[ aquarius records catalogue

BIKINI KILLYeah Yeah Yeah Yeah(Bikini Kill)12"$ 14.98

As any solid Marxist-feminist will tell you, a girl's gotta own the means of production, right? Well, the influential and groundbreaking riot grrrl band Bikini Kill finally went and started their own record label. In honor of the 20th anniversary of their self-titled 1992 release, the band are reissuing their entire catalogue on cd and vinyl (plus downloads) - the eponymous debut record being the first. We know you riot grrl OG's out there already have the entire Bikini Kill catalog, but in case you partied too hard with your original releases (and you should have, because this record rawks), you might need a replacement by now. Also, you should know that the lp comes packed with a 34" x 21" poster (just like the White Album!) that includes snippets from drummer Tobi Vail's famed feminist 'zine, Jigsaw, photos, interviews with the likes of album producer and Minor Threat/Fugazi member Ian MacKaye, and other goodies. For those who have not heard this album, a) why the heck not? and b) it's sixteen minutes of pure punk rock heaven. The only way to explain it is to listen to it really, really loud - preferably while wearing a slip and tube socks (boys, that means you, too) and screaming along with Kathleen Hanna's defiant wail at the top of your lungs. For all the haters out there, look: You don't have to have an abusive father to protest patriarchal control over women's sexuality, as does Hanna in "Suck My Left One." Bikini Kill weren't man-haters, they just wanted to start the revolution grrrl-style. It's not too late to join them!

Jeepers, we've an abundance of Bikneva for you! Two equally lovely cds, their self-titled debut from 2002 and this, their second slightly more outerspace sounding full length. Ultra lush, atmospheric keyboard-laden music that occasionally drifts into easy listenin' lounge territory. Not in a bad (i.e, cheesy) way though! Not at all. I've also seen Bikneva listed online under 'ambient' and 'new age"' but I can't really say that either of those tags fit. Each smooooth, languid track soothes in its own moody way that's often very reminiscent of Angelo Badalamenti's gorgeous work on the Twin Peaks soundtrack. You almost expect Julee Cruise to flutter in with her angelic vocals, but instead there's a gentlemanly chorus of ba-da-ba's in the track "I'm In I'm Walking". Very nice!

MPEG stream: Guncleaning
MPEG stream: I'm In I'm Walking

Jeepers, we've an abundance of Bikneva for you! Two equally lovely cds, their second full length called Even Stars Burn Out On Their Own and this, their self-titled debut from 2002. Ultra lush, atmospheric mostly keyboard-laden (organ and piano) music that occasionally drifts into easy listenin' lounge territory. Not in a bad (i.e, cheesy) way though! Not at all. I've also seen Bikneva listed online under 'ambient' and 'new age"' but I can't really say that either of those tags fit. Each smooooth, languid track soothes in its own moody way that's often very reminiscent of Angelo Badalamenti's gorgeous work on the Twin Peaks soundtrack. You almost expect Julee Cruise to flutter in with her angelic vocals, instead you get a gentlemanly chorus, some loudspeaker spoken word samples, maybe some gentle banjo and guitar as well as static-y crackles that sound like dust on your turntable needle. Very nice!

MPEG stream: Seed The Clouds

Another unearthed Americana rarity from Tompkins Square, this one from the guitarist Don Bikoff, whose Celestial Explosion was originally released in 1968 on the super obscure Keyboard Records, which apparently featured some reference in the liner notes to John Fahey, who subsequently sent Bikoff a handwritten letter, that simply stated "I am not now, not have I ever been in search of someone named 'Blind Joe Death'." Those original liner notes are reproduced here as well, and really listening to this, there's no way to NOT make the comparison to Fahey, and Robbie Basho, and all the rest. But Bikoff definitely has his own sound, one that's more raw and aggressive, his strain of American Primitivism, involves aggressive, rapid finger picking, lots of overtones, the sound swirling and cosmic, with plenty of reverb, his playing quite percussive as well, even the gentle more laid back numbers here sound intense, as if he's really plucking and strumming those steel strings for all he's worth. Opener "Rindler's Metamorphosis" is a stunner, maybe the most psychedelic of the bunch, lots of bent stings and dark chords, strange melodies, the vibe haunting and otherworldly, it's easy to see why the record was named Celestial Explosion. There's some excellent slide work too, "Earth (Revisited)" is all slippery, heavily reverbed steel string buzz, with some deft melodic flurries, not to mention lots of buzz and super percussive pizzicato plucking, and of course the title track is fantastically hypnotic and again darkly psychedelic, laced with glimmering chimes, a sort of abstract Americana that seems to be drifting heavenward, the stars their destination. Nice packaging, reproducing the look of the original lp, original liner notes and other track info inside, new liner notes from Tompkins Square head honcho, Josh Rosenthal.

MPEG stream: Rindler's Metamorphosis
MPEG stream: Earth (Revisited)
MPEG stream: Celestial Explosion

Back in the beginning of 2013, we were super thrilled to host an instore performance by legendary NZ singer songwriter Bill Direen, and it was as great as we could have hoped, all of us having been huge fans of his work, but in particular, his records with the combo Bilders, which over the years has included pretty much every notable member of the NZ underground. While the band never really broke up, we were still pretty excited to discover a brand new release from the Bilders in 2014, one that features a different line-hop on each track to boot. There might be a bit more polish, but the sound is still distinctly NZ, and distinctly Direen, his urgent, distinctive sung/spoken vox, wound around a sinewy almost post punk sounding backdrop, replete with tinkling chimes and some dreamy female background vox, and it all still manages to sound rough and raw, and fantastically shadowy. The two tracks on the B side delve even deeper into the murk, the first all swaggery and slithery, low slung bass throb and tribal percussion, laced with wheezing organ, spidery guitars, and a surprisingly poppy chorus, while the second, is live, recorded on a recent Euro tour, and is a bit more noisy, the vocals more urgent and bellowed, the music following suit, loose with plenty of swing, both tracks a bit swampy, and blooze-y, the whole thing displaying Direen and company in fine fine form.

