[ aquarius records catalogue

IMPORTANT (Please read to avoid confusion): Some items below may be tagged with a bold, red, all-caps OUT OF PRINT/UNAVAILABLE notice. This does NOT mean that all other items not so tagged are, in fact, in stock — or for that matter, in print and available, though there's a good chance they are. Some folks get confused on this point, and we can see why, so please read this for further clarification and other important before-you-order information. Unlike some mailorder websites, we don't have an electronic inventory system linked to our site, so you can't be sure of what we actually have or don't have in stock at any given moment without asking us — please email our mailorder department for availability status — or better yet, just go ahead and place your order using our shopping cart function and we'll get back to you with the status of each item. If you have general non-mailorder questions, email the store.

Showing results 1751 through 1800 of 2272.

REDACTED!!

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Record number REDACTED from this dubstep revolutionary, and another shift even further away from proper dubstep. Like the REDACTED preceeding records, ARTIST 11 unfurls a lush landscape of ethereal drift and deep beat driven ambience, and while fans of the first REDACTED will find much to love here as well, there have been some subtle sonic shifts that are worth noting. Not that the opener would give any indication, a lush expansive stretch of washed out dreamy cinematic synth shimmer, that remains beatless throughout, the sound grows gradually darker, until sampled voices surface, and this 'intro' leads directly into a track that sounds almost like Phoenix or Miike Snow, at least at first, a repetitive piano figure that in other hands would lead into some dream pop, but here, provides the melodic backbone for some seriously mesmerizing dubstep skitter, the beat thick and heavy, but still skeletal, while all around, fragmented melodies swirl, bits of vocal surface and fade away, "REDACTED" though is where the record comes into its own, and displays a shift away from the lush ethereal atmospheres and toward something a bit more stripped down, the change is subtle, but it definitely works, sounding more like Burial here, a creeping tarpit drag, with some thick corrosive bass wobble, that's wreathed in effects which gives it a whole different effect, and the vocals here, hazy and and angelic, balanced by some sped up soul vocals that are transformed into woozy abstract melodies, it's the sort of jam that transcends 'dubstep' or any genre classifications, a gorgeous bit of electronica that we could listen to forever. But then "REDACTED" lays down another killer groove, with more super distorted bass wobble, the whole track driven by a sped up looped vocal, and suddenly what we perceived as a less lush sound, or a more stripped down sound, is revealed as something more akin to economy of sound, it's not that things have been removed, but that everything is perfectly place, and there are no superfluous sonics, which becomes more evident as the record progresses, whether it's a loping dubbed out stutter, or a whirling sprawl of psychedelic ambience, a skittery almost hip hop groove, or Muslimgauze like Eastern tinged trip out. Ethereal and blissed out and dreamy one second, haunting and ominous and sonically sinister the next, check out the closer "REDACTED", a gorgeous chunk of dubbed out rumbling bass heavy slo-mo soul, an be sure to stick around for the hidden track, which might be the darkest and heaviest of the bunch. Yet again, another album of untouchable beat bliss innovation from maybe our favorite dubstep outfit out there...

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Four albums in, and REDACTED's ARTIST 12 have established themselves as more than just a band of bearded REDACTED boys with bad attitudes getting sludgy, Eyehategod style. They certainly started out that way, and we liked 'em then too, but quickly a penchant for spacier, more psychedelic exploration sent them off in a variety of interesting directions, mostly all of 'em still quite HEAVY though. Synth-drone, slowcore, stoner riffery, that's all part of their trip... dunno if we'd even really call them doom (or dooooOOOOoom) any more. They're just way "poppier", and spacier, and also more experimental than you might expect. There's mantric dirges here totally worthy of Om at their finest, other parts where they freak out like Acid Mothers Temple... or rock out like the good ol' Southern boys we mentioned that they indeed are. But it's just as 'Eastern'. Tracks like "REDACTED" sound like Buddhist monks zoned out on Hawkwind, with someone from a Tokyo Flashback act on lead guitar, or maybe Stephen Wray Lobdell... Sometimes these songs are storming, sometimes they're slow and languid (well, a lot of the time), no matter what though, REDACTED is an heavy-lidded yet uplifting listen, with an oxymoronically "urgently relaxed", stoned vibe generally absorbed via throbbing waves of synthesizer, low end guitar, leaden battery, and sometimes even a bit of (heavily effected) vocal melody. ARTIST 12 are the "sludge" band we'd recommend to White Hills and Wooden Shjips fans. Likewise if you like UFOmammut, US Christmas, Litmus, Los Natas, Boris and even a bit of Baroness too... This new one was produced by REDACTED, heaviness studio guru de jour for good reason. Probably, uh, "420 friendly" but you don't need any help to get a high from this, just turn it on up!

