[ aquarius records catalogue

Dark green T shirt with light green logo.

Navy T shirt with aqua logo.

Red T shirt with white logo.

Finally! The first in a series of super limited, artist designed aQ T-Shirts, featuring original art by some of our favorite artists, who just so happen to be loyal aQ customers as well! Each one will be super special, totally unique, and will only be available for a limited time, as we're only making a finite amount of each. The first shirt design is by aQ pal and infamous killustrator Justin Bartlett, whose style many of you no doubt will recognize. He's done tons of drawings for Oaken Throne black metal magazine, as well as record covers for grim groups like SUNNO))), Moss, Nadja, Pentemple and loads more. His style is incredible, super detailed, pen and ink with tons of stippling, lots of skulls and guts and demons and various crusty oozing offal. For aQ he's designed a super creepy and super evil mother and child, heads in bags, their rotten innards spilling out, skulls on spikes, and "Aquarius Records" carved into the stone archway in the background. It looks amazing, and will for sure get some eyes a popping as you wander through the grocery store or sit in church (heaven forbid). The back features a small aQ logo up near the collar, the shirts are white on black, they are Hanes heavyweight T's, 100% preshrunk cotton, and we have sizes all the way from Youth Large (for kids and little ladies) all the way up to XXL (for the big guys). We will only be selling these for a couple months, so don't miss out. Once they are gone, they won't be reprinted. EVER. Future aQ Artist Edition T's will include designs by Savage Pencil, Stephen O'Malley, Aaron Turner and more more more!!!

Finally! The first in a series of super limited, artist designed aQ T-Shirts, featuring original art by some of our favorite artists, who just so happen to be loyal aQ customers as well! Each one will be super special, totally unique, and will only be available for a limited time, as we're only making a finite amount of each. The first shirt design is by aQ pal and infamous killustrator Justin Bartlett, whose style many of you no doubt will recognize. He's done tons of drawings for Oaken Throne black metal magazine, as well as record covers for grim groups like SUNNO))), Moss, Nadja, Pentemple and loads more. His style is incredible, super detailed, pen and ink with tons of stippling, lots of skulls and guts and demons and various crusty oozing offal. For aQ he's designed a super creepy and super evil mother and child, heads in bags, their rotten innards spilling out, skulls on spikes, and "Aquarius Records" carved into the stone archway in the background. It looks amazing, and will for sure get some eyes a popping as you wander through the grocery store or sit in church (heaven forbid). The back features a small aQ logo up near the collar, the shirts are white on black, they are Hanes heavyweight T's, 100% preshrunk cotton, and we have sizes all the way from Youth Large (for kids and little ladies) all the way up to XXL (for the big guys). We will only be selling these for a couple months, so don't miss out. Once they are gone, they won't be reprinted. EVER. Future aQ Artist Edition T's will include designs by Savage Pencil, Stephen O'Malley, Aaron Turner and more more more!!! ----* ----* Highlights : ----*

The very evil black T shirt with shiny black logo.

As mentioned on last Friday's in-betweener, for this year's Record Store Day, we finally got around to producing some aQuarius tote bags! People are always asking, and it's the eco-friendly thing to do, hope you like 'em. It's a black bag, with metallic silver print, featuring a brand new, elaborately 'black metal' styled aQuarius Records logo, done by "the Lord of the Logos" himself, the very talented (and super nice) Christophe Szpajdel. He did Emperor's logo, among many others. He's the man. It's a nice lookin' logo, kind of black metal meets art nouveau. These 14 1/2" x 16" bags, with securely cross-stitched straps, are big enough to hold a bunch of lps (like, up a dozen single lps).

One of our fave one-man bands is Aqueduct (aka David Terry), and here we have a brand spanking new full length. Once again he's tackling the lion's share of vocal, guitar, bass, keyboard and programming duties, but he's also brought in some friends to handle drums and additional guitar parts. With each release Mr. Terry's songs have gotten more polished, and the eleven on I Sold Gold are no exception, and they continue to give hearty nods to the pop craft influence of both the Beach Boys and XTC.

