YAOTL MICTLAN Dentro Del Manto Gris De Chaac (Candlelight) cd 12.98

YAOTL MICTLAN Guerreros De La Tierra De Los Muertos (American Line) cd 11.98
Yaotl Mictlan are a strange bunch. Hailing from Salt Lake City, Utah (by way of Mexico), they play a stark and angular version of brutal buzzing black metal, and share a few members with hateful black horde Ibex Throne.
While the sound of Ibex Throne is more of a hyperspeed humanity-hating violence, the Yaotl Mictlan crew are a bit more diverse in getting their message across. They sing of the ways of the blood thirsty Mayans and the extinct world known as Aztlan and incorporate indigenous instruments from that period such as flutes, bones and drums giving the songs a sort of tribal feel. Even when the band is blasting away, they manage to find ways to mix melody into the din, while the vocalist roars along in Spanish, a painful howl telling telling the tales of a long lost civilization. Damn if it doesn't sound amazing, kind of like a Mexican version of Drudkh or something.
It's that good.
MPEG Stream: "Sexto Sol Aun Esta Naciendo"
MPEG Stream: "Sangre De Vida"
MPEG Stream: "Fuego Rebelde"

YARBROUGH, CAMILLE Iron Pot Cooker (Vanguard) cd 16.98
We're all pretty well acquainted with the genesis of rap in sixties and seventies in the socially conscious (nay, revolutionary) poetry of the Last Poets and Gil Scott Heron. Camille Yarbrough represents nascent hip-hop's femme-flip-side. Effortlessly phasing from poetry to song, Yarbrough's dynamic is matched by guitar player Cornell Dupree and accompanied by clarinet, and all kinds of percussion.

YASUNAO TONE Solo For Wounded CD (Tzadik) cd 15.98
Japanese experimentalist (who was involved with Fluxus way back when) shows how he can make a skipping cd into a thing of beauty, albeit a noisy one. A lot more jarring than Oval...

YAT-KHA Aldyn Dashka (Yat-Kha) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The press release for this described Yat-Kha as "Tuvan music -- with a punk rock twist", which doesn't quite get it right so, in an effort to clarify this remark they say elsewhere: "OK it's not the Sex Pistols kind of punk -- think Joy Division", which is even further from the mark. Why they felt the need to compare Yat-Kha with punk rock or Joy Division we're not certain, but it piqued our interest enough to order a few -- and even more copies once we'd heard it. To be sure, though their distributor Harmonia Mundi isn't the most accurate in describing them, the throat singing of Yat-Kha surely is a looong way from that Smithsonian-Folkways' 1987 release "Tuva: Voices from the Center of Asia", the one that got the whole world hot for Tuvan throat singing. The music of Yat-Kha is much more akin to blues based rock than either the Pistols or Joy Division, but that doesn't really cover it enough! Singer and band leader Albert Kuvezin has a deep, growling bass voice that would make the most accomplished death metal cookie monster vocalist blush. His voice is so impressive that Brian Eno, when judging at the Alma-Aty "Voices of Asia" festival in 1990, made up a prize on the spot for Kuvezin! (Eno would probably also be impressed by the positively Frippertronic sounding guitar solo that surfaces on this disc's "Khary Kyigy"!) Combining both traditional Tuvan instruments (fiddles, drums, banjo-like lute) and the Western flavor of electric guitar and bass, plus fancy recording studios and creative engineers, Yat-Kha produce some damn pretty songs that rock a fair amount as well... And they're on a US tour right now (no SF show, unfortunately), creating an improvised live soundtrack to a 1928 Soviet silent movie classic called "Storm Over Asia", filmed in their Tuvan homeland. Wish we could see/hear that! But, at least we've got this disc to enjoy, an instant and unusual throat-singing favorite.
RealAudio clip: "Oy Adym"
RealAudio clip: "Chorumal Bodum"
RealAudio clip: "Khary Kyigy"

YAT-KHA Tuva.rock (Yat-Kha) cd 28.00

YAT-KHA Yenisei-Punk (Global Music Centre) cd 15.98

YATHA SIDHRA A Meditation Mass (Revisited / Brain) cd 21.00
We blew through these last time, and only now got more, but who knows how long this batch will last...
Holy shit!!! This has to be our krautrock (re)discovery of the year. Definitely contender for krautrock reissue of the year!! We have been listening to this NONSTOP since it came in. We had heard OF Yatha Sidhra, a German group whose only record, A Meditation Mass, was released in 1974, but until now we had never actually heard it. Apparently the record was massive flop which is utterly shocking hearing this now. Everything we could want in a krautrock record, loooong tracks, simple tribal percussion, flute all over the place, simple effected guitar, crooned almost chantlike vocals, squalls of totally heavy super distorted freaked out psychedelia, wild drumming, tons of effects, as well as long stretches of tranquil drift and fluttery folky shimmer.
The opening movement of the Mass begins with all manner of rumbles and drones, before it slips into a lilting laid back groove, all soft guitar curlicues, spare percussion, warm languid bass, and flittering flute, the track drifts lazily, occasionally erupting into ultra brief psychedelic blowouts, the flute howling, a cacophony of frenzied drumming, only to settle right back into the mellow drift. The second movement is a little more active, the drums more propulsive, piano draped over deep dubby bass, and the flute fired up and swooping wildly, jazzy but still pretty krautrocky.
The third movement is probably our favorite, clocking in at 12 minutes, the song starts out by returning to the opening groove, loping bass, fluttery flute, spare guitar, the drums a bit more aggressive, some angular guitar solos, all wrapped up in tripped out FX, eventually the song shifts into a more upbeat shuffle, the drums getting wilder and more chaotic, the guitar going nuts, spitting out psych leads all over the place, until the band locks into a serious blowout, the guitar white hot, the drums freaking out, the bass swooping back and forth, everything doused in so many effects the whole track seems to crumple and crumble under the weight, flanger and phaser and echo have everything totally tripped out and druggy, the drums and flute engage in a wild battle, a free jazz krautrock psychedelic frenzy, before finally simmering down, and slipping into a super soft lazy lope, the flute floating over a deep bass and minimal drum workout, finishing off with another drum vs. flute freakout, everything again dripping with echo and delay, as of the whole band was slipping deeper and deeper, moving further and further away.
The final movement, revisits the opening, the band slip smoothly back into that original groove, the guitars way more effected, the drums a bit more tribal, the flute still drifting above it all, the whole band locked into a totally dreamy, blissed out krautdrone drift, with the instruments dropping out one by one, eventually leaving just the guitar, wreathed in effects to shimmer and finally fade out.
So freaking amazing. Boggles the mind that these guys, and this record aren't spoken of in hushed reverence and worshipped along with Can and Faust and all the other krautrock legends. Hopefully that will change with this reissue, and even if it doesn't, at least we know how mysterious and magical A Meditation Mass really is...
Packaged in a super spare digipak, with a big book of liner notes (in English and German) and a bunch of photos.
MPEG Stream: "Part 1"
MPEG Stream: "Part 3"