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Record number REDACTED from these eighties style new wave indie pop revivalists and another fantastic batch of pretty much perfect new wave pop songs, and all we could think was 'these guys are not fucking around'. Every record not only sounding more polished and more catchy, but sounding more like it actually comes from the eighties. There's no outsider weirdness, not tongue in cheek, this is pure eighties pop and it totally hits the spot. Sounding in places a bit like M83, due in no small part to the glistening glossy production, but also this new batch of songs are pretty fantastic, the guitars chiming and glistening, the programmed beats more intricate and driving, the vocals still appropriately wistful sad boy and slouchy, but this times there's also stings (or synth strings) that add a dark gravitas, and an emotional heft, making these tracks play out like songs that you totally would have put in a mixtape as a teenager back in the day. There's also a bit of a shoegaze vibe going on (hence the M83 comparison), with the guitars and synths whipped up into thick soaring swells, all held together by some awesome gloom pop basslines, especially on "REDACTED" which is especially bass heavy, with a wildly soaring post chorus bridge and a super hooky melody. Probably by now you know if this is your cup of tea, but if you dig this new wave of eighties, well, new wave, few do it as good as these guys. And stick around for the title track, a darkly dramatic closer, all fuzzed out and dreamily droney, moody and brooding, with cool percussion, some vibes, spidery guitar, subtle piano, and some gorgeous vox, all woven into the dreamiest track of the bunch.

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We've mentioned it before, but we love it when people we know make amazing records, and we're then available to share them with all of you. Such is the case with this, the oddly monikered ARTIST 14, the project of aQ customer/pal REDACTED, who hails from REDACTED, and who is solely responsible for the gorgeous sounds to be found on REDACTED, a collection of abstract ambience, deep drones, and experimental rhythmic minimalism. Beginning with the brief minute long intro "REDACTED", a smoldering bit of crumbling distorted piano, and shimmering overtone rich drift, ARTIST 14 reveals itself as something more raw and immediate than much of the ambient/drone/electronic music we hear. It's super well crafted, and lush and lovely, but it's still raw, and rough around the edges, which makes the sounds more warm, the vibe more human and organic, instead of sounds, these feel like songs, long tones shimmer and undulate, melodies seem to slowly evaporate into a haze of high end whir, scattered throughout are fragmented rhythms, dubby and abstract, disembodied pulses and ghostly beats, a sort of electrokrautrock that seems to be gradually coming apart, like some old space station left in orbit, the various pieces drifting off into the ether, some into the heart of the sun, some into the cold black void, here liquid squelches demarcate loose swirling melodic tangles, and thick swells of feedback wreathed buzz, acoustic guitars let loose spare notes, that flutter like leaves falling from trees, or mysterious detritus floating through space. In a few places, the sounds go haywire, explosive bursts of almost jungle like rhythms, or exploding firecrackers woven into frantic beats, but even then the sounds surrounding these blasts are warm and whirling and sweetly soothing, while elsewhere, the sounds slip into dubby Portishead like low slung downtempo grooves, culminating in the 14+ minute epic "REDACTED", a constantly shifting soundscape that plays out like a soundtrack to some mysterious art film, swirling electronics, lush textures, fractured effects, pulsing synths, the sound seeming to shift ever minute or two, finishing off with a stretch of grinding downtuned lo-fi dirgery, which leads directly into the closing number, a fantastically blissed out sprawl of super distorted melodies, all hazy and spacey and dreamlike, but wrapped in crunchy buzz and hissy static, which eventually slips away, leaving lush lustrous sonic swells, lovely hushed computer vox and what sounds like field recording, all woven into a softly undulating bit of dreamlike drift. Fantastic stuff. Highly recommended.

