AUSTERITY PROGRAM, THE Black Madonna (Hydra Head) cd 13.98
It's hard to know exactly what to say about these guys, we have to fight our urge to just gush madly, and as you all probably realize by now, we can only put up so much of a fight... the last Austerity Program record was a bombastic homage to the drum machine fueled acerbic brutality of the late great Big Black, which we absolutely loved. But this record somehow manages to retain that sound (how could it not at least a little, especially considering the lineup is guitar, bass and drum machine?) while taking it so much further. Sure Big Black were amazing, as were the legion of drum machine driven behemoths that followed, but the Austerity Program are way more than the sum of their parts. Especially the drum machine part, which seems to define most bands that utilize one... The drum machine here doesn't always sound like a machine at all, which is the key, it's super tight, and precise, but could maybe be an actual drummer. Occasionally the band do take advantage of the machine's super human abilities, but for the most part, the drumming while crushing and brutal is also weirdly deft and subtle. The vocals also can't help but give a nod to Albini and Big Black, it's not a hellish howl or a guttural growl, it's more of an angry nerdy wail, a hyper literate, snarky rant delivered in a sung / spoken, regular guy shout. But the vocals are generally few and far between, which means it's mostly all about the bass and guitar...
And fuck if these aren't some of the heaviest, and thickest guitar sounds ever. It helps that the riffs totally destroy, super catchy, weirdly melodic, soaring and epic as often as they are metallic and pummeling. Sometimes super affected, but just as often a straight forward chest caving crunch, the bass throbbing and pulsing right along, often offering up some super unlikely melodic counterpoint, never content to just be a low end presence, the bass grinds and growls as intensely as the guitars. 
The overall sound ends up being some strange hybrid of Big Black (obviously), Harvey Milk, Jesu, a little bit of Fugazi and some hints here and there of black metal buzz, all tightly wound into an utterly intense crushing blast of beautiful brutality. From the first track, you'll be pretty much knocked the fuck out. It's a super complex mathy metallic workout, the guitars, swirl and soar, slither and shimmer, all the while pounding out some of the most bad ass riffs ever, and it's super dynamic, with the drums and guitar locked tight, stopping to emit little squalls of corrosive feedback before spiraling back into walls and washes of furious buzz. All the tracks are impossibly gorgeous and melodic, as well as being super ultra tight and clinical, guitars are massive, roiling and thick, the riffs warm and dense, but jagged and razor sharp, and the arrangements are mindblowing, super complex, but not to the point of destroying the flow of the songs, just perfectly obtuse and tangled, so much so that it sounds like one of these guys must have gotten some sort of calculus degree just to program the drum machine. But it's not all pound and crush, some tracks are slow and brooding, the guitars building and building, a haunting groovy Fugazi like percussive chug, that eventually builds to a completely catchy, massive grinding guitar / pummeling percussion battle that manages to take the shape of a crazy catchy song at the same time. 
We'd be remiss if we didn't mention the fact that these guys are also really fucking funny too. But in that all to rare way, where the music is absolutely NOT funny, the humor is subtle, and clever, and just a bit snarky, but it's all over the place, EVEN in the music, but subtly so. From the sticker and obi text on the outside, to the lyrics (especially the part where they scream "Here is my favorite part" before, well, what just might be their favorite part), to some of the clever arrangements, some of the strangely almost recognizable melodies, right down to the WTF liner notes, a chunk of pseudo-scientific data analyzing the various songs on the album, based on things like "distinct drum patterns", "average tempo", "vocal references to death", "abrupt pauses" and more. There are graphs and charts, and lengthy descriptions of how the "Divergence Index Value" of each song was calculated. Even the cover art, various swaths of old lady plastic flowers... these guys just totally rule. They're heavy and ultra brutal, but don't take themselves too seriously, they're funny, but the music is not, the humor is smart and funny, and somehow perfectly compliments the sheer epic intensity of the music...
They also had a contest celebrating the release of their new record with the grand prize being your very own customized song, and as if that weren't enough, have a peek at this amazing Austerity Program infomercial:
http://pl.youtube.com/watch?v=1WcsV7hQ1V4
As if it weren't already painfully obvious, absolutely essential, totally recommended, one of our favorite new records, and a no brainer for record of the week!
MPEG Stream: "Song 12"
MPEG Stream: "Song 17B"
MPEG Stream: "Song 19"

WOODEN SHJIPS s/t (Holy Mountain) 2cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Whoo-hoo! We thought these bonus disc havin' Wooden Shjips cds were all gone, gone, gone... but there was a serendipitous "warehouse find" and now we have a few more for anyone who missed out! Act fast, though!
From right here in our sunny San Francisco neighborhood, comes an eagerly anticipated new release that clinches its Record Of The Week status not only by comprising a fantastic debut full-length album of hypnotically searing garagey psych jams, but also by including a BONUS disc (limited edition, first 2000 copies only) in a cardboard sleeve shrinkwrapped to the jewel case, featuring all the tracks from the now-out-of-print 10" and 7" vinyl records released last year that first made us -- and so many others, foremost among 'em Tom Lax of Siltbreeze/Siltblog fame, and Byron Coley at The Wire -- into drooling Wooden Shjips fanatics.
And yes, if you haven't run into them before, it's Wooden ShJips with a J, that's not a typo, just a way we guess of making their moniker more psychedelic (and easier to Google, too). They've garnered a lot of deserved attention from folks into minimalistic psych throb, that's for sure, and further whetted everyone's appetites for this album with the "Summer Of Love" 7" single that came out a couple weeks ago and has already sold out (2nd pressing in the works, be patient).
So, this new self-titled album follows on from that single with five more fuzzy, super groovy, guitar/organ/bass/drums slowburners, somewhere between Comets On Fire and Circle, with a definite Doors-y vibe as well, in part due to the keys which give this an almost loungey relaxed feel at times, and in part due to the occasional laidback Morrison-ish vocals of guitarist Erik Johnson. Erik also makes us think of Neil Young as well, as his more "out" guitar solos -- some if 'em SCORCHING -- could be off of Young's feedback-filled Arc. Or a Les Rallizes Denudes record! Track four, "Blue Sky Bends", having the best Rallizes-ish drone-factor of the disc. Overall, we'd say that these tracks, as a development from their earlier material, exhibits more and more of a throwback to the ballroom Frisco style of the sixties... now they just need to get a light show happening! But something tells us they'd be all about stark bright white strobes and dark black shadows only, maybe some b&w op art spirals, if their monochrome packaging aesthetic and the general heavy lidded mood of the music is anything to go by...
And then there's the limited bonus disc. Don't dawdle, you don't want to miss it (particularly if you didn't score the original vinyl releases). It's got the three tracks from their debut Shrinking Moon For You 10" (the one that they didn't even tell us about even though we see these guys on the street every day, we had to find out about it from Mr. Lax's blog!) and both cuts from their Dance, California / Clouds Over Earthquake 7". We'll try to summarize what we said about these songs before. The music from the 10" starts off with the title cut, a fuzzy garagey stomp, a groove that locks in and plows forward relentlessly. We began to feel like we were listening to some sort of garage rock Steve Reich. Guitars just sort of buzzing along, blooping new wave bass right underneath, simple solid drumming. But then in swoops some super feedback guitar that sounds like a demented horn section, and before you can examine it more closely it disappears, and we're back to the groove. That happens a few more times before the vocals kick in, sort of sing songy, but SO drenched in delay that the words get all jumbled up and are sort of jettisoned into outer space. There is also a subtle wash of fuzzy keyboards giving the whole thing a sort of Loop vibe. the second track is quite similar except the vocals are a bit more distinct, sort of laidback and mumbly. After a few listens, it became clear that there is some sort of minimal thing going on, but it's more like some lost Velvet Underground track arranged for Reich and Riley. Droney and drifty and druggy and totally mesmerizing. The third track bucks the trend and instead veers off into some tripped out ambience, with drifting motes of guitar fuckery, random sounds and noises, and some cool creepy backwards vocals. Sort of like an indie hipster freenoise "Revolution #9." Cool.
The two tracks from the 7" are also quite sonically similar to the 10" cuts. First up, surprise surprise a buzzy lo-fi garage groove, beneath bizarre super distorted insectoid guitar leads, buzzing WAY up in the mix and sounding almost like some primitive malfunctioning synth. But the whole time, beneath the alien buzz, the groove just hums along, like some extra baked Velvet Underground outtake. "Clouds Over Earthquake" is way more laid back, some blown out sun baked riffage, a super lazy groove, like Loop played at 16rpm, decorated with warm hornlike melodies that eventually stretch out into some serious outerspace psych rock explorations. The vocals we loved so much on the 10" resurface here too, laconic, drawled sung/spoken and super affected, very Lou Reed sounding albeit buried way down in the mix and absolutely drenched in thick reverb and fuzzy delay. Awesome!
So those tracks are all here (not in that order though) along with a radio edit of "Dance, California" for completists. These are the songs that had us jonesing for a full length, which you've just read about up above, and now all this music is together in one crucial package, while they last.
FYI, a vinyl version of the full-length is to follow in a month or two we're told... and maybe Holy Mountain can come up with some better cover art for it too? We were a bit underwhelmed by the blurry black & white photo of the band sitting around on the steps to someone's house, but then again their vinyl releases were in clear sleeves with no art to speak of, so I guess elaborate packaging ain't their thing. But motorik minimalist krautrocky pulsations, mellow Doorsy '60s groove, and out and out geetar psych-splosions are, so we can't complain!!
MPEG Stream: "We Ask You To Ride"
MPEG Stream: "Blue Sky Bends"
MPEG Stream: "Clouds Over Earthquake"

CIRCLE Arkades (Fourth Dimension) 2cd 19.98
BACK IN STOCK! At last... not sure if this actually got repressed, or if our supplier just found a few in a misplaced box or something, but we've got about a dozen of these now, and may or may not be able to get more. Probably not, actually. So if you missed it before, don't sleep on it now. Here's our review from back last summer....
Finland's mighty masters of metallic hypno drone rock, Circle, have slowly transformed into a sort of musical Jeckyll and Hyde. Beginning life with a twisted take on motorik murk, hypnotic riffing, relentless rhythms, and circular song structures, the band gradually became obsessed with metal, and thus Circle records got heavier and riffier, with more wild vocals and metallic bombast, resulting recently in a wildly productive explosion of Circle releases and Circle related side projects, the sludgey rifflords Pharaoh Overlord, the forthcoming Steel Mammoth records, and the most recent Circle release, Panic, perfectly reflecting their split personality split evenly between ambient whoooosh and grinding old skool punk rock. Confusing sure, but also wild and glorious and completely and totally kick ass.
But as Circle records generally got heavier and riffier, they were balanced by a series of lp only releases, all of which seemed to be meditative and droney and dreamy. But for listeners sans turntables, a whole side of Circle must have seemed like it was simply fading way. Well, now one of our favorite vinyl only releases from Circle has gotten re-released on cd, and with a bonus disc to boot (3 tracks, 40+ minutes). So those of you who were wondering what was going on over in Circle lp land, now's your chance to get a glimpse, and obviously all you Circle obsessives who have the lp already, will probably have to pick it up for the extra disc, essentially an entire new (live!) Circle record!
Here's a retooled version of our review of the lp when it first came out (folks who already own the lp, skip down to the end to read about the bonus disc):
Finland's mighty masters of metallic hypno drone rock return, with yes, another brand new record (previously lp only, now on cd), and their obsession (one of their many strange obsessions) with Southern Rock has finally reached critical mass. Not so much musically, although there are subtle hints here and there, as visually and conceptually. This set, recorded live on Brian Turner's radio show on WFMU when Circle were in the states a year or two back is a monster. Two epic and massively long tracks, combining the metallic leanings of their later records (albeit subtly), with the murky propulsiveness of their earlier records, as well as their droney improvised abstract side (most noticeable on the lp only Mountain). It's kind of remarkable how all of Circle's disparate musical personalities fit so well together. But before we get to the music, let's talk about the sleeve. And the Southern Rock. The cover features a knotty pine background, riddled with bullet holes, two crossed pistols above the band name. Very Sergio Leone... The tray card features a band photo seemingly branded into the wood, with Circle donning cowboy hats and sombreros, whooping it up like that last freeze frame in an episode of Bonanza (maybe it was CHiPs, but Bonanza makes more sense here). Then there's Brian Turner's eyewitness account of the musical showdown that occurred when Circle showed up at WFMU to record their set printed like an old weathered Western town wanted poster. Woe was the pasty British garage band that felt Circle's wrath. Broken glass and tobacco spit figure prominently. And let's not forget the Confederate flag on one cd, and the crossed bandoleers on the other (the discs are labeled Rebel Platter and Bullet Platter after all).
Thankfully (or maybe not, some might be thinking) this Southern Rock doesn't filter all the way down to the music. Instead we've got more of that Circular genius we just can't get enough of.
The first track, "The Greatest Kingdom", begins as an abstract soundscape of spacey effected riffs, sort of blurry and drifty, above strange mumbled mutterings and what sounds like alien scat singing. The vibe is strangely dubby and Middle Eastern sounding. Eventually a warm wash of woozy distorted guitars builds into a monstrous swell of sound, warm and thick and sort of heavy, while buried beneath is a burbling cauldron of electronic squiggles and gurgling vocal sputters. Out of nowhere, like a beam of sunlight with a small flock of faeiries flitting about, comes a strange dreamy drift of almost renaissance faire sounding festive folk, which dissipates quickly into a swirl of speaking-in-tongues vocals and insect like electronics before drifting off.
Track two, "The Ghost Of The Highway", is a bit darker, with faux throat singing over ominous psych sludge riffing like classic Circle but slowed way down. Groovy and dark, peppered with subtle tribal percussion. Weirdly enough, that weird dreamy stretch of faerie flecked folk sunniness that surfaced briefly on side A, shows up again here in a slightly different form, and disappears just as quickly, returning to a VERY Circular propulsive groove. Drums skitter instead of pound, while a guitar drifts and stutters, sounding a bit like the guitar line from the Smiths' "How Soon Is Now" but way more druggy and psychedelic!
This double disc reissue tacks on a whole 'nother record, three more loooong tracks, the shortest ten minutes, the longest sixteen plus, and starts off sounding as Western as the artwork would have led us to believe. Lots of random shuffling, crowd noise, recorded live, a murky haze, like smoke in an old West barroom, then the riff kicks in, somewhere between classic spacey krautrock and Morricone spaghetti Western twang, the drums simple and propulsive, the riff slowly drifting and changing shape, while the vocals growl over the top, things like "Sixxxxxx, sixxxx, sixxxx" or "Kaaaaaaay, kaaaaaaay, kaaaaaay" and assorted other mumblings and guttural whispers. Very ominous and evocative. Right smack in the middle, the riff gives way to a strange chaotic interlude of sustained chords, simple rhythmic pulses, swooping synths, and wild nearly operatic vocals, before giving way to a simple drums only coda.
The second track begins with some strange rave-y synthesizers, wrapped around the same growled vocalizations, building and building, but never completely rocking out, instead, lingering in some endlessly repeating world of tension and no release, the synths looping, the drums mirroring the synths, and a wild array of vocals, some breathy and earnest, some wild and over the top, and of course plenty of mysterious grunting and growling.
And they close out the record with one of the highlights from their live sets, not the song necessarily, but the RIFF, a super kick ass, super rocking MEGA-riff, can't remember what record it's from, but what a riff, live it's the sort of riff that induces immediate headbanging, with a killer dynamic stop start "DAH DAH.... DAH DAH.... DAAAAAAHHHH", it's the kind of part in a song, you NEVER want to end, but leave it to Circle to confound, and after a few run throughs, the band pulls back and blisses out, into some strange, super extended FX drenched free floating jam, guitars hover and swirl, the drums a distant shuffle and skitter, the keyboards tinkling abstractly, vocals crooning dramatically throughout, like some theater production gone well off the rails, all culminating in a dense cloud of drum splatter, FX chaos, super affected vocals, and thick swooshes of instrumental buzz and blur. But just as you think it's over, in true Circle fashion, they explode back into action, and finish off with a blistering blast of THAT riff. Awesome.
So it seems that maybe we'll all have to keep waiting for the inevitable, that record they keep threatening us with, when Circle finally become a bizarre krautrock psychrock dronemetal version of the Marshall Tucker Band, but for now, just crack open that Jack Daniels, throw those boots up on the desk (careful with those spurs!), pull the brim of your ten gallon down over your eyes, put a little pinch between your teeth and gums, turn it up and drift off...
MPEG Stream: "The Greatest Kingdom"
MPEG Stream: "The Ghost Of The Highway"

TARENTEL Ghetto Beats On The Surface Of The Sun (Temporary Residence) 2cd 15.98
We listed the individual vinyl installments of Tarentel's Ghetto Beats On The Surface Of The Sun a while back (all now out of print so don't order!), each one a mind blowing blast of druggy, psychedelic free form rhythmic bliss out, and each one could well have been an AQ record of the week. But good thing we held off, cuz here we are a year or so later, and all four slabs of wax have been digitized and compiled as a massive double cd set, and needless to say, four -possible- records of the week, all piled on top of one another, can only mean one thing! Well, yeah, obviously, this absolutely had to be a record of the week. Quite possibly (and very probably) the best music we've heard from these guys, which is saying a lot considering how much we dig most everything Tarentel does...
When we first heard the title of Tarentel's 2cd (formerly FOUR lp) set, Ghetto Beats On The Surface Of The Sun, we were pretty sure they were being ironic, or facetious, or something, and there would be no beats, ghetto or otherwise, to be found anywhere, just their usual gorgeously slow shifting epic postrock soundscapes. But actually, Ghetto Beats IS all about the beats, not sure if they're 'ghetto' or not, but they sure are dense and funky and weirdly rhythmic, from blissed out shuffling skitter to super propulsive krautrocky pound, these discs are definitely a whole new side of Tarentel. A much more raw and ragged, caustic and groove based beast. It almost sounds like Tarentel covering This Heat, or a krautrock No Neck Blues Band, or maybe even Tussle via This Heat with a bit of 23 Skidoo thrown in for good measure.
While the framework of most of these songs is some dense web of percussive clatter or some sort-of-funky drum jam, these gorgeously hypnotic skeletal rhythms are surrounded on all sides by thick swaths of crumbling ambience, disembodied guitar loops and rumbling bass, thick swells of warm whir and all sorts of other random dreamlike shimmer. Often building into seriously caustic squalls, big churning white hot sonic swirls, each wrapped around beats that seem on the edge of falling apart, or splintering into rhythmic fragments. Maybe that's the ghetto angle, the beats are super lo-fi, blown out, strangely recorded, so they sound sort of alien, with lots of strange FX and stuttering stumbling variations. So fucking awesome.
We originally reviewed Ghetto Beats one lp at a time, and while they do work perfectly as one epic cohesive chunk of sound, they still sort of play out like the separate movements they started out as...
The first movement (lp #1) is six tracks, a little over a half an hour, a dense assemblage of abstract rhythms and brooding, swirling psychedelia, heavy on the This Heat worship, beats stretched out over huge expanses of industrial whir and jagged angular guitars, very loping and hypnotic, brooding and drone-y, mysterious tribal rituals stretched out into epic spaced out, abstract rhythmic jams.
Part two (lp #2) is 4 tracks, 40 minutes, two epic jams, both 16+ minutes, separated by two shorter tracks. The opener starts with an endlessly hypnotic, near metal drum jam, over which guitars and sound makers creak and keen, a crystalline web of high end sonics over a swirling tribal rhythm. It could seemingly go on forever, and it sort of does, but near the end it dissipates into a dark spacious soundscape of distant clatter and thick rumbling buzz. After a one minute rhythmic experiment, all freaked out psych rock effects and super distorted drum sputter, the second lengthy jam kicks in, and it's definitely the most mellow and blissed out track so far, some muted free jazz skitter, over a slow burning expanse of chiming guitars and smears of abstract melody all stretched into a near static glacial groove. So nice. As if that weren't enough, the last 5 minutes is some of that fuzzy crumbling blurry ambience we can never seem to get enough of. Soft focus and indistinct, shimmering guitars wrapped in thick crumbling guitars and a glistening sonic glow, like Tim Hecker, Fennesz, and that sort of thing, a gorgeous late night coda of dreamy drone-y bliss.
For part three (originally the third lp), the group start out by moving even further out into space (rock) on the ten minute "Stellar Envelope", blown out crumbling sheets of distorted psych guitar and dizzying FX wrapped around propulsive tribal beats, feedback everywhere, it almost sounds like Hawkwind with all the structure sucked out, leaving a huge swirling mass of psychedelic tribal ambience, while managing to still rock somehow. The rest of volume three area gorgeously obfuscated drift through a sonic landscape at once rough and lo-fi and blissfully lush, strange industrial clatter and clang is muted and smeared into mumbly ambience, guitars are looped into hypnotic stretches of throbbing drone, bits of dreamlike melody, simple spacious piano, are wreathed in fuzz and warped into gorgeous slabs of pop ambient fuzz, the whole thing is surprisingly tranquil and shimmery, especially after that opening salvo, and the dense rhythmic intensity of the first two movements, but within the context of Tarentel's seriously epic Ghetto Beat symphony, it couldn't sound more perfect.
The final movement (the 4th and last lp in the series) offers up Ghetto Beats' heaviest moment in the form of "Somebody Fucks With Everybody", a sidelong doom dirge blow out, referencing everyone from SUNNO))) to Growing to Nadja, a thick glacial swirl of downtuned guitars, wreathed in effulgent streaks of damaged outerspace FX and psychrock solar flares, all underpinned by Neurosis style tribal rhythms, constantly sounding as if any second the song will kick into the heaviest riff of all time, but instead, it stretches on and on, building and building, some sort of cosmic lo-fi krautrock ambience, massive and heavy, but strangely dreamy and blissful.
The rest of Ghetto Beats pretty much eschews the titular beats entirely, instead offering up several brief ambient drifts, the far away foresty folk hovering above slow moving slabs of glacial low end of "Where Time Forgot", the ultra brief scrape and shuffle of "Isalais Delay", the murky disembodied post rock of "You Do This. I'll Do That", a strange landscape of fuzzy melodies and indistinct song fragments, all woven into some sort of soft focus fever dream, and finally, "Lake Light", a two minute outro, the glorious final flurry of sound in this epic sonic travelogue spread out over 2cds, a gorgeously hopeful, sparkling glistening drift of shimmery harmonics, and misty minor key flutter...
Like we mentioned before, we've loved everything Tarentel has done in the past, but this is by far our favorite, and how could it not be after drifting dreamily through two plus glorious hours of Ghetto Beats, immersing ourselves in a dreamy, druggy, murky world of drifting space drones and propulsive beats, of fuzzed out shimmer and barely there ambience... So amazing!
Packaged in a super striking, full color, eight panel fold out sleeve, limited to 3000 copies, each with a numbered metallic sticker affixed to the front.
MPEG Stream: "Everybody Fucks With Somebody"
MPEG Stream: "All Things Vibrations"
MPEG Stream: "Sun Place"
MPEG Stream: "Cosmic Dust"

