[ 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 2051 through 2100 of 2272.

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

SORRY. New release on Force Inc. Steady four on the floor house beats and dark, compressed washes of monochromatic sounds - very much reminiscent of Thomas Brinkmann, Plastikman and most any of the releases on Chain Reaction.

Excellent remix collection (based tracks from Auch's Chain Reaction style "Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye" album), by the happenin' electronica likes of Sutekh, Dat Politics, Goem, Auch, and others.

The German label that brought us the first two albums from ambient doom-jazzers Bohren & Der Club Of Gore is much better known for crusty punk/metal/hc stuff. One of their top acts is Audio Kollaps, who tear it up on their latest, the aptly-titled juggernaut of blurring brutality that is Panzer. It's full of fast, fierce grinding metal with chugging breakdowns and gruff, German-language vocals growling lyrics that we're pretty sure must be politically progressive, anti-war diatribes. Though, just from listening to this aggro music, you wouldn't necessarily take 'em for peaceniks!

MPEG stream: Schuld
MPEG stream: Was Ist Die Warheit?

So I know most of you don't remember the band Pond, which is a damn shame. We've been trying to track down copies of their sadly now out of print final album Rock Collection forever so we could list it, to no avail. It's one of the greatest weirdest pop records ever, though. And like lots of great weird records, it got them dropped from their label and most likely led to the end of the band. I always wondered how a band could make a completely brilliant record, see it overlooked and ignored and not just give up. But lucky for us these guys just won't give up. We have an amazing array of absolutely brilliant post-Pond projects: Charlie Campbell's Goldcard which we raved about a few lists back, and now the second album from Pond frontman Chris Brady's Audio Learning Center. Where Goldcard was an eccentric hodgepodge of ultrapersonal diary-like ditties, home recorded and all over the place, Audio Learning Center is definitely a band, a ROCK band. But it's unlike a lot of the rock you'll hear these days. Very similar to the final Pond record, guitars warble hypnotic little melodies before roaring riffs overtake them, retreating just as quickly leaving just delicate little melodies for Brady to sing over. And as with most bands, it's the songs, AND the voice. The songs are weird convoluted minor key prog-pop excursions, meandering dizzily from part to part but always returning to a hook that pierces your heart and sticks in your head. And Brady has such a unique voice, throaty and gravelly, but at the same time whine-y, almost cracking and straining to reach those high high notes, lending everything an intensely earnest, almost desparate cast. Think Built To Spill, the Weakerthans, Afghan Whigs, but way more rocking and hypnotic, and way more dark and angst ridden. Sure it's on Vagrant, THE emo label, and ALC does fit to a degree, but Brady's emotions and neuroses are so much deeper and more desperate than most of emo's typical girl/boy/my parents don't understand sentiments. But sonically, there's just some one-in-a-million, alchemical intangible perfection, THAT voice and THESE songs, that give this record such resonance. Hard to know how to process this stuff. Makes you want to jump around and bang your head and air guitar, but at the same time makes you want to hole up in your room, and think about everything and everyone you've lost, and try to figure out what the hell anything means. Which is exactly what makes this record, and this band so fucking great.

MPEG stream: The Neverwills
MPEG stream: Cope Park
MPEG stream: Happy Endings

What the hell is it gonna take for Chris Brady to be huge?!?! How many great records and perfect pop songs qualifies someone for super stardom?? First he fronted the criminally underrated Pond, who with their major label swansong 'Rock Collection' breathed

RealAudio clip: Favorite
RealAudio clip: Shell
RealAudio clip: Hand Me Downs

Ace Of Spades is a cd-r series of live recordings showcasing the intimate acoustic music of a variety of local indie artists. The series so far boasts consistently strong performances from all participants (well played and well recorded at Mama Buzz Cafe in Oakland). The Volume 7 - March, 2005 edition features a half dozen tunes from Audio Out Send, five from !Go Mexico! and three from Gibson Cuyler.

MPEG stream: Rolling Heads
MPEG stream: Better To Be Used Than Alone
MPEG stream: Wild Style

Reissues of earlier stuff by this rad thrash band.

"Faster to death with the throttle at max / as I introduce Mr. Neck to Mr. Axe". Yeah! With lyrics like that, and a headbanging maelstrom of speedy riffs to match, this is Thrash Metal all right! But unlike a lot of today's self-professed "old school" thrash bands, Norway's Audiopain aren't primarily an exercise (however deadly) in '80s nostalgia. It's retro thrash, yeah, and they did title one of their older discs 1986, but we get the idea that they're thrashing with no regard for trends, in a more modern, blackened way, maybe 'cause they don't present themselves in formula thrash fashion (at least not on record, we don't know what they look like live). The imagery of their cd packaging isn't about spikes and leather and fists in the face. Or nuclear bombs and radiation symbols. It is dark and evil looking, signifying "extreme" metal for sure, but doesn't try to look like an old Kreator or Nuclear Assault album, y'know? It's a lot artsier than that (though not as creative as the unique packaging of their previous album for Vendlus, 2004's The Traumatizer). However, when you hit "play", you'll hear that this sure IS thrash metal, that would have given any moshpit back in the eighties quite a workout. 100 percent aggro, heads down, faster than a shark, razor-sharp, thrash-til-death metal, that will have your neck thoroughly wrecked before the 27 minutes of violently concentrated force on this six-song cd have barely begun. And while the lyric quoted at the start of this review (from the title track) is certainly the sort of thing an Exodus or Destruction would have come up with back in the day, much of the rest of the lyrics here are way more cryptic and oblique, with seeming themes leaning towards the black metal side of things, anti-religious and evil and obviously misanthropic. You get the idea that Audiopain wishes there was indeed a Switch To Turn Off Mankind. And if we sell this to any kids, their parents will surely be looking for the switch to turn off Audiopain...

MPEG stream: Alliance
MPEG stream: Holy Toxic

A lot of the metal we trumpet here at at AQ HQ is of the weird, droney, dirgey, arty, trancey variety. Stuff that, intentionally or not, could be considered avant-garde. But we like metal that's just plain metal too, metal that's meant for headbanging not headscratching. And so it is that Sweden's Audiopain (a dumb name, yes, but it's just a name) has become the current hit for AQ's metalhorde (if Andee and Allan can be considered a horde). The first thing we noticed about this release (before we even had listened to it) is that they make up for the unimaginative band name by doing something downright creative with the packaging -- the cd booklet has been sliced horizontally in thirds and then cleverly folded into an assemblage unlike anything we've seen before in a cd. So, we were curious as to what this would sound like. How 'bout some fierce, energetic, razor-blade-rifftastic thrash? With raspy screams, nasty guitars, thick bass and blasting drums, Audiopain's The Traumatizer is totally andrenalized and 'izing. It's like '80s German thrash-meisters Destruction with more of a creepy atmosphere. That means we're also reminded of current Swedish thrashers Defleshed (but *with* guitar soloing). That means: freakin' good! And how can you not like a severe, dark, violent metal band that whose thanks list includes a "cosmic toodeloo", a "grand bag of hip hurra" and "a subliminal penguin" to various friends and family? Maybe these guys are kinda weird and arty, come to think of it. But whatever tendencies they have in that direction won't get in the way of your demin-n-leather clad pleasure center enjoying some hooky, headbanging, thrashing-mad METAL. Not overly long at six songs/34 minutes, a la Reign In Blood, but I found myself happily hitting repeat on these traumatizing tunes, over and over again.