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Debut full length from this French black metal horde, and by now you should know how we feel about French black metal, hell you should probably FEEL how we feel. Needless to say, we love it. And these guys waste no time, no tinkly intro or haunting drone music to start things off, they just lurch straight into it, a blackened avalanche of suffocating sound, churning riffage, wild mathy drum damage, hellish vox, a blurred black tangled, that as the first track progress seems to open up into something much more epic and grand, culminating in a strange clean guitar crooned vocal interlude only to collapse into an even more frenzied blast of blackness, with a seriously fucked up production, so the whole thing sounds muddy and murky and washed out but still massive and heavy. The tracks here are epic, and thus, have loads of parts, the sound leaning towards a progged out blackness, the guitars slipping into droned out buzz and then right back into tangled grinding fury, the sound following suit. The second track opens up with a weird bit of programmed drum machine, and what sounds dangerously like rapping, but it couldn't be, could it? It's all wreathed in a locust like muted buzz, only to splinter into another bit of blackened buzz, but the vibe remains strangely funky, in keeping with that opening drum beat, and while troo black metallers have probably stopped reading and looked away horrified, the rest of us, into twisted black whatthefuck, can revel in this weird Deathspell meets Ministry weirdness. The third track offers up more of the same, seeming to take off from "Jesus Built My Hot Rod" era Ministry and fashioning it into something much meaner and way more black but never fully shedding that industrial groove. And yeah, we were taken aback at first, but we're actually digging this a lot. We're reminded of obscure Italian Industrialists La Muerte, but again, way more black and buzzy. The final track seems to return to a sound much more purely black, churning and buzzing and brutal, but again, as the song progresses, that industrial bent creeps to the fore, with stuttery stop start riffage, and pounding tribal drumming. Definitely a weird mix of sounds here, but then that's why we love French black metal, cuz they're so willing to be fucking bizarre and risk alienating the true grim hordes, and we're definitely digging it, but you have been warned...

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Akarma does their mini-LP sleeve digipack reissue thing with this 1969 British psych gem -- "The definitive British psych album" says Nick Saloman of Bevis Frond, in fact -- and it's well worth checking out for fans of early Floyd, Cream, The Nice, and that T2 disc we reviewed a few lists back. Arzachel not only had a weird name, the band members had unlikely names (pseudonyms, actually) too. Meet guitarist Simeon Sasparella (aka Steve Hillage, later of Gong fame), drummer "Basil Dowling", faux-Kenyan bassist "Njerogi Gategaka", and organ player "Sam Lee-Uff", actually one Dave Stewart (not the Eurythmics guy) who is better known for being in progsters Egg later on. The first half of this album features their poppier psych/garage numbers, including the lovely instrumental "Queen St. Gang", which seems to feature the "Hey Joe" bass line coupled with the melody from the theme to The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly! The second half of the album indulges in extended heavy psych jams of the sort Arzachel specialized in playing at London's tripped out Middle Earth club. The acid blues of "Leg" sounds like an organ-led Cactus, while the howling, epic "Metempsychosis" is nearly seventeen minutes of primitive, pounding, distortion-filled psychedelia that could be mistaken for Amon Duul II. Good stuff! With their teenage enthusiasm and ambition, the Arzachel boys managed to wax a classic -- totally of their times in so many ways and yet unique and timeless as well. Doubtless Simeon, Basil, Njerogi, and Sam, with pseudonyms discarded, improved their musical skills in subsequent years, yet can anything from their later proggy careers really stand up to Arzachel?

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The editorial statement in this inaugural edition of As Loud As Possible claims to want "to solve a problem: to offer a contrast to the fumbling coverable of noise and experimental music found in most glossy music magazines... To them, all Merzbow records sounds more of less the same, and... they can hear no differentiation between a Merzbow, a John Wiese, a Macronympha, or a Sudden Infant." Editors Chris Sienko and Steve Underwood have collected 160 attractive pages of insightful, compelling, and sometimes incendiary thoughts in search of the mutable definition of Noise Culture. Probably the main attraction here is the duo's massive undertaking of delving into the history of the seminal Broken Flag label, investigating ALL of their releases, attempting to contact ALL of the artists involved. 40 pages later, and you'll be needing to track down the Vinyl On Demand box of the best that Broken Flag released! There's some great interviews with Rudolf Eb.Er of Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock / Schimpfluch infamy, No Fun bossman Carlos Giffoni, and Ides Recordings' Nicole Chambers. While there's tons of reviews in this issue of As Loud As Possible, Sienko and Underwood seek out direct communication with the artists involved to get their own take on Noise. A massive and highly commendable undertaking, for sure; one that makes for an exceptional read!

As Mercenarias were one of the highlights of the Soul Jazz compilation The Sexual Life Of The Savages, which alongside the superior Nao Wave compilation introduced us to the Brazilian post-punk scene of the '80s. Like plenty of their contemporaries around the globe, this all-women quartet wore their influences on their sleeves, especially early Gang of Four, Nina Hagen, The Dead Kennedies, and Liliput. Not surprisingly, As Mercenarias dabble throughout the broad spectrum of what punk could mean, one track exploding as a taut pogo punk anthem then the next might be a sinewy art-rock tune sounding like a less dubby Slits track with a hell of a lot more fury behind the spidery guitar work and serpentine basslines. Where Soul Jazz sort of dropped the ball on The Sexual Life Of The Savages comp was choosing to include some of late '80s tracks drenched in studio production slickness, but they the mark in uncovering the spittle and contempt of As Mercenarias. Far from being novelty album, O Comeco Do Fim Do Mundo is actually a pretty amazing document from one of the nearly forgotten chapters of punk.

