PORTISHEAD Third (Mercury) cd 14.98
It seems a bit strange to spend very much time writing about the new Portishead. Since by now, odds are you're probably sick to death of hearing about it. Sure we all loved Portishead back in the day, they were one of those rare 'electronic' bands whose appeal knew no boundaries, metalheads, moms, indie kids, the sound of Portishead was dark and sexy and mysterious, sinister and ominous, dark and rife with crackle and buzz. Perfect drugged out late night bliss out music, their strange way of creating sound and composing music, recording their own samples on to vinyl and then spinning and scratching those samples to create new textures, made for a totally unique sound.
So what does a band do after taking almost a decade off? Do they return with a record that sounds just like the last one, which is probably what most folks want, or do they return radically altered? With a sound bold and brash, reinventing the sound they themselves invented in the first place.
On first listen, Third definitely sounds like the latter, but with repeated listening, the record slowly and subtly begins to slip toward the former. Which most definitely speaks to the magic of Portishead, and the new record, which at once embraces the old sound, while turning it into something new. More than past outings, Third is dirty, out of tune, atonal, noisy, chaotic, urgent, sure past records had all that crackle and buzz and fuzz, but those elements were carefully placed, and kept well within line. Third sounds much more, well, loose for lack of a better word, like actual musicians, feeling each other out, maybe even improvising. Less like a studio concoction and more like a real live band. And the sound suits them. And makes for a record at once warm and familiar, but also alien, sort of 'rocking' and rife with WTF? moments.
Take the opener, "Silence", which begins with some sort of radio broadcast, which gives way to a killer loping breakbeat, immediately the fastest tempo Portishead have ever explored, strings swoop in, the sound raw and urgent, almost like the chase scene from some spy movie, gorgeous distorted chiming guitar harmonics ring out, until finally the track slows down, and slithers sexily, the vocals a sexy sultry croon, but it's not long before the track kicks back into the haunting and tense, string laden cinematic jam that opened the track.
Then there's "Hunter", which begins like classic Portishead, all smokey and late night sounding, soft muted reverbed guitars, a lush gauzy production, the vocals ethereal and ghostly, but even here, a few seconds in, the song is interrupted by a super distorted crumbling guitar chord that halts things in their tracks, before fading out, and allowing the song to resume. The a few minutes later, a strange noodly synth freakoutsurfaces, again derailing the song's slow motion groove, but It just sounds perfect. It doesn't at all sound like random weirdness for random weirdness' sake. The first time is jarring, the second time, you find yourself waiting for those parts, even humming along as if they were as crucial to the song as the main melody or the vocals, and the thing is, they are.
Near the end lurks the single, "Machine Gun", with its very machine gun like rhythm, herky jerky, stuttery and not at all fluid, reminiscent of Art Of Noise, the vocals sweetly soaring over this jagged rhythmscape below, which only really varies part way through when the original machine gun drums are replaced by BIGGER, more distorted drums, and wrapped in strange moaning horns (or maybe synths), only to shift once again moments later becoming more electronic, the beats awash in strange FX and metallic buzz. It's so unlikely, that it makes perfect sense as the first single. If you can embrace that strange rhythm, that relentless and very un-Portishead like sound, then the rest of the record will make perfect sense, unfolding in front of you, revealing both the warm familiar sounds missed, and the new, bizarre sonic elements never even imagined
All over the record, the band confounds and confuses, gloriously, the brooding whispery "Small" shifts gears partway through and transforms into a fuzzy organ drenched krautjam, "Deep Water" is a straight up old timey folk song, the vocals and strings soaked in fuzzy ambience (and reminding us a bit of vocalist Gibbons' post Portishead project Rustin Man), "We Carry On" is a sort of atonal Stereolab style jam, relentless percussion, thick swaths of synth, very repetitive and hypnotic, "The Rip" is part whispery folky flutter, part synthy electro buzz, every track here offers some sort of surprise, whether it's the song itself, or some little sonic strangeness lurking within, but never is the song or the sound sacrificed, each track is perfect in its own beautifully twisted way, catchy but never obviously so, groovy, but often convoluted and fractured, it's a difficult record to explain for sure, which is perhaps why so much ink has been spilled, and while we may be sick of reading about it, we sure are finding it nearly impossible to imagine ever getting sick of listening to it, which is precisely why it's one of our Records Of The Week.
MPEG Stream: "Silence"
MPEG Stream: "Hunter"
MPEG Stream: "Machine Gun"

BURNING WITCH Crippled Lucifer (Japanese Version) (Daymare) 3cd 42.00
A few weeks back we gushed and gushed like crazy over this legendary doom classic, all gussied up and elaborately re-packaged and re-issued by the fine folks at Southern Lord. Well, we just got our hands on the Japanese version, now a triple cd instead of a double cd, the packaging very similar, the only real difference being that the Southern Lord pressing came with a download card, so you could download some demos and live shows, well, that's what's on the third disc here. So if you already downloaded those tracks, you don't really need this unless you want to own those tracks on cd. And if you somehow missed this the first time around, and the $42 price tag doesn't scare you off, then by all means grab one! It's worth it. And be warned, we only got a handful, so when we run out, be prepared to wait for us to get more from Japan.
FINALLY!!!! The reissue all DOOOOOOOOOOOOOM heads have been waiting for! The monolithic BURNING WITCH! For those of you that don't know, before SUNNO))), before Khanate, Stephen O'Malley, along with Greg Anderson at least in the beginning of the band, were digging a mass grave of tortured, drugged to hell, low as fuck, abstract blood smeared DOOM in the band Burning Witch. We're pretty sure most people knew that already and are eagerly awaiting this dark treasure. First off, this is probably my (Matt) favorite doom band EVER, so I'm biased, but this record changed me forever, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing. This record makes me want to hide in my room.
The sound of the Witch is everything you can hope for in a heavy band, BRUTAL guitars downtuned to the center of the earth, plodding, fucked up rhythmic patterns, twisted harmonics beating against each other, piercing feedback, noisy textures, and ANGUISHED vocals, courtesy of the ultimate goth, Edgy 59. The vocals range from high pitched, bamboo shards under the fingernail, tortured screeching, to low pitched, classic metal crooning, and even some death metal grunting to boot! All of these songs are structured in interesting ways, the sounds stretched out to the point of transcendence, spacious and demented, but strangely melodic. Every sound on these discs is allowed its own room to live and breath/wither and die, fully resonating in your cavernous skull, until your eyes glaze over, and catatonic fugue state is achieved.
This collection includes both the Towers... EP, which is more of a pummeling, savage slab of heaviness, and also The Rift.Canyons.Dreams EP, which is maybe a little darker and more abstract...both totally inhuman, both completely menacing, and essential to any fan of DOOM. Also includes some tracks from the Goatsnake split, which is loooong out of print, and also a third bonus disc with a killer live set, plus some never heard BW demo material. SICK!
The packaging is also AMAZING, This double disc set comes with a beautiful bound booklet, filled to the brim with cryptic occult iconography printed in stunning gold ink, and some appropriately scary band photos, along with some commentary from that fella Aaron Turner, you know that dude? Totally scary, completely demented, innovative, weird, HEAVY as all the laments of hell's dammed souls combined! Pretty much essential for fans of all things, uh, doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooomy!
RECOMMENDED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
MPEG Stream: "Sacred Predictions"
MPEG Stream: "History Of Hell (Crippled Lucifer)"

NEW THRILL PARADE, THE Slumber In Colorland (Wonder Quest / Big Drum) lp + cd-r 14.98
Release me now from my mortal flesh, where all my thoughts look towards death. This blackened void in which I gasp for breath, death release me NOW! Oh, what I mean is, this is the newest release from San Francisco's own twisted goth, mindfreakin art damaged, sorrowfully psychedelic Death Rockers, The New Thrill Parade! Whoa. Woe.
We have reviewed all their previous releases up until now, and luckily for us things just keep getting weirder and weirder and more and more demented in the New Thrill Parade commune. The sound is an angular misanthropic romp. Bass and drums churning out urgent, fractured rhythms, while the guitar cuts the throat of any soul with open ears, with piercing, discordant, mind-bending leads. Everything swirling, and seething madly, till the brain leaks out of the ears, and any thoughts you had before, about music, life, social relations, death, sex, are completely mutated and subverted. It's a jubilant sonic experience, but travels dark roads to come to it. This explanation of NTP's sound world is not unlike those of our past reviews (which you should check out), but Slumber In Colorland presents a marked development in both the bands sound and aesthetic. The intensely orchestrated, and inspired song craft fuckery of this latest venture show the band maturing and really finding their own unique mode of operation, giving this album a consistency not yet found in their previous works. It's like gothy deathrock darkness has finally met its blurry-brained, altered state, tripped out, color smeared polar blood brother! The songs range from depressive dark jazz sounding crooners, to completely fucked up rock fury, with mutilated melodies and disjointed noises. Heavily warped shit! Not so much genre defying, as it is genre defining!