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)"

HARVEY MILK The Pleaser (Chunklet) 2lp 23.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Available for the first time on vinyl! Thanks to the kind folks at Chunklet, Harvey Milk's The Pleaser is now available on lp, with a second lp featuring Live Pleaser, an out of print cd-r that was available as a companion disc with the Relapse reissue, also never before available on vinyl. Super thick, fancy pants gatefold sleeve, the gatefold a classic rock and roll collage of band photos, snapshots and live pix, inside a full color insert with lyrics, and the lps are pressed on colored vinyl, one red, one blue, housed in nice black inner sleeves. And since you knew this was coming, VERY VERY VERY LIMITED!!!! Here's what we had to say about the record itself:
The Pleaser 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 vinyl reissue (like the cd reissue before it) comes with a bonus lp of the previously cd-r only live-on-the-radio set Live Pleaser, value added for fans picking this up for the first, second -or- third 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)"

SEBADOH The Freed Man (Domino) cd 14.98
As much as we all love Sebadoh, most of their records predate the aQuarius list, so other than the recent reissue of III, and this one right here, we have never been able to truly sing the praises of one of our favorite indie rock bands of all time. They were one of the few bands who took indie rock and did whatever the fuck they wanted to with it. Bakesale, Bubble And Scrape, Smash Your Head On The Punk Rock, Sebadoh Vs. Helmet, all over the map, but all distinctly Sebadoh. Much of it had to do with the genius popsmithery of Lou Barlow, ground zero for lonely sadboy bedroom folk. A one man lo-fi revolution. But much of it had to do with his choice in collaborators. Specifically, Eric Gaffney, Lou's perfect foil, personally, musically, in every way. Where Lou was introverted and shy, Eric was outspoken and spastic. Where Lou penned soft whispery ballads, Gaffney's songs were disjointed angular folk, or blasts of off kilter acoustic weirdness, together, the two forged the perfect balance between romantic longing and snotty punk rock rebellion. Never was this more evident than on their very first record, The Freed Man. 
Back in the nineties, there was a disc called the Freed Weed (you might remember in our review of III, we pleaded for someone to re-release it) which was the cd version of a record called Weed Forestin', a record written and recorded entirely by Lou, jam packed with classic pop, including a handful of tracks that would be reworked later and turned into classic electric Sebadoh numbers. Well, to fill out the cd, they tacked on a handful of tracks from The Freed Man...
The Freed Weed was our introduction to what would become the whole bedroom folk movement. We didn't know what the hell it was, other than it was like nothing we had ever heard, sad and intense, funny and fucked up, super personal and intimate, with bursts of total what the fuck weirdness scattered throughout and some of the prettiest songs we had ever heard. And we were not looking  for soft folky sadness, we wanted heaviness and noisiness, but these songs were just too good to not fall in love with... We played the shit out of the Weed Forestin' side, the prettier Lou songs.
but later, when we had played it to death, we dug deeper into the more difficult songs from the Freed Man, and discovered a whole new world of deliriously damaged fractured folk...
So here we have the Freed Man in its entirety. With tons of extra songs, alternate versions, all culled from the original recordings... and it's just as amazing, as far out, as sweetly sorrowful as we remember. 
The Freed Man was the 'first' actual Sebadoh release, originally released in 1989, and in the early days, sold for 99 cents in local record stores. It was split pretty evenly between Lou's soft bedroom folk, and Eric's damaged whatthefuck lo-fi freakouts  and raggedy strum and croon, with tons of random shit mixed in, radio soundbites, old records, primitive tape recorder experiments, all sorts of weird found sounds scattered throughout.
The sound now is quite familiar, every kid with an old beat up guitar and a 4 track has taken a stab at the whole lone bedroom troubadour thing, but at the time, this was seriously mindblowing, murky hiss drenched acoustic guitar, gorgeously melancholy, with Lou's sadboy vocals, and lilting melodies, heartfelt, yet slightly tweaked lyrics, bursts of staticky chaos, cool weird tape loops... and the thing is, even after a million imitators, this STILL sounds special and fresh, and yeah, mind blowing. So much so that it's hard to pick out particular songs, the whole thing is so perfectly realized, it's almost like some insane lo-fi, bedroom folk DJ mix, the songs all flow into each other, stumbling over one another, woven together with random sound effects or manipulated tapes... Single songs don't get stuck in your head as much as whole suites, chunks of distinctly different songs that are so inexorably linked, they almost sound like multi part mini epics.
Some of our favorite tracks though: the all time classic emo indie boy anthem "Soulmate", with the legendary line "I'll probably have to have sex with a lot of girls before my soulmate reveals herself to me..." and a chorus to die for, Gaffney doing his best Barlow on "Level Anything", still sad and folky, but with way more buzz and off kilter melody, the super distorted hiss drenched beauty that is Barlow's "Close Enough", Lou's "True Hardcore"  with the spoken intro "this is a complete rip off of every other song i've ever done" which launches into a song that is anything but hardcore, instead a gorgeous slab of lush heavily strummed sadboy folk with a KILLER hook / chorus, "Wrists" another gorgeous off kilter folk dirge from Eric, minor key and rife with lush guitars and killer melodies, "Bolder" which hints at the pop genius that Barlow would blossom into, it's easy to imagine this track fully electrified and super rocking on some later Sebadoh record, "Jealous Evil", yet another classic Barlow track, moody and miserable, with brooding guitars, and subtle but moving melodies, and some gorgeous vocal melodies, same with "Pig" slow burning and melancholy, "Punch In The Nose", and an old track with Lou's sister accompanying him on trumpet, and the record finishes off with a Doc Watson cover that ends up sounding like the Frogs which is a very good thing. It's a mess and a jumble, but it's just so goddamn immediate and personal, weird and wonderful. Eric's songs sound like Lou's only doused in acid and pot and slightly -more- out of tune but they are the perfect balance for Lou's earnestness...
The Freed Man is in no way perfect, there are plenty of tracks that are noisy or fucked up and here and there plain embarrassing, but those only add to the record's charm, and tend to never last more than a minute. There's the super noisy cover of "Yellow Submarine" and the super embarrassing "Lou Rap" complete with goofy childhood recordings, both of which we used to skip, but now, are too much a part of the whole to not enjoy as part of the bigger Sebadoh picture. 
There are of course tons of extras, some awesome rarities, redone tracks from the Freed Weed, unreleased songs, tracks from the amazing and long out of print Magic Ribbons 7" boxset and a handful of splits and singles, includes liner notes by both Eric and Lou, each offering their own take on the early years of the band, with lots of artwork from the original cassette and the Freed Weed cd.
Like the recent reissue of Sebadoh III, The Freed Man is gorgeously packaged, with a huge booklet, tons of art, all housed in a swank slipcase, with the original cover reproduced, but with all the text in metallic silver...
MPEG Stream: "Healthy Sick"
MPEG Stream: "Soulmate"
MPEG Stream: "True Hardcore"
MPEG Stream: "Jealous Evil"
MPEG Stream: "Pig"

V/A Thai Pop Spectacular 1960s-1980s (Sublime Frequencies) cd 16.98
Another killer installment in the Sublime Frequencies series of wondrous and fantastical musics from around the world, and although we've probably proclaimed this about past volumes, this just may be the best one yet. The hardest thing about enjoying strange musics from other lands, though, is realizing that the music only seems strange to us. And with that realization comes a responsibility, c'mon, the pop music popular in the US must seem just as strange to folks in other countries, Avril Lavigne, Britney, every singer from American Idol, or how about Weird Al? So you sort of have to take into account that knowing the language, and growing up listening to the various popular musics of a region, would probably help to contextualize the strange hybridized pop music that we love to listen to and that is such a cornerstone of this series. Imagine how different it would be listening to a band like Circle if you understood Finnish. Might not seem so crazy. But that's part of the joy, it does sound crazy, and wild and weird, and wonderful, and there's certainly nothing wrong with being fascinated by seeming strangeness of the music, or enjoying the lyrics as just another instrument since we don't speak the language, and digging the seemingly bizarre juxtapositions, as long as we respect the heritage and the makers of this music that gives us such pleasure. And we do.
And holy crap does this latest installment give us all kinds of pleasure. It -is- wild, an awesomely confusional mix of Molam, Bollywood, Ethiopian groove, funk, soul, American pop and surf rock, all tangled up into amazing shapes, and peppered with killer hooks, amazing vocalists, bizarre production techniques, but most of all amazing amazing songs. The sort of songs that get stuck in your head and you find yourself humming to yourself, wondering if it was something you heard on the radio or something that was playing in some store you were just in, then realizing it was actually some seventies Thai pop song!
We knew this collection was going to be amazing before we even got to the music. Past installments in this series focusing on Thai music were already among our favorites, the photos are awesome, and check out some of these song titles: "There Are Many Handsome Men Out There", "You Should Die By Bullets", "Drinking Whiskey Until I'm Blurred", "Look Whose Underwear Is Showing", "Monthly Wife", "Uncle Dee Is A Drunk"...
And the music is just as fun and funky, crazy and catchy. A killer collection of Thai disco classics, music from Thai films, a bunch of stone cold pop gems, some unknown, some by Thai superstars, and a totally tweaked version of "The Night Chicago Died".
Some of our favorites are "Dance Of The Ngeo" by Johnny Guitar, a bad ass surf guitar jam, that begins with some strange trash can percussion, that surfaces again and again throughout, as well as some awesome fuzz organ, all making it sound like the coolest weirdest track Joe Meek never recorded, "You Should Die By Bullets" by Chailai Chaiyata & Sawanee Patana, a super funky slab of tripped out Bollywood style disco, with some truly damaged alien synths, and some amazing vocals, "We Both Think We're The Best" by Sangthong Seesai, a seasick, slithery groove, all blown out percussion, fuzzy organ, really grimey and groovy and sultry sounding, "Long Time No See" by Generation, a badass Barney Miller wah guitar groove, strutting and sexy, with a super strange totally blown out cymbal that gives the track a really strange shimmer, "Wise Old Man" by Gawao Siangthong, a funky horn flecked funk workout, that almost sounds like the Thai version of an Ethiopian Grooves track,
there's even a weird breakdown in the middle of the song, where the two vocalists joke and banter, before launching right back into the song, "Title Theme from Live From The Rocket Festival" by Chalermpon Malakum, a space age seventies sitcom soundtrack groove, with weird warbly synths, funky horns, and a killer psychedelic guitar solo, and maybe our favorite (although it's practically impossible to choose), "Papaya Salad Merchant, by Onuma Singsiri, a slow burning shuffle, moody and brooding, with super sultry vocals, a wicked Morricone-ish Spaghetti Western twang guitar, some subtle waka waka rhythms, and a main melody to die for.
It's hard to describe any of these tracks without the word 'groove', as the above would seem to demonstrate, and that's because almost all of these tracks are indeed groovy, full of funky horns, wah wah guitars, bouncy bass lines, wild percussion, wicked drumming, and an incredible array of vocals and vocalists... but even the tracks that aren't inherently groovy, still seem to groove somehow... and even though we picked our favorites above, the more we listen, the more -every- song here is becoming one of our favorites... so so great!
Unlike a lot of other titles in this series where the sources were dubbed tapes or unlabeled recordings or radio broadcasts, each track here is credited to the performer (and hopefully, we assume, the performers will see some of the profits this time around?), each with it's original Thai title and translated English title, as well as what album the song is taken from, and there are liner notes from Sublime Frequencies head honcho (and Sun City Girl) Alan Bishop and frequent SF contributor Mark Gergis.
MPEG Stream: BUPPAH SAICHOL "Roob Lor Thom Pai"
MPEG Stream: ONUMA SINGSIRI "Mae Kha Som Tum"
MPEG Stream: JOHNNY GUITAR "Fawn Ngeo"
MPEG Stream: CHALAI CHAIYATA & SAWANEE PATANA "Kwuan Tai Duew Luk Puen"

HAACK, BRUCE The Electric Lucifer (The Omni Recording Corporation) cd 16.98
Can you imagine if "Music To Moog By" maestro Gershon Kingsley had dropped acid, joined a commune, got religion, and jammed with the Silver Apples and Lothar And The Hand People? That might approximate what the unique, wondrous psych-pop "Mooglove" of 1969's The Electric Lucifer sounds like!
YES!!! It's about time. We've always wanted this album to come out on cd. This HAD to be our Record Of The Week. Heck, years and years ago, Allan (long before he worked at Aquarius) became a bit obsessed with this record. He'd found a beat-up old LP of it at a yard sale, bought it mainly 'cause of the title and the freaky colorful cover graphics, and then was blown away by the weird music within. It's what we've described as being "perhaps the most awesomely bizarre psychedelic pre-Kraftwerk electronica album ever to be released on a major label (Columbia) or elsewhere." Allan actually went so far as to try to track down Bruce Haack for an interview, but without any luck (turns out Haack had already passed away back in 1988, a couple years before Allan discovered the record). And Allan's not the only one here at AQ to have a longtime soft spot for this record... so we're all so happy that it's finally, FINALLY been given the cd reissue treatment. It's absurd, really, that this wasn't reissued sooner. The legend of eccentric electronica pioneer Bruce Haack has only grown in recent years. There's been several compilations of his work (Hush Little Robot was the best, since it featured a couple tantalizing cuts from this album), expensive imported Japanese reissues of several of his Moog music albums for kids, a posthumous Electric Lucifer sequel from the vaults, and even a documentary released on DVD, entitled Haack - The King Of Techno! But Haack's crowning glory, his masterpiece The Electric Lucifer, wasn't available at all. Until now. And The Omni Recording Corporation (a label new to us) have done it right, even down to the very welcome notion of including a 5-minute track of silence to separate the 13 tracks of the album proper from the over thirty minutes of additional bonus material that they've added on -- which consists of a 1970 Canadian radio interview with Haack on the subject of Electric Lucifer and an alternate take of "Electric To Me Turn". The packaging is top notch as well, reproducing the amazing artwork and Haack's trippy sleevenotes from the original LP (wherein he discusses his concept of "Powerlove"), plus cramming tons of additional stuff into the thick cd booklet. There's loving liner notes by several of Haack's friends and colleagues and lots of vintage photos and graphics. Nicely done.
How can we explain the utter charm of this album? Well it's about as psychedelic as you can get, a concept album that's futuristic and Biblically ancient at the same time. Haack used an electronic "computer voice" (long before it was cliche) that he named FARAD, as well as regular human vocals, to convey deep Age of Aquarius astrological/philosophical concepts, sometimes in the form of sinister liturgies, at others like playful rhyming lullabies. These Moogy, moody and groovy compositions feature churchy organ sounds, bleeps and bloops, and rhythmic percolations that wouldn't sound out of place in the Star Wars cantina. There's lugubrious droney passages, mechanical beats, switched-on classical flourishes, and musique concrete style sound collage. Very weird *and* oh-so-catchy. It's definitely every bit as wonderful and essential as the Silver Apples albums, which we know so many AQ patrons love dearly. Again, we're so happy this has been reissued. Highest recommendation. Listen to the love angel, people!
MPEG Stream: "Electric To Me Turn"
MPEG Stream: "National Anthem To The Moon"
MPEG Stream: "Program Me "
MPEG Stream: "Word Game"

