SOFT PINK TRUTH, THE Do You Want New Wave Or Do You Want... (Tigerbeat6) cd 14.98
How's this grab you? Drew Daniel (one half of famed SF electronica duo Matmos and a good friend of ours) doing a record of mostly punk/hardcore covers: Die Kruezen, Crass, The Swell Maps, Minor Threat, The Angry Samoans, Rudimentary Peni...and Carol Channing? Well it wouldn't be The Soft Pink Truth if gay camp wasn't an ingredient. Hence the show tune. Actually, hence the whole album. Drew's previous solo effort under the Soft Pink Truth moniker was a celebration of gay house/disco culture, and here Drew indulges again in the disco thing, perverting these carefully-chosen punk nuggets into electroclash dance-floor fodder with lots of beats, synth, and samples. He's certainly having fun, and chances are you will too if this concept appeals to you at all. We wonder what's in store for future SPT albums...is he going to move on to his death metal favorites next?
MPEG Stream: "Out Of Step"
MPEG Stream: "I Owe It To The Girls"

SOGGY s/t (Memoire Neuve) lp 32.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Now we can perhaps prove that old adage that one YouTube clip is worth a thousand words! Go watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o49KyJQl-Og
Ok, you're back? Now just try to tell us you don't want to buy that band's record! After seeing that clip of Soggy kicking out the jams live on French TV in 1980 (thanks to our pal Brian Turner at WFMU for turning us on to it) we knew that if they had an album, we had to have it! A bit of research and we learned that indeed they did, newly reissued as a vinyl-only, limited edition. And now here it is, while they last. It's an expensive import, but it's also a deluxe gatefold package, with the super-thick LP in one pocket of the sleeve and a freakin' HUGE Soggy poster in the other (now when other records claim they come with a 'poster' they'd better step up!). And who cares how much it costs, didn't you just watch that video??!
For those for whom YouTube is somehow forbidden, we'll just say that Soggy (what a name!) were a French band circa 1980-82 who sound a lot like a more metallized version of The Stooges, obviously their biggest influence (end of side one here is cover "I Wanna Be Your Dog"). The skinny, shirtless singer is about as Iggy as you can get, with the added shake appeal of sporting a giant Rob Tyner (MC5) style Afro! Though they're about ten years after the Francais Metal de Proto scene we've obsessed over lately, they're more like Francais Metal de not-so-Proto, they'd fit right in, all heavy and punk and psychedelic. And they're even more obscure than those other French Stooge worshipers Angel Face, but just as badass. In fact, before they broke up the were supposedly slated to open a Judas Priest tour. What else do you need to know? Oh yeah, before they were Soggy, in the '70s some of these guys were in a band called the Hardfuckers!
All right, why are we still writing this? We don't need to, just watch that YouTube clip!! And yes, that song ("Waiting For The War") is included here. Act fast though 'cause this is limited to 500 copies and while we got a bunch we're sure they'll go quick.

SOLAR ANUS Skull Alcoholic: The Complete Solar Anus (tUMULt) 2cd 14.98
It's hard to believe, but it's true. SOLAR ANUS IS HERE! It took almost 5 years, but it was well worth it! But what exactly is Solar Anus? An essay by French writer/philosopher Georges Bataille... a burst of plodding pummel from UK freedrone outfit Skullflower... but also, and as far as we're concerned more importantly, a band whose music conjures up a mysterious land of legendary monsters, ancient customs, cult beliefs and ritualized incest, all hidden just below the surface of our everyday world, a place only accessible through Matsuri, a group trance during which music and sound, lights and pictures help transport participants back to those mysterious other worlds and ancient times.
Such is the strange world of Japan's mighty tranced-out psychedelic doomlords Solar Anus, whose sound most definitely exists as Matsuri, a music designed to lull us into a trance and carry us off...Ê mesmeric, hypnotic and HEAVY.
Here, for the first time ever readily available outside of Japan, is the entire recorded output of the legendary Solar Anus, all collected into one massive head crushing, mind melting double cd.
Skull Alcoholic chronicles the band's dizzying trajectory, from stumbling, buzzing, bloody-stumped, sludge doom behemoths to druggy, tranced out psychedelic outer space visionaries, swinging wildly toward both extremes the whole time. An impossible blend of Black Sabbath, Hawkwind and the Boredoms, Flower Travellin' band, Pink Floyd, Boris and the Melvins.
Beginning life as a dizzy and druggy, slow motion stoner doom outfit, with their 1997 album On, Solar Anus channeled both the garagey spacestomp of old Monster Magnet, the epic miserablist doomscapes of Candlemass, and the purposefully obtuse sludge riffery of the Melvins, taking all of these disparate but distinctly heavy sounds and incorporating all manner of primitive percussive rituals, drifting dronescapes, 16 rpm Krautrock groove, dreamy angelic female vocals, massive fuzzed out guitars, huge in-the-red monster drums and swirls of creepy crawly dirge into a truly epic dronedriftdoomgroove sound.
The band's blend of propulsive tripped out krautrock, dizzying drum jams and glacial stoner sludge is at once ominous and swoonsome, crushing and psychedelic, lurching wildly from tripped out tribal Can worship to massive bulldozing metal grooves to super abstract druggy dreamscapes, often within the same song.
Album number two, 1999's Trance!! found the band trudging even more resolutely into a bleak and blown out world of dark doom, sounding more and more like classic doomsters, My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost and Cathedral, but completely tweaked of course, and confusingly blended with epic stretches of lurching lo-fi psychedelic Krautrock blow outs a la Amon Duul II.
By the release of their final album, 2000's Next World News, the band had stretched out yet again, dragging their druggy doom into a head spinning world of cracked skull outerspace trance, spinning even further into the void, not so much heavy as blissed out and psychedelic. Lots of abstract rhythmic workouts, like a more demented, damaged version of Finnish dronerockers Circle, a swirl of confusionally dense and relentless FX drenched Krautrock spacejams rife with belching foghorn brass, squawking birds, dizzyingly dense tangles of hippy drum freakouts, chanted vocals, as well as all sorts of studio fuckery, chopped up tape loops, warbly pitch shifts and layer after layer of fuzz and buzz and psychdrone blur.
Each languorous stretch of fuzzed out metallic groove is swathed in blown out clouds of Hawkwind bongsmoke, but broken up by bleary expanses of chilled out 4am trancemusic, but instead of a post-rave laid back Ecstasy come down, it's like crashing and burning in some dirty back alley from an all night PCP binge, silvery streaks of electronic glitch laid over a pulsing techno throb, surrounded by thick washes of processed tribal drums, the whole thing a very Boredoms like primitive percussive ritual, hypnotic and heavy, sprinkled with all kinds of sparkling sonic twinkles and drifting chimes, and underpinned by a wasted moody muted sixties psychedelia.
A quick look at the band's convoluted thanks/inspiration list gives another glimpse into their twisted musical world: German Oak, Crash Worship, Twink, The Electric Prunes, Stooges, Nebula, Pungent Stench, Timothy Leary, Monster Magnet, Ash Ra Tempel, Sodom, Sleep, Amon Duul II, Exit-13, Cathedral, Joel Peter Witkin, Saint Vitus, Church Of Misery, Corrosion Of Conformity, Romain Slocombe, Jimi Hendrix, Gong, Funkadelic, Budgie, Guru Guru, Electric Wizard, Brutal Truth, the Beatles and more. Phew.
And for all you Asian psychrock obsessives: The Solar Anus track "Dear Mother Coral" is actually a cover of a classic tune by Japanese psych legends JA Ceasar!
One of the weirdest, wildest, heaviest collections of druggy, dreamy, dirge-drone-doom-kraut-space-noise-sludge rock EVER!
Mind blowing psychedelic collage cover art, housed in a super deluxe die-cut 'solar anus' slip cover. Includes a massive 12 page booklet, with the original album art and liner notes. These two discs contain every single bit of Solar Anus ever, including their final recording, the previously unreleased nine minute title track, "Skull Alcoholic"!
Once again, it's the year of the anus! SOLAR ANUS!!!!
ONE TIME PRESSING OF 2000 COPIES!!!
MPEG Stream: "Skull Alcoholic"
MPEG Stream: "Dear Mother Coral (JA Ceasar)"
MPEG Stream: "Don't Run"
MPEG Stream: "Conceive Bang"
MPEG Stream: "Die In The Space"
MPEG Stream: "Nightfall New Year"
MPEG Stream: "The Extreme North"