AFCGT (A FRAMES + CLIMAX GOLDEN TWINS) s/t (Fire Breathing Turtle) 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.
Holy shit, this is fucking great! And who would have ever thought that the A Frames and the Climax Golden Twins would make a record together? And who would have imagined that it would be this fucking awesome? It's all superlatives and all expletives in describing the first collaborative production from AFCGT. The A Frames had managed to raise some eyebrows here through their post-punk appropriations of early Wire and early Fall, but the vocals had always been something of a miss for them especially on the last Sub Pop album. But in working with the AQ-endorsed Climax Golden Twins who are a band accustomed to delivering exemplary instrumentals from literally every corner of the avant-rock landscape, the A Frames have the permission to shut the hell up and let the Climax Golden Twins dump the fucking kitchen sink all over A Frames rhythmic swagger. The album opens with a tumultuous blast of glue-huffing noise-rock, sort of like a fistfight between the Butthole Surfers and the Sun City Girls. Soon after, a series of bad-ass Birthday Party / Oxbow swamp rock riffs explode with spindly space-age gamelan leads; elsewhere, the No Wave ghosts of R.L. Crutchfield-era DNA emerge with of jagged chops across the guitar pick-ups, bloodied fingers and all. Fuck, it all sounds fucking great! It's a damn shame that this thing is only limited to 50 copies! That perhaps is our only complaint.
MPEG Stream: "New Punk"
MPEG Stream: "Old Spy"
MPEG Stream: "Thug"

GOSLINGS, THE Occasion (Not Not Fun) cd 14.98
Not many artists can lay claim to their very own musical genre, but Hollywood, Florida's The Goslings are among the elite few who most definitely can. On first listen their sound seems to fit pretty comfortably amongst the current crop of distorted deconstructed decaying blissed out dreamy dirge rock that seems to be all the rave (Nadja, Alcest, Hjarnidaudi, Procer Veneficus, etc.), after all they often get described as half SUNNO))) and half My Bloody Valentine, but that's really only half (again) true. And while their sound does share some of the elements of those other bands, The Goslings are their own perfect, synergetic sonic force, an organic, original soundworld that has absorbed and re-synthesized those influences entirely. In other words, on this latest record, they somehow manage to sound way, way heavier and much, much more lush, transforming any vestiges of other bands' sounds into something distinctly theirs. Formerly just a husband and wife duo, Max and Leslie Soren, Occasion finds the couple joined by two apparently full-time members which does nothing but help make their sound, thicker, and more dense, more intense, more distorted, and impossibly, more beautiful. It's not a huge departure from the sound of their previous outings, but that's not really a bad thing. Occasion just serves to demonstrate that their sound is now even more of a particularly refined and menacing chunk of skull crushingly gorgeous sound.
Each of The Goslings' records has been self-recorded straight onto tape in their $15 an hour rehearsal space. Before it was a 4-track, now it's a reel-to-reel 8-track tape, with any additional tracks being added at a friend's house in Pro Tools -- a slight upgrade, but again, one that merely serves to push their sound even further into some hellish sonic realm. Mastered by James Plotkin, their commitment to relatively lo-fi, analog recording a significant part of why each and every track is so totally ear-stabbingly, skull-fuckingly shit heavy. But beneath the obvious doom veneer, the crushing sludge, the washed out hiss and buzz, there are buried some lovely melodies and more of the Goslings' near perfect pop songs. Fear not though, it's not like Nadja or Jesu, where there is potentially enough of said pop to turn-off those more dedicated to the seriously heavy and/or utterly grim. Regardless of the surprising melodic structures lay hidden beneath the blown out bluster, or the prettiness of Leslie's vocals drifting ethereally throughout, the music, the sound, the Goslings' sheer power continually threatens to overwhelm, a bludgeoning slab of sonic destruction that's systematically destroying your entire life, note by note. Then out of nowhere, there's a weird little bluegrass number, a brief respite before the band lurch back into motion, unleashing another avalanche of village crushing, ultradistorted, stumbling, downtuned beautiful brutality.
A higher recommendation would be difficult to give. Essential!
MPEG Stream: "Mew"
MPEG Stream: "Parsley Halo"
MPEG Stream: "Vitium"

SWANOX / SCRAPS OF DOGS Split (Caligulan Records) cassette 4.50
A beautiful and harrowingly dark cassette release from the mysterious new tape label, Caligulan! Based right here in not so sunny these days San Francisco, Caligulan brings the droney, woozy, doomy skull fuck sounds that make a tape head cringe with sorrowful delight!
The Swanox side is one long track, called "Forests Of Pluto", and indeed sounds like an exploration of some alien, yet wooded planet. Deep and dark doomy folk, other worldly voices emmanating from blackened caves, the sounds of ancient trees creaking in the haunted winter winds, reverb drenched guitars plunked by some wraithy wood elf of the unspoiled natural landscape of old. The sounds of Swanox on this release are both haunting and contemplative, letting the mind drift off into the spectral world of tones. Spooky and strangely beautiful music!
The Scraps Of Dogs side is also a dark beauty, but much nosier and much heavier. The first track, "Nag Hammadi" is sort of a metallic drift. The sounds of metal scraping against metal, churning and contorting itself into every changing sonic shapes. Bass tones rumble in a deathlike scree, creating beautifully distorted drones and thick swells of darkened texture. The second track, "Leave Your Body Behind", Is all fuzz and rumble. It sounds like an Orcish army on a death march, in blizzard conditions. The distorted textures undulate in a syncopated way, while more high end elements swirl around your head, like some cold blowing, northern wind. Drifting drones made up of thick fuzz and crackle, mixed up in some evil witch's cauldron, along with a few blackend frog gullets, filtered through the grimmest, most kult coffee machine you could imagine, till it fills your sonic pot with oozing nefarious soundscapes. The coffee machine of grimnity!
The packaging on this fella is beautiful! Much like the Robedoor tape featured on this list, which is also on Caligulan, The cover is adorned with a gorgeous photo of the Northern Woods. More accurately the Pacific North Western woods, where these two doomy bummers originally hail from. The inside is spraypainted to look like some far off galaxy, and there's a beautiful handmade insert to boot! Along with this tape, and the Robedoor, we got the last 10 copies of this gem, so act now or forever hold your deathlike peace!!!

BELONG Colorloss Record (St. Ives) lp 13.98
Belong are just one of many new bands exploring the sound of decay. The sound of music within murk, the sound of pop, melted down and smeared into shapeless forms. For a while there it seemed like every band was lacing their delicate pop with bits of glitch and electronic shimmer. To the point where ANY band, no matter what they sounded like originally, were suddenly 'experimental' with nothing but a bit of crackle and bleep added to the mix. A similar thing has happened lately, another movement has taken hold, of bands burying their sounds under distorted drones, blistering feedback, bleary eyed shimmer, oceans of crackle, sounds pulled apart and layered into strange organic ambient blurs. We're not complaining though, we've long been proponents of distressed sound. The more distressed and heavy and fucked up and crackly and distorted the better. The problem lies in the fact that a movement usually entails everyone and their brother suddenly wanting to sound like whatever band or sound is 'happening' at the moment. SUNNO))) spawned a legion off doomdrone combos, and these movements are not all that different.
A band, be they pop or metal or whatever, can wrap everything in buzz and distortion and suddenly whatever genre they were can get hyphenated with the suffix GAZE, or alternately, a band can blur everything, slow it down, make it muddier and murkier and dronier, and voila, become a doomdronewhatever outfit.
But with all these things, it's not as easy as the truly amazing artists make it sound. And this becomes evident on almost first listen. Anyone can plug their guitar into a laptop, but no one can create gauzy gristly soundscapes like Fennesz. Anyone can tune way down and let their guitars ring out, let riffs crumble to pieces, but it takes more than that to make something a compelling listen.
From the very first listen to Belong's last full length, October Language, we knew these guys were special. They were one of those bands who had the sound down, but were using the sound to create glorious sonic worlds of their own invention. Not aping anyone else's sounds, merely absorbing elements, and transforming them into something new, and distinctly Belong. And the other thing about Belong, was they weren't just making beautiful noise, they were writing songs, that were infused with beautiful noises, sometimes obfuscated by them, but there was always a song, a melody, never just sound for sound's sake.
This new four song ep takes things even further, by being about someone else's songs. Reinventing, reimagining, reinterpreting the sounds of four different artists, and making them all sound like they could have come from nowhere else than this mysterious entity known as Belong.
The first might be the best of the bunch, and it's no coincidence that it's the most song-y. A Syd Barrett cover, via the somewhat more obscure Cleaners From Venus, "Late Night" in the hands of Belong becomes an epic sweeping cinematic warped record spinning underwater, on the surface of some alien moon, beneath the warm glow of twin suns. Soaring vocals, gorgeous melodies, all beneath a thick churning lush wall of crumbling, shimmering sound. Woozy and seasick, dizzying, dense and warm and absolutely gorgeous, it's almost like a more blurred and buzzed version of Oval, digital skipping replaced by indistinct slow motion riffage, everything gauzy and washed out. The other three tracks, covers of '60s psych pop songs by Tintern Abbey, Billy Nicholls and July, are even more ethereal, almost choral sounding, voices and streaks of sound drifting in a softly churning sea of hum and whir, and breathy blur. The final track a thick, viscous outro, the July original barely audible beneath a blown out swirl of creeping low end and free floating metallic flutter, somehow sounding heavy and intense, but laid back and soporific at the same time, eventually fading to a whispery hum. So good. Definitely one of our favorite groups exploring the world of distressed / decayed / deconstructed / dreamy / dronelike sound.
SUPER LIMITED! ONLY 300 COPIES!! Each one hand made by the group using recycled sleeves.
MPEG Stream: "Late Night"
MPEG Stream: "My Clown"

VAMPIRE WEEKEND s/t (XL Recordings) cd 10.98
Don't know what all the fuss is about with this current flavor of the day, but we suspect that XL Recordings must've gotten a particularly crack team of marketing schemers and hype generators 'cause their name is absolutely everywhere!
Sure, it'd be easy to be suspicious and slag this band on that aspect alone, but we won't. They're not bad really, but nothing really special or 'holy shit!' either. Nope, they sound like an adequate cross between Arcade Fire, The Shins and New Pornographers... who've eaten way too many Cracker Jacks. Worth checkin' out if you're looking for some lighter fare along the lines of those two abovementioned bands.
MPEG Stream: "Oxford Comma"
MPEG Stream: "A-Punk"

