[ aquarius records catalogue

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Showing results 701 through 750 of 3202.

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Awesome soundtrack to some strange low budget film about the failed East German space program. Haven't seen the movie yet, but the soundtrack definitely has us curious. Especially considering the players, Jim Becker of Califone, Jim White from the Dirty Three, and lots of other folks who have backed up indie luminaries like Smog, Bright Eyes and more... Beginning with some creepy shortwave radio, and some spoken German (Conet Project anyone?) the record quickly switches gear and launches into some awesome (Turkish style?) fuzz psych, blown out and wildly rocking, but with the strange addition of mandolin over the top. Ends up sounding like Calexico meets Erkin Koray!! But like any soundtrack, the music is dictated by the scenes on the screen, so the sound are all over the place. That said, they gel surprisingly well on their own, it helps that many of the tracks are linked by strange radio broadcasts, mysterious German voices, and other distressed broadcast sounds. The rest of the music is a blast, from soft rock big band jams with horns, albeit imbued with a strange buzzy steel string element, to lonesome strings and wheezing accordion, shuffling percussion, a full on free-jazz drum solo that gives way to a primitive Logan's Run space rock synth drone, laid back blues rock, weird off kilter pop, and near the end, that opening blast of fuzzy psych gets revisited, this time with vocals, and it's even cooler. Pressed on 180 gram swirled pink cotton candy vinyl, housed in an amazing jacket, an oversized matchbook style sleeve, screen printed and letter pressed, black and metallic silver ink on thick brown paper, liner notes printed on the attached inner sleeve, quite striking. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!!

Rashad Becker is a name most folks are probably more used to seeing on OTHER people's records, he is, and has been for the last decade plus, THEE go-to guy to have your record cut for vinyl. A master of his craft, who is able to produce stunning results in the analog realm, massive bass, deep layered sounds, lush and spacious, gritty and grimy, Becker was often the last step in a meticulous process, resulting in some of the most incredible records of the last few years. Check your collection and we guarantee you a handful were cut and/or mastered at Dubplates & Mastering, where Becker has been plying his trade for the past fifteen years. And we'll be the first to admit that technical mastery does not necessarily translate into creative genius, but in the case of Traditional Music Of Notational Species, Vol. 1, an argument could definitely be made that Becker's talent is not limited to the mastering lab. In fact, Traditional Music is far from traditional, and is quite difficult to describe, although a faithful long time aQ customer already proclaimed it his record of the year hands down, and we have to say we're inclined to agree. Split into two sides, the first, 'Dances', the second 'Themes', the record opens with a dense constantly shifting landscape of grinding textures, mutating electronics, synthy squelch, deep rumbles, skittery rhythmic pulsations, the vibe is almost playful, but that playfulness is definitely tempered by a dark shadowy moodiness, it's wild and loose, free and abstract, melodies blossom and fragment, collapsing into swirling tangles, it's just on the verge of noise, but instead, remains textural and atmospheric, almost like a modern day Perrey & Kingsley, deconstructed, the various elements recombined as some mutant modern minimal electroacoustic experimental electronica. That pretty much sets the groundwork for the first side, we're reminded of some past aQ faves like Roly Porter's Aftertime, or any recordings by Ben Frost, this sounds less like 'music' and more like some avant sound design, "Dances II" expands on the opener, weaving what sounds like fragmented vocals, and dark spidery melodies, into something strangely brooding, wreathed in a caustic cloud of flitting molecules of crumbling noise, and burbling underwater shimmer, all seemingly digitized and then corrupted, processed into something approaching a much more angular and aggressive Oval, overlapping layers, stuttering non-rhythms, it's expansive and cinematic, but at the same time dizzyingly dense, driven by thick rib cage rattling swells of low end thrum. The sound grows gradually more industrial, sounds slip backwards and swoop and swirl, a sea of squelches pinging from speaker to speaker, buried Morse code melodies, lots of hiss and hum sculpted into sheets of dark energy, and a blissed out barrage of blackened crumble, building to a near psychedelic squall, before closing out the side with a dark rhythmic sprawl, that touches on the hauntological electronica of Demdike Stare and the like, but so much more sinister, and woozily warped, a mad scientist reinterpretation, recasting the moody lope, as something feral and fracture, peppered with deep sub-bass pulsations, and drowsily fluctuating rhythms, it's like Stockhausen jamming with Demdike Stare, which is about as great, and as fucked up, as it sounds. The flipside, made up of four 'themes', dials back some of the crunch and buzz, opening with a dreamy field of alien electronics, fluttering and flitting, still gritty and crunchy, the sounds organic and analog, rough around the edges, but deftly woven into choir of electro-chirps and woozy moaning chordal swells, laced with burst of laser beam FX, but then a super heavy bass crunch creeps in, and it's stunning, it's meaner, and more brutal, and more physical that most dubstep drops, but with a totally different effect in this context, adding some seriously sinister heft, but before you know it, it's disappeared, leaving just a field of electronic firefly flutter. The rest of the 'Themes' play out like some mysterious soundtrack to a documentary about alien life, you can almost imagine the camera panning over strange sprawls of gnarled landscape, or drifting through the bottomless abyss of some alien sea, the electronics often sounding like the chitter of insects, again like some twisted field recording captured elsewhere in the galaxy, slipping from hushed skitter to epic avant kosmische and back again, culminating in what sounds like some warped choral piece, a gnarled choir of 'voices', sounding like field recordings captured in some Victorian mental institution, and then processed into something even more warped, all laid over a roiling sea of electronic gristle and industrial clatter, all held together by sheets of blurred buzz and ominous insectoid thrum. Strange stuff for sure, but in its own weird way, hauntingly and confusionally lovely. Cut and mastered by Becker himself of course. Pressed on 140 gram vinyl, and like all Pan releases, housed in a super striking, screen printed heavy plastic PVC sleeve.