MPEG stream: The Suggestion Box
MPEG stream: Laundry Baskets

Whoa Aqueduct (aka David Terry), wha'happened?! It's as if sometime between now and your last album I Sold Gold you absorbed a cache of cheesy '80s TV sitcom theme song capsules into your system -- especially in the horn, keyboard and synth line departments. Think equal parts Billy Vera And The Beaters, Bruce Hornsby And The Range and Andrew Gold with lyrics like "you gotta keep it together before it all falls apart" ("Keep It Together") and "When it's all said and done you know that I'll be the one" (Broken Records")! Much of Or Give Me Death is strangely cliched in places and treads precariously on the borders of sappy schlock. Granted, that unto itself takes its own special skill. But that said, it's tempered back into something more palatable by Terry's consistently clever songwriting and vocals which do shine through and more closely resemble those of Andy Partridge and XTC.

MPEG stream: Keep It Together
MPEG stream: Split The Difference

We totally dug Aqueduct's debut album Power Ballads from a couple of years ago, and we're pleased to report that the new ep by this one man band (aka Oklahoman David Terry) is just as much of a pop treat with its quirky, slightly ramshackle indie poppiness and funky little electronic bits. Our past comparisons to Pinback and Modest Mouse definitely still hold true. Totally catchy and sweet. Can't wait for his next full length due to be released next year!

MPEG stream: Hardcore Days & Softcore Nights
MPEG stream: Who Wanna Rock?

Check out this one-man band from Tulsa, OK! David Terry is Aqueduct. Don't be expecting any knee cymbals or harmonica-chinstraps though. Recorded in his apartment over the past three years, "Power Ballads" is Aqueduct's debut album, but we should also stress

RealAudio clip: Assignment #1: Heart Design
RealAudio clip: Growing Up With GNR
RealAudio clip: Try It Now
RealAudio clip: Krushed (Special Edition)

OK, so Arab On Radar broke up, due to "irreconcilable differences" that have "compromised the creative process." This is their final "gift to the world" (their term) in the form of a collection of 7"s and a cassette from their 7 year career (includes their part of the Locust split, singles and comp tracks from Load and GSL, etc.). Them breaking up is really sad, because now we won't have anymore choice AOR quotes such as: "Wire has that Pink Flag record which for a week or two in the 90's was OK." (when asked about their influences) "Life... the totality of all stimuli since birth be it auditory or otherwise... But to humor your question, I guess... it was Six Finger Satellite, Birthday Party, Capt. Beefheart, Albert Ayler, Coltrane, Chuck Berry, Van Halen, but this is all when I learned guitar waaaay back when I was 12." And my personal favorite: "If you read a Noam Chomsky book or two you will probably be educated enough to understand the irony of our band name... " Weh-heh-hell! I bet YOU weren't listening to Beefheart waaay back when you were twelve, huh chump? Them's some awfully self-important pretensions for a band who sound suspiciously like Fugazi, when they don't sound like every other group of noisy post-hardcore-post-punk-no-wave referencing scensters currently crowding Providence and San Francisco. To give credit where it's most certainly due, Arab On Radar had been together since '94, so they were there first (OK, first in the sense of the newwer wave of bands that call to mind no-wave of the late seventies/early eighties- first wave of the second wave of no-wave? Oh yeah, Skin Graft called it now wave-- remember that?), and they're definitely one of the best of the bunch, so the fact that disco-beats meets fucked-up noise-punk is kinda starting to get boring really isn't their fault. For all that's been said about how annoying and harsh Arab On Radar are, "The Stolen Singles" is really listenable, and despite the time span, these obnoxious and spazzy and simultaneously juvenile (title examples: "Swimming With A Hard on," "Miss American Hair Pie") and pretentious (see above) songs work cohesively as an album. Recomended for those who dig Lightning Bolt, Black Dice, Total Shutdown, no wave, Pere Ubu, and, uh, Fugazi. Not recommended for TRUE Arab On Radar fans who bought all these singles three years before they even came out. Suckers.

