been obsessing over the old Nickelodian show The Adventures Of Pete And Pete, with its recent reissue on DVD. Not only is it a totally amazing, completely bizarre show, cute enough for kids, but clever enough for adults, it also has a killer theme song, performed by a band called Polaris, who just happen to feature a Mr. Mark Mulcahy on vocals. I knew I recognized that voice. Mulcahy also fornted the most amazing Miracle Legion, who were a bit of a college radio mainstay back in the day. Anyway, the upshot of all this is, we had sort of forgotten how great Mulcahy was, and what a totally amazing voice he possessed and then we remembered he had just released a new record so we figured we ought to check it out and we're happy to report it's absolutely fantastic. From the warm warbly organ of the title track, with Mulcahy's gorgeous vocals (along with some strange but lovely harmonies) to the simple sunny indie strum and unforgettable vocal melody of "Cookie Jar" to the Yo La Tengo-like jangle and stomp of "I Have Patience" complete with weird ELO style vocal effects and handclaps. This record never lets up. It's like a heavenly slice of nineties college rock all gussied up and given a good twentieth century going over. And with most pop records, it's all about the vocals, and Mulcahy has such a distinct and mesmerizing voice, smooth and sweet, but just a little scratchy and totaly unique, able to slip smoothy from a sweet falsetto to a warm rich croon. So good! Another record that we always seem to find ourselves returning to over and over.
MPEG Stream: "In Pursuit Of Your Happiness"
MPEG Stream: "Cookie Jar"
MPEG Stream: "I Have Patience"

MULCAHY, MARK SmileSunseT (Mezzotint) cd 14.98
I'm a sucker for a certain kind of earnest male singer songwriter. Like Sparklehorse, Nick Drake, Tom Petty, Mark Eitzel, Mark Olson (Jayhawks, Creekdippers) -- those guys with a certain kind of warbly voice that can't quite hide all that inner pain and a chin-up resolve to make it through the heartbreak. A certain kind of toned down rock flavor that's way more Neil Young than it is Beatles. Mark Mulcahy of the late, great Miracle Legion is one of those singer songwriters, underrecognized yet still making pretty music. This is his new album.
RealAudio clip: "I Just Shot Myself In the Foot Again"

MULDROW, GEORGIA ANNE Olesi: Fragments Of The Earth (Stones Throw) cd 14.98
Caught us sorta snoozin' on this one! This release actually came out back in 2006, and Cup heard its strange soulful glory out in Michigan that year. However, its name promptly vanished from her memory banks and we couldn't track it down until now! From the bio provided by Stones Throw Records it sure sounds like Ms Muldrow grew up within close proximity to some cool shit! Her father invented instruments for Eddie Harris and her mother sang with Pharaoh Sanders. Whoa. Initially Olesi: Fragments Of The Earth seems like a disorienting jumbled mess, albeit a really awesome sounding one -- a bunch of different unrelated pieces heaped up precariously into a generous twenty one tracks. All the parts ring familiar on their own in their old R&B, (almost free-) jazz, hip hop and soul ways, but we've never heard them arranged together in quite as unconventional a fashion as this! As the album progresses the sense of disorientation lingers, but her fevered vocal delivery and undulating, loping grooves prove infectious. The album definitely walks the fine line between defiant genius and baked madness. Seriously 'out there', she clearly had a 'vision' for this but it might not be for everyone! A fierce and bizarre debut.
MPEG Stream: "Wrong Way"
MPEG Stream: "Skaw De Beast"

MULHOLLAND DRIVE (OST) (Milan / BMG) cd 16.98
Have you seen this film yet? It's so amazing! Worth the price of this disc alone is Rebekah del Rio's version of Roy Orbison's "Crying", sung in Spanish and totally spine-chillingly good. You also get several tracks of Angelo Badalamenti's score, creepy and atmospheric, plus Sonny Boy Williamson doing a Willie Dixon track, Linda Scott performing a Hammerstein / Kern tune (the '50s pop number the actresses audition for in the film), and 3 tracks written and performed by Lynch himself. Bravo.
RealAudio clip: "Llorando (Crying)"

