BAD GUYS s/t (Riot Season) lp 24.00
We'd been hearing about these guys for a while, lots of people we trust, kept telling us we'd love these guys, and just how crazy heavy and hooky they were, and you know what? They were right. Imagine the bastard son of the Melvins and Harvey Milk, ok? Now imagine that son got it on with the bastard son of Thin Lizzy and the Champs, and then the resulting bastard son got super into Deep Purple and ZZ top, and ended up hooking up with some hot metal chick into Motorhead and the MC5, and they had a baby, and all they played that baby was nineties AmRep 7"s until it grew up and was basically doomed by several generations of rock genetics to start a band, well, then this is probably the band he or she would start.
With any sort of band like this, there's a bit of tongue and cheek going on, not that it's a joke band, but bands like this are meant to be FUN, especially live, the sort of show you go to and end up getting home, beaten and bruised, sweat soaked and drunk as fuck, with about twenty years worth of classic riffs lodged in your head. And they've done a pretty good job of capturing that on vinyl, huge thick guitars, monster drumming, bellowed vox, that sound like that have to be coming from some massive bearded mountain man, the sound flitting easily from dense progged out math metal radness, to punked out metallic stomp, to swaggery classic rock crunch, harmonized leads, cowbell, all the ingredient of ROCK, deftly wielded by these barbarians. Opener "Brick Toothpick" starts out all Champs-y before stumbling into some Melvins style lumber, "Fake Tan" is all fist-pumping, head-banging stadium rock epic writ punk-as-fuck, "Bore" is all churning math metal swagger, with big hooks, big drums, and some awesomely ridiculous lyrics.
Elsewhere, the sound slips from super distorted Torche like sludge pop, to -almost- arena ready heavy rocking a la Mastodon or Queens Of The Stone Age, even some tripped out krautrockiness and swirling psychedelia here and here, but these guys don't get weird or musically high falutin', this is the sort of RAWK, that's about drinking and fucking and fighting, this is the sort of hard rocking good ol' boy soundtrack we all hear in our heads as we're making one glorious bad decision after another. Fucking AWESOME.
MPEG Stream: "Brick Toothpick"
MPEG Stream: "Fake Tan"
MPEG Stream: "Bore"
MPEG Stream: "Hurl"

BAD PARTY Coming Out Slowly (Animal Disguise) lp 13.98
From the same label that brought us the minimal hypnotic pummel of Mammal, and the shrill doomic psych sludge of Cadaver In Drag, comes Bad Party, another hateful noise drenched sonic assault on the senses.
This duo though takes a whole 'nother angle, kicking up a serious din of shitty programmed drum machine, huge moaning buzzing bass, yowled snotty vocals and sheets of squealing feedback. Falling somewhere between Big Black, Suicide and the Brainbombs, these two spew stripped down mechanical garage jams, a fuzzed out lo-fi party ruining stomp, minimal and stripped down, but still noisy as fuck, the lyrics nasty and mean and pretty fucking funny, woven into the lurching grooves and the almost new wave bass lines.
Some tracks get extra murky and grungy, while others sound almost well produced, but even at their cleanest (which is not all that clean at all) the proceedings are still showered in shrieking high end, and that awesome fuck-you caterwaul, you can almost picture these guys shirtless in huge stiletto heels and furs, trashing the stage with just a bass and a crappy old synth, sunglasses, booze and coke, and a cadre of ill behaved hangers on. Bad party indeed. Trashy and noisy and fucked up and fun. As long as it's not your party. Recommended.

BAD PLUS, THE Give (Columbia) cd 16.98
Hadn't heard too much about the Bad Plus other than the ususal "They're that weird jazz group that does weird covers." A bit of an oversimplification perhaps, but yeah, the Bad Plus are a weird jazz group, and they do indeed perform lots of unlikely covers. But beyond that, they are a super original, super fucked up, totally original, post-bop jazz weird-rock hybrid. Which makes them a bit hard to pin down. They are definitely too weird and 'rock' to appeal to jazz snobs, but they have some serious jazz chops, serious enough that it definitely alienates a lot of the jazz-phobic among us. Which is too bad, because they are simply amazing. Splattery percussion is all over the place, skittering delicately one moment, crashing and pounding the next, matched by deep, throbbing upright bass, and wild mayhemic piano. Their originals show a firm grasp of the classics, but their choice of covers demonstrates a band history rich in indie and hard rock. In the past they have covered Blondie, Nirvana and Aphex Twin. This time around they take on Ornette Coleman's "Street Woman", as well as the Pixies' "Velouria", which gets deconstructed into a persistent throbbing pulse (that folks in the store mistook for an upstairs neighbor stomping around) with the song's unmistakable melody stretched out into a classical fugue, that eventually gives way to a weirdly funky free-bop workout. But the album's finest moment may just be their verison of Sabbath's "Iron Man", in which an out of tune piano intro gives way to a sludgy, jazzy dirge, surprisingly heavy, and weirdly chaotic and confusional. Part way through they unexpectedly change from minor key to major key, turning that classic metal riff into some sort of strange fanfare, all pomp and bluster, at once totally unlike the original, but at the same time you can imagine, maybe in some other dimension, the major key version being THE version. And that's what makes the Bad Plus so good, their ability to trample all over sacred ground, be it rock, or jazz, or uncoverable covers, but to do it in such a way that we end up thinking the muddy trampled ground, footprints, dead flowers and all, is almost superior to the cherished original.
MPEG Stream: "1979 Semi-Finalist"
MPEG Stream: "Cheney Pinata"

BAD RELIGION New Maps Of Hell (Epitaph) cd 14.98

BAD RELIGION Process Of Belief (Epitaph) cd 15.98
Yet another one of Andee's guilty pleasures (hard to believe there can be so many). Bad Religion record number 341 or something, and while it's nowhere as good as 'Suffer' or 'Against The Grain' (both are completely amazing), the sound is still quite similar so there is a lot to like here. The only real change is much more melody, a bit less speed, and one of the most elaborate sleeves/cd booklets we have ever seen (especially for a 'punk' record).
RealAudio clip: "Supersonic"
RealAudio clip: "Prove It"

BAD RELIGION The Empire Strikes First (Epitaph) cd 14.98

BAD RELIGION The New America (Atlantic) cd 16.98
The newest offering from this 'intelligent' punk band. And while not their best record, certainly their best sounding (thanks to a sparkling and fairly creative Todd Rundgren production). They still remain head and shoulders above most pop punk bands. Catchy songs, hooks, and occasionally hyper-literate lyrics. It must suck to have helped define a genre, and then wake up one day, fifteen years later, opening for Blink 182. They deserve better.