A tasty three disc set from Billion Dollar Babies, the band comprised of three former Alice Cooper Band members who namd themselves after an Alice Cooper song and recorded just one album in 1977 -- Battle Axe. While disc one is the entire Battle Axe

RealAudio clip: Shine Your Love
RealAudio clip: I Miss You (live)

We made the brand new record by Spanish noise rocker and audio experimentalist Billy Bao our Record Of The Week last list, a dizzying collision of sludgey filthy Brainbombs like dirge, howling Whitehouse styled invective, and weirdest of all, a flurry of Fela-ish highlife horns, all tangled up with sheets of feedback, squalls of effects, and whatever else BB could whip up. The result was transcendent, and well worthy of ROTW status, managing to be punishing and heavy as fuck, but still catchy and blown out and super fun. So here we have BB's preceding release, the wonderfully titled Dialectics Of Shit, and we're happy to report, that while the horns seem to be M.I.A here, everything else is present and accounted for, BIG TIME. A gloriously filthy, in-the-red, sludge fueled noise drenched monster. Weirdly produced, super chaotic, rife with sharp angular skree, pounding Neanderthal drums and a growled phlegmy vocal that seethes maniacally. All that stuff is locked around single, KILLER riffs, each track, a looped hypnotic crush, that riff pounded out over and over and over and over, while the various other elements swirl and careen all around it. Insane bursts of grinding crunch, thick sheets of Merzbowian hiss, long stretches of brittle jangle and thump that will suddenly get swallowed up by a blown out wave of sub sonic low end, or a cloud of white noise will well up obliterating everything in its path, all the while the bass and drums 'groove' churns away, often emerging from one of those disruptions a whole different beats, a sort of muted murky bit of surf guitar, some weird twang, everything off kilter and woozy and noisy and INTENSE. The guitars are sharp and jagged and rough edged, slippery and warped, the riffs seem to be melting, or crumbling to pieces before your ears, the whole record a stumbling, lurching, blackened dirge noise behemoth. All the while, little hooks, and insanely catchy flourishes surface here and there, keeping the record weirdly catchy, and almost poppy occasionally, the sound is schizophrenic, about faces all over the place, sudden edits, overlapping sounds that don't seem to fit (but somehow do), voices all tangled up in guitar melodies tripping over struggling drum pound, everything on the very edge of total collapse, somehow held together in one massive speaker destroying chunk of tweaked and twisted heaviness.

We were definitely a bit skeptical when we read descriptions of Spanish noise rockers Billy Bao as sounding like Brainbombs, Fela and Whitehouse. Even more so when we got the record in and noticed those were the three bands BB thank on the sleeve, we figured, okay, lazy reviewing, BB love those bands so heck, they probably sound like that, or at least sort of. So imagine our surprise upon actually hearing this, and realizing that the Fela / Whitehouse / Brainbombs was somehow, pretty right on. At least in as far as one can actually describe a band as awesomely weird and fucked up as Billy Bao. The core sound is definitely Brainbombs, low slung fuzzy sludge bass, in the red, super distorted and impossibly blown out. The drums a Neanderthal pound that borders on the machinelike here and there, howled vocals, alternating shouting and sort of crooning a non stop stream of invective, the sound crusty and filthy and punk rock and garage rock, but with a weird electronic vibe, bordering on industrial now and again. The relentless crunch occasionally screeches to a halt, and launches into a weird super dynamic stop start thing, sometimes even getting all stuttery as the guitars dissolve into fractured electronics. And the horns, did we mention the horns? Not like the moaning bleat of the Brainbombs' dented trumpet, these are full on festive high life horns, buried way down in the mix, sampled we're guessing, quite possibly actually Fela, but low enough in the mix that only the horns make it through the murk, except for a few moments where the horns / samples slip into the stuttery spaces, only adding to the off kilter chaos. The B-side sounds like Burmese on angel dust, and since Burmese ALREADY sound like they're on angel dust, BAD angel dust, you can get an idea of how fucked up and fierce and bass heavy this side long jam is, the music a wall of blown out, super tangled, in the red bass riffage and low end buzz, so noisy that the song teeters back and forth between intense riffage and full on speaker shredding NOISE, over which the vocals are a feral frenzied Whitehouse style yowl. Heavy and fucked up and noisy and genius. WAY WAY WAY recommended. A few more listens and we might just have us a new favorite band. The sleeve is just a single long missive from the band, there are liner notes and thanks lists in there, but for the most part it's all a stream of consciousness rant against war and government and industry and copyright and loads more, the inside cover features two full color photos of just the sort of death and destruction and human misery they're talking about.