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Don't know much about this record. But boy we sure do like it. And part of the reason is it is so indescribable. Seriously. Rarely is a record free enough from referents that we are forced to describe the sound alone instead of comparing it to this person and that band. Which while daunting, is also incredibly exciting. It even inspired a spirited discussion with my lady friend (who also loved this record) on how to explain/describe just what the hell is going on here musically. Asa-Chang is a self-taught tabla/bongo guru and in-demand session percussionist and this is his first proper solo record. And it's not at all the record you might expect from a famous tabla player. The tabla, and percussion in general is used quite sparingly, usually strangely entagled with processed vocals, creating fucked up rhythms and otherworldly harmonies. The first track features lots of mournful strings, soaring and swelling with staccato tabla perfectly in sync with spoken male and female vocals. Strangely hypnotic and totally alien sounding. The next track is sort of calypso, with horns and steel drums pecking out a lo-fi, murky melody, sounding a bit like Indian street musicians jamming with some Elephant 6 band. And it continues, careening wildly (stylistically) all over the place, but somehow remains totally cohesive and utterly compelling. They even do a cover of Brigitte Fontaine & Art Ensemble's "Comme A La Radio"! With harmonica and sitars and electronics and crazy tablas triggering whispery Japanese vocals over lovely strings. Unlikely sounds and deliberately angular melodies, super affected vocals ranging from robotic sped up female voices to distorted, pitched down male voices, often harmonising (sort of), occasional almost-indie rock riffs plucked out on an acoustic guitar, bells and chimes, shimmering drones, electronic bleeps and blips, and amazing percussion all gel perfectly into one of the weirdest coolest records we've heard in a long time.

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The back-story on this is a good one, so let's start with that: We heard about this from a friend of ours (who shall remain nameless). So Loren came in and asked us one day if we could get an obscure album by some '70s Japanese experimental composer named Masayo Asahara. Apparently it was recently reissued on cd by a label in England... and was said to sound like Terry Riley meets Magma meets Soft Machine or something! Well THAT sure sounded interesting. So we looked it up online. Sure enough, Masayo Asahara's rare 1974 LP Saint Agnes Fountain was now available on cd. Here's what the label's website had to say about it: "A forgotten drone-prog-jazz classic from the 1970s Japanese underground...St Agnes Fountain was composed while Masayo Asahara was completing her masters degree at the University of Osaka in 1974. Asahara's doctorate concerned the music of the early American minimalists, especially LaMonte Young and Tony Conrad, and her composition reflects her involvement not only in that music, but also with the thriving Osaka free jazz scene from whose ranks this one-off band was put together specifically for this recording. Asahara also cites Faust, Soft Machine, and the Rolling Stones as influencing her work during this period. The rather curious title and artwork come via Asahara's parallel studies of mediaeval European history and pagan imagery in Protestant hymnal writing." Wow! We had to order that! Wish we could hear if first though...hmm...maybe there's a sound sample here...click here for more info it says...ok...wait, what's this?! We read: "St Agnes Fountain was composed by Martin Archer and UTT/Foster, and was recorded at Yellowarch Studio, Sheffield during 2002. This music is different from Martin's core music, and we have created Masayo in the hope of bringing a different audience into our music journey." Huh?! Turns out the whole thing is a cruel hoax! Albeit not a very deceptive one, if you did a little research. But hadn't our friend said that he'd heard of this supposed composer Masayo Asahara before? He had -- when he visited experimental/jazz musician Martin Archer in England! So, there's no such person as Masayo Asahara at all, she's merely the alter-ego Martin Archer. Apparently he only wanted to fool some of the people some of the time, in aid of making a fantasy LP come true. So, disappointed but still intrigued, we got Martin to send us a copy, thinking, it had better be good! And...it IS good! Really good. Dunno if we would have been fooled had he not revealed the truth, it certainly sounds inspired by all the stuff cited above, though the recording itself is perhaps not authentically '70s-sounding. And what we really think this sound like, is Gas gone prog. The disc begins with the track "Begin" -- twelve minutes of heavily filtered electric organ chording, endlessly building, eventually morphing into the 17+ minute "Continue"! Further into the disc, new themes and instrumentation are introduced, but the basic hypnotic concept progagates. It's a very satisfying trip, the kind of thing that you don't really realize is playing for as long as it is. It really sounds like the pulsing electronics of Wolfgang Voigt's Gas project combined with the minimalist jazz-drone of Australia's The Necks (two big AQ faves you'll note), with some detours into psych-fusion freakouts, via Hammond organ and what Martin Archer and his co-conspiratorsconsider their tribute to "Magma's horn section". If this really WAS a long-lost Japanese LP from '74 we'd be losing our minds over it...so why not anyway? Martin Archer's fantasy has resulted in a quite fantastic musical reality on this here disc.