BAD SECTOR / CONTAGIOUS ORGASM Vacuum Pulse (Old Europa Cafe) cd 15.98
"Vacuum Pulse" is a collaborative effort between Japan's Contagious Orgasm and Italy's Bad Sector, both of whom have extensive catalogues of post-industrial rumblings. This was originally a cassette from Old Europa Cafe, who fortunately issued this again in a digital format with two extra collaborative tracks. Bad Sector's sound is typified by slow Wagnerian melodic progressions creeping out of tense John Duncan-esque data-crunched drones. Contagious Orgasm prefers to lace processed authoritative speech patterns with Eraserhead radiator sounds. Their collaborative efforts sounds a lot like a louder Main without as much bass and with a gilded aura surrounding all of the work.

BAD STATISTICS Lucky Town Gone (Pseudo Arcana) cd 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Awesome! We'd been waiting and wanting more from New Zealand's bizarre Bad Statistics ever since we got their vinyl-only debut, Static, last year. In addition to thinking they had a really excellent band name, we loved the doomic, droning weirdness of their propulsive krauty NZ noiserock, made even weirder by the utter outsider vocal garble that arose over their ritualistic music, like spirits or specters seemingly summoned from the other side. Now, huzzah, there's this new full-length, an actual cd on the Pseudo-Arcana label, and it pretty much picks up where the LP left off! 47 and a half minutes more of mysterious musical ceremony, Bad Statistics style, on these seven tracks. Again, the vocals (produced from the throat of one Thebis Mutante) are really strange, unhinged alien hippy rant-chant, like Ya Ho Wah's Father Yod speaking in tongues, sometimes looped and layered. Together with the throbbing drum beats, distorted electronic textures from guitar and bass, and hollow horn bleat and twitter on a track or two, you have the basic tempel-vibrating template for Bad Statistics' repetitive, rumbling, mesmerizing murk. Best listened to from a yogic position of spiritual openness, legs crossed, mind clear, third eye unblinking. Though, at their loudest, most intense chugging psychrock peaks, some vigorous rocking back and forth will be called for, maybe even full-on writhing on the floor.
Let's take the 13-minute title track as an example... it's moaningly eased into, the percussive plod slow and sparse, but after a short while Thebis cries out quite like Can's Damo Suzuki, and the pace picks up, cymbals crashing... before another long droning lull with whistling and mumbling drifting over the slo-mo chug of the guitars and drums... then towards the very end, the singer suddenly seems possessed, his voice dropping into a guttural exhortations, the din of the instruments rising into a psychedelic swirling howl... welcome to the reverse exorcism!!
Imagine the kosmic-kraut-primitivism of early Amon Duul, Tangerine Dream, or Siloah, with Circle's Mika Ratto as voice coach, encouraging Yod x Yoko vocal vibrations. Or the linear lo-fi insanity of a secret Dead C meets Reynols monster jam, if directed towards the worship of some ancient god, recorded on cheap cassette only as an afterthought. Yeah. It's pretty much awesome.
MPEG Stream: "Balloon Outbreak"
MPEG Stream: "Three Swarms Of Bees"

BAD STATISTICS Static ((K-RAA-K)3) lp 13.98
One of our favorite new records of late, comes to us all the way from New Zealand, but via Belgium (where their label, long time AQ faves Kraak are based). A mysterious troupe called Bad Statistics, their debut a two song vinyl only EPIC. Equal parts droney noise rock, propulsive krautrock, and even some weird sort-of-doom. Drenched in swirls of chaotic FX and a blown out in-the-red recording, that manages to be fierce and murky at the same time.
Each track takes up a whole side and is given plenty of time to change shape and direction, sound and spirit, transforming gradually, but managing to remain hypnotic and blissed out. The A side, begins as a doomy plod, but with clean guitars instead of downtuned distorted ones, the drums spare, and all manner of weird demon-y vocals, a sort of post rocky crawl. Eventually, synths join the fray, and along with the drums, they lock into a looped cyclical groove, over which, still more strange vocals croon and moan. And we're talking REALLY strange, mewling moaning howling weirdness. The music sounds like some spaced out Tangerine Dream, the drums a constant pound way down in the mix, the synths pulsing and throbbing, the vocals though turn it into some damaged outsider space jam. At one point the synths drop out and the vocals go crazy, sounding like they're speaking in tongues, before the band kick back in, launching into a fierce Hawkwind style FX drenched psychrock outro that goes on forever.
The second track is even better, and one of our favorite songs of the year hands down. A gorgeously blown out dirge, the guitars so hot they crumble with every downbeat, the recording super distorted and raw, but the melody and the main riff are super gorgeous, catchy and minor key, the track relaxes briefly, spreading out into a glitchy ambient murmur, over which guitars shimmer, little bits of electronics flutter, and the bass holds it all together with a simple dreamy groove. Very krautrocky, and a bit like a more lo-fi noiserock Necks. The track shifts constantly over the next ten minutes or so, to weird doomy twang, with gorgeous majestic riffing, thick bass chords, and some shapeless falsetto vocals, then to a super distorted psychdrone freakout, replete with chiming guitar harmonics, and a pulsing throbbing rhythm buried beneath a layer of crunchy buzz, then to a sunbaked space jam, all open chords, simple drumming, more shapeless vox, and finally to a washed out krautrock dirge, peppered with bits of backwards percussion, garbled voices, reverse guitar, and jagged chunks of crumbling distortion, until the whole thing slowly burns to black.
Sorry to everyone without a turntable, but this just may be the blown out space psych doom kraut jam of the year!!
MPEG Stream: "Static One (Excerpt)"
MPEG Stream: "Static Two (Excerpt)"

BAD TIMES s/t (Sympathy For the Record Industry) cd 14.98
This is Eric Oblivian (Oblivians), Jay Reatard (Reatards, Lost Sounds), and King Louie Bankston (Persuaders, King Louie One Man Band, Royal Pendletons). They got together to record an album of songs they had worked up in their individual "bad times" outside of their regular bands. All three met in New Orleans for one day of practice and one day of recording. Totally fuzzed out fucked up lo-fi madness. Punky and Stoogesy, a wild and chaotic messy party.
RealAudio clip: "Over You"
RealAudio clip: "Momma Told Me So"

BAD TRIPS Open (Rocketship) lp 15.98

BAD TRIPS Open (Rocketship) lp 15.98

BAD TRIPS, THE s/t (Rocketship) lp 15.98

BADAWI Safe (Asphodel) cd 14.98
Some of you might be familiar with Raz Mesinai from his work with the illbient/ambient dub project Sub Dub. If so you know that he has this great ability to get to eerie places in the music he creates. Growing up in Jerusalem he spent many of his formative years around Bedouins and really really latching onto their musical stylings. Then studying with dervish sheik Murshid Hassan he became a master of Middle Eastern drumming excelling in the playing of everything from bendir to zarb to darbukka. Meanwhile, he also studied extensively with folk musician and Hasidic rabbi Harov Shlomo Carlebach. All this background info really sets the stage for this outing as Badawai. The underlying tension in his homeland is no doubt a constant fuel for his music. Taking from both Palestinian and Jewish traditions he creates songs that are loaded with suspense and sizzle under the surface. With an amazing ensemble including Eyvind Kang, Marc Ribot and Mark Feldman the result is darn near flawless. It might just be a matter of moments before Mesani is snagged by a big film studio because we can't think of anyone better suited to score films filled with drama, mystery, suspense and horror. Wow.
MPEG Stream: "Etheric Uprise"
MPEG Stream: "Safe"