A killer cd compilation from Spain-via-New-York noise rocker and audio experimentalist Billy Bao, whose May 08 lp we made Record Of The Week, and whose Dialectics Of Shit we reviewed recently as well. This cd collects that Dialectics lp, as well as a handful of earlier releases. The whole thing is packaged in a jewel case, then wrapped in sandpaper and sealed shut with duct tape. Here's a review of the Dialectics lp, now cd, and after that we'll give a quick rundown of the other stuff compiled here. So first up is the wonderfully titled Dialectics Of Shit, and we're happy to report, that while the horns that were all ovr May 08 seem to be M.I.A here, everything else is present and accounted for, BIG TIME. A gloriously filthy, in-the-red, sludge fueled noise drenched monster. Weirdly produced, super chaotic, rife with sharp angular skree, pounding Neanderthal drums and a growled phlegmy vocal that seethes maniacally. All that stuff is locked around single, KILLER riffs, each track, a looped hypnotic crush, that riff pounded out over and over and over and over, while the various other elements swirl and careen all around it. Insane bursts of grinding crunch, thick sheets of Merzbowian hiss, long stretches of brittle jangle and thump that will suddenly get swallowed up by a blown out wave of sub sonic low end, or a cloud of white noise will well up obliterating everything in its path, all the while the bass and drums 'groove' churns away, often emerging from one of those disruptions a whole different beats, a sort of muted murky bit of surf guitar, some weird twang, everything off kilter and woozy and noisy and INTENSE. The guitars are sharp and jagged and rough edged, slippery and warped, the riffs seem to be melting, or crumbling to pieces before your ears, the whole record a stumbling, lurching, blackened dirge noise behemoth. All the while, little hooks, and insanely catchy flourishes surface here and there, keeping the record weirdly catchy, and almost poppy occasionally, the sound is schizophrenic, about faces all over the place, sudden edits, overlapping sounds that don't seem to fit (but somehow do), voices all tangled up in guitar melodies tripping over struggling drum pound, everything on the very edge of total collapse, somehow held together in one massive speaker destroying chunk of tweaked and twisted heaviness. The weird thing when you finally see these tracks in your cd player, is that all the songs are of an exact length, almost all the songs on Dialectics are 3:00 long, the two songs from the ep are exactly 10:00 each, and all ten of the tracks from the 7" are exactly 1:00 long. Weird. ANyway, the Fuck Separation ep from 2007 is two ten minute long jams, the whole thing, all twenty minutes made up of the same riff, a killer for sure, looped and locked and pounded out over and over and over, while the vocals howl, the sound shifts from sharp and jagged to murky and muddy, only near the end, does it begin to unravel and fall apart in a glorious pile of broken beats shrieking feedback, the riff never letting up until the very very end. The Accumulation 7", also from 2007, follows a similar pattern, locking into a single sludgey garage-y Brainbombs style groove, while the vocals howl and mewl, and the sound gets more and more brittle and noise and fucked up until it devolves into a blonw out nearly white noise damaged psych free-for-all. Incredible stuff. Heavy and heady, fucked up and freaked out and damaged and demented, and some of the best shit we've heard in forEVER.

MPEG stream: I Am Billy Bao, Right Here Right Now!
MPEG stream: Tight Ass Bleeds
MPEG stream: I Am A Mirror / Putrefied Egos
MPEG stream: Borders Of Mass Deception
MPEG stream: 1
MPEG stream: 2

All right, a new Billy bao, a crazy expensive fancy pants lp, sorry about that, not sure why it's so expensive, it's super limited, imported from overseas, original artwork by HENRY FLYNT!, cool silkscreened plastic sleeves, all that stuff probably contributed to the crazy price, but for the noise obsessed, and specifically BB obsessed among you, it'll take more than $36 to keep you away from another slab of damaged, caustic noise punk weirdness from this demented noisenik. And demented this stuff is, beginning with a loooooong stretch of barely there hushed crawl, voices, drones, all way down in the mix, played in the store it almost sounds silent, but don't crank the volume, cuz soon from the silence explodes a monstrous chunk of downtuned dirgery, wrapped in swirls of warped buzz and woozy layered crunch, a simple caveman beat pounding away, weirdly hypnotic, like some sort of kraut-noise-rock, which gives way to stuttery staticky stop and start rhythmic hiss, spitting out an almost martial sounding rhythm, underpinned by strange mumbled vox and peppered with shards of feedback and deep tectonic rumbles. After still more near silence, BB and co. spew some seriously Merzbowian thud rock, all wrapped in jagged squalls of white noise and grinding feedback, stumbling rhythms, that sound like they were made out of distorted voices. Soon after comes maybe the coolest part of the record, a twisted bit of skipping stuttering skittery free jazz, almost like some drunk turntablist spinning dusty old Coltrane records, at the wrong speed, while some nervous footed punter continually kicks the plug out of the wall only to plug it right back in again, dizzying and almost carnivalesque. After still more whispered drift, another bout of pounding feedback drenched noiserock, culminating in a final stretch of near silence, punctuated by sharp bursts of caustic blown out crunch and fucked up grinding howl, rhythmic and dementedly mesmerizing. Woah. Some serious outsider noiserock damage for sure. Definitely headphone listening, but headphones WITH earplugs! As mentioned above, super swank packaging, pressed on 140 gram vinyl, housed in a jacket with original artwork by Henry Flynt, in a cool hand screened sleeve, imported and limited, and thus the hefty price tag...