ZENI GEVA Maximum Money Monster (Cold Spring) cd 15.98
Swans. Godflesh. Big Black. Melvins. Eyehategod. Unsane. Zeni Geva. We're concerned here with the latter, who maybe aren't as well known as the first half dozen bands mentioned, but sure as heck belong in that illustrious company... and sound VERY much like some unholy, heavier-than-thou hybrid of all of 'em!! It's been a long time since we've had a new Zeni Geva album to write about... and no this isn't actually a new album. But we're still pretty excited. Every once in a while, we have the opportunity to list and review an old favorite. Something that's been out of print for longer even than we've been doing the Aquarius website and New Arrivals emails, that we'd never had the chance to stock and recommend before, that finally at long last gets a well-deserved reissue and is cause for much celebration 'round here. For instance, to name a couple of recent examples, Harvey Milk's My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be. And Skullflower's IIIrd Gatekeeper. You'll note the examples we just cited are all on the "heavy" side... well that's 'cause what we're about to recommend here also pretty darn heavy. To say the least.
You may already be familiar with Japan's Zeni Geva, as they've been around for years and years. This cult "progressive hardcore" trio is the brainchild of guitarist Kazuyuki Kishino Null, also well-known for his "nullsonic" solo recordings. Definitely influenced by early Swans, KK Null started up the doomy and noisy ZG in about 1987. Previously he'd done time in Tokyo underground industrial noise-terrorists Absolut Null Punkt, and with prog act YBO2, which also featured drummer Tatsuya Yoshida, who of course later went on to lead the incredible Magmoid duo Ruins. Meanwhile, post-YBO2, Null formed the far more metallic* Zeni Geva. Null did draft Yoshida in to play drums on some early ZG material (wouldn't you?), and you'll here him here on about half of this disc's tracks, contributing his distinctive vocals as well to a couple songs. Ikuro Taketani (ex-Hanatarashi) plays drums on the other half. The lineup also includes Tabata Mitsuru (ex-Boredoms and Leningrad Blues Machine) on guitar. That's right, there's no bassist in Zeni Geva which is pretty incredible considering how hellishly heavy they are! And it's clear that ZG are something of a underground Japanese rock supergroup.
MMM was ZG's first cd release, coming out originally in 1990 on the UK's now long-gone Pathological label. It's a lumbering juggernaut fully blessed and bloated with everything we LOVE about Zeni Geva that would also be heard on later, Albini-produced releases like Total Castration and Desire For Agony: Utter headbanging, slo-mo, dirt-plowing destruction. Molasses thick riffs dripping from electric axes. Frenzied, technical bashing. Mathy post rock song structures. High-end guitar solo skree. Mean misanthropic attitude. Pounding repetition. Pounding repetition. Pounding repetition.... adorned with the aforementioned guitar soloing, providing a crashing, crushing soundscape to underscore the throaty proclamations of "Sweetheart!" or "War Pig!" or "Blackout!" from gruff vocalist/guitarist Null -- the lyrics to these tracks being little more than the song title shouted over and over with fervent anguish. Glorious stuff, massive and mesmeric.
From the first track, the 16 minute harrowing dirge-stomp "Slam King" that ends terrifyingly with waves of unaccompanied, effected vocals, to the last, the rhythmic and witchy "On Suicide", featuring lyrics borrowed from Bertold Brecht, this is scary, monolithic, artistic heaviness of the highest order.
Let's give a big thanks to Cold Spring for making this classic available once again (as part of a wave of Japanese releases including a new disc from noise legends CCCC). Though we don't see why Cold Spring felt the need to replace the original, much more colorful, and in our opinion, superior artwork, we are happy to note that they did make one major improvement. While the eight songs on the original disc were inexplicably presented as one loooong track with no separate-song indexing (annoying!) they're thankfully corrected that. Now you can skip right to "Guystick Bodie", or put "Skullfuck" on repeat. And in addition to the eight original tracks, they've added three previously unreleased bonus cuts as well! Devastating live versions of album cuts "War Pig" (a Zeni Geva song, not Sabbath's "War Pigs" plural) and "Skullfuck", along with "Dead Car, Sun Crash" (an early ZG number not included on the album proper), recorded in Tokyo circa 1988-89. Whee! Like we said, we're so stoked to get to list/review/recommend this!
*Though not metallic enough to be accepted by the online metal authority Encyclopedia Metallum it must be noted...
MPEG Stream: "Slam King"
MPEG Stream: "Sweetheart"
MPEG Stream: "War Pig (live)"

LONGMONT POTION CASTLE 6 (D.U.) cd-r 12.98
The return of the always hilarious Longmont Potion Castle!!! If you're like me (Matt), you missed LPC the first time around, and are super stoked to have a disc from this side splitting and incredibly aggravating (to his victims) prank call mastermind! The most amazing thing about these calls is how long these people on the other end stay on the phone! Most of the calls consist of LPC picking fights with mall employees and local business owners, trying to sell dog bowels to a pawn shop, and requesting Orange Julius employees to feed him grapes while he's interviewed for a job. There's also a lot of fucked up editing and sample based pranks on this disc that are sometimes more creepy than they are funny, like the fucked up effected speech impediment of "Can O' B.S.". The receivers of these pranks range from confused elderly folks to aggro townie redneck dudes, all of whom get super pissed and usually end up threatening some sort of beatdown. It's interesting and hilarious to realize how many people love a good verbal tussle, and out of frustration how many people are willing to actually fight assuming the prankster "comes on down there...". LPC's delivery is totally dry and deadpan, almost stoned sounding, but the things coming out of his mouth are so completely absurd and absolutely hysterical! The best is when the delay pedal is implemented over the phone for extra confusional hilarity. LPC records are by far the most consistently funny, clever, bugged out, annoying, and ultimately excellent pranks on disc EVER!!! If you have 1-5 (compiled in a now out of print boxset), 6 certainly stands up, and for those of you have never checked LPC out, this is a great place to start! It's a bit hard to describe how great this stuff is, but it's one of a kind, So funny and super recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Dog Gnash"
MPEG Stream: "Citation"
MPEG Stream: "Sandyman"

DAFT PUNK Alive 2007 (Virgin) cd 17.98
It's been over 6 months since Daft Punk played in San Francisco but anyone who was there will never forget it. Daft Punk proved they are one of the greatest live experiences on the planet. From an immaculate trance inducing light show, to a futuristic pyramid shaped console that they were housed in and then of course the loud, supremely danceable songs that they blasted through the amphitheater as thousands of people grinning wildly, completely let themselves go, dancing with ecstasy and an adrenalized joy that we rarely ever get to experience. Alive 2007 captures that show (and that recent tour) perfectly. It's pretty much the same set they played here as they morph many of their songs into one new track which gives a new life to many of their already well known songs from their three albums.
We're sure that at least one Daft Punk record has found its way into your subconscious (Discovery will always be our favorite!) as they are a duo who have discovered an amazing way to be accessible to such a wide range of people (ravers, metal heads, hip-hop kids, gay club scene, indie rockers, ordinary joes, etc) yet create music with such charged and creative energy. They manage to bring elements of disco, prog, house, psychedelia, funk and rock to a level of ecstatic heights rarely reached in popular music. Long live Daft Punk!!!
MPEG Stream: "Burnin' / Too Long"
MPEG Stream: "Aerodynamic Beats / Forget About The World"
MPEG Stream: "Around The World / Harder Better Faster Stronger"

BURNING WITCH Crippled Lucifer (Southern Lord) 2cd 17.98
FINALLY!!!! The reissue all DOOOOOOOOOOOOOM heads have been waiting for! The monolithic BURNING WITCH! For those of you that don't know, before SUNNO))), before Khanate, Stephen O'Malley, along with Greg Anderson at least in the beginning of the band, were digging a mass grave of tortured, drugged to hell, low as fuck, abstract blood smeared DOOM in the band Burning Witch. We're pretty sure most people knew that already and are eagerly awaiting this dark treasure. First off, this is probably my (Matt) favorite doom band EVER, so I'm biased, but this record changed me forever, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing. This record makes me want to hide in my room.
The sound of the Witch is everything you can hope for in a heavy band, BRUTAL guitars downtuned to the center of the earth, plodding, fucked up rhythmic patterns, twisted harmonics beating against each other, piercing feedback, noisy textures, and ANGUISHED vocals, courtesy of the ultimate goth, Edgy 59. The vocals range from high pitched, bamboo shards under the fingernail, tortured screeching, to low pitched, classic metal crooning, and even some death metal grunting to boot! All of these songs are structured in interesting ways, the sounds stretched out to the point of transcendence, spacious and demented, but strangely melodic. Every sound on these discs is allowed its own room to live and breath/wither and die, fully resonating in your cavernous skull, until your eyes glaze over, and catatonic fugue state is achieved.
This collection includes both the Towers... EP, which is more of a pummeling, savage slab of heaviness, and also The Rift.Canyons.Dreams EP, which is maybe a little darker and more abstract...both totally inhuman, both completely menacing, and essential to any fan of DOOM. Also includes some tracks from the Goatsnake split, which is loooong out of print, and also a "drop card", which is a thing that lets you download a killer live set, plus some never heard BW demo material. SICK!
The packaging is also AMAZING, This double disc set comes with a beautiful bound booklet, filled to the brim with cryptic occult iconography printed in stunning gold ink, and some appropriately scary band photos, along with some commentary from that fella Aaron Turner, you know that dude? Totally scary, completely demented, innovative, weird, HEAVY as all the laments of hell's dammed souls combined! Pretty much essential for fans of all things, uh, doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooomy!
RECOMMENDED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
MPEG Stream: "Sacred Predictions"
MPEG Stream: "History Of Hell (Crippled Lucifer)"