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Wow, what with a new Koji Asano release coming out every month (literally!) it's a bit hard for us to always come up with something original to say. If you search for "Asano" on our website you'll find a ton of reviews of his past releases, many of

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Two 20+ minute tracks of solo computer noise music from the prolific 26 year-old Japanese composer Koji Asano (now based in Barcelona). Although a computer is involved, this ain't glitchy laptop techno! This material isn't that far removed from the electroacoustic drone/static of his excellent previous album "Momentum". Lovely cover photo by Asano as usual, not indicative of the difficult sounds inside. Asano says: "At this stage, powerful but sensitive music constructed by strong high frequencies and the space. Sometimes sounds are like small steps of insects or huge movements of the ground."

By now most readers of the AQ New Arrivals list should be familiar with the work of Koji Asano, the uber-prolific Barcelona-based Japanese experimental composer who has long been a big favorite here at Aquarius. We didn't have to wait long for this, the

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"Even Jim O'Rourke would be left gasping at the depth and range of his output"--that's what the Wire magazine says about 25-year old Tokyo composer/multi-instrumentalist Koji Asano, and here are three new cds to prove it. Sunshine and Avalanches both explore noisy electronic realms with extreme frequencies both high and low, and some strange analog rhythmic 'beats' in places. Monsoon, meanwhile, is quite different: a truly gorgeous piano-improv session, very good falling-asleep at night trance music. We also have the rest of the very prolific Asano's hard-to-find back catalog in stock, including his insane guitar/drums/keyboards trio record Gravity which somehow combines metal, surf music, and improv skree. Other highlights are "Solstice" (electronics/noise/ping pong game sounds...), "You Can't Open The Door Because It's Already Open" (beautiful, far-away sounding piano bliss), "Pheromone" (guitar/noise/weirdness), "Vacant Land" (crinkly noise soundscapes), "Caffeine" (another guitar-oriented fave, some really beautiful stuff on here)...and a couple other fine discs. Check out his website [www.solstice-europe.com] for more details.

Koji's second album, with a different cover from its original release on his pre-Solstice label RAB. Lots of his rarely-heard these days avant-guitar playing on this one.

Piano on this early one.

Disc number 25 (!) from one of our favorite Japanese experimental composers, the ever prolific Koji Asano. With his album-a-month schedule, we've been worried about quality control, but he rarely disappoints, although it's been tough for us to keep up -- we're

Ok, it's that time again. We've got two new ones here from AQ fave Koji Asano, the eclectic and very prolific Japanese experimental composer. These are numbers 38 and 39 in his steadily growing cd catalog!! The thirty eighth, Final Insurance, isn't actually a brand new recording, it is (as the full title suggests) a collection of previously unreleased tracks from the period directly prior the release of Asano's first actual album, Solstice, in 1995. Wow, that was a while ago now, but I remember when we first got that disc -- who would have guessed that ten years later we'd have reviewed dozens more cds by him? There's twelve tracks here, varied in approach from squeaky, sci-fi electronic noise (a la Ryoji Ikeda) to gentle field recordings (kinda like something Toshiya Tsunoda might do). There's improvs on guitar and piano as well... everything here is interesting, some of it harsh, some of it beautiful. He carefully selected these tracks from a vast amount of material recorded in this youthful period of sonic activity and discovery, and it's all good stuff that deserves to be heard!

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Japanese experimental music wunderkind Koji Asano has already produced a slew of fine albums that range in focus from guitar noise-rock to meditative piano improvisation to electronic soundscapes... Now, with this release, he ventures into the realm of modern classical, with three long tracks of melancholy and unsettling yet not-unmelodic music for strings, performed by the Koji Asano Ensemble (piano, cello, viola, violin, and contrabass). Koji Asano is perhaps Japan's answer to the United States' own prolific and multitalented new music prodigy Jim O'Rourke (and Asano has yet to release any dubious "pop" music). Recommended.

Another eclectic early recording from our fave Japanese composer living in Spain.

One of Koji's first releases, with his group Gravity: an instrumental, guitar-keys-drums avant-rock band! Hard to describe, improv-meets-surf-meets-metal-meets-prog music, quite different from much of his vast catalog, but nonetheless one of Allan's faves.

