[ aquarius records catalogue

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Showing results 701 through 750 of 2272.

Gorgeous collection of psychedelic guitar drone from one half of Destructo Swarmbots. Lovely hushed dreamlike shimmer meets buzzy druggy blur.

Public Guilt is quickly turning into one of our favorite labels. A definite sound and vibe, but no two releases alike. An amazing visual aesthetic, sublime packaging, and some of the most beautiful, the heaviest, and most fucked up sounds we've heard in ages. Public Guilt were one of the labels responsible for the amazing triple cd Untitled collection, a box gathering up some of the best 'noise' music of the last few years, they were also responsible for both discs from ambient guitarorrists Destructo Swarmbots, and this here super limited 3" cd-r just so happens to be the work of one of those Swarmbots. The sound here is similar to the DS records, but where those records took guitars and stretched them into spaced out drones and whirring soundscapes, the music on Saturday, is much more obviously guitar music. Swarmbot Bianca Ala Muerte, is joined by Max Bondi, a UK experimental soundmaker, and the two, create a glistening, sublime world of subtly processed steel string buzz, breathless drift, and occasional bursts of fuzzy softpsych buzz. The opening track is a lovely little tangle of playful guitar melodies, woven tightly amidst drifting wordless vocals, dreamy and hypnotic, the second track takes the same guitars and runs them through the computer, transforming them into stuttering soft edged swells, culminating in a crushing slow motion metallic dirge coda, throbbing crumbling heaviness, pulled into bleary eyed sheets of distorted bliss. The rest of the disc tends more toward the lovely and soft focus, with only super brief bits of downtuned crush. Instead, bits of glitched electronics, distant whistling, whirring chordal swirls, choral like voices, are all laid over the framework of delicate spidery guitars, and drifting melodic blur. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!! Packaged in screenprinted mini 3" foldout sleeves, blue black and metallic silver ink, with a printed vellum insert.

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We always talked about trying to start a live jungle band, drum and bass played by a REAL band, no synths or laptops, just guitars and bass and drums. Lots of drums. In fact, we spent a lot of time trying to figure out how many drummers you would need, or how insane a drummer it would take to simulate that lightning speed skitter and stutter. So what exactly would it take, in terms of instrumentation to accurately recreate that jungle sound, or say maybe the sound of Aphex Twin? Well judging from this record right here, it would take flute, alto flute, piccolo, oboe, English horn, clarinet, bass clarinet, alto saxophone, bassoon, horn, horsoon, horse horn, Jew's harp, trumpet, duck call, trombone, steel drums, plastic tubing, mbira, piano, celesta, Fender Rhodes, violin, viola, accordian, cello, electric bass, upright bass, electric guitar, tambura, voice, cocktail stirrer kalimba, water hose, curtain rods, air pumps, engraving tool and of course FOUR percussionists and TWO drummers!! Phew. No wonder we could never get it to work. This massive ensemble manages to take songs by Aphex Twin and give them a classical organic makeover, and the results are pretty fantastic, owing as much to the brilliant and undeniably catchy songs of Aphex Twin as it does to the clever arrangements and deft musicianship of the Alarm Will Sound players. Aphex tracks definitely lend themselves to this sort of re-imagining, the older stuff is dense and rhythmic, clattery and chaotic, already feeling a bit twentieth century classical, so you can imagine that a group of modern classical musicians would have no problem playing, and playing with the material, having already tackled Cage and Reich and Riley and Feldman. The new stuff is rife with soaring strings and pizzicato melodies, so having a full string section tackling those parts, and then being supported by a complement of horns and a huge corps of percussion, only makes the originals sound that much more lush and musical. And then there's the redone tracks from Selected Ambient Works Volume 2, which in this context, are so perfectly lovely and hypnotic, they prove once again (remember the Phillip Glass Aphex Twin remixes?) that had Richard D. James chosen a different musical tack (modern classical minimalism), we might speak of him in the same breath as Cage or Riley or Feldman (with whom James most definitely shares a similar subtly melodic flair), instead of groups like Boards Of Canada or Bola.

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Super-raw carnal energy is all over this album. Alarmist's sound is pretty thin but not for lack of punk energy, they just have minimal layers of sound and maybe when they recorded, only a handful of tracks to work with. There are certainly some small angular aspects of magic somewhere sprinkled in and all around this album. Its female singing is a little bit Exene Cervenka, a tiny bit Kim Gordon. One maintains a sense of danger when listening throughout though. Evil Works ends with a curious track: cats meowing meowing meowing and suddenly becoming an untamed human chorus of wild growls. Whoah. Recorded in Portland, OR at Smegma Studios by Mike Lastra of you guessed it, Smegma.