SOLLUBI At War With Decency (Choking Hazard) cd 13.98
Another slab of crushing doomy filthiness from the Choking Hazard label, who we first heard about via that kick ass Ghast / Yoga split, and who also just released the Moloch cd reviewed elsewhere on this list.
Choking Hazard definitely have their niche, barring the anomaly of the Ghast / Yoga, it seems to be sludgey stonery crusty downtuned distorted drenched doom, whether it's groovy Eyehategod churn and crush, or pounding relentless ultrasludge, they got it covered.
Hard to tell where Midwestern quartet Sollubi fall, they veer chaotically from super slow sludge, to pounding almost AmRep style noiserock, even a bit of drugged out space rock, often careening back and forth between the three in a single song.
There's only three songs, but two of them clock in at over twenty minutes, the songs lock into pounding head banging grooves, seemingly looped, so hypnotic and heavy, "The White Witch" even adds some squiggly space-y effects, making it like the HEAVIEST space rock outro ever, and the outro lasts nearly 10 minutes. The title track is nearly a half hour of slow burning lope, the first half almost pretty, like a sludgey Low, until the song slips into some filthy slithery Killdozery chug, totally channeling old school Midwest thudrock, before spacing out and getting more and more abstract, slower and doomier, until the track finally, and begrudgingly, lurches to a halt. Awesome.
MPEG Stream: "In Violation"
MPEG Stream: "The White Witch"

SONIC YOUTH Confusion Is Sex (Original Recordings Group) lp 27.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SONIC YOUTH Evol (Original Recordings Group) lp 27.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORE THROAT Death To Capitalist Halmshaw (Area Death Productions) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Okay, Sore Throat are one of our favorite bands. EVER. But for ages their shit has been impossible to track down. Crusty, heavy, fast and furious, stupid, goofy, political, pissy, snarky, clever, wasted, and musically unbeatable. They were cramming hundreds of songs on to 7"s before Anal Cunt was even a bad idea. BUT, and this is the big but here, we tried to get a ton of these to list, and managed to only get 5. But we wanted to give at least a few folks on the list a chance to experience the fucked up grindcrust joy of the mighty Sore Throat. So be prepared to be disappointed. Only the crazy dudes up at 2am on Friday maniacally watching the aQ site for the update will probably be able to snag these, but you never know. Fear not though. There are some upcoming reissues, which we'll be able to get plenty of, enough for everybody. But for now, 5 of you are in luck, get ready, get set go...
Oh yeah, the record. A cd compilation of some super rare demos, 83 songs in all, furious crusty metallic anarcho grind. Comes with an extensive booklet, some inserts and a Sore Throat patch!

SORE THROAT Disgrace To The Corpse Of Sid / Unhindered By Talent (Earache) cd 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We were originally trying to track down enough of these to make it Record Of The Week, arguably one of the greatest records from one of the greatest, most ridiculous and utterly genius crust / grind / noisecore bands EVER. Maybe described as Anal Cunt crossed with Napalm Death, or early Carcass via Lawnmower Deth, or Amebix crossed with Electro Hippies, or something equally ridiculous and nonsensical. Andee bought a copy when he was in Japan, and considered the whole trip a huge success, based on his procurement of said cd, which should definitely give you an idea of the sort of high regard we hold this glorious piece of sonic filth in around here.
Sore Throat were born of the same scene that produced Carcass, Napalm Death and the various other legendary early Earache bands, but the group were extremely opposed to commercialism in all forms and took great pains to musically talk shit and call bullshit on bands they considered to be sell outs, even bands on their own label. Frontman Rich Walker, who would later go on to play in doom metal outfit Solstice and runs the Miskatonic Foundation label, was a legendary shit talker, who purposefully alienated bands, labels and whole scenes, which only made Sore Throat that much more fun to listen to, and fun to see piss of all the bands around them, in that way they were sort of like a proto Anal Cunt, and in fact, the A side of this, their final record, Disgrace To The Corpse Of Sid, definitely set the template for Anal Cunt and other noisecore outfits, short sharp blasts of chaotic noise, many as short as a few seconds, 90 songs in 22 minutes, so many that they're all clumped together so as to not exceed the limit of 99 songs on the cd, all these brief blurts and blasts laced with weird buzzes and bleats, strange effects, processed vocals, bizarre samples, the sound often drenched in effects and reverb or totally dubbed out. It may be noisy and brutal and blown out, but it's also weirdly listenable, and we often find ourselves listening to the whole of side A, a twisted fragmented noise grind songsuite that NO band since has come close to matching. In fact if this disc was just those 22 minutes, it would still be worth it. But this disc also includes the rest of the Disgrace To The Corpse Of Sid record, which displays the band's other side, longer songs, midtempo, crusty doomy punk rock, more like Amebix or Doom (which featured members of Sore Throat) or Antisect, churning and heavy, dirgey and crusty, swaggery and snotty.
As if that weren't already enough grinding crusty noisy bliss, the rest of the disc is filled up with Sore Throat's equally ruling first full length Unhindered By Talent, which is way more punky and thrashy, pounding d-beats, grinding riffage, bellowed vox, wild squiggly guitar solos, but the band was already well on their way to being grind/noisecore legends, with Unhindered featuring tons of sub 30 second songs, with 14 or 15 not even cracking the 10 second mark, plenty of goofy stuff too (a killer, warped reinterpretation of Sabbath's "Iron Man" called "iron Lung"), but also some seriously fierce heaviness, some of it easily some of the best punkmetal crust EVER.
Needless to say, TOTALLY RECOMMENDED, cool artwork with extensive liner notes and lyrics, and be warned, it took us ages to get enough copies to list, so when we run out, it might take us a while to get more, if we even can.
MPEG Stream: "Disgrace Side A (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Disgrace Side A (excerpt 2)"
MPEG Stream: "Different Sides... Of Same Coin"
MPEG Stream: "Horrendous Cut Throat System"
MPEG Stream: "Straight Ahead (Narrow Mind)"
MPEG Stream: "Alcoholics Unanimous"

SPAZZTIC BLURR s/t (Earache) cd 10.98
"Way beyond speed!! / Spazztic Blurr!!!! / There is no cure!! / For The Spazztic Blurr!! ... Let There Be Spazztic! -- Let there Be Blurr!"
Holy hell. We never thought that Earache would reissue this out of print record on cd! This 1988 LP of absurdist metal has been long sought after by Allan, 'cause he just loves the Spazztic Blurr song found on that classic Earache label "Grind Crusher" compilation. That song ("He-Nota-Home-Me-Marco") is found here along with 13 other examples of their brilliantly (?) mindless, stream of consciousness, dadaistic thrash songwriting. Ok, normally Allan doesn't approve of overtly silly joke bands. But these guys totally take their jokes into a shaggy dog realm of utter nonsequiturship. Lyrics about Burger King, boardgames, the Flintstones, the alphabet, hardcore punks and rappers...yes it's childish. But it's also 1988. And then there's the way they include descriptions of what's going on musically at each point in a song on the lyric sheet (some examples: "Distorted Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, Distorted Guitar, Acoustic Guitar...", "Total Speed Metal Ending", "Weird Effect", "Surf Part", "Isn't It Neat How This Songs Jumps Right In?"). They were probably a huge influence on John Zorn! Kinda like Dead Milkmen meets the Suicidal Tendencies, for fans of Ludichrist, Lawnmower Deth, S.O.D., 7000 Dying Rats, that sort of thing.
RealAudio clip: "He-Nota-Home"
RealAudio clip: "Def Metal"
RealAudio clip: "Mexicalli"

SPITS, THE s/t (In The Red) cd 13.98
We had never really heard The Spits before. Pretty sure we just assumed they'd be super generic boring punk rock. But one aQ staffer who'd been living in Seattle until recently was shocked that the rest of us had never checked these guys out, and talked them up as being one of his favorite bands, which was enough of a recommendation for us, and holy shit, do these guys rule. This is full length number 5 (we think), all self titled, and all, we presume, packed to overflowing with killer jams that meld Ramones style three chord punk with blown out Devo-style electro-punkpop, and the results are pretty mindblowing, hooks galore, but often buried in murk and buzz, the vocals slipping from a Joey Ramones style yelp to a mush mouthed heavily effected drawl, with even the most straight ahead jams wreathed in weird streaks of processed guitar buzz or twisted electronics, opener, "All I Want" is a pretty perfect pop song, and yeah, total Ramones worship, but the whole track is underpinned by killer sinister sci-fi guitar sounds and lots of buzz and drone, the result is punky pop, but sort of tense and intense. And "My Mess" is all curdled guitar crunch and tripped out doped up vox, wild drumming, and some rad psychedelic effects drenched breakdowns, and while there's not a proper chorus, somehow the whole goddamn song gets stuck in our heads like crazy. Oh and did we mention the bizarre falling apart interlude replete with dialed telephone tones and all the instruments sounding like they're melting before your ears. Then there are jams like "Tomorrow's Children", with muted muddy riffage wrapped around motorik programmed rhythms, and some druggy Hawkwindy vox, with a distinctly electro vibe throughout. We could go on track by track, but it's hardly necessary. 13 tracks, 21 minutes, short sharp, hooky, heavy, buzzy, fuzzy, catchy and totally ruling, these guys might just be our new (old) favorite band!
MPEG Stream: "All I Want"
MPEG Stream: "My Mess"
MPEG Stream: "Tomorrow's Children"
MPEG Stream: "Electric Brain"