RACCOO-OO-OON Behold Secret Kingdom (Release The Bats) lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Here at AQ, we're well acquainted with multiple 'o's. Most often used in reviews of ultra doom records, you know Moss, Monarch, Asunder, Catacombs, Celestiial, Bunkur, and usually used to denote -more- doom. The slower and the filthier, the sludgier and the more buzzing and trudging, the more 'o's. So describing a band as doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom is not at all unheard of around here. But we rarely see multiple 'o's anywhere else. So what's the deal with Raccoo-oo-oon? What are all of those extra 'o's for? Do they mean anything? And what about the hyphens? What the heck are they all about? Is that how you pronounce the band name, ra coo OO oon. 4 syllables. Or just the more traditional two, as in the middle 'oo' is silent?
No matter how you interpret the 'o's and hyphens, it's strange and unusual and not a little bit confusing. Which pretty much perfectly captures the essence of these guys' sound. A dizzying collision of free rock splatter, jazzy skronk, stumbling outsider folk, and full on noise. What makes Raccoo-oo-oon special is the fact that they somehow manage to sound like all of those things at once. An ultra dense blitzkrieg of sounds, that impossibly manages to be heavy and free, skronky and melodic, spastic and pretty all at the same time.
We've listed a few other releases from these guys, a clutch of lps and a cd, all of which kicked our asses big time, but as much as we dug those discs, Behold Secret Kingdom trumps them all. Songs, sound, it's all so much more focused, the melodies are catchier, the blown out blasts are even more caustic and abrasive, the vocals are much more 'present', a strange sort of howled primitive wail, the guitars are heavier, more dense, the rhythms, groovier, a surprising amount of 'swing' for a noiserock combo.
With Behold Secret Kingdom, Raccoo-oo-oon have sort of emerged as super distinctive noisemakers, in a scene rife with same sounding combos, these guys don't really sound like anybody else.
Right out of the gate, the sound is a wall of thick guitars, swirling and keening, loads of buzz and squealing feedback, the drums a dense tribal blow out, the vocals drifting over the top, some strange invocation. It's equal parts krautrock, noiserock, and post rock, all smeared and tangled into a glorious blast of super fresh, garage-y psychedelic free rock whatthefuck. The next track veers into some angular synth drenched new wave noisiness, with squiggly synths, droning high end guitars, thick buzz swaths of sound, relentless, almost funky drumming, and moaning atonal speaking-in-tongues vocals. As hard as it might be to imagine, it sounds a bit like some impossible mash up of Crash Worship, Excepter and Faust, but with some weird new wave-y sheen.
The songs are definitely rhythm based, the propulsive drumming guiding everything, the vocals sort of trailing after the drums, the guitars, at once riffing and defining the shape of the songs, but at the same time drifting and swirling totally free, unmoored from any sort of traditional song-based structure and wrapped around the jams like thick tangled ropes of sound. There is occasional sax, which is where a lot of the skronk element comes from, but even sans sax, the songs retain a bit of skronkiness, angular and atonal as often as warm and melodic (maybe more often in fact.
Occasionally, the band -really- let loose, the guitars erupt in acidic squalls, the drums splattery and abstract, everything spinning wildly, the result a huge dense cloud of super distorted psychrock freakout. And just as often, they lock into some strangely new wavey garage rock stomp, like a less misanthropic, more groovy and druggy Brainbombs, and as if that weren't confusing enough, they also often just let loose and engage in endless dopesick jamming space rockery, a roiling blown out FX drenched space rock pound, relentless and so goddamn good. And like we mentioned before, the magic here is that Raccoo-oo-oon don't just switch gears from space rock to weird free rock jam and back, all of those different sonic sides bleed into each other, and all over each other, one at a time but then ALL AT ONCE, a slithering, shimmering, constantly shifting, shape changing organic sound sprawl that is as amazing to hear as it is difficult to describe.
And if we were in fact, to apply the same sort of rules regarding the extra 'o's, to these guys, that we do in our doom reviews, then we might as well begin calling these guys Raccoo-oo-oooo-oo-ooooooo-oo-o-o-o-ooo-oo-oooo-ooo-oo-oo-oo-ooooooo-oon. Fuck yeah.
MPEG Stream: "Black Branches"
MPEG Stream: "Mirror Blanket"
MPEG Stream: "Visage Of The Fox"

HIGGS, DANIEL A.I.U. Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot (Thrill Jockey) lp 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The return of our favorite modern day shamen, Mr. Daniel Arcus Incus Ululat Higgs, maybe better known to some of you as Dan Higgs, the vocalist for the mighty Lungfish, or perhaps Higgs, the world renowned tattoo artist (now retired). A man who wears many hats: vocalist, painter, tattoo artist, poet, guitarist, master of the Jew's Harp, and who knows what else. We made Higgs' last full length Ancestral Songs record of the week last year, and since this one is just as good, if not better, we figured it deserved the same honor. 
Truly one of the few modern day troubadours, Higgs is a mysterious traveling man, he'll occasionally show up at the store, looking as dapper and disheveled as ever, with tales of various explorations or experiences. The last time he stopped by, he had a little hand held tape recorder, and he had just returned from India, where he spent the whole time recording street musicians and crowds and animals and anything else that struck his fancy. 
His music has the same quality, a sort of restless rootlessness, that is at once warm and familiar, but strangely alien and indescribable. On Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot, Higgs manages to weave all of his disparate sonic interests together into one seamless whole. Buzzing raga guitars, strange lo-fi field recordings, Jew's harp, all in varying states of fidelity, but the recording, the sound quality, the location and the background noise are as much a part of the music as the music itself. 
Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot begins with a burst of static, like a strong wind on a microphone, before Higgs' guitar begins to buzz like some snake charming ritual, an Eastern tinged Appalachia, a rustic raga, the string buzzing, lots of distortion and shifting overtones creating all sorts of glorious tonal color. Ragged and ramshackle but completely mesmerizing. The second track is a dizzying seasick assemblage of wheezing harmonium and pounded chimes, atonal melodies and streaks of feedback, eventually fading out and leaving just Higgs' guitar to buzz and shimmer, a sprawling sun balked stretch of gorgeously pastoral Appalachia. "Spectral Hues" is a stuttering collage of manipulated tones, using just the record and stop buttons on a tape player, a primitive swirl of tones, transformed into a haunting melody, each note separated by the weird swoop and bbbzzzzt of the button being depressed. The title track is Higgs in full on electric guitar mode, or at least what sounds like an electric guitar, wailing and howling chaotically, unfurling some sort of old time jig, before again fading into a 'nother steel string workout, this one distinctly Indian sounding, a dense tangled raga, the notes overlapping and the strings' buzz smearing the sounds into thick swaths of sonic blur. "Creation Moan" is another tripped out psychguitar freakout. A buzzing overdriven squall of tangled upper register skree and low end rumble, what sounds like some traditional folk song transformed into snarling, squirming, grinding crumbling distorted buzz. And finally the nine minute final track, a swirling ambient  drift, running water, some finger picked guitar, that suddenly winks out, leaving a wavering buzzscape, above which Higgs' Jew's Harp weaves haunting alien melodies, sometimes buzzing and reverberating, other times, speaking in tongues as Higgs sings into it. So haunting and unlike anything we've ever heard. Yet at the same time so strangely soothing, meditative and dreamlike.
It's always such a joy to step into Higgs' world, like traveling through the looking glass, or falling down the rabbit hole, and on the other side, in the mysterious world Higgs calls home, a world which we can only visit, and even in visiting, only see what hovers on the surface, we wander wide eyed and open eared, trying to take in everything we can before the record ends and we are pulled back into home, where we wait patiently for our next visit...
MPEG Stream: "Luminous Carcass Ornament"
MPEG Stream: "Cocoon On The Cross"
MPEG Stream: "Spectral Hues"

HIGGS, DANIEL A.I.U. Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot (Thrill Jockey) book + cd 15.98
The return of our favorite modern day shamen, Mr. Daniel Arcus Incus Ululat Higgs, maybe better known to some of you as Dan Higgs, the vocalist for the mighty Lungfish, or perhaps Higgs, the world renowned tattoo artist (now retired). A man who wears many hats: vocalist, painter, tattoo artist, poet, guitarist, master of the Jew's Harp, and who knows what else. We made Higgs' last full length Ancestral Songs record of the week last year, and since this one is just as good, if not better, we figured it deserved the same honor. 
Truly one of the few modern day troubadours, Higgs is a mysterious traveling man, he'll occasionally show up at the store, looking as dapper and disheveled as ever, with tales of various explorations or experiences. The last time he stopped by, he had a little hand held tape recorder, and he had just returned from India, where he spent the whole time recording street musicians and crowds and animals and anything else that struck his fancy. 
His music has the same quality, a sort of restless rootlessness, that is at once warm and familiar, but strangely alien and indescribable. On Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot, Higgs manages to weave all of his disparate sonic interests together into one seamless whole. Buzzing raga guitars, strange lo-fi field recordings, Jew's harp, all in varying states of fidelity, but the recording, the sound quality, the location and the background noise are as much a part of the music as the music itself. 
Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot begins with a burst of static, like a strong wind on a microphone, before Higgs' guitar begins to buzz like some snake charming ritual, an Eastern tinged Appalachia, a rustic raga, the string buzzing, lots of distortion and shifting overtones creating all sorts of glorious tonal color. Ragged and ramshackle but completely mesmerizing. The second track is a dizzying seasick assemblage of wheezing harmonium and pounded chimes, atonal melodies and streaks of feedback, eventually fading out and leaving just Higgs' guitar to buzz and shimmer, a sprawling sun balked stretch of gorgeously pastoral Appalachia. "Spectral Hues" is a stuttering collage of manipulated tones, using just the record and stop buttons on a tape player, a primitive swirl of tones, transformed into a haunting melody, each note separated by the weird swoop and bbbzzzzt of the button being depressed. The title track is Higgs in full on electric guitar mode, or at least what sounds like an electric guitar, wailing and howling chaotically, unfurling some sort of old time jig, before again fading into a 'nother steel string workout, this one distinctly Indian sounding, a dense tangled raga, the notes overlapping and the strings' buzz smearing the sounds into thick swaths of sonic blur. "Creation Moan" is another tripped out psychguitar freakout. A buzzing overdriven squall of tangled upper register skree and low end rumble, what sounds like some traditional folk song transformed into snarling, squirming, grinding crumbling distorted buzz. And finally the nine minute final track, a swirling ambient  drift, running water, some finger picked guitar, that suddenly winks out, leaving a wavering buzzscape, above which Higgs' Jew's Harp weaves haunting alien melodies, sometimes buzzing and reverberating, other times, speaking in tongues as Higgs sings into it. So haunting and unlike anything we've ever heard. Yet at the same time so strangely soothing, meditative and dreamlike.
It's always such a joy to step into Higgs' world, like traveling through the looking glass, or falling down the rabbit hole, and on the other side, in the mysterious world Higgs calls home, a world which we can only visit, and even in visiting, only see what hovers on the surface, we wander wide eyed and open eared, trying to take in everything we can before the record ends and we are pulled back into home, where we wait patiently for our next visit...
As if that weren't enough, the cd version comes with a full color hardcover book of Higgs' paintings and 'poetry', a series of cryptic acrostics to be more accurate. The Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot series of paintings are all, like most of Higgs' work, strange and wondrous, here the focus is on enigmatic amorphous shapes, vividly colored, with all manner of textures and designs, stripes, polka dots, some of the shapes look like whales or fish, others like mushrooms, eyeballs, amoebas, shapeless heads, each filled with symbols, colors and patterns. The accompanying acrostics are cryptic and it's difficult to determine if they are related to the paintings they are beside, MUSIC, BIRDS, MIND, EDEN, PEACE, EMBRYO, BELOVED, COITUS... all offering up mysterious pearls of wisdom like "Always braid your silver serpents" or "Existence manifests between ravenous yellow orbs". 
The perfect visual accompaniment to Higgs' raw and primitive musical rituals...
MPEG Stream: "Luminous Carcass Ornament"
MPEG Stream: "Cocoon On The Cross"
MPEG Stream: "Spectral Hues"

EXPO '70 Animism (Kill Shaman) cd 12.98
It's amazing how quickly Expo '70 went from being a group we had never heard of, whose cd-r we got randomly sent to us in the mail, to a dronerock juggernaut, releasing disc after disc of amazing ambient kraut-flecked drift, what is beginning to seem remarkably like a monthly installment of outerspace sonic exploration. But heck, we'd much rather get a new 'issue' of far out Expo '70 dronebliss every month than say, Star Magazine (well, actually, okay, maybe Star was a bad example, but definitely more than say Spin or Rolling Stone or pretty much any other monthly installment sort of thing, anyway...).
Animism just so happens to be Expo '70's first actual cd as well, the first release that's not a limited edition cd-r, which is one of the reasons we decided to make it record of the week. 'Cuz to be totally honest, every single one of the Expo '70 releases could have been, and heck, maybe should have been Records of the Week. Certainly if we based it on how much they get played in the store, and the reaction of the folks hearing it, and the fact that the cds have been impossible to keep in stock. But that's only one of the reasons. The other, is that Animism, in it's own subtly space-y and psychedelic way, is quite possibly the 'heaviest' Expo '70 release yet.
The record begins much in the same way as most of the others. A huge drifting rumbling soundscape. Spare and wide open. Across this warm expanse drift disembodied guitar squiggles, reverbed scrapes, bits of fragmented melodies, post rock snippets, tinkling percussive shimmer,
all drifting over soft swells of undulating low end. There are tons of FX, but it's not Acid Mothers style freakout, instead, these sonic aktions are muted and smeared into dreamy streaks. Never has a music sounded so much like what it must feel like to drift weightless through space. Cloaked in inky blackness, but with the sparkle of a million stars illuminating the seemingly endless emptiness. And so it goes on, each track, a slow lugubrious crawl through the galaxies, strange shapes drift by, colored lights, every bit of melody like some barely visible shooting star, soft billow clouds of FX enveloping you before dissipating and leaving you to once again drift wide-eyed into infinity.
Track three, though, is where things start to get a little scary. In come the guitars, and this time it's not the little glimmers and twinkles, these are thick sheets of crumbling rumbling distorted buzz. Relentlessly trudging beast like across the same barren soundscapes, but leaving a trail of blown speakers in its wake. The effects here are much more blown out, melodies slip and slither amidst the coruscating heaviness, sounding almost like someone transported SUNNO))) back to the seventies, where they ended up jamming with Klaus Schulze and Ash Ra Tempel. Granted the Expo '70 cd-r Center Of The Earth, was also pretty heavy, but on Animism, the heaviness seems to be more deftly integrated with the lovelier psych-drone-drift parts, an organic space kraut doom, as dark and dense as it is dreamy and effervescent. The record effortlessly drifts back and forth, from black drone to space-y drift, as if one couldn't possibly exist in this universe without the other.
There are some subtle sonic surprises too, like the way-up-in-the-mix, tripped out harmonized guitars on "Entering The Night On A Highway Of Astral Projection", the folky acoustic strum on "Missing Sun", and the swirling SUNNO)))-y murk of "Shape-Shifting Mountain Mover", sounding a bit like the Angelic Process with the treble turned all the way down and the bass all the way up! Blissy and muddy, an epic blown out glistening dirge, suffocated under layer after layer of FX drenched detritus.
If there was ever an ultimate soundtrack for blowing the hatch and floating free, doomed to a languorous eternity of drug fueled drift and buzzing rumbling psychedelic space rock torpor, this is most certainly it.
So recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Mahogany Lake"
MPEG Stream: "Eagle Talons"

SHELLAC Excellent Italian Greyhound (Touch And Go) cd 14.98
It's hard not to love Shellac. They are definitely one of the best sounding bands in the world. And they still manage to be as weird as all get out. Sonically, their recordings are so loud and live sounding. The players are unbelievably tight and efficient. The drums are like a machine, way up in the mix, driving the songs, so precise and perfect, but somehow still impossibly groovy. The arrangements are simple, but manage to be intense and convoluted and confusing at the same time. Albini is the absolute master of the jagged angular riff. Stripped down minimal math rock, no one does it better. 
So what's a band to do, instead of making another perfect sounding record? Well, howsabout making a not-so-perfect sounding record? Or more specifically making a -mostly- perfect sounding record, but making it so weird and fucked up that it's bound to drive some folks nuts? Which is exactly what they've done. 
The long in the works (6 or 7 years it seems like) Excellent Italian Greyhound definitely sounds like a Shellac record, and in that, we already love it. And it does sound perfect. Most of the songs are relentless and intense, the guitar a precisely tuned rrrrroooooar, veering from sharp shards to warm crunch, in fact, Steve Albini's guitar tone sounds warmer than ever, the bass a throbbing anchor, and the drums, holy shit, Todd Trainer is a mathrock drum cyborg alien master. And the songs! "Steady As She Goes" (we were secretly hoping it was a Raconteurs cover) is a post rock math rock post punk masterpiece. Tightly wound with a killer half time breakdown, and some relentlessly catchy riffing. The next track too, "Be Prepared", is about as good as stuff like this gets. A weird hook, a seasick rhythm, and amazing vocals. And that voice, the same tortured whine, which in the past was another minimal element in Shellac's minimalist sound, is now taking center stage, often wailing all by its lonesome.
And while we're on the subject of vocals, that's one way in which Albini and Co. seemingly decided to fuck with us. Albini's lyrics in Shellac were always a bit, um... mysterious, but here they're downright bizarre, and almost goofy. The opening track "The End Of Radio" has some slightly cheesy bits, some radio style sloganeering, sure there is a point, but it still sounds a little out of place. But leave it to Shellac to take those lyrics and couple them with the weirdest song on the record, musically, with Trainer and Albini seemingly playing two different songs, maybe not even listening to each other, but clicking every few measures, making it obvious that it was meant to be exactly that way. But the song that will probably be the most discussed (in this review as well) is the nine minute long "Genuine Lulabelle", most of which sees Albini crooning romantically a capella. Singing about partying and cum and other weirdness. But as if that wasn't strange enough, other voices enter the fray, the Moviefone guy (?), even Strongbad (?!?!), from Homestarrunner.com... At first we were convinced that Albini had lost it, but the more we hear it, the more it seems just weird enough that it manages to transform the song from annoying and goofy to damaged and demented. And there ain't nothing wrong with damaged and demented. 
The rest of the record is rife with little bits of weirdness, the false starts on "Be Prepared", the jangly surf rock TV theme intro to "Spoke", as well as the usual deconstructed melodies, and abstract rhythmic workouts, but it all fits, it just takes standing back and seeing the big picture, no matter how convoluted and confusing and un-right it seems on the surface. Trust them. They're Shellac. 
MPEG Stream: "The End Of Radio"
MPEG Stream: "Steady As She Goes"
MPEG Stream: "Genuine Lulabelle"

SHELLAC Excellent Italian Greyhound (Touch And Go) lp 14.98
It's hard not to love Shellac. They are definitely one of the best sounding bands in the world. And they still manage to be as weird as all get out. Sonically, their recordings are so loud and live sounding. The players are unbelievably tight and efficient. The drums are like a machine, way up in the mix, driving the songs, so precise and perfect, but somehow still impossibly groovy. The arrangements are simple, but manage to be intense and convoluted and confusing at the same time. Albini is the absolute master of the jagged angular riff. Stripped down minimal math rock, no one does it better. 
So what's a band to do, instead of making another perfect sounding record? Well, howsabout making a not-so-perfect sounding record? Or more specifically making a -mostly- perfect sounding record, but making it so weird and fucked up that it's bound to drive some folks nuts? Which is exactly what they've done. 
The long in the works (6 or 7 years it seems like) Excellent Italian Greyhound definitely sounds like a Shellac record, and in that, we already love it. And it does sound perfect. Most of the songs are relentless and intense, the guitar a precisely tuned rrrrroooooar, veering from sharp shards to warm crunch, in fact, Steve Albini's guitar tone sounds warmer than ever, the bass a throbbing anchor, and the drums, holy shit, Todd Trainer is a mathrock drum cyborg alien master. And the songs! "Steady As She Goes" (we were secretly hoping it was a Raconteurs cover) is a post rock math rock post punk masterpiece. Tightly wound with a killer half time breakdown, and some relentlessly catchy riffing. The next track too, "Be Prepared", is about as good as stuff like this gets. A weird hook, a seasick rhythm, and amazing vocals. And that voice, the same tortured whine, which in the past was another minimal element in Shellac's minimalist sound, is now taking center stage, often wailing all by its lonesome.
And while we're on the subject of vocals, that's one way in which Albini and Co. seemingly decided to fuck with us. Albini's lyrics in Shellac were always a bit, um... mysterious, but here they're downright bizarre, and almost goofy. The opening track "The End Of Radio" has some slightly cheesy bits, some radio style sloganeering, sure there is a point, but it still sounds a little out of place. But leave it to Shellac to take those lyrics and couple them with the weirdest song on the record, musically, with Trainer and Albini seemingly playing two different songs, maybe not even listening to each other, but clicking every few measures, making it obvious that it was meant to be exactly that way. But the song that will probably be the most discussed (in this review as well) is the nine minute long "Genuine Lulabelle", most of which sees Albini crooning romantically a capella. Singing about partying and cum and other weirdness. But as if that wasn't strange enough, other voices enter the fray, the Moviefone guy (?), even Strongbad (?!?!), from Homestarrunner.com... At first we were convinced that Albini had lost it, but the more we hear it, the more it seems just weird enough that it manages to transform the song from annoying and goofy to damaged and demented. And there ain't nothing wrong with damaged and demented. 
The rest of the record is rife with little bits of weirdness, the false starts on "Be Prepared", the jangly surf rock TV theme intro to "Spoke", as well as the usual deconstructed melodies, and abstract rhythmic workouts, but it all fits, it just takes standing back and seeing the big picture, no matter how convoluted and confusing and un-right it seems on the surface. Trust them. They're Shellac. 
MPEG Stream: "The End Of Radio"
MPEG Stream: "Steady As She Goes"
MPEG Stream: "Genuine Lulabelle"