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In case you hadn't noticed, we've been totally in love with the latest Bardo Pond record Ticket Crystals, so we were pretty dang excited to discover this new release by Bardo side project Alasehir (just one of many, see elsewhere on the list for Vapour Theories another side project as well as a new live album!). Alasehir is the work of Bardo brothers the Gibbons' and is absolutely kicking our asses. 4 long instrumentals equal parts heavy, heady and blissed out. It may be 4 distinct songs, but taken as a whole it's a serious psychedelic monster! The guitar sound is so instantly recognizable, effortlessly unfurling blown out stoner riffs other bands can only dream about. After the first two tracks, rife with heavy riffs and fluid grooves, "Seven Tongues" finds the brothers busting out their sitars and unleashing a dreamlike stream of sweetly buzzing star gazing sounds. This is the kind of record that gets your head bobbing, not quite head banging and not quite daydreaming but some wonderful place in-between.

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Bardo Pond records may only come out every year or two, but we need more fingers if we're gonna keep track of all the Bardo side projects and recordings that have been surfacing every few months for the last few years. Records by 500mg, Takeda, Dechemia, Alumbrados and of course these guys, 3 parts Bardo with some added electronic muscle, Alasehir. This is record number two from this Bardo brothers project and is maybe the riffiest and heaviest Bardo side project recording yet. Three loooong tracks, each one some strange blend of abstract Appalachia, slippery slide guitar, tripped out druggy ambience, and seriously blown out dirgey metallic space rock, with simple pounding drums, huge distorted riffing, wild swirls of freaked out psychguitar leads, dense clouds of cymbal sizzle, tons of wah wah, streaks of screeching feedback, everything in the red and overblown, like some wild Hawkwind / Black Sabbath / Growing / Monster Magnet / Acid Mothers Temple / Amon Duul 2 mash up. This is wild and heavy, free and fucked up, spacey and trippy and druggy and far far far out. Packaged in one of those cool aRCHIVE style 6 panel fold out sleeves. LIMITED TO 600 COPIES! And already almost sold out so once these are gone we probably won't be able to get more.

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John and Michael Gibbons of the infamous Bardo Pond have been on quite a roll lately. As if the three other recent Bardo Pond related vinyl-only releases on Important weren't killer enough, here's another one to complete the four piece series of mind melting guitar driven psychedelic haze. Alasehir finds the Gibbons brothers in cahoots with drummer, Jason Kourkouni. The result is a smoldering heap of fried out, stoned to the bone, free psych madness! Plumes of smoke rising behind towering tube amps and blistering feedback, stoner doom riffs plodding on and on into the distant horizon, menacing solos hovering above waves of crashing cymbals and driving drums, all building and building into some Parson Sound, doom kraut heaviness. We love how blown out the record sounds, every instrument being dragged to its far off limits, we could've sworn we heard the wax start to melt right under the needle. This one is also limited to 500 copies, and those of you with a sweet spot for blistering guitar heaviness will not want to miss this. Recommended!

The first album from this indie rock super duo! Alaska's roster boasts the talents of Russ Pollard (Sebadoh, Folk Implosion) and Imaad Wasif (Lowercase, Folk Implosion). This is all soft'n'mellow pop prettiness with whispery male vocals over subdued jangly guitars, some cello and piano. The song "Sun Don't Shine" features '80s poptart Josie Cotton (!) singing backups. Have to say, this is sooo much better than the new album from the Folk Implosion on which these two fellows make up the new F.I. line-up (along with a gent known as Lou Barlow). Like early summer sun beams glinting through tree leaves, these songs glisten and lull you ever so warmly. Very very nice. MPEG Download: "S.S." [/audio/alaskass.mp3] MPEG Stream: "S.S." [/audio/alaskass.m3u]

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This is the musical project of artist Marcel Dzama, who you should know if you're at all clued into the hipster art world. His drawings are Henry Darger-esque and he seems to have a thing for vampires. This limited edition 9" ep is part of a larger project that involves a custom made miniature log cabin, a beaver pelt, 20 limited signed prints, and this here record. Well, if you'd prefer not to drop the $10,000 the deluxe version will set you back (really!), then just the record is the way to go. Colored vinyl, packaged in a full cover sleeve, with an original Dzama painting depicting a morose looking black and white vampire family perched amidst a full color collage. The music of Albatross Note is a ramshackle, home recorded, chaotic indie pop. Damaged blues collides with sweetly soulful melodies, plaintive folks songs stumble and struggle through a thicket of amp buzz and tape hiss. Weird and wild and pretty wonderful. And buying just the record you save $9,980!! But if anyone -is- actually interested, there are a few of those Dzama cabins left....

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Switzerland has more to offer the unruly noiseniks than just the Young Gods. Alboth, while having the same sort of pompous air as the Gods, approach their music with a little less bombast. This outing finds them sounding less like a piano fronted Naked City, and more like a computer generated post rock soundtrack, infused with a drug induced paranoia, and an exagerrated sense of otherworldliness. Allan and Andee both recommend this record highly.

Alboth! (yes, the exclamation point is part of their name, and deservedly so) was once known as the Swiss answer to Naked City (replacing Zorn's saxophone squalls with some amazingly fucked piano playing, however). Here they continue in their explorations of sonic extremity. Post-industrial jazzcore progrock? The current lineup dispenses with their signature piano, although there is use of a xylophone, as well as drums, guitar, vocals and electronics. Intense, crazy, like nothing else. But still recommended to fans of Naked City, Ruins, Oxbow, 16-17, etc.