MPEG stream: Believer
MPEG stream: The Traumatizer

Who ever said grunge was dead was wrong wrong wrong! Chris Cornell joined all of Rage Against The Machine (minus the singer) in May 2001. After some tumultous band strife they bust out with this, their first release, which brings you so back to the early 90's it's hard to believe (or understand). This has all the sludginess of Mudhoney, the murkyness of Green River and of course sounds a lot like Soundgarden. Dynamic and slick recording, with a familiar, if out of date sound. If you're sad cuz you're bored of your old grunge here's some brand new songs that sound as if they came right out of a time capsule.

RealAudio clip: Cochise
RealAudio clip: Like a Stone

We raved recently about Iron Forest, a one man band trafficking in gloriously bleak and blackened industrial noise, his disc a murky expanse of wasted beatscapes and zoner dub power electronics. Auditor is the same guy. Not sure if this record by Auditor signals the end of Iron Forest (we hope not), or if it's just another gnarled offshoot, either way, Form Destroyer (possibly named after the Skullflower record, which would make sense...), basically takes up where that last Iron Forest left off, unfurling a caustic sprawl of gristled dronemusic, grinding fields of electronic static, moaning heaving swaths of suffocating low end, dense roiling clouds of sinister chordal thrum, not to mention, glitched out sort-of rhythms, processed vokills, sheets of hiss and hum, and eventually, fragmented distorted beats, which comes together on the second track, a twisted bit of dance floor destruction, with a rhythm constructed from drum machines and jackhammers (literally we think), a sort of gnarled, blackened IDM, fractured industrial techno recast as grimly groovy lurch and lumber, which quickly (d)evolves into a harrowing black ambient epic, all grinding, pulses, crumbling rib cage rattling rumbles, staticky drum machines, and primitive programmed rhythms, straddling the line between dark and moody, and truly terrifying, ultimately, and seemingly impossibly fusing the two, into something heady and hypnotic, darkly hypnotic and strangely mesmerizing. The last two tracks change tack considerably, with "Betrayer Of Sleep" slipping into seriously blackened doom territory, a heaving slo-mo-crawl, with crumbling distortion, and oozing downtuned riffage, a lumbering deathmarch that is constantly on the verge of blurring into a blackdronedirge, while the nearly 15 minute long closer "I Can Never Be Far Enough From You", adds some female vocals, a keening, mewling cry off in the distance, over a swirling tangle of wild hiss and static drenched churn, almost like a disembodied Diamanda Galas torchsong, smeared into a bleary, blackened drift, the sound pulsing and dynamic, moments of crushing malevolence aside moments of delicate shimmer, a bit cinematic for sure, the blackness and grinding distortion eventually receding completely, leaving just some muted murk, buried melodies, distant rhythms, and that female voice repeating the title, everything eventually enveloped by soft noise and blurred buzz, for one final, almost shoegaze sounding coda, before it's just that voice, and that mantra, wreathed in effects. A haunting, and surprisingly delicate finale.

MPEG stream: And Vomit As You Devour Them
MPEG stream: Flea On A Dead Dog
MPEG stream: I Can Never Be Far Enough From You

The last few Posies records (and Posies related records) haven't been entirely satisfying for those of us who have been yearning for that lush, powerful, harmony-vocal-soaked pop. Both Ken and Jon have been dabbling in random solo projects, and the Posies

RealAudio clip: Baby Bitch
RealAudio clip: Green Eyes
RealAudio clip: Beautiful Stanger

Together or apart those Posies' gents Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer never fail to do a number on your pop-loving heartstrings. Wonder if it irks them that seldom is one mentioned without reference to the other or to their band for that matter (if so, we apologize for adding one more to the stack), but geez, it's pretty difficult not to do! They're all so deeply interwoven. While other bands' members usually strike out on his or her own to follow a muse that doesn't mesh with their main band, these guys' solo endeavors all inevitably end up sounding like The Posies whether or not they intended it to be so. Auer's vocals have always been the aural equivalent of a big ol' ice cream sundae. Ever so slightly smoother and fuller than Stringfellow's, but no less sweet and irresistible. That was fine and dandy when they (and we) were young pups, but how do they fare today as veteran songsmiths? Well, if Songs From The Year Of Our Demise is any indication, very very good, thank you! Auer has taken his sweet time issuing forth a solo album meticulously refining each and very facet himself (Stringfellow's been much more prolific on that side of things), but it's so worth the wait! This man is downright wizardly at composing counter melodies and vocal harmonies and they're everywhere on this labor of love. And yes, it does sound incredibly like a Posies album albeit a bit darker and more introspective, but are we complaining? Hell no! Those guys have brought us so much pop joy over the years in all of their incarnations, and we're pleased as punch that their fountain is showing no signs of stopping.

MPEG stream: Six Feet Under
MPEG stream: Bottom Of The Bottle

Yes indeed folks, this here is a little 5-song ep from the gent who along with Ken Stringfellow make up the fabulous Posies. As the credits tell, Mr. Auer makes all the noise on this release (with the exception of some drum assistance from Darius Minwalla on two tracks). And what can I say other than this release exhibits yet more shining examples of his fine pop songwriting skills. The only problem you may find is that if you're at all familiar with the Posies, you can't help but feel that something is missing here because it's the fabulous vocal interplay between Jon and Ken Posie that elevates their exceptional individual talents to pop greatness. Nevertheless, these are some top notch tunes including a cover of "Gold Star For Robot Boy" by another pop genius, Guided By Voices' Robert Pollard.