NARROWS, THE Benjamin (Wantage USA) cd 12.98
BACK IN STOCK! This Record Of The Week from May, 2007 is still awesome and not in nearly enough folk's collections...
It's been ages since we've heard from Bellingham Washington's Narrows, whose last two (and only two) records, Alligator and The Skull At Life Size, were huge AQ favorites. Our Narrows obsession was solidified by a mindblowing show at the Hemlock where the band laid waste to all post rock past and present in a matter of 30 or 40 minutes, managing to rock so hard, even with the frontman / guitar player seated the whole time. A mix of lurching loping metallic bombast and lilting whispery post rock moodiness, not like the current crop of metallic post rockers though, no the Narrows were something much more unique... all the best parts of nineties mathrock, June Of 44, Slint, Rodan, but filtered through that weird Bellingham outsider vibe (also responsible for Reeks And The Wrecks) and lovingly wrapped in some serious skull crushing riffage. And of course songs. Killer songs. Moody and mournful, personal and emotional, and catchy as all get out.
We had sort of given up on the Narrows, we knew there was a record in the works, but they sort of seemed to drop off the musical map completely, until all of our fears were assuaged by the sudden appearance of this here brand new full length, that is somehow even better than their first two discs, heavier, prettier, weirder....
Beginning with the nine minute near perfect post rock epic "The Sasquatch", a sequence of big groaning downtuned riffage, huge pounding drums all wrapped around a strange insistent loping groove, with wailed super emo vocals, like a prettier Melvins almost, or a resurrected Engine Kid, some Unwound, a little bit of Sub Pop, a little Amrep. These super dynamic nine minutes might as well go on for 90 minutes as far as we're concerned.
The second track, the even longer "Last Of The Norsemen", is all slithery slowcore, with crooned sadboy vocals, spidery guitar melodies, shuffled drums, until the crashing chorus, a gorgeous minor key stop start lurch, along the same lines as Codeine's "Cave In", with burbling underwater bass added to the mix, and a convoluted mathy arrangement, before drifting back into the moody lope of the first few minutes, peppered with strange slippery guitar chords and unexpected dynamics, somehow totally off kilter and alien sounding, but super catchy and melodic and surprisingly pretty!
"Quellish" is up next with its serpentine distorted crunch and crashing blown out drumming, letting up here and there for some muted shuffle and croon, before the bombast is brought in again, a super emotional musical seesaw, that manages to subvert the tired loud-soft-loud-soft thing and turn it into something new and exciting sounding.
As if the deal wasn't already sealed for best post-math-whatever-rock / slowcore record ever already, they finish it off with the heartwrenching "Over and Out", a sort of damaged Pinback on horse tranquilizers mathy groove, with big booming Albini-ish drums, over blooping underwater bass, and slithery minor key distorted guitar melodies, and a super subtle hook to die for. The song has a wicked, super dramatic coda with crumbling distorted riffing, and super emotional leads, yeah LEADS, what self respecting post rock band can whip out the leads and bring you to your knees without sounding the least bit cheesy? Can't think of very many (or any really)... but The Narrows pull it off effortlessly. There's an "Over and Out" part two, but it's more sort of a coda, that now burned into your ears/heart/soul melody is pulled apart, wrapped in some twangy Morricone-ish guitar, some tinkling music box like keyboards, and allowed to unfurl lazily into the distance, becoming more and more abstract and indistinct, culminating in seven minutes of silence... Needless to say one of our favorite new records, pushing all our buttons, old math rock, new post rock, metal, pop, heavy, pretty, strange... Absolutely and utterly recommended (as is seeing these guys live if you get the chance)!
MPEG Stream: "The Sasquatch"
MPEG Stream: "Last Of The Norsemen"

RACCOO-OO-OON Behold Secret Kingdom (Release The Bats) cd 14.98
Here at AQ, we're well acquainted with multiple 'o's. Most often used in reviews of ultra doom records, you know Moss, Monarch, Asunder, Catacombs, Celestiial, Bunkur, and usually used to denote -more- doom. The slower and the filthier, the sludgier and the more buzzing and trudging, the more 'o's. So describing a band as doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom is not at all unheard of around here. But we rarely see multiple 'o's anywhere else. So what's the deal with Raccoo-oo-oon? What are all of those extra 'o's for? Do they mean anything? And what about the hyphens? What the heck are they all about? Is that how you pronounce the band name, ra coo OO oon. 4 syllables. Or just the more traditional two, as in the middle 'oo' is silent?
No matter how you interpret the 'o's and hyphens, it's strange and unusual and not a little bit confusing. Which pretty much perfectly captures the essence of these guys' sound. A dizzying collision of free rock splatter, jazzy skronk, stumbling outsider folk, and full on noise. What makes Raccoo-oo-oon special is the fact that they somehow manage to sound like all of those things at once. An ultra dense blitzkrieg of sounds, that impossibly manages to be heavy and free, skronky and melodic, spastic and pretty all at the same time.
We've listed a few other releases from these guys, a clutch of lps and a cd, all of which kicked our asses big time, but as much as we dug those discs, Behold Secret Kingdom trumps them all. Songs, sound, it's all so much more focused, the melodies are catchier, the blown out blasts are even more caustic and abrasive, the vocals are much more 'present', a strange sort of howled primitive wail, the guitars are heavier, more dense, the rhythms, groovier, a surprising amount of 'swing' for a noiserock combo.
With Behold Secret Kingdom, Raccoo-oo-oon have sort of emerged as super distinctive noisemakers, in a scene rife with same sounding combos, these guys don't really sound like anybody else.
Right out of the gate, the sound is a wall of thick guitars, swirling and keening, loads of buzz and squealing feedback, the drums a dense tribal blow out, the vocals drifting over the top, some strange invocation. It's equal parts krautrock, noiserock, and post rock, all smeared and tangled into a glorious blast of super fresh, garage-y psychedelic free rock whatthefuck. The next track veers into some angular synth drenched new wave noisiness, with squiggly synths, droning high end guitars, thick buzz swaths of sound, relentless, almost funky drumming, and moaning atonal speaking-in-tongues vocals. As hard as it might be to imagine, it sounds a bit like some impossible mash up of Crash Worship, Excepter and Faust, but with some weird new wave-y sheen.
The songs are definitely rhythm based, the propulsive drumming guiding everything, the vocals sort of trailing after the drums, the guitars, at once riffing and defining the shape of the songs, but at the same time drifting and swirling totally free, unmoored from any sort of traditional song-based structure and wrapped around the jams like thick tangled ropes of sound. There is occasional sax, which is where a lot of the skronk element comes from, but even sans sax, the songs retain a bit of skronkiness, angular and atonal as often as warm and melodic (maybe more often in fact.
Occasionally, the band -really- let loose, the guitars erupt in acidic squalls, the drums splattery and abstract, everything spinning wildly, the result a huge dense cloud of super distorted psychrock freakout. And just as often, they lock into some strangely new wavey garage rock stomp, like a less misanthropic, more groovy and druggy Brainbombs, and as if that weren't confusing enough, they also often just let loose and engage in endless dopesick jamming space rockery, a roiling blown out FX drenched space rock pound, relentless and so goddamn good. And like we mentioned before, the magic here is that Raccoo-oo-oon don't just switch gears from space rock to weird free rock jam and back, all of those different sonic sides bleed into each other, and all over each other, one at a time but then ALL AT ONCE, a slithering, shimmering, constantly shifting, shape changing organic sound sprawl that is as amazing to hear as it is difficult to describe.
And if we were in fact, to apply the same sort of rules regarding the extra 'o's, to these guys, that we do in our doom reviews, then we might as well begin calling these guys Raccoo-oo-oooo-oo-ooooooo-oo-o-o-o-ooo-oo-oooo-ooo-oo-oo-oo-ooooooo-oon. Fuck yeah.
MPEG Stream: "Black Branches"
MPEG Stream: "Mirror Blanket"
MPEG Stream: "Visage Of The Fox"

LANGHORNE, BRUCE The Hired Hand (OST) (Blast First (petite)) cd 13.98
This long time AQ fave has once again been re-pressed, this time with new artwork and in a digipak. Not sure why this keeps going out of print, but if you missed it before, don't blow it this time. We loved it so much we made it record of the week, and were barely able to keep it in stock. Not sure how long it will be around this time either, considering it's habit of constantly going out of print, so dig it while you can!
We weren't really sure what to expect with this one. A lost soundtrack from 1971 (a magic year for music, just ask Allan) to a movie none of us had ever heard of, directed by and starring Peter Fonda. Could go either way. But the second we threw it on, we knew this was IT! A dark and languorous abstract country psych folk gem. Seriously. Hearing this for the first time, you'd be forgiven for guessing it was Scott Tuma, Souled American, Califone, Golden Hotel, Thuja, Woven Hand or some totally obscure cd-r on some little tiny label from some mysterious band of psychedelic country folk minstrels. Slow and mournful, delicate and dreamy, acoustic guitars, farfisa organs, harmonicas and an echoplex. Spare and skeletal, mini epics of melancholic twang. Imagine if Sergio Leone had Ennio Morricone assemble a band cobbled together from members of the Jewelled Antler Collective, the No Neck Blues Band and Souled American to score one of his Westerns. Definitely recommended if you dig any of the folks mentioned above (including Morricone). And if like most of us, you've been digging all sorts of those obscure so-called "new weird America" outfits, maybe it's about time we all dug into some "OLD weird America."
And by the way, now we HAVE seen the film (it was re-released on DVD not too long ago) and it's GREAT!
MPEG Stream: "Opening"
MPEG Stream: "Leaving Del Norte"
MPEG Stream: "Riding Through The Rain"

KEMIALLISET YSTAVAT Untitled (Fonal) cd 17.98
Finland's Kemialliset Ystavat (and Avarus, and Anaksimandros, and Uton, and Lau Nau, and Doktor Kettu, etc.) are often referred to as "forest-folk", implying some sort of quiet, gentle rustling mystery amidst the trees, and sometimes that's quite the case. But the first few tracks here, on Kemialliset's latest, would certainly scare off any friendly small animals -and- wake up the sleeping forest trolls. It's woozy woodsy cacophony unleashed. This be outsider "folk" at its most abstract and noisy and "free". But, by track four or five things have calmed down a bit, the sounds have gotten more organized. Some charismatic, long-haired, bearded guru has obviously taken charge of the previously wild music-makers, their pagan energy now channelled down paths previously trod unshod by the likes of Parson Sound and Amon Duul... more mellow and musical, still druggy and damaged. Track six, "Superhimmeli", comes off like something by cult '60s ESP tribe Cromagnon!! (Perhaps due to having the same keening horn cry as heard in Cromagnon's "Caledonia".) There's a hippy chant drone density to a lot of this that's VERY satisfying. It's like an ancient celebration underway, wooden space rock rituals, accompanied by electronic squiggles or birds atwitter, burbling and gurgling sounds in the margins... sunshiney yet strange, very strange. Fonal thinks this is one of their best yet and we wouldn't argue.
NB. There IS vinyl of this, but unfortunately the copies we got were damaged -- we're expecting replacements from Finland soon, though.
MPEG Stream: "Tulinen Kiihdytys"
MPEG Stream: "Superhimmeli"
MPEG Stream: "Himmeli Kutsuu Minua"

MACHINEFABRIEK Weleer (Lampse) 2cd 22.00
It had to happen, even if only to be fair to those of us without lightning fast reflexes and supernatural senses regarding tracking down ultra limited, barely available cd-r's. Over the last 4 years or so, Machinefabriek, aka Rutger Zuydervelt, in addition to releasing several amazing 'proper' records, a cd, a 7" and maybe a few other things, has unleashed an impossible amount of self released ultra limited cd-r's, all in micro editions, 100 copies, 50 copies, some even less, and while we've done our very best to grab as many as we could of every single one, we missed a bunch! And of the ones we did get, they sold out in the blink of an eye. So here's your chance, a massive sprawling double disc collection, gathering up bits and pieces, the best tracks from an armload of releases, all sequenced and woven together, into what could very well have been actual Machinefabriek albums.
It's hard to tell exactly which cd-r's are included, and since only certain songs were selected, even those of you who nabbed every cd-r in sight, odds are there is plenty here that you haven't heard. Definitely lots of stuff we didn't recognize, and all of it, as we've come to expect, simply amazing. Long drawn out stretches of warm fuzzy ambience, muted glitchery, melancholy melodies, soft sweeping epics, wreathed in dense FX and thick swirls of shimmery whir and whirl. One of the masters of our new favorite sound, that sort of foggy buzzy dreamy drone thing we can't seem to get enough of. Fans obviously absolutely need this, and folks who were daunted by the limited nature of past releases, or just have a thing against cd-r's, this is the perfect introduction, a chance to hear what you've been missing.
And there -are- plenty of surprises. While both discs do flow beautifully, there are some strange sonic moments, the dreamy wheezy Eastern tinged post rock drift of "Oi Polloi", the ultra gristly and crackle infused glacial crawl of "Chinese Unpopular Song", the almost Merzbowian intensity of "Hieperdepiep", the THX-theme-stretched-into-gorgeous-metallic-drone of "Wintervacht", all seemingly strangely out of character for Zuydervelt, but in the bigger sonic picture that is Weleer, they sound perfect, all nestled comfortably amidst rich, thick sonic swells and smears. So great!
MPEG Stream: "Oi Polloi"
MPEG Stream: "Onweer"
MPEG Stream: "Wintervacht"

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"

BURNING STAR CORE Operator Dead... Post Abandoned (No Quarter) cd 13.98
Normally the solo project of 'noise violinist' C. Spencer Yeh, on Operator Dead... Post Abandoned, Burning Star Core has been expanded to a four piece, with Yeh on violin, voice, electronics, junkbox and trumpet, Trevor Tremaine on drums, percussion and objects, AQ fave Mike Shiflet on computer, electronics and voice, and Robert Beatty on electronics, who is also credited with being "acoustic appraiser."
As much as we've dug past BSC records, this one is definitely shaping up to be our favorite. This Burning Star Core Quartet thing really suits them. The opening track alone, "When The Tripods Came" is a serious contender for best 'noise rock' track of the year. Maybe ever. Calling it noise rock is hardly fair though. It's a rambling sprawling slow moving driftscape of buzz and distortion. It's almost how you might imagine a modern, noisier Taj Mahal Travellers to sound. In fact the whole record sort of has that same sort of spiritual organic vibe. Taking bits and pieces from other purveyors of longform drone noise, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Total, Sunroof!, mixing in some ultra-free jazz, some raga like buzz, some old school improvised ambience, then running it all through a battery of modern effects and unleashing this thick viscous, incredibly heavy, yet impossibly beautiful (especially for a 'noise' record) sound.
A lot of it has to do with the drums, a relentless chaotic octopoidal rhythmic frenzy, skittering as often as pounding, giving the thick snarling ambience direction and propulsion. Turning a record of drifts and shimmers, into something aggressive, something fierce... but the drums are just the framework, supporting the massive sonic weight of the swirling, churning lush noisiness above, beneath and around them.
The first two tracks, nearly 40 minutes, are some of the finest drone-dirge-space-improv EVER. Some impossible dream jam, The Taj Mahal Travellers vs. Crystal Fist vs. Wolf Eyes, mix in some strange disembodied horns, some Tim Hecker like blurred melancholia, add copious amounts of extra buzz and distorted crumble, wrap everything in a bleary eyed crystalline shimmer, and let the whole thing just ooze out of the speakers.
The third and fourth tracks are much more brief and less dense, balancing the bristling buzz of the first two, in the third, a muted warble underpins shimmering high end harmonics, strange muted mechanical whirs and creaks underneath, as well as burbling underwater bass, random bits of percussion, metallic thrum and long streaks of feedback, eventually building into a sort of an abstract tribal space drift, like the members of No Neck and Sunburned Hand jettisoned from the airlock into deep space mid-jam. The fourth is a rhythmic free for all, the drums a constant splatter and shimmer, spreading out like percussive ripples, the cymbals sizzling out a thick layer of constant buzzing whir to compliment the groaning blown out shimmer and reverb drenched washes of sound, everything growing gradually more distorted until it reaches a fever pitch, a lumbering swirl of crumbling low end and pounding drum damage.
MPEG Stream: "When The Tripods Came"
MPEG Stream: "Operator Dead... Post Abandoned"

SEEFEEL Quique (Redux Edition) (Too Pure) 2cd 14.98
We made this reissue a Record Of The Week back on list 265... then Too Pure let it go out of print again! But now, wisely, they've just repressed it and we happily have it back in stock. If you missed it before, please read on to find out why picked it as a ROTW:
God, we love this record! We've never stopped loving it. In its fourteen years of existence, it's never sounded tired or dated. Can't say that for a whole lot of other electronica records. So we are really glad to see our good old friend back in print again with this super nice 2cd deluxe re-issue. If you missed this the first time around, then you are in for a real treat, and if you bought this the first time around, you may just need to buy it again to get the whole extra disc of unreleased tracks and alternate mixes. We have been playing this daily since we got it, and we're surprised how many folks have never heard of Seefeel or experienced their incredible ocean of sound.
So what is all the fuss about, you say?
Well, Seefeel at their peak were one of the main players that spawned the nineties electronica genre, at a time when there were only Dance and Rock sections in most music stores. Their sound was a delirious mash-up between the shoe-gazing swirl of My Bloody Valentine, the machinic rhythm programming of Autechre, the ambient chill of Aphex Twin and the driving pulse of Stereolab, with an early hint toward the looping repetitions of William Basinski. They bridged ambient techno and indie rock by foregoing rock music's verse and chorus structures in favor of beats and loops wrapped inside icy motorik rhythms, industrial whirs, blurbs of female vocals and dubby bass lines. Like the best work of minimal composers, Seefeel's long-form compositions create a warmly hypnotic form of static movement that refused to fit neatly into music for either dance floors or chill out lounges.
Quique was their head-turning debut following two EP releases featuring remixes by Aphex Twin. That connection surely gained them a bigger following, but Seefeel was always one of those bands that should have been bigger. Of course such a potent and influential debut would lead to many of their contemporaries, bands such as Bowery Electric, Labradford, Boards Of Canada and Flying Saucer Attack, to take Seefeel's initial explorations in sound further into Post-Rock, Trip Hop, IDM and Neo-Psych territories, leaving Seefeel at a bit of a loss for a follow-up. Signing to Warp, they delved further into a dark ambient direction in the vein of groups like Main, Ice and Scorn, that was just too stark for a wider audience to appreciate. They put out two more albums before splintering off into various side projects such as Scala, Disjecta and Sneakster.
The bonus disc contains six previously unreleased tracks, and three alternate mixes from a limited white label 12" and two ambient compilations. Out of the unreleased tracks, "Clique" sounds like it just barely missed the cut from the original album line-up while "Silent Pool" is a longer version of Quique's closing track "Signals". "My Super 20" and "Is It Now?" are long beat-less swims that are a warmer hint at their future direction and the two other unreleased tracks are versions of opening track "Climatic Phase #3, and "Time to Find Me" from their first EP. It might sound like at first listen that there is some repetition between the two discs, but it's really more in line with classic ambient music's infatuation with the Dub tradition of versioning, the adding or removing of various elements in a song to give it a totally different spin. Each version really does give a different feel even if the basic structures seem similar. Seriously, the second disc is just more of what you love already, and gives us a little more of the stuff we've been missing for ages.
Listening to Quique fourteen years later, it has lost none of its powerful splendor and warmly chilled charm. Add this to the list of favorite one record bands like My Bloody Valentine and Stone Roses. So Amazingly Awesome!!!! Reissue of the year so far and so totally recommended!!!!!!!!!
MPEG Stream: "Climatic Phase #3"
MPEG Stream: "Plainsong"
MPEG Stream: "Filter Dub "
MPEG Stream: "Signals"

