[ aquarius records catalogue

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We've listed this before, but it's finally available again after what seemed like an eternity. The fans clamored for more, and they will have more. Anton Maiden is a 19 year old from Sweden who loves Iron Maiden, and to prove it, he steals computer midi files of his favorite Maiden tunes, and sings tunelessly, but energetically over them karaoke style. Like I need to tell you that this is absolutley fucking brilliant. So if you missed out on this the first time, or you just want to upgrade your xeroxed cover for the new improved color copied cover, go for it. Plus, it's no longer a cd-r, this is Anton Maiden in all his aluminum glory.

Antony's most recent live appearance in San Francisco transpired earlier this year at the Nob Hill Masonic Center, and it will most likely go down as one of THE concerts of the year for many of us who witnessed it. Besides having William Basinski as his opener and then playing an incredibly rich, intimate and moving set, one of the highlights came when Antony and his band did an amazing version of the Beyonce hit "Crazy In Love". After they played it someone in the audience yelled out, "You are so much better then her" to which Antony immediately replied "Excuse me?! She is extremely talented!" Haha. We totally agree and that made us love Antony even more, if that was even possible. This single offers up a studio recorded version of that amazing cover as well as "Aeon" from the latest album The Crying Light.

MPEG stream: Aeon
MPEG stream: Crazy In Love

It's been three years since Antony & The Johnsons captivated us, along with the rest of the world, with the devastatingly gorgeous I Am A Bird Now. But luckily we've been able to hear his voice on lots of releases since, as he's lent his striking vocals to records by folks like Bjork, Matmos, Current 93, Yoko Ono, Michael Cashmore, Nico Muhly and channeled his inner disco diva on the great Hercules & Love Affair debut. But of course we've still been craving a new full on Antony & The Johnsons album and it looks like that's on the horizon, but for now there is this brand new five song ep that once gain offers up that ineffable magic in Antony's voice and that unique songwriting that is still such a sound to behold. The title track, which leads off the ep. literally made us freeze and fill with goosebumps the second we first heard it and "Shake That Devil" would make the best companion piece to Nina Simone's "Take Me To The Water/I'm Going Back Home". The ep's closer is filled with solemn soul and mournful glory making this a totally essential slab of dark beauty. Only one of these songs will be on the brand new album, so of course this is a must have for all Antony fans!

MPEG stream: Another World
MPEG stream: Shake That Devil

Second single from I Am A Bird Now, from mysterious androgynous ingenue / torch singer Antony and his group the Johnsons. Smokey piano driven, gospel flecked ballads featuring Antony's amazing and impossible to describe voice, that we had described as "A rich throaty tenor, that slips effortlessly into a keening falsetto. A luxurious vibrato, trilling and wrapping itself around every note. Equal parts Nina Simone, Tiny Tim, Tracy Chapman, Jimmy Scott and even a little Elvis Presley." It truly is unlike anything you'll ever hear. This single features the gut wrenching "Hope There's Someone" (you can hear a sounds sample with the review for I Am A Bird Now) as well as two unreleased tracks, both nearly as emotional and intense. The cd features a video for "Hope There's Someone" that is as creepy and darkly lovely as the song.

MPEG stream: Frankenstein

Always time to rejoice around here when we're graced by new music from Antony. This ep has three brand new songs as well as two covers (Dylan, Lennon). It opens up with, what for Antony is an almost upbeat and rocking song that doesn't come off as immediately devastating as most Antony record openers, but instead demonstrates the rage of textures and dynamics that Antony is capable of creating. The next two songs slip back into Antony's more slow and swoonsome sound. And then the record closes with covers of Bob Dylan's "Pressing On", a cool choice for a cover as it came from Dylan's 1980 born again record Save. And Antony latches on to the melancholy gospel themes of survival in such a beautiful way. The record closes with a cover of "Imagine" where Antony is joined by Kevin Barker and William Basinski. That might be our least favorite of the songs from this ep but luckily we love the other tracks so much that it almost doesn't matter.

MPEG stream: Thank You For Your Love
MPEG stream: You Are The Treasure
MPEG stream: Pressing On

MPEG stream: Thank You For Your Love
MPEG stream: You Are The Treasure
MPEG stream: Pressing On

While we had the fantastic Another World ep to tide us over last year while we waited patiently, the time has finally come and we now get a brand new full length from Antony and it DOES NOT disappoint, not one bit! I Am A Bird Now is a really touch act to follow, but The Crying Light glows in its own unique beauty. Filled with lush arrangements and gorgeous orchestration, and of course Antony's one of a kind magical voice that is absolutely heavenly. Exploring similarly emotional and stunning stratospheres as folks like Rene Joly, Nina Simone, Bryan Ferry, Arthur Russell and Boy George, while employing a remarkable group of musicians (Nico Mushily, Greg Cohen, Doug Wieselman, etc.), but ultimately it's Antony's incredible songwriting and delivery that elevate his work to that highest level of musical achievement. While not a dramatic departure from the haunting and emotionally charged sounds of I Am A Bird Now, this record still finds its own voice. Focusing on nature, and our relationship to nature in the smallest and most grandiose ways, Antony ponders our lives, births and deaths, as these songs make you stop in your tracks and soak up the wind and air and spirits that surround us. This is the kind of record that keeps revealing itself on repeated listens. Of course, highly recommended!

MPEG stream: The Crying Light
MPEG stream: Kiss My Name
MPEG stream: Aeon

Besides putting out one of the year's best albums I am a Bird Now, Antony also put on one of the most moving and brilliant live shows of the year in his SF appearance at the Palace of Fine Arts this fall. Like myself, so many people I know were brought to both tears and laughter that night. We left knowing we would never forget that night and of course wanting more Antony as soon as possible. Well here are three NEW songs as well as "You Are My Sister" a great single from the last LP with Boy George lending his vocals. If you're like us and you need an Antony fix to remember what's really important then this EP will hold you over for a bit.