RealAudio clip: Inventor
RealAudio clip: Samurai Fight Song

Jeff was supposed to review this new Arab On Radar atrocity (their fourth long-player), 'cause he's one of the only folks here at Aquarius who actually likes these Providence, RI art-spazz noisemakers. Heck he even usually has one of their discs of yelping no-wave chaos stuck in his car stereo. For most of us, this would be pretty far from "driving music" but not for Jeff! Anyway,

RealAudio clip: Birth Control Blues
RealAudio clip: My Mind Is A Muffler

Originally released in England on Go Beat in 1999, Arab Strap's third studio album follows the epic "Philophobia" album in spilling itself all over the floor of some grimey Scottish pub. These are sorrowful drunken dirges that encapsulate the Arab Strap sound: an elegance in simple arrangements, pedestrian drum machine, and minor key guitar strum. Aidan Moffat's half muttered/half sung vocals tell tales of sexual dependance and alcoholic self-desctruction, with a clarity in its miserablism that isn't far from the best work of Robert Smith or Morrissey. While a few tracks falter into uptempo jazzy stutters, Arab Strap make you want to either never drink again, or get really hammered and ramble for hours to an ex's answering machine.

After a handful of painfully limited edition 12"s which never really got any distribution in the States, Arab Strap has released this single with a fortunately much larger pressing. While the title track is one of Arab Strap's more idiosyncratically upbeat songs (with a funky Ninja Tune-esque trip hop / pseduo jazz groove), the other two tracks are more quintessentially Arab Strap -- dark, epic dramas that sound like the more dymanic moments of Mogwai and allow for Aidan Moffat to mutter his morose tales of heartbreak and alcoholism. It's good.

RealAudio clip: Love Detective

For a live recording this is a pretty damn good one... A superb recording quality of a great performance from these Scottish pessimists. Most of the songs come from Philophobia plus some new tracks that follow the Arab Strap aesthetic of simple acoustic songs, crappy drum machine, occasional Mogwai-style explosive guitars, and those mopey lyrics of too many pints and sexual frustration.

Arab Strap return with another record of lurid relationship confessionals. Tales of love and fucking gone wrong are given a musical backing that mixes up warm strings and outdated drum machine dance beats, languorous guitar downer pop and funky bass. As always, tragic and ugly, a made-to-order soundtrack for bad sex, worse breakups and the corner pub where you drown your sorrows afterwards. It's all singing this time from Aidan (half of the Strap), but I kinda miss the spoken confessions of nastiness, betrayal and sorrow, all breathy gruffness barely covering the underlying heartbreak on previous records (but then I have a personal fondness for spoken vocals). Arab Strap's strength is getting away with hyper-personal, depressing sentiments without sounding totally self-indulgent or whiny (maybe it has something to do with their singer being a burly, drunken Scot and not some fey, barely post-pubescent midwestern college boy? or is it due to the honesty in singing about fucking other people over as often as gettting fucked over?) That strength is thoroughly apparent on "Monday At The Hug & Pint," a wrenching experience even if it's not as deliciously dirty as my personal fave Strap album "Philophobia." MPEG Download: "Act Of War" [/audio/arabstrapactofwar.mp3] MPEG Stream: "Act Of War" [/audio/arabstrapactofwar.m3u] MPEG Download: "Serenade" [/audio/arabstrapserenade.mp3]

MPEG stream: Act Of War
MPEG stream: Serenade
MPEG stream: Shy Retirer

Scottish duo whose melancholy murmurings remind us of Tindersticks more than anything else.