MPEG stream: Dances I
MPEG stream: Dances II
MPEG stream: Themes I
MPEG stream: Themes II

This is such a strange cd. And we've all become completely obsessed with it. A bizarre series of spoken instructions and long droning notes. Easier to just share Forced Exposure's description: "The playing directions for the instrumentalist on this CD are derived directly from the so-called sucking stones sequence in Beckett's Molloy, where the author has his protagonists invent three variations of the correct way to suck 16 pebbles -- distributed between two coat or trouser pockets. Everything takes place inside the head, and yet these image provoking speech rituals find their way to the outside. Everything becomes the listener's projection room. We look on the speakers as we would an open, exposed interior. Speech is its own dissecting instrument. Existence is transferred into speech, being is removed from its time. The images remain, the sound of speech remains -- in which the secret of an entire world is concealed." Simply, it's 3 actors, reciting instructions like: "Take a stone from pocket one. Put it in your mouth. Suck it. Suck it...." and so on. With the occasional moaning horn. Totally surreal and creepy and super great.

RealAudio clip: Image 1
RealAudio clip: Rule Number 3

We managed to get a small handful of these from a distributor, they're priced super cheap, as the label has since folded, so these are the very last copies we'll ever be able to get, and we just have SIX of these... We reviewed a double disc by this Italian composer a while back (we still have a very few copies left!), working under the name Kinetix, which was a heady chunk of musique concrete, that definitely owed much to Lucier, Ashley and Ferrari, and while his approach seems to be similar here, the sounds are definitely distinctly different, Becuzzi offering up a series of sonic palindromes and recurring phrases, beginning with an anerated dronescaping, one that takes after The Hafler Trio who in turn was looking to Roland Kayn, long stretches of hushed static, and garbled muted thrum, peppered with bursts of white noise, soft swells of industrial whir, at least initially, eventually, the drones recede leaving what sounds like a scratchy violin playing mournfully inside some abandoned warehouse, laced with distant tinklings, bits of mysterious spoken word, and a final burst of staticky buzz. That's just the first track. The second track offers up some dark rumblings, pockmarked with bits of click and glitch, and over the course of its 18 minutes, slips from differently textured drones, deep low hum, high end flitter, and laces these long sprawls with melancholy trumpet bleats, long stretches of near silence, and thick cavernous blackened drones that evolve into strangely decaying symphonies of creak and crumble. Finally, the disc finishes off with the prettiest of the bunch, still super varied, and constantly shifting, but this time the various elements are more tranquil and serene, slipping into an almost lullaby at one point, but elsewhere offering up glistening streaks of barely there high end, swoonsome chamber like streaks, washed out muted shards of feedback, and lovely fields of metallic shimmer. A challenging listen for sure, but also quite rewarding, and quite lovely in their own abstract non-traditional way.

MPEG stream: Untitled 3

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MPEG stream: Damned
MPEG stream: To The Unholy

This was originally released as a European import on Black Widow, then there was a domestic cd, but that was almost ten years ago and has been long out of print, so Relapse just did '70s proto-metal/garage/psych lovers who missed this before a big favor by reissuing it on both cd and vinyl!! Our mega-review from way back when goes something like this: DOOM HISTORY HERE FOLKS! And not just that, it's a fantastic album. Ok, you know something is up when almost EVERYONE here at AQ absolutely loves a doom metal album. Not just the regular metalheads, but everybody. So what's all the fuss about Bedemon? Well some of you may be familiar with the band Pentagram from Maryland, who have about a 30+ year history, going on 40 in fact. Well Bedemon are essentially an obscure but very worthwhile footnote to Pentagram's history, being the "solo" recording project of original '70s Pentagram guitarist Randy Palmer, the majority of this recorded circa 1973-74 with a few tracks from a 1979 Bedemon session as well. They never played out, or even released any records. Bedemon were more of a practice room, basement-recording project that involved Palmer and friends, including the other members of Pentagram, most significantly the uniquely talented vocalist Bobby Liebling who sings on all of these cuts. It was just a way for Palmer to get his own songwriting down on tape, stuff that wasn't recorded by Pentagram. It's totally in the same vein as Pentagram though, if anything MORE dark and doomy than Pentagram's '70s output. Very heavy, and heavily Black Sabbath influenced, also with echoes of Blue Cheer, Randy Holden's Population II, and Iggy & The Stooges (the track "Time Bomb" is very Stoogey, in a way similar to Pentagram's "Last Days Here"). And for '73, this is definitely about as heavy as it gets, Sabbath and Pentagram themselves excepted. There's so many great tracks on here, each one more sorrowful and wrought with doomful emotion than the next, all of 'em throbbing and (awesomely) distorted. Yes, the quality of these rehearsal tape recordings is downright grungey and murky, but in our opinion that isn't a distraction nor a detraction. In fact, it only makes this better, totally capturing that spirit and raw energy of jamming in the garage for your own enjoyment. And it also sounds doomier that way too. Hands down, Randy Palmer wrote some of the best Pentagram songs, and many of these are just as good. Some of his riffs absolutely lay to waste those of his contemporaries. Just imagine if Palmer had decided to promote his doom skills rather than keep them for the most part to himself. Holy shit. At least we have this, one of the best "lost" albums ever uncovered in the realm of heavy, underground music. Sadly, Palmer died in a tragic car accident just a few years ago, so the official release of this material at long last is also something of a tribute to his memory. Some of this stuff has been bootlegged before, but this legit release has been done with the blessings of Randy's survivors and the input of the other Bedemon musicians. There's even a Wes Benscoter cover painting based on Palmer's own hand-sketched ideas, as well as lots of photos, a Bedemon history written by Palmer before he was killed, and some very fascinating, detailed, and heartfelt liner notes from fellow Bedemon/Pentagram bandmate Geof O'Keefe. Essential to all true fans of Pentagram, and also to anyone into heavy '70s Sabbathy psychedelic garagey proto-metal!!