YATTERING Murder's Concept (Season Of Mist) cd 14.98
Extreme death metal (very intense and dense) in the vein of masters Cryptopsy, from these European grunt-grind shredders. Violent art, released on a label from which we have come to expect such good things (as they have brought us Anata, ...And Oceans, the new Mayhem, etc.).

YAU, R.H.Y. The Hidden Tongue (Ground Fault) cd 11.98
With his early recording "The Hidden Tongue," San Francisco noise composer Randy Yau conceptualizes an alternate perspective on how the physicality of sound is to be perceived. Instead of assigning a value to sound such as "man-made" or "natural," Yau proposes that sound only has two states: existence and absence. The implications of Yau's hypothesis are interesting, yet set up a conceptual groundwork that's difficult to articulate as a piece of sound art. Yau stages these two states as a loud, violent, staccato noise fragments on one hand, and nearly empty passages on the other. With jarring noise bricolage splayed across his album in an almost random factor, the very quiet passages become that which is nerve-wracking as nervous precedents for the blasted screams of incendiary distortion. "The Hidden Tongue" does emerge as an expressive piece of noise manifestation, even if its conceptual agenda is tough to find with the music.

YAU, RANDY Coagulation: Selected Works 1996-2000 (Auscultare) cd 11.98
"I guess I had a lot of terrible relationships," snickers noise artist Randy Yau as an apology for the electric violence that explodes from this anthology of early works. Ah, yes, but so much great art has come from the pain of shitty break-ups and romance gone horribly wrong. Spanning his college days at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, Coagulation features some of most explosive, nauseating, and abject sounds to pass through the Aquarius doors. Considering that Merzbow, Whitehouse, and Bastard Noise are frequently stocked items here, such hyperbole should not be taken lightly. Where Yau differs from his power violence / extreme noise contemporaries is in focus upon the body. His recent investigations into low frequencies vibrations within any given architectural environment engage a similar poetry, however, in a much more benevolent way. Coagulation is anything but benevolent, purposefully jumping from harsh noise to silence and back to hyper-distortion within just a few moments. These sounds hit you like a ton of bricks, letting up just enough to let you catch your breath, and then the assault immediately begins again. Yau's start 'n' stop technique immediately sets him apart from the neverending torrents of sound from many of his contemporaries.
A word of warning, do not plan on eating a meal during or after listening to Coagulation, as one track in particular the homage to Schimpfluch's Dave Philips entitled "Intermission" finds Yau purposefully vomiting over and over again. I think I turned green; but then again, has Merzbow ever done that? No fuckin' way.
MPEG Stream: "Intermission"
MPEG Stream: "I've Hurt You Today... I'll Do It Again"
MPEG Stream: "Scherzo 781003"

YBO2 Greatest Hits Volume 1 (SSE Communications) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Before starting Ruins, Tatsuya Yoshida played in this unusual 80's avant-progrock band, along with K.K. Null of Zeni Geva, original Ruins bassist Hideki Kawamoto, and mainman (on bass, vocals, & keyboards) Kitamura Masashi. These two volumes collect the "greatest hits" from their many records--a bunch of weirdness, all dark, emotional, complex and heavy stuff, including an interpretation of a Paul Simon tune! Recommended to all fans of Ruins!

YBO2 Greatest Hits Volume 2 (SSE Communications) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Before starting Ruins, Tatsuya Yoshida played in this unusual 80's avant-progrock band, along with K.K. Null of Zeni Geva, original Ruins bassist Hideki Kawamoto, and mainman (on bass, vocals, & keyboards) Kitamura Masashi. These two volumes collect the "greatest hits" from their many records--a bunch of weirdness, all dark, emotional, complex and heavy stuff, including an interpretation of a Paul Simon tune! Recommended to all fans of Ruins!