Koji Asano, the AQ-beloved Barcelona-based Japanese sound artist, is back at last with a new cd (the twenty-seventh release on his own label Solstice). This new one, "January Rainbow", consists of a 64 minute long track that successfully combines two of our favorite Koji Asano compositional styles: his abstract but lovely piano improv, and electro-acoustic noise-drone! Asano's flowing piano explorations of almost romantic, fractured melodies are heard through a more-than-ambient fluctuating field of thick static, hum, and crackle. If you play this at a low volume, it's like listening to a mellow and pretty avantgarde piano recital over a messed-up shortwave radio signal. But turn it up, and the physical presence of the rumbling electronic noise really takes over! Your choice, both are nice. Those familar with Koji's back catalog need only imagine a DJ mix of his solo piano discs "You Can't Open The Door Because It's Already Open" or "Monsoon" (which already had their a background-ambient-noise element to 'em) with one of his noise-drone oriented discs like "Momentum" or "The Last Shade of Evening Falls". A truly mesmerizing, beautiful balance of melody and drone is the result. So, not only are we glad to hear from Koji again, but we think this is one of our favorite entries in his vast catalog so far!

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Here's another great release from one of our favorite sound artists, Japanese twenty-something Koji Asano, a fellow who really ought to be on the cover of The Wire sometime, in a just world. He is more deserving of that sort of coverage than, say, last issue's cover star Pole. Not that we don't like Pole, but c'mon, that guy has made more-or-less the same record three times in a row, and his work is not based on that original of an idea in the first place. However, Koji Asano has produced over a dozen creative albums, all of them excellent and inventive, in a variety of experimental subgenres, from piano-ambient to electro-noise to skronky guitar rock... but no hip hype for him. Anyway, this newest effort from Asano deviates from his recent discs of piano improvisations and chamber music compositions with a collection of recordings that we've been told have been "created by two loudspeaker's woofers and the air pressure from the movement of them. Two microphones put inside of the speakers and directly touched on the woofers to make a sound of moving. Those movements were amplified again and again by controlling the mixer and changing the position of microphones." The result is a wash of crunchy, squealing and pulsing drones not all that far from some of Maurizio Bianchi's early power electronics, but without any of the doom 'n' gloom industrial-horror imagery. To go into more detail: the first of the three unamed tracks, is 10 and a half minutes based on a rhythmic helicoptering sound, a clipping rotor-like "whack whack whack" that modulates in tone, tempo, and volume over the length of the track. Also occuring is additional, carefully sculpted feedback noise. Very nice, really, sounding somewhat like a more "live air", electro-acoustic version of the sort of "clicks & cuts" music made by the likes of Noto, but more driving and organic and less sterile. The second, much longer (42'33") track has bursts of scratchy electronic hum forming interwoven patterns of drone. Static never sounded so good. Eventually the "feedback" comes to the fore, rather like some impossibly precise, persistent, obsessive, repetitive guitar / amplifier battle session. Piercing sounds mix with deeper, hesitant drone-segments, eventually mutating into insect realms of buzzing whine. That segues into the final track, seventeen minutes that morph the insect-like sounds into something resembling some solo saxophone free improv I've heard, rather quiet and sparse, but with a bit of lawnmower-sounding blurt as well. The whole disc is always changing, always alive, and thus full of interest for the adventurous listener. Check out Koji's website at http://personal4.iddeo.es/koji for more info and sound samples of his stuff, most of which we have available at Aquarius.

See "Avalanches" for info.

Koji's back (again)! The very prolific Barcelona-based Japanese composer -- who just returned from the Instal 2002 festival in Glasgow, where he appeared alongside the likes of Mirror, Ryoji Ikeda, Alva.Noto and Phill Niblock -- follows up his recent, wonderful "January Rainbow" release with this new disc (#28!) of experimental electronics. No pretty piano this time, rather you get a dreamlike, if ominous, background hum out of which glitchy bursts of chirping, grinding electronic noise emerge. These interruptions build in intensity and density, first establishing some kind of abstract rhythm, then coalescing into a loud, layered, rumbling drone. Eventually Koji brings the piece back into a zone of bleep-punctuated silence. These could be the voices in the head of an unstable antagonist in an imaginary techno-psycho-horror film...to our ears, quite nice! If you like the, shall we say "abrasively listenable" side of Koji's eclectic sound explorations, the stuff that aligns him with Merzbow and Aube, "Octopus Balloons" should interest you indeed. And as with all of Koji's recent releases on his label Solstice, this disc comes packaged in a slim cardboard sleeve, featuring another of Koji's beautiful urban landscape photos on the cover.

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Little-known but highly talented young Japanese avant-garde composer Asano works with piano, electronics, guitar etc. on this disc.