MPEG stream: Child Of Darkness
MPEG stream: Last Call
MPEG stream: Time Bomb

DOOM HISTORY HERE FOLKS! And not just that, it's a fantastic album. Ok, you know something is up when almost EVERYONE here at AQ absolutely loves a doom metal album. Not just the regular metal heads (Andee, Allan, Jason, Lauren) but also Jim and Cup too. Indeed, Cup's two cents for this review is this: "fucking awesome!" So what's all the fuss about Bedemon? Well some of you may be familiar with the band Pentagram from Maryland, who have about a 30+ year history, going on 40 in fact. Well Bedemon are essentially an obscure but very worthwhile footnote to Pentagram's history, being the "solo" recording project of original '70s Pentagram guitarist Randy Palmer, the majority of this recorded circa 1973-74 with a few tracks from a 1979 Bedemon session as well. They never played out, or even released any records. Bedemon were more of a practice room, basement-recording project that involved Palmer and friends, including the other members of Pentagram, most significantly the uniquely talented vocalist Bobby Liebling who sings on all of these cuts. It was just a way for Palmer to get his own songwriting down on tape, stuff that wasn't recorded by Pentagram. It's totally in the same vein as Pentagram though, if anything MORE dark and doomy than Pentagram's '70s output. Very heavy, and heavily Black Sabbath influenced, also with echoes of Blue Cheer, Randy Holden's Population II, and Iggy & The Stooges (the track "Time Bomb" is very Stoogey, in a way similiar to Pentagram's "Last Days Here"). And for '73, this is definitely about as heavy as it gets, Sabbath and Pentagram themselves excepted. There's so many great tracks on here, each one more sorrowful and wrought with doomful emotion than the next, all of 'em throbbing and (awesomely) distorted. Yes, the quality of these rehearsal tape recordings is downright grungey and murky, but in our opinion that isn't a distraction nor a detraction. In fact, it only makes this better, totally capturing that spirit and raw energy of jamming in the garage for your own enjoyment. And it also sounds doomier that way too. Hands down, Randy Palmer wrote some of the best Pentagram songs, and many of these are just as good. Some of his riffs absolutely lay to waste those of his contemporaries. Just imagine if Palmer had decided to promote his doom skills rather than keep them for the most part to himself. Holy shit. At least we have this, one of the best "lost" albums ever uncovered in the realm of heavy, underground music. Sadly, Palmer died in a tragic car accident just a few years ago, so the official release of this material at long last is also something of a tribute to his memory. Some of this stuff has been bootlegged before, but this legit release has been done with the blessings of Randy's survivors and the input of the other Bedemon musicans. There's even a Wes Benscoter cover painting based on Palmer's own hand-sketched ideas, as well as lots of photos, a Bedemon history written by Palmer before he was killed, and some very fascinating, detailed, and heartfelt liner notes from fellow Bedemon/Pentagram bandmate Geof O'Keefe. Essential to all true fans of Pentagram, and also to anyone into heavy '70s Sabbathy psychedelic garagey proto-metal!!

MPEG stream: Child Of Darkness
MPEG stream: Last Call
MPEG stream: Time Bomb

Pentagram fans, Trouble fans, The Obsessed fans, Black Sabbath fans, lend us your ears!! Underground old school occult metallers Bedemon are back, which is a minor miracle, considering that their main songwriter died over ten years ago� We weren't expecting this to be as good as it is. But it's pretty great. Now, we all loved the other Bedemon cd we reviewed back in 2005, Child Of Darkness, the one that consisted of vintage lo-fi old demo / practice space recordings that this band did back in the '70s, 'cause as you may know, Bedemon was formed in '73 as a solo side project by then-Pentagram guitarist Randy Palmer - but Bedemon never released an album during Palmer's lifetime (he was tragically killed in an automobile accident in 2002). Those Child Of Darkness tracks had Pentagram vocalist Bobby Liebling on the mic, so they really sounded like long lost Pentagram songs, really good ones. And of course we thought that that posthumous collection was all we were ever going to hear from Bedemon, for obvious reasons. But then we heard that this was coming out, an album of hitherto unreleased Bedemon songs that Randy Palmer had been working on before he died, those recordings at last completed by the surviving members of the band, consisting of fellow former original Pentagram member Geof O'Keefe (drums/guitars), and Mike Matthews (bass), both of whom were on those basement Bedemon demos from the '70s, plus 'new' vocalist Crag Junghandel, replacing Liebling - and doing a good job of it, bringing a dramatic intensity to the role, kind of a Dio to Liebling's Ozzy if you will. Hearing this, you can tell why these guys felt that they HAD to finish this album, in tribute to the true doom songwriting talent of their friend Palmer, whose songs are super Sabbathy for sure (some of this is very "Electric Funeral") but also have their own sinister vibe, one that's strangely funky at times too, even on a lumbering tune like 9+ minute "Godless", that one also an example of how some of the tracks are pretty long, sprawling and psychedelically jammy, with wild guitar soloing and some gloomy organ. The vibe here is dark and doomy, but also rockin', some passages replete with handclaps and cowbell. The atmosphere, the riffs, all of this is definitely what any Bedemon/Pentagram fan could wish for, much much better recorded than Child Of Darkness of course but still raw and powerful, and clearly still rooted in the '70s. Rest In Peace, Randy Palmer, and keep on rockin' wherever you are.