YCOSAHATERON La Nuit (Baphomet) cd 14.98

YE OLDE MAIDS God Blesses Us, Mother Dresses Us (Heartworm Press) cd 11.98
!!!!COLD CAVE ALERT!!!!
Originally released as a super limited lp, this pre Cold Cave artifact finally gets a compact disc release, and it's long overdue, as people continue to be totally batshit obsessive about minimalist synth poppers Cold Cave,
Ye Olde Maids is CC mastermind Wes Eisold's faux boy/girl duo, where he actually plays both parts, and follows a similar, yet slightly sweeter poppier path than Cold Cave, so much so that you might be hard pressed to tell the difference on a few tracks. But hey, we're not complaining, because like everyone else, we're too busy digging these propulsive, gloomy as hell lo-fi jams. Like Cold Cave, you might want to compare this to New Order or the Cure in terms of atmosphere and in their overall approach. It's easy to see that this is where Wes Eisold began to solidify all his new wavey inclinations after years of playing in hardcore bands, though the songs definitely stand strongly enough on their own. Things are probably a little more lo-fi and disjointed than what was finally perfected with Cold Cave, but for those who can't get enough CC, you will definitely want to grab this one fast. The cd's limited too!!
MPEG Stream: "Cocoa Cherubs"
MPEG Stream: "Candy Cigarettes On Fire"
MPEG Stream: "Dreamscraper"
MPEG Stream: "Love Theme From A Car Commercial"

YE OLDE MAIDS God Blesses Us, Mother Dresses Us (Art Fag) lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
!!!COLD CAVE ALERT!!!!
Hopefully that got your attention, not only because the world seems to be going totally batshit for minimalist synth poppers Cold Cave, but ALSO because we only have a scant 15 COPIES of this pre-CC group, and it's looking like that will probably be it for all of history, or until someone else decides to come along and reissue it. So you probably want to act now or miss out.
Ye Olde Maids follow a similar path as Cold Cave, in fact you might be hard pressed to tell the difference. But hey, we're not complaining, because like everyone else, we're too busy digging these propulsive, gloomy as hell lo-fi jams. Like Cold Cave, you might want to compare this to New Order or the Cure in terms of atmosphere and in their overall approach. It's easy to see that this is where Wes Eisold began to solidify all his new wavey inclinations after years of playing in hardcore bands, though the songs definitely stand strongly enough on their own. Things are probably a little more noisy and disjointed than what has been perfected with Cold Cave, but for those who can't get enough CC, you will definitely want to grab this one fast. Did we mention that we had only 15 copies?

YEAH YEAH YEAH'S It's Blitz (Interscope) cd 15.98
Hmm, not finding too much to say about the latest from the Yeah Yeah Yeah's. There is much more of an emphasis on synthesizers and less on guitars, though we think it would have come out cooler had they pushed that even further. Some tracks do demonstrate the best possibilities of this very Blondie meets Italians Do It Better sound, like "Dragon Queen", but lots of the songs here just don't commit to being here or there and sort of just are. Not bad really, but not as exciting as we were hoping it would be....
MPEG Stream: "Zero"
MPEG Stream: "Dragon Queen"

YEAH YEAH YEAHS Fever To Tell (Interscope) cd 15.98
After a couple of insanely hyped singles which altogether clocked in at about 18 minutes total, New York's garage-punk trio The Yeah Yeah Yeahs have mustered enough material to warrant their debut, full-length album "Fever To Tell." As expected the car-crash of thuggish rockabilly licks and punky-disco grooves guided by vocalist Karen O's snarling sexuality and blackened humor are present and sound an awful lot like a female fronted Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, or perhaps more appropriately Boss Hog when they were good. However, there's only about 15 minutes worth of sneering rock 'n' roll on the album; and the remainder of the album comes as a huge, but certainly not unwelcome surprise, as the Yeah Yeah Yeahs round out the album with a handful of slower, darker, and sentimental ballads. These later tracks are not unlike the recent works of PJ Harvey, transforming raucous punked-up energy into emotive songsmithery; however, they may not be exactly what fans of the previous EPs would expect. Hey, don't be discouraged though, "Fever To Tell" still has those 15 minutes of possessed blues to match those previous EPs.
MPEG Stream: "Date With The Night"
MPEG Stream: "Maps"

YEAH YEAH YEAHS Is Is (Interscope) cd ep 5.98
Is Is is the follow-up to Yeah Yeah Yeahs' startlingly different Show Your Bones album. If you happen to think that it in turn sounds starkly different from that album, and more like the hot'n'bothered YYYs of old, well... good ears, my friend! These songs were actually written back in 2004 while the band was on tour in support of their Fever To Tell album. Four of the five were previously available on the Tell Me What Rockers To Swallow dvd (the exception is the track "Isis"). That explains things a bit, doesn't it? On this ep the trio sounds downright wild, loose and furious... a lot of what we thought was sorely missing from SYB. Karen O rocks and rages at the top of her lungs. You almost expect a fist to burst through your speakers. On those few moments when she calms down a little (on the song "Down Boy"), her voice glints with her more familiar, and very Siouxsie-esque throaty inflections. Guitarist Nick Zinner and drummer Brian Chase are right there with her throwing a bunch of their own rawk punches left, right and center. Raw art-punky good.
MPEG Stream: "Rocker To Swallow"
MPEG Stream: "Isis"

YEAH YEAH YEAHS Machine (Touch & Go) cd ep 5.98
Three songs, seven minutes. Yeah Yeah Yeah's aren't messin' around. The hot-shit New Yorkers pack every minute full of gritty, high energy, lo-fi, post-glam rockn'fuckn'roll. Singer Karen O seemed to bely a little vulnerability in between shrieks on their debut e.p., but here she exudes confidence. YYY's would be an ideal band to see in someone's packed living room; too bad their lightning fast rise to fame deprives us of that experience! This single is another teaser before the release of their debut full length, expected soon-ish.
RealAudio clip: "Machine "
RealAudio clip: "Graveyard"

YEAH YEAH YEAHS Machine (Touch & Go) 10" 6.98
Three songs, seven minutes. Yeah Yeah Yeah's aren't messin' around. The hot-shit New Yorkers pack every minute full of gritty, high energy, lo-fi, post-glam rockn'fuckn'roll. Singer Karen O seemed to bely a little vulnerability in between shrieks on their debut e.p., but here she exudes confidence. YYY's would be an ideal band to see in someone's packed living room; too bad their lightning fast rise to fame deprives us of that experience! This single is another teaser before the release of their debut full length, expected soon-ish.