MPEG stream: Forest Of Love
MPEG stream: Paddy's Gone

Holy shit, this record destroys me. Within 30 seconds, this record had already given me chills, unnerved me, and literally made me want to cry. On the first listen even! Just listen to the first sound sample and you'll know just what I mean. It's all about Antony's voice. A rich throaty tenor, that slips effortlessly into a keening falsetto. A luxurious vibrato, trilling and wrapping itself around every note. Equal parts Nina Simone, Tiny Tim, Tracy Chapman, Jimmy Scott and even a little Elvis Presley. The instrumentation is minimal, piano, upright bass, shuffling jazz drums, occasional electric guitar. Some songs sound like jazz standards, some like lost gospel classics, others like timeless spirituals. Soaring and maudlin, without becoming overwrought or overly dramatic. He's sort of like an otherworldly, avant-garde Rufus Wainwright. Or the sort of singer you would find in a piano bar in your strangest dreams. Not sure what it was that kept us from getting into Antony And the Johnsons in the past, whether it was the overplayed Coil / Current 93 connection or the whole gender bending novelty aspect, but this record has definitely turned us around. Totally chilling, absolutely haunting and completely beautiful. Features guest performances by Rufus Wainwright, Boy George, Lou Reed and Devandra Banhart.

MPEG stream: Hope There's Someone
MPEG stream: My Lady Story

Swanlights might be the most giving, emotional and personal record yet from Antony & The Johnsons. Right from the get go, you've got "Everything Is New" which builds to a triumphant climax and captures the same kind of intensity that "I Hope There Is Someone" conjured, the opener to the 2005 release I Am Bird Now, which so strongly reeled us in to the world of Antony at the time. The follow up to that record, The Crying Light, was much more stark and insular, distant even, yet was still so haunting and intense. But with Swanlights it feels like Antony is coming to these songs from a much more personal and intimate point of view, and as always his voice and the song structures just totally make us melt and give us chills and the effects of these songs linger and linger... Besides having a song called "I'm In Love" we get the exciting feeling that Antony may very well in fact be in love in a way we haven't heard from him before. There are several tracks with a much more wide eyed and under-the-influence, blood-rushing-love sound then on any of his past recordings. So while there is a more hopeful and uplifting tone to Swanlights, there are still lots of great somber and haunting moments, including a truly chilling duet with Bjork. Once again another stunning set of songs from Antony that we'll be listening to for a long time to come.

MPEG stream: Everything Is New
MPEG stream: I'm In Love
MPEG stream: Fl�tta (featuring Bjork)

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORRY.

Another barrage of new tapes from Ormolycka this week. And after barely being able to keep that Lil Ugly Mane tape in stock over the last few months (and before you ask, yeah, we're probably out of it AGAIN), we can only imagine this one, the debut from Bay Area rapper Antwon, is gonna be the new one folks will be freaking out over. Which makes sense, cuz holy shit is this good. And this isn't any sort of home brewed lo-fi shit (although it probably is actually home brewed). No, the production is epic, each track handled by a different producer, so the sound is super varied, from buzz drenched super distorted raw big beat crunch, to looped soul sample swirl, to groovy, almost commercial sounding hip-pop, to new wavey retro-electro, with Antwon's super distinctive, sorta mush mouthed flow, raw and rough and rugged, closer to something like Death Grips than more mainstream hip hop, which makes sense since Ormolycka also did the Death Grips tape. But just check out the dirgey, noisy, crunchy "Laugh Now", with its loping beat, thick corrosive buzzing droned out chorus, complete with weird sorta moaned back up vocals, or "Sittin In Hell", which ditches all that noise for a woozy loopscape and some skittery stutter, or even "Living Every Dream" which has Pictureplane looping Suzanne Vega, slowed down and warbly. "Lap Of Luxury" is all glossy pop infused hip hop, shot through with out of place easy listening horns, and awesomely chaotic drum squalls bookending the washed out hazy dream poppy chorus. And then there's "Hidden Room" which is all percolating synths, and handclap electro. The whole record rules, and if there's any justice, all that blog/online hype that helped Kreayshawn, Lil B, Tyler The Creator, Earl Sweatshirt and all the rest, blow up big time, will do the same for Antwon. As always, sweet packaging, and also pretty dang limited.

MPEG stream: Laugh Now
MPEG stream: Sittin' In Hell
MPEG stream: Hidden Room

Ok, you've seen the documentary by now, haven't you? Anvil: The Story Of Anvil (we blogged about it, c'mon... plus it was huge, all over VH-1 and everyplace). And if so, you know you now need some Anvil in your collection - if you didn't have it already, like us longtime Anvil fans. This one is about our favorite. No, it doesn't have "Metal On Metal" on it (that's on the album Metal On Metal, naturally), but after watching the movie you've heard THAT song like 1,000 times on the soundtrack and don't need to hear it again for a while anyway. Forged In Fire has a lot of other Anvil gems on it, however, including the crushing title track, "Motormount", "Winged Assassins" and "Hard Times - Fast Ladies" among others. Also the unfortunately titled "Butter-Bust Jerky", hmm, which is as heavy as it is sleazy. While in the movie Anvil might seem like delusional, washed up, emotionally fragile (though still quite scrappy and charismatic) old rocker dudes way past their sell-by date, THIS early material will help to confirm why thrashers like Metallica used to look up to these Canadians as being the fastest and fiercest of underground metal bands in the land. The back of the album proudly proclaims: "If it's too loud, you're too old. Get the hell out cause you've been told". Obviously they had no idea they'd still be headbanging in 2009! And with a surprise second wind thanks to a fantastic documentary film, that's like a combo of Some Kind Of Monster, The Wrestler, and of course Spinal Tap. It's funny, right after we first saw the Anvil movie, we tried to get copies of the NEW album, the one they're working on in the documentary, to sell here. Y'know, just to support 'em. We contacted the band directly, they were nice but wanted WAY too much money per cd. We'd have to have sold 'em for like $25 each. So, we said forget it, and anyway we'd rather stock their classic '80s albums - but couldn't, 'cause those weren't available at all in the States, either... but now with the success of the movie, we noticed our regular, non-metal suppliers carrying 'em! Cool. So here you go, Anvil's Forged In Fire, it's their third album, from 1983, and the apex of their musical career if you ask us.