Nooooo, say it isn't so! Ten Years Of Tears -- a collection of Arab Strap odds'n'ends -- marks the close of Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton's tavern of awesome melancholic vitriolic folk (the band played their final shows in late 2006). These Scots always shined brightest when they were sounding their most liquor-blurred, beleaguered and foul tempered singing about fucked up relationships, tawdry sexual liaisons, and assorted other daily downers atop programmed beat driven folksiness. Theirs was (and is) the perfect music to play when you wanna be dancing and be all bummed out at the same time. This fan-pleasing cd compiles alternate versions, remixes, live recordings and B-sides rounded out by a few album tracks. Keep an ear out for their rousing cover of Bonnie Tyler's "It's A Heartache".

MPEG stream: The Shy Retirer
MPEG stream: Blood (Live '04)
MPEG stream: It's A Heartache

What's been concocted in the Arab Strap brewery since their last album Monday At the Hug & Pint back in 2003? Something big. To mark their tenth year of existence, they've opted to pour their sixth album into a sleekly produced affair with surprisingly fleshed out full band arrangements (horns, strings, the whole kit'n'kaboodle). As a result, it's mighty big on rock, lush and slightly shoegazerly, and their trademark endless-night-at-the-pub melancholia really benefits from this new turn of events. Never fear, Malcolm Middleton and Aidan Moffett are as bleary-eyed, sneering and ill-tempered as ever, but their sourness has never sounded so sweet. Their battered romantic hearts have muscled over their whiskeyed vitriolic spirits this time. Some songs here are downright beautiful. Check out "Don't Ask Me To Dance" and the album's official closer "There Is No Ending". You just wanna give 'em a hug. Psst, a secret bonus: we just noticed that there's an additional two songs at the end ("El Paso Song" and "Go Back To The Sea") that aren't mentioned in the track listing on the back of the cd!

MPEG stream: Stink
MPEG stream: (If There's) No Hope For Us
MPEG stream: Don't Ask Me To Dance

Arab Strap's fourth album finds the Scottish duo returning to Chemikal Underground / Matador after an ill-conceived stint with Go! Beat, who were pushing the purveyors of miserablism to produce the big hits like Portishead. It's not really clear what Go! Beat The title of this album refers to an ancient eastern theology which posits that an invisible red thread links soulmates. Yet within Arab Strap's semi-autobiographical tales, the quest for the soulmate has been marred by the regrets of casual sex and the physical misery of one too many hangovers. As on previous albums, Aidan Moffat's half spoken / half sung confessionals reveal little guilt (and more pleasure) from alcoholic misadventures. Musically, this is just as spartan as before, with crappy drum machines given fantastic production and simple minor-chord guitar melodies. Instead of putting those 'Parental Advisory' stickers on this album, there should be stickers advising not to drink when listening to Arab Strap's albums.

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

SORRY. Arab Strap's application of their unmistakable hungover dourness to a couple of '80s hard rock megahits -- the ever-brooding Scots cover AC/DC's trademark "You Shook Me All Night Long" and Van Hagar's chart-topper "Why Can't This Be Love?" -- proves to be a somewhat trying experience for the listener. However set those two songs aside, and you're left with three others which fare considerably better. Plus, of course no EP these days can be without an obligatory remix, and The Shy Retirer is no exception... voila, Dirty Hospital contributed a remix of the title track.

MPEG stream: The Shy Retirer (radio edit)
MPEG stream: Why Can't This Be Love?

The domestic release of the first album from this amazing Scottish duo. Not nearly as morose or cohesive of an album as Philophobia, The Week Never Starts Around Here displays a remarkable sense of humor in between all of the references to alcohol and sex. Think either Lou Barlow, Tindersticks, or Nick Cave on a drinking binge of your favorite hard liquor.