YEAH YEAH YEAHS s/t (Touch & Go) cd ep 10.98
The self released five-track ep by up and coming Brooklyn trio is now available on Touch and Go in both vinyl and cd formats. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs are going to give the comparatively more famous White Stripes a run for their money. When she's not absolutely screaming, Karen O, the girl lead singer, wails with a strong gravelly voice and that trembly warble the Riot Grrl vocalists / Kim Gordon also make use of. The drums are admirably stripped down and freshly unpredictable, often leaving out downbeats to interesting effect, and the guitar is angular and sharp. Very similar appeal as White Stripes, so give it a listen. Yum.
RealAudio clip: "Bang"
RealAudio clip: "Our Time"

YEAH YEAH YEAHS s/t (Touch & Go) 12" 10.98
The self released five-track ep by up and coming Brooklyn trio is now available on Touch and Go in both vinyl and cd formats. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs are going to give the comparatively more famous White Stripes a run for their money. When she's not absolutely screaming, Karen O, the girl lead singer, wails with a strong gravelly voice and that trembly warble the Riot Grrl vocalists / Kim Gordon also make use of. The drums are admirably stripped down and freshly unpredictable, often leaving out downbeats to interesting effect, and the guitar is angular and sharp. Very similar appeal as White Stripes, so give it a listen. Yum.

YEAH YEAH YEAHS Show Your Bones (Interscope) cd 15.98
A kinder gentler YYY's can be found on their follow up to Fever To Tell, the record which made them international superstars. We are not averse to bands softening their sound as long as they are also finding new more subtle, interesting and pleasing ways to express themselves. The moment Show Your Bones begins it becomes clear that this is a shinier glossier more pop affair. There are a few moments of the more rocking YYY's scattered throughout the disc but this is much more about their full on pop leanings. The first song (and many others on this album) sounds remarkably like it came from Tegan & Sara's latest album So Jealous. Indeed these catchy girl-sung tunes might lure some fans over from those sisters' camp. Her vocals also recall those appealing '80s female singers such as Debbie Harry, Dale Bozzio, Siouxsie and Martha Davis of The Motels. Perhaps Karen O and co. are targeting the teenage girl population? Not sure, but these are certainly some toned down and tidily groomed YYYs who've made themselves totally presentable for the masses. Really, these tunes are absolutely ripe for some John Hughes movie soundtrack!
MPEG Stream: "Gold Lion"
MPEG Stream: "Mysteries"

YEAH YEAH YEAHS Tell Me What Rockers To Swallow (Interscope) dvd 17.98

YEAR OF Slow Days (Morr) cd 16.98
A Morr Music supergroup? Yes, It was bound to happen sooner or later, what with such a solid and ever expanding roster of likeminded artists on board. Year Of's members include B. Fleischmann, Martin Siewert, Werner Dafeldecker, Paul Kling, and Christof Kurzmann. As can be expected the Morr Music trademark drowsy delicate electronica forms the core of this group's sound, but there's more dimensions to it than that. Unexpected inflections of jazz and country/folk color and shade the affair with warmer brassy hues than the usual frosty blues and strawberry ice cream pinks of the individual artists' works. Definitely stands apart fom the rest of the Morr pack. The year of what? Whatever it is, it's good!

YEAR OF NO LIGHT Nord (Crucial Blast) cd 15.98

MPEG Stream: "Selenite"
MPEG Stream: "Traversee"

YEARS / VENTOUX A Shift In Moods / The Inferno Of The Living (Magic Bullet) cd 5.98
Brand new disc of solo works from these two one man bands, both of whom traffic in sounds much harsher and heavier in their 'day jobs'. Ventoux is Graham from aQ faves Souvenir's Young America and Forensics, and Years is Ryan from Darkest Hour and City Of Caterpillar, both of whom seem to share a similar sonic focus here, away from the heaviness of their proper bands, both delve deeply into some sonic netherworld where the churning blackened buzz of Locrian intersects with the psychedelic bliss out of Expo 70, and the barren dusky deserty twang of Barn Owl blurs into the cavernous creep of Lustmord.
Years is up first, and deftly unfurls a shimmery electronic buzz that drifts atop billowy clouds of rib cage rattling low end, the insectoid melodies the perfect foil for the suffocating black hole bass beneath, the two delicately intertwined, creating something at once dense and black, ethereal and amorphous. The high end peels away, leaving just that deep Niblockian thrum, before being buried beneath a cascade of almost symphonic sounding high end, a woozy washed out synth heavy swirl that fades out again, leaving just that massive almost physical sounding low end, before finishing off with a haunting minor key bit of cinematic synthscapery, that's both dark and dramatic, and definitely hints at the sound of Umberto and Zombi and all the rest, but still tethered to that intense black hole bass.
Ventoux is immediately a much darker proposition, launching immediately into a churning, Locrian like black ambience, thick and undulating, softly gristly, laced with shards of melody, and wreathed in ever shifting textures, and like Years, allowing all sort of warm whirl and dreamlike shimmer to creep into the proceedings, so that by the end of the opening tracks nearly ten minutes, the sound has lightened considerably, and has drifted into a sort of sun dappled Nadja style metalgaze drift, a lush blur of softly roiling riffage. The second track grows considerably darker, playing out like some ancient sonic ritual, the sounds massive and glacial, this track too, gradually begins to build, but here instead of blissing out, the noise is cranked up, and not just Merzbow style noise, no instead it's a weird grinding choral sort of swirl, a blackened choir, twisted and tangled into a gloriously chaotic psychedelic ur-drone, which leads directly into the final 'movement', perhaps the noisiest and heaviest of the bunch. A groaning, creaking, caustic landscape of crumbling low end, thick processed burts of strangely melodic noise and dubbed out industrial clang and clatter, all wreathed in a black sonic gauze, but also infused with a strange bit of buried melody, that keeps the sound weirdly warm, and strangely soothing, the sort of sinister blackdrone music that transforms punishing blacknoise into mesmerizing tranced out black ambience.
MPEG Stream: YEARS "To Our Friendship"
MPEG Stream: YEARS "An Arbitrary Excuse"
MPEG Stream: VENTOUX "From Sleep Unbound"
MPEG Stream: VENTOUX "Abyssas Abysum Invocat"