SPITS, THE s/t (In The Red) lp 13.98
We had never really heard The Spits before. Pretty sure we just assumed they'd be super generic boring punk rock. But one aQ staffer who'd been living in Seattle until recently was shocked that the rest of us had never checked these guys out, and talked them up as being one of his favorite bands, which was enough of a recommendation for us, and holy shit, do these guys rule. This is full length number 5 (we think), all self titled, and all, we presume, packed to overflowing with killer jams that meld Ramones style three chord punk with blown out Devo-style electro-punkpop, and the results are pretty mindblowing, hooks galore, but often buried in murk and buzz, the vocals slipping from a Joey Ramones style yelp to a mush mouthed heavily effected drawl, with even the most straight ahead jams wreathed in weird streaks of processed guitar buzz or twisted electronics, opener, "All I Want" is a pretty perfect pop song, and yeah, total Ramones worship, but the whole track is underpinned by killer sinister sci-fi guitar sounds and lots of buzz and drone, the result is punky pop, but sort of tense and intense. And "My Mess" is all curdled guitar crunch and tripped out doped up vox, wild drumming, and some rad psychedelic effects drenched breakdowns, and while there's not a proper chorus, somehow the whole goddamn song gets stuck in our heads like crazy. Oh and did we mention the bizarre falling apart interlude replete with dialed telephone tones and all the instruments sounding like they're melting before your ears. Then there are jams like "Tomorrow's Children", with muted muddy riffage wrapped around motorik programmed rhythms, and some druggy Hawkwindy vox, with a distinctly electro vibe throughout. We could go on track by track, but it's hardly necessary. 13 tracks, 21 minutes, short sharp, hooky, heavy, buzzy, fuzzy, catchy and totally ruling, these guys might just be our new (old) favorite band!
MPEG Stream: "All I Want"
MPEG Stream: "My Mess"
MPEG Stream: "Tomorrow's Children"
MPEG Stream: "Electric Brain"

SPITZ, MARC AND BRENDAN MULLEN We Got the Neutron Bomb (Three Rivers Press) book 13.00
"You get a donkey and you get a baboon and you feed 'em a diet of chili and custard for thirty days and then you get 'em to fuck. Their children would be the Germs." -- Kim Fowley
That's just one of the choice quotes in this book, which chronicles the LA punk scene in much the same oral-narrative way that the wonderful Please Kill Me did for the NY punk scene of the '60s and '70s. This book starts in the mid-'60s with the Doors, and covers the Runaways, the Screamers, the Weirdos, X, Germs, the Cramps, Black Flag, SST, Slash magazine, etc etc etc. Everyone is mean and says that Belinda Carlisle was fat and ugly -- aw! The authors went straight to the source, if the sources were still living, so this is a story told from the horse's mouth -- the narrative smoothly constructed from the interviews. While not as perfectly-executed as Please Kill Me, this book is nonetheless highly recommended.

SPLIT CRANIUM s/t (Hydra Head) cd 15.98
A few weeks ago we listed the debut, limited edition 7" single from Finnish/American hardcore hypno-punk supergroup Split Cranium. That was the teaser for this here Hydra Head full length, which includes that single's A side (the B side was a Daniel Menche remix) "Scepters To Rust", along with seven other (mostly) short sharp shocks of this band's noisy, gnarly, D-beat driven loud/fast attack. Featuring our pals Aaron Turner (Mamiffer, Isis, House Of Low Culture, etc.) and Jussi Lehtisalo (Circle, Pharoah Overlord, Steel Mammoth, etc. etc.) along with another of the guys who plays with Jussi in Steel Mammoth. Here's what we said about that track on the single: "Cranium splitting heaviness for sure. Pounding drums, kick ass riffs, massive HEAVY production, some seriously crusty punk blowouts woven into more metallic chug and crunch, peppered with wild squiggly metal shred freakouts, and bizarre echo drenched vocals, that make this sound very Circle-like indeed." Well, a Circle-like version of aggro crusty HC punk anyway (if you've got Circle's Panic cd from a while back, you've had a taste of this). And that pretty much goes for this whole album, starting from the 1:47 blast of "Little Brother", Split Cranium cranking out the raw distorted punkrock in race-to-the-finish, fist-in-your-face fashion. None of the first three tracks break the 2 minute mark, in fact, they get shorter and shorter. But then, with "Blossoms From Boils", the band starts to groove a little more, that's where the Turbonegro-doing-NWOFHM comparison we made in our 7" review comes in. They stretch that one out to almost 5 minutes, and as cranium-splitting headaches go, it's a darn catchy one. A couple tracks further along, we come to "Black Blinding Plague", a track that's about 50 percent just feedback, before the crush and churn and sore throat vokills come in and the party really starts. No wonder they got noisician/droneologist Daniel Menche to do that remix! (Though we wonder, was Merzbow not available?). And then a song called "Yellow Mountain" gets to gallopin', upping the "New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal" quotient while also bringing in some soaring, clean, chant-like vocals (mixed under/above the gruff shouty ones). Beginning to hear some early Circle here, circa Meronia, but more punked out for sure. That awesome headbanger is followed by the album's grand finale, the 8+ minute "Retrace The Circle". It takes the sound of "Yellow Mountain" and gets more epic and Isis-y with it, building into grand spaced out drone heaviness and ending with a totally distorted noise flourish. Wow. We're sold.
For a project such as this, with key members living many time zones apart, who probably spend more time emailing each other than they ever get to spend jamming together in the same practice space, it's damn convincing. But then, we'd expect nothing less from Jussi and Aaron, et. al. And while Circle and Isis fans should of course be interested in this, we feel Split Cranium is good enough to garner fans on their own merits. If we'd never heard of Circle or Isis or Steel Mammoth, we'd still be digging Split Cranium's freaked out HC.
Cd version comes in a nice oversized digipack sleeve, & there's also vinyl but we weren't able to get enough to list this week, hopefully more will show up soon...
MPEG Stream: "Blossoms From Boils"
MPEG Stream: "Scepters To Rust"
MPEG Stream: "Yellow Mountain"

STALAG Dernier Cri (Memoire Neuve) lp 29.00
More super limited vinyl-only, French reissue goodness from the folks at Memoire Neuve, the same label that brings us the mighty Soggy LP reissue featured elsewhere on this list! Stalag are rumoured to have been the first punk band from Bordeux, and Denier Cri tracks their recorded works from their inception in 1978 to their break up in early 1982. Included is the band's one and only release (the hyper-limited 1981 single "Date Limite de Vente" b/w "Secrets," which has become something of a grail among French punk aficionados) as well as unreleased studio tracks and a few live recordings.
Stalag deliver an appealing mix of earnestness, melodicism and snottiness that fits nicely with the recent Perfect Un-Pop and Rubble collections of DIY power pop scrappiness. Picture Buzzcocks/Damned-style punk swagger mixed with a touch of Gallic, cold wave cool and you're in the ballpark. Denier Cri is limited to 500 copies worldwide and we have less than 10 in stock. Once they're gone, they're gone, so act fast! Allons-y!