MPEG stream: Saviour
MPEG stream: Son Of Darkness
MPEG stream: Hopeless

"The only song anyone in the band has ever written in musical notation is 'Lepidoptera', the seventh song on Transaction de Nova. A few months ago, in a rare serendipitous moment, the page of the music was turned upside down -- the bass clef became the treble clef, the treble became the bass -- It instantly made sense. It didn't sound backwards, but it sounded reversed, turned inside out and over all at once... a song that forms a mirror image of another song and is, literally, the perfect b-side, the record turned upside down." - from Bedhead's description of 'Leper'.

Dark sunglasses, leather, fuzz, feedback, and attitude (and wet hearts and dry vomit too). Killer '70s NY proto-punk worship from modern day China!

MPEG stream: Rock N Roll Dehydrated Me
MPEG stream: 3rd Circle of Hell

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What comes to mind when you think of The Bee Gees? Saturday Night Fever? Disco? White suits? 30 years of cheesy disco dancing to "Stayin' Alive"? The awesome(ly atrocious) film version of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band? SNL's "Barry Gibb Talk Show"? Probably all of those things. Which is too bad, 'cuz if it weren't for all that stuff, maybe you'd think instead of lush melancholy experimental pop music, incredible vocal harmonies, horns, strings, orchestras, mellotrons, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Zombies... Some of you probably have no idea what the heck we're on about, but well before disco and Saturday Night Fever and all that, way back in 1967, the Bee Gees were crafting some of the loveliest, most compellingly mysterious pop music around. With a sound that borrowed from other bands of the time, most notably the aforementioned big three, the Beatles, the Beach Boys and the Zombies, but incorporated those influences into a sound that was distinctly their own. A sound at times gorgeously classic sounding, and at others surprisingly strange and dark and experimental. The influence of the Beatles and the Beach Boys is undeniable. The song "Please Read Me" is incredibly Beach Boys-esque, and marks the first time the group would employ falsetto vocal harmonies, obviously influenced by Brian Wilson, and which would of course become their trademark. And the cover of 1st is by the artist Klaus Voorman, who of course also designed the Beatles' Revolver. But scratch a little below the surface, and there is so much more. A musical world of dreamlike, melancholy psychedelia. "Holiday" is a brooding and moody dirge, with haunting organ swells, and pizzicato strings, with soft horns and simple percussion, and a gorgeous vocal melody, as well as a strange and impossibly catchy bridge with simple nonsense vocals. Then there's "Red Chair, Fade Away" a dreamy, rainbow hued blast of psychedelic pop, blissed out and trippy, with tons of layered production, fuzzy guitars, jazzy horns, fluttering flute, all wrapped in a stained glass production, peppered with circusy calliopes and soaring strings. But two of the tracks on 1st really stand out. Lovely and catchy, but so dark and emotionally intense. The first is "Every Christian Lion Hearted Man Will Show You", which begins with minor key strings over monk-like chanting background vocals, before the Strawberry Fields vocals kick in, over a shuffled rhythm and some deliriously fuzzy psych guitar, with the chanting vocals resurfacing throughout the song before it fades into a truly haunting outro, just those strings and some heavily reverbed drums that stumble into the darkness. The other is the amazingly monickered "New York Mining Disaster 1941" with it's haunting nearly a capella verses (backed up by barely audible guitar strumming WAY down in the mix), jangly guitars, throbbing simple percussion, the whole track mournful and melancholy, the minor key brightening briefly for the chorus before drifting baack into haunting melancholia. The track is laced with strange funereal strings, and again the vocals are just so beautiful, lush and dreamy. The rest of the record is just as fantastic, every song a strange gem, it's difficult to pick which ones to mention, you'll of course recognize "To Love Somebody", which while not a huge hit for them (although it did crack the top 20), has become an international pop standard, and was originally a track the band wrote for Otis Redding, but their version is the best, so lush and rife with layer after layer of instrumentation, as well as some amazing melodic flourishes left off subsequent cover versions, then there's "Cucumber Castle" with its super dramatic strings, Spanish sounding trumpets, moaning cellos, and bizarre player piano background trills, all behind a main melody that is so unbelievably catchy... we could go on and on and on. Needless to say, it's difficult to not go all gushy and declare this as one of the all time greatest pop records. But what the heck, it is! Listen to this enough and you just may banish all thoughts of white suits and light up dancefloors from your head forever! Gorgeously elaborate reissue, in a full color 8 panel digipak, full color with tons of amazing photos, a massive booklet also packed with photos, with lengthy liner notes, as well as notes on each track from the surviving members. The first disc contains the full version of the album, in both stereo AND mono, the second disc contains 9 alternate and early versions (including two dramatically different versions of "New York Mining Disaster 1941") as well as 5 unreleased tracks, most of which are as good as anything on the album proper!

MPEG stream: To Love Somebody
MPEG stream: Holiday
MPEG stream: New York Mining Disaster 1941