BADGERLORE Stories For Owls (Free Porcupine Society) cd 14.98
What do you get when you take Tom Carter of Charalambides, Ben Chasny of Six Organs Of Admittance, Pete Swanson of the Yellow Swans and Rob Fisk of Seven Year Rabbit Cycle? The curiously monickered Badgerlore actually, who manage to take the disparate sounds of all the contributors and weave them into a rich thick sonic soup of fuzzed out psychedelic soundscapes, haunting disembodied falsetto vocals, urgently strummed acoustic guitars, keening minor key melodies, and darkly ominous rumbles and whirs, all beneath a thick haze of speaker hiss, staticky grit, warm thick reverb, fuzzy instrument buzz and atmospheric shimmer. So lovely. Packaged in beautiful hand screened / yellow ink sleeves.
MPEG Stream: "Stone Stick Earth Brick"
MPEG Stream: "String Wrist"

BADGERLORE Stories For Owls (Yik Yak) lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
What do you get when you take Tom Carter of Charalambides, Ben Chasny of Six Organs Of Admittance, Pete Swanson of the Yellow Swans and Rob Fisk of Seven Year Rabbit Cycle? The curiously monickered Badgerlore actually, who manage to take the disparate sounds of all the contributors and weave them into a rich thick sonic soup of fuzzed out psychedelic soundscapes, haunting disembodied falsetto vocals, urgently strummed acoustic guitars, keening minor key melodies, and darkly ominous rumbles and whirs, all beneath a thick haze of speaker hiss, staticky grit, warm thick reverb, fuzzy instrument buzz and atmospheric shimmer. So lovely. Packaged in beautiful hand screened / metallic ink sleeves.
MPEG Stream: "Stone Stick Earth Brick"
MPEG Stream: "String Wrist"

BADGERLORE We Are All Hopeful Farmers, We Are All Scared Rabbits (Xeric) cd 16.98
A welcome and wonderful follow up to the debut Badgerlore record from a couple years back. This time out Rob Fisk (7 Year Rabbit Cycle), Tom Carter (Charlambides), Ben Chasny (Six Organs Of Admittance, Comets On Fire), and Pete Swanson (Yellow Swans) add Glen Donaldson (Blithe Sons, Skygreen Leopards) and Liz Harris (Grouper) into the stew, creating hazy and blurry meditations that sound like some perfect cosmic meeting of the most ghostly moments of Loren Mazzacane Connors and the earthly explorations of The Jeweled Antler set. It's almost as if you can hear the sounds of the mud and the moon on this album as there is such a prevailing sense of nature intertwining with the outerworld. Grouper's sensibility is felt in a really nice way, adding wonderful layers of delay and mystique to the already mysterious surroundings. One of those records that perfectly fills that mysterious gap somewhere between waking and sleeping. Whispers of guitars, voices off in the distance, rumblings you can't totally place. It all feels like some weird fever dream where you can't really make out what's happening but you can't imagine being anywhere else, enthralled and blissfully entranced...
MPEG Stream: "The Crops That You Tend"
MPEG Stream: "Mountain Wine"
MPEG Stream: "Duet"

BADLY DRAWN BOY About A Boy (Original Soundtrack) (XL Recordings) cd 16.98
Once Byram brought it to our attention that Mr. Damon Gough sounds remarkably like a rather chipper Elliott Smith, we couldn't hear these songs as being sung by anyone but! Check out the songs "Something To Talk About" or "River Sea Ocean" if you wanna hear for yourself what we're talking about. So if you've been craving something new from either of these gifted songcraftsmen, this soundtrack might be calling your name. It's all here! Rollicking do-do-dododo's, sweeping string and horn swirliness, sweetly strolling acoustic guitar melodies, lush female backing vocals... oh yes, and of course, his scruffy, knit-capped, sensitive guy voice. He *is* a lot more happy then Elliot Smith, though, and the music sounds that way too. Oh and one more lil' observation, the second track sort of swerves in and out of Sanford and Son tv show theme song-ness. Strange, but aside from that oddness, this impressive soundtrack will certainly not disappoint Mr. Gough's many admirers, will certainly win him a batch of new ones, and will tide everyone over until the next BDB album proper.
RealAudio clip: "Something To Talk About"
RealAudio clip: "River Sea Ocean"
RealAudio clip: "Walking Out Of Stride"

BADLY DRAWN BOY Born In The U.K. (Astralwerks) cd 16.98
Another solid ear pleaser from Mr. Damon Gough. He's always been a fine folk popster (or pop folkster?), but Born In The U.K. might be his most country leaning album to date, and his most smooth and accessible. He's definitely scaled back a bit from the grand orchestrations of his last album, 2004's beauty One Plus One Is One. While he might be prone to rambling and mild distemper on stage, here on record he keeps things even keeled, the tone warm and the mood down low. Still very steeped in sentimentality. His songs always make you go "awwwww". Some have liken him this time to a more sullen Neil Diamond (mind you, not quite to the extreme of Crooked Fingers' Eric Bachmann). Maybe a bit damp, but never dreary. Such shufflin' shamblin' sweater wearin' earthiness makes a perfect accompaniment to an autumn cuddle up.

MPEG Stream: "Welcome To The Overground"
MPEG Stream: "The Way Things Used To Be"

BADLY DRAWN BOY Have You Fed The Fish (Artist Direct) cd 16.98
In-store listens of this new Badly Drawn Boy album have drawn more vocal comparisons to the intelligent, tweaked pop of Robyn Hitchcock than to the sentimental, boyish heartbreak of Elliott Smith (to whom he formerly bore more than a striking vocal resemblance). Yet, this also seems to be his most accessible work to date. Whereas Hour Of Bewilderbeast was lovely, melancholic, and flowing, this is much more saturated, eccentric, and lively (much like Hitchcock or more recently Destroyer's Dan Bejar). Actually Damon Gough's recent soundtrack to About A Boy seemed a much more logical full length successor to his debut! However, this album does still shine with the sharp, detailed songcraft (often very reminiscent of Lennon and McCartney) and soaring grandeur of his previous works, not to mention the deeply romantic heart, but he's incorporated more classic '60s/'70s pop rock elements (y'know, lots of piano, a fine variety of backing vocals!) into the arrangements. A little different, yes, but pretty great in a grow-on-you-with-every-listen kind of way.
RealAudio clip: "Born Again"
RealAudio clip: "You Were Right"