STARS OF THE LID And Their Refinement Of The Decline (Kranky) 3lp 26.00
Finally available on vinyl!
We've been huge fans of the Stars Of The Lid ever since their first record, Music For Nitrous Oxide, way back in 1995. And their last record, Tired Sounds Of... is a beloved favorite and all time AQ best seller. It's been fascinating to observe their sonic development, from murky guitar based 4-track bedroom guitar drones, all foggy and fuggy and murky and dreamlike, to their current sound, a more modern, almost classical sound, of rich reverberant swells, and lots and lots of space.
The Stars' sound has obviously become much more clear and well defined, polished even, but everything we loved about Nitrous Oxide is still present, albeit in slightly altered form. The Stars' were always about swells, ebb and flow, melodies and compositions played out over expansive stretches of oceanic shimmer, and that at least hasn't changed on And Their Refinement Of The Decline. Notes aren't just played, they begin as tiny sparkles, little distant glimmers, and gradually grow into thick rich whirs, or massive rumbles, before just as quickly fading away again. Oceanic is definitely an apt descriptor, as the music here, as on the more recent records, does have that feel, like some epic dimly lit sonic sea swirling and churning, sometime tranquil and barely moving, other times heaving and tumultuous. It's the sound of a new dawn, an impending storm, or the birth of a galaxy, it's so completely epic while at the same time managing somehow to be pastoral and contemplative and breathtakingly beautiful.
In the early days it was just 2 guitars and a four track, and the sound reflected that, much more gritty and fuzzy, the mood a lot darker, evoking the desert, the starry sky, a druggy dreamy innerspace of muted minimal shimmer. As the band grew, and added instruments, more players, recorded in real studios, the sound changed dramatically, and suddenly, instead of some indie bedroom project, the Stars were crafting pieces that could stand alongside any modern classical piece, while remaining dreamy and drone-y enough to tickle the ears of indie dronesters worldwide. Which is probably the most fascinating part of the Stars' sound. They were making music equally as expansive and epic and gorgeous 10 years ago, but those sounds were limited by the technology, by the band's meager recording set up. And only now it seems that the band is able to fully realize the sound they have been hearing, and essentially creating, all along.
There are guitars here and there, it is after all still the root of their sound, but they seem to be overshadowed by the other instruments (although it is often difficult to pinpoint the instrument creating many of the sounds), heavy on the strings, three violincelles and a harp, as well as a surprising arsenal of horns, two trumpets, flugelhorn and clarinet, AND a children's choir!! But it's not just the players or the instruments, but how they interact and the music they create, and here the results are divine. Many of the tracks do sound like bits of modern classical stretched out into languorous stretches of muted drone and subtle shimmer, like watching the planets from outer space, observing the epic drifts of solar systems and an infinity of cosmic interactions, but others definitely reference more earthly sonic treasures, "Apreludes (In C Sharp Major)" has some serious Morricone going on, and "Don't Bother They're Here" references Scott Tuma's washed out guitar work in Souled American. But whatever subtle flavor is introduced into each track, the sound is definitely and distinctly Stars Of The Lid. Their shift to double disc releases also seems to suit them, allowing their slow burning soft swell compositions plenty of time to sprawl and spread and evolve into epic and soul stirring soundscapes. But even three lps is not nearly enough as far as we're concerned, so everyone buy this one, so next time, these guys can release a four lp set, or a ten lp set or a twenty lp set...
MPEG Stream: "Dungtitled (In A Minor)"
MPEG Stream: "Articulate Silences Part 1"
MPEG Stream: "Dopamine Clouds Over Craven Cottages"

V/A Hyphy Hitz (TVT) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Living in the Bay Area, we've obviously been hearing all about Hyphy for about a year now, a distinctly Bay Area sound, not all that dissimilar to Crunk or the chopped and screwed sound of the Dirty South, but with a vibe that was distinctly, well Hyphy (a mix of hyper and fly btw). A sound that supposedly just sort of sprouted up in the beginning of 2006. We'd heard tracks by all the main movers in the scene, Keak Da Sneak, Mac Dre, E-40, and while we dug it, it didn't really sound all that different from the Bay Area hip hop we'd been hearing for years, and it sort of smacked of the great hype machine, coming up with a catch phrase to make something old and tired sound new and fresh again. But maybe we weren't hearing the right tracks, cuz we got our hands on this comp, featuring all the best Hyphy bangers from the first year, and HOLEEEEEEEEE SHIT, is this stuff amazing. Fucked up and funny, funky and fun and so totally over the top. Absolutely irresistible. In fact we sold one to a customer, who called us from his car ten minutes later FREAKING OUT about how great it was, and how every track was so good, he'd skip to the next one, expecting it to be a dud, only to discover it was even better. We had the exact same experience. We listened to a few minutes of each track, constantly skipping forward, not believing that every track could be that fucking great. But they were, and they are!
We've been freaking out about grime for ages, a killer UK hybrid of hip hop and jungle (Dizzee Rascal, Lady Sovereign, Wiley...), we can't get enough of that grimey sound, so fucked up with killer beats and weird loops, and some of the funniest freaked out flows we've ever heard, dense and tongue twisting. With our new found love of grime, we had been lamenting the sad state of US hip hop, the same beats, the same boring gangster rap, the same glossy MTV stuff, but damn if these tracks don't push the exact same buttons that grime does, sounding fresh and thrilling all over again.
But what does Hyphy actually sound like? It's kind of hard to pinpoint, it may be about location as much as sound, the scene as much as the music, but most of the tracks have some common elements. Synths for one. Lots of synths, thick and fuzzy, often the main hook is just a massive buzzing synth melody over a shuffling laid back rhythm. And the rhythms, they don't bang and pound as much as sort of slink. And the rapping, some seriously strange flows, from marble mouthed mumbles, to urgent whispers to Lil' Jon style hollerin' but it's not just the delivery, it's the actual words, a confusional mix of Hyphy slang that has you scratching your head as often as laughing out loud. Check out "I Got Grapes", the main lyric being a wailed "I got graaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaapes" over a super stripped down beat. Or "Yadadamean" where the main hook is a strangely affected "Yadadamean" repeated over a weirdly epic cinematic synth line. WTF?!? So amazing.
I wish we could describe it more explicitly, but you just gotta hear it. If you're anything like us, you'll be grabbed in the first 30 seconds and won't be able to stop. Normally we're pretty skeptical of 'hits' collections like this, but it's hard to argue with a comp this jam packed with stunners, and we're not about to. Did you dig the B'more Music comp? The Science Faction: Grime comp? The Rio Baile Funk comps? The Warrior Dubz comp? The Razor X Productions comp? Well, you just might have a new favorite. THE dance party record of the year. Whether you're slow rolling with the top down, cranking it through the headphones, or bumpin' and sweatin' up the dancefloor, this disc is THE ONE.
MPEG Stream: THE A'Z "Yadadamean"
MPEG Stream: MESSY MARV "Get On My Hype"
MPEG Stream: NUMP "I Got Grapes"
MPEG Stream: THE TEAM "Hyphy Juice"

BOXCUTTER Oneiric (Planet Mu) cd 14.98
We're really not sure how we managed to miss this one. Especially with us always dying for more grime. More blissed out dark and doomy dubstep. Well, this is IT!!! This 'it' actually came out almost a year ago! But so what! We just discovered it, and maybe you missed it as well. Boxcutter is everything we've been hankering for. And digging elsewhere. Milanese (a past AQ record of the week), Kode9, Virus Syndicate, that Mary Anne Hobbs comp, the Science Faction: Grime comp, Boxcutter fits right in amongst those killers. And is totally kicking our ass. Maybe more dubstep than grime (although it sounds pretty grimey to us, and we're not even really sure of the difference), this is dense and skittery, blown out dub drenched grimey and and filthy dark-as-fuck electronica. The rhythms throb and shuffle, a hiccuping stutter, that is not so much funky as fucked up and hypnotic, occasional beats get all gnarled up, glitching and buzzing before falling back into line. All around the beats, thick clouds of strange synths and spaced out FX hover and swirl, peppered with melodic fragments, and thick rib cage rattling bass lines.
Some of the tracks are WAY laid back, dubbed out to the extreme, a sort of late night / early morning chill out sound. All dark and druggy, heavy lidded and sort of shuffling drowsily. But other tracks are HUGE and bumping. Bursts of blown out synth fuzz, massive rolling bass lines, streaks of sizzling sound that careen from speaker to speaker, bits of fluttering flute suspended over dense rhythmic tangles, huge smears of undulating low end, kick drums that punch right through your sternum, sounding almost like some killer dancefloor destroying jungle dubplate played at 16 rpm.
Heavy and thick and dark and fuzzed out and spacey and groovy and so fucking great!!
MPEG Stream: "Tauhid"
MPEG Stream: "Grub"

ABRUPTUM Evil Genius (Southern Lord) cd 14.98
Ah Abruptum, how we've missed you. Nary a peep since 2004's killer black ambient masterpiece Casus Luciferi, which while an amazing gorgeously bleak slab of droning mystery, really barely scratched the surface, only hinting at the harsh, hateful, bizarre black metal beast Abruptum once was.
That's where Evil Genius comes in. And evil Genius is exactly what it is. A collection of old demos, it was originally released with an actual razor blade inside and a sticker instructing the listener to kill themselves. There were also loads of strange rumors surrounding the band, including the one about mainman It being a dwarf, who tortured himself in the studio, in order to capture true anguish. After all, Abruptum were, according to their own edict, "the pure audial essence of evil"... Who knows how much of that stuff was true (we like to think ALL of it), and ultimately it doesn't really matter, the proof is in the pudding, and in this case the pudding is a sludgy, filthy, crusty, primitive chunk of harsh, stumbling, lurching, distorted psychedelic black metal. Or maybe black doom would be more appropriate. There are no blast beats or blazing buzzing riffs, instead, Evil Genius is a confusional garbled outsider mess, but a glorious one, keyboards lurch in and out of the mix, usually atonal and off kilter, the drums plod and pound, tortured and strangled vocals howl and grunt, belching out strange black growls, tons of thick black ambience surround everything, seeping into every bit of music like some strange black mold, weird squeaks and groans, and all sorts of random sounds pepper the entire record, hard to say if they are footsteps or the cracks of a whip or creaking hinges, but they all sort of get sucked into Abruptum's dizzying blurry and buzzy soundworld. And guitars of course, lots of them, tuned way down, sometimes not tuned at all, occasionally spewing out some strange black shaped riff, but other times just buzzing or droning, roaring or squealing, often sounding less like a guitar than some sort of hellish demon speaking in tongues.
But as fucked up and bizarre as Evil Genius is, it's still eminently listenable, even catchy at times, almost pretty at others, but always, a totally baffling, fucked up and completely damaged way out black metal what-the-fuck blast of, well, EVIL GENIUS!!
All new artwork, with brand new liner notes from It, and while it's hard to tell for sure, we're led to believe that there is at least one extra track, as EG compiles the first two Abruptum demos ("s/t" and "The Satanist Tunes") as well as the "Evil" 7" and their track from the long out of print Tribute To Euronymous compilation cd (which we think is the bonus track).
So absolutely and utterly RECOMMENDED!!
MPEG Stream: "Honores Vultus Mutares Ex Aeris Campi"
MPEG Stream: "Icendio Fulminis Telis"
MPEG Stream: "Animum, Mentem Alcis Iuventutem Largitionibus, Hostes Ad Dimicandum, Commotis Exita Sacris Thyias"
MPEG Stream: "De Profundis Mors Vas Cousumet"

ENOCKSSON, ERIK Farval Falkenberg (Kning Disk) cd 15.98
Another disc we knew nothing about and just luckily stumbled across (with our interest whetted due to its label affiliation, Kning usually being quite interest-ing). We were initially struck by the gorgeous cover, an embroidered landscape, all oranges and blacks, the texture of the background fabric adding grit to the already dark and mysterious shapes and hues in the foreground. The words Farval Falkenberg printed in huge gold metallic letters, strangely poetic song titles.
We later discovered that this is in fact the soundtrack to a Swedish film, a coming of age story, sad and bittersweet, and the music couldn't be more perfect. The opening track had us completely smitten within seconds. A gorgeously melancholy acoustic guitar, spinning a soft sad melody, mournful and moody, the main melody is whistled, giving the track a certain childlike vibe, a bit of a Morricone / Bjorn Olsson feel too, it seriously gives us shivers just writing about it. Then the 'chorus' kicks in, and adds soft focus piano plinking in the background, another guitar higher up in the mix, simple tambourine percussion. It's so evocative, you can't help but let your mind start making up different scenes from this movie you've never seen. Lonely walks, sitting by the window, rain pouring down, wandering along railroad tracks, laying in bed staring at the cracks in the ceiling. Wow.
And the rest of the record is just as compelling. Every song a mini super emotional epic. Organs wheeze ominously, acoustic guitars flutter and flit, chimes drift and shimmer, the piano returns in dense swells, bits of static and glitchy hiss intrude like someone changing stations on the radio, there are creaks and groans, distant rumbles, bits of electronic skitter, subtle drones, chimes, bells, even the occasional vocals, but it's always about the guitar, it's delicate dreamlike melodies, and how it's so perfectly intertwined with the piano and the organ. So moving and intense. Think Rachel's, Dirty Three, Pinetop Seven, Japancakes, Godspeed, but somehow much less arty, and more genuine, subtly experimental, but practically perfect, dark, emotional, so incredibly moving. Makes us want to see the film so bad, but in the meantime, it's the ideal music for whatever film you have running through your head. And of course the absolutely perfect soundtrack for lonely walks, staring at the ceiling, staring out the windows in the rain, wandering along railroad tracks, etc...
MPEG Stream: "The Joy Of D.H. Lawrence"
MPEG Stream: "Dusk Settles In"
MPEG Stream: "The Breaking Of Waves"

MONARCH Dead Men Tell No Tales (Crucial Blast) 2cd 14.98
For a band who supposedly broke up, Monarch sure have managed to put out a whole bunch of music, post mortem. And while this is funeral doom and everything, we're not talking some Biggie Smalls / Tupac Shakur music from beyond the grave thing (although you never know!), it seems the announced breakup was premature, and lucky for all the doomongers among you, the Monarch is alive and (un)well.
Avid readers of the AQ list should need no introduction to French downtuned slow motion sludge doom trio Monarch. A band truly worthy of many multiples of 'o's (dooooooooooooooooooooom), whose plod and crawl is so slow it often veers near static drone territory, and who also manage to deftly mix in a bit of subtle loveliness into their harsh metallic trudge, AND whose peculiar sense of humor, and album art, and unlikely front woman, definitely make them stand out in an increasingly crowded field...
For those new to Monarch let's recap shall we?
Quite possibly the world's only female fronted deathdoomdronedirge outfit. An unholy mix of Khanate, Corrupted, Bunkur and Moss, but with a petite young French woman on lead vocals, usually clad in Converse hightops, a skirt and a sweater, hair in a pony tail, no tattoos or spikes or leather, but when she opens her mouth, out comes the foulest demonic shrieks and hellish gurgles you have EVER heard. Certainly from a woman, maybe from ANY one, man, woman or beast.
Then there are the record covers, always covered in grade school like doodles of cute big eyed skulls, puffy ghosts, burning churches, and hearts all over the place. They're like a Sanrio doom band. And not surprisingly are obsessed with Hello Kitty (their email address is sanriosabbath!!). But eyes closed, and these guys and gal can most definitely hold their own amongst the slow motion elite. With the added bonus of a singer who can actually sing and does occasionally, adding a definite creepy melodic moodiness to the music.
So this double disc collects two ultra limited lps (the band seem to lean toward lps, AND double cds, with songs clocking in at 10, 20, sometimes 30 minutes), one that we carried a while back and sold out in the blink of an eye, the massive and amazing Speak Of The Sea, and weirdly enough, another 2 song lp, that's not really out yet entitled appropriately enough Die Tonight.
So what has us so smitten with Monarch? Besides the above that is? Let's start with Speak Of The Sea, a massive pummeling wall of headsplitting ultra doom, an impossibly glacial plodding thud wrapped in ear shredding sheets of corrosive feedback that will tear your insides out and fill your ears with black tar. A gorgeously dense. ultra caustic and corrosive funereal doom that manages to be dreamy and darn near pretty while it's pummeling you to death. Easily one of the slowest heaviest dooooooooom records ever, three looooong tracks. Each so slow it's almost ambient. It's a bit like listening to SUNNO))) or Earth 2 when some caveman drummer decides to crash the party and start drumming slowly along. Riffs stretched out into huge droning smears of black rumble, ringing and reverberating, pulsing and wavering unsteadily before the next ten ton riff drops. Each track is a slow plodding ultradoomscape, like the ultimate doom metal intro stretched into actual songs, smeared across nearly an hour. The vocals don't even come in until the first song is almost over, a shrieking black coda, after twenty minutes of slow burning doom drone tension. The second track features some distant Ozzy-like crooning way off in the distance before the scowling growl kicks in. So slow and heavy. On the AQ doooooomscale, this ranks more O's than we could possibly include in this review!
And for the cd release, they've tacked on a whole 'nother song to the first disc (album), a creepy, pretty near ambient crawl, nothing but the sound of the surf crashing on the shore, a thick hissy staticky sound, slowly swelling and drifting, very meditative, with hushed urgently whispered vocals hovering above the crashing sea, very strange, but quite nice.
Then we get to Die Tonight, a record most of us (if not all of us) have not heard until now. And if anything it's everything Speak Of The Sea was and MORE. Heavier (as if that were even possible), slower (ditto) and more blurred out, buzzy and dronelike, with bits of the song so blissed out, the drum hits and chaotic crashes are so far apart, you can almost forget you're listening to a doom band, wallowing in the glorious shimmering drones of the drawn out chords, before a howled shriek and a massive crunch knocks you near out of your seat. There's also more singing, with gorgeous drifting vocals that hover alongside long stretches of buzzing guitar making for haunting harmonies, giving the proceedings brief moments of surprising tranquility. And the vocals continue to twist and turn, from hushed and whispery, to girlish and sing songy to inhuman demonic screech, all the while, the band trudging along dronelike, weaving impossibly pretty soundscapes from downtuned crunch and skull cracking thud.
This is absolutely essential doom. If you like Esoteric, Boris, Moss, Bunkur, SUNNO))), Earth, Esoteric, Skepticism, Eyehategod, Marzuraan, Atavist, Catacombs, Khanate, Pale Horse, Monument Of Urns and you NEED this! And the drifting drone element is in full effect, so those who have yet to dabble in the doom pool, might check this out, the long drawn out shimmers and Niblock like layers of guitar rumble might hit the spot and have you digging deeper for more and more dooooom.
Gorgeously packaged in a black gatefold, printed in silver ink, decorated with big eyed ghosts, a sailing ship with upside down crosses and a heart on the sail, lots of stars, some cute birdies, and an anchor with a heart on it. Inside are two silver on black printed inserts, with all the lyrics, the liner notes and a thanks list that says it all: Moss, Noothgrush, Otesanek, Corrupted, Bastard Noise, Rainbow Of Death, Nuit Noire and of course "our lucky stars"!
MPEG Stream: "Speak Of The Devil, Speak Of The Sea"
MPEG Stream: "Winter Bride"