We really wish we could tell you more about the Billy Boys. Other than that they're Finnish, and they're batshit bonkers (we suspect some causality there). Leave it to Jussi from Circle to unleash this sonic weirdness on an unsuspecting public. Ostensibly only of interest to the nerdiest of Finnish music historians, and of course aQuarius Records and all the weirdo Finnish music obsessives that sail with her, the Billy Boys were a super obscure Finnish outfit, featuring one member of legendary Finnish punk band Terveet Kadet, formed with the idea of creating a "country influenced trash rock band", which to a certain degree was a success. There are moments that definitely could be described that way, but as the label explains, that sound "mutated into something more grotesque". But then if you believe Jussi, the radiation from the Chernobyl meltdown poisoned the drinking water in Finland in the eighties, and did irreparable damaged to the Billy Boys, aka Mr. Hank Morlock, and Mr. Johnny Helicopters, actual brothers in fact. Grotesque it is, label misinformation be damned, but gloriously grotesque, in that way it seems only Finnish music can truly be. Sure lots of you love Circle and Pharaoh Overlord, Avarus and Kemialliset Ystavat. But what about Aavikko, Deep Turtle, Death Trip, Liimanarina, Worms, Sperm, Chainsmoker, Radiopuhelimet, Dr. Gunni, Sweetheart, The Vacuum Cleaners, weirdo one man band Keuhkot, the haunting outsider psychedelic folk of Pekka Streng, the Cleaning Women (a bunch of Finns who dress up like housewives and play all manner of kitchen appliances and implements), Mieskuoro Huutajat (the Finnish men's shouting choir, who wear ties made from old innertubes and shout national anthems)?? Now that we read over all of that, maybe there really IS something in the water over there. Cuz what else could account for so much whatthefuck music being created in one little country? Whatever it is, we're grateful - we can't get enough of Finnish musical weirdness, and the Billy Boys are definitely right at home on that list, and are definitely toward the WTF? side of the Finnish sonic spectrum. Sure, take that "country influenced trash rock" thing, add some primitive synth blurt, some insanely low-fi production, crappy drum machines, probably throw in a lot of drugs, and go from there. The collection starts off with the group's 1984 single "Mystery Train", which could be a sort of catchy pop ditty, had it not seemingly been recorded in a tin can, in a bus station bathroom - the resulting low fidelity as much a part of the Billy Boys' sound as the music itself. Tinkling melodies, yelped vox, a bloopy bleepy rhythm, all doused in blown out white noise crumble, which as you listen reveals itself as either a guitar or a keyboard, so distorted it just becomes a blur of sonic gristle, but somehow, it manages to be a kinda catchy ditty. From there on out, all best are off. "Get It On" takes a sonar ping rhythm, adds some weird electronic glitch, and some mumbled Finnish vox, not to mention some buzz and weird malfunctioning effects. The suddenly you realize, it's a cover of T-Rex's "Bang A Gong", but only once you hear the title moaned in heavily accented English, over what sounds like a primitive pong machine. WTF indeed! Some tracks do actually do sound like countrified trash rock, with jangly guitars, crooned vocals and galloping rhythms, but in some cases, like on "Lonesome Train" after a minute or so, the track devolves into something else entirely, in this case a speaker blowing squall of noise, before transforming into a creepy slo-mo dirge, female vocals over stumbling drums and constantly shredding guitars way down in the mix. Elsewhere, that 'trash rock' devolves into an electronic flecked dirge, laced with all sorts of random sounds, detuned guitar strum, pulsating synthesizers, howled shrieks. And then check out "Harley Man" with its twang guitar and handclap rhythm, wrapped around enthusiastically belted out cookie monster vocals, or "The Spider And The Fly" which is a haunting sprawl of experimental minimal pop, that sounds a little like the Residents, or "My Wild Love", which is about as close as these guys get to a heartfelt ballad, croony and creepy, but weirdly beautiful. The rest of the record unwinds just as confusionally, with blurts of damaged honky tonk, Teutonic echo-drenched industrial throb, warped drugged out damaged blooze blowouts, some cool twisted sort of rockabilly grooves, stumbling cold wave minimalism, a disturbing slo-mo cover of "Love Me Tender" that sounds like the soundtrack to a particularly twisted nightmare, some electronic flecked minimal dirge punk, super abstract experimental pop, that occasionally consists of motorik drumming over, hushed whispers and woozy low end thrum, or super spaced out glitch and skitter, flecked with fragmented vocals, and heck even some almost straight ahead pop, but of course the Billy Boys add some creepy ghastly vocals, and suddenly it is transformed into something "more grotesque". There's so much going on here. Total warped whatthefuck outsider genius. There are moments of serious sonic brilliance for sure, peppered amidst some mouth breathing, knuckle dragging, confusional, demented sonic damage, but somehow, those two sides of the Billy Boys balance, and the result is a twisted, and valuable artifact of outsider Finnish underground music genius. Not for everyone, obviously, maybe not even for most people, but we're pretty into this stuff, and have been listening to it like crazy. If you dig any of the weirdo Finnish outfits mentioned above, or just love totally twisted warped outsider sounds, these guys might be your new (old) favorite band. And odds are you can drive everyone else in your house batshit at the same time! Includes a massive fold out booklet, with extensive liner notes, IN FINNISH, and lots of photos.

MPEG stream: Mystery Train '84
MPEG stream: Get It On
MPEG stream: Mr. Death
MPEG stream: Lonesome Train / Pearl Of Berlin
MPEG stream: The Spider And The Fly
MPEG stream: Love Me Tender
MPEG stream: Sun Of The Gun
MPEG stream: Mystery Train '58 Mic Test

Obscure but awesome, ugly yet catchy, crusty underground noiserock here! We gotta thank our pals in Megaton Leviathan for hepping us to this now defunct band (2000-2006). In fact, one of Megaton dudes put this disc out on his own label a while back, and we just got a handful direct from them at a bargain price. Not sure if there was ever any membership connection between the two bands or not, could be, but we do know the Billy Dirt Cult started off in Anchorage, Alaska, eking out a DIY punkrock existence up there in the frozen north for several years before migrating down to the relatively milder climes of Portland, Oregon, and then subsequently morphing into another band called Theda Bara whom we're also now curious to hear, after getting into this document of BDC's particular brooding darkness. With the Megaton Leviathan endorsement, you'd expect Billy Dirt Cult to be heavy, and they are. But while Megaton Leviathan traffic in what might be called "soft doom" or "doomgaze", Billy Dirt Cult is a much nastier beast, though like we said, quite catchy, and in their way quite artful, and political. This disc collects a 2001 demo, their half of a split lp with some fellow Alaskans called Eu Vusahm, and unreleased tracks, 12 cuts in all. Rife with caustic vocals, rumbling guitars, pounding drums, feedback, all that good stuff. Gets more and more distorted and crusty as it goes along, it seems, culminating though in the disc's surprising grand finale, an instrumental epic called "February", kind of a post-rock apocalypse, all shades of light and dark in one gripping, gnarled, blown-out fuzzfest whose only flaw is that it eventually fades out instead of going on forever. Worth the price of admission right there for that one, but we are diggin' on the whole thing, whether BDC be in driving scuzzpunk mode or doing the plodding crashing doomic stuff, or both.