YEASAYER All Hour Cymbals (Are We Free) cd 14.98

YEASAYER Odd Blood (Secretly Canadian) cd 15.98
These guys are really tough to figure out, we were never that into them actually, until we heard one of their tracks on a Mojo compilation of all places, and even weirder it was a sort of No Depression / Americana style collection, with groups like Iron & Wine, The Low Anthem, and their sound, while slightly twangy, was way more quirky and electronic, a sort of twisted cabaret pop, we ended up digging that record quite a bit, so were excited to hear this new one.
Right off the bat, it's a weirdo winner, processed garbled vocals, over a strange plodding electronic beat, washed over by lush layers of shimmery sound, like a Phoenix song played at 16 rpm, lugubrious and warbly, but strangely appealing. The next song though reveals the band's true colors, which seem to lie more along the lines of groups like Sparks or Pretty And Nice, slightly twisted pop, layered synths, lush production, looped electronic rhythms, skittery drum machines, "Madder Red" introduces lots of "ooooohs" and some abstract tribal drumming, multi tracked vocals, for a sort of more earth take on Animal Collective's abstract pop, which is pretty much where Yeasayer are situated, they definitely have a Pitchfork vibe, their sound definitely absorbing elements of Animal Collective, TV On The Radio, that sort of almost-mainstream pop, but for our money, Yeasayer are just a bit more odd, they definitely have the total pop gene, but they also seem inclined to fuck it up, whether with weird production, strange rhythms, vocal processing, everything infused with a sort of tweaked new wave vibe. Definitely seems like an acquired taste, but could very well be a weird music gateway for folks who want to start their strange sonic education slowly. For the rest of us, it's a pretty cool, slightly off kilter, electronic pop record, that will definitely fit perfectly on your shelf next to records by all of the above mentioned bands... Cool!
MPEG Stream: "The Children"
MPEG Stream: "Ambling Alp"
MPEG Stream: "Madder Red"

YEASAYER Odd Blood (Secretly Canadian) lp 16.98
These guys are really tough to figure out, we were never that into them actually, until we heard one of their tracks on a Mojo compilation of all places, and even weirder it was a sort of No Depression / Americana style collection, with groups like Iron & Wine, The Low Anthem, and their sound, while slightly twangy, was way more quirky and electronic, a sort of twisted cabaret pop, we ended up digging that record quite a bit, so were excited to hear this new one.
Right off the bat, it's a weirdo winner, processed garbled vocals, over a strange plodding electronic beat, washed over by lush layers of shimmery sound, like a Phoenix song played at 16 rpm, lugubrious and warbly, but strangely appealing. The next song though reveals the band's true colors, which seem to lie more along the lines of groups like Sparks or Pretty And Nice, slightly twisted pop, layered synths, lush production, looped electronic rhythms, skittery drum machines, "Madder Red" introduces lots of "ooooohs" and some abstract tribal drumming, multi tracked vocals, for a sort of more earth take on Animal Collective's abstract pop, which is pretty much where Yeasayer are situated, they definitely have a Pitchfork vibe, their sound definitely absorbing elements of Animal Collective, TV On The Radio, that sort of almost-mainstream pop, but for our money, Yeasayer are just a bit more odd, they definitely have the total pop gene, but they also seem inclined to fuck it up, whether with weird production, strange rhythms, vocal processing, everything infused with a sort of tweaked new wave vibe. Definitely seems like an acquired taste, but could very well be a weird music gateway for folks who want to start their strange sonic education slowly. For the rest of us, it's a pretty cool, slightly off kilter, electronic pop record, that will definitely fit perfectly on your shelf next to records by all of the above mentioned bands... Cool!
MPEG Stream: "The Children"
MPEG Stream: "Ambling Alp"
MPEG Stream: "Madder Red"