A few months back, we made the Rhino reissue of the debut release from the Bee Gees our Record of the Week. Which raised a few eyebrows, at least until the ears nearby to those eyebrows actually heard the gorgeously melancholy,�sweet, shimmery, sun dappled, minor key pop confections of the band that would somehow go on to be the kings of disco. But long before Saturday Night Fever and white disco suits and questionable movie music reinterpretations of Beatles albums, the Bee Gees were masters of lush moody pop, releasing what some consider to be one of the most perfect 1-2-3 pop punches in forever, 1st, Horizontal and Idea.� The Beatles are definitely worth mentioning, as the Bee Gees shared a similar knack for both perfect hook filled pop and slightly trippy, druggy psychedelia, that managed to find it's way into much of their music and many of the lyrics. Horizontal is packed with plenty of�sixties jangle and�gorgeous vocal harmonies, but where as 1st was filled with short sharp pop, Horizontal is a much darker beast, the songs are longer, slower, and much moodier, lots of minor key melodies, wild squalls of psych guitar, wheezing instrumental stretches, the vocals are even more dramatic and emotional, soaring strings, unlikely instrumentation, the songs are still catchy, just more subtly so.� The opener, "World" sounds like the Zombies, via the Kinks, with a slow burning urgency, long drawn out droning instruments, an insistent beat, and a hook to die for. Later on, "Really And Sincerely" almost sounds like Antony And The Johnsons, right down to the super emotional vocals. Then there's the super slinky "The Earnest Of Being George", that sounds like "Come Together" era Beatles, all smoke and slither. Then there's the title track, their own "Day In The Life", epic and intense, dark moody piano and haunting strings, with heartbreaking melodies and those perfect, perfect vocals. Such an amazing record. Along with the other two (1st and Idea), this is absolutely essential, some of the most timeless perfect pop you'll ever hear! Gorgeously elaborate reissue, in a massive 8 panel digipak, full color with tons of amazing photos, a massive booklet also packed with photos, with lengthy liner notes, as well as notes on each track from the surviving members. The first disc contains the full version of the album, in both stereo AND mono, the second disc contains lost tracks, random B sides, alternate and early versions, as well as two gorgeous Christmas songs, one a medley of� "Silent Night" and "Hark The Herald Angels Sing", as well as 5 other unreleased tracks, most of which are as good as anything on the actual album!

MPEG stream: World
MPEG stream: Massachusetts
MPEG stream: Words

Third times the charm for the Bee Gees, as we finally get around to reviewing the third double-disc remastered deluxe reissue in a series, this one of their 1968 third record, Idea. And it's not because this is our least favorite release, but quite the contrary, it's become the album we revisit the most frequently. Often letting it play in the store repeatedly through both stereo and mono versions. A slight departure from the baroque arrangements and epic songwriting of 1st and Horizontal (but which they will return to in full form on 1969's Odessa), Idea focuses more on the band as an integrated rock combo rather than a harmony-pop group with accompaniment. The orchestra arrangements take a back seat in the mix, while the group utilizes a more upbeat hook-laden rocking sound in the vein of other seminal (and underrated at the time) albums of the era such as Something Else By The Kinks, The Notorious Byrd Brothers, and Headquarters by The Monkees (and influencing such later bands as Elf Power, Beachwood Sparks and Vetiver). Spotlighting electric guitar, 12-string acoustic, harmonicas and organ, as evidenced on the title track, "Kitty Can", "Indian Gin and Whisky Dry" and "Such A Shame", which stands out due to fact that it's the only song on the record not written by the Gibbs, but by then lead guitarist Vince Melouney. But of course, this wouldn't be a classic Bee Gees album without some melancholic orchestral balladry which they were more known for, so we assume that is why opener, "Let There Be Love" with its piano and harp arpeggios, "I Started A Joke" and "I've Got To Get A Message To You" were pegged as the standout singles. All great songs surely, yet for us the lesser known songs are the real treats. Definitely one of the bands most underrated recordings and one which we hope this reissue will garner many new fans. Features both Stereo and Mono mixes and a bonus disc of alternate versions, unreleased tracks and even a couple of radio spots for Coca-Cola! Highly Recommended!!!!

MPEG stream: Such A Shame
MPEG stream: Idea
MPEG stream: Kilburn Towers

Odessa, the Bee Gees' fourth proper full length, from 1969, found the band returning to the lush baroque pop of 1st and Horizontal, after the more rock combo styled Idea. For those of you who only know the Bee Gees from their later incarnation as THE disco group and their iconic Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, boy are you in for a surprise. Well before any of that happened, the three brothers Gibb were masters at crafting gorgeous orchestral pop songs - think the Beach Boys, the Zombies, the Beatles, and you'll get an idea of what we're talking about. Having three brothers in the band meant HARMONIES, and indeed, the vocal harmonies are heavenly, as is each of the brothers' voices on their own, but those angelic voices are backed up by a crack band, and some incredible orchestration. Odessa was infamous for many reasons: disputes over which single to release caused Robin to quit the band briefly, the non-Gibb guitarist Vince Melouney quite the band, the record originally came in red flocked covers that had to be discontinued because they were too expensive and workers assembling the lps complained of allergic reactions, and most importantly, the sound shifted somewhat dramatically, with the sound returning to the lush, almost overwrought, over the top sound of the first two records, and ends up being super sprawling, incorporating all sorts of psychedelic vamps, and stripped down ballads into the usual collection of perfect orchestral pop gems. The quasi-bummer about this reissue, is that it's been expanded to a whopping 3 discs, the first two exactly the same except one is all stereo mixes, and the second is all mono mixes, while the third is called Sketches For Odessa, which is exactly that, raw takes and demos, a cool glimpse into the process of making the record, but really, only the most obsessive fans will ever listen to the 2nd or 3rd discs, cuz all you really need is the record proper, but as this is currently the only way to get Odessa, we have to say, even though it's pricey, for lovers of classic pop, it's well worth it. PLUS, the reissue has been restored to its red flocked metallic gold lettered glory! As with the other records, Odessa is packed with the most amazing pop songs, catchy and wistful, melancholy and dreamy, lots of acoustic guitars, soaring strings, harps, subtle horns, shuffling drums, chimes bells, at it's most lush, it's almost syrupy, but then a song later, it'll be just vocals and guitar. A bunch of the songs sound SUPER Beatles-y, with the vocals more raw, the drums more propulsive, the sound pretty rocking, but even those songs are laced with strings, and are transformed into something distinctly their own. This is definitely a complicated record. Released as a double album, later as a single, lots of fantastic songs (if you loved "Holiday", off of 1st, odds are you'll find lots to love here), some strange almost variety show sounding jams, and a few far out numbers, that prove the boys never shied away from experimenting or doing their own thing. Heck, we made 1st a Record Of The Week, we probably could have / should have done the same with Idea and Horizontal, so keep that in mind when we suggest, that in some ways, Odessa might be the best / weirdest / most underappreciated of the four. So yeah, obviously recommended. Big time.