MPEG stream: Darkness
MPEG stream: T.V. Wars
MPEG stream: February

A band, not a guy. A British instrumental quartet, playing stuff roughly in the Mogwai/Tortoise realm (influenced by, and hyped as such, at least). They did a split single with AQ's UK-post-rock faves Rothko. We're fairly certain that if this was playing in the store and a fan of the aforementioned bands walked in, they'd be intrigued by Billy Mahonie. And as one of their song titles states: "We Accept American Dollars."

Holy crap. This band is so completely mindblowing. Ultra technical, downtuned black thrash... power metal? An impossible mix of techgrindthrash a la Meshuggah, Dillinger Escape Plan, Strapping Young Lad and the like, but with plenty of chugcrunchmosh as per Pantera, but most importantly, a huge heaping dose of classic melodic power metal: blazing leads and harmony solos like they were plucked straight from some Iron Maiden b-side, wailing and soaring eighties style Rob Halford like vocals, all plopped smack dab in the middle of a dense sludgy, churning whirpool of brutal pummeling technical thrash metal. Imagine your favorite eighties metal record, Avenger, Obsession, Omen, doesn't matter, now imagine that band going through one of those science fiction transformations, you know like where the dinky little robot is dragged down the conveyor belt, strapped down and then is suddenly awash in a blur of sparking machines, and molten metal, a hundred mechanical arms with all manner of alien tools welding and cutting, sparks spraying everywhere, flames and smoke, until the tiny robot emerges a hulking armored battle machine, all sharp edges and planet crushing firepower. That's basically Biomechanical. Imagine Iron Maiden or especially Queensryche (the singer sounds a hell of a lot like Geoff Tate) with a 21st century makeover. A blurred buzzy blast of totally brutal thrashmetal, technical and convoluted but super catchy. With those wailing vocals that at first sound so completely out of place, but immediately make Biomechanical so much more interesting than their grunting shrieking thrash metal brethren. Plus they smear the proceedings with all sorts of bizarre keyboards which gives the whole record a demented alien vibe. The metalheads around AQ have been rocking this nonstop since we first got it a few months back!

MPEG stream: Enemy Within
MPEG stream: The Empires Of The Worlds

This latest release from Norwegian sound artist Geir Jenssen is a much darker, and less rhythmic affair than past releases. Based on an early sixties' dramatisation of Jules Verne's De La Terre A La Lune, Jennsen has sampled bits of dialogue, sounds from the MIR space station, and assorted other atmospheric detritus, incorporating them into his original sounds, resulting in an expansive nine part, minimal soundscape, that is darker and creepier than the subject matter would suggest. The record starts off quite tranquil, dreamy and somnambulent, simple melodies smeared into washes of minimal shimmer, but the sound rapidly takes on a quite ominous hue, sinister and subtly nightmarish, with buzzing sinewaves and threatening rumbles. This ominous drone forms the basis of the entire record, occasionally shifting into fuzzy shortwave interference, mysterious transmissions from the ether, buried rhythms, and subtle variations on Biosphere's glacially shifting low end. This actually sounds like it would be perfect horror movie music, haunting and tense, pregnant with the possibility of the sustained minor key drones erupting into something much more terrifying. But the fact that it never does only makes it that much more effective.

MPEG stream: Rotation
MPEG stream: Modifie

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

SORRY. Still embracing mid-90s ambient electronica, Biosphere fabricates sub-zero atmospheres out of digital swoops, complete with buried radio samples and exotic percussion. It ends up sounding not unlike the ambient realms for Muslimgauze, if the political agenda were based on the plight of the French (whatever that might be) rather than the Palestinians.

When this came out on vinyl a couple months back, we sort of let is slip by; but the cd is a different matter. It's probably not that the music is all that different (other than the obvious fact that the cd is almost 25 minutes longer than the LP), but Biosphere's ambient beatitudes work so much better through the extended / not-having-to-rise-from-the-couch format of a cd. Biosphere is the work of Norway's Gier Jenssen, who has been producing some mighty fine ambient based electronica for nearly 15 years. Dropsonde retains all of Biosphere's lovely ambient swaths, arctic lullabies, and hypno-dreamtime loopings, not too warm and not too cold. Just right! The one detour to this records is found in Jenssen's occasional splashes of skittering jazz percussion, rendering Dropsonde the Norwegian parallel to the noirish timbres that Amon Tobin had crafted on his brilliant Supermodified and Permutations albums. Unlike so much "ambient" music which disguises a lack of good ideas behind tasteful synth patches and sultry grooves, Biosphere has always stood out in the slightly misnamed genre (after all, how can ambient music have beats?), and Dropsonde is yet another feather in his cap.

MPEG stream: Birds Fly By Flapping Their Wings
MPEG stream: Fall In Fall Out

Biosphere's Microgravity was a watershed album for the burgeoning rave scene. In 1991, techno in particular found itself splintering into the 'arder / faster sounds that took acid house towards gabber, and the evolution of more complex variants through the innovations of Aphex Twin and Autechre. And then there was the chill-out / ambient crowd. It has to be said, that this was always the most problematic, as the bulk of efforts from this end of the spectrum was substantively vapid in taking up the ideas of kosmische electronica and watering it all down with drool cups and pacifiers. All of this without the benefit of a rhythm to trick the body into thinking that there was something revolutionary going on with these futuristic sounds. Biosphere was one of the few phenomenal exceptions to the more banal forms of ambient-techno - yes, the term is an oxymoron of a genre marker, but it stuck a long time ago. Geir Jenssen (aka Biosphere) cut his teeth in the late '80s in the ethereal-pop project Bel Canto, with Biosphere acquiring the dark sheen of Detroit techno from that time period. The rhythms which Jenssen programmed for Biosphere's debut Microgravity have a slinky groove that owes considerable gratitude to Juan Atkins' Cybotron and Model 500 recordings. The nocturnal, reverberant sprawl that became the signature of Biosphere's later recordings of drumless space was in its nascent phase, but he was clearly ahead of the curve; and Microgravity certainly holds its own some 25 years later. As a side note, the first recordings that Jenssen produced as Biosphere were initially rejected by Nettwerk back at the time, only to attain considerable notoriety when R&S released those tracks along with all of Microgravity in 1992. This reissue contains a bonus disc (or, with the vinyl version, a third lp) of unreleased material recorded back then.