YEAST CULTURE IYS (Art Into Life) lp 37.00
So, we raved about Small Cruel Party a few months back, being an unheralded genius of tactile minimalism hailing from the Pacific Northwest; and now we have the reissue of the Yeast Culture album IYS, in many ways, a document originating from the same time and place that's even more cryptic and more obsessive than Small Cruel Party all the while achieving similarly cracked abstraction of sound-art. Yeast Culture was the brainchild of an artist named Abo, who set up shadowy installations, performances, and even a record shop in an abandoned building in Seattle. The days of such romantic squatting are surely over in Seattle, but they provided the context of damp concrete, rusted rebar, and festering mold. Through collaboration and in piloting the ship himself, Abo steered Yeast Culture into a strange beast of DIY musique concrete, self-immolating electro-acoustic strategies and dangerous field recording situations, amidst all that rubble and decay. While there were only a handful of releases to coincide with the seemingly rich history of activity through that space, the 1989 album IYS is the Yeast Culture masterpiece. An enigmatic smear of crumbling events, metallic scribblings, aerosolizing hiss, poltergeist-like clunks of grey noise, and strange whirring machines caught in their last dying breath. What little information that can be found on the record is that the source material was entirely taken from a three day session on an island in the Puget Sound, after which Abo quite literally ripped those recordings to shreds and painstakingly reassembled the artifacts. Like Small Cruel Party and Organum, Yeast Culture's constructions are densely layered and aggregated, with the compositional strategies keeping to a blank linearity. The sounds themselves have the feeling of being an amplification of the wood beetles gnawing through oak trees or an invasion of mechanical insects adopting a scorched earth policy in miniature or perhaps some unwritten noise symphony for Jan Svankmajer's films, full of disembodied teeth chewing incessantly on cutlery and old furniture. As if that weren't enough to entice, there's the artwork - a densely silkscreened poster that wraps around an equally densely silkscreened inner sleeve with multiple belts of paper holding everything in place. As chaotic as the heavily overlaid silkscreens look, the packaging is quite elegant and perfectly reflects the sounds on the grey / splattered vinyl. While the artwork on the original was pretty stunning, it's even better here on the reissue. Yeah, it's pricey; but when you get your hands on this, you'll realize that the price is totally justified given the amount of work that went to each album. Of course, it's super limited and so fucking recommended!

YEAST CULTURE s/t (Incubator / Petri Supply) cassette 11.98
Yeast Culture was a project that blossomed (or would 'festered' be more suitable here?) in Seattle during the mid-'80s, producing eerie soundfields of murky tape-collage, synth-noise, and junkyard ritualism, all of which firmly planted Yeast Culture within the cassette culture that brought forth G.R.O.S.S. tapes, Sound Of Pig, and of course the countless recordings of recycled music from RRR. Yeast Culture operated as something of a squatter collective, occupying abandoned buildings, setting up shows within those spaces, and eventually taking up residence in a warehouse space in (then) ungentrified part of downtown Seattle, with all sorts of installations, screenprinting, photography, and residue smeared paintings oozing out of Yeast Culture's creative output.
This recording marked the first release for the collective, originally released on cassette in 1987 (or thereabouts) and has been reissued in the same format as the original with collaged wallpaper mounted to board and xeroxed drawings sandwiched around the hand-painted tape and held together in a plastic bag. A bit cumbersome as an object, but certainly true to the tape culture mentality of the time. Drawn out sessions of clanks, bangs, and scrapes within those dank industrial spaces dominate the Yeast Culture ethos, but the group slices into murk with zoner synth sequencing (much more industrial minded than the Emeralds, Oneohtrix Point Never, Caboladies set), masticated vocalizing further mangled through electronics, tactile object manipulation, field recordings, and tape compressed noise. All together, it was not all that far from the contemporary work of Cranioclast, Premature Ejaculations, P16.D4 (at their most primitive), and even some of the looser Nurse With Wound collages. A great document for sure, and in all likelihood, pretty damn limited!

YEE-KING SuperUser (Rephlex) cd 16.98
Matt Yee-King, one of the stars of Bristol UK's 'Trash' electronica collective, here presents a solo disc which appropriately enough is released on Aphex Twin's Rephlex label. Yes, it sounds a lot like Aphex: skittering drum n' bass derived beat programming meeting with both pleasant melodies and distorted noises. Quite nice.

YEH YELLOW SWANS Tour ep (Jyrk) 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.
We won't spend too much time on this one since we only got 20, and it's very likely there's probably WAY more than 20 of you who want one of these long out of print lil' gems.
This release is from a while back, it's a single 11 minute track, a collaboration between the Yellow Swans and Spencer Yeh of Burning Star Core. We were lucky to get -any- of these, a bit of random postal confusion is what did it. A box of 20 got lost in the mail, the band made 20 more to replace them, but then the lost box resurfaced and we managed to lay claim to all 20 of the extras! And a good thing too. This is some of the most gorgeous stuff we've heard from either / both of these outfits. Warm atonal guitar strum, angular and purposeful, mournful and minor key, drifts above a bed of skittery glitch and rumbling drones. Eventually the guitars disappear beneath a wild wooly sheet of shrieking sonic turbulence, a whirl of moaning melodies behind a thick curtain of freaked out feedback and squealing skree. Nice and noisy!
SUPER LIMITED. THESE ARE THE LAST 20 COPIES THERE ARE! SO ACT FAST!
MPEG Stream: "Untitled"