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The Album Leaf and Bright Eyes are the first contributors to this 7" series from the label that just recently brought us the new Track Star album. The Album Leaf, perhaps most noted for being the opener on Sigur Ros' first U.S. tour last year, is the solo side project of Mr. Jimmy LaValle (guitarist for San Diego based post-rockers Tristeza). Bright Eyes is Mr. all-by-his-lonesome Conor Oberst. Jimmy provides the instrumentation (lightly scritchy electronics, samples of children's voices), and Conor, the weary voice. Sounding just as one might expect... mellow, pretty and more than a little doleful. The only problem I found was the brevity of this record. Really, if you're gonna blanket the listeners in fuzzy indie bummerness, you gotta let 'em wallow in it a while.

Another outing of pleasant post-rock with electronics from San Diego's The Album Leaf.

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You can always count on a pretty, wistful melody from Mr. Jimmy LaValle both on his own as The Album Leaf as well as in his other band San Diego post-rockers Tristeza, and his newest full length is chock full of 'em. Sooo soothing. Perhaps you saw him perform live when he more than fittingly opened for Sigur Ros a couple of years ago. If so, then you've got an inkling of the dreaminess you're in store for with In A Safe Place. It was even recorded at Sigur Ros' studio in Iceland! Each song is primarily centered on gentle guitars, contemplative piano and usually a shuffling drum beat, but he'll also add some strings, an occasional murmurred vocal or in the case of the eighth song "Streamside" an accordion! After listening to this a few times we've come to the conclusion that it would make the perfect soundtrack for the outtro montage of a coming of age movie about figure skaters. Guests include members of the aforementioned Sigur Ros as well as Pall from fellow San Diegans Black Heart Procession. Very Nice!

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The Album Leaf has made a name for themselves as the American counterpart to (and comrade of) those grand glistening soundmakers Sigur Ros and Mum. Over the years his music has drawn more and more from the same wintry palette as those Icelanders. However on his fourth album Album Leaf central force Jimmy Lavalle's mellow post-rock roots from his days in the San Diego band Tristeza resurface more prominently than on previous albums. Gently grooving songs like "Writings On The Wall" also bring to mind an American Notwist. To boot, Lavalle is singing more than ever. Oddly enough we initially though he sounded a lot like a less morose Pall Jenkins of Black Heart Procession (bringing back to the fore another element from his past -- he played with them too), however we soon discovered that the voice actually was Jenkins'. Yup, the BHP singer contributed some backup harmonies to his buddy's album. The overall results are not such a vast departure from his past recordings, but they do cut some welcome fresh glistening facets into his lovely resonant tried and true. Recorded at Sigur Ros' Sundlaugin studios.

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Hey there Album Leaf fans! This is a domestic reissue of his glistening 2003 ep that was previously released in Spain. The big whoop about this particular release though is that there's twice as many tracks as there were on the original... that makes for a 10-track EP! The five bonus cuts are live recordings from the tour they did with Sigur Ros (one is from Portugal and the other four are from Atlanta), but there really isn't that much difference between the studio recorded tracks and the live ones. It's a pretty seamless shift from the fourth to the fifth song -- which simply makes for a smooth listen. His blissed out electronic pop sounds as dreamy and delicate as ever.

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No, not the '80s metal band, featuring Yngwie -- that Alcatrazz had two zz's in their name. This Alcatraz was a krautrock outfit from Hamburg, who released this album, their debut, in 1972. At last it gets a cd reissue -- we've always been curious about 'em 'cause the striking/silly LP cover painting (the lips and teeth of a vampire, with the bloody fangs being two inverted Empire State Buildings) always shows up in books of krautrock lore like Cosmic Dreams At Play and The Crack In The Cosmic Egg. AND, they're one of those Nurse With Wound list bands too! In fact, Nurse With Wound and Stereolab 'covered' this album's brilliant lead-off track "Simple Headphone Mind" on a collaborative ep some years back. Alcatraz prove to be one of those wildly jamming, kinda-heavy bands, with some bluesy Zeppelin-esque riffing and powerful, fuzz-psych lead guitar (love that tone!) cutting through their fusionoid, jazzily-rockin' songs, which also feature sax, flute, piano, drums, bongos, and (on two tracks only) vocals. Reminds us of some way-out Traffic or Santana type of thing. Really, the mostly instrumental songs on here don't really sound like 'songs', just a lot of improv parts and crazy playing, which is of course cool by us. It totally makes sense that they started out playing covers of stuff by the likes of Savoy Brown, Vanilla Fudge, Black Sabbath, and Uriah Heep before getting into Soft Machine and Tony William's Lifetime -- the liner notes mention 'em blending Cannonball Adderly and Deep Purple! While by no means a newly unearthed krautrock classic of Can or Faust proportions (though it was recorded at Faust's Wumme studio, during a police raid on suspected terrorists no less), this is a cool album of eccentric, sometimes epic, hippy jazz-rock. Reissued from the master tapes, with bonus track, and the aforementioned liner notes in both German and (more-or-less) English.