There's not a band around these days that more embodies the concepts of LOUD, and NOISY than the UK's mighty Aufgehoben. But being loud and noisy is not enough on their own. If it were, we'd sure have a lot fewer shitty bands floating around. No, Aufgehoben (formerly Aufgehoben No Process) are masters of their craft. That craft being ear splitting, strangely rhythmic, massively overblown super distorted totally fucked up noise rock. This stuff is so amazing, and amazingly alien, it's hard to know how to describe it. It's sort of like free jazz, meets free noise, meets Krautrock. Maybe Laddio Bolocko covering Masonna. Or a handful of This Heat Records and a handful of Merzbow records run through a meat grinder and then performed by Sun Ra. Or Mainliner and God (the '90s British noise band, not the deity) going toe-to-toe. A mind bendingly perplexing polyphonous cacophony of zig zagging melodies, almost like someone dropped a handful of notes in a particle accelerator and let 'er rip. If you thought their previous two albums were head-smashers and ear-melters, you'll be blown away by this one. Featuring, as on their prior Magnetic Mountain opus, the guest "stereo guitar" of British improv maverick Gary Smith. Yes, as we've said of them before, "the Anaal Nathrakh of improv noise rock" are back and all pretenders should be running scared.

MPEG stream: Solar Ipse
MPEG stream: Avant Primitiv

Is it us, or is UK noise rock outfit Aufgehoben continually getting noisier and noisier? Is that even possible? We're beginning to think it is, even after the recent Messidor full length seemed to have reached a noise ceiling. But here we are, two splattery, speaker frying blasts of no wave, free jazz noise rock. Or something. Not sure what to call it, but we like it. A lot. It does require a strong stomach and some iron clad earholes, but if you think you've got the stuff, that hop right in. Two drummers, electronics, and very little else, are all these guys need to DESTROY. Side A begins with some rhythmic free jazz splatter before being swallowed alive by white hot bursts of crumbling distortion and swells of Merzbowian fury. The sheets of noise stuttering and almost 'skipping' into strange speaker shredding almost-rhythms, some otherworldly white noise pulse that bathes the rest of the song in a blinding and painfully loud glow. Side B is cut from the same cloth, beginning with some Derek Bailey-ish guitar scrabble before the band launch into a full-on free jazz noise rock assault, loads of buzzing feedback, charged sheets of skree, all blown out and super distorted and in the red, interrupted by brief bits of tranquility, peppered with moments of grinding guitar scrape and spastic drum sputter, always quickly obliterated by a massive super nova of pure noise. Fucking brutal and massively intense! Packaged in a plain black sleeve with some simple paste on art. Pressed on super thick vinyl, a gorgeous picture disc adorned with strange branch like patterns, like a fossil or some blurred winterscape. Nice!! LIMITED TO 524 COPIES!!!

Jeezus. Just when you thought that Aufgehoben couldn't get any noisier, the UK unit ups the ante with this terroristic slab of sonic annihilation, their sixth full-length and 3rd for Holy Mountain. Full of brutal feedback and blown out howl, crinkly glitch and sudden outbursts, this is loud miasmic 'music' that's maybe made with guitars and drums (2 kits worth) and electronics, but could just as easily be channeled direct from nightmare. There's broken rhythmic clank that garners them some This Heat and (early) Supersilent references, lashed to skree worthy of the Japanese heavyweights like Merzbow and Hijokaidan. Aufgehoben have long been one of our favorite noise acts, 'cause there's always a discernible method to their madness, if you will, enough 'rock' structure for your ears to hang on to (for dear life) to make it, ahem, listenable. But boy do they push that envelope! This is one for fans of their previous works of course, also for fans of certain Skullflower, Kevin Drumm, Wolf Eyes, Voice Crack, Borbetomagus, Shit & Shine... Really, recommended to all noiseniks! We wish it were on cd though, that's our preferred noise format. Who wants to get up and flip this when you're in its tender clutches?

MPEG stream: ActsRoman(s)
MPEG stream: Ethicsisanoptics (TI23)
MPEG stream: Thatwealldoallthatwedo (1102s2-3)

Pop quiz! Or not so "pop" really. Whom have we ever compared to Anaal Nathrakh -and- This Heat -and- High Rise -and- Merzbow?? Why Aufgehoben of course. Their name sounds German (it means something along the lines of "nullified" or "voided" in that language). And early on, their music did have krautrocky, rhythmic underpinning. Underpinning brutal ultra distorted NOISE rock that is. And that noise has gotten only noisier and noisier, believe it or not (disbelieve at your peril). Aufgehoben are in fact from England, and certainly fit in with the harsh n' heavy tradition of bands like Skullflower, God, Ramleh, and more recently, Shit And Shine, with whom they share the multiple drummers thing, though Aufgehoben manage to make do with just two of the species freaking out on their drum kits. They also utilize "bricks and metal" as well as the usual guitars and electronics. But if you had to guess, from just listening to 'em, you'd probably pick Japan as their country of origin. Again, 'cause of the sheer noisiness of this, but also 'cause of how the album's last, longest track "Jederfursich..." (26:57) is an epic, repetitively pounding psych guitar blow out (blow up?) that would have the combined forces of both Boris and Merzbow running for cover... whereas the tracks that precede it aren't quite as "rock", though no less noisy, maybe more so, in the vein of Wolf Eyes, who too might reach for the earplugs when confronted with this. Khora's first track "Ignorance Oblivion Contempt" is a vigorous splattering of utterly fried sounds, shrill shards of feedback and frantic trash-compacting percussion colliding and imploding and becoming one dense, writhing mass. That's followed by "Annex Organon", which features a more sparse sort of clatter, but you'd still better be careful about turning up the volume! Next, on "A Bastard Reasoning", we get over ten minutes of mayhem that begin with random meteor strikes of percussive, concussive distortion and then turn into a rumbling, tumbling skree-for-all. Damn. The relative rockiness n' riffiness of the aforementioned fourth and final track, even if the riffs sound like they're played with explosives rather than on guitars, is just a slightly more controlled sort of chaos, building and building and building... kinda like a Cadaver In Drag track -being- dragged, behind a tank, down a rocky road. No, Aufgehoben's brand of utterly destroyed instrumental improv has NOT been tamed at all on Khora, their 5th album, and 2nd for Holy Mountain, who quite rightly hail that ultimate track "Jederfursich..." as being "easily the most massive song of the year". Being obsessed with Les Rallizes Denudes and Keiji Haino, and putting out Blues Control and Wooden Shjips records, would lead you too to say things like that about Aufgehoben. Get this and see, we think you'll agree... This damage is definitely for fans of similar subversive sonic conspirators and AQ faves Shit And Shine.

MPEG stream: Ignorance Oblivion Contempt
MPEG stream: Jederfursich...