STARS OF THE LID And Their Refinement Of The Decline (Kranky) 2cd 16.98
We've been huge fans of the Stars Of The Lid ever since their first record, Music For Nitrous Oxide, way back in 1995. And their last record, Tired Sounds Of... is a beloved favorite and all time AQ best seller. It's been fascinating to observe their sonic development, from murky guitar based 4-track bedroom guitar drones, all foggy and fuggy and murky and dreamlike, to their current sound, a more modern, almost classical sound, of rich reverberant swells, and lots and lots of space.
The Stars' sound has obviously become much more clear and well defined, polished even, but everything we loved about Nitrous Oxide is still present, albeit in slightly altered form. The Stars' were always about swells, ebb and flow, melodies and compositions played out over expansive stretches of oceanic shimmer, and that at least hasn't changed on And Their Refinement Of The Decline. Notes aren't just played, they begin as tiny sparkles, little distant glimmers, and gradually grow into thick rich whirs, or massive rumbles, before just as quickly fading away again. Oceanic is definitely an apt descriptor, as the music here, as on the more recent records, does have that feel, like some epic dimly lit sonic sea swirling and churning, sometime tranquil and barely moving, other times heaving and tumultuous. It's the sound of a new dawn, an impending storm, or the birth of a galaxy, it's so completely epic while at the same time managing somehow to be pastoral and contemplative and breathtakingly beautiful.
In the early days it was just 2 guitars and a four track, and the sound reflected that, much more gritty and fuzzy, the mood a lot darker, evoking the desert, the starry sky, a druggy dreamy innerspace of muted minimal shimmer. As the band grew, and added instruments, more players, recorded in real studios, the sound changed dramatically, and suddenly, instead of some indie bedroom project, the Stars were crafting pieces that could stand alongside any modern classical piece, while remaining dreamy and drone-y enough to tickle the ears of indie dronesters worldwide. Which is probably the most fascinating part of the Stars' sound. They were making music equally as expansive and epic and gorgeous 10 years ago, but those sounds were limited by the technology, by the band's meager recording set up. And only now it seems that the band is able to fully realize the sound they have been hearing, and essentially creating, all along.
There are guitars here and there, it is after all still the root of their sound, but they seem to be overshadowed by the other instruments (although it is often difficult to pinpoint the instrument creating many of the sounds), heavy on the strings, three violincelles and a harp, as well as a surprising arsenal of horns, two trumpets, flugelhorn and clarinet, AND a children's choir!! But it's not just the players or the instruments, but how they interact and the music they create, and here the results are divine. Many of the tracks do sound like bits of modern classical stretched out into languorous stretches of muted drone and subtle shimmer, like watching the planets from outer space, observing the epic drifts of solar systems and an infinity of cosmic interactions, but others definitely reference more earthly sonic treasures, "Apreludes (In C Sharp Major)" has some serious Morricone going on, and "Don't Bother They're Here" references Scott Tuma's washed out guitar work in Souled American. But whatever subtle flavor is introduced into each track, the sound is definitely and distinctly Stars Of The Lid. Their shift to double disc releases also seems to suit them, allowing their slow burning soft swell compositions plenty of time to sprawl and spread and evolve into epic and soul stirring soundscapes. But even two discs is not nearly enough as far as we're concerned, so everyone buy this one, so next time, these guys can release a four disc set, or a ten disc set or a twenty disc set...
MPEG Stream: "Dungtitled (In A Minor)"
MPEG Stream: "Articulate Silences Part 1"
MPEG Stream: "Dopamine Clouds Over Craven Cottages"

EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY All Of The Sudden I Miss Everyone (Temporary Residence) 2lp+cd 17.98
Now available on vinyl! And the lp version also includes the bonus remix cd...
We've always been fans of Explosions In The Sky. One of the post Mogwai, post Godspeed outfits so adept at crafting super epic and emotional instrumental soundscapes -- post rock, math rock, jangly pop, chamber music, all sort of whipped into grandiose cinematic swells. But past records, while sounding amazing, with the right balance of mood and metal, hush and heaviness, still stuck a little too close to the template of their forbears. EITS were like the perfect mix of Godspeed and old more bombastic Mogwai. And not much more. Nothing wrong with that really, it just never totally blew us away.
But All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone is different. And it does blow us away. In a big way. It still sounds like EITS, and thus still sounds a bit like Godspeed and Mogwai, but like any great band in the last 20 years, it's not who you steal from, or what you steal, it's how you make what you steal your own. And EITS have made epic instrumental post rock all their own. The opener is everything this sort of music could and should be. Super dense and dramatic, spacious and emotional, opening with keening high end melodies over big jangly guitar strum and huge percussive For Those About To Rock blasts, the guitars slowly intertwining and drifting off, fading to a moody minor key post rock drift, underpinned by layer after layer of fuzzy blissy guitar and a motorik rhythmic shuffle before the completely perfect bridge, a spaced out melody, all dynamic and epic, that will definitely give you goosebumps, before launching into a full on heavy math rock groove, incorporating that same hair raising melody, with some killer drumming and a veritable orchestra of guitars.
The rest of the record plays out in similar, albeit slightly less bombastic fashion. Each track perfectly leading into the next, an expansive post rock epic, separated into movements, chiming guitars, thick riffs, each track gloriously tangled and emotional, with long stretches of cinematic ambience, some shimmering strings, glistening melodies, lush harmonies, bits of piano, and some amazingly expressive drumming.
The All Of A Sudden lp also includes a cd, which contains an entire remix of the album, each track reworked by a different artist. Jesu turns the epic opener into a fuzzier, blissier, and toward the end a MUCH heavier beast. Adem's remix is all low key and abstract, acoustic guitars, simple percussion and glistening chimes, a whispery shadow of the original. The Paper Chase wraps the original track in a glorious swirl of murky ambience, adding a stuttery drum machine rhythm and all sorts of strange sonic filigree. Mountains gives their track a serious Pop Ambient makeover, stretched out and languorous, swirling and shimmery, ending with a long expanse of solo piano. Four Tet's reimagination is the most dramatic, a blissed out shuffling electronic workout, all processed drums, shuffling and skittering, with the original track nestled beneath layers of synth fuzz and strange subtle FX. Finally, labelmates Eluvium transform the album closer into a fuzzy smear of pixelated ambience, that builds and builds, much like the original, but in this version, into a blown out, super distorted fuzzy dreamscape.
Two versions of the same record, both stunning! So recommended.
MPEG Stream: "The Birth And Death Of The Day"
MPEG Stream: "Welcome, Ghosts"
MPEG Stream: "The Birth And Death Of A Day (Jesu Mix)"

LAPORTE, JEAN-FRANCOIS Soundmatters (23five) cd 14.98
Those artists, musicians, misanthropes, and just plain weirdos who not only exist musically on the fringes but have planted their entire existence on the edge have long been the greatest inspirations of Aquarius Records. For proof, you could scroll through oddball recordings that have earned the honor of Aquarius Record Of The Week. There was the Finnish sound artist Terje Isungset who crafted not just one album, but two from untreated percussive instruments entirely made of ice. Hans Edler thrilled us with his 1970s transformation from teen idol into short-circuited electronic composer. The protracted ululations of the profoundly cracked Elizabeth Clare Prophet and the Church Universal and Triumphant were as transcendent as anything that Lamonte Young had to offer, yet also had that creepy cult of personality vibe to boot. And who could forget Kathy McGinty? But one of the earliest recordings that truly made our collective jaw drop was the 3" cd from French-Canadian composer Jean-Francois Laporte called Mantra. Here was a mighty fine 20 minute composition of delicious vibrations, rattles, mechanical hum, and industrial drones that came with a particularly alluring back story: the source material to Mantra was a Zamboni -- the unusual machine only found at hockey rinks responsible for resurfacing its ice.
The one catch to Laporte's Zamboni sourced masterpiece was that we could never verify that a Zamboni was the actual source material. We heard from 'reliable sources' that Mantra is the sound of a Zamboni; and we wanted so desperately to believe that this was the case, just because the Zamboni is such an amazing and eccentric beast of industrial engineering. Before this turns into a dialectic on epistemology, we here at Aquarius discovered that we had been duped by a couple of mischievous DJs on KPFA without the knowledge or consent of Jean-Francois Laporte. It turns out that Laporte used nothing but a common air-compressor in composing Mantra. This factual unveiling should not in any way take away from the splendor of that piece. Here's what we had to say about Mantra many moons ago:
"Mantra opens with a trio of motors starting up and emitting a gentle purr. As these engines warm up and shift through various perfunctory cycles, a wide spectrum of metallic vibrations slowly spins through the stereo field. After a marvelous set of transitions between drones, there is the rattling sound as if a screw or bolt had been loosened by the vibrations, with two pieces of metal beginning a clamorous bell-ringing arrhythmia. When these motors finally are shut down, those pieces of metal still resonate for a beautifully sustained coda."
That 3" cd came out almost a decade ago, became a classic, and went out of print. Thankfully, 23five Incorporated has rescued Mantra from the dustbin by issuing the first major compendium of Laporte's work in the form of Soundmatters. While we've already sung the praises of Mantra, the remainder of Soundmatters is well worth investigating on its own. The opening track "Electro-Prana" is a pristine set of field recordings of a wind that ripped through Montreal, when the city was silenced by a winter time blackout. It's a pure, chilling sound of whistling wind overtaking the urban landscape. The next piece is the only digitally rendered composition on Soundmatters, yet Laporte brings his intuitive expressionism to a series of spiraling drones that easily rival those of your favorite minimalist (e.g. Niblock, Chalk, Hafler Trio, Xenakis, etc.). For those of you who have had the pleasure of experiencing Laporte's live concerts, the third piece will certainly be familiar. He's built an instrument with a series of car horns and elongated trumpet bells attached to an air compressor with each of the valves controlled by foot pedals. This instrument can generate infinitely sustainable, blaring drones from each of the horns; and Laporte craftily layers these sounds for incredible, dynamic results. Well, for this recording, Laporte lugged this instrument into the hull of a giant cargo ship and recorded this composition using the massive reverb of that space and the results are simply jaw-dropping. Imagine the most Nordic bellow from a Wagner symphony stretched out into its melancholic, raw sound and allowed to decay in space and time. Wow!
Following this is the aforementioned Mantra; and then Soundmatters' final piece which explores a quiet, yet thoroughly rich harmonic tapestry produced by a quartet of saxophones that could be Laporte's imagined summit between Evan Parker and Morton Feldman with rasping breaths of sound breaking across a silent event horizon with the ghostly energy of subatomic particles flickering and dissolving in a cloud chamber before amassing into a delirious swarm of Tony Conrad-esque acoustic dissonance. It's all utterly magnificent and one of finest collections of 'serious' composition that we've come across.
MPEG Stream: "Electro-Prana"
MPEG Stream: "Boule qui roule..."
MPEG Stream: "Danse le ventre du dragon"
MPEG Stream: "Mantra"

LA DRIVERS UNION POR POR GROUP, THE Por Por: Honk Horn Music Of Ghana (Smithsonian Folkways) cd 16.98
Ghana must be a really loud place. Even just based on the amount of honking that that goes on there. Vehicles honk often and repeatedly, to shoo pedestrians or cyclists out of the way, to signify annoyance with slow traffic or blocked roadways, to signify a desire to change lanes or pass, to get the attention of other drivers or just because they're so thrilled to be driving. Taxis honk rhythmically to attract fares, buses also honk rhythmically while their drivers sing out the various destinations. But there's more than just honking, sound systems blast music, stalls selling their wares broadcast songs and sounds, prayers are broadcast through large speakers affixed to the outsides of mosques...
Sonic chaos certainly. But at the same time, all of these sounds merge into a strange sort of music, the sounds of a city going through the motions of daily life. Chaotic certainly, but also vibrant. Unique. And so alive. A joyful celebration of everyday activities.
At the root of all of this sound is Por Por, the honk horn music of Ghana. Por Por, pronounced 'paaw paaw', an onomatopoeic description of the local drivers' honking squeeze-bulb horn music, was initially just that, the sounds of a city in motion, but eventually, the drivers who helped keep the city moving, took the sounds of their work day and turned it into music. Horns honking, found percussion, wrenches on tires, pipes on concrete, drums, pumping up tires, singing and shouting, those sounds became ritualized, and became their own music, with particular sounds and rhythms and arrangements, and a specific purpose. This music while a reflection of the city around it, was rarely performed in public, but instead, was almost exclusively performed at union drivers' funerals, those funerals very reminiscent of the New Orleans jazz funeral, replete with processions, music obviously, and coffins modeled on the various buses and trucks carrying the dead to the afterlife. The story of por por, of Ghana and its independence is a long one, far to intricate and complex to get into here, but La, the province from which these drivers and horn honkers hail, was critical to the resistance to colonial rule, refusing to pay taxes, fighting a proposed ban on por por horns, a strong sense of community, were all critical to the region's struggle for independence.
So in honor of this year's golden anniversary of Ghana's independence, for the first time, the La Drivers Union Por Por Group gathered to record the music that had been such a part of their culture and their life. Recorded outdoors, in backyards, the sound of the city, the traffic, all around, the music of por por spills forth, effusive and celebratory, joyous and spiritual, complex and strange and like nothing we have ever heard before.
A gorgeously ramshackle rhythmic workout, metallic percussion dense and spidery, a lush framework of intricate rhythms, beneath amazing vocal arrangements, but it's the por por that make this music so unique, honking rhythmically, strange melodies, sounding a bit like geese, an orchestra of squeeze-bulb horns, locking into looped rhythmic structures, hypnotic and mesmerizing. Like traditional African music being performed during rush hour in the middle of a busy intersection. Like Konono No1 but with horns instead of amplified thumb pianos. Most of the tracks seem to be more focused on the vocals, or the hypnotic rhythms, with the horns acting more as a melodic counterpoint. But some tracks, like the opening track "Por Por Akwaaba / Welcome" are entirely about the honking horns, sounding a bit like Philip Glass or Steve Reich composing for automobile horns, rhythmic and strangely catchy, and that is when Pop Por completely captivates, when the horns lock into strange cyclical melodies, all tangled up with the vocals, complete transporting us to the dusty streets of Ghana, horns in hand, honking joyously, letting the sound and the rhythms carry us away.
The final track is especially stirring, with the Por Por group heading into the city, and setting up outside the union office, enlisting all of the drivers present, as well as enlisting the help of various passing vehicles, for a call and response salute to their Independence, the por por horns honking rhythmically, regular car horns held down, underpinning the proceedings with long keening drones, folks singing long drawn out tones, almost wailing, a dense swirl of droning honking mesmer. So intense. And moving.
As with all Smithsonian Folkways releases, there is a huge booklet, with tons of amazing photos, extensive liner notes, as well as notes on each track.
MPEG Stream: "Otsokobila"
MPEG Stream: "Trotro Tour Of Ghana"
MPEG Stream: ""Trotro Drivers, We Love You So""

FURZE UTD: Beneath The Odd-Edge Sounds Of The Twilight Contract Of The Black Fascist / The Wealth Of The Penetration In The Abstract Paradigms Of Satan (Candlelight) lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We talk a good game about different black metal bands being the weirdest or most fucked up, the most damaged, even the most retarded, and there are plenty of bands vying for that top spot, whether they know it or not. But the count is finally in. and Furze are the hands down winner. This latest blast of whatthefuck grimness proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Let us count the ways. This new record is in fact TWO new records, making the full title of the album UTD: Beneath The Odd-Edge Sounds Of The Twilight Contract Of The Black Fascist / The Wealth Of The Penetration In The Abstract Paradigms Of Satan. Phew. Then there's the song titles: "Demonic Order In The Eternal Fascist's Hall", "Beneath The Wings Of The Black Vomit Above", "Deep In The Pot Of Fresh Antipodal Weave"... and it only gets stranger. Besides the baffling lyrics inside there is also a warning: "Don't stop the Furzement! 'Furze' is the name of the blade on The Reaper's scythe. Furze is the one and only trademark of the one and only Reaper, made (that vibration in the whole wide world called) "music" !!! That fire which burns (Candlelight) and that which penetrates golden walls by organic thorns (Furze) supports to take heed approach the Reaper." Indeed. Then there is a completely confusing thanks list, some truly strange iconography, and finally the center panels of the booklet are simply an advertisement for Furze's other two albums (because apparently the original artwork, featuring a drawing of Jesus fucking Mohammed, was just too shocking). Alrightee then. All of that would be a bunch of pretentious crap, if the music didn't sound just as fucked up and demented. But it does, maybe even moreso.
It's hard to even explain what this sounds like, it is obviously black metal, lots of buzz, loads of distortion, blast beats, growled shrieked vocals, but every one of those elements is totally tweaked. The guitars first and foremost, tinny and razor sharp, slippery and all tangled up, impossibly convoluted riffs, produced in some weird way that allows the guitar to go from ear piercingly loud to murky and muddy, often in the same phrase. Then there are the drums, insane and splattery, blasting and octopoidal, sometimes a blast way down in the mix, sometimes a stumbling fill spilling out all over the next part. The vocals are similarly damaged, shrieking, growling, mumbling, howling, sometimes super distorted, sometimes sounding like they are being shrieked from a hundred yards away, sometimes it sounds like they are being spat right in your ear. And the production?! Holy fuck, drums explode swallowing the rest of the sound whole, before the song eventually blasts forth, the guitars duel with the vocals, a damaged dance to the death, it's almost like Faxed Head producing Benighted Leams, with occasional guitar contributions from Greg Ginn and a doped to the gills Yngvie, mix in some drunken fretless bass and some underwater yodeling vocal bits and some freaked out psychedelic guitar skree, all played through a tiny practice amp. The sounds, and the recording, and the concept, is it possible that this is all just accidental? No, it's TOO weird, too bafflingly obtuse, too perfectly skewed -- this guy is a genius. And the thing is that even within all this confusional sonic damage and demented blackness, these songs are catchy, really catchy, how can some convoluted buzzing slippery buzz saw riff get stuck permanently in your head? Or some shrieked line of obtuse black poetry? Only Woe J. Reaper, the man who is Furze, knows for sure.
So completely and utterly recommended. Black metal record of the year for sure...
MPEG Stream: "A Life About My Sabbath"
MPEG Stream: "Demonic Order In The Eternal Fascist's Hall"
MPEG Stream: "Mandragora Officinarum"

EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone (Temporary Residence) 2cd 14.98
We've always been fans of Explosions In The Sky. One of the post Mogwai, post Godspeed outfits so adept at crafting super epic and emotional instrumental soundscapes -- post rock, math rock, jangly pop, chamber music, all sort of whipped into grandiose cinematic swells. But past records, while sounding amazing, with the right balance of mood and metal, hush and heaviness, still stuck a little too close to the template of their forbears. EITS were like the perfect mix of Godspeed and old more bombastic Mogwai. And not much more. Nothing wrong with that really, it just never totally blew us away.
But All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone is different. And it does blow us away. In a big way. It still sounds like EITS, and thus still sounds a bit like Godspeed and Mogwai, but like any great band in the last 20 years, it's not who you steal from, or what you steal, it's how you make what you steal your own. And EITS have made epic instrumental post rock all their own. The opener is everything this sort of music could and should be. Super dense and dramatic, spacious and emotional, opening with keening high end melodies over big jangly guitar strum and huge percussive For Those About To Rock blasts, the guitars slowly intertwining and drifting off, fading to a moody minor key post rock drift, underpinned by layer after layer of fuzzy blissy guitar and a motorik rhythmic shuffle before the completely perfect bridge, a spaced out melody, all dynamic and epic, that will definitely give you goosebumps, before launching into a full on heavy math rock groove, incorporating that same hair raising melody, with some killer drumming and a veritable orchestra of guitars.
The rest of the record plays out in similar, albeit slightly less bombastic fashion. Each track perfectly leading into the next, an expansive post rock epic, separated into movements, chiming guitars, thick riffs, each track gloriously tangled and emotional, with long stretches of cinematic ambience, some shimmering strings, glistening melodies, lush harmonies, bits of piano, and some amazingly expressive drumming.
All Of A Sudden also includes a bonus disc, an entire remix of the album, each track reworked by a different artist. Jesu turns the epic opener into a fuzzier, blissier, and toward the end a MUCH heavier beast. Adem's remix is all low key and abstract, acoustic guitars, simple percussion and glistening chimes, a whispery shadow of the original. The Paper Chase wraps the original track in a glorious swirl of murky ambience, adding a stuttery drum machine rhythm and all sorts of strange sonic filigree. Mountains gives their track a serious Pop Ambient makeover, stretched out and languorous, swirling and shimmery, ending with a long expanse of solo piano. Four Tet's reimagination is the most dramatic, a blissed out shuffling electronic workout, all processed drums, shuffling and skittering, with the original track nestled beneath layers of synth fuzz and strange subtle FX. Finally, labelmates Eluvium transform the album closer into a fuzzy smear of pixelated ambience, that builds and builds, much like the original, but in this version, into a blown out, super distorted fuzzy dreamscape.
Two versions of the same record, both stunning! So recommended.
MPEG Stream: "The Birth And Death Of The Day"
MPEG Stream: "Welcome, Ghosts"
MPEG Stream: "The Birth And Death Of A Day (Jesu Mix)"