STARFUCKERS Metallic Diseases (Holy Mountain) lp 15.98
Wow, exciting times at our shop. Even several of the Starfuckers' biggest fans here at AQ had never heard THIS before, this crucial Italian band's debut lp originally released in 1990. As promised in our Record Of The Week review of the Starfuckers' Ordine '91-'96 collection just a few lists ago, the Holy Mountain label (who know their secret history of rock and roll all right!) has now done a reissue of this early Starfuckers platter, a dark slab of Stooges worship containing a dirty dozen tracks so trance inducingly raw n' powerful we can only imagine the entire band were stripped shirtless, bare torsos smeared with peanut butter, Iggy Stooge style, whilst recording this. The blurry black and white cover photo suggests as much, though the peanut butter is not visible...
If, at our recommendation, you picked up the Ordine cd (which is out of stock at the moment - we have more copies coming from Italy soon, never fear) then you have already heard a handful of early Starfuckers rockers from before they went totally gonzoid experimental. The six songs from the band's 1991 Brodo Di Cagne Strategico mini-lp included on Ordine demonstrated that despite their ultimately unique, counter-intuitive, almost "anti-rock" sound for which we consider the band geniuses, they surely had their roots in "actual" rock and roll, very much Stooges influenced (hence the "Funhausen" tag that Holy Mountain head honcho JW likes to apply to 'em). If you liked the Brodo Di Cagne Strategico stuff, then Metallic Diseases is for you. And anyway, how can it not be great with that title?
Relentless punked out noiserock riff repetition that's fuzz laden, feedback filled, with drawling English language vox all sneered and snotty, and song titles like "Dead Metal City Blues", "Western Man", "Cold White Cancer", and "U.S.A.". Godly garagey stuff for sure, loud and pounding. There's maybe a jangling, poppier side to some of it ("Shake Off" in particular), and that's a real cool time too, but what you've got mainly here is a down on the street death trip, Starfuckers on a search and destroy mission to be your dog... this left hand path eventually leads them to the inclusion of some Funhouse style saxophone squawk, skronk, squall on the penultimate track "Flower Lover", and thence to the seven and a half minute final cut, "Grado Zero", the only song sung in Italian, and heavily laced with wiggy electronic FX, which of the trax here most strongly foreshadows the Starfuckers' later experimental direction, it could have appeared on Sinistri alongside "Ordine Pubblico" for sure.
So, it's as if the Starfuckers guys got together in 1990, and decided, ok, sure, we'll make rock and roll, yeah, let's channel the Stooges, 'cause we want to START at the END, and then push past those limits. So, once they had manifested themselves as the apotheosis of "rock" at its punkest and rockest, on Metallic Diseases and Brodo Di Cagne Strategico, they then moved on to the next phase of their career to utterly DECONSTRUCT "rock" on the Sinistri album and beyond... Why they did this, how they decided these things, what happened? We don't know, we can only wonder.
But, while cool and interesting and all, that doesn't even matter. Let's put it this way, if Metallic Diseases was the only record that the Starfuckers ever did, its reissue would/should still be hailed as the discovery of a long lost gem of timeless Stoogified psychedelic ugly-noise-punk-rawk that belongs up there with the output/outbursts of such acts as Union Carbide Productions, The Heads, Spacemen 3, High Rise, Brainbombs, and (more recently) Vincent Black Shadow. That it was only the beginning of the Starfuckers' sonic explorations, a program of experimental rock n' roll reinvention that took them somewhere that no other band has ever gone, makes it even more special...
Totally recommended, as if you couldn't tell. Sadly for those of us who happen to prefer cds, this reissue is vinyl-only, although it does include a download code for mp3's, including the aforementioned "Grado Zero" which as it turns out is a bonus track, not on the actual vinyl (whoops, wrote this review away from the turntable!).
MPEG Stream: "Love You"
MPEG Stream: "Dead Metal City Blues"
MPEG Stream: "(I'm) Alive!"
MPEG Stream: "Grado Zero"

STICKMEN WITH RAYGUNS Some People Deserve To Suffer (Emperor Jones) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Killer reissue of the collected recordings of the -OTHER- legendary-drug-addled-shirtless-drunk-stumbling-rocking-LOUD-punk-as-fuck-Texas-combo (other than the Buttholes that is). And while the Stickmen have a lot in common with the Butthole Surfers (see above) their sound tends towards the noisy rocky end of the spectrum, rather than the tripped out space jam the Surfers were so fond of.
And you may recognise the name as the Stickmen were one of the standout bands on the recently reissued Texas punk comp. Cottage Cheese From The Lips Of Death. Been listening to this like crazy. So great! Fans of the Butthole Surfers, Scratch Acid, punk rock and early Homestead records, should really check this out.
RealAudio clip: "Christian Rat Attack"
RealAudio clip: "Gave City"
RealAudio clip: "What Am I?"

STINKING LIZAVETA ...Hopelessness And Shame (w/ bonus tracks) (self-released (previously Compulsiv)) cd 10.98
High-adrenaline, deliriously complex, hard-hittingly heavy multidimensional power trio music that's part metal, part jazz, part punk, part prog. Gorgeous stuff played with supreme power and passion. Telepathic precision, improv awareness, and hella guitar heroics. They've been around forever and just get better and better. But they started off pretty good in the first place, as you'll hear here!!
That's right, one of our favorite bands, the ever-touring, ever-incredible Stinking Lizaveta (name taken from Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov), have themselves reissued their first album of f'n amazing drums/standup electric bass/electric guitar instrumental action. Post rock, metal, jazz, hardcore -- these terms don't matter, it's Stinking Lizaveta from Philadelphia and they rule. One of the best live bands we've EVER seen. They've done two AQ instore performances in the past, two of the best. And when they played in SF and Oakland last year, they destroyed. Don't fail to see them if you get the chance. If you like Gone, King Crimson, AC/DC, Mahavishnu, The Fucking Champs, Don Cab, Melvins, Gore, Breadwinner, Ruins, etc. get with the program and get anything and everything you can find by Stinking Liz. Especially including this, the new reish of their debut disc. It looks pretty much the same as the original release on Compulsiv, but it's got an unlisted, hidden bunch of previously unreleased tracks tacked on!! Five songs from the same Steve Albini overseen sessions as the album proper. They got left off the album's original release back in '96, but now the band can't figure out why (and we can't either, they're prime Stinking Liz awesomeness), so they've been added on for your extra listenin' pleasure.
MPEG Stream: "Wheaton"
MPEG Stream: "Schuylkill"
MPEG Stream: "LBJ"

STINKING LIZAVETA III (Tolotta) cd 13.98
We've been waiting for this for a loooong time, the new, third (duh) album from one of our favorite bands, the amazing Philadelphian power trio Stinking Lizaveta. The first thing to say is that we like how the front cover shows band members seated in their barren inner-city Philly back yard, while the back cover has a slight variation on the same shot with each band member's pet dog perched on their respective laps...the dogs are indentified by name (Davis, Kira, and Shu Shu), and tracks 7-9 on the cd are named after the dogs! Very nice. They love their dogs.
For those who need to know more, let's give you the basics: This is ROCK. Goddamn. An instrumental trio of godly Les Paul guitar, hard-hitting mathrock drums, and virtuoso upright electric bass. It's not exactly metal, it's not jazz, but it's heavy and tight and blows away most other rock outfits on the planet, live especially. And "III", with somewhat fuller production than past efforts, reminds us that Stinking Liz kick ass in the studio too. Imagine Black Flag/Gone mixed with King Crimson, or AC/DC playing Mahavishnu instrumentals, or The Champs falling in love with each other, moving to the country, and practicing yoga. Those are woefully inadequate comparisons, of course, but that's cause this band is its own incredible thing. With "III", they've added some synth and violin to the mix -- and even some half-buried vocals on the very first song -- but primarily what you're going to hear is the basic guitar/bass/drums trio, simply cookin'. With gas. Fuckin' huge propane tanks of it, exploding left and right. Whoops, but then let's not forget the moments of delicate, Eastern-tinged post-rock bliss to be found here as well. Lizaveta's multi-genre rock synthesis results in a unique and varied album, from the tension-buildup of a slowburning track like "Tenuous" to the Frippian ambience of "Diana" to the psychedelic soulshiver of "Naked And Alone" with its doomy Black Sabbath bassline and Yanni's lengthy Fushitsusha style blues-psych guitar blowout. The brothers Papadopoulos (Yanni, guitar and Alexi, bass) and drummer Cheshire Agusta do all this and more, with sincerity, passion and might.
Joe Lally (Fugazi) released this on his label Tolotta, best known as the home of stoner rock heroes Spirit Caravan. I'd really like to see both SC and SL go on tour together, that would be something...
RealAudio clip: "The Sentence"
RealAudio clip: "Revelationary"
RealAudio clip: "The Hanged Man"
RealAudio clip: "Naked and Alone"

STOOGES, IGGY AND THE Raw Power (Sundazed) lp 21.00

STOOGES, THE Fun House Deluxe (Elektra / Rhino) 2cd 18.98
Hmm. We really should have gotten these listed a few months ago when they first came out, but we were debating with ourselves about whether we really needed to write a review that explained how awesome the Stooges are or not. I mean, we figure most AQ customers are hip to these punk rock pioneers, right? So basically, our recommendation boils down to this: if you don't have these albums, BUY THEM NOW. If you don't like 'em, we can't help you. But we think you'll like 'em. Some of the most primal yet avant-garde heavy garagey punk metallic rock n' roll ever made. Of the two albums, debate can rage as to which is most essential. We don't need to answer that question here. Get 'em both. "I Wanna Be Your Dog" is on the debut, whereas you get all the crazy saxophone freakouts on Funhouse.
Now what about if you do have these albums? Should you buy 'em again 'cause they're now "deluxe"? Well, yeah. They've got an extra disc apiece of alternate takes and unreleased material. Damn!! For instance, the full version of "Ann" on the second disc of the s/t package is awesomely super sleazy -- we love it. And don't you wish you could buy a "new" Stooges album every week? Take this historic opportunity! With one caveat: if you happen to be a lucky owner of the Rhino Handmade Funhouse Sessions box set, you might not need the deluxe version of that album, as we're pretty sure (though we didn't do any exhaustive research) that all the extra material on the second disc also must have appeared somewhere on the many discs of that amazing (and long out of print) box set.