MPEG stream: Forged In Fire
MPEG stream: Hard Times - Fast Ladies
MPEG stream: Winged Assasins

Here it is, the record you've been waiting for - that is, if you saw the surprisingly well-received documentary "Anvil: The Story Of Anvil", wherein the long-suffering Canadian thrash band go through emotional and financial hell, and endure misadventures of Spinal Tap proportions, to record this, their 13th album if you didn't figure that out from the title. In the movie, it's the album they hope will put them back in the big leagues (where the were for about 15 minutes, maybe, back in the early '80s). And in the movie, it's obvious to everyone but them that going to the UK to record with a big name (and expensive) producer, the same one who recorded their early classic Metal On Metal in 1982, is NOT going to guarantee them the major label deal and rock star status they desire and (desperately believe they) deserve. But, it does leave you curious to hear the results. After we saw the movie the first time last year, we (like everyone else who sees it) were overwhelmed with sympathy (pity?) for these never-say-die, 50-something kids still trying to make it big. Plus we already liked Anvil anyway. So we contacted the band via their website and tried to order their self-released This Is Thirteen album for AQ, figuring we should do our part for the cause. Unfortunately, it turned out the band wanted WAY too much money for 'em, we'd have had to sell 'em for like $25. So we had to pass. But now, thanks to the success of the quite excellent movie (go see it if you haven't already, even if you don't care about metal, trust us, it's great), it turns out that this is the lucky 13th album of Anvil's career after all, now getting a wider release. They've gotten more press in the last year or so than they had over the last two decades probably. Thanks to the film, Anvil is now touring regularly (double billed with the movie, at times, in fact) and apparently were finally able to quit their day jobs! We almost thought they would want to make a whole new album now with songs explicitly referencing the themes of the documentary - never giving up, following your dreams, believing in your friends and family, rockin' out, and being beaten down by harsh reality (not necessarily in that order). But now we realize those things ARE actually what these songs are about. Titles here include "Worry", "Should'a Would'a Could'a" and "Flying Blind" after all. "Ready To Fight" is another one, and in the movie guys did fight (each other) a lot too, though they always made up in the end. Furthermore, this IS very much an Anvil album, and the movie was called Anvil: The Story Of Anvil after all. If you've heard any of Anvil's other records you know what to expect here. Straightforward '80s speed (and not so speedy) metal. Lots of shredding guitar solos, powerhouse drumming, catchy riffage, and singer/guitarist Lips' unique gravelly caterwaul, which can convey a lot of emotion at times (he's an emotional dude, you know if you've seen the movie). Basically, a headbanging good time, not unlike a hyper caffeinated Motorhead (if we had to describe this to someone unfamiliar with most metal). The opening, title track is certainly quite heavy, a lumbering behemoth, though some might find it a little boring at over six minutes long. It showcases the powerful production job that the band were so proud of, however. The album then picks up speed up pretty quickly, with "Bombs Away" assaulting the ears in thrashy fashion, clocking in, as do most of the tracks here, at closer to 3 minutes. There's 13 songs (of course) plus one bonus - for this domestic VH1 Classic label release, they've added an extra track, and not just any track, it's "Thumb Hang", the wonderfully juvenile, Inquisition-themed, previously unrecorded early Anvil tune that was demoed a cappella by Lips in a scene in the movie, now done properly by the whole band! One of our faves here, with a memorable build up and killer galloping middle section. While we can't say this is as good as Metal On Metal or Forged In Fire, it's no disgrace to their legacy either. Recommended to those who already have all dozen previous Anvil albums (of course). Or even just a couple Anvil albums. And to those who love the movie. And to those who just want to rock. The feel-good throwback metal album of the year!

MPEG stream: Flying Blind
MPEG stream: Axe To Grind
MPEG stream: American Refugee

Not to be confused with Anvil! Though, right now, maybe they'd like to be. This Bay Area metal band, is another from the '80s that had even less success than those now famous Canucks. Much less. Back in the day, Anvil Chorus never managed to get signed, and released only demos and singles, never an album - until now. It wasn't 'cause they weren't good, in fact, they were commonly known as "the Bay Area's best unsigned metal band". It was more due to mere bad luck. And maybe 'cause their music crossed too many genre lines, from NWOBHM power, to party time LA pop metal, to progressive wank, to speed metal tech. Who knows. But it's cool that they got back together, got back in the studio, and FINALLY have released their debut album, via the Rockadrome label (who've been blessing us with some awesome proto-metal reissues lately, you should recall). Anyone who digs '80s metal ought to check this out. There's certainly plenty of shred. And don't worry, most of these songs are ones demoed back in the day thus and have that "only in the '80s" authenticity to 'em, although they're newly recorded. Criticisms? Well, Anvil Chorus do have a tendency to a bit of cheesiness, mainly due to overuse of keyboards, that's their weak spot taste-wise. And they've probably only grown in "adulthood", towards such prog-metal pitfalls, also evinced by the awful album cover. Cheesy, yeah. Still, even their cheese can be kinda enjoyable, so this is just a warning to those who can't handle a whiff of it. Their song "European" for instance, might be too poppy for some, but it's ultimately pretty good, a classy track, though we prefer it when they're killing us with the equally classy "Deadly Weapons"! Anyway, among the 12 songs here there's lots to make folks into heavy, riffy, rippin' bands like Riot, Armored Saint, and Metal Church happy... along with pleasing the Queensryche fans that their cheesier prog side indulges. So check it out, it's some Bay Area heavy metal history come back to life (they even played a show the other night!). Oh, and making amends for the cover art, the cd booklet includes lyrics, vintage photos of the band in action in the '80s, and a band history/appreciation by local metal celeb Ron Quintana.