Composer/multi-instrumentalist/improviser Koji Asano's 13th self-released cd is here! A beautiful yet strange, oddly recorded disc of solo piano meditations, 67 minutes spread over six tracks. The ambient background his/hum is at times as much part of the soundscape as is Asano's piano playing (not unlike one of his three earlier piano discs, the lovely "You Cannot Open The Door Because It Is Already Open", which was recorded in an abandoned castle near St. Petersburg which provides plenty of echoey atmosphere). This one, though, was recorded in Asano's new home of Barcelona, Spain, and the atmosphere probably comes from the monaural micro-cassette recorder used for the recording! With a nice cover photo as always, a desolate desert landscape/sky with hopeful saplings sprouting inside protective cages.

Japanese sound artist Koji Asano recently (last weekend!) graced AQ with an instore performance, and it's a shame if you missed it 'cause what we'll call his "laptop Merzbow" style electronics were intense and mesmerizing indeed. He brought along copies of this

The big 4-0 for our pal Koji here. No, he hasn't turned 40 (far from it) but he's reached his fortieth cd release! We've been fans since way back when you could count Koji Asano albums on the fingers of one hand. And we're happy to say that he's kept up the quality all along, as anyone who picked up number 39, reviewed here not too long ago, knows. Rabbit Room Reservation Centre (Koji has a thing for rabbits, it seems) is a visit to the dronier side of Asano's ouvre, which is a nice place to be. There's three tracks, lasting 10, 23 and 24 minutes or so. They've got the sound of insects and/or appliances amplified and abstracted... but we can only guess how he actually made this music. His press release reads thusly: "new electro-acoustic works, infiltrating slowly while deeply resounding." That doesn't say a lot but it's accurate! Generally we think he likes to leave things to the imagination, a bit mysterious, cryptic... so we'll simply offer up that some of this gives us the vibe of a propeller-driven airplane droning over the Himayalas, that sort of loneliness in a vast space... even if this simply may be the processed sounds of appliances in Asano's apartment. Or a Rabbit Room Reservation Center, whatever that is!

MPEG stream: Rabbit Room Reservation Center I
MPEG stream: Rabbit Room Reservation Center II

Man, we've got some catching up to do. Since we last listed anything from prolific AQ-fave Koji Asano (that'd be 2002's Octopus Balloons), the Japanese avant-composer has moved from Barcelona back to Japan, gotten married, had a baby, and somehow managed to record and release another NINE albums. He's up to his thirty-seventh release now!! Dunno if we're gonna manage to retrospectively, individually review all of 'em but we'll at least try to get back with the program by presenting to you now numbers 36 (Sanctuary On Reclaimed Land) and 37 (Takoyakikun). We do, however, also have a couple copies each of The Giant Squid, Gondola Odyssey, Piano Suite Vol. 1: Fitness Club No. 1-20, Absurd Summer, Suite For Organ And Recorders No. 1: The Alien Power Plant, Zoo Telepathy, and Wind Gauge in stock for any fellow Asano enthusiasts that need to complete their collections right now. Anyway, Sanctuary On Reclaimed Land is definitely still the Koji Asano music we know and love. Recorded as part of an installation in an empty warehouse on the Osaka waterfront, literally a "sanctuary on reclaimed land", this 51 minute piece is the sound of the interaction of a grand piano with a computerized sound system inside the echoing interior space of the warehouse. Notes played on the piano were amplified, reflected, and reproduced via computer processing and multiple microphones and speakers. Asano says he "received the inspiration of moisture and the sea breeze, while vibrating the Osaka harbor warehouse by a large volume and ... completed a large integrated work of the grand piano and computer sound". The results are a gorgeous ambient drone piece, that sounds not unlike Wolfgang Voigt's work as Gas. We've always enjoyed Koji's various piano-based projects (discs like Preparing For April, The End Of August, You Cannot Open The Door Because It Is Already Open, and January Rainbow) and this one belongs in that bunch, but at the end of a continuum where the piano as an identifiable sound source is almost entirely abstracted. Very nice. Instead of the cardboard sleeves of most of his recent releases, this (and Takoyakikun too) comes housed in Asano's newest style of cd packaging, a plastic, sort of cd-sized dvd case.

MPEG stream: Sanctuary On Reclaimed Land (excerpt)

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SORRY. Album number 1 in Koji's catalog. One of our all-time favorites of his. It's eclectic and noisy, with one part that sounds like a sampled ping-pong game.