RealAudio clip: Simple Headphone Mind
RealAudio clip: Piss Off

Metalheads are definitely a weird bunch, their likes and dislikes, what is considered true and cult, versus stuff labeled poser or false metal. In some cases it's definitely cut and dried, but in others, there's really no rhyme or reason. For instance, take Depeche Mode. Almost every metalhead we've ever met, loves Depeche Mode. Why? There seems to be no metal connection, other than a sort of darkness or gothiness. Yet, DM remain a fast favorite, with more than a few metal bands covering songs by them as well. Which brings us to Alcest. For the life of us, we can't figure out why these guys are so beloved by black metallers, even the ones who go on about frosty grim kvlt hordes and generally listen to only extreme buzzing blackness, they all seem to love Alcest. Not that there's not plenty to love, it's just Alcest are barely metal at all. Sure there's some harsh vocals now and again, some distorted guitar, even some blast beats but that's about it as far as it goes metalwise. And the thing is, even when Alcest do dip into some blasting blackness, it's more shoegazey and dreamy and washed out and melodic, which speaks to why we love this band so much, their ability to create this glimmering blown out dreampop using tropes usually reserved for musics much more harsh and heavy. This latest record finds the band perfecting their ever evolving formula, merging a sort of depressive melancholic black metal, with total blissed out shoegaze jangle pop. On Ecailles De Lune, even the heaviest moments are infused with an undeniable poppiness, a sort of ethereal dreaminess, that turns this into one of the least likely black metal records ever. The band can be perfectly summed up sonically in the nearly 20 minute two part opening salvo, jangly guitars, hushed vocals, explode into a sort of prismatic shoegaze post pop, all big chords, pounding drums, everything wrapped in a soft psychedelic haze, crooned sad boy vocals, way down in the mix, slow builds to Godspeed like crescendos, angelic female background vocals, lush harmonies, spidery tendrils of minor key guitar, finally within the last minute of the first part, slipping into a buzzing blast, but as mentioned above, it's not so black and grim as if is epic and effulgent and soaring and majestic and beautiful. The second part opens with spare chiming guitars, before some almost actual black metal erupts, a woozy descending minor key melody that quickly shifts into something much more moody with harsh vocals showing up for the first time. It's frenzied and buzzy, but still more dreamy and druggy than black, and then just as quickly as it started, the blackness fades, leaving a loping rhythm, sweet chiming clean guitars, and then the rhythm drops out too, and the song plays out with just a soft tangle of reverby guitar notes and ethereal female vocals. "Percees de Lumiere" begins all Lifelover-y, with swoonsome soaring shoegaze pop and harsh vox, only to splinter into prismatic dreampop partway through, dreamy female vocals over softly churning chords underneath, so nice. "Solar Song" is some sort of Slowdive / Swervedriver / My Bloody Valentine hybrid, warm lush chords, soaring vocal harmonies, a killer main melody, total classic pop wreathed in layers of washed out fuzz and swirling sonic gauze, maybe the 'hit' here if there was gonna be one. An 8+ minute closer might have you expecting a blasting metallic finale, but instead, we're treated to a smoldering sprawl of soft strummed, chiming gloom pop, no drums, just layers of glistening guitars, warm lush vocals, a slow burning chunk or rainy day post-metal dreamfolk balladry. woozy, washed out, hazy, dreamlike and utterly gorgeous. While they last, we've got the limited digi-book packaging version of this fine album.

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Long before melodic post black metal or blackened shoegaze metal, or whatever you want to call it, became the flavor of the month (a flavor we continue to find delicious by the way), Alcest's 2 song debut came out of nowhere and blew minds. Not just ours, although ours were indeed sufficiently blown, but the metal world at large, the BLACK metal world, notoriously averse to innovation, especially of the poppy and melodic variety, with pretty much everyone freaking out over this French one man band, whose sound was a blend of Slinty post rock, spidery, shimmery shoegaze, and buzzing black metal. Since then, hundreds of bands have taken on the mantle of blackened jangle buzz pop, from Amesoeurs to Les Discrets, Deafheaven to Lantlos, but few releases, even later Alcest records, have managed to capture the same energy and intensity as these 2 songs. The opening track "Le Secret", began long stretches of crystalline reverbed guitars, that goes on and on, 3+ minutes before the song proper begins, but then the guitars come buzzing in, thick, and crumbling, wrapped around an impossibly poppy melody, and then the vocals drift in, vocals which we initially thought were female, hazy, and washed out, high and softly plaintive, the track slipping easily from pounding blast, to loping midtempo, but always warm and washed out, softly buzzy and so divinely dreamy. Black metal perhaps, but smooth out some of the metallisms and you'd have a Lovesliescrushing tune, strip away the distortion and it might sound like Cocteau Twins. The second track might be even better. "Elevation" begins with another long intro, this one all woozy shimmery synths, and when the 'band' launches into it proper, it's definitely buzzy and blackened, but again, infused with impossibly catchy melodies, and the vocals here are more black metal rasp, but somehow, the combination works perfectly, the riffs seeming to grow ever more epic and majestic, the pounding beats, blurring into another layer of pulsing buzzing sound. The sound does shift, from folky, clean guitar interlude, to lumbering midtempo chug and churn, which is when Alcest is at 'their' most metal, but the song drifts back toward the soaring majesty of the first half, droned out and hypnotic, buzzy and melodic and just about as sweetly warm and lush as black metal can get. Even six years later, after hearing a million different bands employ this same strategy, these two tracks sound so fresh, so impossibly heavy and simultaneously so infectiously hooky, total fuzzpop blackbuzz dreamgaze bliss. For this long awaited reissue, both songs have been rerecorded, these new version accompanying the originals, the liner notes explaining that Alcest mainman Neige was always unhappy with the sound, and the two new versions do sound a bit different, not necessarily better, but in some ways more lush and warm, less brittle and buzzy, even a bit more expansive and rich, although the originals were pretty dang perfect to begin with. Hard to say which versions we like more, but the fact that very little was changed besides the actual recording quality, means it almost doesn't matter!