BADLY DRAWN BOY One Plus One Is One (XL Recordings) cd 16.98
Damon Gough has pulled out all the stops for One Plus One Is One -- another totally grand Badly Drawn Boy album. Although his last full length Have You Fed The Fish received mixed reviews around these parts, O.P.O.I.O. looks to be the one to which both old fans and newcomers will take a fresh, generous shine. Can this man write a song or what?! And sing it in that achingly sensitive lad voice (still very much like fellow beloved folk-pop troubadour the late Elliott Smith)? And incorporate such a range of styles into his pop structures (some country, some cabaret, some prog even!)? And arrange it all in the most lush yet still earthy orchestrations? Soaring strings, introspective piano, feverish flutes, acoustic guitars? It really doesn't matter what instrumentation he chooses, his songs on this album consistently charm the pants off the listener. Who else can make an album that's the perfect soundtrack for both dreary'n'rainy and warm'n'sunny days. So damn good! One particular album highlight (of which there are many) is the seventh song "Year Of The Rat" which comes complete with glorious children's chorus (psst, the kids reappear on the fourteenth song "Holy Grail"). Absolutely splendid!
Note: this domestic release includes two bonus tracks!
MPEG Stream: "Year Of The Rat"
MPEG Stream: "Don't Ask Me I'm Only The President"

BADLY DRAWN BOY The Hour of the Bewilderbeast (XL/Twisted Nerve) cd 10.98
Now released domestically!...When we first heard the Badly Drawn Boy, we couldn't believe our ears. Who was this guy? He was like a Britpop Beck; sort of Beck-like voice, twisted pop sensibilities, beautifully Sentridoh-style home recording, and songs that kill. Well, we still don't exactly know who he is, except for the fact that he's the Mercury Prize winner, but at least now there's more than two impossible to find eps. Surprisingly, for his first full length, BDB has abandoned the lo-fi bedroom sound, and lots of his Beck-isms and created a lush, hyper-produced pop masterpiece. Somewhere between Elliott Smith, Radiohead, and Beck. Right off the bat, the first song is a spare arrangement for strings and oboes and cornets. In fact the whole record is dotted with swelling string parts, horns, accordions, bleeps and bloops and super creative production. This is a weird and beautiful (albeit commercial, compared to his earlier recordings and remixes) record, definitely for fans of Beck, Elliott Smith, Radiohead, Quasi, Built to Spill, etc. Imagine Beck or Elliott Smith, if they grew up in England, listening to Radiohead and Oasis, and cut their teeth doing remixes for a who's who of British pop/dance groups, and put a record out on MoWax. It's kind of like that, but not exactly. But it *is* totally great.
RealAudio clip: "The Shining"
RealAudio clip: "Once Around the Block"

BADLY DRAWN BOY The Hour of the Bewilderbeast (XL/Twisted Nerve) lp 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Limited pressing on vinyl! When we first heard the Badly Drawn Boy, we couldn't believe our ears. Who was this guy? He was like a Britpop Beck; sort of Beck-like voice, twisted pop sensibilities, beautifully Sentridoh-style home recording, and songs that kill. Well, we still don't exactly know who he is, but at least now there's more than two impossible to find eps. This too was a little difficult to get (check out the price) but it was worth it. Surprisingly, for his first full length, BDB has abandoned the lo-fi bedroom sound, and lots of his Beck-isms and created a lush, hyper-produced pop masterpiece. Somewhere between Elliott Smith, Radiohead, and Beck. Right off the bat, the first song is a spare arrangement for strings and oboes and cornets. In fact the whole record is dotted with swelling string parts, horns, accordions, bleeps and bloops and super creative production. This is a weird and beautiful (albeit commercial, compared to his earlier recordings and remixes) record, definitely for fans of Beck, Elliott Smith, Radiohead, Quasi, Built to Spill, etc. Imagine Beck or Elliott Smith, if they grew up in England, listening to Radiohead and Oasis, and cut their teeth doing remixes for a who's who of British pop/dance groups, and put a record out on MoWax. It's kind of like that, but not exactly. But it *is* totally great.

BAGS Survive (Artifix) 7" 4.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

BAGS, THE All Bagged Up (Artifix) lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

BAGS, THE All Bagged Up (Artifix Records) lp 13.98
Killer compilation of pretty much everything ever recorded by these infamous LA punks, including a bunch of demos, alternate takes and rehearsals! The Bags were originally conceived after a failed audition for Venus And The Razorblades, Kim Fowley's next big thing after the Runaways. Named for the fact that the group would wear paper bags on their heads at early shows (Darby Crash of the Germs once infamously jumped on stage and tore off lead vocalist Alice Bag's bag!), the group would become infamous for wild shows, that would culminate in fights and damaged equipment, the group consequently getting banned from many of the popular clubs in Los Angeles. Sonically, while definitely punk, like lots of seventies punk rock their sound had a heavy Yellow Pills power pop vibe, the songs fuzzy and jangly, and crazy catchy, with cool, snarly, swaggery female vox, fuzzed out guitars, the songs laced with wild squiggly leads, and catchy like crazy. Listening to this now, it seems impossible that the Bags weren't more popular. Raw and emotional, passionate and rocking and hooky as hell, definitely another essential punk rock artifact, and one that anyone who's been digging that recent Avengers reissue should check out for sure!
Includes a massive insert with extensive liner notes by punk rock impresario Brendan Mullen and tons of photos!

BAGUNCA, PAULO E A TROPA MALDITA s/t (Discos Mariposa) cd 17.98
It's no surprise to learn that this album developed a strong underground following among Brazilian youth when it came out in 1973. With its forward thinking arrangements, perfectly played Moog and a merging of samba, afro-funk and American rock and folk, it was for sure a record that hinted at what smart weird pop music would sound like in the decades to come. Twenty years later in a different part of the globe groups like Olivia Tremor Control and the whole Elephant Six collective were playing this same brand of eclectic and oh-so-smart pop. But these guys were doing it way back in the seventies! You might remember Paulo Bagunca E A Tropa Maldita for their appearance on the Brazilian version of the Love Peace and Poetry series. Another nice reissue from Discos Mariposa. Good stuff.
MPEG Stream: "Grinfa Louca"
MPEG Stream: "Madalena"

BAHLU, KALI ...Takes The Forest Children On A Journey Of Cosmic Remembrance (Kismet) cd 17.98
This week the Kismet label brings us two rare sitar infused flower power psychsploitation oddities: The 1971 sitar and electronics groove of Holland's Okko (reviewed elsewhere on this list) and this far-out mindwarping "children's" record for the hippie acid kids: Kali Bahlu Takes The Forest Children On A Journey of Cosmic Remembrance from 1967.
Incredibly strange music indeed! This album is 4 long drugged out sitar, flute and gong meditations narrated by the child-like Kali Bahlu as she talks (a bit ditzily, we might add) to leprechauns, trolls, gnomes, witches, devils and moonchildren about comic consciousness or something to that effect. If anyone is familiar with Lucia Pamela, the eccentric bandleader and musician who made the hopped up Into Outer Space with Lucia Pamela album about an imaginary trip to the moon, Kali Bahlu sounds like Lucia Pamela if she had discovered marijuana, opium and acid at the same time and then soon after found God. We can definitely appreciate the exotic novelty of such a record, and this would be excellent and fun to sample in a DJ set or mixtape, but it might be a stretch to appreciate it for anything deeper than that.
MPEG Stream: "A Game Called Who Am I"
MPEG Stream: "Cosmic Remembrance"