NADJA Touched (Alien8 Recordings) cd 13.98
While not a 'new' record per se, Touched, by AQ dreamdoom faves Nadja is in fact their newest release, a collection of older tracks, from a long out of print cd-r, reworked and retooled into arguably one of the prettiest, heaviest, most blissed out doom records of recent memory.
Which makes sense when you consider the fact that Nadja mastermind Aidan Baker, spends the rest of his time creating gorgeous, fuzzy dark ambient soundscapes, all of which end up informing his more metallic alter ego, turning what could have been a run of the mill funereal downtuned trudge, into a mind bending, ear melting psychedelic drift.
Quite possibly the heaviest Nadja record yet, this is a serious slab of spaced out, acid fried, FX drenched doom, all wrapped in thick swirls of soft fuzz, and dense clouds of blurry buzz, a monstrous caveman plod through a thick, smeary sonic storm. It's like Godflesh wrapped in My Bloody Valentine filtered through some Wolf Eyes, or the Swans covered by the Jesus And Mary Chain, remixed by Tim Hecker. Or even Mogwai's Young Team run through a bank of effects pedals and played back at 16rpm. Heavy and pretty, punishing but strangely serene.
And then there are the vocals, soft and lilting and dreamy, fluttering and floating amidst the crash and cacophony, like mysterious spectres, an amazing juxtaposition of industrial throb and glistening shimmer, which ends up sounding almost more Jesu than Jesu.
The guitars are massive, but instead of sounding like the black tar rumble of impossibly downtuned strings, or the jagged crunch and black buzz of other purveyors of metallic slowmotion, Nadja transform their guitars into thick washes of textured sound, constantly pulsing and throbbing, changing shape and color, thick and dense and suffocating, like being submerged in some strange viscous liquid, warm and syrupy, heard from inside this strange sonic cocoon, the outside world becomes a buzzy blur, all the beats and vocals, when they finally make it to your ears, are dull murky plods, or distant wisps of melody.
Each track, at its center, contains a perfect little pop core, some gorgeously melancholy melody, a seriously sublimated hook, which is summarily stretched and twisted into long black stretches of blown out sound, an impossibly heavy slowcore, the poppiness, all but totally obscured by the coruscating sheets of sonic rumble and whir, the pumelling pound, and the gauzy swaths of dreamy shimmer. A never ending (we wish) trudge through epic landscapes of black beauty and bleak mystery.
Doom was never meant to sound this pretty, but we're sure as hell not complaining!
MPEG Stream: "Mutagen"
MPEG Stream: "Stays Demons"
MPEG Stream: "Incubation"

NADJA Touched (Conspiracy) lp 33.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Now available on vinyl from our pals at Conspiracy. Super limited (we only have 8 copies, not sure if we can get more), super expensive, but so worth it. Incredible new artwork, an embossed, diecut jacket, printed thick full color inner sleeves, visible through the diecut, photos by Seldon Hunt, the vinyl thick as well, weights a ton and sounds amazing. Here's what we said about the record when it came out on cd:
While not a 'new' record per se, Touched, by AQ dreamdoom faves Nadja is in fact their newest release, a collection of older tracks, from a long out of print cd-r, reworked and retooled into arguably one of the prettiest, heaviest, most blissed out doom records of recent memory.
Which makes sense when you consider the fact that Nadja mastermind Aidan Baker, spends the rest of his time creating gorgeous, fuzzy dark ambient soundscapes, all of which end up informing his more metallic alter ego, turning what could have been a run of the mill funereal downtuned trudge, into a mind bending, ear melting psychedelic drift.
Quite possibly the heaviest Nadja record yet, this is a serious slab of spaced out, acid fried, FX drenched doom, all wrapped in thick swirls of soft fuzz, and dense clouds of blurry buzz, a monstrous caveman plod through a thick, smeary sonic storm. It's like Godflesh wrapped in My Bloody Valentine filtered through some Wolf Eyes, or the Swans covered by the Jesus And Mary Chain, remixed by Tim Hecker. Or even Mogwai's Young Team run through a bank of effects pedals and played back at 16rpm. Heavy and pretty, punishing but strangely serene.
And then there are the vocals, soft and lilting and dreamy, fluttering and floating amidst the crash and cacophony, like mysterious spectres, an amazing juxtaposition of industrial throb and glistening shimmer, which ends up sounding almost more Jesu than Jesu.
The guitars are massive, but instead of sounding like the black tar rumble of impossibly downtuned strings, or the jagged crunch and black buzz of other purveyors of metallic slowmotion, Nadja transform their guitars into thick washes of textured sound, constantly pulsing and throbbing, changing shape and color, thick and dense and suffocating, like being submerged in some strange viscous liquid, warm and syrupy, heard from inside this strange sonic cocoon, the outside world becomes a buzzy blur, all the beats and vocals, when they finally make it to your ears, are dull murky plods, or distant wisps of melody.
Each track, at its center, contains a perfect little pop core, some gorgeously melancholy melody, a seriously sublimated hook, which is summarily stretched and twisted into long black stretches of blown out sound, an impossibly heavy slowcore, the poppiness, all but totally obscured by the coruscating sheets of sonic rumble and whir, the pumelling pound, and the gauzy swaths of dreamy shimmer. A never ending (we wish) trudge through epic landscapes of black beauty and bleak mystery.
Doom was never meant to sound this pretty, but we're sure as hell not complaining!
MPEG Stream: "Mutagen"
MPEG Stream: "Stays Demons"
MPEG Stream: "Incubation"

MAKES NICE, THE Candy Wrapper And Twelve Other Songs (Frenetic) cd 14.98
All right, before we go naming the debut album from San Francisco's The Makes Nice the #1 Pop Album Of The Summer Even Though It's Barely February Already, full disclosure: we do happen to know these guys. An especially good friend of ours is guitarist/vocalist Josh Smith, whom you too probably know from some other bands of his in the past -- he used to play lead guitar in the The Fucking Champs, and also was integral to the legendary SF black metal band Weakling! So after Josh quit the Champs a few years ago, you can imagine our reaction when, eventually, he told us that his next band project was gonna be a power pop, power trio -- with him singing as well as playing guitar! That's pretty far from the instrumental metal of The Champs, or the epic evil of Weakling, eh?? But damn if he didn't pull it off!
Teamed up with Aaron Burnham (of The Mothballs) on bass and vocals, and Jack Matthew (of Harold Ray Live In Concert) on drums, Josh's new band has not only only blown us away with their live shows but now present their killer debut album, the cryptically-titled Candy Wrapper And Twelve Other Songs. The thirteen tracks here run about 31 and a half minutes -- most of 'em not even hitting the 2 minute mark. But each is crammed with so much blazing pop energy in the vein of freakbeat, psych-pop heroes of yesteryear who populate compilations like the Nuggets 2 box set (they'll tell you themselves) that it's got enough head-nodding, foot-tapping hooks for an album twice its length, and could power a full on ballroom blitz to boot.
Hopping on a White Striped bandwagon? No, not at all. What sets The Makes Nice apart from a lot of the current crop of garage rock outfits is their emphasis on Beach Boys/Beatles styled vocal harmonies and sheer songcraft. Yeah, most of these songs are totally raw and rockin' and full of high energy sonics, but also carefully arranged with vocal sweetness that would do Brian Wilson proud. Furthermore, the album is woven throughout with memorable guitar solos. Peeling off licks with tasteful abandon and doses of thick fuzz, Josh's virtuosic playing really gives The Makes Nice their unique signature and vitality. Fucking Champs fans who pick this up just 'cause Josh is on it won't find any metal, but they will hear plenty o' great guitar playing -- and in fact, Josh really lets loose with more soloing here than he ever did in the Champs! So rad guitar + sweet harmonies + utter catchiness = why The Makes Nice totally rule, basically.
And they didn't got to all that work with the vocals without giving some thought to the lyrics as well, so this thing has just got about all the angles covered, top of the pops as far as we're concerned. Definitely this disc should have a lot of appeal to fans of sixties Brits like The Who, Pretty Things, Creation, and Tomorrow up through '70s, '80s, and '90s North American acts like The Raspberries, Cheap Trick, Redd Kross and Sloan! Seriously, the toughest thing about writing this is that we still have to write a bunch of other reviews before this week's New Arrivals list goes out, but from working on this, we've got pretty much this entire record stuck in our heads right now -- and we don't want to make it stop!
MPEG Stream: "Candy Wrapper"
MPEG Stream: "Enough Is Enough"
MPEG Stream: "November Girls"

WOLD Screech Owl (Profound Lore) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Seems kind of foolish to continue to proclaim different black metal bands the "weirdest ever" or "the most fucked up we've ever heard". We're quite tempted to take that route again with this bizarre Canadian horde, but the truth is, they were barely black metal to begin with, more a sort of Jeckish, Basinskian ambient blackness that bordered on the downright dreamy. Well, if anything the band has moved even further away from traditional black metal and into a distinctly, more damaged and significantly noisier world of sound.
Fortress Crookedjaw, Obey and Opex, the trio who make up this ensemble, have taken the strange scratched, looped sepia toned smear of their first record, and torn it apart, doused it in white hot sheets of crumbling guitar and damaged feedback, offering up an even more obscured black metal, a metal turned inside out so we can see the squirming guts inside, malfunctioning electronics everywhere, coating every single riff, every growled lyric, every snatch of barely audible drums, in a crackling sparking field of sonic solar flares. Like listening to Jeck's Surf on a busted car radio, where it's mostly static, but you can -almost- hear bits of melody in there somewhere. Or more accurately, listening to some old skipping 78's on Masami Akita's custom sound system, while Malefic from Xasthur sings along.
Some tracks are almost pure noise, the riffs and drums and anything else discernible as actual music, buried beneath an avalanche of Merzbowian skree, usually the vocals hovering atop, like another harsh jagged layer of sound. But occasionally, the noise abates, and we get a glimpse of some melancholy melodic murk inside, or a brief blast of black riffing, but more often than not, those bits are quickly subsumed and the record becomes a roiling chaotic black swirl once more.
A few tracks, like "The Field Hag", harken back to the first record, with the noise reeled in, and a haunting muddy soundscape allowed to drift and shimmer ghostlike, beneath a thick layer of fuzz and grit and a glass gargling demonic screech, and theoretically, every track on Screech Owl is like that, just some are more obscured and obfuscated than others. Tracks like "Windmill" and "A Sword Becomes Red With Fury" are so distorted and blown out, that they become Pan Sonic style glitch and buzz scapes, pulsing short circuited rhythms, spare and skeletal, with almost no trace of melody, metal or otherwise. Like that busted car radio when you go through a tunnel, all distorted and choppy with only little bits and snippets able to surface through the distortion and static.
Screech Owl weaves chaotically from blown out dreamscapes doused in furious fuzz, to crumbling damaged black loopscapes, to Whitehouse style noise, to soft focus looped ambience to ultra lo-fi black metal buzz, often in the same song. Distortion, noise, processed feedback, every track a delicate balance between huge pulsing flows of fuzzed out electronics, buzzing black metal madness and dreamy fuzzy drone and whir. Baffling and fucking brilliant!
MPEG Stream: "Ray Of Gold"
MPEG Stream: "So That No Sword May Strike Him Down"
MPEG Stream: "The Field Hag"
MPEG Stream: "A Sword Becomes Red With Fury"

JESU Conqueror (Hydra Head / Daymare) 2cd 28.00
Who thought the dreamiest, fuzziest bliss pop record of the year would come courtesy of the same man responsible for the soul crushing might of Godflesh's Streetcleaner, and someone who once called Napalm Death home? Well, actually we sort of did. Especially since last year's Silver ep, on which Justin Broadrick's Jesu took the already fuzzy dreamy metallic crunch of their debut, and injected it with all sorts of unlikely glistening pop and muted indie jangle, creating an impossibly pretty metallic dirge pop, equal parts Godflesh, My Bloody Valentine and M83.
And as if to prove that Broadrick indeed has a heart of pop beneath that crushing downtuned exterior, we now have the Conqueror, which if anything, pushes Jesu's sound even further into the glistening dreamy realm of pure pop. But fear not, we're not talking sugary sweet, treacly pop music cheese, no this is Jesu after all, spawn of Godflesh, so there's no shortage of dirgey rhythms, BIG crushing guitars, lurching tempos, thick swaths of buzz and fuzz, but it's all just window dressing for some seriously pretty pop. The opener is shockingly poppy, with sweet melodic hooks, tinkling piano, breathy vocals, all processed and wrapped in a fuzzy dreamlike haze. An immediate classic for sure. The rest of the record strikes a delicate balance between the dirgier heaviness of the first Jesu record and Broadrick's newfound love of the jangle and swoon, each track a glistening pop gem, placed delicately into a blown out landscape of loping drum crush and thick shimmery guitar buzz, coruscating sheets of distortion wrapped tenderly around heartfelt epics, soaring vocals, and dreamy melodies.
We don't so much hear some Godflesh / M83 hybrid now as we do the dirgey dreamlike murky bliss of nineties New Zealand legends Bailter Space, or the heavier side of the shoegazer spectrum, Swervedriver, Chapterhouse and the like. It's a captivating sound for sure, and a logical progression, and while it's distinctly less metal, there is still much heaviness to be had, even at its most soft focus and glimmering, the guitars retain their buzzy crunch, and the tempos are always dirgey and machinelike, but all the sharp edges have been smoothed out, and the rhythms maybe seem more languid than mechanical, and the fuzzy blissy poppy core of each song seems to radiate from within like some alien sun, giving each song, no matter how heavy, a soft burnished glow.
So you might wonder why the heck the new Jesu is $28.00? Well, we figured that like us, you'd probably rather spend a little bit extra and get the gorgeous Japanese version, with its elaborate silver printed slipcover and more importantly, an ENTIRE EXTRA DISC nearly thirty three extra minutes, two epic tracks, featuring in its entirety, the music from Jesu's new 12" on Aurora Borealis (which we haven't even gotten yet). And it is most definitely worth it. Two 15 minute tracks, each epic and majestic, huge throbbing fuzzed out guitars, pounding rhythms, drifting minor key melodies, thick washes of blissy psychedelia, soft processed vocals, the first a crushing dreampop dirge harkening back to the first Jesu record (albeit a bit poppier), the second an almost ambient guitarscape of layered melodies, murky vocals and shimmery rhythms, so good. So worth it.
And the packaging, WOW! A double disc digipak, housed in a thick plastic slipcover, a silver cityscape superimposed over the washed out grey of the digipak, with a booklet, lyrics, Japanese liner notes and of course a Japanese style obi.
MPEG Stream: "Conqueror"
MPEG Stream: "Old Year"
MPEG Stream: "Transfigure"

BEE GEES 1st (Reprise) 2cd 25.00
What comes to mind when you think of The Bee Gees? Saturday Night Fever? Disco? White suits? 30 years of cheesy disco dancing to "Stayin' Alive"? The awesome(ly atrocious) film version of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band? SNL's "Barry Gibb Talk Show"? Probably all of those things.
Which is too bad, 'cuz if it weren't for all that stuff, maybe you'd think instead of lush melancholy experimental pop music, incredible vocal harmonies, horns, strings, orchestras, mellotrons, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Zombies...
Some of you probably have no idea what the heck we're on about, but well before disco and Saturday Night Fever and all that, way back in 1967, the Bee Gees were crafting some of the loveliest, most compellingly mysterious pop music around. With a sound that borrowed from other bands of the time, most notably the aforementioned big three, the Beatles, the Beach Boys and the Zombies, but incorporated those influences into a sound that was distinctly their own. A sound at times gorgeously classic sounding, and at others surprisingly strange and dark and experimental.
The influence of the Beatles and the Beach Boys is undeniable. The song "Please Read Me" is incredibly Beach Boys-esque, and marks the first time the group would employ falsetto vocal harmonies, obviously influenced by Brian Wilson, and which would of course become their trademark. And the cover of 1st is by the artist Klaus Voorman, who of course also designed the Beatles' Revolver. But scratch a little below the surface, and there is so much more. A musical world of dreamlike, melancholy psychedelia.
"Holiday" is a brooding and moody dirge, with haunting organ swells, and pizzicato strings, with soft horns and simple percussion, and a gorgeous vocal melody, as well as a strange and impossibly catchy bridge with simple nonsense vocals. Then there's "Red Chair, Fade Away" a dreamy, rainbow hued blast of psychedelic pop, blissed out and trippy, with tons of layered production, fuzzy guitars, jazzy horns, fluttering flute, all wrapped in a stained glass production, peppered with circusy calliopes and soaring strings.
But two of the tracks on 1st really stand out. Lovely and catchy, but so dark and emotionally intense. The first is "Every Christian Lion Hearted Man Will Show You", which begins with minor key strings over monk-like chanting background vocals, before the Strawberry Fields vocals kick in, over a shuffled rhythm and some deliriously fuzzy psych guitar, with the chanting vocals resurfacing throughout the song before it fades into a truly haunting outro, just those strings and some heavily reverbed drums that stumble into the darkness. The other is the amazingly monickered "New York Mining Disaster 1941" with it's haunting nearly a capella verses (backed up by barely audible guitar strumming WAY down in the mix), jangly guitars, throbbing simple percussion, the whole track mournful and melancholy, the minor key brightening briefly for the chorus before drifting baack into haunting melancholia. The track is laced with strange funereal strings, and again the vocals are just so beautiful, lush and dreamy.
The rest of the record is just as fantastic, every song a strange gem, it's difficult to pick which ones to mention, you'll of course recognize "To Love Somebody", which while not a huge hit for them (although it did crack the top 20), has become an international pop standard, and was originally a track the band wrote for Otis Redding, but their version is the best, so lush and rife with layer after layer of instrumentation, as well as some amazing melodic flourishes left off subsequent cover versions, then there's "Cucumber Castle" with its super dramatic strings, Spanish sounding trumpets, moaning cellos, and bizarre player piano background trills, all behind a main melody that is so unbelievably catchy... we could go on and on and on. Needless to say, it's difficult to not go all gushy and declare this as one of the all time greatest pop records. But what the heck, it is! Listen to this enough and you just may banish all thoughts of white suits and light up dancefloors from your head forever!
Gorgeously elaborate reissue, in a huge 8 panel digipak, full color with tons of amazing photos, a massive booklet also packed with photos, with lengthy liner notes, as well as notes on each track from the surviving members. The first disc contains the full version of the album, in both stereo AND mono, the second disc contains 9 alternate and early versions (including two dramatically different versions of "New York Mining Disaster 1941") as well as 5 unreleased tracks, most of which are as good as anything on the album proper!
MPEG Stream: "To Love Somebody"
MPEG Stream: "Holiday"
MPEG Stream: "New York Mining Disaster 1941"