XYNFONICA A Feast For Famished Ravens (Hekaloth / Cyclops) cd 15.98
What we're about to say, we don't say lightly. Trust us. We may traffic in hyperbole. And our shelves may be stuffed with lots of 'best evers' and 'worst evers' and 'greatest evers', but this friends, is quite possibly the weirdest record we've ever carried. When we first threw it on, we were immediately struck with the realization, that what we were hearing, was either the most amazing thing we had ever heard, or absolutely the worst piece of shit EVER. Andee quickly decided on the former. And no matter how hard he tried, or how many repeated listens he was subjected to, Allan is sticking with the latter. But the more we play this in the store, the more the tribe of Xynfonica worshippers grows, Antaeus, Matt, Cameron, one can only handle a few listens before you're forever in its thrall. We're not sure how Allan does it, maybe there's some sort of chip in his brain, or maybe he's not really human at all, who knows. What we do know is we will wear him down, and just like you, faithful yet doomed reader of this list, he will eventually bow down to the damaged glory that is Xynfonica.
By now you're probably wondering what the fuck we're on about. Fair enough. So let's go back a bit. Not sure how we first heard about Xynfonica, but we got the disc in, it had an amazing cover, an old painting of some ancient battle, men on horseback, wielding swords, the record title: A Feast For Famished Ravens, song titles like: "From Your Father's Skull" and "The Viking Zodiac", a huge booklet jammed with more lyrics than could possibly fit in the three songs here, there are even footnotes!!! So we still hadn't listened to it, but we were pretty much sold already.
So we finally threw it on, and were greeted with some strange synthesizers, guitar synthesizers to be specific (we later discovered) and a growled demonic vocal, the synths, sort of atonal and detuned, like a demented Peter And The Wolf, the vocals, a strangled black metal rasp, so okay, we're thinking, a cool weird intro, so we waited for the band to kick in, and waited, and waited, and waited some more, scanned forwardŠ So then we thought, okay, maybe the whole first track is the intro, so we skipped to the second track, which of course started with the raspy vocals and the seasick synths, but we gave it the benefit of the doubt and waited and waited, scanned forward, and then it dawned on us. HOLY SHIT. This was the band. There were no drums, no guitarist. It was just some trollish demon and his damaged synth, spewing endless tales of mysterious battles and lost civilizations. And suddenly, it had us. Xynfonica. Sure it's creepy and demented, and borderline retarded, and the synths sometime sound so wrong it makes us dizzy, so 'off' it makes our eyes water, the melodies are demented, alien, creepy ominous one second, bouncing cheerfully the next, but always those vocals, an everpresent demon storyteller, it's hard to explain exactly why we're so taken, but we are. Every time we play this, initial reactions range from confusion, to hysterical laughter, to anxiety to sheer unadulterated joy. Imagine if Jandek was the keyboard player in a black metal band and decided to make a solo record, or imagine Mr. Roger's neighborhood but Mr. Rogers is out sick, so the dude from Abruptum is filling in, or imagine the music files from some medieval video game getting corrupted, and then used as the intro music for some evil metal band. Well you know, what? There's no need to imagine. It's all right here. Xynfonica will give you all of that and more. With just a rudimentary grasp of the synthesizer, and a frog in his throat, all will be revealed, and we shall all revel in his stumbling, confusional musical brilliance.
Xynfonica. Xynfonica. Xynfonica. Xynfonica. XynfonicaŠ
MPEG Stream: "A Feast For Famished Ravens Pt.1"
MPEG Stream: "The Viking Zodiac Pt.1"

NEW THRILL PARADE, THE s/t (Mountain Landis) 12" 8.98
This is a mind fuck of a 12"! We just got our hands on this, The New Thrill Parade's first ever document of their brand of head-trippy angular goth madness, and we could not be more pleased. This EP brings the listener to the edge of neurotic insanity, the place in your mind where shameful thoughts and nervous feelings are waging endless war. Dark, creeping discordances pummeling one and other, skull drilling guitar lines, saxophone squawking, and crooning vocals desperately narrating the most tenebrous thought processes of the human psyche. Heavy.
The ep begins with the drunken swagger of "Gift Horse". Starting slow and low, at a sort of swung pace, vocals sighing deeply, specks of reverby guitar and flittering sax punctuating the creeping crawl of the rhythm section. The chorus bursts in suddenly with a jagged romp, piercing guitars and guttural whoops, reminding us of The Birthday Party at their most frenetic. The second track, "Jealous Brothers" is a bit more rocking, the fucked up guitar lines becoming a little more strident and noisy. The bass lines on this one are throbbingly heavy, with the drummer playing a sort methamphetamine cowboy shuffle. Rounding out the a-side is "Spare My Teeth", starting off with a twisted spazzy groove, guitar wailing, drums churning out a clatter of syncopation, before everything pretty much drops off, and the tempo becomes stretched and abstracted, pushing and pulling with howling vocal lines, and then snapping back into the rocking tempo of the beginning. The song slowly dies, twisting and curling like the end of a fragmented dream.
The b-side starts up where the a-side left off, "Moat" is a riff heavy stomper, but maintains the abstract form of "Spare My Teeth". The tempo is stretched to hell, noisy and arrhythmic at times. The closing track is far and away our favorite. "Little Dancer, Age 14" is a creepfest! Dark and heavy aRes fuck, starting off with just twangy strung hgrfhtrt guitar stabs and funerary sounding organ carrying out the progression, the vocals murmuring in deep tones, lamenting some horrific train of thought. The song has an overwhelmingly elegiac feeling, drifting along like a Lynchian dream (nightmare?), fractured and abstracted. The piece ends beautifully, with tremolo picked wailing guitar melodies, outlining a more major sounding chord progression. A stark contrast from the rest of this minor sounding document. Killer!
This band recently moved to San Francisco from the nefarious beaches of Santa Cruz, and we are glad to have them. They are quickly becoming one of the most interesting and confounding local acts. While a little more raw then the debut full-length (reviewed on list #252) the dark intensity has been present from the beginning. This record is a bad trip, but in the best way! Like the type of nightmare you don't want to wake up from. Fractured and fucked up, noisy and scattered, and all together AMAZING! For fans of The Birthday Party, Public Image Ltd., Swans, Butthole Surfers, Scratch Acid, Lydia Lunch, and all jams damaged and demented. Recommended!

TRICLOPS! Cafeteria Brutalia (Sick Room) cd ep 11.98
A savage proggytrippypunkasfuck megablast in the form of Triclops!' Cafeteria Brutalia ep. This four song rager is the perfect blend of post-Jesus Lizardy mathy fucked up punk and spacey effects-riddled shreddyness. Hailing from right here in the bay area, Triclops! featuring John Geek From local punk heros The Fleshies on vocals, piece together a super interesting combination of weird rock elements. One moment angular and furious, while another blissy and tripped the hell out, and still at another just plain super rocking! The vocals are processed and effected, the guitar is furious and fierce, and the rythym section is just about as tight as can be, churrning out an ever-changing, multi-metric pummelfest of pure rock brutality. All the songs on this way too short document are great, to be sure, but the ONE for us is definetly the 10 plus minute epic, "Bug Bomb". Within this track, all the disparate elements that makes this band awesome perfectly coalesce. Super proggy acid-punk to begin with, breaking down into some suprisingly melodic pop, before getting heavy and crazy to round it out. Excellent! Triclops! are also one of the best local live acts we have here in SF, and they seem to play all the rad shows around these parts. In fact, most of us discovered them earlier this month at the killer Circle show at Bottom Of The Hill, which they opened. All in all, a really great ep! For anyone thats been missing that old 90's Touch and Go / Amrep sound, or people that just love proggy flipped out PUNK RAWK, this is definetly recommended!
RealAudio clip: "Bug Bomb"
RealAudio clip: "Salton"

TRICLOPS! Cafeteria Brutalia (Sick Room) picture disc 12" 14.98
A savage proggytrippypunkasfuck megablast in the form of Triclops!' Cafeteria Brutalia ep. This four song rager is the perfect blend of post-Jesus Lizardy mathy fucked up punk and spacey effects-riddled shreddyness. Hailing from right here in the bay area, Triclops! featuring John Geek From local punk heros The Fleshies on vocals, piece together a super interesting combination of weird rock elements. One moment angular and furious, while another blissy and tripped the hell out, and still at another just plain super rocking! The vocals are processed and effected, the guitar is furious and fierce, and the rythym section is just about as tight as can be, churrning out an ever-changing, multi-metric pummelfest of pure rock brutality. All the songs on this way too short document are great, to be sure, but the ONE for us is definetly the 10 plus minute epic, "Bug Bomb". Within this track, all the disparate elements that makes this band awesome perfectly coalesce. Super proggy acid-punk to begin with, breaking down into some suprisingly melodic pop, before getting heavy and crazy to round it out. Excellent! Triclops! are also one of the best local live acts we have here in SF, and they seem to play all the rad shows around these parts. In fact, most of us discovered them earlier this month at the killer Circle show at Bottom Of The Hill, which they opened. All in all, a really great ep! For anyone thats been missing that old 90's Touch and Go / Amrep sound, or people that just love proggy flipped out PUNK RAWK, this is definetly recommended!
RealAudio clip: "Bug Bomb"
RealAudio clip: "Salton"

CLOCKCLEANER Babylon Rules (Load) cd 13.98
Maybe the most aptly named band ever? Weird that when we first stumbled on Clockcleaner, it was in our search for more music from damaged drug addled caveman noisemakers the Violent Students, but it seems Clockcleaner is now the more viable band, with the VS sort of fading away, with only one proper record we know of. And where the sound of the Violent Students was more of a massive frontal lobe melting cacophony, Clockcleaner seemed to take that same aesthetic, and apply it to actual songs, the poppier Dr. Jeckyl to the Violent Students' Mr. Hyde...
And right off the bat, Clockcleaner up the ante with maybe their best song ever. A dense propulsive, grungy, filthy, swampy stomp, a malevolent, lascivious and lurching Swans slither, an ominous stumble and plod over Morricone Western twang, reverbed surf guitar, growled baritone vocals, sounding straight out of late eighties NY noise underground Copshootcop, the Swans, everything bathed in reverb, and swirling alien FX, bizarre little bits of melody... And the record sort of goes from there, adding damaged Jerry Lee Lewis piano pound, crumbling chest rattling bass, slippery drunken slide guitar, more super dramatic crooned vocals, still more reverb and effects, the whole thing a sort of hellish end of the world swing, plenty of groove, but gnarled and convoluted, dangerous and drunken, reminding us quite a bit of Lubricated Goat, King Snake Roost even Nick Cave, a blackened noise flecked confusional cabaret. Awesome.
Killer tape-faced cover art too...
MPEG Stream: "New In Town"
MPEG Stream: "Vomiting Mirrors"

CLOCKCLEANER Babylon Rules (Load) lp 12.98
Now in stock on vinyl!!
Maybe the most aptly named band ever? Weird that when we first stumbled on Clockcleaner, it was in our search for more music from damaged drug addled caveman noisemakers the Violent Students, but it seems Clockcleaner is now the more viable band, with the VS sort of fading away, with only one proper record we know of. And where the sound of the Violent Students was more of a massive frontal lobe melting cacophony, Clockcleaner seemed to take that same aesthetic, and apply it to actual songs, the poppier Dr. Jeckyl to the Violent Students' Mr. Hyde...
And right off the bat, Clockcleaner up the ante with maybe their best song ever. A dense propulsive, grungy, filthy, swampy stomp, a malevolent, lascivious and lurching Swans slither, an ominous stumble and plod over Morricone Western twang, reverbed surf guitar, growled baritone vocals, sounding straight out of late eighties NY noise underground Copshootcop, the Swans, everything bathed in reverb, and swirling alien FX, bizarre little bits of melody... And the record sort of goes from there, adding damaged Jerry Lee Lewis piano pound, crumbling chest rattling bass, slippery drunken slide guitar, more super dramatic crooned vocals, still more reverb and effects, the whole thing a sort of hellish end of the world swing, plenty of groove, but gnarled and convoluted, dangerous and drunken, reminding us quite a bit of Lubricated Goat, King Snake Roost even Nick Cave, a blackened noise flecked confusional cabaret. Awesome.
Killer tape-faced cover art too...
MPEG Stream: "New In Town"
MPEG Stream: "Vomiting Mirrors"