Yer ears ready for a bit of a challenge? This, the fourth album from take-no-prisoners English instrumental noise-rock project Aufgehoben (nee Aufgehoben No Process) ought to be just the thing. Seven tracks, 45 minutes of crumpled, crinkly skree in the form of amp-frying distortion, chaotic falling-down-the-stairs song structures, and clattering pipe-fightin' percussion. It's "music" that's been brutally improvised and manipulated, coming out sounding something like Merzbow meets the Starfuckers. At its most extreme (which is very, and most of the time) this stuff's so in-the-red it's infrared. This time around we're hearing less of the krauty rhythmic pummel and snatches of near-melody that characterized their earlier releases (like their last one, 2004's Anno Fauve), and more just sheer blown-out, blow-it-up loud skronky noise, or threatening-to-be loud glitchscapes of brief silences, scrapery and FX. The "small print" in the cd booklet somehwhat puzzlingly specifies the instrumentation/methodology as "paper, stone, electronics, two drums, one mono GS" and "no bass, no overdubs, no no no process", along with the usual disclaimer that Aufgehoben "accept no responsibility for health or hardware". A smart lawyer they must have... Messidor is a seriously OTT session for fans of the likes of Wolf Eyes, Shit and Shine, and Skullflower.

MPEG stream: Ruckfragen
MPEG stream: Manotgog

As promised in last list's review of this British avant-noise-rock band's juggernaut of a second album, we can now offer you copies of their debut, "The Violence Of Appropriation", which bears the alternate title "Cool Tastes In Heavy Sounds". Heavy Sounds indeed! While not *quite* as punishingly always-in-the-red as their follow-up album (which co-billed guitarist Gary Smith), this is still a distortion-fest with lots of guitar and massive rhythmic propulsion. Compared to that 2nd album, the beats here are perhaps "funkier", if that makes any sense in the context of this noisy-as-heck outfit, which employs a music-improvised-live-then-sampled-and-deconstructed methodology a la Phantomsmasher, Radian, and Pluramon. Imagine one of the loud, noisy, semi-industrial bands from the early '90s Pathological stable (God, Terminal Cheesecake) attempting some sort of instrumental modern-day take on experimental krautrock, with Merzbow doing the mixing! This quote from the cd booklet's literal small print gives both the recording details and a definite sense of their sonic overload aesthetic: "1 All sounds and musics utilised in this recording were produced via live and undirected improvisation involving the services of two drummers, a floating pool of guitarists, bass players, keyboard operators, string-scrapers, and non-and-quasi musicians. 2 No sounds extraneous to those original improvised sessions, recorded in Bethnal Green between November and December 1998, were employed in the final product. 3 Aufgehoben No Process accept no responsibility for damage caused by this recording to hi-fi, hearing, or aesthetic sensibilities. 4 Aufgehoben -- past participle of Aufheben, the sublation or simultaneous cancellation, preservation and suppression of terms, a process immanent to the object itself." Yep, whether part 4 of that makes sense to you or not, the rest of the quote gives a pretty clear picture of both their working methods and (part 3) the extremity of the results.

RealAudio clip: Brief Blank
RealAudio clip: Mondo Cult Trip
RealAudio clip: Happening And Formless

Whoa... This, the second album from mysterious Brighton UK outfit Aufgehoben No Process, is some serious, distorted, noise-rock mayhem. And LOUD. Led by Wire scribe Stephen Robinson, and consisting of one, maybe two drummers plus sampler and other indisclosed instrumentation, the Aufgehoben boys (apologies if there's girls in the band, but I'd be surprised, this has a very definite male energy!) are teamed here with (against?) improvising "stereo guitarist" Gary Smith (whom you might know from his heavy "fusion" bands Mass and Powerfield, and most recently the Glass Cage match-up with Hugh Hopper and Shoji Hano, along with other solo and collaborative efforts) for thirteen tracks of high-density heaviness. They indeed scale "magnetic mountains" of riff and noise, venturing also into a few moody valleys of equally-distorted, but quieter, improv fuckery. Mostly, though, this is fully in-the-red sonic assault of utter devastation, full of martial drum pummel, Smith's swooping stereo guitar skree, and beyond-metal instrumental intensity, the likes of which the UK hasn't heard since the glory days of early Skullflower or Kevin Martin's God (and without God's dumb vocals) -- and even then this is taking it up a notch. Heck, even the scariest grindcore metal bands from the early Earache label roster would be sent crying home to Satan upon hearing this. Along with the old Pathological bands like God and 16/17, you could compare this to the best of the current Japanese scene -- imagine the noisiest Japanese psychrockers (Mainliner, Musica Transonic, High Rise, Boris) with a healthy dose of Merzbow added in! So it makes a lot of sense that Aufgehoben No Process enlisted Gary Smith, 'cause he's previously played with High Rise's Nanjo Ashahito, and the rhythm section of his band Mass are former members of God, as well. But this Aufgehoben disc is even louder and noisier than any of that, they're kinda of the Anaal Nathrakh of improv noise rock! We were very impressed, and glad we managed to track some of these down for the store (we'll get their first cd in eventually too).

RealAudio clip: Gourdportalplaning
RealAudio clip: Grosse Module
RealAudio clip: Magnetic Mountain

Strange and mysterious rehearsal recordings from this Canadian black metal horde, most notable for the fact that it's all improvised. As the liner notes proclaim: "We think there should be more spontaneity in black metal and extreme music in general and this release is a tribute to the primal energy and chemistry we felt and experienced while playing/recording." Hear! Hear! And while this is all improvised, don't be expecting super abstract weirdness and ambient black drone, no this is still raw and kvlt black metal, grim and buzzing, with some super killer riffing and some seriously awesome drumming. Strangely recorded too, murky practice space production. The guitars thick black smears, and the drums super blown out and in the red, but still kind of washed out and muddy, and when the blasting double kick drums come in, it's less like a staccato dut-dut-dut-dut-dut-dut than a massive roiling wave of low end speaker shredding thrum. We only have 6 or 7 copies of this, and we're not sure if we can get more when we sell out...