BAIER, SIBYLLE Colour Green (Orange Twin) cd 17.98
Some of us here whose proclivities gravitate towards rare psych and folk have been bemoaning the recent flurry of "buried treasures" and "lost classics". It seems a day does not go by without a new release or re-issue of a forgotten or recently discovered artist rescued from obscurity passing before our attentive eyes and drooling mouths. Sometimes the "lost classic" status is not always deserved (not everything made in the sixties and seventies that didn't receive any attention is noteworthy, somethings are better off staying buried or lost), but it's sure keeping the reissue labels and revisionist musicologists busy as they map out an ever-growing expanse of the spheres of influence on music today. It's hard to keep up and also pay equal attention to all the great music that is being made right now. This makes us very happy on the one hand that amazing music continues to be discovered but it also drives us crazy us to see our paychecks quickly dwindling every week. Why just in the past month, we've seen re-issues from Bridget St. John, Kay Hoffman, John Jacob Niles, Kaleidoscope and Fairfield Parlour (all pretty amazing!) among others. And now on our plate are these previously unreleased home recordings of German underground folk singer, Sibylle Baier. We must admit when we first heard this, we suspected fraud. These recordings sound almost too contemporary to have been made in the early seventies. But after doing a little research, we found out this is no fraud. These intimate recordings fully deserve their "buried treasure" status, for whatever that's worth at this point. Baier, only previously known for a song on an early Wim Wenders film soundtrack, recorded these songs in her home from 1970-73 after a "spirit-renewing" trip through the Swiss Alps. She has the warm Sunday jam and tea voice reminiscent of Vashti Bunyan, but with the more spare guitar compositions and melancholy vocal delivery of someone like Chan Marshall. In fact, we sort of wish the new Cat Power or Beth Orton records were this good! Like Bunyan, Baier shunned what could have been a successful career in order to raise a family and it's because of her son, Robby, that these recordings are being heard at all. But unlike Bunyan, these songs don't derive from a back to nature hippie-folk aesthetic, but rather they come from a more delicate fragility where life's beauty and despair are interwoven with the tiny details of daily life. Beautiful! Totally recommended for seventies folk enthusiasts as well as fans of contemporary singer/songwriters.
MPEG Stream: "Tonight"
MPEG Stream: "I Lost Something in the Hills "

BAILIFF, JESSICA Feels Like Home (Kranky) cd 14.98

BAILIFF, JESSICA Hour of the Trace (Kranky) cd 13.98
Album number two finds Jessica again working with Alan from Low. This time around the songwriting has drastically improved, and the delicate yet dense washes of velvety guitar bear a remarkable resemblance to, yep, you guessed it, Low. Another beautiful release from Kranky. Recommended!

BAILIFF, JESSICA s/t (Kranky) cd 14.98
Whenever this album has been played in the store (which is plenty of times already!), folks have clambered to find out what the loveliness is. Well, it's the new Jessica Bailiff! She's singing a lot more this time around, and it's a welcome development. Her third full length is absolutely dreamy, quietly weaving together elements of spartan folk and spacious chamber music, with plenty of nods to fellow Kranksters Low (whose Alan Sparhawk produced her first album). Listening to this eponymous album almost feels like an intrusion, but each of her songs only draws you in further. These are the songs sung to the stars on a sleepless night. Quite often her softly murmured vocals are only accompanied by some hushed strings, piano or a barely strummed acoustic guitar - both hovering in the air like a frosty breath. And even when more sounds enter the stage - a sitar, a violin-uke, some digital effects - they're the sheerest of shimmering veils. Mesmerizing.
RealAudio clip: "Hour Of The Traces"
RealAudio clip: "Time Is An Echo"

BAILTER SPACE s/t (Flying Nun) cd 23.00
Bailter Space by now is all but defunct, with most of their records released through Matador in the US now deleted and unavailable. That's unfortunate, as the short lived career of this late '80s and early '90s New Zealand droned out, art-rock band offered a brilliantly unique parallel to the English shoegazing scene (dead ringers sometimes for Swervedriver) and Seattle's nascent grunge community.
Bailter Space was a trio, whose members performed as NZ legends The Gordons in the early '80s, developing a cantankerous post-punk sound whose short-fused riffs, off-kilter bursts of noise, and rhythmic teeth-gnashing had been one of the many influences on Sonic Youth. After their dissolution in the mid 80s and subsequent resolution as Bailter Space in 1987, the trio had softened some of the rough edges creating a signature sound that perfectly brought together Joy Division and the Velvet Underground within the bleary-eyed charm that seemed almost natural to every one else on Flying Nun (e.g. The Chills, Pin Group, This Kind Of Punishment, etc.).
It's a bit hard to figure out what's going on with this record, a compilation actually of tracks from other releases, a greatest hits sort of, there's no real info, and the album doesn't even say which track came from which album -- just a track listing and the legal stuff, that's it. Needless to say, they all rule, and it makes us want to listen ot ALL those records again. As we mentioned, all of their US albums are out of print (and it's unclear if the NZ releases are still available); so this anthology is certainly a welcome return for a band that had long been a favorite of Aquarius all the way back to our days on 24th Street. Here you'll find the spry rhythms of "Tanker" (which was the title track from their 1988 album) darkly forecasting the shimmer and drone of Ride and Slowdive; there's also the narcotic tunes of sci-fi shadow and murk from their last great album Vortura (e.g. "X" and "DarkBlue"); and plenty of distorted-then-blurred extended passages of drone guitar which really sound like they must have been the template for Justin Broadrick's Jesu. We love this band, we have for years, their Robot World record is one of Andee's ALL TIME favorites. If you don't know this band, you need to. And this is a pretty great way to discover them for the first time, and even if you're already a fan, it's a pretty bad ass Bailter Space mixtape.
MPEG Stream: "Robot World"
MPEG Stream: "SoLa"
MPEG Stream: "Tanker"