STRIBORG Solitude (Displeased) cd 14.98
Black metal bands come in many varieties, and we have our favorites among everything from blackened thrash drunkards to grandiose symphonic keyboard-laden festival headliners to grim trance-y one-man-band eccentrics... particularly the latter, though, especially when we're trying to find black metal to recommend to AQ customers who aren't necessarily metalheads but who like weird weird music whatever the genre. Droning fucked up stuff that's almost more experimental than it is metal. And this (one-man) band Striborg is precisely what we like to have on hand when the subject of, "if I were to buy just one weird black metal record, what should it be?" comes up.
For the longest time, it was next to impossible to find cds by this still-obscure artist from far-off Tasmania (that's right, Tasmania!). Fortunately others besides us have recognized his peculiar genius and now the releases are (somewhat) more readily available. Which brings us to this brand new album, Solitude, and it to us, hot on the heels of Striborg's other recent full-length release, Ghostwoodlands. As with that album, here Striborg has uncapped his usual aerosol spray of buzzing guitars and wretched effected vokills. The fuzzed out, bleak black metal clatter is interspersed with long stretches of what approaches D.I.Y. 20th Century Classical electronic music spookiness! The ambient, isolationist tracks that cropped up on Ghostwoodlands are again to the fore, as is an even more droney, doomy, droomy mood. There are several exclusively "black metal" tracks (two of 'em quarter hour epics!), some of them powered by blazing drum machine beats, but even so the overall vibe of Solitude is so slooooow and doooooomy.
Drum machine? Don't worry, it sounds good, and at times, we think he really IS playing the drums. Striborg's less-than-tight timekeeping and fucked up fills have always been paradoxical highlights of his albums in our perverse estimation, but Solitude finds many ways to provide those idiosyncratic so-wrong-its-right pleasures. Tracks like "Ektoplasmic Dreams", "Doppelganger" and "The Untouched Land" are purely electronic-sounding, ominous abstract dronescapes, piercing with high-end synth-shards and soothing with somnolent textures. Elsewhere, his blurred guitars do the same, reminding us of dreamy gloom dronesters Angelic Process, a hushed guitar tone... not even a tone, more like a pure wave, a solid mass.
We mentioned that Striborg hails from pretty far south -- Tasmania. The rainforests of his island are not that distant from the icy wastes of Antarctica. But this album, Solitude, is the sound of Striborg's one-man, one-way journey even further south, falling right off the edge of this world...
MPEG Stream: "Ektoplasmic Dreams"
MPEG Stream: "Solitude"
MPEG Stream: "The Grandeur of Melancholy"

STEEL MAMMOTH Atomic Mountain (Ektro) cd 14.98
You were warned. We reviewed this Circle side project's insane debut ep a couple weeks ago. Now, here's the full-length follow-up. The battletoads are back!
Not Sacred Steel, Steel Attack, Ritual Steel, or Steel Assassin. Not Wooly Mammoth. Or Mammatus. Or Mastodon. Or Pelican's "Pink Mammoth". Not Titan Steele, or Virgin Steele, or Steeler. It's STEEL MAMMOTH!! A metal band, presumably? Well, no, not quite. It IS another example of the many flirtations our favorite Finnish prog-psych band (Circle, including offshoots like Pharaoh Overlord and Krypt Axeripper) has always had with the elements of heavy metal (sonic, visual, lyrical). But the high-concept of "Circle does '80s metal" that you might expect from the band name and cover graphics and band pics with spikes and leather isn't quite what you actually get here, these guys being too clever and creative and crazy to do the obvious thing. Really, if you want to hear Circle-goes-metal, they come a lot closer on certain songs from Circle albums like Sunrise and Tulikora, and the recent, ever so slightly black metal bewitched Katapult. Not to mention, way back on their debut Meronia, with all its Helmet-style heaviness. And probably the most metal they've ever been is on Pharaoh Overlord #4.
So no, Steel Mammoth isn't a metal band, or even a joke metal band (though there's definitely some tongue in cheek joking going on). It's pure WTF? weirdness in the guise of a metal band. More catchy than crushing, it's a hitherto unheard hybrid of Circle's trademark hypnotic pulsations, a relaxed pop sensibility, tossed off hard rock riffing, moody tension, and sensitive vocals delivering ridiculous lyrics. Lyrics that are so ridiculous they're genius, lyrics that would make Monster Magnet or Manowar laugh and crumple up their notebook page if they'd written them. For instance, lines like: "barbarian lords/we ride alone/until we're just a pile of bones", or "lonely banzai rhino blackout leather/volcano hideout of the mountain owl/masterplan suicide war machine/lady death on the steering wheel", or "black diamond thunder dragon/beast of vampire torture/silver locusts on the desert sky/acid rain wasteland"! We also hear about a "multiheaded lion", "switchblade messiahs of hate", "midnight witches", a "metal infant", and the "powersweat of the demonwolf" to pick some other gems at random. Wow. Death and destruction and kicking ass seem to be the themes... yet there's some thought and depth to it all, extending to a self-constructed cosmology for these "nuclear barbarians" on their journey to the center of the "atomic mountain", that's depicted in a schematic in the cd booklet. We even detect a sincere sentimentality to some of this -- when album closer and title track "Atomic Mountain" finds the band sweetly crooning "Down, down, down I go" you FEEL it on some meaningful level, really.
As for the music, most of the songs share a skeletal Judas Priest vibe, stripped down and mellowed out and infused with effects. The opener, "Black Team", reminds us more of a handicapped Rolling Stones, fronted maybe by Danzig, but odder even than that would be. Several tracks later, "Nuclear Barbarians" is reprised from the ep, not really sure why they did that, though it is a cool song -- love how they pronounce nuclear, "nuck-leeyer". But it's followed by something completely different, the 11 and a half minute "Commando Leopard", an instrumental that starts off with primitive krauty rhythms before entering into a long beatless stretch of atmospheric, electronic spookiness. Like we said, WTF? Or should we say, NWOFWTF?
MPEG Stream: "Blackout Leather"
MPEG Stream: "Riders Of Death"
MPEG Stream: "Commando Leopard"

V/A Museum Of Future Sound (Flogsta Danshall) cd 14.98
Yo droids! You wanna know what's been boomin' on Pluto lately? It's gotta be skweee. Y'know here at Aquarius we're always on the lookout for something new, the next big thing perhaps (though we're talking big 'round here, not necessarily elsewhere). Well we think we've found it! SKWEEE. Skweee? That's the self-proclaimed name for a new scene of electronic music in Scandinavia. It's basically Nordic b-boys doing DIY electro, and it's true, if they hadn't called it skweee but something less silly like, uh, "Scandi-funk" or "Vikinglectro", we might have not been as initially intrigued, though we did already have an interest in electro from Finland 'cause of that Sound Of Suomi comp we listed a while back. Something about "skweee" though just grabs us. You don't have to like bad puns to like skweee but it helps. Hey what are you doing this skweeekend? There's a skweee show Saturday skweeevening. Some of our favorite skweeejays will be spinning. Skweee you there!
We kind of randomly found out about it on the internet, listened in to some online samples on the "Nation of Skweee" webpage, and were hooked. Imagine a warped crossover between old school video game music and '90s hiphop instrumental tracks, that laidback Dr. Dre style funk as if hacked on a Commodore 64, programmed by Finnish and Norwegian kids trying to stave off the boredom and depression of long sunlight-deprived winters (as opposed to embracing it like their countryfolk into black metal would do). There's an obscure but active scene up in that part of the world skweeepin' it real with the support of a couple local labels, Harmonia and Flogsta Danshall, releasing the skweee on 7" and 12" singles. We did discover this one compact disc compilation that Flogsta Danshall put out, and figured we had to get it, it features a lot of the "stars" of skweee and obviously would be a good starting point for us, and any AQ customers who wanted to get turned on to skweee. And funnily enough, the guy from Flogsta Danshall had previously been to Aquarius on a trip to the USA, so he was himself excited that we wanted to stock some skweee in our shop!
Here's the artists: Mesak, Pavan, Rigas Den Andre, Beem, The Munchies, Randy Barracuda, Wizards of DOS, PJVM, Mangrove, Uday, Vakttornet, Daniel Savio, Maja Hedin, and Claws Costeau (great name!). Although each one's different, there's a definite "skweee ID" shared between 'em: elements like distorted squelching synthetic bass, computery bloops and bleeps, fractured funk beats, crazed dance logic, and what's either a playful sense of humor or just plain weirdness. Or both. Some tracks (say, Pavan) are a bit more uptight techno-rigid kraftwerkouts than others, which skweee like along with the looser, more fucked up cuts (like Randy Barracuda's which sounds like Inspector Gadget done Doug E. Fresh style or somethin').
The Museum Of Future Sound exhibits 14 trax, 54+ minutes of the finest in skweee, packaged in a thin, square, black plastic cd case, with simple, stark black & white cover graphics and a tracklisting on stickers affixed to the front and back. No further info is given about any of the contributors, unfortunately, so they stay mysterious... but they probably all have MySpace pages and would love to get visitors!
Next big thing? Could skweee. We'll skweee.
MPEG Stream: MESAK "Popkumm"
MPEG Stream: RANDY BARRACUDA "Rick James Is Dead"
MPEG Stream: CLAWS COSTEAU "The Franzzz Connection"