MULK Putrilogie (Suprachaotic / Dan's Crypt) cd 13.98
From the same label that brought us the amazing electro-metal / glitch-grind of Whourkr (whose debut is reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, and whose newest records we made our Record Of The Week a while back), comes this equally baffling and brilliant chunk of glitched out electro deathgrind hypermetal from the oddly monikered Mulk, a one man band who basically makes some of the most twisted, complex and convoluted metal ever. With head spinning drum programming, wild gouts of lightspeed blasts and inhuman flurries of beats, chopped up and sliced and diced and reassembled into furious bursts of outsider deathmetal weirdness, laced heavily with strange effects and electronics, the sound constantly stuttering and skittering and transforming, the beats splintering into weird blasts of buzz, the sound glitching out almost as if your cd player were melting, or imagine playing a Morbid Angel record and an Immolation record at 78rpm on two tapes that were recorded on a busted up boombox on old tapes that had been left on the dash in the sun. It's like a futuristic cybergrind Faxed Head! Theres definitely a big drill and bass electronic component, but instead of mixing beats and riffs, this guy mashes them together into a single raging sound. It almost sounds like a death metal record made by Venetian Snares. It's hard to describe, if you dig Whourkr, you definitely need this, and if you're after the heaviest, weirdest most fucked up death metal / deathgrind record EVER, this is most definitely it.
MPEG Stream: "Putr&fact I - Part 2"
MPEG Stream: "Putr&fact I - Part 3"
MPEG Stream: "Putr&fact I - Part 15"
MPEG Stream: "Putr&fact I - Part 16"

MULLEN, GEOFF A Rip In The Fabric (Rare Youth) 7" 4.50
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

MULLEN, GEOFF Accidental Guitars (Rel) lp 19.98

MULLEN, GEOFF Armory Radio (Barge Recordings) 2lp 18.98
Geoff Mullen, a string picker and dronelord, released two amazing records over the last few years, both huge favorites around here. Both thrtysxtrllnmnfstns and The Air In Pieces were gorgeous, slow unfolding collections of buzzing strings and slow burning ambience. Mullen's instrument of choice was the banjo, and on thrtysxtrllnmnfstns he twisted and stretched that instrument into new and amazing shapes, whereas The Air In Pieces found Mullen exploring even more abstract territory, smearing and blurring the source material until it was unrecognizable.
But on Armory Radio, his brand new vinyl only double lp, he's exploring a whole new world of sound. Expansive and epic and abstract, but dense and heavy, and thick with sound, intense noisy, busy soundscapes, fuzzed out and droning, buzzy and washed out. A similar vibe as folks like Tim Hecker, William Basinski, Aidan Baker, Dialing In and Axolotl...
But where those folks take their piece of music and leave it out in the rain, recording it through a dusty window onto a wax cylinder, played back on a tin can and twine, evoking faded memories, old photographs, rainy twilights, foggy mornings, everything bleary eyed and soft focus, Mullen's Armory Radio is a much more intense and sonically aggressive proposition. Beneath the fuzz and whir, the layers of grit and glitch, there aren't just simple pop songs hidden underneath or muted melodies blurred and buzzed, there's a whole world of sound, chunks of field recordings, bits of melody, huge sweeping drones, epic, slow sprawls of shimmer, of dark and light, strange arrangements fall to pieces and somehow reassemble often in completely different order then before they crumbled, or pieces from some crumbled melody will be swept up by a wash of whirling low end, and tangled up into some new, more alien melody.
Armory Radio begins with a burst of grinding fuzz, a dense slab of furious grinding thrum, which quickly gives way to softer squalls of glitched out buzz, warm throbbing sonic stormclouds, everything in a constant state of motion, chaotic and unmoored, but with little threads that connect all four sidelong pieces. This is definitely a noise record, but SOFT noise, thick and corrosive, but with soft edges, like stepping into the eye of a hurricane, watching all sorts of shapes and sounds spinning around you, a grinding, thick morass of constantly shifting crunch and crumble, of billowy soft smears, all barely obscuring a mysterious and impossible to fully grasp world of beauty beneath. So good.
LIMITED TO ONLY 500 COPIES!! Pressed on thick 140 gram vinyl, packaged in super deluxe sleeves, all hand-screened, hand-stamped and numbered.
MPEG Stream: "Part 1"
MPEG Stream: "Part 2"