We weren't sure what to expect from a band made up of one part�abstract experimental postrock math metal grinders Forensics, and one part�epic sweeping soundscapers This Will Destroy You, with the word 'mosh' in their band name, and very Donnie Darko-esque cover art featuring a little girl holding hands with a man in an oversized, raggedy bunny suit. But whatever we may have been expecting, it wasn't this... The first descriptor that comes to mind would be something like�emo-ambient, each track a dark and glistening, shimmery and abstract streak of sound, some poppy and propulsive, others skittery and electronic, still others super minimal and softly blurred. But each of them gloriously fuzzy and blissy and dreamy, and a little bit emo... From the soft focus swirling drift of "Always Oversleeps" sounding like some strange Tim Hecker / Machinefabriek / Jasper TX hybrid, to the lilting piano / guitar drift of "Dog Years", that transforms part way through into a loping Flaming Lips style groove with distorted bass and strange alien drums, to the barely there ambience of "A Bluff Carried More Resolutely Through To The Final Limit", a lengthy found sound, soft synth shimmer, like sitting on the beach, listening to a Niblock performance from a mile way. Elsewhere, "Courage & Courtesy" sounds like some lost slowcore classic, all arpeggiated minor key guitar, simple drums and a warm buzzing drone in the background, "I Love You, Please Come Back" is the greatest electro indie track, the Postal Service never wrote, equal parts Autechre skitter and Death Cab swoon pop, "The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same" is a sprawling twangscape, steel strings buzzing lazily in a wide open expanse of billowy breezy sound... the record continued to wander all over the place, every stop some gloriously warm and soothing sonic confection, before finishing off with "One Day We Will Grow Old And Forget The Things We Had When We Were Young", a dense fuzzy wash of thick layered drones and swirling muted buzz, epic and about as heavy as this record gets, sounding not unlike Nadja at their most tranquil... So good.�

MPEG stream: Always Oversleeps
MPEG stream: Dog Years
MPEG stream: A Bluff Carried More Resolutely Through To The Final Limit
MPEG stream: Courage & Courtesy

All you free-folk fans have a real sweet treat here! Six Organs Of Admittance + L = August Born. That's right, this gentle, emotive, improvised-sounding folk album finds Ben Chasny of Six Organs Of Admittance teamed up with Hiroyuki Usui of the mysterious Japanese psych-folk unit L, whose lone album Holy Letters from 1992 became a Record Of The Week here at AQ when it was reissued last year on VHF. If you've heard of L, you're surely familiar with Six Organs. And if you like both of them (as we do), then the idea of this collaboration has probably already piqued your interest. We might as well just say, it's real nice, and let you come n' get it 'cause it's pretty much a no-brainer! Lonesome, loose, lovely music from two like-minded souls, collaborating across the vastness of the Pacific (via air mail, we suppose), Hiroyuki recording in Tokyo and Chasny in Northern California. The music here went back and forth between Chasny and Hiroyuki as many as five times, with each musician adding both electric and acoustic guitar and voice and other sounds/instrumentation -- tambora, autoharp, bass, tinkling bells, field recordings of gurgling water, and more -- building up these songs in ghostly layers that allow them to remain rather spare and delicate. The eleven tracks that resulted from this long-distance collaboration are so very pretty and mellow and somewhat melancholic -- a strum here, a percussive knock there, with loose melodic guitar and bass lines underpinning the rambling, pensive, and lowkey (if not always in key) vocals. It's wonderful, wandering, wondering music, for a sunlit afternoon reverie. In addition to the previous works of Six Organs and L, we're reminded of Richard Youngs, Jandek, Nagisa Ni Te, and some Jewelled Antler stuff.

MPEG stream: More Dead Bird Blues
MPEG stream: A Lot Like You

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

SORRY. Here's the debut release from SF folk singer/songwriter Seth Augustus. Having extensively studied Tuvan throat singing, he ably applies this captivating vocal delivery into his rootsy Americana sound. Unlike many other artists who attempt to add seeming incongruous international elements to a traditional western style of music, but whose attempts end up drawing too much attention to it, Augustus integrates the two well, imbuing his songs with a haunting comfort. Also although the cover art is a busy, brightly colored collage, the music itself is anything but that. Very barebones and earthy. Includes covers of Tom Waits and Charlie Patton songs.

MPEG stream: Tango 'Til They're Sore
MPEG stream: Convolution Blues

A split release between conceptual composer Sam Auinger and a collaboration by composers Robert Adrian and Rupert Huber. The Auinger piece is an awesome 40 minute digital manipulation of the sounds of jet engines, resembling flanging twin-blade flutter or amplified insects. The Adrian/Huber piece is a long, rhythmic collage of applause (clapping). Put that track on when you feel the need for a little positive re-inforcement!

We've long been fans of Canadian doom/drone/dirge outfit Aun. They shared a split with French ultra doomlords Habsyll (who also released a record on Andee's tUMULt label) and we made their most recent record, VII, a Record Of The Week a while back. Which makes perfect sense, as they traffic in a perfect blend of electronic dronemusic, abstract blackened buzz and downtuned glacial sludge that we just can't seem to get enough of. VII was peppered with black metalisms as well, and featured drumming from Voivod's Away, transforming Aun's drones into something way more metal, but on Black Pyramid, Aun move away from overtly metallic soundmaking, and instead focus on creating a collection of epically abject dronescapes, that capture the same sort of intensity and soul crushing heaviness, but using a distinctly different palette. And the results are incredible. Dark, and dreary, depressive and hauntingly beautiful. Each track here is a miniature epic, a bleak sprawl of smoldering sounds, deep shimming low end drifts beneath hazy fragmented melodies, everything blurred and smeared into slow shifting clouds of grim ambience, the tracks peppered with mysterious bits of random percussion, scrapes, creaks, chimes and buried rhythms. The sound occasionally blossoms into thick buzzing sheets of crumbling distortion, smoldering swaths of blown out thrum, or gorgeously dreamy streaks of shoegazey melody, but just as quickly settles back down into pulsing electronic swirls, or murky expanses of blackened drift. The record closes with the 9+ minute "Shining", which finds Aun taking that hushed minimal shimmer, and tethering it to a strange skeletal rhythm, a sort of disembodied techno throb, but more brittle and trebly, as the black swells beneath roil and churn, until eventually, thick throbbing droned out guitars, wreathed in swirling fuzz, are driven forward by a new, more propulsive, loping, lurching rhythm, the sound growing more and more intense and distorted, before finishing in a final squall of swirling FX and washed out distortion. So good. And while way less metal than the previous record, it's most definitely just as heavy, and dark, and intense. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES!!