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Really, what can we say at this point about French shoegaze / post black metallers Alcest, that hasn't already been said, by us, and pretty much everybody else? Alcest are pretty much the gold standard when it comes to soaring emotional melodic shoegaze black metal (along with Amesoeurs, but they're both fronted by the same guy anyway), and with every record they move further and further away from actual buzzing blackness, but at the same time, they keep getting better and better (production, arrangement, songwriting) and in the process, their ability to blend their dreamy jangle and black buzz far surpasses any of the other groups out there trying for the same effect. There's no jarring shift from crystalline shimmer, and hazy dreamy drift to blasting buzz, it's totally organic, and sure, in the process, perhaps the black and the buzz becomes muted and less, well, buzzy and black, but the strange thing is, no one is complaining. Even the grimmest of metalheads seems to love Alcest (and Amesoeurs). It's the Depeche Mode principle again, like Depeche Mode, all metalheads love Alcest. Not that we can blame them, what's not to love? Especially here, on what is arguably the group's masterpiece, so epic, and melodic, and sweeping and soaring, lush and textured, alternatingly heavy and majestic, dreamy and drifty, heavy on the post rock and the jangle, with the black metallisims making up a relatively small part of the sound, and when the band do get into some buzzy blackness, the infuse it with an impossible melodic sense, and the fact that the sound is so lush and the record is so well produced, it makes it sound heavier than most proper black metal bands, not brittle and buzzy, or chaotic and furious, but epic and crushing and MASSIVE. It can only really be a matter of time before non metalheads catch on. There's plenty here that would not sound at all out of place alongside Explosions In The Sky and Godspeed You Black Emperor and M83 and Mogwai and all the rest, and we wouldn't be at all surprised if this had come out on Temporary Residence, or even Matador. Maybe that's in the cards, but for now, we can all continue to bathe in Alcest's glorious sonic glow, while they still remain, at least tenuously, in the underground. At this point, this can't really be a contender for black metal record of the year, cuz it's finally just too far removed, but it's still so goddamn good, we're having a hard time imagining very many records this year, metal or otherwise, will top it.

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Sweater not included.

We've been gushing over French black metal outfit Ameseours for a while now. Their amazing blend of buzzing blackness and indie jangle. Like nothing we'd heard really, but was exactly what we always wanted, nay needed to hear, just didn't know it. As we mentioned in our review of their record, various members of that group also do time in the much more black metal Peste Noire, whose most recent record FolkFuck Folie we also reviewed recently, and in both reviews we lamented the fact that we were never able to get the ep by yet another related band, the even less metal, more blissy Alcest. And while that 2 song disc does in fact seem to be out of print, this here is the brand new full length, and besides being amazing, and one of the prettiest records of the year, it's absolutely and entirely not the least bit metal. AT ALL.� Which is in no way a bad thing, it's just perplexing that black metal folks have been touting this as one of the best metal records of the year, even ever. Much like Ameseours, Alcest is all about indie jangle, and blissed out shoegazey pop, but where Ameseours, mixes that sound with a more traditional buzz and blast, resulting in some strange blackened hybrid, a sort of indie jangle black metal, Alcest, jettison the metal entirely, leaving nothing but gorgeous, dramatic, epic, blissful pop perfection. And this is simply that, perfect pop. The guitars are still distorted and slightly heavy, and there is some double kick drum action, but that stuff is so wrapped up in dense smears of glistening chordal thrum and breathy emotional vocals, simple acoustic guitar picking and buzzing fuzzed out grooves, that it just sort of gets absorbed into Alcest's divine dreamy drift.� We talked about Justin Broadrick channeling the spirit of early nineties shoegaze pop in Jesu, but Alcest sound like they were transported directly from that era, yanked from a field of similarly minded sonic explorers like My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Ride, Swervedriver, Chapterhouse, and the like. It almost seems pointless to mention anything about the band's black metal pedigree, since if you were going on sound alone, you would be hard pressed to not imagine this was some legendary college rock record from 1992, each track glorious and glistening, the guitars�soaring, epic and majestic, all�major key, a walls of sound, rich and thick and lustrous, the�bass mirroring the guitar, simple subtle harmonies, everything tangled into lilting bliss pop epics, while over the top drift�soft fuzzy vocals, both male and female, that almost even more than the music recall that specific musical era. Absolutely the finest slab of blissed out, post My Bloody Valentine dreampop indie jangle drift we've heard in forever. Just listen to the sound samples and we think you'll be just as smitten as we are...�

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MPEG stream: Souvenirs D'un Autre Monde
MPEG stream: Les Iris

This should have been a highlight, but check out the price. Oof! Apparently Northerh Silence pressed up 3000 cds, but Alcest's new label forced them to destroy ALL but 500. Not sure what the problem was, but they only allowed NS to keep the 500 in order to recoup some of the money already spent on the now destroyed cds. Thus, NO copies of this were sold wholesale, as the label needed to make as much money back as it could. Thus we got a handful. The label let us have 10, but they were expensive, and figure in the exchange rate, and the shipping, and well, there ya go. $39. It is fantastic though, many of you bought the lp version. This is the cd version. We have 10 copies, that's it. SOrry, but at least a handful of you will get a copy, even if you have to cough up nearly forty bones. Here's our review of the lp version when we first listed it: Folks have been chomping at the bit for this one and now it's finally here. A collection of older demo material from French black metal horde Angmar and AQ faves, and current black-metal-bliss darlings Alcest. And after the most recent Alcest full length, the barely metal�Souvenirs D'un Autre Monde, and with the first ep being out of print and unavailable, a new Alcest record, even if it's an -old- new record, is enough to get the AQ black metal faithful, all in a frenzy... Angmar, who we have yet to feature on the AQ list but who we most definitely dig, offer up a handful of demos and rehearsals spanning the years 1998-2003. All the usual adjectives apply, this was long before the band streamlined their sound, so these tracks find the band raw and grim and frosty. Cold buzzing riffage, blast beats and some seriously creepy atmospheres. Every track a relentless burst of black fury, primitive and lo-fi, but all the more intense and blackened for it. The tracks are sprinkled with gorgeous bits of lilting folkiness, short stretches of dark ambience, one whole track of creepy shimmer, a gloomy piano / guitar duet, but it's the blasting buzz that define these guys, and they do it well, burning a black mark on the pale flesh of all that is holy with their beastly racket. Awesome stuff.� But Alcest is really the reason everyone wants this so bad, and rightfully so. Neige might not be a household name, unless you live with a bunch of black metalheads in France, but it sure should be, and probably will be soon, as Neige is the man behind Alcest, the equally brilliant Ameseours, as well as a member of weirdo black buzzers Peste Noire. The Alcest lp half of this split double, is one sided and features a 2001 demo in its entirety. And for those of you whose only exposure to Alcest is�Souvenirs D'un Autre Monde, you just might be shocked to discover that Alcest were indeed a real buzzing black metal outfit at one time. This demo definitely proves it. It also demonstrates, that even way back then, Neige had a melodic flair that could just not bee denied. The insane thing is that all of this music was written when Neige was all of 15 years old. Holy shit. What were we doing at 15? Definitely not composing legendary slabs of grim melodic black metal. But that's precisely what this is, an epic slab of buzzing blackness, run through with irresistible pop melodies, streaks of jangle and shoegazey bliss, but all merely as filigree for a seriously intense black metal buzz. Howled vocals, furious blasting rhythms, jagged black riffs, all woven into long stretches of midtempo moodiness, epic and minor key, and grim grim grim. But amazingly, without ever losing that mysterious melodiousness that would come to define Alcest's constantly evolving sound.

MPEG stream: Tristesse Hivernale
MPEG stream: Les Songs De L'Hiver

New album of unclassifiable, psychedelic death metal from this not-as-well-known-as-they-should-be Australian band. For fans of Neurosis and Voivod! Screechy Cradle of Filth parts meet outback tribal percussion jams, amidst heavy Entombed-style rockin'.

MPEG stream: Wrapped In Guilt
MPEG stream: Tongues & Knives

I think El Bobo at Revolver Distro describes this better than I can: "A psychedelic chunk of the brain's ugliest regions torn from the skull and fried in a deep vat of sizzling rock oil, as Britain's skull chefs of garage-skree, guitar-psychosis prepare a dramatic post-love-vibe, punkadelic meal." Playing Terrastock!