BAILTERSPACE Strobosphere (Fire) cd 21.00
There are very few bands from the past, whose reemergence has the potential to get pretty much everybody at aQ freaked out, but legendary NZ shoegaze noise rockers Bailterspace are definitely one of 'em. Their record Robot World still ranks among our all time faves, and over their decade plus lifespan, they pretty much never made a bad record. Featuring members of the Gordons, the Clean, the Terminals and the Pin Group, Bailterspace took the noisy experimental rock of Sonic Youth, and molded it into something unique to themselves, creating a sort of woozy, washed out heaviness, a heaviness that had people describing them as one of the loudest bands ever. But it definitely wasn't just about volume, BS were masters of texture and tone, taking super catchy melodies and stretching them way out into tranced out expanses of mesmerizing hypnorock blissout. Moody and melodic, minimal arrangements wedded to maximal volume, yielded a sound that was visceral and intense, yet somehow weirdly dreamlike. Super catchy stripped down minimal indie rock jangle pop, but cranked up, stretched way out, and doused in distortion and a My Bloody Valentine like sonic haze.
While there was a greatest hits released in 2004, the band remained on hiatus until a surprise show in 2008 in NYC, which in the days of old bands reuniting, wasn't a huge surprise, but a new record most definitely was. And while it's been close to 15 years since the band's last proper record, Stroboscope definitely finds the band in excellent form, the record sounding like it could have easily come out a decade ago, the music gorgeously woozy, the guitars angular and atonal, but sculpted into lush blown out swells, the vocals deep and dramatic, the drumming buried in the mix, a sort of noiserock slowcore, at least on the opener "Things That We Found", woozy and druggy, droney and dirgey, the sort of thing that should have Wooden Shjips fans who have yet to discover the joys of Bailterspace, flipping their shit big time.
The title track shrugs off some of the murk, the guitars sharper and more crunchy, but otherwise, the sound laid back and washed out, thick seasick basslines wrapped around acoustic guitar strum, and big crashing electric guitar chords, the vocals all but lost in the swirl and shimmer. "Blue Star" sounds like Dinosaur Jr after a heaping dose of thorazine, similarly whiny vocals the guitars blown out and psychedelic, and then "Polarize" lets the drum drive things, the muted guitar strum draped over wheezing organs, the whole thing blurry and bleary, the vox a weary drawl, the whole thing laced with jagged streaks of feedback, and then there's "No Sense" which is hugely dramatic, the vocals howled and crooned, over a super stripped down jangly noise pop, before "Meeting Place" gets all modern noisy new wavey, reminding us that whether they realize it or not, a ton of new bands owe these guys royalties big time.
And so it goes. The whole record oozing that classic nineties sound, equal parts NZ and the US indie underground, but distinctly Bailterspace, and another record to add to their perfect streak. And while Robot World remains our favorite, this is definitely a good starting point, and odds are it will lead to an obsessive quest to track down the rest of the catalog!
MPEG Stream: "Things That We Found"
MPEG Stream: "Strobosphere"
MPEG Stream: "Blue Star"

BAILTERSPACE Strobosphere (Fire) lp 33.00
There are very few bands from the past, whose reemergence has the potential to get pretty much everybody at aQ freaked out, but legendary NZ shoegaze noise rockers Bailterspace are definitely one of 'em. Their record Robot World still ranks among our all time faves, and over their decade plus lifespan, they pretty much never made a bad record. Featuring members of the Gordons, the Clean, the Terminals and the Pin Group, Bailterspace took the noisy experimental rock of Sonic Youth, and molded it into something unique to themselves, creating a sort of woozy, washed out heaviness, a heaviness that had people describing them as one of the loudest bands ever. But it definitely wasn't just about volume, BS were masters of texture and tone, taking super catchy melodies and stretching them way out into tranced out expanses of mesmerizing hypnorock blissout. Moody and melodic, minimal arrangements wedded to maximal volume, yielded a sound that was visceral and intense, yet somehow weirdly dreamlike. Super catchy stripped down minimal indie rock jangle pop, but cranked up, stretched way out, and doused in distortion and a My Bloody Valentine like sonic haze.
While there was a greatest hits released in 2004, the band remained on hiatus until a surprise show in 2008 in NYC, which in the days of old bands reuniting, wasn't a huge surprise, but a new record most definitely was. And while it's been close to 15 years since the band's last proper record, Stroboscope definitely finds the band in excellent form, the record sounding like it could have easily come out a decade ago, the music gorgeously woozy, the guitars angular and atonal, but sculpted into lush blown out swells, the vocals deep and dramatic, the drumming buried in the mix, a sort of noiserock slowcore, at least on the opener "Things That We Found", woozy and druggy, droney and dirgey, the sort of thing that should have Wooden Shjips fans who have yet to discover the joys of Bailterspace, flipping their shit big time.
The title track shrugs off some of the murk, the guitars sharper and more crunchy, but otherwise, the sound laid back and washed out, thick seasick basslines wrapped around acoustic guitar strum, and big crashing electric guitar chords, the vocals all but lost in the swirl and shimmer. "Blue Star" sounds like Dinosaur Jr after a heaping dose of thorazine, similarly whiny vocals the guitars blown out and psychedelic, and then "Polarize" lets the drum drive things, the muted guitar strum draped over wheezing organs, the whole thing blurry and bleary, the vox a weary drawl, the whole thing laced with jagged streaks of feedback, and then there's "No Sense" which is hugely dramatic, the vocals howled and crooned, over a super stripped down jangly noise pop, before "Meeting Place" gets all modern noisy new wavey, reminding us that whether they realize it or not, a ton of new bands owe these guys royalties big time.
And so it goes. The whole record oozing that classic nineties sound, equal parts NZ and the US indie underground, but distinctly Bailterspace, and another record to add to their perfect streak. And while Robot World remains our favorite, this is definitely a good starting point, and odds are it will lead to an obsessive quest to track down the rest of the catalog!

BAIRD, MEG Dear Companion (Drag City) cd 14.98
If Josephine Foster is the modern day equivalent of Shirley Collins, then Meg Baird would be the contemporary Anne Briggs. Here on her long-awaited yet sweetly low-key Drag City solo debut, Baird, who also fronts Philadelphia's Espers, has been channeling the old ghosts of British Folk (we got a glimpse on the disc of traditional numbers she recorded with Helena Espvall and Sharon Krause, a few lists back) through new and traditional numbers that feel contemporary and timeless without being too folksy or quaint. Sure the influence of folk music's past is anything but new these days, but Baird has been at it for a real long time, and while she has had some killer tracks on compilations now and again, including the ground-breaking "Golden Apples Of the Sun", it's nice to finally see a proper full length from this fair-headed lass who can strum a wistfully folky tune with the best of them. Lovely.
MPEG Stream: "Sweet William And Fair Ellen"
MPEG Stream: "All I Ever Wanted"

BAIRD, MEG Dear Companion (Drag City) lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
If Josephine Foster is the modern day equivalent of Shirley Collins, then Meg Baird would be the contemporary Anne Briggs. Here on her long-awaited yet sweetly low-key Drag City solo debut, Baird, who also fronts Philadelphia's Espers, has been channeling the old ghosts of British Folk (we got a glimpse on the disc of traditional numbers she recorded with Helena Espvall and Sharon Krause, a few lists back) through new and traditional numbers that feel contemporary and timeless without being too folksy or quaint. Sure the influence of folk music's past is anything but new these days, but Baird has been at it for a real long time, and while she has had some killer tracks on compilations now and again, including the ground-breaking "Golden Apples Of the Sun", it's nice to finally see a proper full length from this fair-headed lass who can strum a wistfully folky tune with the best of them. Lovely.
MPEG Stream: "Sweet William And Fair Ellen"
MPEG Stream: "All I Ever Wanted"