MULLEN, GEOFF Bongo Closet (Type) lp 19.98
Latest from this experimental axeman, master dronologist and long time aQ fave, after a clutch of seriously epic and amazing releases that found Mullen dragging his guitar into mysterious musical realms, similar to the sonic otherworlds of fellow sound manipulators like Tim Hecker, Christian Fennesz, William Basinski, Aidan Baker and the like.
In fact, much like the records that came before, one would be forgiven for assuming there were no guitars at all on the misleadingly playfully named Bongo Closet, instead, these extended pieces pulse and rumble and smolder, the manipulated and recontextualized guitars melded to old synths, only to blossom into haunting dreamscapes of murky buzz and rhythmic drift, the opener sounds a bit like some obscure krautdrone jam via Chain Reaction, a sort of heroin house dream drone, while the following track, melds chiming streaks of high end, and haunting backward swoops, to a glitched out almost tribal sounding rhythm, sonar pings demarcating a strange underwater sounding bit of twisted synth drift.
Not long after, the record returns to the dark droning, fuzz drenched melancholy of the opening track, fields of muted glitch and cascading sheets of electrical shimmer are draped over softly shifting glacial melodies, a haunting minimal moonlit blur creates a strangely ominous and foreboding variant of new age, which leads directly into a stretch of twang flecked ghost-dub, echoey melodies splinter and fragment, the various bits drifting over a sea of softly crumbling distortions and tinkling chimes.
The record winds down with a cloud of warm whirling psychedelia, a gauzy indistinct sprawl of layered soft skree, and whirring slow motion warble, all blurred and smoothed into a soporifically undulating dirgescape, a little bit post industrial crumble, a little bit late night bleary eared haze, until finally, the record finishes off with a sepia toned Jeckian dronescape of warped distorted melody, and crumbling atmosphere, a gorgeous bit of dreamlike drift, of hushed melancholy melody, nearly obscured by its thick patina of smoldering glitchy buzz, and a glowing halo of blown out, in-the-red, softly psychedelic thrum. So so nice. Fans of any of the above mentioned artists, who have yet to check out Mullen, don't wait a second longer.

MULLEN, GEOFF The Air in Pieces (Last Visible Dog) cd 13.98
Dronologist and sometime string plucker Geoff Mullen, whose fantastic thrtysxtrllnmnfstns we so recently highlighted, is back already with his 2nd full-length compact disc, this time on the Last Visible Dog label, which makes perfect sense. Maybe murkier and even more abstract (we're pretty sure he's playing guitar, but we don't hear any back-porch banjo here) than his debut, The Air In Pieces features eight tracks, each one for the most part a gentle, slowly unfolding ballet of dense, deep drones and whispering vibrations from below. It's the music of subterranean behemoths, Lustmord-like whale calls, sleeping, dreaming, but very physically present. Material that could perhaps be spooky, but in Mullen's hands all this low-register distortion is bent towards light-filled blissfulness. We're very pleased. Two for two for Mr. Mullen, and neither record really sounds entirely like the other.
MPEG Stream: "track 1"
MPEG Stream: "track 5"

MULLEN, GEOFF thrtysxtrllnmnfstns (Entschuldigen) cd 14.98
Want to hear a wonderful "glitch-banjo-drone" recording? This is it! New Englander Geoff Mullen's impressive debut album thrtysxtrllnmnfstns is a homemade electro-acoustic soundscape of steel strings and swarms of lovely abstract drones, made with guitar, banjo, electronics and amplification. Geoff plays broken-down, Takoma-esque American Primitive fingerpicking style, rambling over a bed of insectlike buzz and stuttering static. Melodic figures drift in and out, his old tyme instrumentation often receding fully into the misty fascination of the crackly drone-zone he's created... warm and fuzzy and alien and really pleasant! Back porch folk electronic textures, both soothing and mysterious. Recommended, 'specially to fans of Fennesz, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Loren Chasse, Tim Hecker -- and John Fahey at his most experimental. (Probably P. Jeck and Wm. Basinski too, though this isn't as looped-sounding.)
Cool packaging, including in lieu of regular cd booklet, a hand-sewn fabric pouch containing a few random photos.
MPEG Stream: "track 1"
MPEG Stream: "track 3"