STEEL MAMMOTH Nuclear Barbarians (Ektro) cd 9.98
Ohh yeahhh. All the Krypt Axeripper fans here have been waiting for this. Circle fans too. Same thing, sorta. Krypt Axeripper, you know, that was the very entertaining, brilliantly stupid, supposed "heavy metal" side project of our Finnish friends Circle, enshrined on a four song ep earlier this year. After Krypt Axeripper could the NWOFHM get any more ridiculous?? You be the judge, they certainly tried: ta dah, STEEL MAMMOTH!! Seemingly a similar high concept (that being, Circle's metal obsession goes too far?) but actually more confusional than you'd think. Sure the cd booklet is filled with awesome D&Dish artwork and pisstake photos of the truly chuffed band members posing in full leather and studs regalia. But then, check out the music. As with Krypt Axeripper, there's a quota of crotch-rock riffs but it's also so oddly poppy, more like some sort of twisted rock n' roll alternative to the alternative than anything really made of molten metal. English-language lyrics (about Satan and radiation, "metal blade warriors" and "scorpion wizards", and suchlike metallic subjects, 'tis true) are weirdly crooned over shuffling beats and guitars that whilst fully fuzzed aren't exactly wielded by Hanneman/King. It's absurd, and absurdly catchy. When they sing something about how "battletoads explode in stereo" you'll be humming along (if not quite headbanging) and won't even bat an eye.
Looks like the Steel Mammoth trio of Garfield Steel, Rema 7000, and Juicyifer (hmm) and their pal Krypt (all pseudonyms for Circle folks) have invented a new cartoony subgenre all their own, jokingly initiated perhaps but inadvertently (?) awesome. Extra dimensional, post apocalyptic, astral travelling silliness that's part pop, part metal, and yes, part Circle ('specially on "Slow Death" with its unmistakable motorik drumming). This first attack from Steel Mammoth clocks in at 5 tracks, 18 minutes. But get this, future members of the Steel Mammoth Army: there's a Steel Mammoth full-length album in the works now, too! Look out, the battletoads have only begun to explode in stereo...
MPEG Stream: "Spirit Horse"
MPEG Stream: "Nuclear Barbarians"

ANGELS OF LIGHT We Are Him (Young God) cd 14.98
As harrowing and depressive yet magical and luminous as ever, Michael Gira returns with his fourth proper Angels Of Light record, We Are Him. Recorded with his buddies the Akron Family, the overall feeling of this record is hypnotic and repetitive... It's tough for us to write an objective review, we're basically really big Michael Gira fans and have dug most everything he's done. He always manages to get awesome musicians, and his records sound really great, always. That being said, We Are Him is definitely different from all his other releases, maybe a little more angular rhythmically speaking, a bit more prog, even jangly almost at times. One of our favorite elements of Gira's music is most definitely his lyrics. They have a kind of universal quality, dealing with more existential themes, and less of personal emotional type stuff, which is rare in the world of song-writing. Akron Family are amazing as well and their unique musical contributions have much to do with the unique sound of the record. Stark and a bit abstract, stripped down, but still lush, and of course haunting and beautiful. And just really fucking great. Another great album in a long line of great albums. If you liked the other Angels Of Light albums, you'll probably dig this one too. It's certainly a development, and there are lots of subtle differences, but it manages to maintain the eternal quality of all Gira's work. Yeah, it's really beautiful, there are awesome brass parts too, the lyrics rule, the textures are evocative, GREAT ALBUM! That's all we need to say.
MPEG Stream: "My Brother's Man"
MPEG Stream: "We Are Him"

FAUST So Far (Polydor / Universal) cd 17.98
One of the BEST RECORDS EVER. That's right. And I don't think we're really going out on a limb with that claim. Certainly one of the best krautrock records ever (as are pretty much all the Faust albums, actually). This, Faust's second album, originally released in 1972, has been reissued numerous times over the years, for a while as an expensive Japanese import only, then in the crucial Wumme Years box set, and most recently by Collector's Choice as a two-on-one with Faust's self-titled debut. We still stock that for the budget-minded amongst you, but since this is such a classic, we figure some folks will want this newer, nicely digipacked reish all by its own. Unlike the two-fer, the cd booklet here includes all the full-color images (one illustration per song) that came as art prints with the original vinyl. And as well, there's new liner notes and vintage photos in there as well. Nice.
But let's get back to this best records ever business, for those that weren't already nodding in agreement. It's the missing link between The Velvet Underground and The Boredoms, we're telling you. Just listen to the mantric opener "It's A Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl" and tell us they weren't influenced by the VU... yet taking things way further into the trance-zone, pioneering the minimal post-rock sounds of many popular indie bands today... Circle ferinstance! And for sure the Boredoms. Also, without Faust, chances are, no This Heat. No Nurse With Wound. Yep they were pioneers all right. And still sound plenty fresh 'n weird today. So Far reigns in the sound collage craziness of their selt-titled debut, tightening up into actual song-form-iness, even getting into some pleasantly lyrical poppiness... but always ready to do something violently eccentric. "Daddy, take the banana!"
MPEG Stream: "It's A Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl"
MPEG Stream: "No Harm"

HARVEY MILK My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be (Relapse) cd 13.98
My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be. What an awesome title. And the record cover, a bull and a rooster and an ornate candle, the words Harvey Milk in tiny blue type over the rooster. On the cd, the text: "Harvey Milk is Cronos, Mantis, Abadon". Song titles like "Where The Bee Sucks, There Suck I", "The Anvil Will Fall" and "Merlin Is Magic". By now most avid AQ customers are very familiar with the mysterious sludge rock power trio Harvey Milk, but when we first laid hands on this disc, back in 1994, we had no idea what to think. As if the artwork wasn't enough to have us scratching our heads, the music inside was even more willfully difficult. And still is. Obviously borne of some serious Melvins worship, Harvey Milk, took the already difficult sound of the Melvins to new heights, or depths, crafting lengthy sludge jams, packed with as much space as riffs, long expanses of spastic John Bonham like drumming, vocals a whiskey soaked gravelly bellow, guitars thick black sheets. This was without a doubt some of the strangest music we had ever heard. But at the same time, somehow the most beautiful. The sound of Harvey Milk was some impossible blend of noise rock, math rock, post rock, punk rock, twentieth century composition and METAL. All tangled into one huge gnarled black hole of sound. A sound that crawls more than it rocks, but when it does rock, it blows away pretty much any other band in the land. 
Lots of you no doubt already own Courtesy And Goodwill Toward Men, arguably one of the greatest records EVER, heavy, sludgy or otherwise. If you don't you need to stop reading for a second and go buy it right now. We'll wait...........
Okay, Courtesy was HM record number two, and found the band 'tightening' up their sound, taking the chaos of My Love, and crafting it into, well, more chaos. It's hard to say how they changed between these two records. My Love is a tiny bit faster. The best way to describe it is like this: My Love is to Courtesy, the way Nirvana's Bleach is to Nevermind, more immediate and raw, but with some of the best songs the band ever wrote, and like Bleach, it's a record that tons of fans continue to insist is the best thing they've ever done. And while we are of the mind that Courtesy is in fact the best Harvey Milk record ever (unless you ask Allan, who would probably say The Pleaser, the -other- HM reissue this week, a killer disc of Harvey Milked ZZ Top worship) returning to My Love has us maybe reconsidering. We can't actually decide. There are so many amazing songs on My Love that we had forgotten about, as good as anything on Courtesy. It would probably be more realistic to proclaim My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be / Courtesy And Goodwill Toward Men as the ultimate math-sludge-slow-motion-dirge-doom-whatever one-two punch EVER. Maybe the greatest first and second record combo of all time. Needless to say, if you're at all into the current crop of slow motion doom mongers, and have somehow missed out on these records, you will lose your fucking mind (and odds are loads of you have never heard My Love as it's been out of print for ages). It's no exaggeration when we say every song on My Love is darn near perfect. But a few of our favorites:
"A Small Turn Of Human Kindness" was the absolute first peep we ever heard out of HM, and it's brutal and beautiful, so utterly confusing and unlike anything ever. A frustratingly obtuse abstract jam, even calling it a jam is stretching the definition of the word jam, there's LOTS of space, the track begins with a minute of weird electronic noodling, a huge wash of cymbals and guitar scrape, a killer BIG drum fill, and then... nothing... a weird barely there buzz, some cymbal dings, a moaning cello.... How amazing is that?!?!? It isn't until halfway through the song before the riff finally kicks in, and even then, it's like pulling teeth to get these guys to let loose and rock. In fact, it's not until the last two minutes that the band really go for it. And it was worth the wait, but before you know it comes "Women Dig it", slowing everything waaaaaaaaay back down. A super drawn out exercise in tension and release, with long stretches of just drums, big Zeppelin style drums, accompanied by mewled vocal, but which features one of the most awesome riffs EVER, so much so, that when it kicks in, it makes you want to rock the fuck out, which you could do if it wasn't just played once every couple minutes.... oh the glorious frustration!!! It's the sort of riff most bands would not only kill for, but that most bands would repeat over and over and over and base a whole song  around, whereas the Milk kick out that riff maybe twenty times, in the whole song, and all clumped together, with the rest of the song spent plodding and drifting and doing anything but locking into a killer groove. But that's what makes Harvey Milk so great, when that riff DOES drop, it's a ridiculous release, like an orgasm, this unbelievable rock-out relief, but like with most things it's the wait, the build up, that is the best part. Or at least the 'other' best part.
Another classic Milk track is "The Anvil Will Fall", a moody drifting whispery ballad, peppered by huge bursts of downtuned pummel, when out of nowhere, in come the strings, some patriotic hymn, an almost recognizable tune that Creston sings along too in his warbly raspy croon, even kicking it up into a wicked falsetto, before petering back out into the original hushed crawl, eventually launching into a super moving moody goddamned ANTHEM. The sort of song that should have sludge fans teary eyed with hat in hand, and hand over heart. And finally...
"Where The Bee Sucks, There Suck I", besides being the best song title maybe EVER, it's also one of the greatest songs ever, a really really fucking weird song, howled tortured vocals over a relentless tribal drum fill with occasional bursts of Zeppelin like riffage, before the guitar transforms into a static rumbling drone, and the drums just sort of do whatever the hell they want, for ever it feels like... and then the band launches back into it and it's some relentless bastardized groovy Southern sludge jam, but like all HM songs, they stop not long after to just sort of wander, and plod and wait, and pause, before doing it all over again....
We could go one and on, and get all mushy and fanboy about every single song on My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be, but you get the drift. This record is magical. Majestic. Freaked out. Furious. Heavy as anything you've ever heard. Strangely pretty. Mind meltingly difficult. Crushing. Confusing. Baffling. Brutal. And pretty much one of our favorite records ever...
MPEG Stream: "A Small Turn Of Human Kindness"
MPEG Stream: "Women Dig It"
MPEG Stream: "The Anvil Will Fall"
MPEG Stream: "Where The Bee Sucks, There Suck I"