BAIRD, MEG Seasons On Earth (Drag City) cd 14.98

BAIRD, MEG Seasons On Earth (Drag City) lp 15.98

BAIRD, MEG / HELENA ESPVALL / SHARRON KRAUS Leaves From Off The Tree (Bo'Weavil) cd 21.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Meg Baird and Helena Espvall, the string players and female vocalists of Espers, team up with British folkie, Sharron Kraus for a hazy afternoon's recording of traditional English and Appalachian folk songs. Sung simply and played sweetly on guitar, cello, and dulcimer by a trio well versed in the dulcet timelessness of the folk cannon, these nine songs recall the best work of Shirley Collins, Sandy Denny and Shelagh McDonald. Lovely!
MPEG Stream: "Now Westlin' Winds"
MPEG Stream: "False Sir John"

BAJA Maps / Systemalheur (Still) cd 16.98
Baja is a German collective revolving around a composer by the name of Daniel Vujanic. By the sound of things, Baja see themselves in neither Germany nor Mexico, but in Chicago circa 1995 when Gastr Del Sol was deconstructing any number of musical tropes into their own rigid signature sound. Both of the two long-form Baja tracks are decentered compositions of angular guitar plucking, ECM jazz motifs, elliptical bass riffs, painterly splatters of multiple horns, and stumbled percussive rhythms.
MPEG Stream: "Maps"
MPEG Stream: "Systemalheur"

BAKAMONO Long Time Cain (Super8) cd 12.98
Local favorites, loud, raw, and crunchy, packaged in a pretty cardboard'n'gold digipak.

BAKER, AIDAN Pure Drone (Beta-Lactam Ring ) lp 21.00
STILL A HANDFUL OF THESE LEFT! Get 'em while you can...
The first installment in a new series on Beta-Lactam Ring called the Drone Compendium series, curated by none other than Mr. Aidan Baker, he of mighty dronedoomdirge duo Nadja, and as is befitting his status as curator, the first installment is in fact a Baker record, entitled Pure Drone, and the record delivers precisely what the title promises. Recorded live in 2010, the A side, while pure drone, is definitely more than a single tone, or a simple bit of minimal hum. Instead, the sound is lush and layered, a sprawling, smoldering expanse of dreamlike drift, a soft focus slow build, rife with subtle melodies that gradually reveal themselves, beneath subtly shifting textures, laced with streaks of high end and pulsing almost-rhythms and shimmering overtones. The B side is a bit more subdued, a little more minimal, but still lush and lovely, the tonal colorations surfacing in the second half, after a long dark droney bit of hypnotic thrum, the sounds seeming to blossom, the light up, it sounds like watching a star appear from behind a planet as the orbits shift, that sort of fundamental, monumental sonic power, the melodies glimmering and glittering in the alien starlight, so gorgeous.
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES, packaged in super swank heavy jackets!

BAKER, AIDAN Songs Of Flowers And Skin (Beta-Lactam Ring) cd 16.98
Originally released (albeit only digitally) in 2005, Songs Of Flowers & Skin reveals a side of Aidan Baker we love, but only rarely get to see, and it's his slowcore side, channeling the spirit of groups like Codeine and Bedhead and Seam, creating dark, drifting slow motion pop songs, that creep and crawl and unfurl gorgeously and gradually. Like we said, those moments do surface in his discography, especially solo, where he seems more inclined to introspection and less to doomgaze, but this record offers up a whole disc of proper songs, slow, languorous, dark, haunting, melancholy songs, with singing and lyrics and proper rock band instrumentation, augmented by trumpet and violin, it's really quite lovely.
The record opens with "Skin Like Sand", a serpentine guitar figure wraps around simple minimal skeletal drumming, vocals are crooned softly, actually sung, but this IS Aidan Baker, so it's not nearly that simple, the track is laced with bits of glitch, streaks of crackle, and the vocals are strangely processed, so in the background, little vocal snippets echo the main voice, making it sound ghostly and dreamlike. The next few tracks get almost jazzy sounding, upping the tempo a bit, but keeping the mood dour and depressive, "Dance Dance Dance" is a smoky trumpet flecked ballad, all reverbed guitar and sizzling cymbals, "Second Selves" sounds almost Spanish, a little bit of a Morricone vibe, a regal almost march, the horns and strings, sweeping and dramatic, very cinematic, "Take Me Out Of My" is another skittery slow groove, that sounds almost like it could be American Music Club, if it weren't for the strange static and whirling organ drones.
Almost the entire second half of the disc is taken up by the nearly half hour long "Flowerskin" (although some of that is silence hiding a secret track, more on that in a second), begins as a slowly building driftscape of long tones, mysterious electronic glitches and truncated rhythms, before the song proper kicks in, another brooding meander, the glitch and crackle and hiss even more pronounced here, sometimes almost blotting out the song completely, there is an almost Nadja worthy climax, but it's more soft focus and subdued, a swirling cloud of warm washed out drones and tangled streaks of buzz, before sputtering out and leaving nothing but silence. Which is eventually supplanted by a gorgeously dark and melancholy dirge folk ballad, just acoustic guitar and vocals, hushed and haunting and quite beautiful.
Maybe not for the Nadja doombliss dronemetal obsessives, but fans of past AB solo outings, as well as anyone into dark, intimate, minimal slowcore and dark brooding doom pop, will definitely want to check this out.
MPEG Stream: "Sand Like Skin"
MPEG Stream: "Feed Me Yr Kiss"
MPEG Stream: "Dance Dance Dance"

BAKER, AIDAN / NOVELLER Colorful Disturbances (Divorce) lp 17.98
A pretty perfect matchup, Aidan Baker, 1/2 of doom drone duo Nadja, and avant-drone guitarist / filmmaker Sarah Lipstate aka Noveller, who both offer up some of their prettiest sounds for this collection of Colorful Disturbances.
Lipstate starts things off with a gorgeous smoldering driftscape, a sea of tinkling chiming high end melodies draped over soft swells of buzz and crunch, while within a pulsing blur holds it all together. Dreamy and divine, definitely the sort of track that could have been double or triple the length. Her second contribution is just as good, a bit more minimal, slightly glitchier and buzzier, but still serene and dreamlike, with a slightly ominous vibe, reverbed guitars are left to float in a constantly swirling cloud of sonic grit and soft focus hiss, that hiss constantly changing shapes and revealing partially obscured sounds and voices and melodies. So nice, this too could have filled up the whole side and we would have been perfectly happy.
Baker contributes a single 20 minute sidelong drift, all washed out glimmery tones, long and blurred and smeary and indistinct, creating a slow shifting layered landscape of gauzy soft focus colors, sun dappled and prismatic, warm and muted and totally lovely. Easily one of the prettiest tracks we've heard from AB for sure. Like we said, a perfect match!
Vinyl only and limited, so grab one before they disappear...