MPEG stream: Tranquilizer
MPEG stream: The Fairy Tale
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Two lovely tracks of nocturnal electronica from the perennially exceptional Biosphere (aka Geir Jenssen). While he recently produced the N-Plants album, a disc rippling with taut rhythms amidst his signature warm ambience, the tracks here date back to 2006 when he was working on the Dropsonde album. Both of these tracks represent some of the darkest work we've heard from Biosphere, marking a considerable detour away from his typical work; and we're certainly not complaining at all. Glacial and arctic references abound in this Norwegian's work, but on the A side "Fluvialmorfologi," they take on the ominous pall of what BJ Nilsen mustered under his older Hazard moniker, through sodden drones and rasping sinewave tones. The B side "Feber" is more in keeping with the somber nature of the aforementioned Dropsonde album, built upon a languid loop of minor-key strings topped with subtle effects and melodic interludes, not too far from the work of Leyland Kirby or the Konigsforst period of Gas. Great stuff, but we would expect no less from Biosphere!

Overt rhythms had seemingly disappeared from Biosphere's work over the past decade, as he had been building his lush ambient electronica from orchestral loops and samples. Dropesonde may have broken into an electronic jazz shuffle for a moment or two, but all of his signature ambient-techno structures seemed to be something of the distant past (especially from his 1994 album Patasknik). That is until the 2011 release of N-Plants, which is the first album from Biosphere to feature the drum machine with any regularity since maybe Cirque in 2000. Gier Jenssen hasn't lost his touch, that's for sure, as a clean, mechanical breakbeat punches through the slow-as-molasses basslines and heavenly ambient swooshes on "Shika-1." Blooping melodies march alongside the clockwork rhythms of "Joyo" and "Ikata-1," and "Genkai-1" could be some missing Boards Of Canada track from Music Has The Right To Children with its off-kilter sub-melody locked in step with a warmly cybernetic tumble of algorithmic notes and a gliding hip-hop breakbeat. This is all well and good as simply a great Biosphere record, but Jenssen actually finished this album in early 2011 as a study on the architectural designs of the Japanese nuclear power plants built during the reconstruction period in the middle of the 20th century. On completion of N-Plants, he saw this as a soundtrack to those plants, their relationship to the turbulent landscape, and the potential damage caused by radiation contamination if something were to happen. Little did Jenssen know that the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant would succumb to the damage from an earthquake and subsequent tsunami. While his precognition is downright spooky, the album is not. It's quite lovely and lilting even in its mechanical design.

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Most of the sensorially depressed semantics of the Chill-Out subculture that arose out of the rave scene had the pretense of such cutesy catch phrases as "I Think Therefore I Ambient." Ugh. The majority of the music that was championed within that early '90s Ambient scene has failed to age with any dignity or grace, instead fading away as mindless New Age drivel. Biosphere - the Ambient project of Norwegian Geir Jensen - has always been the exception to that rule, by never allowing his music to comfortably fall into the regions of aural wallpaper. His first two albums "Microgravity" and "Patashnik" would probably transcend their status as minor classics in their thoughtful recomibinations of Techno propulsion and Ambient utopianism, if it weren't for the ill-advised (though fashionable at the time) use of extra-terrestrial imagery. At the height of the Ambient-Techno phenomenon in 1995 or so, Levi's licensed a Biosphere track off of "Patashnik" for a jeans commercial, which had the same steroid-injected effect on Biosphere's sales as those of Spiritualized, Trio, and Nick Drake with their Volkswagen. Wisely, Jensen took the money and ran from commercial success. He has since declared his permanent base of operations to be Tromso, Norway - located some 400 miles north of the Arctic Circle - and has signed to the exceptional Touch label. Both decisions have resulted in a profound maturation of the Biosphere sound far away from the puerile Chill Out agendas. "Shenzhou" is the third Biosphere record for Touch, and continues to describe aural environments that are at once decidedly Arctic, yet wholly inviting and warm. Jensen has drawn a very direct line on this album back to Impressionist composer Claude Debussy by basing this album on some very old vinyl recordings of various Debussy pieces. The surface noise crackle may parallel that of the recent Touch production from turntablist Philip Jeck, but "Shenzhou" doesn't extend the comparison beyond their similar source materials. This is distinctly a Biosphere album filled with synaesthetic driftings, subtle rhythmic pulsations, and hypnotic loopings, all culled from the muted instrumentation of those Debussy compositions. Biosphere has yet again succeeded in crafting an exceptionally poetic album that is as accessible as it is subtly expressive. Recommended.

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Substrata is often heralded as the grand statement of Biosphere, and gets lumped alongside Boards Of Canada's Music Has The Right To Children and Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Vol. II as one of the best electronica records from the '90s. There's little to argue with such claims, even with a half-dozen or so of stellar records that followed this album. Originally released back in 1997 on All Saints Records and repackaged as a double-disc with Biosphere's soundtrack to the Russian silent film Man With A Movie Camera in 2001, now the album gets released on vinyl for the very first time, alongside the vinyl of Biosphere's latest, N-Plants. Like all great ambient records, Substrata works because of its subtlety, balancing soft-focus melodies that never assert themselves too much, but never fade so far into the background to become irrelevant. Given that his previous records smoothed out contemporary techno for the chill-out crowd, Substrata is a logical extension of Biosphere's sound for billowing synth-pad sequences and time-suspending ambience that never has to give over to the release of a big 909 backbeat. "Chukhung" cycles through muted arpeggios with layered chiming strings that gently rasps against the pastoral ambience to give the piece a crescendo of drama and softened tension. "The Things I Tell You" refines the tremolo / delay ambience that Pete Namlook was churning out into a quintessential Biosphere number rippling in time with an arctic wind pushing flecks of snow across a landscape lit by the midnight sun. Vocal snippets swimming in echo, aqueous passages, reverberant acoustic guitar plucks, and looped field recordings dot the album's resonant ambient hum, providing small signposts more to mark the passage of time than to assign any particular allusion. Biosphere rounds out the vinyl edition with a 14 minute bonus track entitled "Laika", although it's unclear as to when this track was produced. This album offers up beautiful music for lucid dreams.