HARVEY MILK The Pleaser (Relapse) cd 13.98
It's official Harvey Milk week here at AQ. Like another '90s epitome of heaviness, Earth, they're a band underappreciated the first time 'round, now a long last deservedly revered -and- better yet, back among us!!
Andee's already gone over a bit of the backstory of this amazing band in his review of their -other- Record Of The Week this week, the reissue of My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be. That one HAD to be a Record Of The Week, heck it's one of Andee's all time favorites, a Harvey Milk album almost he loves nearly as much as the one that got a release on his own tUMULt label, Courtesy And Goodwill Towards Men. Now, along with reissuing their crucial debut, Relapse has also simultaneously reissued what (until recently, with the release of another AQ ROTW, Harvey Milk's reunion album Special Wishes) was HM's swansong, their 1997 album The Pleaser. And since The Pleaser happens to be Allan's very favorite Harvey Milk, it too had to be a ROTW, just to be fair (the idea being, get 'em both... but we'll go on with this review just a bit more).
This one has always stuck out as, uh, different, in the brief but utterly ruling Harvey Milk discography. Mindblowingly different. On The Pleaser, these dirgey, heavier-than-thou arty post-rockers decided to really rock out with their cocks out, to put it crudely. It's the surprise Harvey Milk for headbangers, a beer-foaming behemoth of explosive rock n' roll riffola! No more holding back for 20 minutes at a time, they'd had it with that. From song one, riff one, this is pure RAWK, inspired by Motorhead, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin and ZZ Top. (Again, a bit of a parallel with Earth, whose last '90s album Pentastar also featured badass, muscle car, classic rock motifs.) And that would be enough for us to love it. Yet, 'cause it's Harvey Milk, there's more to it than that. They do the rawk thing with Harvey Milk style -- even though it's unusually uptempo for them, their weird avant-artistry is still at play. Song structures aren't so straightforward as they seem, that throaty Harvey Milk howl is still there, and strange chord progressions abound... and of course it's way HEAVIER than the hesher beloved bands that inspired it. And possessed of unexpected flashes of beauty, also in the Harvey Milk tradition.
Listening to this, you can imagine what the kind of band playing this music would look like: long hair, beards, jean jackets, maybe a backwards baseball cap or two, the bassist perhaps wielding an axe that's shaped like a Jack Daniel's bottle. Sweaty and hairy and throwing the devil horns, leering at the girls. But... that they're actually more like nerdy indie rock dudes (a la The Champs) might cause some confusion and/or consternation. And admittedly the very last track, "Rock And Roll Party Tonight" reveals some indie irony at work, tongues planted in cheek. But try to find the humor in the likes of "Shame" and "Misery". Or the slow, bluesy, balladic "Lay My Head Down". No, this is as serious as they ever were, just expressed in a far rock-ier mode.
They slow down to the turgid doomy pace of My Love Is Higher and Courtesy And Goodwill only occasionally ("Red As The Day Is Long" being one such example), instead preferring a more energetic attack, packed with shred guitar solos, catchy hooks, and hoarse but melodic vocals. Shorthand summation: it's kinda like the Melvins meets Tad meets Thee Speaking Canaries (the Van Halen influenced indie mathrockers), playing a wild kegger for a drunken crowd of revelers, the smarter few of whom realize they're witnessing something really amazing and weird and subversive of the party vibe, but ALL of them having a great time. It can't be denied, this is the Harvey Milk we put on when it's Miller Time, Allan definitely finding himself giving this more spins-per-decade than a lot of their other, equally awesome but much more spacious and difficult-to-grok output.
And wait, that's not all! There's more: this reissue comes with a bonus disc of the previously cd-r only live-on-the-radio set Live Pleaser, value added for fans picking this up for the first -or- second time. It's got kickass versions of all the tracks from The Pleaser -- plus a cover of "Deuce" by KISS, that fits in with songs from The Pleaser just perfectly like they wrote it themselves!
MPEG Stream: "Down"
MPEG Stream: "Get It Up & Get It On"
MPEG Stream: "Lay My Head Down"
MPEG Stream: "Shame (Live)"

CIRCLE Panic (Ektro) cd 14.98
Ah, Circle. We love 'em. You love 'em (or, if this is the first you've heard of them, then please do an artist=circle search on our website for plenty o' info). And we've all come to expect the unexpected from these freaky Finns, yet also always expect the "Circle" sound: rhythmic, krautrocky, "circular". And they always deliver. Yet we'd have to say, with this new record Panic they've also managed to come up with the Circle album that we doubt -anyone- would quite have predicted, nosiree.
Spoiler warning! Since we know that the legions of Circle fans reading this pretty much don't need us to tell 'em that they want this or any new Circle cd and will be all over this like stink on a pig regardless, we should mention that this review contains something in way of a "spoiler" about the album's contents and if you're already planning on buying this you might want to read no further. Not that the surprise is, y'know, like The Crying Game or anything. So read on if you want.
Looking at this, you might be wondering, what do the apocalyptic, crusty-punk looking black-and-white graphics mean? And why'd they call it Panic? And what's with the sticker on the front, proclaiming Circle to be "Finland speed-kraut pioneers" and telling us that they consist of ex-members of Sorto Ja Riiso, Saaste, Nyrkinen Kehitys, Spiders, and Suomen Ruutivarasto? Are those even real bands? Ultimately, you're wondering, what's this gonna sound like??
So, let's put it on... it starts off with "Black Tape", reminiscent of their recent lovely Miljard set: minimal piano plinking amidst spacey organic washes of synth, sort of Circle in an ambient Aphex Twin / Terry Riley mood. As that track flows into the next, and the next, the tone becomes more urgent, ominous, and busier... And then, without warning (well, unless you've read this) track number four ("Neverending Dinner") blasts from the speakers, a loud n' raging PUNK rock shock to the system, 38 seconds long. Seriously retro '80s styled hardcore punk, boots and spikes and all that, with vocals angrily shouting subversive political diatribes, the music uber-distorted and as catchy as a veneral disease. Wow. That's what we mean by a surprise! Thus begins this mayhemic middle portion of the album, six tracks, averaging not much more than a minute in length each, is Circle's teenage punk rock rebellion reborn and moshing hard. But since it's Circle's version of punk, so you can still hear the sci-fi prog rock keyboards layered in there, twittering and swooshing amidst the purely punk noise. Weird weird weird. Then, like a summer thunderstorm, all that's over with... and we're back to the vast, instrumental reaches of deep, dark space, the disc coming to a conclusion with its two longest tracks, the 12 minute "Tunnel" and the 14 minute "And Far Away", both even dronier and spacier than the synthscapes that began the album. Wow again.
If you think about it, those two extremes -- spacey prog and quasi-metallic rockin' -- are both integral parts of the hard-to-define Circle sound. So it's as if on Panic, they've taken the "usual" Circle thing and pulled it apart, like taffy. The opposite ends of the album are stretched out into a bleak and beautiful drone-zone, while the heaviest densest craziest stuff settles into the middle.
Some might criticize Circle for what might appear to an indulgence in high-concept joking around... post-modern appropriation... punk playacting... taking the piss... whatever. But what we think is that they're all the more amazing for it, for deciding to do a "punk" record yet keeping it Circle. After all, if you're gonna make as many albums as these guys have AND always have to make sure you stay true to the very distinctive sound they're established (the "circular", repetitive thing), you've gotta be creative, which they are. So their solution here is to sandwich their warped '80s punk pastiche between something completely different -- cosmic electronics like '70s Schulze or maybe a John Carpenter soundtrack. The jarring juxtaposition is brilliant and maybe even meaningful, somehow tying in with the nuclear nightmares depicted on the album graphics. And there are many clever details in the graphics dep't by the way, from the collaged riot pics to the fonts used to the barbed wire borders and the Ektro flag-logo... tight. In fact, we might wonder which came first, the graphic notions or the music...!?
By the way, while we've got your attention, may as well let you know to look forward to another new Circle album coming out on No Quarter in September. Haven't heard it yet, but Jussi from Circle tells us it sounds like "60's black metal"... whatever that means! No doubt more surprises in store.
MPEG Stream: "State Powder"
MPEG Stream: "U.M.F.G. Horsemen"
MPEG Stream: "And Far Away"

CANTILO, MIGUEL Y GRUPO Sur (Viaiero Inmovil Records) cd 21.00
While there ARE lots of amazing reissues of all sorts of old records -- psychedelic, rock, folk, jazz, reggae, metal, etc. -- coming out all the time (and hopefully you've read about a bunch of 'em here, we do our best to keep up), it's also become evident to us that the vast majority of reissued obscurities were, well, obscure for a reason, and it's hard to understand WHY someone would choose to reissue 'em. But then there's reissues like this one, that make us wonder, why hadn't we ever heard of this band before? Why weren't they HUGE? Well maybe Miguel Cantilo Y Grupo were famous in their native Argentina, they should have been, we certainly can't imagine that there were all that many bands of this quality releasing records in that country back then (this dates from 1975). At any rate, we're pretty excited to learn about 'em now thanks to this reissue. An eclectic psychedelic progressive rock album, with songs ranging from acoustic mellow melodicism to heavy hard rockin' bombast, this is something that we'd rank with a few other '70s reissues that have become big favorites 'round here -- if you loved the Eduardo Bort from Spain, or the more-recently reviewed Tarkus from Peru, you'll want this too for sure! It's got strong songs, a charming heavy-duty hippy vibe (check out the cover art), exotic appeal (all songs sung in Spanish, very emotively), and is definitely Classic Rock worthy (reminding us of Led Zep, Budgie, and even Aerosmith at their most mystical, magical a la "Kings and Queens"). Miguel's vocals are a bit Bolan-esque as well. But what puts it over the top for us is the killer blend of exquisite prettiness and sudden, frantic rock n' roll action, a lot looser and rawer than some other progressives of the era. Very dynamic and surprising. It's weird in all the right places. It's always neat to discover cool stuff like this out of the blue, proving that there definitely are unknown reissues worth taking a chance on... Nicely packaged in a slim colorful cardboard digipacky thing, with the cd itself in a sleeve with the lyrics printed on it.
MPEG Stream: "Algo Esta Por Suceder"
MPEG Stream: "Naturangel"