The latest addition to the ever expanding "Cascadian black metal" scene comes via Tacoma Washington's Alda (who apparently are not, as we had been hoping, named for Alan Alda). This is their 2009 debut, and delivers pretty much everything you'd want from a band like this or say, Wolves In the Throne Room, or Fauna, or Echtra, but give that sound their own twist. The record opens with a dark, haunting acoustic number, aching crooned vocals, spare finger picked guitars, the sound building to an urgent strum, the vocals too soaring dramatically, it's definitely effective in setting the mood, and leads directly into the slow, and distinctly melodic opening to the first proper metal track, "Fimbulwinter" - a plodding doomic death march, melancholic minor key guitar melodies, over simple plodding drums. We actually would have been perfectly happy had they kept it at this tempo, and unfurled a massive smoldering slo-mo blackened doom creep that filled up the whole rest of the record, but instead, they do eventually slip into some proper black riffing, and don't explode into a blast so much as a midtempo lope, an interesting choice for sure, giving the whole track a super laid back vibe, which is quickly scuttled when the guitar splinters into some super cool angular mathiness, and the harsh vokills swoop in. The song never fully explodes into blasting blackness, but in its own way, it sort of makes it less predictable and more interesting, the rest of the track rife with memorable melodies and shifting blackened textures. But fear not, the following track finds the band in full black/buzz/blast mode, furious and frantic, at least for the first minute or so, the song soon shifts into something much more mathy and midtempo, before they lurch right back into it again. And so it goes, there's some cello that pops up here, giving the sound some moodiness, and the acoustic guitars return, giving the proceedings a bit of a neo-folk feel, and leading directly into the next track which finds the band again unfurling some midtempo melodic blackness. It definitely seems obvious that Alda are more comfortable at a generally more midtempo clip, and it certainly suits them, the heavier slower parts get almost Neurosis-y, and the blasting parts add some definite dynamics, the vibe throughout moody and melancholy, and in its own way darkly psychedelic. While these guys might not be as epic and intense as WITTR, it also doesn't seem like that's what they're going for, their sound much slower and moodier, less majestic and more personal, and the neo-folk elements too are super distinctive, the cello is a nice touch as well. For fans of that 'Cascadian' sound, these guys definitely do it well. And there's a second Alda record too, released more recently, so curious to see how Alda have pushed their sound in the two years since they recorded this one. Regardless, we're digging this one a lot!

MPEG stream: Scattered On The Wind
MPEG stream: Fimbulwinter
MPEG stream: The Seed And The Hailstone

Alejandra and Underwood are actually Aeron Bergman and Alejandra Salinas, the folks responsible for the always-interesting Lucky Kitchen label, devoted to unusual releases like Alejandra's childhood tape experiments, or the fabulous "Blip Bleep" videogame electronic music comp. For this album they took material recorded live over the past year and created fragmented soundscapes with snatches of music, spoken word, and environmental sound, representing their collective subconscious, a "notebook" of sound-thoughts and memories.

Double cd set collecting recordings from 1938-1957 from this South American jazz guitarist, a contemporary of the legendary Django Reinhardt (both, at one point, playing in the clubs of Paris). Certainly the claim that Aleman could possibly outswing the famous Gypsy is supported by the two and a half hours of classic recordings on offer here. Jazz standards and Latin fare both. Delightful.

Another amazing Italian Library missive from the same folks who brought us the Daniela Casa we reviewed a while back. Alessandroni, most famously known for being the whistler for Ennio Morricone's Spaghetti Western soundtracks, was a fantastic composer in his own right as we heard previously on Prisma Sonoro, a haunting library score reissued on the Australian Roundtable label last year. On this 1970 release he created the vocal group, I Cantori Moderni Di Alessandroni, an eight to sixteen person choir, who have lent their talents to many soundtracks by Morricone, Piero Umiliani, and many other Italian composers of the 60's and 70's (and were also featured recently on Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained soundtrack). This was the only full length the choir recorded. Through 12 original compositions by Alessandroni, the choir evoke a lilting cinematic pop sound of Italian Bossa vibes and moody themes, augmented by harpsichord, flutes and twangy guitars. The choir not only featured Alessandroni's first wife, Giulia De Mutiis, but also the incomparable Edda Dell'Orso whose wordless vocals epitomize many of Morricone's Italian western and horror scores. Fantastic and Limited!!