Remixes of Scottish duo Arab Strap's first single off of their newest "The Red Thread" album by Bis, Jason Famous and... Arab Strap. Three pleasant, if not particularly challenging tracks for diehard AS completists (AS newcomers should definitely check out

RealAudio clip: Bis Remix

Weird and wonderful one here, folks. And it's for folky folks, though it's got a HEAVY pedigree. A lot of you are fans, like us, of South American stoner rock cosmonauts Los Natas, so you'll sort of (but not really) know what to expect here, Ararat being Los Natas guitarist Sergio Chotsourian's solo side project, and it is psychedelic like the most darkly psychedelic of Los Natas' output, coming closest perhaps to the proggy spaciness of Los Natas' two Toba-Trance discs for Circle's Ektro label, but is even more abstract and stripped down, not actually rock at all, often all-acoustic, "New Weird Argentina" maybe we'd call it! Ararat could be some kind of haunted, campfire krautrock, more like a field recording than the finished product of a studio session (even if the studio is called Death, which is where this was in fact recorded). It starts off with "Gitanoss", an quietly epic almost 14 minutes of moody late-night strum, ambient hum, echoes, drifting melody, hazy organ drone, ritual percussion, backwards effects... quite a trip, as is this whole disc, Chotsourian climbing his personal Holy Mountain here (Mount Ararat!), it seems, this album a musical sketchbook of his ascent, of sorts. Track two turns out to be a reprise of "Dos Horses", the album-ender of most recent Los Natas disc, Nuevo Orden De La Libertad, this alternate version not that far removed from the acoustic guitar/piano interplay of the original (Chotsourian just must be very proud of this particular composition, and it is quite nice). Next, there's the spooky "El Carrusel", all billowing fuzz and tinkling bell, like Stephen Wray Lobdell's Davis Redford Triad doing the soundtrack for a John Carpenter film! While that one got heavy, the next is not, the pretty "Little Grissy" being under a minute of guitar and guitar only, Chotsourian giving a delicate demonstration of his chops for the Takoma crowd, leading into the hushed and melodic "Ganar-Perder", which to us sounds like Ghost's Masaki Batoh reinterpreting "Planet Caravan" or something (it too is a version of a song from Nuevo Orden De La Libertad, but in this case much altered, extended and acoustic). That's followed by the delicate Spanish guitar and atmospheric creaky crackle of the nearly 12 minute long "Magia Negra", one that Sir Richard Bishop fans should enjoy. Only finale "Castro" is a "real" rock song, sounding like a band (Los Natas, or even Circle), with proper drums, and amps fully cranked, with vocals that Circle's Mika Ratto might think were his own, and even this one stays freaky and uncommitted, 'til it ends with the clatter of abandoned drumsticks, electricity flickering, Chotsourian and his mysterious band wandering away into the desert night. We always say Boris fans should check out Los Natas. And Boris fans should check this out too, but we think Ararat is also for folks into Six Organs Of Admittance, James Blackshaw, Jozef Van Wissem, Feathers, Steven R. Smith and other Jewelled Antler stuff, all that whole post-Fahey psychfolk scene, with the astral Argentinean/Amerindian/Armenian/Appalachian vibes here flowing as ominous, minimalist mesmer, intimate and entrancing...

MPEG stream: Gitanoss
MPEG stream: El Carrusel
MPEG stream: Ganar-Perder

Arastoo is another one of those outfits (persons, actually) who has loads of releases out, but all of them are ultra limited and thus seemingly impossible to get. The last (and only) thing we had from Arastoo was a gorgeous cd-r released on Dielectric records, and now of course out of print. So we were super excited when AQ pal Brandon decided to release a brand new Arastoo on his label Isounderscore. it's still limited of course, but we managed to get a bunch, although we imagine these won't last long. Arastoo is Arastoo Darakhshan, and is another in the brotherhood of the drone, deftly exploring a warm and wonderful drone drenched ambience. Three is a series of deep cavernous drones, warm and rich, not so much rumbling and sort of washing over you like the sun drenched surf. But this is NOT sunny, this is like a sky devoid of sun, a blanket of rich blackness, permanent nighttime. Occasionally punctuated by haunting reverbed tones, presumably the sound of struck metal. Creepy buzzing alien melodies drift by like a broken trumpet or some sort of shortwave guitar. The heart of the record is a massive, slow building ultra dense drone, layers of low-end get thicker and thicker, while additional layers are added slowly and subtly, each of those new layers, slightly higher in pitch, the result is a rich swirl of strange overtones and hunting ghostlike melodies. Gorgeous. Housed in an amazing gloss black on matte black sleeve.