MPEG stream: Odessa (City On The Black Sea)
MPEG stream: You'll Never See My Face Again
MPEG stream: Lamplight
MPEG stream: First Of May

Chris Madak is the man behind the Bee Mask, a project with several dozen cassette releases issued over the past couple of years. Madak should also be noted as the principle behind the exceptionally curated Deception Island tape label, which had the foresight to release Oneohtrix Point Never's Betrayed In The Octagon as well as a handful of killer Emeralds related side projects. That said, not much from Bee Mask's own discography has made it through here, with blister popping electrical noise and synth sequencing seeming to be par for the course. Yet through those circuit bent experiments, Bee Mask emerges fully evolved as a master synthesist of all things elekronische and kosmische circa 1975. Canzoni Dal Laboratorio Del Silenzio Cosmico is a wonderfully varied album whose hallucinatory narratives speak to a purposeful and thoroughly intelligent design in its creation. Throughout you'll hear distinct references to the likes of Roland Kayn, Tangerine Dream (e.g. Electronic Meditations), Jean-Claude Eloy, Francoise Bayle, anything from Sky Records you could think of in the mid to late '70s, and even the more bombastic electronic interludes offered by Pink Floyd for that matter. The album opens in a more studied fashion through a sequence of carillion bell tones backmasked with a series of soft vocal grunts and gradually building set of electronic percolations, but all of this is engulfed in a tidal wave of polydactyl synth sequencing and brainfried electronic percolations only to morph again into a cavernous expanse of elongated tone and drone. The album's numerous detours and labyrinthine structures twist and devolve constantly across both sides of the record, delving into melodic phrasing in the electronic sequences only to shift deftly into plunging electrical vibrations of pulsing synth noise and delirious crescendos popping throughout. The fact that John Elliott of Emeralds has brought this to vinyl after a release on Gift Tapes a while back should not go unnoticed. Spectrum Spools is his new imprint, released through Editions Mego, and this should be a label not to be missed. Certainly not this release, that's for sure.

Here stands the monumental anthology, culled from the numerous cassettes and cd-rs that Chris Madak has released over the past decade or so, under the moniker Bee Mask. Like Emeralds and Oneohtrix Point Never, Madak is single-minded in his retrogarde aesthetic for synthesized compositions based on a vintage 1970s' cosmology. But where many of the '70s synth revivalists have coyingly adopted a full-fledged new age aesthetic through effervescent prettiness and soft-focus ambient swirl, Bee Mask offers up his own dysptopic take on psychedelic electronics through a crucible of cracked circuits, tape splutter, infernal field recordings, and a hell of a lot of sustained synth drones oscillating into crescendos of dissonant thumming. The zoner tracks on Elegy For Beach Friday (and there are a number of them) never sit in the background seeking a sublimated hypnosis, rather Madak zooms in on the placid pools of sound to unveil intense percolations and swarming vibrations. There's a scientific rigor to his pieces that finds Bee Mask orbiting around the dense, alienating electronics from Matt Shoemaker, Rick Reed, and Bernard Parmigiani. But, Madak is also one to tease with the subtle swelling melodies that harken to the more emotive works from Omit and Emeralds. If his work shares anything with the retro electronic tapestries that are the forgotten soundtracks for a summer sunset, Madak would rather blind the audience with the intensity of the sun, complete with blisters on the skin and technological mishaps from sunspots. Brilliant!

Git ready for some gritty bluesy rawk'n'roll, kids! Beehive & The Barracudas' fourth full length, the follow-up to their darkly brooding In Dark Love, gets things back on the track of their more characteristic smokin' punchy garage action! This is a band with plenty of shit-disturbin' attitude as is more than evident in their album art (an explicit collaged shamble of assorted peni and Dubya), song titles and lyrics (such as "Fuck It Out", "Stupid Asshole" and "Hitler's Cock")... not to mention the way they deliver them -- suitably slurred, sneered and snarled. Nasty!

MPEG stream: Stupid Asshole
MPEG stream: White Noise Suicide

San Diego's Beehive And The Barracudas are back at it again, but this time they're taking a rather more subdued, smouldering and angular approach than on their previous two heart-pounding, ass-kicking albums. Still it's no less raw, and certainly no less immediate -- featuring a mix of live drums and old drum machines, dingy guitars and squidgy analog synths. And it's all topped off with some rad lanky boy / saucy girl vocals. The third song "Stuck On The Bus" echoes with a certain bluesy Television-ness, and the rest of the album definitely has that early '80s New York art rock grittiness. Think of this as the soundtrack to the after-party that just might follow a whiskey 'n' jet-fueled Beehive live frenzy.

MPEG stream: Stuck On The Bus
MPEG stream: Changes

San Diego superstars ND (Rocket From The Crypt) and Dirty/Dustin join Kerry from the Red Aunts and a ton of others to form Beehive and The Barracudas. Not unlike the high octane fire power of RFTC, but more garage-y and tough. Fans of the White Stripes or the

RealAudio clip: Dirty Soughts
RealAudio clip: Real Blue Flame

This is the first release from this all star supergroup. Members of Rocket From The Crypt, Tanner, The Red Aunts, The Pee-Chees, and Last of the Juanitas... Oh, but don't think they sound like any of the above. As a matter of fact, it's a sweet blend of soul,

RealAudio clip: Big Time Suicide
RealAudio clip: Featuring the Insects
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THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORRY. Skweee!!! See our Museum of Future Sound review for more explanation...