STOOGES, THE Gimme Some Skin (Get Back) cd 17.98

STOOGES, THE Gimme Some Skin (Get Back) lp 16.98

STOOGES, THE Heavy Liquid (Easy Action) 6cd 82.00
You can't get the Rhino Handmade Funhouse Sessions box set anymore, but here's a box set that ALSO features multiple run-throughs of the same Stooges song over and over. Which, as any proud owner of the Funhouse box can tell you, is a supremely GOOD thing. Can't get enough. So, here's SIX discs of primo live, rehearsal, and studio outtake material recorded circa 1972-1974. From London studio tapes (13 different takes of "I've Got A Right" on that disc!) to Detroit rehearsals to Max's Kansas City and Whisky A Go Go sets, there's plenty of raw power here for the true Stooges fan to bask in... some of it you might have heard before, on bootlegs and so forth, but this box set is approved by the band. Probably a must-have for the dedicated fan, what with the unreleased recordings, rare photos, interviews with Iggy and the Asheton brothers, and other stuff (including a Stooges sticker) included.

STOOGES, THE s/t - Deluxe Edition (Elektra / Rhino) 2cd 18.98
Hmm. We really should have gotten these listed a few months ago when they first came out, but we were debating with ourselves about whether we really needed to write a review that explained how awesome the Stooges are or not. I mean, we figure most AQ customers are hip to these punk rock pioneers, right? So basically, our recommendation boils down to this: if you don't have these albums, BUY THEM NOW. If you don't like 'em, we can't help you. But we think you'll like 'em. Some of the most primal yet avant-garde heavy garagey punk metallic rock n' roll ever made. Of the two albums, debate can rage as to which is most essential. We don't need to answer that question here. Get 'em both. "I Wanna Be Your Dog" is on the debut, whereas you get all the crazy saxophone freakouts on Funhouse.
Now what about if you do have these albums? Should you buy 'em again 'cause they're now "deluxe"? Well, yeah. They've got an extra disc apiece of alternate takes and unreleased material. Damn!! For instance, the full version of "Ann" on the second disc of the s/t package is awesomely super sleazy -- we love it. And don't you wish you could buy a "new" Stooges album every week? Take this historic opportunity! With one caveat: if you happen to be a lucky owner of the Rhino Handmade Funhouse Sessions box set, you might not need the deluxe version of that album, as we're pretty such (though we didn't do any exhaustive research) that all the extra material on the second disc also must have appeared somewhere on the many discs of that amazing (and long out of print) box set.

STOOGES, THE The Weirdness (Virgin) cd 14.98
Sorry. Sorry folks. We're very sorry. In fact, we've been putting this off, so maybe we won't be the first to tell you, that this new, eagerly-awaited Stooges reunion album sucks. That's just the way it is. No songs to speak of. Terrible lyrics ("She Took My Money", "Free & Freaky In The USA"). It's just not good. Iggy's made way better solo albums than this, even in recent years. For a leathery old guy Iggy still has the long hair and rambunctious energy of someone much, much younger, that's true. But that doesn't mean that getting together after thirty some years with the surviving Stooges to do anything other than play their old songs was a good idea. We wish we could tell you different, we were excited before we heard it too. But it's bad and we've yet to talk to anyone who didn't agree. Oh well, we bet they'll still be worth seeing on tour, as long as they don't do too many of these tracks...
MPEG Stream: "Trollin'"
MPEG Stream: "The End Of Christianity"

STOOGES, THE The Weirdness (Virgin) 2lp 22.00
Sorry. Sorry folks. We're very sorry. In fact, we've been putting this off, so maybe we won't be the first to tell you, that this new, eagerly-awaited Stooges reunion album sucks. That's just the way it is. No songs to speak of. Terrible lyrics ("She Took My Money", "Free & Freaky In The USA"). It's just not good. Iggy's made way better solo albums than this, even in recent years. For a leathery old guy Iggy still has the long hair and rambunctious energy of someone much, much younger, that's true. But that doesn't mean that getting together after thirty some years with the surviving Stooges to do anything other than play their old songs was a good idea. We wish we could tell you different, we were excited before we heard it too. But it's bad and we've yet to talk to anyone who didn't agree. Oh well, we bet they'll still be worth seeing on tour, as long as they don't do too many of these tracks...
MPEG Stream: "Trollin'"
MPEG Stream: "The End Of Christianity"

STOOGES, THE You Don't Want My Name You Want My Action (Easy Action) 4cd-boxset 70.00

STORMCROW / SANCTUM split (20 Buck Spin) cd 13.98
Want some brutal "war crust" to, um, brighten your day? Look no further. Stormcrow (from Oakland, and not to be confused with the Italian black metal band of the same name) team up with likeminded metallers Sanctum (from Seattle) for this split cd on the ever-reliable, heavy as heck 20 Buck Spin label. Dark and wretched, violent and crushing, it's a raw mix of speedy death and moody doom from two bands both of whom love their Bolt Thrower and Amebix, Winter and Doom. The grey-shaded artwork depicting armored foes in medieval combat is quite appropriate, as across this sprawling split, they're either charging forward with berserk fury, or trudging battleweary from the killing fields... (generally Sanctum do the former, Stormcrow the latter). Imagine Asunder with D-beats.
MPEG Stream: STORMCROW "Dead Dreams"
MPEG Stream: SANCTUM "Age Of Ruin"

STRANGLERS Greatest Hits (Epic) cd 10.98

STRANGULATED BEATOFFS Greatest Hits (Behemoth) cd 13.98
The Strangulated Beatoffs are a weird weird band. But then what did you expect from a band called the Strangulated Beatoffs? Or from a band that features members of infamous noise punks Drunks With Guns?
This demented duo sometimes use samplers and loops to make fucked up hypnotic grooves and seriously demented electronic weirdness, but as is evidenced by Greatest Hits, they're also puerile purveyors of sick sludgey noise rock and filthy drunkrock dirges. Greatest Hits is mostly a collection of seven inches, the earliest recordings of the Beatoffs circa 1988-1992 or so and thus are maybe the closest sonically to the late great Drunks With Guns. Some tracks like "Porky The Pig And Bess" and "Heeby Jeeby/Practicing To Be A Doctor" are heavy dirgey space rock drug jams that sound like they could have been yanked from a Butthole Surfers set, while others, like "Lick My Butthole" musically sound like Dutch post metallers Gore, but with the addition of some goofy fucked up lyrics, and some damaged shards of buzz and crunch.
"It's A Vile, Vile, Vile, Vile World" is a super lengthy collage of looped eighties Carpenter-ish soundtracks, that sounds like it could be James Ferraro, but it's from at least a decade before Ferraro delved into lysergic pop music, so the Beatoffs are unsung musical pioneers! Fuck yeah! There's a Troggs cover too, but you'd never know it, a murky field recording that sounds like it was captured in the bar around the corner from the show, there's a dorky acoustic ditty, some strange carnivalesque child molesting weirdness, some Mentors like punk rock, but the finest moments are when the band do their best Butthole Surfers, crafting longform drone dirge drug rock, all swirling spacey effects, gnarled looped guitars, and mesmerizingly motorik beats...
If you're not sold by now, maybe this will sway you: Strangulated Beatoffs are one of Andee's all time favorite bands. EVER. So much so that he contacted them about reissuing all of their records, maybe even a box set, but all they wanted to release on tUMULt was their record of Genesis covers! (And then he never heard from them again.) How rad is that???
MPEG Stream: "Lick My Butthole"
MPEG Stream: "Did Those Dumbfucks Even Name This One?"
MPEG Stream: "Fake Eyeball"
MPEG Stream: "Heeby Jeeby / Practicing To Be A Doctor"
MPEG Stream: "It's A Vile, Vile, VIle, Vile World"

STRIP MALL SEIZURES No English (True Panther Sounds) lp 10.98
Oakland's own Strip Mall Seizures spew forth a thrashing, pounding, and super noisy record on excellent San Francisco imprint, True Panther Sounds. No English is a cacophonous, damaged and ultimately danceable record for the people that like their keyboards turned WAY UP! Hella good.

SUBTONIX s/t (No Love) 7" 2.99
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Channeling the ghost of James Chance and the Contortions are the Subtonix from SF. Sax squeals amid a herky jerky mayhem of guitar, bass, drums and keyboards. Ah yes, the art-punk-no-wave spirit is alive and flourishing in these five women.