BLUES CONTROL s/t (Holy Mountain) cd 13.98
Don't let the punny name fool ya, this surely isn't "blues rock". Nor blues. Nor rock. Not really. Nor is it of Yugoslav origin, despite the biographical misinformation posted on the Holy Mountain website that claims Blues Control to be an obscure '70s psych band from Yugoslavia. Nope, Blues Control are an instrumental Brooklyn duo on guitar and synths and drums, making a wonderfully fucked up yet pleasantly listenable psych-squabble of a sound that's not super easy to describe, actually... let's just say that if it were blues rock, it'd be druggily confused, utterly EXPERIMENTAL blues rock. The eight tracks found on this eponymous debut wander through mellow, spacey passages, interludes of seasick synth symphonics, and blown-out epic episodes full of fuzzed-up motorpsycho guitar leads, drunken and damaged sounding. Blues Control's two-man trash team are up to something strange here, counter-intuitive creativity that can make a cool track out of some pretty piano dropped into a droney wash, followed up by a broken-amp bass solo and some off-kilter beats, ferinstance. This totally fits in on the out-there Holy Mountain label alongside the likes of Residual Echoes and Aufgehoben, especially considering how fractured and distorted they can get, almost like a fuzzed-out Starfuckers on the very first track. We're digging this a lot.
MPEG Stream: "Blues Control"
MPEG Stream: "Boiled Peanuts"
MPEG Stream: "No Sweat"

V/A Rumble In The Jungle (Soul Jazz) cd 21.00
When we first got wind of this comp, for some reason, we just assumed it was gonna be another amazing Soul Jazz reggae comp, it didn't even occur to us that it would be a collection of killer classic jungle jams from the early nineties. But we threw it on, and were just knocked on our asses, transported back to '93/'94 when we first discovered jungle, particularly, ragga-dancehall-jungle or whatever you wanted to call it, a killer blend of traditional Jamaican dancehall, and this new breed of sped up hip hop that had grown out of the rave scene in the UK.
The history and genealogy is complex, but there's been plenty written about it, the liner notes here are particularly informative, tracing the development of ragga-jungle from the early Reggae sound systems, through the rave scene, UK hardcore hip hop, and beyond. Ragga jungle was a flash in the pan, existing for 3 or 4 years before most of the folks making it moved on to two-step, garage, drum and bass and on an on. But for our money, this was it. This was THE music we had been waiting for. We have loved dancehall forever, the harder and faster the better, so here was the toasting and melody of dancehall, draped over chopped up stuttering and pounding hip hop beats, all sped up into a rhythmic frenzy.
If there's one track that sums it up for us, it's DJ Zinc's "Super Sharp Shooter", with its interminable vocal and squelchy synth intro, the loping creeping reggae groove, the buzzing melody, the simple shuffling drum beat, the slowed down Method Man sample, and that's all before the track actually even drops, and when it does... Whoooowheee. We remember hearing this for the first time in one of the few clubs in SF that played jungle back in the day, and it nearly knocked us out of our seats. We ended up buying a DJ mix tape from one of the DJs spinning, and thankfully it had "Super Sharp Shooter" on it, and from that point on, we listened to it over and over every day, in the car, cranked as loud as it would go, bass pumping (as much as the bass could be said to pump in a crappy old van). So fucking heavy and hooky and funky. When the track finally kicks in, it's massive, relentless serpentine pass line, ultra complex drums, funky and groovy but so tangled and dense, every once in a while the bass line locks on a single not and just hooooooooolds steady until it drops, hard, and we're off on another junglistic jam. As far as we're concerned this would be worth it just for this track, but thankfully, the rest of the disc is just as kick ass.
Lots of familiar reggae and dancehall names, Ninjaman, Bounty Killer, Beenie Man, Cutty Ranks, and for those in the know, the rest of the names read like an early nineties jungle all star lineup: Ragga Twins, Poison Chang, Ragga Twins, DJ Zinc, Shy FX... but even if you don't know any of these names, the music speaks for itself. Check out "Original Nuttah" by UK Apachi & Shy FX, beginning with some super hooky sing songy reggae vocals before the track launches into a maddeningly dense rapid fire snare workout underpinning a raw and tongue twisting flow. Furious and intense and so goddamn good. Then there's tracks like Ragga Twins' "Illegal Gunshot", with its playful and circusy melodic loop, but juxtaposed with some seriously aggro toasting, some Bomb Squad like production, and some outrageously funky drumming.
Pretty much every track on here is a killer, never has a record so much made even us non-dancers want to head for the dancefloor and go fucking nuts. The cool thing about this stuff, is even if you're dancefloor phobic, is that these tracks are so dense and multi layered, full of convoluted rhythms and mad drumming and rapid fire rhymes and wild toasting and strange melodies and killer grooves, that they're almost as fun to listen to as they are to dance to. Almost.
Like all Soul Jazz stuff, gorgeously packaged and extensively researched. Tons of liner notes, track notes, photos, all wrapped up in a full color slipcase.
MPEG Stream: DJ ZINC "Super Sharp Shooter"
MPEG Stream: RAGGA TWINS "Illegal Gunshot"
MPEG Stream: ASHER SENATOR "One Bible"
MPEG Stream: POISON CHANG "Press The Trigger"

V/A Rumble In The Jungle (Soul Jazz) 2lp 24.00
When we first got wind of this comp, for some reason, we just assumed it was gonna be another amazing Soul Jazz reggae comp, it didn't even occur to us that it would be a collection of killer classic jungle jams from the early nineties. But we threw it on, and were just knocked on our asses, transported back to '93/'94 when we first discovered jungle, particularly, ragga-dancehall-jungle or whatever you wanted to call it, a killer blend of traditional Jamaican dancehall, and this new breed of sped up hip hop that had grown out of the rave scene in the UK.
The history and genealogy is complex, but there's been plenty written about it, the liner notes here are particularly informative, tracing the development of ragga-jungle from the early Reggae sound systems, through the rave scene, UK hardcore hip hop, and beyond. Ragga jungle was a flash in the pan, existing for 3 or 4 years before most of the folks making it moved on to two-step, garage, drum and bass and on an on. But for our money, this was it. This was THE music we had been waiting for. We have loved dancehall forever, the harder and faster the better, so here was the toasting and melody of dancehall, draped over chopped up stuttering and pounding hip hop beats, all sped up into a rhythmic frenzy.
If there's one track that sums it up for us, it's DJ Zinc's "Super Sharp Shooter", with its interminable vocal and squelchy synth intro, the loping creeping reggae groove, the buzzing melody, the simple shuffling drum beat, the slowed down Method Man sample, and that's all before the track actually even drops, and when it does... Whoooowheee. We remember hearing this for the first time in one of the few clubs in SF that played jungle back in the day, and it nearly knocked us out of our seats. We ended up buying a DJ mix tape from one of the DJs spinning, and thankfully it had "Super Sharp Shooter" on it, and from that point on, we listened to it over and over every day, in the car, cranked as loud as it would go, bass pumping (as much as the bass could be said to pump in a crappy old van). So fucking heavy and hooky and funky. When the track finally kicks in, it's massive, relentless serpentine pass line, ultra complex drums, funky and groovy but so tangled and dense, every once in a while the bass line locks on a single not and just hooooooooolds steady until it drops, hard, and we're off on another junglistic jam. As far as we're concerned this would be worth it just for this track, but thankfully, the rest of the disc is just as kick ass.
Lots of familiar reggae and dancehall names, Ninjaman, Bounty Killer, Beenie Man, Cutty Ranks, and for those in the know, the rest of the names read like an early nineties jungle all star lineup: Ragga Twins, Poison Chang, Ragga Twins, DJ Zinc, Shy FX... but even if you don't know any of these names, the music speaks for itself. Check out "Original Nuttah" by UK Apachi & Shy FX, beginning with some super hooky sing songy reggae vocals before the track launches into a maddeningly dense rapid fire snare workout underpinning a raw and tongue twisting flow. Furious and intense and so goddamn good. Then there's tracks like Ragga Twins' "Illegal Gunshot", with its playful and circusy melodic loop, but juxtaposed with some seriously aggro toasting, some Bomb Squad like production, and some outrageously funky drumming.
Pretty much every track on here is a killer, never has a record so much made even us non-dancers want to head for the dancefloor and go fucking nuts. The cool thing about this stuff, is even if you're dancefloor phobic, is that these tracks are so dense and multi layered, full of convoluted rhythms and mad drumming and rapid fire rhymes and wild toasting and strange melodies and killer grooves, that they're almost as fun to listen to as they are to dance to. Almost.
Like all Soul Jazz stuff, gorgeously packaged and extensively researched. Tons of liner notes, track notes, photos...
MPEG Stream: DJ ZINC "Super Sharp Shooter"
MPEG Stream: RAGGA TWINS "Illegal Gunshot"
MPEG Stream: ASHER SENATOR "One Bible"
MPEG Stream: POISON CHANG "Press The Trigger"

JODOROWSKY, ALEJANDRO The Films Of Alejandro Jodorowsky: Fando Y Lis, El Topo, The Holy Mountain (Anchor Bay) 4dvd/2cd 49.00
Visionary cult cinephiles get ready to drool! If you were as excited as we were about the recent reissue of Kenneth Anger's early films, then this incredibly packaged and affordable 4dvd+2cd box set of the early films of Chilean theatrical genius Alejandro Jodorowsky will surely make your head explode!!! Fando Y Lis! El Topo!!, HOLY MOUNTAIN!!!! Marvelously restored and beautifully remastered, there is so much amazing material here that has either never been available before, or only available previously as extremely hard to find poor quality transfers from mediocre prints.