BAKER, AIDAN WITH RICHARD BAKER Smudging (Backwards) lp 24.00
As if to make up for a relative dearth of releases from Aidan Baker over the last handful of lists, we've got two new ones this week, the collaborative B/B/S/ project, which finds Baker joining up with Svarte Greiner for a gorgeous disc of Necks-like brooding jazziness, and this one, a sort of family affair, a duo of Baker and his brother Richard on drums, and in some ways it's actually a lot like the B/B/S/ record, droned out, trancey and mesmeric, a sort of sprawling hypno-rock minimalism, jazzy and skittery, looped and cyclical, but where B/B/S/ is all low end thrum and murky darkjazz swirls, Smudging is much more psychedelic, and krautrocky, Baker's bass and guitar sounds heavily processed and transformed into soft billowing synth like swells, and long shimmering drones, slipping easily from soft focus dreamdrone riffing, to something way more abstract. Brother Richard's drumming is subtly yet powerful, measured and minimal, but with plenty of expression. Check out the opening track "Sage", which is a gorgeous hazy slowburn motorik kraut-psych shoegaze epic, the sound wreathed in gauzy wisps of atmosphere, and subtly glimmering effects, the track loping and hypnotic, the drums gradually fading out, as the guitars blur and bleed into a gorgeous chordal smear, laced with cool little backward effects and lush softly shifting layers.
The rest of the record follows a similar sonic blueprint, although pushes that sound into interesting directions. "White Desert Cedar" is like the opening track, but wrapped in a crackling field of weirdly distorted FX heavy guitar, the vibe very Circle-like, but way more blissed out, dreamy and druggy, a pulsing psychedelic shoegaze trance-out, that like many of the tracks here, even though lengthy, end way too soon. Things do get even more Circular on the side 1 closer, which explodes into a blown out hypno rock blast, only to have the drums immediately splinter and and instead of a driving krautjam, the song seems to expand into some serious tripped out kosmische heaviness, the guitars swirling and super distorted, the drums wild and chaotic, but still providing a firm anchor for Aidan's soaring sheets of blurred buzz and muted howl.
The flipside slows things down, opening with a brief burst of synth like soft noise, before settling into a dreamy sprawling meander, shuffling and drowsy, all beneath a haunting choral like drone. The follow up too, unfurls gradually, super abstract spaced out drift, keening tones floating above warm bass swells, laced with looped melodies, slow shifting textures, and all manner of cosmic effects, the perfect score for a weightless drift through the abyss, before finally finishing off with another dreamy brooder, a slow jazzy creep, all barely there percussion, hushed guitar filigree, more woozy bass thrum, a dreamy nocturnal skitterscape, darkly cinematic, mysterious and lovely.
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES!!

BALBOA / ROSETTA Project Mercury (Level Plane) cd 13.98
As we've no doubt mentioned before, metallic post rock seems to be its own little cottage industry, spawning more bands that it's possible to keep up with, and causing lots of bands to suddenly shift their sound, to be either more metal (for the post rock bands), or more post rock (for the metal bands). But as we've also mentioned before, it's tough to complain about a sound that combines two of our favorite musics. Metal, heavy and crushing, doomy and massive, and post rock, with its mathy rhythms, moody melodies, and soaring arrangements.
One of our favorite purveyors of this sound is Rosetta, from Philadelphia, who gave us one of our favorite postrockmetal records a few years back in the form of The Galilean Satellites. The approach for that release was unique, in that one disc was song based, with all the requisite crushing riffs and mathy metallic crush, while the second disc was all ambient, long tracks of swirl and shimmer, drone and rumble.
With the postrockmetal feeding frenzy, we were sure Rosetta were on the fast track to being big names in the scene, but they seem to still remain just below the spotlights, which seems to have done them no harm in terms of new music, their half of this split destroys. Albeit beautifully and dramatically. Two tracks, both topping 10 minutes. Both beginning with plenty of soaring jangle and Godspeed like cinematic build. Guitars chime and ring out, the drums are simple, perfectly supporting the rest of the instruments as they drift skyward. The first track builds and builds in intensity, only becoming truly metallic near the end, when the chiming high end guitars drift off leaving a churning downtuned riff, but even that riff is wrapped in effervescent streaks of glistening far away guitar harmonics, and strange vocal snippets, and rumbling whirring low end drones.
The second track follows a similar pattern, but the heavy parts STAY heavy, with howled guttural vocals, and a very Neurosis-y riff, but again, still surrounded by all sorts of incandescent guitars and dense swirls of ambient buzz.
Rosetta are teamed up with fellow Philly noisemakers Balboa, who also do their own version of the metal math rock, but theirs has a foot firmly planted in punk rock, hardcore to be exact. The first track starts off like a super charged nineties math rock jam, with angular guitars and BIG drums, vocals that are sort of sad boy, but build into full on howls, when all of a sudden, the band lurches into an almost blast beat, a furious punk rock blast, that shifts gears again, into a seriously hooky hardcore groove, sounds like a weird mix, but it sounds amazing. And a perfect foil to the languid expansiveness of Rosetta. The other two songs, don't get as punk rock as the opener, instead, mining more of that nineties math rock sound, Polvo, Dazzling Killmen, Hoover, the songs are loping stretched out grooves, the bass and guitar locked in tight, the drums almost tribal, everything crashing together in huge bursts of metallic emo fury. Pretty great.
And as if that weren't enough, the two bands combine forces for the closer, the title track, which to be honest sounds like it could be either band, as easy as both, BUT, it's amazing, a seriously gorgeously executed, heavy and hooky chunk of mathy metallic rock. From the beginning, a propulsive, almost krautrock jam, that slowly and steadily builds into a seriously thick bout of massive roiling guitars, and chaotic drumming, all downtuned and dripping with distortion, the only hint that this is actually two bands is about three quarters of the way through, when the drummers engage in a relentless double kick dual, over which ALL the guitarists spit out spidery glistening guitar lines, a huge glimmering tangle of melodies that sparkles and shimmers, and as you might expect is quickly sucked under another crushing wave of grinding growling guitar. Awesome stuff. Fans of the usual suspects (Isis, Baroness, Mogwai, Explosions In The Sky, Pelican, Tides, Conifer, Minsk, etc..) most definitely NEED this.
MPEG Stream: BALBOA "Kaddish"
MPEG Stream: ROSETTA "Tma-1"

BALDWIN, MATT Imaginary Psychology (self-released) cd-r 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Man, Matt Baldwin just seems to get better and better, taking his already wonderful celestial spaced out guitar playing and constantly pushing his sound further and further out. This super limited self released outing finds Baldwin positioning one short track inbetween two epic 15 minute sprawls which evoke the spirit of Robert Fripp playing a Terry Riley composition or Michael Rother and Steve Reich teaming up for some hypnotic psychedelic kraut guitar drift. Exploring cosmic guitar explorations similar to folks like Mark McGuire and Phil Manley, this is such a wonderful record of truly tripped out and densely dreamy solo guitar. We could go on and on about how much we love this, but considering these are the very last copies left of this cd-r we should probably just say act super fast as we only have ten of these left!
MPEG Stream: "Lindsay And Her Duplicates"
MPEG Stream: "Imaginary Psychology"

BALDWIN, MATT Night In The Triangle ( American Dust) lp 14.98