MPEG stream: Deadly Weapons
MPEG stream: Blue Flames
MPEG stream: Phase To Phase

Weirdo black metal obsessives no doubt remember Italian band Leaden, whose awesomely titled album, Monotonous Foghorns of Molesting Department, we raved about a while back. Not only were the songs called things like "Black Apartment Of Depression" and "When Out Seems To Vanish", but the music was a stumbling confusional mix of blackened doomy slowcore and lurching murky black fuzz, that managed to be more droney and hypnotic than blasting and buzzing, but so weird and unique that we just couldn't get enough of it. So when we discovered the guy from Leaden had another band, we knew we had to track it down. This isn't that new, but it's the firs time we've managed to get enough to list. And while it doesn't really sound much like Leaden, it is just as weird, but in a whole different, maybe even more brilliantly fucked up way. My Frozen Dream Slept Too Eternally is only 4 songs, but they're all long, and there's so much packed into each. It would be worth it even if it was just one song, the opener, "Strongest Nocturnal Silence" is the black metal gloom pop what-the-fuck jam of the year. Of any year. Beginning with a simple doomy, almost Sabbathy riff, the drums join in, simple and stripped down, and then the vocals, holy shit. Somewhere between the Ethel Merman like warble of Urfaust and a doped up Axl Rose. A raspy harsh falsetto croon, draped over a warm thick doomy black groove that is equal parts black metal, slowcore and slooowed way down punk rock. The end result is something haunting and creepy and off kilter and amazingly moody and evocative. When the track shifts to the 'chorus', it's a hook that will stick in your head forever, the lurching riff, the anguished vocals. And we're only 5 minutes in. The track shifts gears and suddenly it's just a guitar, unfurling a mournful melody, the notes dripping in effects, drifting over space-y Tangerine Dream style synths, until a distorted guitar comes back in adding a layer of woozy swirling riffage, then the track builds and builds, the guitars getting more psychedelic and frenzied, the synths more dramatic and tense, and suddenly it's some sort of spaced out epic, Godspeed versus Hawkwind by way of Abruptum and Urfaust, the vocals come back in, and finally, the track explodes into a blast of about as black as it gets here, minor key doom-ed black metal, rife with super movie melodies, that minus the vocals and some of the buzz, could be some sort of dark post rock record. Wow. Like we said, that song alone would be worth the price of admission, but there are three more long ones to go, and they hardly tread the same ground. The next track starts off all churning downtuned chug underpinned by stumbling double kick, an almost Khold style groove, with some strange murky synthesizers than transform the track into something much more moody and unhinged, the vocals adding their own bit of anguished mystery, the track veering all over the place, the synths shifting the mood from punkish pound to swirling dizzying doom psych and back again. The next track is another punkish jam, with those disembodied keyboards that make this sound like Burzum covering Khold covering Nuit Noire. Shifting repeatedly from loping melancholy dirge to blurred buzz to lumbering moody dirge. The final track is total blackened post rock. The guitars tangled and minor key, a swirling layer of ghostly keyboard over the whole thing, the vocals, a raspy mournful howl, the melodies constantly shifting and swirling, the song slipping into post punk groove, then dirgey doom metal pound, then black metal blast, but always twisted up by those vocals, and the off kilter keyboards, and the thing is, it may be damaged and demented, but beyond simply being 'bizarre', the sound is intense and emotional, epic and melancholic, dark and weirdly beautiful, while still managing to be heavy, buzzy, totally freaked out, fucked up and so fantastic.

MPEG stream: Strongest Nocturnal Silence
MPEG stream: Misanthropic Sensation Far Away From The Light

The return of the mysterious Anworth Kirk, an offshoot of hauntological electronica alchemists Demdike Stare, a 'groop' which professes to be a whole different entity, although as far as we're concerned, we imagine we might be hard pressed to find anyone that loves Demdike Stare, who wouldn't also love these guys (this guy?). Sonically similar, but more shrouded in mystery, and plenty of bizarrely esoteric descriptive psychobabble, the label explains that Avonwaith "constructs dense melodic and narrative sound poems upon a skeletal framework of non-musical elements such as basic magnetic communication, secular religion and primitive mechanical industry. Composed and compiled around fake-loric nonlanguage/electric codes and forbidden information, Anworth Kirk uses the phonographic format as an archive of sonic and poetic commentary (evidence) concerning corruption in pre-war local industry, perverted belief systems and scientific invention. Part musique concrete, part folklore, part-pulp-fictitious, part Neorealist, this indulgent patchwork of mechanical folk/pop and non-music combines essential influences of electric Smithsonian releases, sound poetry, Zden?k Liska, Ilhan Mimaroglu, basic Carnatic music, Letterism, Pierre Henry, Oramics in Ardwick, Massiera, Lloyd M. Williams, Stella Crenshaw, Bruno Nicolai, Suzanne Ciani, Eastern European fiction, AgitProp, L.S. Lowry, J.G. Frazer, Gurdjieff, Kommune pop groups and futen theater." Phew. And yeah, while perhaps that is all in fact maybe sort of true, it might be easier to say, that it sounds a lot like much of Demdike Stare's Tryptych, equally hauntological, each track a miniature soundworld of electronic ephemera, of skeletal beats and bleep bloop electronics, haunting grey atmospheres, looped tribal rhythms, like a collection of mysterious transmissions from the ether. Tracks are hazy, their borders constantly bleeding into one another, snippets of gauzy old timey easy listening, lightly dusted with distortion and reverb transformed into some sort of ghostly retro slo-mo electro pop, drifting through fields of tinkling chimes and echo drenched melodic swirls, peppered with muted glitchy pulses, field recordings of unknown provenance, soft focus smears of sun dappled shimmer, chanting children's rhymes, all woven into something strange and magical, very cinematic, a definite seventies giallo vibe in places, a little Euro, a lot jazzy, moody and atmospheric, the record unwinding in it's final movement with a distinctly horror movie like feel, brief melodic motifs repeated (a la Halloween), nestled in a black cloud of thick ominous synths, collaged voices, and laid over what sounds like some ritualistic pagan forest folk, skeletal and otherworldly, all flecked with odd buzz and Eastern melodies, darkly dreamy and beautifully bewitching. LIMITED TO 420 COPIES, and one final recommendation from the label/groop: "Parts of this disc are presented in both Stereo and Mono and it is to be played at 45RPM with a low-gram stylus pressure." Indeed.

Shacklecross is the third installment in an ongoing series of hauntological vinyl explorations from this mysterious musical brotherhood, rumored to in fact be none other than Demdike Stare, along with Finders Keepers head honcho Andy Votel. Rooted in all manner of arcane esoterica, AK engage in an impossibly obtuse and all over the map crazed kitchen sink sonic alchemy, that results in a topographical musical map that leads to some strange other/inner world, where the sky is streaked with Phantasm like synth squelch, wheezing keyboards, strange sound effects swirls, and railroad crossing percussion. Grim horror movie ambience unfurls revealing detuned plucks, creaky old man vox and keening string scrape. The production warped and woozy, bursts of martial snare and blasts of white noise crunch, beneath thumb piano melodies, and Muslimgauze style grooves. At one point the drums explode into bombastic chaos, cascading over mesmerizing Middle Eastern vocal loops, sounding like some wild Sublime Frequencies remix, before fading into a field recording flecked ambience, all kosmische synth swirl and fluttery birdsong, pocked with bits of skitter and glitch, which seem to melt into a sort of sci-fi sprawl of warped wooze. The flipside begins with the introduction of tabla like beats over wavery drones and lush layered tones, all wreathed in crackle and buzz. The sound shifting into a creaking Pierre Bastien like robotic clatter, skeletal and oddly propulsive, draped over distant swaths of feedback drenched electronics, all culminating in a droned out doomy drift, driven by industrial clatter and clang, all over a roiling sea of moaning rumbles and bird song like electronic squiggles. Finally the sound returns to the first 'movement', dark squelchy synths beneath bombastic drumming, funky breakbeats and guitar twang mired in murky gurgles, all of which blossoms into an almost Morricone-esque coda, but more blurry and bleary and much more warped and sinister. LIMITED TO 700 COPIES, spin at 45rpm, or 33 if you dare!