FURZE UTD: Beneath The Odd-Edge Sounds Of The Twilight Contract Of The Black Fascist / The Wealth Of The Penetration In The Abstract Paradigms Of Satan (Candlelight) cd 13.98
We talk a good game about different black metal bands being the weirdest or most fucked up, the most damaged, even the most retarded, and there are plenty of bands vying for that top spot, whether they know it or not. But the count is finally in. and Furze are the hands down winner. This latest blast of whatthefuck grimness proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Let us count the ways. This new record is in fact TWO new records, making the full title of the album UTD: Beneath The Odd-Edge Sounds Of The Twilight Contract Of The Black Fascist / The Wealth Of The Penetration In The Abstract Paradigms Of Satan. Phew. Then there's the song titles: "Demonic Order In The Eternal Fascist's Hall", "Beneath The Wings Of The Black Vomit Above", "Deep In The Pot Of Fresh Antipodal Weave"... and it only gets stranger. Besides the baffling lyrics inside there is also a warning: "Don't stop the Furzement! 'Furze' is the name of the blade on The Reaper's scythe. Furze is the one and only trademark of the one and only Reaper, made (that vibration in the whole wide world called) "music" !!! That fire which burns (Candlelight) and that which penetrates golden walls by organic thorns (Furze) supports to take heed approach the Reaper." Indeed. Then there is a completely confusing thanks list, some truly strange iconography, and finally the center panels of the booklet are simply an advertisement for Furze's other two albums (because apparently the original artwork, featuring a drawing of Jesus fucking Mohammed, was just too shocking). Alrightee then. All of that would be a bunch of pretentious crap, if the music didn't sound just as fucked up and demented. But it does, maybe even moreso.
It's hard to even explain what this sounds like, it is obviously black metal, lots of buzz, loads of distortion, blast beats, growled shrieked vocals, but every one of those elements is totally tweaked. The guitars first and foremost, tinny and razor sharp, slippery and all tangled up, impossibly convoluted riffs, produced in some weird way that allows the guitar to go from ear piercingly loud to murky and muddy, often in the same phrase. Then there are the drums, insane and splattery, blasting and octopoidal, sometimes a blast way down in the mix, sometimes a stumbling fill spilling out all over the next part. The vocals are similarly damaged, shrieking, growling, mumbling, howling, sometimes super distorted, sometimes sounding like they are being shrieked from a hundred yards away, sometimes it sounds like they are being spat right in your ear. And the production?! Holy fuck, drums explode swallowing the rest of the sound whole, before the song eventually blasts forth, the guitars duel with the vocals, a damaged dance to the death, it's almost like Faxed Head producing Benighted Leams, with occasional guitar contributions from Greg Ginn and a doped to the gills Yngvie, mix in some drunken fretless bass and some underwater yodeling vocal bits and some freaked out psychedelic guitar skree, all played through a tiny practice amp. The sounds, and the recording, and the concept, is it possible that this is all just accidental? No, it's TOO weird, too bafflingly obtuse, too perfectly skewed -- this guy is a genius. And the thing is that even within all this confusional sonic damage and demented blackness, these songs are catchy, really catchy, how can some convoluted buzzing slippery buzz saw riff get stuck permanently in your head? Or some shrieked line of obtuse black poetry? Only Woe J. Reaper, the man who is Furze, knows for sure.
So completely and utterly recommended. Black metal record of the year for sure...
MPEG Stream: "A Life About My Sabbath"
MPEG Stream: "Demonic Order In The Eternal Fascist's Hall"
MPEG Stream: "Mandragora Officinarum"

SUNN O))) & BORIS Altar (Southern Lord) cd 14.98
It was inevitable really. The Japanese masters of Orange Amp-powered drone-sludge and the robed priests of low end doom. How could it not happen? In fact, if you remember the 2005 April Fool's AQ list, we actually jokingly predicted this epochal event! Although in our version it also included Earth, each band playing one note of the world's heaviest E chord.
The real question was never IF it would happen, it was when. And how. Especially how. C'mon, how on earth can you fit that many amps in a recording studio. They must have used an airplane hanger, either that or they filled a high school gymnasium with Sunn and Orange stacks and microphones, and actually played in an entirely different room.
Regardless, it happened, and it sounds as good as you might imagine. Both bands completely compliment each other. SUNNO))), whose slow motion riffing borders on pure ambience, is given a serious propulsive shove, with more structured riffing and the addition of DRUMS!!! Boris get dragged back into the gloriously glacial tarpit of their older records, discarding their current garage rock rrrooooaaar for that classic slow motion doom trudge. However you look at it, it's basically the best record either band has put out. It's like an EVEN heavier SUNNO))), with bigger riffs and pulverizing doom rock drums, and of course wailing psychedelic leads. For Boris, they've taken their blown out grooves and dipped them in tar, added a million more pounds of guitar firepower and made the best Boris record since Flood.
But it's not all pulverizing doom riffage. There's plenty of dark droning ambience too. Huge stretches of swirling guitar rumble, dreamy swaths of wispy steel string shimmer. murky and haunting, processed vocals and minor key melodies swimming in a black sea of echoey ambient guitars and sizzling cymbal shimmer. The strangest track is probably "The Sinking Belle (Blue Sheep)", sort of the Boris / SUNNO))) version of a torch song, with FX smeared piano, strange buried rhythms, and hushed vocals, like a doom metal Mazzy Star.
The closer "Bloodswamp" is 14 minutes of churning downtuned guitars and shimmering Sunroof! like ambience. No riffs really, or if they are there, they're stretched into thick streaks of black fuzz. A furiously epic coda to a fucking amazing record.
The first 5000 of these (long gone now, sorry) included a bonus disc, featuring, guess who, Dylan Carlson of Earth (making our April Fools joke come true!!). But even without Dylan's presence on the album proper, there are lots of guest performers including Jesse Sykes, Joe Preston from Thrones (also ex-Melvins, ex-Earth), Kim Thayil from Soundgarden (aha) and Rex Ritter from Jessamine.
Packaged beautifully in a mini cd style gatefold, with AMAZING cover art, black on black with weird muted color and text printed in glossy varnish and metallic gold, both bands be-robed and standing in a cornfield, a full color booklet attached to the inside.
MPEG Stream: "Etna"
MPEG Stream: "N.L.T."
MPEG Stream: "The Sinking Belle (Blue Sheep)"

IGNATZ II ((K-RAA-K)3) cd 15.98
Ignatz II (or III if you count the recently reviewed I Will Soothe My Eye To Feast It With A Sight Of Beauty cd-r) heralds the return of our favorite alien Appalachian troubadour and another transmission of fuzzed out, obfuscated, FX laden, bedroom free folk outer space buzz and shimmer. Not too much has changed since I (a past AQ Record of the Week), but if anything, the sound of Ignatz has become even darker and more expansive, and somehow, impossibly more beautiful and mysterious. Another haunting and dreamily disorienting stopover in a musical journey to points unknown. While some of what you see or hear on II might sound familiar, it doesn't take too long before you realize that the sounds here are... well, different, off kilter, damaged, prettiness is present but summarily obfuscated. Bits of folks and blues surface here and there, but are slowly and methodically transformed into a whole new shapes and sounds. Every melody, at first warm and inviting, begins to twist and change, becoming some bastardized blues, sometimes broken down into jagged shards and stumbling cadences, other times splattered into glimmering glistening sonic sparkles.
The root of Ignatz's sound is still a wonderfully gnarled Appalachia, guitars and vocals mostly, drenched in filthy spacey FX most of the time, but even when delivered sans effects, they manage to sound alien and otherworldly. Ghostly abstract dirges, lengthy meanders through epic and ominous landscapes of blown out slow burn riffs and bits of delicate fingerpicking. Hovering above are wistful, abstract vocals, distorted and indistinct, wrapped around mournful melodies, the whole thing stumbling and slightly off kilter. Occasionally the guitars build into huge thick torrents of fuzzy riffing, dense and chaotic, before the riffs crumble and threaten to fall apart completely, until the vocals and guitars tangle up and become more and more indistinct, a slow shifting cloud of blues shimmer and folk swirl.
It almost sounds as if someone pulled apart some old blues 78's, piece by piece, note by note, and then, hundreds of years later, reassembled them without any instructions, utilizing some as yet undiscovered alien technology, only to discover that THIS is what music sounded like in 2007. What a strange world it must have been....
This warm and warbly, futuristic ancient folk is a masterfully mangled Delta blues transmitted from planet to planet, and with each million light year stretch, the sound becomes more tangled and less obviously blueslike. Alien musical transmissions intercepted using an old victrola and played back by some crazy old man, sitting on his porch, armed with just an acoustic guitar, a pile of busted old wax cylinders, and a huge bank of broken and rusty effects pedals...
So goddamn great!
MPEG Stream: "He Deals With Love & Her Eyes Glaze"
MPEG Stream: "The Dreams"

IGNATZ II ((K-RAA-K)3) lp 15.98
Ignatz II (or III if you count the recently reviewed I Will Soothe My Eye To Feast It With A Sight Of Beauty cd-r) heralds the return of our favorite alien Appalachian troubadour and another transmission of fuzzed out, obfuscated, FX laden, bedroom free folk outer space buzz and shimmer. Not too much has changed since I (a past AQ Record of the Week), but if anything, the sound of Ignatz has become even darker and more expansive, and somehow, impossibly more beautiful and mysterious. Another haunting and dreamily disorienting stopover in a musical journey to points unknown. While some of what you see or hear on II might sound familiar, it doesn't take too long before you realize that the sounds here are... well, different, off kilter, damaged, prettiness is present but summarily obfuscated. Bits of folks and blues surface here and there, but are slowly and methodically transformed into a whole new shapes and sounds. Every melody, at first warm and inviting, begins to twist and change, becoming some bastardized blues, sometimes broken down into jagged shards and stumbling cadences, other times splattered into glimmering glistening sonic sparkles.
The root of Ignatz's sound is still a wonderfully gnarled Appalachia, guitars and vocals mostly, drenched in filthy spacey FX most of the time, but even when delivered sans effects, they manage to sound alien and otherworldly. Ghostly abstract dirges, lengthy meanders through epic and ominous landscapes of blown out slow burn riffs and bits of delicate fingerpicking. Hovering above are wistful, abstract vocals, distorted and indistinct, wrapped around mournful melodies, the whole thing stumbling and slightly off kilter. Occasionally the guitars build into huge thick torrents of fuzzy riffing, dense and chaotic, before the riffs crumble and threaten to fall apart completely, until the vocals and guitars tangle up and become more and more indistinct, a slow shifting cloud of blues shimmer and folk swirl.
It almost sounds as if someone pulled apart some old blues 78's, piece by piece, note by note, and then, hundreds of years later, reassembled them without any instructions, utilizing some as yet undiscovered alien technology, only to discover that THIS is what music sounded like in 2007. What a strange world it must have been....
This warm and warbly, futuristic ancient folk is a masterfully mangled Delta blues transmitted from planet to planet, and with each million light year stretch, the sound becomes more tangled and less obviously blueslike. Alien musical transmissions intercepted using an old victrola and played back by some crazy old man, sitting on his porch, armed with just an acoustic guitar, a pile of busted old wax cylinders, and a huge bank of broken and rusty effects pedals...
So goddamn great!
MPEG Stream: "He Deals With Love & Her Eyes Glaze"
MPEG Stream: "The Dreams"

PLANTS Double Infinity (Paradigms) cd 12.98
The final release in a seriously amazing first year for the UK's Paradigms label. Some labels manage to be just so perfectly all over the map and so goddamn eclectic without losing their focus, swinging wildly from genre to genre, but with each disparate release and artist possessing some ineffable something that links them all together. Paradigms is the perfect example. Black metal (Throne Of Katarsis, Utlagr), math rock (Woburn House), dream dirge sludge (Hjarnidaudi, The Angelic Process), psychedelic spacerock (Titan), drone (the Walking With Ghosts compilation), prog (Blueprint Human Being), chamber (Amber Asylum), modern classical doom (Hallvardur Asgeirsson), whatever it is that Jarboe does, and now folk. Well, sort of folk. Just like the above mentioned bands, Portland, Oregon's Plants transcend any genre tag you'd care to attach to them. While they may be a self described "psych folk duo", their sound only begins at folk, taking various folk like elements and spinning them into grand expanses of starry skied drone and fuzzed out otherworldly psychedelia.
The opener "The Sky Above You Seeks The Below", is a nearly 14 minute epic, lush, thick organ drones, twist and shimmer and shift, peppered with piano plinks, and a gorgeous velvety torch song croon. Deep male vocals intertwine with angelic female voices, drifting ghostlike above the thick gritty drones beneath. Like a super lo-fi Charlemagne Palestine, a handful of keys held down, the overtones drifting into dense melodic clusters, while the voices weave dreamy minor key melodies over the top. Thick and fuzzy and ethereal. Like using your finger to manually spin an M83 single as slow as possible. Absolutely gorgeous late night drift...
The second track emerges from the first, thick fuzzed out drones intact, slithering and shimmering, before the band breaks into a dark and minimal percussive krautjam, simple rhythms, a looping repetitive riff, plodding along relentlessly through a swirling cloud of guitar buzz, sixties psychrock jangle, warm warbly organ, an utterly mesmerizing kaleidoscopic psychedelic jam that practically goes on forever.
The final track is all acoustic, steel string tangle, slippery slide, shimmering buzz, deep dramatic vocals, sort of Fahey via Comus via Incredible String Band, but with a murky moodiness, a slow moving, otherworldly Appalachia, menacing and beautifully creepy.
Double Infinity definitely puts most of the other free folk and psych folk we've heard lately to shame. Absolutely epic and amazing!
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. And unlike most of the Paradigms releases, which come in cardboard sleeves wrapped in hand stamped, brown paper, this disc is in a white DVD case, with black and white printed insert (much like the recently reviewed Hallvardur Asgeirsson...)
MPEG Stream: "The Sky Above You Seeks The Below"
MPEG Stream: "Double Infinity"

BRINKMANN, THOMAS Klick Revolution (Max Ernst) cd 16.98
Click. Pop. Buzz. Fuzz. Whir. We are suckers for all the sounds that most other folks hate. So much care is spent mastering records perfectly, desperately trying to keep lps from getting dusty or scratched. When most of the time we hear a record and think how much better it would sound with some record crackle, or pops and clicks. We could literally hear the same record, recorded in a state of the art studio, and then on a handheld tape recorder in the forest during a thunderstorm, and we're pretty sure you can guess which one would have us flipping out.
In the past we've discovered dreamy drone records just drenched in fuzz and record static, L. Chasse even recorded a record dedicated to our very own Allan, that emulated the sound or record crackle. You could say we're obsessed. There's something about that sound, it's so raw and pure and beautiful sounding. It may be an unwanted byproduct to most, but to us it's one of the most beautiful sounds in the world.
This new record from Thomas Brinkmann, Klick Revolution, is an entire record of super minimal, skeletal techno, constructed completely from the static and buzz of needle on vinyl. At least it sounds like it. And the sleeve is adorned with the garage sale center labels of all the lps ostensibly used in the making of this record. The strange thing is, Brinkmann has always seemed very clinical, his sounds dry and clipped, as if his records were made in a lab, so it's exciting to hear, a very crisp, clipped sounding record made out of the very opposite sort of elements. Organic analog distortion and inconsistencies transformed into cool digital clickery. The other strange thing is that Klick Revolution seems to be Brinkmann's tribute, or homage to the pinball machine, a very convoluted concept concerning the inclined plane in a locked box and Sisyphus playing pinball with a rolling stone... Not sure we get it, but we do LOVE pinball, and by now it should be obvious how much we love record crackle, so needless to say THIS RECORD RULES.
Based on live performances utilizing turntables and locked groove records, these pieces are definitely reminiscent of Pierre Bastien, Strotter Inst. and other modern avant turntablists, but the sound is definitely all Brinkmann. Hypnotic rhythms, a super skeletal techno, a symphony of Geiger counters, the kick drum is a pop, the shuffling snare is a tiny clipped burst of static. So completely hypnotic. He incorporates longer snippets from the records too but only briefly, introducing bits of melody, weird textured sounds, creepy cinematic elements, each surfacing for a moment before fading out.
Strangely impossibly gorgeous and lush considering how barebones and skeletal this is. Somewhere between heroin house, Pop Ambient and maybe even haunted house, a strange and wonderful world where sound is measured in clicks and skips, buzz and fuzz, snap, crackle, pop and very little else. Click. Pop. Buzz. Fuzz. Whir. Click. Pop. Buzz. Fuzz. Whir. Click. Pop. Buzz. Fuzz. Whir...
MPEG Stream: "Geschlossene Kiste/Initiation_locked Box"
MPEG Stream: "Die Schiefe Ebene_Inclined Plane"

CORDIER, ERIC Breizhiselad (Erewhon) cd 14.98
Making music is all about transporting the listener to another place. Creating sounds or songs that transform the listener's whole world, so with eyes closed, a person could be anywhere, drifting through space, wandering in caves miles below the surface of the earth, laying in tall grass in the countryside, holed up in a concrete bunker during a war, wandering through the smoking ruins of some ancient city, all through the magic of music.
Most of our favorite sound makers use their considerable talents to sonically alter the course of time, taking us back with them to some unrealized past, some mysterious otherworld where it's still the middle ages, or the 1900's, or the fifties or even just the seventies. Their sounds are faded postcards, old snapshots browned with age, glimpses of places and people long forgotten, it's all very evocative and hauntingly emotional. Philip Jeck, Tim Hecker, William Basinski, Jasper TX, Machinefabriek, they all meticulously craft windows to other worlds, using various instruments and techniques, they allow us to step through our speakers and into some rainy day, an overcast afternoon, in a barely populated city, an intimate get together with family and friends, a lonely walk through dark alleys and rain slicked streets, but unlike a film or a photo, these are less distinct, more like memories than actual visual images, and like memories, they are nothing but personal recollections of events long past, and like memories, some parts are fuzzy, indistinct, everything seems faded and ghostlike, on the verge of being lost forever. Capturing that ineffable sound, manufacturing a world of mysterious musical memories, with music, never fails to captivate us completely, and we could listen to those sounds, rich with nostalgia and warmth, rife with magic and mystery, pretty much forever...
French experimental sound artist Eric Cordier has taken a bit of a detour from his usual electro-improv and installation work and has joined the ranks of our favorite sound makers, with his latest, Breizhiselad, an epic and gorgeously inventive exploration of tape, the turntable and a single 78rpm 10" record found in the attic of a friend's grandmother. The original recording, one of the first to proudly feature the Breton language after years and years of persecution, was to Cordier's ears, "horrible because of the catechism-like vocal arrangements" but the conviction of the vocalists, as well as the condition of the record itself, convinced him that these were important sounds. SO he transferred the sounds to tape, and attempted to capture the essence of the music, the power and the passion, while discarding the rest.
The result is a haunting epic, an expansive drift through some lost era, the voices are disembodied and wreathed in murk and static, an EVP broadcast from the beyond, rhythms and melodies develop suddenly amidst a cacophony of distortion and processed voices.
The opening track sets the tone, with a looped low end rumble, fuzzy and mysterious, the rich warm sound of deep harmonies, amidst a bed of tangled crackle, looped and chopped into lurching rhythms, like some disembodied short wave doom, a creepy low end moaning melody that gradually fades into a soundscape of layered angelic voices, creating a stuttering blurry chorale. The record is peppered with field recordings and bits of found sound, whipping wind, footsteps, snippets of conversations, the crunch of boots in snow, all woven into the strangely liturgical sound of Cordier's mysterious world of sound.
Imagine the murky undersea drift of Oval's skipping cd-scapes, but wrapped in a thick cloak of analog imperfections, skips and pops and crackle and hiss, imbued with an ominous undercurrent, minor key melodies assembled from rumble and hum, thick swells of static and clipped stuttering snatches of organ or voice, all transformed into creepy complex squalls of sound, scraping and hiccuping, but just as often, smoothed into hushed, dreamlike drifts, warm and muted, almost like some analog Pop Ambient, letting us float serenely and ghostlike through a sonic world of dark forests and crumbling castles, small villages and rolling hillsides, battlefields and ruined cities, of war, famine and death, but also of hope and salvation.
MPEG Stream: "Breizhiselad / Ar Baradoz"
MPEG Stream: "Lieux De Repos"