MPEG stream: Phoenix
MPEG stream: Taurus Ten
MPEG stream: Black Pyramid

The term 'doom' gets bandied about quite a bit these days (by us, too, to be sure). It's gotten to the point that anything slow and low gets described as doom. There's a certain cool quotient attached to 'doom' it seems, and all sorts of music makers have been taking advantage of that by doing their best to infuse their music, be it metal or pop or drone or electronic, with some of that doomy magic. But as we all know, doom is more that playing slow, more than tuning way down, more than plodding lugubriously, it's about evoking a mood, creating an atmosphere of dread, of DOOM, using those sounds to paint a bleak and abject picture, rendered in shades of grey and black, especially black. We're not really that uppity when it comes to people branding themselves doom, but in the case of Aun it might be a bit misleading. Not to say Motorsleep is not a killer record, it is for sure, and it is plenty dark and dreary and rumbly and droney, and heavy, okay, a little bit doomy, but really only a bit. To these ears Aun sound way more like Machinefabriek or Jasper TX, with some Nadja or Jesu mixed in. There's not much riffing, it's not all that heavy, instead, it's mysterious and murky, blurred loops laced with buzz and crumble, are woven into haunting melodies, the songs all blend into one another, like one massive organic piece split into movements, and it does get heavier and louder, but more sort of like Sunroof! heavy, a sort of sun dappled upper register ur-drone, more than any sort of crushing pummel or churning pound. The music at its most minimal shimmers and glistens, spidery bits of crystalline sound set amidst deep rumbling tones and slow shifting textures, often building into almost orchestral swells, sometimes slipping into something murky and blurred and barely metallic, other times glimmering like and expanse of starry sky, not so much doomy as just dark and dolorous. This might well be too dreamy and drifty for troo doomlords, but for anyone into fuzzy distorted shimmer, Japer TX, Machinefabriek, Tim Hecker and that sort of washed out buzz flecked loveliness, then Aun will definitely hit the spot.

MPEG stream: Motorsleep
MPEG stream: Protection
MPEG stream: Erzot

Part of the joy of music for us is seeing various genres stretched to the breaking point, testing the creativity of the music maker, whether it's electronic, black metal, indie rock, whatever, it's what really keeps music exciting for us. Not that we don't love us some buzzing blasting grim black metal, or perfectly poppy indie jangle, but sometimes all it takes is that black metal being twisted up a bit, or that pop music tweaked a little, or heck even better, combining the two into some impossible grim black indie jangle, to really get us going. One genre that seems to offer limitless possibilities is DOOM. We've had funereal doom, true doom, black doom, doom folk, doom pop, and within those various permutations, there are still more subsets, ultra doom can be abrasive and harsh and heavy, or washed out and dreamy, doomgaze anyone? But we have to say, we pretty much love most doom, all the various shades of slow and low, doooooooom, the more o's the merrier, the slower, the heavier, the prettier, the more abstract and minimal the better. Which brings us to Quebec's Aun, who to some ears might indeed sound like doom, and heck, certain elements of Aun's sound are most definitely doom-like, but Aun is a perfect example of the above mentioned experimentation. The tropes that define the sound remain the building blocks, but are approached as something malleable, able to be twisted into any shape, and it seems the shape Aun has chosen is something closer to the glacial crawl of SUNNO))) and the metalgaze drift of Nadja. Which is a pretty killer combo, especially in this case, as Aun manages to make that sound, sound pretty unique. The opening track of this new album is a slow motion sea of heaving black swells, downtuned and thunderous, but blurred into gritty streaks of low end, wreathed in glitch and crackle, underpinned by sheets of coruscating feedback, buried in the mix, offering a subtly melodic counterpoint to the mesmerizing glacial pulse of the thick crumbling near static riffage. The result is a totally mesmerizing, almost raga like doomdrone, that manages to be both tranquil and crushing, dreamlike and HEAVY AS FUCK. The second track begins hushed and shimmery, minimal and ethereal, while way off in the distance a churning riff begins to pulse and throb, eventually emerging as a thick pulsing wall of crumbling sound, very much like old Earth, but like the track before, crackling with electricity, and then the drums come in (courtesy of none other than Voivod's Away, wow!!), but not like a normal beat, they sputter and skitter, little explosive bursts, not fully kicking in, just peppering the black expanse with machine gun bursts of percussive crunch, before eventually locking into a rhythm, the track becoming a strange almost krautrocky groove, while all around those sheets of guitar undulate wrapping their blackened tendrils around the beat, shades of Aluk Todolo. The next track is more of the same, that motorik drum beat, but this time the guitars are muted and smoothed out, unfurling haunting melodies beneath the drums, epic and cinematic, and the cool thing is it never gets properly heavy, the guitars remain washed out and minimal, a little spacey, a little psychedelic, the production almost sounds like Xasthur, weirdly lo-fi and lush at the same time, before the track sort of splinters to pieces at the end, allowing the drums to sort of drift off, while those churning guitar drones slowly rev down. The 'final' track (more on that in a second), returns to the incendiary guitar crunch of the first few tracks, spreading out another dronescape of warm buzz, glimmering glitch, and blown out blurred melody, all hazy and super distorted, there's a brief bit of drum driven dirgery, before the track settles into some softly crackling shimmer. After the 'final track', there appears to be an unlisted extra track, sounds like maybe it could be live, hardly matters, it fits perfectly with the rest of the record, another expansive buzzscape, all layered ever shifting drones, truncated melodies, strange textures and timbres and overtones, the most abstract of the bunch, a swirling shimmering blackened drift, still heaving and heavy, but way more ethereal and space-y, the perfect final movement for sure. Equally recommended for doomlords, dronelords, and pretty much anyone who likes it slow, low, mysterious, heavy and BEAUTIFUL.

MPEG stream: Drainbow
MPEG stream: Broken Hill

Two of our favorite heavies team up for an epic slab of vinyl dronedirgedoomsludge, and it's just as good as we would have hoped. One man Canadian slow motion doomlord and recent aQ Record Of The Week honoree Aun goes head to head with French ultra doom duo Habsyll, each stretching their sound in new directions, while keeping things appropriately slow and low and heavy. Aun's first track is a buzz drenched dirge, but with a surprising amount of propulsion, and melody, a sort of psychedelic space rock rendered in mechanical rhythms billowing clouds of buzz, a lumbering glacial groove locked in tight, while all around thick slabs of chordal rumble heave and swell and howl and buzz, swoonsome and swirly and downright catchy, and pretty, almost like a pop song melted down into something slightly more oozing and blackened, at times sounding like some strange sort of metallic trip hop, like a sort of doomy Portishead vibe, dark and smoldery and murky, but still dense and heavy. The shorter follow up, follows a similar trajectory, some blurred effected riffage, laid over another machinelike groove, the mood mysterious and melancholy, the vibe hypnotic and mesmerizing, a sort of stripped down post industrial rhythmscape, with plenty of constantly shifting action in the background, clouds of shifting layers, strange overtones, streaks of crackle and hiss and buzz, very cinematic and atmospheric, and just a little bit krautrocky. Habsyll counter with a 23+ minute side long sprawl that begins with some spare percussive clatter, before slipping into some strange murky atmospherics, billowing gongs, strange snake charmer melodies, rumbles, downtuned thrum, all very spare and spacious and haunting, until about 4 minutes in, and things lurch into action, albeit some barely mobile glacial tarpit drone action, huge caustic crunches, left to ring out, the decay in the form of crumbling clouds of distortion, swirls of cymbal sizzle, eventually some tortured vocals, a strange cacophonous harmony, one a sick gargle, the other a hysterical shriek, the drums growing more busy, the clouds of rumble and buzz coalescing into riffs, finally exploding into some super manic Lightning Bolt style frenzied freak out, but it's not long before the track settles back down into a creepy crawl, ponderously plodding its way into a drumless haze, dense swells of warped distorted warble, pulsing and throbbing until finally fading out completely. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. 180 gram grey vinyl. Includes a download card, and features super bad ass artwork by Stephen Kasner.