Demdike Stare fans listen up! There's a new dark mysterious stranger in town by the name of Anworth Kirk, and for fans of Demdike Stare's haunted dub sound paintings or that Broadcast and The Focus Group record we keep raving about, or any of the vintage horror soundtracks from Trunk Records, you will surely want to give this a listen. No, Anworth Kirk is not really a person, or a band, as far as we can tell, but it's the first release on the new archival imprint Pre-Cert Home Entertainment that will be devoted to releasing a series of limited vinyl missives of contemporary musical and non-musical strangeness. Most definitely associated with DJ Andy Votel and the B-Music crew as well as Demdike Stare themselves (in fact, we're pretty sure Anworth Kirk IS Andy Votel and Sean Canty of Demdike, who run the Pre-Cert label), the music presented here is a mind-bending collage of haunting creaking loops, far away noises of babies crying and dogs barking, slow motion creeping synths, library music, and eldritch incantations culled from dusty corners of British horror. So haunting and beautiful! Limited to 500 copies, it is basically already out of print, so grab one of the few we have while you can!

Record number two from this psychedelic raga-rock supergroup finds the lineup slightly altered but with very little shift in their sound. Still present of course are Cedric Bixler Zavala of the Mars Volta, Christian Eric Beaulieu of the late great Triclops! and Mike Watt (Minutemen, firehose et. al.), but gone is Rachel from dream poppers Sleepy Sun and in her place is Toshi Kasai from Big Business, but as we mentioned before, the sound still remains relatively unchanged, which is a good thing, considering how much we dug their debut. The A side title track, named for a Grateful Dead record, is all wild tumbling drums, that flit from rhythmic and motorik to chaotic and progged out, heavily strummed acoustic guitars, shimmery keyboards, the whole thing very spaced out and darkly proggy, almost like the intro to some sidelong seventies prog rock epic, but here kept well in check, minimal, tight, a little raga-like, but super mesmerizing and hypnotic. The flipside sounds almost like a continuation of the first track, but blossoms into some soaring strummy psychedelic rock, with high, crystalline vox, over a bed of steel string strum, and more busy drumming, all blurred into something much more dreamy, with a distinctly seventies Yes vibe (which is most definitely a good thing), the vocals processed into swoonsome sheets of shimmery melody and lush layered texture, again, having the feel of being one part of a much bigger whole, that we just haven't heard yet. Fantastic. And after two singles, we're definitely hankering to hear what these guys can do with a full length. Like everything on Valley King, super deluxe, gorgeously designed slikscreened sleeves, with original artwork from Alan Forbes. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, each one hand numbered. And pretty much entirely sold out. We should be able to get a few more copies when this first batch sells out, but most likely not many, so as always, grab one quick...

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Anywhere began life as a sort of Mars Volta side project, featuring Cedric Bixler Zavala and Mike Watt as well as members of Sleepy Sun and Triclops, but after two singles, Zavala and Watt are out, and Anywhere now seems to have morphed into something a bit more ambiguous, a sort of ever shifting musical collective, which this time around includes Dale Crover (The Melvins, Altamont), Ethan Miller (Comets On Fire, Howlin' Rain), Toshi Kasai (Big Business), Krist Novoselic (Nirvana!), Christian Eric Beaulieu (Triclops), Jonathan Hischke (Hella), Bret Constatino (Sleepy Sun), Matt Holliman (Sleepy Sun) and Cyrus Comisky (Drunk Horse, Howlin' Rain). That's a lot of cooks in this musical kitchen, but it works, and really doesn't stray too far from those early singles, spaced out psychedelic prog jams, all big booming drums, swirling guitars, tangled melodies, buried vocals, the opener is pretty epic and bombastic, slipping into some near Queen like majesty at one point, while the second track drift into a more acid folkiness, all softly strummed acoustic guitars, wild bongos, not sure if it's just us, but we might be hearing a little Comus going on here, which is never a bad thing. The flipside remains in acoustic guitar mode, sounding almost like a continuation from the A side, the urgent steel string strum, and frenzied hand drumming now augmented by some cool psychedelic lead guitar, the vibe very seventies prog-folk for sure, before drifting into the spaced out closer, all hazy, drowsy, druggy drift, churning rhythms, more acoustic guitar strum, even some harmonica, but all blurred and smeary, and sort of Spacemen 3-ish, a sprawling, smoldering slow build space jam that is seriously psychedelic, and wouldn't sound out of place on Rocket or Agitated, spacey stoner psych bliss!! LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!! With some seriously kick ass eye popping full color picture disc art by Alan Forbes.

Local label Valley King are on fire, after singles by local space rockers Carlton Melton, SF psych stoners Golden Void, witchy Swedish rockers Spiders and Sweet Apple, the project of Witch's Dave Sweetapple, comes this, the debut from L.A. supergroup Anywhere, which we have to say, we were a wee bit skeptical about. Not just because of the often bandied about 'supergroup' tag, but also cuz it seemed like a strange hodgepodge member-wise, Cedric Bixler Zavala of The Mars Volta and At The Drive In, Christian Eric Beaulieu of the late great Triclops!, Mike Watt of the Minutemen and fIREHOSE obviously, and finally Rachel Fannan from SF dreampsych combo Sleepy Sun. Weird right? The label explains how these folks all fell in together, but even then we weren't sure what to expect, but whatever it was, it wasn't this, a weird sort of psychedelic rhythmic acoustic guitar driven dronerock, laced with electronics, and tabla like percussion, a bit proggy and druggy and dreamy, the A side plays out like the first movement of an epic sidelong prog masterpiece, the guitars lush and shimmery, those tabla sound rhythms often run through glitched out effects, the melodies majestic and soaring, some classic sixties psych guitar laid over the top, it's a shame it ends after only 5 minutes, when we had been plotting out the rest of the imagined song in our heads. Needless to say, it was a hugely pleasant surprise and had us hankering for more. The B side adds vocals to the mix, Fannan's hazy stoned croon, perfectly complimented by the warm, whirling acoustic strum and toy xylophone like percussion, the song ebbing and flowing in soft swells, even more than the first side, sounding like some lost sixties band, all Laurel Canyon, witchy folk flecked psychedelic classic rock, brooding and moody and darkly dreamy. Gorgeous stuff for sure, and here's hoping they can manage a full length! LIMITED TO 500 COPIES! Already sold out, we have the last 20 copies, and then this is gone for good. Like the other Valley King releases, super swank sleeves with striking cover art by artist Alan Forbes, signed and numbered, includes a sticker as well.