SUPER WILD HORSES Fifteen (Hozac) cd 14.98
NOW IN STOCK on cd! Also BACK IN STOCK on vinyl!
Damn we've been digging lots of stuff coming out of Australia lately. We made the latest from Fabulous Diamonds our record of the week a couple months ago and we've been getting really into Total Control and now Super Wild Horses are our newest Australian crush. We imagine you might get super smitten too for SWH's punky high energy fuzzy pop that is totally refreshingly unpretentious, super impassioned and brimming with an integrity that can't be denied. Funny that the record is named Fifteen, as it kind of reminds us a lot of the heyday of Bay Area pop punk with bands like Fifteen, Tilt, Crimpshrine and J Church. We're also reminded of some of our favorite and way underrated bands on Simple Machines from that era like Tuscedero, Scrawl, and Tsunami. In lots of ways SWH seem to connect the dots of that era to the current wave of rad lo-fi minded garage popsters like Brilliant Colors, Wetdog, and Grass Widow. So good!
MPEG Stream: "Lock & Key"
MPEG Stream: "Fifteen"

SUPERCONDUCTOR Heavy With Puppy (Boner) cd ep 6.98
We've long been fans of Canadian 'supergroup' Superconductor, long before Superconductor member Carl Newman went on to front Zumpano and then New Pornographers, but don't be expecting any sort of pop here, although those pop sensibilities do seep into SC's twisted experimental noise rock. Infamous for their seven (7!) guitarist lineup, these guys kicked out some seriously kick ass jams, heavy, rhythmic, dynamic, walls of guitars, pounding octopoidal drums, howled vox, but somehow, catchy as hell too. We reviewed their classic Bastardsong a while back, their last, and poppiest record, but we just discovered that our distributor still had copies of this, SC's 1991 debut ep, which still kills, and sounds heavier and hookier than most of the bands today, and includes one very aQ jam that knocked us for a loop.
It had been a while since we heard this, but got one in and threw it on, and wait a second, we recognized one of the songs, riffy and heavy, and then the vocals, a super distinctive wail, and it dawned on us, it was a cover of Japanese '70s hard psych gods Flower Travellin' Band's "Satori Part One", and it was awesome, not that far removed from the original, the vocals spot on, just a bit buzzier and heavier. And we were struck again by what amazing music nerds these guys were. The cover of Bastardsong was a parody of Iasos' new age classic Inter-Dimensional Music which we just listed a while back, and here they were covering Flower Travellin' Band WAY before any of us had heard them. And it's that music nerdery that informed the music of Superconductor and elevated their sound WAY beyond bash and crash noise rock. So yeah, the FTB cover here is worth the price of admission. But the rest of the songs rule too, "Bushpilot" is ridiculously hooky and catchy for being a weirdly mathy chunk of noise drenched indie rock, a should have been nineties underground hit if there ever was one. "Ride The Big Penis", besides having an amazing title, also boasts some serious churning riffage, and some skull caving drum pummel, which leads directly into "Clamhammer" (these guys had a way with titles), another melody infused slab of noiserock, that sounds a bit like Sonic Youth mixed with Unsane mixed with Polvo, angular and buzzy and sludgey and blown out. Finally, the group finishes off with "Riffmania", which is as advertised, chugging, buzzing riffage wrapped around some BIG drums, with the multiple guitarists adding all sorts of psychedelic squiggle and layered buzz, not to mention some seriously distorted in-the-red vocal howls (about as far removed from the New Pornographers as can be), the song gradually splintering into crumbling slabs of disembodied riffage, swirls of feedback and wildly loosening drum damage.
Oh did we mention the amazing confusional cover art, how about the names of the band members: Dream Whip, It's On You, Thighmaster, He Who Is Named, Flying Fist, Noise Annoys, El Impacto, Sweet Bitch, Delicious Warm, and weirdest of all... Alan Smithee (the pseudonym movie directors use when they don't want their own name on a film!).
We love these guys, and this might be their finest moment, heavy and hooky in equal measure, tongue lodged firmly in cheek, but seriously ruling!
MPEG Stream: "Satori Part One"
MPEG Stream: "Bush Pilot"
MPEG Stream: "Riffmania"

SWARM OF THE LOTUS When White Becomes Black (At A Loss) cd 12.98

SWELL MAPS A Trip To Marineville ( Secretly Canadian) cd 14.98
The Swell Maps were a brief late seventies / early eighties solar flare of totally brilliant, clattery, jangly, ramshackle experimental art pop like no one had ever heard. And without the Maps we definitely would not have had Sonic Youth or Pavement or about a million other bands. Fronted by brothers Nikki Sudden and Epic Soundtracks, Swell Maps were a bouncy Britpunk kick in the chin, mixed with druggy clumsy psych rock explorations, speaker bashing freakouts, hypnotic droney dirges, whiny snotty British vocals, brittle guitars, splattery drumming and and downright free-noise.
A Trip To Marineville was their debut record from 1979. The reissue includes an interview with the band, extensive liner notes, lyrics, song by song analysis and loads of photos as well as a video for the track "Midget Submarine", an awesome collage of live and found footage! There are bonus tracks, unfortunately if you have the now out of print Mute versions, you're gonna need both, since while the Mute versions have more bonus tracks, some of the bonus tracks included here are NOT on the Mute versions. Arghhh.
MPEG Stream: "H.S. Art"
MPEG Stream: "Another Song"
MPEG Stream: "Spitfire Parade"

SWELL MAPS A Trip To Marineville (Secretly Canadian) lp 14.98
Newly Reissued on Vinyl!
The Swell Maps were a brief late seventies / early eighties solar flare of totally brilliant, clattery, jangly, ramshackle experimental art pop like no one had ever heard. And without the Maps we definitely would not have had Sonic Youth or Pavement or about a million other bands. Fronted by brothers Nikki Sudden and Epic Soundtracks, Swell Maps were a bouncy Britpunk kick in the chin, mixed with druggy clumsy psych rock explorations, speaker bashing freakouts, hypnotic droney dirges, whiny snotty British vocals, brittle guitars, splattery drumming and and downright free-noise.
A Trip To Marineville was their debut record from 1979. Reissue comes with a download card plus bonus 7" that accompanied the original release!
MPEG Stream: "H.S. Art"
MPEG Stream: "Another Song"
MPEG Stream: "Spitfire Parade"

SWELL MAPS Jane From Occupied Europe ( Secretly Canadian) cd 14.98
The Swell Maps were a brief late seventies / early eighties solar flare of totally brilliant, clattery, jangly, ramshackle experimental art pop like no one had ever heard. And without the Maps we definitely would not have had Sonic Youth or Pavement or about a million other bands. Fronted by brothers Nikki Sudden and Epic Soundtracks, Swell Maps were a bouncy Britpunk kick in the chin, mixed with druggy clumsy psych rock explorations, speaker bashing freakouts, hypnotic droney dirges, whiny snotty British vocals, brittle guitars, splattery drumming and and downright free-noise.
Jane From Occupied Europe was their second and final record from 1980. The band split soon after with Suddn forming the Jacobites and Soundtracks going on to join Crime And The City Solution. The reissue includes an interview with the band, extensive liner notes, lyrics, song by song analysis and loads of photos as well as a video for the track "Let's Build A Car", an awesome collage of live and found footage! There are bonus tracks, unfortunately if you have the now out of print Mute versions, you're gonna need both, since while the Mute versions have more bonus tracks, some of the bonus tracks included here are NOT on the Mute versions. Arghhh.
MPEG Stream: "Robot Factory"
MPEG Stream: "Let's Buy A Bridge"
MPEG Stream: "Border Country"

SWELL MAPS Jane From Occupied Europe (Secretly Candian) lp 14.98
Newly Reissued on vinyl!
The Swell Maps were a brief late seventies / early eighties solar flare of totally brilliant, clattery, jangly, ramshackle experimental art pop like no one had ever heard. And without the Maps we definitely would not have had Sonic Youth or Pavement or about a million other bands. Fronted by brothers Nikki Sudden and Epic Soundtracks, Swell Maps were a bouncy Britpunk kick in the chin, mixed with druggy clumsy psych rock explorations, speaker bashing freakouts, hypnotic droney dirges, whiny snotty British vocals, brittle guitars, splattery drumming and and downright free-noise.
Jane From Occupied Europe was their second and final record from 1980. The band split soon after with Sudden forming the Jacobites and Soundtracks going on to join Crime And The City Solution. Download card included!
MPEG Stream: "Robot Factory"
MPEG Stream: "Let's Buy A Bridge"
MPEG Stream: "Border Country"