YEH, C. SPENCER Violin, Objects (Tone Filth) lp 17.98

YEH, C.S. Transitions (De Stijl) cd 14.98

YEK KOO Psychic Atonement For Land Deaths (Digitalis) cd-r 9.98
Be warned. This is another one of those tiny, tiny, tiny editions from Digitalis; and it's undoubtedly out of print from the source. Yek Koo is the solo project of Helga Fassonaki, the Los Angeles half of the trans-Pacific duo Metal Rouge, who blew us away with their last record on Root Strata. She follows a similar path as Metal Rouge on Psychic Atonement For Land Deaths, mining a deconstructed post-Krautrock vein all the way down to its droning core. It's all voice and lapsteel on this album; and not surprisingly, she shares more than a few similarities to the freeform atmospherics of Heather Leigh Murray (Taurpis Tula, ex-Charalambides) or even to the earlier Grouper albums. Much to her advantage, Fassonaki uses her voice with a restrained panache when it comes to these distant siren songs bathed in thick clouds of reverb and delay. The lapsteel itself melts into magical cascades of bliss out drones, roughly swirled ambience, and sustained chords. Everything comes together into three gorgeous longform pieces of seductively creepy feral drone work. Fans of Fursaxa, Grouper, and Charalambides should not miss this one! LIMITED TO 81 COPIES!!!
MPEG Stream: "Holy Migration"
MPEG Stream: "Freedom Inside Her Clothes"

YELDHAM, JUSTICE Cicatrix (Sweatlung) cd 13.98
What initially sounds like a super distorted overblown recording of Hendrix playing his wild "Star Spangled Banner", or a super grinding fuzz drenched synth noise psych rock blow out, or some insane ultra processed Japanese psychedelic solo guitar freakout, is in fact, a 40 something man, covered in blood, holding a huge piece of contact mic'ed broken glass in his mouth. Huh?
Such is the musical world of Mr. Justice Yeldham. We weren't sure what to expect actually, conceptually we were definitely intrigued. A guy who records himself smashing his face against panes of glass, moaning and humming into the glass resulting in all sorts of bizarre alien sounds, and often ending up with the glass shattering and much blood being shed. He had us at glass and blood. The cd sleeve is even a patchwork of bloodied band-aids (euwww).
But when we finally got the disc, the sounds were just as amazing, maybe even more so than the process, which is definitely a rare occurrence. How many records have we gotten, where the story of the recording was way more fascinating that the resulting music? Way too many. The thing with this Yeldham disc, is it's actually quite listenable as well. Ostensibly a noise record, the sounds here are anything but run of the mill noise, they range from strange fuzzy drones, wailing streaks of coruscating feedback, crumbling synth like blasts (parts of this almost sound like samples from the Justice record!), grinding gnarled squalls of super distorted buzz and every strange fuzzy buzzy stop in between. And every once in a while you have to remind yourself that THIS IS A GUY WITH HIS FACE PRESSED UP AGAINST A PIECE OF GLASS! A piece of glass that just may shatter at any second. And the more feverish and frenzied the sounds become, the more strain is placed on the glass, and the more imminent shatter and bloodshed becomes. So weird, and so goddamn awesome.
Comes in a cool velour lined cd sleeve, adorned with images of band-aids and blood, inside a full color booklet with tons of photos of Yeldham performing live, amazing and intense, some weird, some strangely beautiful, some super disturbing, most of them really bloody!!
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YELLE Pop Up (Source / Caroline) cd 13.98
As we sit in the middle of an atypical heatwave here in San Francisco it's made us think hard about what our summer jams are going to be, and luckily the debut album from Yelle has just hit stateside and we can officially proclaim that this will be one of our party records of summer '08! Hailing from France, Yelle evokes that special infectious magic of French pop in all its incarnations with a healthy dose of electro and a fun hip-hop disposition. It's sort of how we would imagine a collaboration between Stereo Total and M.I.A. would sound. Yelle is fun and full of color but sharp and strong enough sounding so it doesn't just become disposable fluff. This is exactly what we hoped would be playing everytime we ever walked into a dance club. Suave and and so damn sassy!
MPEG Stream: "Dans Ta Vraie Vie"
MPEG Stream: "Ce Jeu"
MPEG Stream: "Jogging"

YELLE Safari Disco Club (V2) cd 14.98
Oh-la-la - this young French lady makes some of the most exciting and satisfying dance music around. With her second album she's proven she is no fluke, or one hit wonder, as this is just as action packed, fun filled, and free flowing as her great debut. It's really hard to make a solid dance record that doesn't just rely on a few hits and then the rest is just forgettable filler, Yelle has no room for filler in her life, as every single song on here brings the goods with such exciting results. This makes us think of what it might sound like if some really cool French electro-producers produced a record by Kylie Minogue or Goldfrapp. But it's really Yelle's energy and charisma that makes her stand way ahead of the electro-dance-pop pack, as you always feel such a human and real element driving these contagious songs. This has summer jams of '11 written all over it!
MPEG Stream: "C'est Pas Une Vie"
MPEG Stream: "Que Veux-Tu"
MPEG Stream: "Chimie Physique"

YELLOW 6 / ROTHKO / LANDING New Found Land (Music Fellowship) cd 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Connecticut label Music Fellowship is doing a series of three-way split cds -- we already reviewed the second release in the series, the lovely "Crickets And Fireflies" by the triumverate of Kinski/Paik/Surface of Eceyon. Now, here's the first, and like volume two it's also a bunch of spaced out drone-on indie rock, music well in keeping with the photo of the Northern Lights that adorns the cover. Yellow6 is a British feller we're not familiar with, looping his guitar nicely. Rothko should be more familiar, and with them it's not guitars -- it's basses. Last but not least Landing work their improv-drone magic.