MPEG stream: Druids
MPEG stream: IV

Aunt Sally only had one studio record, issued in 1978 on Japan's Vanity Records. Featuring the damaged vocal scree of Phew (who went on to record many solo records -- she's currently a frequent collaborator of Otomo Yoshihide and Seiichi Yamamoto, among many other luminaries of Japan's avant underground), this live collection documents the early manic insanity of her punk rock youth.

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

SORRY.

MPEG stream: Released Damnation
MPEG stream: The Rape
MPEG stream: Broth Of Oblivion

A good metal record can do a lot of things. But it really takes only one thing to make a great metal record. That it tears your face off. (Or melts your ears, or wrecks your neck, or whatever metaphor for the physical response to loud, violent, headbanging riffage you choose to use.) And by that metric, this latest from Norway's Aura Noir is a pretty great piece of work. Total mid-paced blackened thrash mastery! Featuring former members of black metal legends Ved Buens Ende, Dodheimsgard, Ulver, Satyricon, and Mayhem (among others), this band originated during what might be considered the first thrash metal revival, in the mid/late '90s. Now we're in the midst of another wave of nostalgia for good old '80s thrash, and thus these guys cannot be accused of being trendy or jumping on the bandwagon! The rasping death grunts, chainsaw guitaring, and blazing drum kit devastation found here is all authentically old school, at least older than the new school of old school... raw n' ugly and hella catchy too. For fans of speedy '80s slayers like Destruction and early, Frost-ier Coroner, with maybe more of a rock n' roll Venom/Motorhead vibe mixed in. The dissonant guitar licks twisted into tracks like "Iron Night/Torment Storm" give this a bit of left-field Voivod-y weirdness as well. More modern reference points could be fellow Norwegian retro-thrashers Audiopain, and the more recent, metal/punk Darkthrone output (one song here is called "South American Death", shades of DT's "Canadian Metal"). We should mention that one track features a guest guitar solo from Danny Coralles, but even those of you not so metal-obsessed enough to know or care about who that is (he's from the band Autopsy, duh), might well still enjoy the heck out of Hades Awaits for the basic, brutal pleasures it provides. We dare you not to headbang. Impossible.

MPEG stream: Hades Rise
MPEG stream: Gaping Grave Awaits

Not a new album from these Norwegian black metal thrashers, but a re-release of their rare 1995 debut mini-cd "Dreams Like Deserts" with the addition of a bunch of previously unreleased tracks, including a few live tracks and two recordings with Fenriz of the illustrious Darkthrone on vocals! Aura Noir's guitarist plays in black metal legends Mayhem, and the band also features members of weirdos Dodheimsgard and the even weirder Ved Buens Ende (who we'd rather see a new release by, but what can you do?)... "Increased Damnation" is indeed a great speedy slice of artful blackened thrash metal, however.

RealAudio clip: Towers of Limbs and Fevers

We're excited about this album for a few reasons: 1) it's the first release from a new imprint called Tyrant Syndicate, run by none other than Norwegian black metal godfathers Darkthrone themselves! 2) besides that, we were already fans of Aura Noir -- a band featuring members of Mayhem, Ved Buens Ende and Dodheimsgard. And oh, and most importantly, 3) it is a merciless (yes it is) blackened thrash attack, with a nasty grin and a death-grunt for every poser mowed down by their onslaught. Blazing guitars, thumping tubs, and a Darkthrone-approved n' authenticated old school attitude! Venomous.

MPEG stream: Funeral Thrash
MPEG stream: Sordid

Another of several new PSF titles new in stock, and this one's a BRUTE. Holy moly. Deafening sandpaper for the ears... and we love it, just like we love the likes of Skullflower, Aufgehoben, and Cadaver In Drag, all of whom share the same sonic sandpapery, amped up overload absurdity of this band. Aural Fit, you may recall, if you read our list attentively or are especially tuned in to the Japanese underground, had a track on the Tokyo Flashback 5 comp, followed by a self-released full-length (now out of print) that we recommended some years back to fans of Boris and Earth looking for an even more extreme dose of heavy-duty, doomy dirge. On this new disc, Aural Fit still do the dirge, some of the time, remaining ultra-heavy all of the time. But, their sound has gotten even more "cacophonic and dense" so that it's ridiculous the band's called, merely, Aural Fit. More like Aural Apocalypse! They're not having a fit, they've having a catastrophic explosion. The sound of mechanical monsters on the march, lumbering through the smoking ruins of civilization, crushing and killing anything that hasn't already fled or been vaporized by their initial onslaught. It's four tracks, 38+ minutes of feedback, distortion, pounding percussion, and buried screams. Punishing noise rock, psych rock insanity. Utterly blown-out freak-outs, so in-the-red that your shuddering stereo speakers would be glowing if you looked at 'em through infrared goggles!

MPEG stream: track 1
MPEG stream: track 2

We tracked this down for those of you who really liked the first band on that recent Tokyo Flashback 5 compilation, or who, failing that, end up intrigued by the following description... We're talking about a Japanese trio called Aural Fit. We'd never heard of 'em before, but we were impressed by their cut "Behind 20, Beyond 20k" on that comp, which we described as "a very heavy, doomy, dirgey track that fans of Boris and Earth will dig, cacophonic and dense". Turns out they'd recently released a full-length cd entitled Livestock that's equally dirgey. Five tracks, 33'36" of unrelentingly creepy, cavernous, noisy, plodding improv psych. This is the dark, moody, hypnotic, rumbling music of rock n' roll void-dwellers, with crashing drums, harsh blasts of feedback guitar, and anguished vocals buried in the mix. Chances are they're fans of Fushitsusha and Skullflower... (We've actually only got 11 copies of this, hopefully we can get some more, but please be patient if we run out.) NB. the band put this out themselves, so Slant Eye Archives is their own label, something that anyone offended by the name might want to know!