SWORD HEAVEN & 16 BITCH PILE-UP Come Here Sandy (Game-Boy) lp 14.98

SYDNEY DUCKS Esprit De Corps (Pirates Press) 7" 5.98
We're not really all that clued in to the modern Oi / mod / punk scene, and we really wouldn't know about these guys at all if it weren't for the fact, that an ex member of crust metal crushers and aQ faves Acephalix was one of the guitar players in this local hard-mod / Oi combo, named for the wave of immigrants in the 1800's, coming from Australia to SF, who were blamed for all sorts of trouble, including a fire in 1849 that destroyed much of the city, as well as much of the street crime in general.
What we do know, is we're digging both of these new 7"s a bunch, total classic old school seventies/eighties style power pop / mod / punk rock, crunchy, jangly guitars, thick sinewy basslines (that sometimes get super distorted and crazy melodic), gruff belted vocals, and ultra catchy songs, that stick in your head like crazy, songs that beside being hooky, just ooze blood and sweat and energy and emotion, it's not hard to imagine folks going nuts and jumping around like crazy, their live shows must be insane, and while the stuff we've seen written about these guys make all sorts of super obscure punk rock references, we're thinking if you're like us, and dig stuff like Sham 69, Stiff Little Fingers, 999, the Adverts, even the Jam, this stuff will most definitely hit the spot! We weren't gonna go into too much detail about all the songs on both of these singles, cuz we were figuring that if you dug either (or both) of the sound samples, you'd probably want both, but we will say the B side of the Esprit De Corps single is pretty goddamn great, all sung in Spanish, with some seriously kickass bass that pretty much drives the whole song, and "Stray Dogs" sounds like a punk rock classic transported from the past, but then so does "Espirit Des Corps", and hell, the B side of the Stray Dogs single is pretty classic sounding too, with a main riff/hook that kills and some seriously anthemic vox... Screw it, just buy em both, you won't be sorry...
MPEG Stream: "Esprit De Corps"

SYDNEY DUCKS Stray Dogs (Sydney Town) 7" 4.98
We're not really all that clued in to the modern Oi / mod / punk scene, and we really wouldn't know about these guys at all if it weren't for the fact, that an ex member of crust metal crushers and aQ faves Acephalix was one of the guitar players in this local hard-mod / Oi combo, named for the wave of immigrants in the 1800's, coming from Australia to SF, who were blamed for all sorts of trouble, including a fire in 1849 that destroyed much of the city, as well as much of the street crime in general.
What we do know, is we're digging both of these new 7"s a bunch, total classic old school seventies/eighties style power pop / mod / punk rock, crunchy, jangly guitars, thick sinewy basslines (that sometimes get super distorted and crazy melodic), gruff belted vocals, and ultra catchy songs, that stick in your head like crazy, songs that beside being hooky, just ooze blood and sweat and energy and emotion, it's not hard to imagine folks going nuts and jumping around like crazy, their live shows must be insane, and while the stuff we've seen written about these guys make all sorts of super obscure punk rock references, we're thinking if you're like us, and dig stuff like Sham 69, Stiff Little Fingers, 999, the Adverts, even the Jam, this stuff will most definitely hit the spot! We weren't gonna go into too much detail about all the songs on both of these singles, cuz we were figuring that if you dug either (or both) of the sound samples, you'd probably want both, but we will say the B side of the Esprit De Corps single is pretty goddamn great, all sung in Spanish, with some seriously kickass bass that pretty much drives the whole song, and "Stray Dogs" sounds like a punk rock classic transported from the past, but then so does "Espirit Des Corps", and hell, the B side of the Stray Dogs single is pretty classic sounding too, with a main riff/hook that kills and some seriously anthemic vox... Screw it, just buy em both, you won't be sorry...
MPEG Stream: "Stray Dogs"

T.I.T.S. The Girls (self-released) lp 14.98
Over the last few years T.I.T.S. have proven to be one of the most exciting groups in the San Francisco music scene. Four woman who bring an immediacy and intensity to their off kilter post-punk jams. Theirs are songs that make you want to dance in such a fucked up way, as you smash and destroy, sweat and bleed and exorcise all the demons from your soul...
For sure taking their cues from the early No Wave scene, their sound so perfect alongside impassioned blasts from the past by folks like The Au Pairs, Liliput, DNA, Teenage Jesus & The Jerks, Bush Tetras, The Raincoats and The Slits. We also love how they songs feel like such kindred spirits to what Erase Errata were exploring on their final (?) album, Nightlife. We're also reminded of a similar sensation we feel when we listen to The Ex.
While they may be getting much inspiration from the past, nothing feels nostalgic about the sounds on The Girls. In fact every song jumps out with such a present, vibrant energy that they make the listener feel totally connected to that visceral moment in time. What makes T.I.T.S. so fucking great is that they don't just borrow from post punk's past, but instead they actually infuse so much true punk spirit into their songs. Smoking hot!
MPEG Stream: "Rachel"
MPEG Stream: "Lindsay"
MPEG Stream: "Kirsty"

TALIBAM! s/t (Evolving Ear) 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.
Awesome band name for sure! We were dying to hear these guys before we had any idea what they might sound like. And they do sort of sound like the name, explanation point and all. A whirling dervish of a three piece, Matthew Mottel on synth, Kevin Shea (Coptic Light, Storm And Stress) on drums and Ed Bear on baritone saxophone and
electronics. The presence of Kevin Shea should give you a hint as to what you're in for. His spastic, impossibly octopoidal drum splatter is all over this disc, a stuttering spastic free jazz soundscape dense and impenetrable. Above this tangled percussive squall, the synth and the sax do battle. And this is a serious fucking knock down drag out battle to the death. The synth seems to come out on top turning what could have been more of a free jazz record into a seriously fucked up freenoise record. Mottel is like Keith Emerson on a serious PCP bender, spitting out thick snarling sheets of synth buzz, spraying it like machine gun fire, melodies are tangled and complicated little knots hurled into the fray like cannonballs made out of steel string and roof nails. The sax is all over the place, adding tonal color, mad squawking, chittering chirps and deep fuzzy moans, this is a massive chaotic free for all. Sometimes the band members lock into a cohesive sort of drone, but even then Shea is still hurling his kit all over a huge concrete bunker, like every free jazz solo drum record played simultaneously, it's never long before the synth splinters and the sax shrieks and suddenly it a big black musical cloud, you know like in cartoons when people are fighting and there's a big black swirling cloud with arms and legs sticking out. Only now there's broken drumsticks, shattered keys from an abused synthesizer, bent saxophones as well as bruised and bloody body parts.
This an exhausting listen, but it's worth it. Heavy and thick, weirdly groovy, totally spastic and really really great.
Comes packaged in spray painted sleeves made out of old chopped up lps, each disc includes a jagged shard of some old vinyl lp as well.
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 1"
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 2"

TAYLOR BOW Thin Air (Youth Attack) lp 10.00
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
Last time we were in New York, we managed to grab a single by this band, Taylor Bow, named for an infamous online porn site featuring videos posted by a disgruntled and spurned ex boyfriend, we heard it playing in a store, and had to buy it. An insanely furious and frenzied, blown out chunk of metallic punkness, or maybe punked out metal, either way, the speakers seemed to be melting and malfunctioning, spewing red hot daggers of sound, the vocals ultra distorted and in the red, the drums, total practice space boom and crunch, chaotic and unhinged, the guitars slipping from wild feedback soaked squalls, to churning Brainbombs-y sludge. So we of course tried to order a bunch, but it was the LAST copy.
So we waited and waited, and our patience was finally rewarded with this, the first full length from NYC hardcore noise metal weirdos Taylor Bow, fronted, you might not be surprised to discover by Dom Fernow, of Prurient, Vegas Martyrs and Ash Pool among others. Taylor Bow features the same sort of lo-fi metal-punk noise drenched crush, but instead of blasting blackly, or exploding into sheets of white noise, TB slip back and forth between freaked out on-the-verge-of-collapse hardcore and looped sounding sinister dirges, that totally push all our Brainbombs buttons. The sound is red hot, blown out, brittle and brutal, but still thick and heavy, the vocals are super intense, which sometimes makes Taylor Bow sound like a way more rocking Whitehouse, but there are definite nods to the current crop of stripped down raw black metal, Fernow's Ash Pool for sure, but also stuff like Akitsa and Bone Awl. But even with that metal edge, this stuff is way more filthy and punky, and we're loving it. Released on the same label that brought us Ancestors and that Hallow record, which makes perfect sense, just more fucked up freaked out heaviness that we can't seem to get enough of.
SUPER LIMITED of course, we may have the last few copies, so grab one while you can...

TEAM DRESCH Personal Best (Chainsaw / Candy-Ass) cd 14.98
So very sadly defunct, Portland, Oregon's Team Dresch empowered young women everywhere back in '94. And continue to do so with this feistily fantastic album as a document of their inspiring greatness. Some extraordinarily right-on raging music including the awesome "Fake Fight". Super catchy, driving and emotive dyke punk for everyone. All salute Kaia, Donna, Marci and Jody. A co-release on Jody's label Candy-Ass and Kaia's Chainsaw Records. Is that enough superlatives for ya?