MPEG stream: Una Storia
MPEG stream: Verso l'infinito
MPEG stream: Insieme A Te

We'll pretty much get anything on the Roundtable label right now, as they in collaboration with The Omni Recording Corporation, have been on a winning streak of reissuing on vinyl the most farflung and obscure library records, documentary soundtracks and other psycho-cinematic sonic ephemera from far off corners of the globe. Trouble is, they have been especially hard to get, and even more difficult to get enough of for us to list. We've literally been waiting for these latest two releases for nearly a year and our hopes of ever getting them were diminishing by the week. And all of the sudden, we got the news they were on the way and we were so seriously psyched! Two Italian library gems, one of haunted choir compositions from Egisto Macchi, founding member of the mighty Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova con Sonanza and the other from the wonderfully named Alessandro Alessandroni who is perhaps more well known as Ennio Morricone's guitarist and whistler! (Yes, whistler, of course he had to have one!) Both are pretty essential for lovers of seventies dreamy, otherworldly, acousmatic psychedelia! Alessandro Alessandroni was a key player in shaping much of the classic Italian soundtrack sound as we know it today from such comps as Delirium Of The Senses: Psychedelia In Italian Cinema. As guitarist for Ennio Morricone, his famous whistle pretty much defined the whole Spaghetti Western sound. He was a session player for nearly all the well known film composers, Piero Umilani, Bruno Nicolai and Francesco De Masi, yet his own solo work often was overshadowed. It's hard to figure out why with such a beautifully brilliant album as this mythical library album for the Sermi label. Like the most sublime Italian soundtracks from Ennio Morricone, Prisma Sonoro is phantasmagoric exotica of strangely compelling and lush melancholic moods. A lysergically-minded sound design creates druggy cinematic compositions of harpsichords, mournful strings, psychedelic guitars and haunting female vocals. Seriously beautiful and limited to 500 copies, get one while you can!

While the world of indie underground rock continues to fawn over the new free folk movement, Feathers, Banhart, Vetiver, Brightblack, Fursaxa, Faun Fables, Espers and the like, out there, deep in the forest, a similar breed lurks in the shadows, one that shuns the light, and the magazine covers, and the collaborations, choosing instead to pursue their own muse, perform their own rituals, create their own sonic magicks deep in the shade of the wood. Their music is of a much darker hue, drawn from a much more mysterious source, and the results aren't fuzzy or shimmery, they are chaotic, ominous, intense and intensely emotional, a modern folk by way of Comus, via the Wickerman, but without any frilly folk trappings, instead the sound is magical yet murky, morose and moody, a strangely hauntingly creepy crawl. Such is the music of the duo known as Alethes. Doom laced pagan rituals assembled from strummed acoustic guitars, tribal percussion, and growling gravelly vocals. Imagine some impossible mix of Kiss The Anus Of The Black Cat, Comus, Swans, Der Blutharsch, Woven Hand and an acoustic Neurosis. Gorgeously nihilistic, a somber and shadowed forest folk, lilting and lovely but always with some haunting uneasiness lurking right below the surface. A world of stygian shimmer, of doomic desolation, of blackened beauty. Truly stunning. Gorgeous black glossy print on oversized, fantastically tactile rubberized six panel deluxe fold out sleeve. Wow.

MPEG stream: Aletheia
MPEG stream: Eostre

Last time, we listed some excellent Swedish psych reissues on the Silence label, all Parson Sound related bands like International Harvester, Harvester, and Trad Gras och Stenar. But those weren't all the great LPs Silence has dug up for cd reissue recently! It's quite a bit different from Algarnas' approach on "Framtiden", being heavier, proggier, and more structured. The drifting, freeform improvisational aspects of the previous disc are overtaken by progressive rock compositions that incorporate eastern ragas, western classical music (there's a quote from Holst's "The Planets" in the first track), and folk ballads -- but Algarnas' roots in droning psychedelia aren't ignored either. Third Ear Band is referenced in one song, while the album ends with a gorgeous female-sung folk ballad. On the whole, "Delayed" is pretty great, but it seems that it comes from a more familiar '70s Prog Rock aesthetic than the truly otherworldly magic of its predecessor. So, unless you're more into prog than psych, definitely get "Framtiden" first, but then check this out -- it's a worthy, if lesser, successor to that album (BUT if you're someone who likes psych but can't cross the line at all into "prog", then maybe this isn't for you at all). When we first heard about "Delayed", we were hoping perhaps for a live disc with more of the material that formed the great bonus tracks on the "Framtiden" reissue, but the actual content here is far from disappointing!

RealAudio clip: Takeoff
RealAudio clip: Almond Raga
RealAudio clip: My Childhood Trees

This is one of those essential reissues that remind us that everything cool was already done about thirty years ago. Yep, these Swedish hippies sure knew what they were doing. Timeless psychedelia from 1972. Certainly everybody who gets worked up over the This reissue (which actually came out back in '95 and we've had before, but never in big enough quanities or at low enough prices to list until now) adds two amazing live bonus tracks that Byram will tell you are worthy of the price of the disc alone! These live tracks, along with the whole of the album proper, reveal Algarnas Tradgard as creators of dark stoned driftdrone every bit as cinematic as the best GSYBE! and even more authentically psychedelic than AMT leader Kawabata's beard. It's lovely, blissful, transportational stuff indeed. Our quick AQ-guide to the crucial Swedish psych essentials definitely includes this disc, along with the Parson Sound double cd, Bo Hansson's "Lord Of The Rings" opus and the International Harvester album. (Those are the top of the list, but once you've gotten into those you'll need to investigate Harvester, Trad Gras Och Stenar, Kebnekajse, and others from the Silence catalog, including Algarnas' lost-until-now second album, "Delayed", reviewed nearby!)

RealAudio clip: Two hours over two blue mountains...
RealAudio clip: Rings Of Saturn
RealAudio clip: 5/4
RealAudio clip: The Mirrors of Gabriel

[ aquarius records catalogue — A ]