Adventurous accordionist Teodoro Anzellotti has already adapted the piano music of Erik Satie for another Winter & Winter disc. Now he turns to the harpsichord music of Italian composer Domenico Scarlatti, who flourished in Spain 1685-1757. Scarlatti's music

Satie wonderfully adapted for accordion!!

From the fellow who brought us the lovely accordian interpretations of Erik Satie on a prior cd! From the back: "Compositions such as these - unquestionably go a long way in re-defining the accordian, in liberating it from its relatively short, but heavily cliche-ridden history. In a way, the accordian's role may be compared with that of the saxophone: both children of the industrialisation of musical instrument manufacture in the 19th century, both aesthetically defined by certain popular idioms, both re-discovered and re-defined by the composers of New Music. But while I must confess that the re-invention of the saxophone has, as yet, rarely convinced me - too often the wealth of timbres and articulations created by the master jazz saxophonists has been traded for a relative sterility and blandness of tone -, I do feel that these (and other) new works for accordian have enriched the sound world of the accordian immensely, and I hope that you will share my sense of discovery."

AOA is a Boredoms related group featuring newest member E-da and bassist Hilah (formerly Hira). "Emotion Vacation", their second full length, was recorded in Melbourne, Australia by "deep house / industrial techno / trance" producer Ollie Olsen. Eye

28 pairs up the always lovely Ms Tujiko Noriko with Aoki Takamasa. Both are Japanese artists living in Paris, both are 28 years old (hence the title of the record). The pair initially met over 3 years ago at an event for the Cartier Foundation in Paris. Their collaboration, originally intended for just one song, worked out so well that they decided to work on a full length together, exchanging and sewing more sound bits with the loving attention of a precocious collage prodigy. A patchwork quilt of blissful, Morr-esque electronics, broken toy IDM, lilting, tender vocals, and gently textured raindrops-on-a-corrugated-roof beats. The album is silky and caressing, less jagged than Noriko's recent collaboration with Lawrence English. Reminiscent as well as Japanese chanteuse, Salyu's vocal pieces for the film, "All About Lily Chou-Chou."

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The return of French black metallers Aosoth, with what many are proclaiming to be black metal record of the year. And we have to say we're ready to agree. Obviously, as long time aQ list readers no doubt already know, we love French black metal, as probably do many of you. Deathspell, Blut Aus Nord, Diamatregon, Antaeus, Hell Militia, Otargos, Peste Noire, Spektr, S.V.E.S.T., Mutiilation, Wolok, and of course Aosoth belong to that elite group. This is record number three, originally a side project of Antaeus vocalist MkM, who seems to have maybe been downgraded here, as only the other two guys get their pix in the booklet, while MkM is credited with "audio propaganda", which we can only assume are vocals, and the vocals here are appropriately fierce and fucked up and awesome, and are no doubt still delivered by MkM. But it's the music that's mindblowing, impossibly relentless, insanely heavy, gnarled and ultra complex, taking the sort of avant blackness of Deathspell, and rendering it in a form much more raw and low fidelity. The riffs are black tangles, the drums insane blasts of lightning fast pound, the atmosphere is super creepy and murky, the melodies soar, the arrangements epic and majestic, but the sound is just this side of lo-fi, the sound managing to be dense and heavy, without being slick and polished, instead, the sound is feral and RAW, and it's a strange combination, the raw lo-fi sound, and this seriously complex avant garde blackness, the tracks slipping from old school black buzz blast, to soaring epic majesty, to total mathed out confusional chaos, all super twisted and psychedelic, just take the extended breakdown on "II", which is a head spinning swirl of constant drum fill and swirling interlocking manic melody, a blurred cloud of frantic heaviness that is so tense and intense, that when it does finally switch, it seemingly takes a few seconds to readjust. There are plenty of strange interludes, buzzing black ambience, haunting pianos, hazy stretches of guitardrone, hushed expanses of hushed shimmer, but this is the kind of record that is already inherently twisted, those non-metal extras only add to the atmosphere, in fact, in a way, it's those parts that offer a brief respite from the actual music's hellish black weirdness, the core sound a grinding, buzzing dense black tangle, occasionally slipping into something woozy and doomy, lumbering and creeping, a haunting bit of depressive darkness, but inevitably those parts explode into flurries of wildly chaotic drum damage and fucked up and fractured riffage. But for all this perceived weirdness, the sound is not 'weird', all of those strange elements are deftly woven into an incredible suite of grim black metallic mastery, creating a series of songs that manage to be heavy, haunting, brutal and black, fucked up and totally fucking incredible. Black metal record of the year? Could be...

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It's been quite some time since we've heard from French black metal lords (and lady) Antaeus. Fortunately, the always amazing Norma Evangelium Diaboli label has given us a split 7" with Antaeus and Germany's Katharsis, reviewed elsewhere on this list. But what has the band been up to since their last full length, 2006's Blood Libels? Well, we're not entirely sure. But our blackened hearts have been aching for Antaeus' incomprehensibly heavy blend of thick riffage, terrifying vocals and truly astounding drumming. And that, dear friends, is where Aosoth steps in. The new-ish (they've been around since 2002 but only released a couple of splits) project of Antaeus vocalist MkM, with the awesomely monickered Bestial Satanic T handling all the instruments and production work, Aosoth effortlessly steps into the top tier of current black metal bands with their first full length. The sound is not too far removed from that of Antaeus, but Aosoth is its own beast indeed. These songs won't be mistaken for anything but black metal, but they are at times quite thrashy and, dare we say, "catchy" throughout the majority of the record. Production wise, this will make you realize that no matter how many black metal bands are capable of producing awesome work with limited means/musical talent, some guys are just a cut above the rest. Who, other than someone truly devoted to darkness, can write riffs this devastating? It's clear that these guys are anything but amateur black metal weekend warriors. Things kick off with the two part "Aura of Pills", the name of which gives you a pretty clear idea of the strain of mental instability these true black metallers have embraced to further their deviance within modern society. Part I begins with shimmering cathedral-like ambience before snapping into a burley, hyperspeed D-Beat with thick swells of guitar and uber-metal pinch harmonics. Part II is a bit more plodding, but no less heavy, making nice use of the devil's tritone as the vocals bark out pure vitriol, before culminating in a squiggly (maybe not the best word to describe something so evil...) guitar solo. The somewhat hilariously titled "Here to Serve" offers another uncompromising blend of sheer brutality as does the final track, "Prophet's Curse", where MkM's treated vocals gurgle below a queasy, arpeggiated guitar riff as things head into a midtempo dirge that is probably a pretty good indication of what it would be like to die in combat... in a GOOD way. This album came as quite a surprise, because honestly, we weren't really expecting it to kick our asses this hard. The unknown status of Antaeus is a little easier to stomach when we know the members are up to something as truly worthwhile and unrelenting as this.