So let's get the business stuff out of the way first. THIS IS VERY LIMITED. In fact, we have the only 17 copies left. Of the 50 ever produced. We tend to be kind of opposed to ultra limited releases, obviously if a release is good enough to release at all, and then spend loads of time and money on, then it makes sense that you would want as many people as possible to hear it. But sometimes cicumstances make that unrealistic. Running a label is hard. Especially when you specialize in really strange music, spend a lot of money on packaging, and then don't sell a whole lot of records. Even though the records you release are amazing. This happens way more than you think. Often the result is cool little labels just giving up. Which is always a drag. In the case of Dielectric, another label with a houseful of unsold records, all of which we've raved about here, the solution was to start doing super limited, lovingly assembled cd-r's, limiting the financial risk, and of course the amount of space needed to store the damn things. So here we have the newest release by Arastoo, aka Arastoo Darakhshan, who produces some of the most haunting, gorgeously ethereal ambient music we've ever heard. Drifting and shimmering, these thirteen tracks, embrace nature, but in a totally abstract way, dark soundscapes of distant vibrations and subtle sonic shifts, late night expanses of moonlight and forest flutter, smoothed into warm, rich drones. There seems to be guitars, but the actual notes are muted and spread into dreamy ethereal wisps of sound. Really amazing. Coleclough, Mirror, Ora, Chalk and Basinski have nothing on Arastoo. Packaged with six oversized cards, printed with full colour images of industrial landscapes, mostly blown up abstract details, wrapped in a vellum outer sleeve that folds shut like the petals of a flower and is held closed with a wax seal! Be warned, the wax seal is VERY delicate and will most likely crack or crumble in the mail, or even on the shelf, you'll just have to deal with it since you'll have to break the wax seal anyway to listen to it. So don't expect an intact one. And again we only have 17 copies. After these are gone, it is gone for good!

MPEG stream: October
MPEG stream: Wooded Area
MPEG stream: Moss

International Harvester, Algarnas Tradgard, Trad Gras Och Stenar, Kebnekajse. If those names mean anything to you then you're probably like us -- a big fan of Sweden's answer to krautrock, the Svenska psych-prog-folk bands of the seventies. There's been a veritable smorgasbord of cd reissues of awesome if obscure classic LPs by these and other '70s Swedish outfits over the past couple of years, and now comes this, a cd version of the third (we think, but maybe it's the fourth?) album by this legendary group, Arbete & Fritid, from 1973. Like Harvester and Kebnekajse especially, you'll hear plenty of traditional Scandinavian traditional folk music mixed up with a kinda Velvet Underground rock style in A&F. They've been described as sounding like the "Third Ear Band meets Terry Riley" and that's pretty accurate, especially on the last track here, a 20 minute drone-jam called "Ostpusten-Vastpusten" that's probably worth the $17 this costs alone. That's actually a bonus cut, taken from the Arbete & Fritid side of a 1972 split LP with some other band we've yet to hear. While that's the highlight, the rest of this disc is mighty fine too, the only problem perhaps being how their diverse interest in folk, politics, repetitive minimalism, and experimental jazz doesn't always lead to them maintaining a consistent vibe. During one song you'll be transported to the a cold farmhouse in the Swedish wilderness filled with rustic hippies sawing on violins, but then on the next you're in a basement radical jazz club pondering urban issues after a streetfight with the Man. In a way though that's kinda cool. Tea party waltzes and heavy fuzz jams, they're all here. Had we heard A&F before those other bands mentioned above, it's quite likely that they'd be the measure by which we'd judge the rest, as apparently they were a seminal influence on the scene -- in fact, members of the Parson Sound/Trad Gras Och Stenar axis later joined A&F after this particular album. Hopefully then this is only the first of a slew of A&F reissues!