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

SORRY. Hip hop remix. Rhythm = "Midwest Swing" (St. Lunatics).

Another cool dance hall single from Jamaica, this time around the rhtyhm is "One Minute Man" (Missy Elliott). B-side, though supposedly containing a "Remix" of the aforementioned rhythm, has a version that is completely unrelated.

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

SORRY. Hip hop remix. Rhythm = "What It Is" (Busta Rhymes).

Like a few of the newer hip hop dancehall remixes, this one utilizes a few different rhythms crossfaded in and out. The b-side says "version" on it, but -- surprize, surprize -- actually has the Elephant Man theme (using the melody to "Spiderman" of course.) Nice printing bonus on this single is a classic misspelling of Beenie Man as "Bennie Man".

"A Touch Of Brimstone" was intended to be the 10th anniversary release for the Dutch ambient / industrial duo Beequeen (Frans De Waard and Freek Kinkelaar), but the nature of Beequeen's extensive side projects delayed the anniversary by almost 4 years. Nevertheless, this album collects a number of (mostly) unreleased tracks from 1989 to 1995, with the one previously released track coming from their debut recording "Scala Destillans" which was issued in a whopping pressing of 250 copies. The Beequeen sound has been and probably will always be a synthesis of a number of pre-existing ideas. At this time, those references for Beequeen were the phasing ambience of Klaus Schultz and Brian Eno, the isolationist practices of Maeror Tri, the clinical feedback noise of early SPK, and the magickal psychedelia of the Legendary Pink Dots. Thus, soft drones, ghosts of songs, and distant drum machine pulsatsions structure Beequeen's ongoing activities.

RealAudio clip: A Touch Of Brimstone

This happens to be the fourth and most comprehensive edition of the best album from Beequeen, the ephemeral drone project spearheaded by Frans de Waard and Freek Kinkelaar. Der Holzweg was originally released by Anomalous Records back in 1993, housing the disc in a smartly designed wooden sleeve. At the same time, a tiny cassette edition made its way into the world. Many years, later a vinyl edition of the material was issued; and now the Russian imprint Tantric Harmonies has thankfully reissued this album once again, with all of bonus material found on the cassette and vinyl versions as well as three additional tracks from some contemporary seven inches. Whew! Beequeen's musical output is emblematic of the dreamy, soft focus ambience that emerged out of a post-industrial framework back in the early '90s. Zoviet France, Paul Schutze, O Yuki Conjugate, Christoph Heemann, and Cranioclast were some of the more obvious influences on Beequeen, whose backwards masked guitars and ambling tape loops flicker across grey, synthetic drones. It's very nice to see this back in print, one more time!

MPEG stream: Dead Hares
MPEG stream: Chorok

Beequeen is the duo of Freek Kinkelaar and Frans De Waard, whose name you might recognise from his other projects, Goem, Shifts, Kapotte Muziek and a bunch more. Can't say I have been all the taken with most of De Waard's projects, but for some reason Beequeen records always hit the spot. The sound of Beequeen has been anything but static, with two musically restless souls exploring all aspects of sound and recording, coming up with extremely varied results, most actually quite appealing, but Gund, a collection of old unreleased tracks finds Beequeen at what I think is their perfect sound, dreamy drony, hypnotic, minimal throbbing shimmerscapes of dark rumbles, ethereal wisps of high end incandescence, and subtly shifting, distant low end murmurs of rustle and thrum, that will most definitely tickle the cochlea of even the most discerning of drones fans, and of course folks who can't get enough Coleclough, Mirror, and the like. This collection assembles four tracks from a proposed 12" where all four tracks were to be cut at different speeds, 16, 33, 45, and 78 RPM (eventually scrapped due to the difficulty in pressing such a record) as well as two tracks from an aborted collaborative split with MSBR. Really beautiful stuff. Limited to 500!

MPEG stream: For Daniel In The Lion's Mouth
MPEG stream: I'll Call You Claude

Beequeen is but one of the many sides to Frans De Waard - the Dutch vangardist who has also explored post-techno minimalism in Goem, blissful guitar drone work in Shifts, musique concrete in Kapotte Muziek, and about a half-dozen other smaller projects. As with all of those aforementioned projects, De Waard typically follows the lead of a 'trendy' line in experimental music -- PanSonic, Main, Pierre Henry, etc. For Beequeen, it's a little more vague, originally taking off from the Legendary Pink Dots (as De Waard met fellow Beequeen member Freek Kinkelaar out of their mutual admiration of Ka-Spel and Co.), but more recently picking up cues from the Temporary Residence aesthetic of quiet guitar led introspection and moody post-rock atmospheres espoused by Sonna and Tarentel. As with the majority of the De Waard projects, Beequeen mimics its influences remarkably well.

RealAudio clip: My Wicked Wicked Ways
RealAudio clip: Beam Ends

Frans De Waard and Freek Kinkelaar have been very active in the Dutch experimental sound community for well over two decades in far too many projects to count. Beequeen was one of those projects, having originally producing some lovely post-Eno driftwork ambient pieces; yet, over the past three album, De Waard and Kinkelaar have steadily pulled atmospheric songs and folk structures out of that ambience. Sandancing is the latest venture and really seems to be mining the same skeletal songwriting as Low had on Secret Name. It doesn't hurt that the two have recruited vocalist Olga Wallis to join their project, as she's got a voice eerily similar to Low's Mimi Parker.