TEENAGE JESUS AND THE JERKS Shut Up And Bleed (Cherry Red) lp 28.00
NOW ON VINYL!
Love her or hate her, Lydia Lunch will make an impression on you. Given her venomous poems, constant invectives, and perpetual bad attitude, it's pretty obvious that Lydia wants you to hate her. While she's not an artist without her charms, she'll probably hate you for loving her. She began a career of transgression and teeth-gnashing in the mid-'70s when she was a runaway teenager slumming around the crappiest parts of NYC and pissing off more people than not. Yet, she managed to sequester enough people to support her in Teenage Jesus and The Jerks - one of the seminal bands who defined No Wave. They were also one of the four bands who appeared on the highly influential No New York compilation, alongside James Chance & The Contortionists, Mars, and DNA. Teenage Jesus only lasted for three years, probably due to the fact that no one could tolerate the musical dictator that was Lydia Lunch. But the music itself probably did a fair share of damage upon the participants as Teenage Jesus produced hyper-abrasive, hyper-condensed songs through militant rhythmic stomps, screechingly atonal slide guitars, and Lydia's sharply barked vocals. James Chance was in fact one of the early members of the band, offering his blood-splattering sax as a suitable duet for Lydia's caterwauling.
While Teenage Jesus never managed a full album (well, they barely managed to clock in a 20 minute live set!), there have been a number of collections of Teenage Jesus tracks. This compilation, Shut Up And Bleed, pretty much has all of the tracks from the band that were recorded to tape. It should be noted that the cd version of the same name contained tracks from Beirut Slump, another early Lydia Lunch project; but none of those cuts appear on this Cherry Red vinyl reish.
MPEG Stream: TEENAGE JESUS & THE JERKS "Orphans"
MPEG Stream: TEENAGE JESUS & THE JERKS "Baby Doll"

TEENAGE JESUS AND THE JERKS / BEIRUT SLUMP Shut Up and Bleed (Atavistic) cd 16.98
Love her or hate her, Lydia Lunch will make an impression on you. Given her venomous poems, constant invectives, and perpetual bad attitude, it's pretty obvious that Lydia wants you to hate her. While she's not an artist without her charms, she'll probably hate you for loving her. She began a career of transgression and teeth-gnashing in the mid-'70s when she was a runaway teenager slumming around the crappiest parts of NYC and pissing off more people than not. Yet, she managed to sequester enough people to support her in Teenage Jesus and The Jerks - one of the seminal bands who defined No Wave. They were also one of the four bands who appeared on the highly influential No New York compilation, alongside James Chance & The Contortionists, Mars, and DNA. Teenage Jesus only lasted for three years, probably due to the fact that no one could tolerate the musical dictator that was Lydia Lunch. But the music itself probably did a fair share of damage upon the participants as Teenage Jesus produced hyper-abrasive, hyper-condensed songs through militant rhythmic stomps, screechingly atonal slide guitars, and Lydia's sharply barked vocals. James Chance was in fact one of the early members of the band, offering his blood-splattering sax as a suitable duet for Lydia's caterwauling.
While Teenage Jesus never managed a full-album (well, they barely managed to clock in a 20 minute live set!), there have been a number of collections of Teenage Jesus tracks. The 2008 compilation, Shut Up And Bleed, is unique by including tunes from Lydia Lunch's other band at the time Beirut Slump. Some of these tracks had appeared on another Lunch compendium, Hysterie, released way back in 1988, but they've never been on cd. In Beirut Slump, Lydia played the part of the lead guitarist, leaving the vocal rants to Bobby Berkowitz, whose growling and grunts were uncannily similar to those of Michael Gira on the early Swans records. With the dissonant organ stabs, scraped guitar noise, and jackbooted stomping, Beirut Slump must have been one of the unsung templates for Gira and Swans. Even 30 years later, this stuff is damn impressive.
MPEG Stream: TEENAGE JESUS & THE JERKS "Orphans"
MPEG Stream: TEENAGE JESUS & THE JERKS "Baby Doll"
MPEG Stream: BEIRUT SLUMP "See Pretty"
MPEG Stream: BEIRUT SLUMP "Case #14"

TEENAGE PANZERKORPS Gleich Heilt Gleich (Skulltones) 7" 5.50
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Now available on a super limited 7" (only 300 copies made!). This killer, long out of print slab of artrock originally released as a 3" cd-r on Pink Skulls, the label run by Glenn Donaldson of Jewelled Antler, rears its spiky helmeted head once again, bit only briefly, as we only got a handful of these!
Ahhh, the Teenage PanzerKorps, a band which actually features Glenn himself (under the name Edmund Xavier) in its ranks and doesn't sound at all like you might think, nothing like Thuja or Tomes or Dead Raven Choir or any of that Jewelled Antler stuff. It's raucous, droney, arty rawk with a German singer (a 40-year old punker going by the name Bunker Wolf here). Bunker and Xavier and joined by drummer "Catholic Pat" Toves and Boy True on bass (quite possibly actually Jason Honea, who's a member of the Knit Separates with Glenn). Loud (or at least distorted), not too fast, and Teutonically snotty: the whole thing clocks in at under 10 minutes, with titles like "Burma Crawl", "Chinese Machine Gun parts 1 and 2", and "Get Out Of My Shadow!". It references '80s downer artpunk (The Fall, Factory Records stuff I guess or maybe some of Savage Republic's tracks), '60s garage with fuzz organ, and the hardcore bands Boy True and Catholic Pat used to play in. Noisy breaks, abrupt edits, and poppy grooves are all important to Teenage Panzerkorps' sound, but it's Bunker Wolf's accent and delivery that stands out the most. No fake German here like Zeigenbock Kopf! Then there's Glenn. He proved in his old band Mirza's more loud, scree-filled moments that he can do the aggro guitar thing, yet his sensitive side is still in evidence here, so his 6 & 12 string guitar parts here betray an indie-pop influence as pretty as what he's come up with in such outfits as The Birdtree, The Knit Separates, Blithe Sons and even Thuja (with whom Teenage Panzerkorp at least share a partly improvised approach). An interesting blend of inspirations/expertise to be sure.
Limited to 300 copies, each one hand numbered in silver ink!
MPEG Stream: "Future Hygiene"
MPEG Stream: "Burma Crawl"

TEENAGE PANZERKORPS Gleich Heilt Gleich (Pink Skulls) 3" cd-r 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Pink Skulls is a new cd-r label run by Glenn Donaldson of Jewelled Antler, for stuff that's too "punk" for Jewelled Antler to put out. A recent list's Record of the Week, Leaf Yard, was one of Pink Skulls' first releases (if you've heard that, you know that what Glenn means by "punk" sure ain't Green Day). Now comes the Teenage PanzerKorps, a band which actually features Glenn himself (under the name Edmund Xavier) in its ranks. This lil' 3" cdr looks a lot like the stuff in the on-going Jewelled Antler "Library" series, but sure doesn't sound like Thuja or Tomes or even Dead Raven Choir. It's raucous, droney, arty rawk with a German singer (a 40-year old punker going by the name Bunker Wolf here). Bunker and Xavier and joined by drummer "Catholic Pat" Toves and Boy True on bass (quite possibly actually Jason Honea, who's a member of the Knit Separates with Glenn). Loud (or at least distorted), not too fast, and Teutonically snotty: nine songs in as many minutes, with titles like "Burma Crawl", "Chinese Machine Gun parts 1 and 2", and "Get Out Of My Shadow!". It references '80s downer artpunk (The Fall, Factory Records stuff I guess or maybe some of Savage Republic's tracks), '60s garage with fuzz organ, and the hardcore bands Boy True and Catholic Pat used to play in. Noisy breaks, abrupt edits, and poppy grooves are all important to Teenage Panzerkorps' sound, but it's Bunker Wolf's accent and delivery that stands out the most. No fake German here like Zeigenbock Kopf! Then there's Glenn. He proved in his old band Mirza's more loud, scree-filled moments that he can do the aggro guitar thing, yet his sensitive side is still in evidence here, so his 6 & 12 string guitar parts here betray an indie-pop influence as pretty as what he's come up with in such outfits as The Birdtree, The Knit Separates, Blithe Sons and even Thuja (with whom Teenage Panzerkorp at least share a partly improvised approach). An interesting blend of inspirations/expertise to be sure. These guys recorded this for fun a couple years ago, and have finally found a proper outlet for it, which is cool 'cause it's pretty great.
MPEG Stream: "Future Hygiene"
MPEG Stream: "Burma Crawl"