MULLEN, GEOFF & KEITH FULLERTON WHITMAN July (GM/KFW) lp 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
A private pressing from Keith Fullerton Whitman of a live recording of a collaboration with Geoff Mullen back in 2006, through the Uppercase Sound series that Brendan Murray curated in Somerville, MA. While both of these avantniks have been known for their heady guitar-driven dronesmears, this mostly finds the two grappling with all of the filters, oscillators, pedals, and electronics that can be crammed into a suitcase. Guttural renderings of pink noise, refracted vibration, and Derbyshire punctuations of tonal electronics slide in and out of rhythmically tapped structures amidst indeterminately placed squiggles and LFO sweepings. Much of the electronics mirror a deep-space, cosmic exploration although the 'recorded in the middle of the room' quality of the recording somewhat tempers any transcendent qualities. Well, it WAS recorded in the middle of a room. And yes, they did bring their guitars; and Mullen provides some choice moments of narcotized strums cast through heavy amounts of delay, which combined with Whitman's somber tone-bent electronics foreshadows the industrial psychedelia of Emeralds or Infinity Window. Each LP comes with a slightly different cover, with each featuring a still from the video documentation of the event, or something similar. In any case, it's limited to 300 copies... and give it about ten to fifteen years, this soon to be out-of-print document might just show up as a Creel Pone cd-r. Ha!

MULLEN, GEOFF & KEITH FULLERTON WHITMAN November 28 2009 (Upstairs) cd 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
A new batch of Upstairs cd-r's means a whole bunch of cool spaced out synthy weirdness, which makes sense as Upstairs is the microlabel run by Daniel Lopatin, the man who is also sometimes known as Oneohtrix Point Never.
Geoff Mullen and Keith Fullerton Whitman are both long time aQ faves, but even so, they seemed like a weird choice for an Upstairs cd-r, since the label tends toward lo-fi synth obscurities, but the duo have worked together in the past, and in those collaborations displayed a propensity for space-y sounds, some Radiophonic Workshop bleeps and bloops, cosmic electronics, swirling supernova squiggles, all of which are in full effect here, woven into weirdly propulsive krautdrones, or infused into some skittery minimal thump and shuffle, while the tracks sprawl and ooze and expand into dubbed out abstract blurscapes, laced with sci-fi streaks of planetarium ambience, wrapped around starfields of glitch and crunch, slow burning Blade Runner ballads, loping synthy swirls blurred into otherworldly edge of the universe, celestial sub atomic dreamscapes, a gorgeous space-y bit of electronic bliss. Lovely indeed.
LIMITED TO LESS THAN 100 COPIES. We got a bunch, but these will most likely go pretty quick so grab one while you can.
MPEG Stream: "#01.3"
MPEG Stream: "#??.??"
MPEG Stream: "#01.1.5"

MULLENDER, ROB Human Resources (Bo'Weavil) cd 17.98
Amazingly alchemic guitar compositions in the primitive / wooden / post-Appalachia vein. Lovely.

MULLER, GUNTER & LE QUAN NINH La Voyelle Liquide (Erstwhile) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
You really can't go wrong with improv/experimental percussionist Gunter Muller and his various projects. Here he teams up with fellow percussionist Le Quan Ninh (who I'm sorry to say we don't know much about) and together they produce a 75 minute (edited down from 4 recorded hours) jumble of electronics and percussion, a busy aquarium of sound to be immersed in. This disc's title references a book called "Water And Dreams" by some French philosopher, and I can see how they felt that was appropriate. Gunter plays his "selected drums", Minidiscs & electronics, L� Quan Ninh utilizes "surrounded bass drum" & electronics.

MULLER, GUNTER & TAKU SUGIMOTO I Am Happy If You Are Happy (For 4 Ears) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Happenin' German free-improv go-getter Gunter Muller (on electronics, Minidiscs, and what I'm always amused that he likes to call "selected" percussion) again teams up with the fantabulous Japanese gutiarist Taku Sugimoto (someone my ears sometimes mistake for David Grubbs). Previously they collaborated with Keith Rowe on the "The World Turned Upside Down" cd. Quiet, sparse, beautiful.
RealAudio clip: "Rest And Smile"

MULLER, GUNTER / OTOMO YOSHIHIDE Time Travel (Erstwhile) cd 14.98
An electronic improv scrape-scape from world reknowned sonic experimentalists Otomo Yoshihide (electric guitar, turntables, electronics) and Gunter Muller (iPod, minidisc, electronics, and of course 'selected' percussion). Yay iPod!
The duo conjure tones and drones that are quiet, textured, well-paced, and pleasing. Pretty, even. There's unspecified twitter and glitch that could be guitar notes or field recordings of forest birdsounds, or both, and probably is.
Erstwhile has become the most reliable label out there for wonderfully detailed, abstract modern free improv stuff that incorporates electronics as much as it does "regular" instruments. So of course this neither Muller nor Otomo's first appearance on Erstwhile.
MPEG Stream: "Matsushima 89"