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"Peruvian Groove"

First record from Swedish depressive black metal trio, Apati (Apathy we assume), who travel a well worn path, one most recently and fantastically tread by their countrymen Lifelover, but who manage to take that sound and do their own thing with it. To be fair, that 'thing' is most definitely not that far removed from Lifelover, although we do hear plenty of other sonically similar groups like Hypothermia and Happy Days, and other outfits who are melding melodic blackened pop with harsh shrieking vocals and black atmospherics. Also worth mentioning is Katatonia, who seem to have inadvertently created the template for the modern wave of depressive black metal, strip the hellish shrieks away, introduce some deep crooning vocals, and you'd have some seriously dark and catchy blackened doom pop. Which should give you an idea of what's going on with Apati, the music is mournful and melodic, epic and grandiose, the drums sound programmed, but they're simple and there more as a framework, allowing the guitars to loop into mesmerizing riffscapes, most of the tracks only have one or two parts, more about repetition and mood than songsmithery. The vocals are really the only thing that keep Apati at all tethered to black metal, they shriek maniacally, frenzied, hysterical, anguished, wailed dramatically, easily the most metal element besides the buzzy guitars, but the guitar buzz is less harsh and hellish and more melodic and poppy. Apati also offer up plenty of haunting instrumental interludes (which is probably another reason they get slagged off for being Lifelover copies), dark chamber music, looping piano figures, the sound of storms, disembodied voices, sampled dialogue, all draped over hazy, gauzy stretches of dreamy shimmer, or murky ambience. Where Lifelover are seriously demented and fucked up and damaged, Apati don't concern themselves more with creating beautiful music, the juxtaposition is certainly odd, and is what make them what they are, but it's not willfully far out, it seems more like an aesthetic choice, the harsh vocals, adding to the dread and drama of the melancholy music underneath. We're pretty partial to this new breed of depressive black metal, most of our favorite BM has elements of pop anyway, this more like a dark rock band infusing their sound with elements of black metal, whatever you call it, gloom pop, dark metal, depressive dirge pop, black pop, it hardly matters, this stuff is awesome, moody, melodic, hypnotic and heavy, and heck, it will definitely tide us over until the next Lifelover record, or even the next Apati record. RECOMMENDED!

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Art books can be pretty hit or miss. Especially indie underground art books, zines, etc... Which run the risk of being a little too insular, self indulgent, whatever the art version of friend rock is... Granted there are lots of exceptions, but we're sure we don't need to tell you that there is as much bad art as there is bad music. But by the same token, there's just as much good art, you just gotta know where to look. We don't often list books, especially art books, but once in a while, our ass is so kicked by one we feel compelled to share it with everybody. The latest ass kicker is the strangely titled Apenest. A 100+ page perfect bound tome, featuring 23 artists from the North East United States... Not a single artist we had heard of, but almost all of them amazing. The art is all over the map, from photos, to pencil drawings, collages, elaborate oil paintings, bizarre squiggles, abstract, lifelike, pretty, ugly, all fantastic. The concept behind the book is pretty remarkable as well. It's incredibly difficult for artists to have a book of their work published, so for Apenest, each artist contributed an original piece of artwork, which were all assembled into a single portfolio and sold to a private collector. The money was then used to pay for the book. Simple. And now we all get to see some totally kick ass, and off the beaten path art. Some of our favorites: James Quigley's grotesque cartoon monster drawings, Cody Hoyt's gorgeous and scary snake/rainbow/skull assemblages, Brandon Nastanski's mysterious numbered and patterned figures, Anabel Vasquez's super abstract color drenched photos, we could go on and on. Gorgeously laid out, and lovingly assembled, bits of text interspersed with the artwork, almost all of which is totally great. And so cheap! You spend so much time catering to the whims of your ears, it's high time your eyes got some serious love! Essential. 116 pages, perfect bound book, comes in a zip lock bag with stickers, an 11" x 17" offset poster and a hand silk-screened bandanna! LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES.

The completely rad, hectic debut full length release from this Washington, D.C. quartet! The Apes have replaced the position of lead guitar with organ, giving their music a dark, creepy feel, while still staying totally rock. 14 raw'n'raunchy, bluesy,

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Crushing noise breaks and musique concréte from Jason Skeet, co-owner of Ambush along with DJ Scud, whom Skeet has collaborated with regularly. Harsh.

Former Cradle of Filth guitarist Stuart Anstis offers a solo album on the experimental Iris Light label (Szeki Kurva, Aube, Maeror Tri, Band of Pain, etc.). It's not black metal, but more of an electronic soundscape thing with beats...not bad, but not too

During the early '90s, the remix became a new marketing tool to help salvage or lend credibility to A&R debacles -- signings that otherwise would have been relegated to bargain bins and been tax write-offs. With the unexpected explosion of Nirvana on one side of the world and grassroots fervor of rave culture spreading out of the UK, the confusion of A&R reps was somewhat understandable. This is exactly the context in which Richard D. James (aka Aphex Twin) was approached to remix The Lemonheads! Perhaps the mythology behind this remix is true -- that James had forgotten all about his commission and when the courier came around to pick up the remix, he randomly grabbed a DAT which obviously had nothing to do with the Lemonheads. When the label protested, James argued that he had sped the entire song up to build one of the snare fills! Or so the myth goes. Regardless, Aphex came away with the cash, and fans of Lemonheads' heart-throb punk image were confused if not irritated by a jackhammered blast of 909 discomfort! Accused of rank cynicism, or of the post-ironic facade of cynicism, or of an inability to render any consistent conceptual agenda, James remains cryptic as to his intent: "I like doing it sometimes. Basically, I'll take a song and make it into something that I like. The original comes to me in a form that I hate, then I have to do a serious bit of alteration to it, and sometimes I don't even bother. I just give them a track that has nothing to do with the song." Thus, "26 Mixes For Cash" is what it is, a collection of unrelated projects branded with the Aphex Twin trademarks: slippery ambience, klanging breakbeats, and mercurial electronic melodies. True to his own admission, the songs vary in degrees to his attachment; and those that he feels most passionately about (either love or hate -- e.g. Baby Ford, Curve, St. Etienne, and Seefeel) are rendered with the greatest panache, and others are delivered with an offhanded nonchalance (e.g. Buck Tick, Nav Katze, and Nobukazu Takemura). Certainly, this is not for Aphex neophytes. For those readers out there new to Aphex, please check out his albums "Richard D. James" or "I Care Because You Do." However, completists will be more than happy with this batch of tracks. MPEG Download: CURVE "Falling Free, Aphex Twin Remix" [/audio/aphexcurvefalling.mp3] MPEG Stream: CURVE "Falling Free, Aphex Twin Remix" [/audio/aphexcurvefalling.m3u]