RealAudio clip: Ganglat Efter Lejsme Per Larsson, Malung
RealAudio clip: Petrokemi Det Kan Man Inte Bada I

Once again, we can just tell when a record is going to be a hit here. Something intangible that tells us that everyone is going to absolutely love (or absolutely hate but still need to own) this record. We felt it about the Conet Project. Hatebeak. Daddy's Curses. The Thai Elephant Orchestra. And now Arboga Teenage Riot. The story goes like this. Our pal Nathan was on tour in Europe and while travelling through Sweden, two young ladies handed him a tape. The tape sat in the bottom of his bag, unlistened to for months. On his return to the states he remembered the tape, put it in the stereo, pushed play and had his mind promptly blown. And we'll have to admit we feel exactly the same way. Imagine ultra lo-fi, high energy techno / gabber, all four on the floor beats and cheesy synths, whistles and those kinds of melodies usually reserved for cheerleading competitions. "You All Ready For This?!?!" DONK DONK DONK DONK DONK DONK DONK! You know of what we speak. So now imagine two teenage girls, sometimes making up Swedish lyrics and chanting them in cute sing-songy harmonies, but more often, just screaming and growling hysterically in their best aproximation of black metal vocals, sounding like they were just dubbed over the music on a boombox (which they probably were). This is the real digital hard core! Or more accurately ANALOG HARD CORE!!! If Alec Empire had any balls Arboga Teenage Riot would be the next DHR superstars. ATR take techno and black metal and riot grrl and DIY recording and turn it into a totally bizarre, fascinating, fun and funny masterpiece! The cover is pretty sharp too, a huge swamp beast thing emerging from the water, beneath a hot pink totally illegible Arboga Teenage Riot black metal style logo! Fuck yeah!

MPEG stream: Two
MPEG stream: Three

We hadn't heard too much about these fluttering folk faeries, but odds are, we'll all be hearing a whole lot about these guys (and gals) in the near future. The sound they make is a gorgeous sun dappled blend of soft focus Appalachia, folky forest drift, shimmering indie shuffle, all wrapped in a warm gauzy production like a lazy summer afternoon spent on a porch swing, just sitting, and staring out at everything and nothing.� Minor key melodies unfurl via stately steel string guitar, a lilting mix: a little blues, a little Appalachia, a little moody ambience, flecks of twang here and there, all�very spare and languorous. The female vocals are gently affected, the result a perfect mix of modern nu-folk, some Chan Marshall, some Joannna Newsom, and a healthy dose of classic old school British folk, Incredible String Band, Pentangle... the vocals very dramatic and swoonsome, perfectly complimenting the dark twangy swirl beneath. At some points the vocals become much more intense and pronounced, and we're definitely reminded of Jolie Holland, the vibe becoming decidedly country at times, but even then, the music continues to sway and shimmer, drifting and floating, the leaves in the trees above rustling, the leaves below crunching underfoot. So lovely.� Obvious comparisons would be Devendra, Newsom, Feathers, Vetiver, Brightblack, Espers, and odds are anyone into that stuff will be quite smitten by Arborea, but even folks who aren't always sold on this new wave of folk revivalists, might find Arborea's old fashioned sounds just familiar enough to wrap up in like an favorite old blanket...

MPEG stream: Wayfaring Summer
MPEG stream: River And Rapids
MPEG stream: Wake Up, Little Sparrow

[ aquarius records catalogue — A ]