MULLER, JURGEN Science Of The Sea (Digitalis) cd 16.98
Previously only available on vinyl (the lp now out of print) this fantastic collection of ethereal new age kosmiche aquatic bliss out is available again, this time on cd!
Originally recorded in 1982 (there's a little debate over that, more on that in a sec) by an oceanographer in Germany while living on a houseboat, Science Of The Sea undoubtedly speaks to the energy and feeling of the deep blue. You not only feel like you're floating, but often like you're dreamily submerged underwater. With soft waves and shimmering soft focus ripples, warm sun dappled streaks of woozy mesmer seems to ooze grooves of this record. Imagine the right kind of new age bliss injected into the most pastoral & ethereal side of kosmiche glory and you begin to get a picture of what kind of beautiful sounds are found on this album.
While some doubt has been raised as to whether this really is a reissue of some obscure private press from 1982, or in fact the work of a modern artist, perhaps even Brad Rose, the man behind Digitalis. But who knows, and in the end who really cares, as its the music that matters, and the music on this album is beyond gorgeous!
MPEG Stream: "Beyond The Tide"
MPEG Stream: "Sea Bed Meditation"
MPEG Stream: "The Elusive Seahorse"
MPEG Stream: "Sea Green"

MULLER, JURGEN Science Of The Sea (Digitalis) lp 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Final pressing!! It's taken a long while to get enough of these in stock to list, as they've flown out the door since we started stocking it back in June, and then our distributors kept being sold out of it. Makes a lot of sense that folks have been freaking out over this, as the sounds on Science Of The Sea are some of the most blissed out sounds we've ever heard.
Originally recorded in 1982 (there is debate over that, we will get to that later) by an oceanographer in Germany while living on a houseboat. The sounds on the album undoubtedly talk to the sounds and feeling of the sea. You not only feel like your floating but often that you are underwater yourself. With soft waves glowing in their ripple, as such warm shimmering sounds come gliding out of the grooves of this record. Imagine the right kind of new age bliss injected into the most pastoral & ethereal side of kosmiche glory and you begin to get a picture of what kind of beautiful sounds are found on this album.
While some doubt has been risen as to whether this really is a reissue of some obscure private press from 1982, or in fact the work of a modern artists, perhaps even Brad Rose, the man behind Digitalis. But who knows, and in the end who really cares, as its the music that matters, and the music on this album is beyond gorgeous!

MULLER, THIERRY Rare & Unreleased 1974-1984 (Fractal) cd 22.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
What could be cooler than a French guy in the '70s, hanging out with naked chicks and teetering stacks of analog synths, making underground DIY futuristic psychedelic new wave punk drone proto-industrial music??? Uh, not much. Particularly when said French guy (Thierry Muller) is so good at it. Longtime AQ list readers might recall us raving some time ago about something called Ilitch and something else called Ruth, both bands/projects of Muller reissued on the Fractal label. Now, those discs are all out of print (why? they should repress!), but the label has just presented us with a collection of mostly previously unreleased material from the man's various projects over the period indicated in the subtitle... and even the stuff that has been available is super rare. None of it included on those previous Fractal cds of Ilitch and Ruth. For the uninitiated, let us say, Thierry Muller was a French pioneer in the realm of electronic/prog/punk weirdness, an "early Industrial" genius indeed! This disc is all the proof you need. There's material from five different Muller led projects: Arcane (1974), Ilitch (1975), Breaking Point (1978), Ruth (1978), and Crash (1984). The progression, if we can generalize, from "band" to "band" is from the more abstract, lo-fi distorted homebaked soundscape-psych displayed by Arcane all the way to the robotic sci-fi FX pop of Crash. But it's all got a kind of tense krautrock meets the new wave vibe, and if you like the likeminded work of Muller's countryman Richard Pinhas (Heldon) you should check this out! You could buy it just for the blissful 28 minutes of Ilitch's 1975 "Un Jour Come Tant d'Autres" and get your money's worth. Highly recommended!!
MPEG Stream: ARCANE "Punkhardlove"
MPEG Stream: BREAKING POINT "Breaking Point, Pt.1"
MPEG Stream: RUTH "Mon Pote"

MULLER, WOLFGANG Mit Wittgenstein In Krisuvik (A-Musik) cd 16.98

MULLIGAN, MIC & S. FUTURE Original Space Neighbors (Abduction) cd 13.98
Rap from the Sun City Girls camp... ??? WTF?