With album number 26 in his rapidly expanding discography, Japanese experimental composer Koji Asano switches from packaging his cds in jewel cases to putting them in slim cardboard sleeves. He tells us that the reason for this change is in part because of a This 72-minute "Spherical Moss Factory" disc continues Koji's interest in high-end (shrill) sonic explorations, being a piece in two parts written for violin and contrabass, performed by the Koji Asano String Ensemble, which consists of Tomomi Tokunaga and Kentaro Suzuki on those instruments respectively. But the first few minutes of track one don't betray the stringed instrument sound source, as the near-inaudible scrape of Tomomi's violin starts things off in what sounds like an emulation of the sine-wave electronics of Sachiko M. But soon the listener realizes that this is no computer processed piece, but an avant-classical composition featuring real human musicians on acoustic instruments. Track two displays quite a bit more energy from the get go, as Tomomi saws away on her violin with abandon, before relaxing and entering into a duet with Kentaro's deep contrabass bowing. All throughout both tracks, the violin and contrabass together trade mournful moans in a melodic (if melancholy) mode, punctuated by frenzied scrabblings. We may not be season ticket holders to the symphony or 20th/21st century classical experts, but we know what we like, and we do like this.

RealAudio clip: Spherical Moss Factory pt. 2

AQ-fave Japanese sound experimentalist Asano is putting us to the test with another of his monthy (!) releases, another one on the "difficult" (for him) side of things. Maybe the monthly schedule is getting the better of him, too, 'cause here he kinda takes a

RealAudio clip: Spirit Of The Wardrobe (excerpt)

Ok, it's that time again. We've got two new ones here from AQ fave Koji Asano, the eclectic and very prolific Japanese experimental composer. These are numbers 38 and 39 in his steadily growing cd catalog!! Number 39 is his very latest recording, Spring Estuary. The vague information we have seems to indicate that Asano used water as a sound source for this disc. But it sure doesn't sound like him splashing about in the bath! It's really shimmery and sort of churchy -- we would have guessed that he was manipulating recordings of pipe organ and/or bells, though the third track sounds like more like wheezing horns, all distorted and billowy. There's a total of four tracks here, the final one taking up the majority of the disc at almost 34 minutes in length. Imagine that the children's carousel in the park is somehow also one of Philip Jeck's turntables -- a giant Jeck turntable/carousel, turning and turning, its pretty music blurred and warped and utterly overwhelming and enveloping all around it. Very nice!

MPEG stream: Spring Estuary II
MPEG stream: Spring Estuary III

See "Avalanches" for info.

Man, we've got some catching up to do. Since we last listed anything from prolific AQ-fave Koji Asano (that'd be 2002's Octopus Balloons), the Japanese avant-composer has moved from Barcelona back to Japan, gotten married, had a baby, and somehow managed to record and release another NINE albums. He's up to his thirty-seventh release now!! Dunno if we're gonna manage to retrospectively, individually review all of 'em but we'll at least try to get back with the program by presenting to you now numbers 36 (Sanctuary On Reclaimed Land) and 37 (Takoyakikun). We do, however, also have a couple copies each of The Giant Squid, Gondola Odyssey, Piano Suite Vol. 1: Fitness Club No. 1-20, Absurd Summer, Suite For Organ And Recorders No. 1: The Alien Power Plant, Zoo Telepathy, and Wind Gauge in stock for any fellow Asano enthusiasts that need to complete their collections right now. Takoyakikun is a bit of a departure for Asano, or maybe a return to his roots. For one thing, it's not one long, cd-length track, but several different, individual songs. Songs? Well, instrumental rock numbers anyway. Yes, rock. Or avant-rock, or prog-rock, or something. And, unlike most of his releases which are solo recordings (or sometimes string ensembles), this is a band project -- the very same band with which he made one of his first discs, Gravity. Maddeningly convoluted and repetitive at times, this is choppy, angular, occasionally melodic, no-wave instrumental improv prog from a trio of guitar, keyboards and drums (Asano being the guitarist). We think folks into other skronky underground Japanese prog-core acts like Ruins and Korekyojinn would find this of interest... The keys definitely give it a "classic" prog vibe, and there's even a drum solo in track five! Recorded in 1997 (and released as a cd-r only at the time) now Asano has remastered and repackaged Takoyakikun for a proper cd release on his Solstice label.

MPEG stream: Takoyakikun track 1
MPEG stream: Takoyakikun track 2
MPEG stream: Takoyakikun track 3

Beautiful! This new release from prolific Barcelona-based Japanese experimental composer Koji Asano, number 22 (!) in his ongoing series of fascinating self-released recordings, is described by Asano as "a long lost memory of a once heard piano." Now, he has

RealAudio clip: The End of August (excerpt)

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SORRY. Briefly, part two rachets the tension up even further with some insectoid drones, lonely and menacing.

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SORRY. Part three seems to have the most dynamism, with Asano's gurgling late-evening drones meeting with sudden, eerie, shudder-inducing stabs in the growing darkness.

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SORRY. ...And the fourth and final installment of Asano's "Last Shade" wavers and keens like the mad monstrous pipers of Azathoth's court in the center of the universe trying to play a Tony Conrad composition!

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