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After a few very nice ambient techno albums for the R&S sublabel Apollo, Biosphere released the purely ambient album "Substrata" in 1997 on All Saints. Now a member of the Touch Records roster, Biosphere has reissued that album as a double cd with the

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Wireless is a pristinely recorded live album from Biosphere, the Norwegian pioneer of silken ambient techno, who has released a handful of stellar albums over the past two decades now. The set is a seamless interweave of various tracks from his previous records including the jazz inflected rhythms extracted from his Dropsonde album back in 2005 to the locomotive digital breakbeats on track "Kobresia" from his 1997 Substrata album, and sampling from Cirque dotted amongst the tracks. There are three cuts which hadn't appeared previously including a interlude of soft-focus static with field recordings and the book-ending "Pneuma" tracks that feature Biosphere recontextualizing the maudlin bellows of a trombone amidst his ambient wash and drift. For better or for worse, Biosphere leaves behind all of the Apollo recordings from the early '90s; after all, this was performed for a Touch Festival and released on Touch. So why not 'play' all of the hits from his ongoing Touch years?

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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. Using the recently reissued electro-acoustic masterpiece "Electric" by Arne Nordheim as the sole source material, Biosphere's and Deathprod's remixes are ice-laden, mesmerizing abstractions of sweeping electronic darkness.

These two heavyweights of Norwegian electronics have in fact been paired together on disc once before. That album found both Geir Jenssen (aka Biosphere) and Deathprod (aka Helge Sten) remixing various compositions of Arne Nordheim - the pioneering electronic composer of Norway from the '60s. Stator, like the Nordheim remix project, is NOT a collaboration, but a split release that alternates between the two. We definitely get the sense that Jenssen is hedging his sound towards that of Sten, as this album harbors a considerable bleakness within the radiant black drones that's far more fitting of the Deathprod catalogue than that of Biosphere. Deathprod's recorded work is very much a rare commodity, with his four albums that were released collectively on a boxset through Rune Grammofon for his epic black ambience and elegantly dark moodscaping. Outside of the boxset and that remix project (both of which are long out of print), there's very little else, making any new Deathprod material very welcome, indeed. As we mentioned, the album alternates between the Biosphere and the Deathprod material, with the Deathprod tracks sprawled as expanses of cold drone and Morton Feldman-like electronic compositions of tone, color, and pace. The Biosphere tracks are equally as impressive, as shivering, radiophonic works of tremolo'd ambient glimmering upon deep dark rumbles and the occasional step-sequenced ruminations that act as ghostly distillations of his once and former techno past. So so good!

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Pulsating electronic euro-pop from Sweden. Co-released by syrup-pop label Kindercore and light'n'fluffy electronic pop label Emperor Norton. The perfect place for this release to be. At times sounding very much like the soundtrack to Sega Saturn's Bomberman videogame. Soothing, swirling and sweet.

It's been 4 years since we last heard from New Orleans' goofily monickered Bipolaroid. We went a little crazy for their acid drenched Pink Floyd worship. And we were actually wondering what happened to them not too long ago, when weirdly enough, we got a call from a lawyer who was representing Polaroid and were thinking about suing the band! Fortunately, it seems nothing came of that, especially since only a little later we got a brand new Bipolaroid album in the mail. And thankfully it takes up pretty much right where the last one left off.� Tripped out sixties style psychedelia, woozy and warbly and weary and druggy, whirring organs, shimmery guitar strum, wild drumming, soaring arrangements, swirling space-y effects everywhere, vocals that are a dead ringer for Syd Barrett's, often doused in delay or weird "Hurdy Gurdy Man" style FX, but like on the first record, Bipolaroid take their love of Floyd and supercharge it, adding a heaping dose of Hawkwind in places, creating an awesome space rock / sixties drug rock hybrid. Some of the songs are slow and slithery and sexy, with fluttery flutes, moody piano, and drawled mournful vox, others, like the opener, are wild and rollicking with the vocals nearly buried under a psychrock blowout, the drums all over the place, strings soaring in the background, and everything soaked in fuzzy organ, sounding all Deep and way Purple. The rest hover somewhere right in between, slipping effortlessly from strummed folky meander to propulsive trippy space groove and right back again. Any one into classic psychedelia and sixties prog will most likely dig this a lot. And Elephant 6 folks might get into this as well, since it shares much of the same retro aesthetic. The recording definitely sounds of the time, and even the songwriting would be tough to peg as modern, in fact, you could definitely pass this off as some reissued unearthed psych rarity. But none of that really matters, ultimately, this is just a killer tripped out psych pop record, and like the first one, we find ourselves going a little nuts and playing it over and over and over...