YELLOW DRESS, THE Humblebees (self-released) cd-r 7.98

MPEG Stream: "Poor Sailor"
MPEG Stream: "Harmony Isn't As Lonely As You Are But That Doesn't Mean She Isn't Lonely In Her Own Right"
MPEG Stream: "The Sun Is Out"

YELLOW FEVER s/t (Wild World) cd 11.98
Many of the sounds coming out of the recent surge of girl group inspired bands that we've been digging have been more on the garage and lo-fi rocking side of things, but Yellow Fever are mining that same sort of girl group glory with a more direct song based approach with totally stunning results. We hear echoes of the Young Marble Giants and their disciples, like Klang or Quixotic, albeit slightly more twee. We'd imagine that if Calvin Johnson heard this he would sign YF to K in a heartbeat, the music these gals conjure up definitely has many of the same endearing qualities of some of our favorite K records over the years.
Get Grass Widow and Girls At Dawn out of the fuzzy dirty garage, and bring them upstairs to the warm and comfy living room and you're getting an idea of where Yellow Fever are coming from. The songs are really compact and stripped down. Like Kim Deal and Julie Doiron doing extra minimal Aislers Set covers. Yellow Fever are amongst an awesome new breed of bands from Austin, Texas who are starting to get wider attention (weird that they weren't included on the new Matador compilation, Casual Victim Pile featuring a bunch of other bands from Austin). But it does make perfect sense that it's their friends the Vivian Girls who have released this on their own record label, Wild World, they for sure share a similar spirit and plenty of musical reference points, even though they approach their sounds from slightly different angels.
This is totally hitting the spot!
MPEG Stream: "Ratcatcher"
MPEG Stream: "Donald"
MPEG Stream: "Hellfire"

YELLOW FEVER s/t (Wild World) lp 13.98
Many of the sounds coming out of the recent surge of girl group inspired bands that we've been digging have been more on the garage and lo-fi rocking side of things, but Yellow Fever are mining that same sort of girl group glory with a more direct song based approach with totally stunning results. We hear echoes of the Young Marble Giants and their disciples, like Klang or Quixotic, albeit slightly more twee. We'd imagine that if Calvin Johnson heard this he would sign YF to K in a heartbeat, the music these gals conjure up definitely has many of the same endearing qualities of some of our favorite K records over the years.
Get Grass Widow and Girls At Dawn out of the fuzzy dirty garage, and bring them upstairs to the warm and comfy living room and you're getting an idea of where Yellow Fever are coming from. The songs are really compact and stripped down. Like Kim Deal and Julie Doiron doing extra minimal Aislers Set covers. Yellow Fever are amongst an awesome new breed of bands from Austin, Texas who are starting to get wider attention (weird that they weren't included on the new Matador compilation, Casual Victim Pile featuring a bunch of other bands from Austin). But it does make perfect sense that it's their friends the Vivian Girls who have released this on their own record label, Wild World, they for sure share a similar spirit and plenty of musical reference points, even though they approach their sounds from slightly different angels.
This is totally hitting the spot!
MPEG Stream: "Ratcatcher"
MPEG Stream: "Donald"
MPEG Stream: "Hellfire"

YELLOW MACHINE GUN Spot Remover (Howling Bull) cd 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
As their recent bay area shows confirmed, this band completely destroys. Three twenty year old Japanese girls, playing grinding thunderous metal. Coming soon: a split 7" with S.O.D. and a new album.

YELLOW MAGIC ORCHESTRA Solid State Survivor (Alfa / Epic) cd 12.98

YELLOW SWANS At All Ends (Load) cd 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The infamous Yellow Swans return -- this time without any D-something word in front -- and continue to blur the line between noise rock and good ol' noise. Given that they have approximately a billion tape/cd-r/whatever releases, you may want to assume that all the tricks are out of the hat and this is just in fact another Yellow Swans record, but you'd be wrong. At All Ends is somewhat of a departure from much of their previous work, and it focuses more -- okay, a bit more -- on melody and song structure. Gorgeous sheets of noise, gut-punching blasts of sonic destruction, percussion and vocals both reverbed and distorted into total oblivion, and an underlying sense of danceable rhythm. Through it all, this album is one of those noise rock epics that proves the it-all-sounds-the-same haters wrong and shows that its possible to celebrate, break some shit, AND have a good time doing it. Recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Our Oases"
MPEG Stream: "Mass Mirage"

YELLOW SWANS Bring The Neon War Home (Narnack) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
1st actual cd from these exciting Bay Area noisemakers.

YELLOW SWANS Descension Yellow Swans (Three Lobed Recordings) lp 22.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Once again, our favorite SF sonic expats (now Portland based) return with another killer slab of drone-y goodness. This time bearing the mark of 'Descension' (for those new to the Yellow Swans, every record they are called something different, a different 'D' word preceding their name, unclear if it is related to sound or mood or what, but it's always different!) and sounding less noisy and more darkly introspective than ever. Which as far as we're concerned is a very good thing. But noiseniks, fear not, there is still some abrasive brutality lurking hear and there within. Read on...
The A side begins as a moaning and groaning minor key deep ambient drift, wreathed in crackle and static and bits of high end shimmer. Mournful melodies are muted and smeared into the backdrop of one of the prettiest dreamiest things the YS have ever done, but it doesn't last long as about halfway through they burst into a full on cascading crumbling wall of blown out buzz. There's still some moodiness underpinning the chaos, but by the end, there will most definitely be drops of blood on your headphones.
The second side foregoes the noise completely, as the 'Swans offer up a delicate and slow burning washed out dronescape, cavernous low end, gurgling buzzing tones layered into murky muddy harmonies, slowly shifting, industrial and machinelike, but still thick and warm and organic sounding. This might just be the chunk of buzzing lovely low end creep that finally hips the dirgedoomdronee set to the Yellow Swans...
LIMITED TO 489 COPIES. Each one hand numbered. Pressed on crazy thick vinyl and housed in a gorgeous blue on black hand screened sleeve.