MPEG stream: Obedience
MPEG stream: Sensory Deprivation

Utech brings us the third album from these Japanese earhole destroyers, two years after Aural Fit II which came out on the PSF label (and was one of the most brutal and intense recordings ever on PSF, and that's saying A LOT). They haven't changed much. You want noise rock? Dense, distorted psychedelic clangor? A truly powerful power trio? Well this band's music is positively apocalyptic. Makes the likes of Skullflower and Wolf Eyes sound almost tame. The feedback and distortion is a physical force, the sound of a universe imploding. Listening to each track, it's hard not to imagine Aural Fit's amps and other gear (and the band members themselves too) beginning to vibrate, levitating off the ground, and then flying violently through the air, all around the room, participating in a "wire-fu" version of a mosh-pit, crashing and bashing together, drums colliding with speaker cabinets, effects pedals pelting off of cymbals, the tangle of guitar cables and power cords writhing in space like some sort of noodly monster... Though, somehow, somehow, the 5 individual pieces on this 40 minute disc are structured "songs", even with (distressed) vocals buried somewhere in the blown-out din. A couple of the tracks, like "Embedded Command" parts 1 and 2, are more spaciously rumbling, a mesmeric smear of textural rattle and roll. Others, like "Revelation 1" or epic opener "Overexposure", traffic more in lumbering bludgeon, all pounding drums and in-the-red riffage. If we said Aural Fit sounds like Fushitsusha in gladiatorial combat, atop a trash heap, with a "motorpsycho" Merzbow, would you dig it?? All lovers of anything excessively "distorto-delic" should. Comes in a slim, oversized, mostly black sleeve typical of Utech's usual fine packaging and graphics, with liner notes by liner notes by Alan Cummings.

MPEG stream: Overexposure
MPEG stream: Revelation 1
MPEG stream: Embedded Command 2

People went nuts for the most recent record from local psychedelic space rockers 3 Leafs, and rightfully so, a primo clutch of tripped out, druggy drift. The Auricle finds one of those Leafs exploring another quadrant of the outer reaches, this time with a drastically different arsenal, violin, French horn, ukulele and sampler, sounds strange, but this trio makes it work, a healthy dollop of reverb, a little delay, the violin unfurling loooooong velvety ribbons of sound, the French horn moaning out melancholy melodies, the Ukulele spinning out little upper register trills, sent spiraling into the ether, the sampler... well, not sure what it's doing, probably just taking all of the rest of the sounds and subtly twisting and transforming, the end result is something that is definitely space-y, abstract and atmospheric, haunting, playful pizzicato melodies surface here and there, the violin sometimes drifting into more traditional sounds, making this sound like a chamber ensemble drifting through space, and that's just the first track. The rest of the record definitely branches out a little, from warped minimal sort-of-bluegrass, looped and hypnotic, to otherworldly music box like warble, to clattery almost industrial sounding machinemusic, to deep almost new age sounding ethereal ambience, to strangely drone-y old timey back porch blues, to slow spaced out slowcore lullabies, all tied together by the woozy washed out reverby production, and the strange and wonderful instrumentation.

MPEG stream: Fake Moisture
MPEG stream: Truth Gets Its Shoes On

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

SORRY. Mark Van Hoen (Locust) appears courtesy R&S, Belgium, & Daren Seymour (Seefeel) appears courtesy Warp Records, Ltd = impeccable resumes. Check out the inner grooves = "This is what they want." & "A bony prime cut."

From the same label that brought us the blackened atmospheric doom of Charnel House, the abstract doom-ed black metal of OS, the psychedelic industrial dronescapes of Agakus, the fuzzy, droney, cosmic weirdness of Sky Projection and the tranced out black metal minimalism of Avakr, comes this gorgeous collection of dreamy avant psych folk, from the oddly named Aurora Dorey Alice. But this is very likely not the psych folk you might have been expecting, which shouldn't surprise you considering the label it's on, it's not strummy or croony, it's WAY more abstract and minimal, skeletal percussion suspended in fields of barely there shimmer, lots of abstract sound, scrapes and creaks, mysterious percussion, rhythmic and murky, prismatic and crystalline, the sounds blurred and hazy and gauzey and washed out, the music is gorgeously lush, but somehow also druggy and minimal and abstract, the music is reminiscent of outfits like Avarus, and No-Neck Blues Band at times, but at others the sound is some alien electronica, all swirling and pulsing, ADA's voice throaty and powerful, at times fluttery and ethereal, wreathed in echo and delay, not always singing, sometimes blending into the sonic backdrop, all shimmery streaks of vocal sound, very haunting and psychedelic and lovely, but also strangely sinister. And when she does sing, it's gorgeous and powerful, transforming the experimental drifts, and glitched out distorted dronescapes, into dark, brooding gothic torch songs, albeit, far out, experimental, avant ones. Fans of Chelsea Wolfe, Zola Jesus, Marissa Nadler will find it easy to get lost in ADA's twisted subterranean electronic flecked goth-psych drone-folk soundworld. So great!!!

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

SORRY. A dirty, yet simmering atmosphere surrounds these free noise improvisations built out of lo-fi guitar feedback, siren like modulations of analog electronics, theremin, clarinet, accordion, organs, etc. Wouldn't be out of place on Ecstatic Peace or Siltbreeze.

The first we heard from French black metal crew Aurvandil was on a recent split with the Weakling worshipping Dead As Dreams, we described them as sounding very Norwegian, very Burzumic, drum machined buzzy midtempo blackness, and we were definitely primed to hear more, which brings us to this, the latest from Aurvandil, released on the same label as the Murmuure raved about elsewhere on this list, Aurvandil is not nearly as twisted or bizarre, but still totally slays. After a lengthy folky almost Viking sounding intro, all lilting acoustic guitar and programmed drum machine, the band burst into a buzzing electrified version of the same song, an odd way to kick off your record, especially considering that the next track EXPLODES in a frenzy of impossibly blasting frantic blackness, the programmed drums so fast they almost become a drone, the guitars frenetically riffing along, totally trancelike, a series of swells, beyond the furious buzz and black blast, it's mesmerizing and hypnotic and relentless, even when the track shifts gears, it's to another strangely frenzied blast, but it's not that simple, the guitars are still buzzing madly, but beneath the guitar a melancholic synth drifts and shimmers, and then the drums and vokills come back in, and it's a weird, hard to describe black metal that is impossibly intense, but also washed out and dreamy, a totally strange combo, that could not work, but instead, transforms this into some sort of ambient blackness, that still buzzes and blasts, but without shattering the strange spellbinding energy the songs invoke. There are strings, and cellos, and mysterious voices, the arrangements seem simple, but they are definitely simple in unexpected ways. The record finishes off with another weirdly folky chunk of blasting blackness, but the three songs in between those folky bookends, nearly 30 minutes, are an incredible suite of psychedelic avant trancelike black metal dronemusic, that would probably be ranking first in our new black metal obsessions, if it weren't for that Murmuure, but hell, it's a seriously close second! LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, these are the last of these we'll ever see...

[ aquarius records catalogue — A ]