MPEG stream: Breathe
MPEG stream: The Honeythief

MPEG stream: Sad Sheep
MPEG stream: The Dream-O-Phone

Pete Swanson's post Yellow Swans trajectory into the uncharted realms (at least uncharted by most other noise making weirdos originally from the "floorcore" scene) of twisted, noise drenched avant techno, takes a not entirely drastic detour here. On the oddly named Hobo On The Face Of Music, Swanson joins up in a duo with his pal Brian Sullivan, adopting the moniker Beer Damage, and proceeds to lay out a slab of churning rhythmic noise, warped industrial ambience and dense textured experimentation, a sound that most definitely harkens back to the days of his old duo, but pushes the sound way further, into the furthest reaches of garbled, rhythmic, free-noise psychedelia. Sonically somewhat aligned with an outfit like, say, Campbell Kneale's Our Love Will Destroy The World, Swanson and Sullivan take a similar tack, of burying rhythms and distorted melodies, beneath thick, roiling, chopped up layers of sound, stuttering and dizzying, some serious WTF? sonic carnage, that occasionally coalesces into dark beauty, or driving rhythmic churn. The A side launches directly into a jumbled Jeckian soundscape of warbling loops and woozy tangled melodies, splintering into squalls of haywire machinery, spewing, bleeps and bloops and sheets of crunchy gristle. All eventually buried beneath a cascade of glitched out whir and swirling collaged plunderphonia. There are still lots of rhythms going on, what sounds like primitive beat-boxing at one point, accompanied by detuned drones, a barrage of twisted babel-like vox, a crumbling soundfield pelted by squelches from all sides. Amidst all this chaos lurks some loveliness too. Blurred sprawls of smoldering jazz-noise drift, wistful and melancholic, but doused in grime and grit, but even the pretty parts, eventually transform into stuttering grooves, dementedly chopped and looped into haphazard blurts of murk and twisted melting sound effects. The flipside seems a bit more tranquil and serene, but really only a bit, starting out super pretty, but still plenty warped and warbly, detuned varispeed plucks hurled from on high and landing with a series of sonic splats over looped swirls of cosmic garble. The side begins to drift into rhythmic territory again, with some clipped and glitched out weirdo grooviness, before crumbling into a blackened decaying noisiness, wreathed in muted guitar freakout, all blurred into prismatic psychedelic smears. Finally the record ends not with a bang, or a whimper, more like a strangled, demented sprawl of stumbling, collaged lysergia, a sample-delic robot-noise, that sounds almost carnivalesque, with truncated voices, and even some harmonica (?), a twisted finale, that sounds like it was filtered through a malfunctioning transistor radio in the hands of a restless toddler with ADD. Phew! Warped, and weird, and really kind of dementedly wonderful.

In past reviews of earlier Beets records, we found ourselves imagining them as the result of some sort of Thee Oh Sees / Shaggs sonic breeding experiment, a mix of naive primitivism and fuzzy reverby garage rock pound, and on this latest, not too much has changed, although the things that have, only serve to make these guys sound better than ever. The production is way less lo-fi, the more polished production perfectly complimenting the stripped down instrumentation, and the songs, still stripped down and minimal, sound somehow more fully fleshed out and way catchier (although subtly so). The vibe is also a bit darker and dronier, with a huge Velvets vibe, woozy and druggy and hypnotic, most of the songs with just one or two parts, repetitive and jangly, with the more upbeat jams sounding almost Beatles-esque, classic three chord jangle pop, over shuffling drums and peppered with some twisted atonal sort-if-solos (there's even some flute!!). For the most part though, this is just some perfectly dreamy, jangly, catchy, stoney and droney left field ramshackle folk pop bliss, that we just can't seem to stop listening to. And like all of their other records, more of that immediately recognizable cartoon cover art depicting the theme of the record (all The Beets records have themes), this one about "letting the poison out of your system."

MPEG stream: You Don't Want Kids to Be Dead
MPEG stream: Doing as I Do
MPEG stream: Friends of Friends

Now available on cd! Captured Tracks is turning into the go to label for rad and limited vinyl pressings (and cd's!) of some of the most interesting and offbeat damaged garage pop bands around. Recent releases from the label include records by Blank Dogs, Brilliant Colors, Dum Dum Girls, etc. The Beets fit perfectly with the label's aesthetic, these are some way lo-fi reverbed out rudimentary garage pop gems with a charming kind of innocence about them. We hear a kinship with Thee Oh Sees, especially circa Sucks Blood, as these tracks have that same kind of stoned and lacka-daze-ical quality. Imagine what it might sound like if Dwyer and company did a bunch of Shaggs covers and you'd pretty much have the Beets. There is something so refreshingly effortless and free flowing about this record. Maybe it's their name but we have dreams of seeing them play live in a friend's kitchen as we nibble on snacks and they use everything in the kitchen sink to create totally endearing lo-fi punk rock brilliance.

MPEG stream: Happy But On My Way
MPEG stream: Go Away
MPEG stream: My Bones My Flesh And Me

There is something about knowing your sound and keeping your focus which is kind of crucial when you are a band playing very primitive ramshackle DIY folk/punk. The Beets know this so well, in fact right on the cover it says this is a collection of thirteen new songs about staying home. And many of the tracks are in fact about why the world can often make staying in your own room the only viable alternative. They keep all the subject matter very simple yet painfully honest. It's about relationships, regret, fear, longing...all delivered in a way stripped down lo-fi left-field garage pop sound. Following in the tradition of folks like Daniel Johnston, The Shaggs, Half Japanese, Beat Happening and Jonathan Richman, The Beets remind us that when done right, less can be so much more!

MPEG stream: Cold Lips
MPEG stream: Floating
MPEG stream: Young Girls

[ aquarius records catalogue — B ]