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Since Richard D. James has recently been hiding from the public with no indications as to when or if another Aphex Twin album will be happening, this rare Australian import collection of Aphex Twin's mid '90s singles is certainly a welcome arrival! "51/13" During this period of Aphex Twin's sound, he was continuing his mutations of hardcore techno breakbeats, which had been popularized by the likes of The Prodigy, Meat Beat Manifesto, and XL Records. For those who care about such things, this breakbeat sound was instrumental in the birth of drum 'n' bass, yet is drastically different in that the hardcore breakbeats are internally constructed by a drum machine (usually a Roland 909), whereas drum 'n' bass actively sampled its breakbeats from the history of soul, funk, and jazz. As a result of the technological process of the creation of the breakbeat, these three Aphex Twin singles have a particularly cybernetic feel to them. However, Aphex Twin uses this sound as a counterpoint to the oddly whimsical melodies from his re-wired and re-programmed MIDI patches for piano, harp, calliope, and bells. These are the same sounds that the Aphex Twin droned out on his beautiful "Selected Ambient Works Volume 2." "51/13" also features the seemingly incongruous collaboration between Aphex Twin and Philip Glass! For this piece called "Icct Hedral," Glass scored a dramatic orchestral piece around the repetition of a distinctly Aphex Twin melodic phrase. It's surprising how well this particular piece works. For a lot of electronica, history tends to date and make obsolete certain sounds and artists... But this has never been the case with Aphex Twin.

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The title track of this ep scared the pickles out of me. And the video will do the same. Must hear. Must see. Richard D. James, you rule.

The internet spoke and Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments Part 1 has been christened as a collection of tracks for prepared piano and electrically driven acoustic pieces on Drukqs - the 2001 album which preceded a 14 year silence from Richard James. Whether James agrees with that historical connection or if he just wanted to apply that suffix to this long EP / short album is any one's guess. That said, it would be delightful to entertain the notion that James had spent all that time away from the recorded world, perfecting the art or robotics with this album being an IDM symphony composed on Pierre Bastien like automatons. Whirring machines clacking at a piano, tapping on a drum kit, and stringed instruments getting struck, strummed, and abraded. But in all likelihood, this is a sample based construction, even if James did play and collect everything, and then feed them into his sequencers and rhythm programs with little in the way of DSP manipulation. These tracks are intricate constructions of archetypal Aphex rhythms and grooves, with the instrumentation swapped out on the arrangements. Some of the tracks like "Disk Prep Calrec2 Barn Dance [slo]" have an urban gamelan feel of 23 Skidoo, and others like "Diskhat1" march jauntily along like Alarm Will Call's re-constitutions of Aphex tracks, albeit with a much funkier drummer. That was always the failing of Alarm Will Call - the inability to ground the groove; and perhaps that's where James figured he could do it better. Or maybe he's just been listening to the aforementioned Bastien alternated with Herbie Hancock. Not a bad combination at all, we think.

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It's been five years since the Aphex Twin unleashed his Surrealist-tainted slab of brilliance "The Richard D. James Album," which jauntily skipped around the accepted boundaries of contemporary electronica with surprising ease and an almost voiceless black From the get-go, Aphex Twin wisely sidesteps the currently hip clickery of the Ritornell / Raster labels, jumping straight into his tried and true forms of bastardized drum 'n' bass punctuated by delicate piano-ambient interludes. Unfortunately, Aphex has been following the rather tepid stylings of 2 step and speed garage, instead of the vibrant spasticity of Lesser or the mentally damaged dancehall of DJ Scud. Thus, the ambient artifacts -- which come across as Satie's "Furniture Music" for the H.R. Giger set, being both deliciously macabre yet tonally beautiful -- are the more interesting moments found on the first half of the album. Disc two offers a few classic Aphex sounding tracks of smoldering acid squelchiness, time-stretched vocal snippets, and complex grooves built out of constantly counterpointing rhythms. Again, these are spaced between delicate halcyon piano ambience, something which at times appears as dinner jazz for the IDM set. While certain individual tracks flash a programming brilliance cast with his ever-present sideways smirk, easily putting his contemporaries to shame, "Drukqs" as a whole never really finds a direction; nor, does it makes much progression though all of the various electronica agendas. Nevertheless, those of you already cardcarrying members of the Aphex fanclub won't be disappointed.

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The mad-scientist of electronica - Richard D James aka Aphex Twin - released I Care Because You Do in 1995; and now in 2012, that classic electronica album gets a 2lp reissue by way of the 1972 label, who also recently reissued Aphex's Selected Ambient Works Vol. Two on triple lp. This album's single "Ventolin" stood as one of the more cantankerous tracks that RDJ had recorded to date. A harsh, tinnitus-inducing squeal permeates the sequencing of clunky rhythms and dum-dum melodies of that single thumbing its noise at everybody who took the whole Intelligent Dance Music thing way too seriously. At the time, the track was a blatant provocation, and after all these years, it still sticks out as a grotesque distortion, with the album moving somewhat like a palindrome around that track - progressing up to that nasty piece of electronics from more stately and subdued tracks before reversing course. One of the tracks that brackets "Ventolin" is the majestic "Icct Hedral" which spirals around an orchestration worked out by Phillip Glass for Aphex Twin, with James girding the cauldron of repetitive woodwinds and strings with his trademarked crunching breakbeats and phase-shifting parametric filter sweeps. The sweaty acid-breakcore track "Come On, You Slags!" is the other bookend to "Ventolin" with more introspective abstractions pooling on either side with plenty of counterpointing rhythmic complexities tossed in for good measure. It was on this record that the Aphex sense of humor - with its broad spectrum from the strange to the village idiot - first came into its own as a unique facet to Aphex Twin's vocabulary. So much of this work still sounds amazing after all these years, and it's also great to see this on vinyl again finally, too! (Even moreso since it seems the cd version has gone out of print.)

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[ aquarius records catalogue — A ]