MULLINS, DEE The Continuing Story (The Omni Recording Corporation) cd 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Omni has been kicking our asses with weird and wonderful outsider country reissues, one of our favorites so far was that awesome Plantation Gold collection we made a Record Of The Week, and if you remember, one of our favorite tracks on that double cd (and there were tons of contenders) was "I Am The Grass" by Dee Mullins, who we had never heard, nor even heard OF, before the release of that comp.
"I Am The Grass" did seem on the surface like a straightforward country classic, if it weren't for the strange percussion, the wah wah guitar, the haunting spoken word intro, the lyrics about literally being the grass - especially the part about being the grass over someones's grave, dark. And of course the weird super effected metallic buzz of the chorus. But this was no gimmick, Mullins had an incredible voice, and his songs were catchy, and fantastically arranged. Lush, and heartfelt and bittersweet. Listening to this collection, it seems criminal that he wasn't HUGE. "Texas Tea" sounds like it could have been a hit for Kris Kristofferson or Willie Nelson, "Guilt Box" is total classic honky tonk, with an awesome main riff, and some incredible vocals, "War Baby" is an intense anti war track which incorporates passages from "Wild Blue Yonder" (or whatever that song is called), as well as some cool processed E.L.O.-like background vocals. Then there's the slide guitar laced gospel of "The Next Face I See" about a prisoner facing death (the next face he sees will be the Lord's, get it?), and telling tales of how he got there (murder!). And that's the thing with Mullins, these songs on the surface are gorgeous, classic sounding country, slippery slide, shuffling drums, lots of twang, and Mullins' voice which is incredible, but these songs are dark, really dark sometimes, and a little bit twisted, but that's also what makes this stuff so special.
Mullins only had one hit, a sort of novelty track, "The Continuing Story Of Harper Valley P.T.A.", a response to the original, and it's a shame really, since almost ALL of the others could have and should have been even bigger hits.
Of all the Omni reissues, this might just be the best one so far, a perfect combo of twisted and dark, and total classic country, with some of the best and catchiest country songs we've heard, maybe ever.
As with all the Omni releases, tons of rare photos, and lots of liner notes in a big full color booklet.
MPEG Stream: "I Am The Grass"
MPEG Stream: "Texas Tea"
MPEG Stream: "Guilt Box"
MPEG Stream: "Beers"

MULLINS, PATRICK Don't Go To Sleep (Yik Yak) lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Long before local garage rockers Thee Oh Sees were Thee Oh Sees, they were in fact called the OCS (need proof? Check out the double cd on tUMULt!), and were a much different beast, a duo, equal parts bedroom folk and abstract experimental noisiness, the duo at that point was made up of John Dwyer and Patrick Mullins. At some point, Mullins left, Dwyer expanded his 2 piece OCS into the 4 piece Oh Sees and the rest is history. Mullins went East, became a baker, but kept recording, and Don't Go To Sleep is the result.
A haunting collection of fractured meandering abstract soundscapes, dreamlike drones, and constantly shifting textures, from twisted dark electronics-laced folk to minimal musique concrete, to deep swirling dronemusic, to blissed out soft noise, all assembled from field recordings, electronics, effects, guitar and musical saw.
The opener is lovely, sounding a bit like Scott Tuma jamming with Whitehouse, a high end electronic pulse laced over delicate slow-mo Appalachia, hypnotic and alien, but so mysteriously beautiful. That's the sound that grounds most of the record, with Mullins constantly returning to that sort of woozy softly psychedelic glitchy electronic folk. But in between, the record constantly shifts gears, from pure field recordings, voices, and insects, thunderstorms, to drone-y minimal electronics, lushly layered yet raw and primitive, from blown out hazy Tim Hecker like blurscapes, to thick corrosive downtuned minimal doomdrone churn, to fields of gauzy drift, rife with buried melody and muted guitar strum, to glitched out digital crunch, to barely there ambient shimmer, finally culminating in the lengthy close, which begins as a hushed thrum, only to expand into a strange soundscape seemingly constructed from the sounds of rushing water, processed into textural smears, and laid over lush deep chordal swells. So nice!
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!
MPEG Stream: "How Terribly Human"
MPEG Stream: "Angels"
MPEG Stream: "All The Young Cripples"