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It seems like ages since we last heard from East Coast acid psych combo Bipolaroid, but in fact it's been about 4 years, which seems to be about how long it takes these guys between records, but as always, it's well worth the wait. The first two Bipolaroid records were big hits around here, both E(i)ther Or and Transparent Make Believe took early Pink Floyd as their starting point, but the band took that sound and stretched it way out, weaving woozy, tripped out, psychscapes, all whirring organs, fuzzy guitars, swirling strings, spaced out effects and laid back drawled vox that were at times a dead ringer for Syd Barrett. It was easy to get lost in those records, the sounds hooky and hazy and hypnotic, and even four years on, very little has changed, if anything, the band sound a bit heavier, the production more lush, the songs more propulsive and pounding, but also a bit more warped, almost like classic sounds dosed with some particularly virulent strain of LSD, the guitars a little tweaked and atonal, horns here and there, sounds drone and warble, pure psychedelia for sure, that minus the shiny new production, definitely sounds like it could be some unearthed sixties rarity. The guitars are wild and wooly, buzzy and fuzzy, squiggly and distorted, slipping from riff to jangle, wild psychedelic lead to wrapped tangled atonal crunch, unfurling melodies wreathed in wah wah, draped over loping waltzes, and swaggery stomps, the vocals still a laid back drawl, settled just so in the mix, lots of acoustic guitars, and swirling keyboards, the vibe is jangly and psychedelic, but also a little dark, and a little bit wasted, the whole record a gloriously twisted sonic funhouse mirror, a wonderfully warped collection of dark twisted modern psychedelia, that should for sure hit the spot for old school psych obsessives, but might also appeal to folks into more modern psychedelic sounds... LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!

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Latest blast of sixties style psychedelic pop from these aQ faves - two short sharp ditties, one clocking in at about 90 seconds, the other a little over two minutes, but that's plenty of time for Bipolaroid to deliver some seriously sunshiney psychedelia, chiming percussion, shuffling rhythms, dreamy guitar jangle, whirring organ, all dreamily druggy and a little bit garage-y, with a sound that like past records, if you didn't know it was new, it would be easy to believe this one some unearthed sixties pop rarity. The B side slips into something a tiny bit darker and more driving, the vocals getting sweetly falsetto in places - and speaking of the vocals, on past Bipolaroid records, the vocals (and the sound in general) were a dead ringer for Pink Floyd, but the now the singing has grown much more distinctive, cooler and weirder, adding a definite twist to Bipolaroid's sun dapped psychedelic jangle.

Transparent Make Believe was the first we ever heard from Pink Floyd worshipping psychedelic space rockers, and that debut is now available as a super limited lp, only 100 copies, each one hand numbered, in super swank hand silkscreened jackets, here's what we had to say about the record, when we reviewed the cd version way back in 2004: Holy Pink Floyd! New Orleans' Bipolaroid are definitely channeling some serious Syd Barrett on the acid drenched Transparent Make Believe. In fact, everytime we've played this in the store, someone has come up and asked if it was in fact some strange lost Pink Floyd record. From the first track, a bizarre hybrid of the Beach Boys' "In My Room" and Pink Floyd's "Astronomy Domine" you know things are gonna get weird. The Floydisms abound, swirling psychedelic swoosh, drunken Barrett-ish vocals, loping drug addled waltzes. But mix in lots of strings, some serious spaced out heavy bits and you have a totally wicked heavy rock Floyd meets Hawkwind hybrid. The sound is so authentic you'd be hard pressed to convince someone this record wasn't recorded 30 years ago. But who cares. Definitely for fans of all things druggy and psychedelic. And why not tease your psych nerd know it all friends with this long lost psychedelic gem before you bring the hammer down and shatter their already fragile egos!

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Another new release from local label Time Released Sound, and another collection of gorgeous haunting mesmer, this one the work of a duo called Birch And Meadow, which is David Wenngren from Library Tapes, and a Swedish vocalist named Sara Forslund, the two whip up a dark droning concoction of soft noise mesmer and lush layered torch song minimalism, the opener is a thick sprawl of droning thrum, layered and softly pulsing, wreathed in static and hiss, shot through with high end sine wave tones and buried barely there melodies, Foslund's breathy vocals settled right into the drones, neither drowning out the other, minus those vocals, this would be a primo slab of minimal dronemusic, without the drones, some gorgeous singer/songwriter action, but together, it's a gloriously dark and hauntingly psychedelic bit of avant songcraft. And while the whole record is not nearly as deep and droney, it's all haunting and languid, darkly mysterious and beautifully eerie, Wenngren crafting lush sonic backdrops, swirling tangles of reverbed guitar, strange creaks and moans, machine like metallic buzz, field recordings of footsteps and birdsongs, wheezing chordal swells, cricket like skitter and crumbling distorted low end, ethereal komische synth shimmer, weirdly processed melodies, haunting fields of crackle and hum, all of which Forslund winds her sultry voice around, channeling classic seventies British folk and transforming it into something more alien, more murky and moody, tense and intense, definitely one of the darker releases on TRS, and thus, maybe one of our favorites. As with all the Time Released Sound releases, there are two version, one super limited and quite deluxe, and as always, no expense is spared with the packaging, the deluxe version this time around is LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, and comes in a hinged reel-to-reel box, which is adorned with collaged images from a 100 year old book on butterflies, the front of the box cut out, making it resemble an old fashioned specimen box, a small magnifying glass affixed to one corner of the box. The cut out reveals the insert an accordion like fold out adorned with more butterflies, and hand colored leaves and flowers, beneath which lies the disc, in a picture sleeve, with printed lyric sheet. So nice! Then of course there's also the less expensive standard version, which comes sans box and insert, housed in a simple standard picture sleeve, with a printed lyric insert.

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Another new release from local label Time Released Sound, and another collection of gorgeous haunting mesmer, this one the work of a duo called Birch And Meadow, which is David Wenngren from Library Tapes, and a Swedish vocalist named Sara Forslund, the two whip up a dark droning concoction of soft noise mesmer and lush layered torch song minimalism, the opener is a thick sprawl of droning thrum, layered and softly pulsing, wreathed in static and hiss, shot through with high end sine wave tones and buried barely there melodies, Foslund's breathy vocals settled right into the drones, neither drowning out the other, minus those vocals, this would be a primo slab of minimal dronemusic, without the drones, some gorgeous singer/songwriter action, but together, it's a gloriously dark and hauntingly psychedelic bit of avant songcraft. And while the whole record is not nearly as deep and droney, it's all haunting and languid, darkly mysterious and beautifully eerie, Wenngren crafting lush sonic backdrops, swirling tangles of reverbed guitar, strange creaks and moans, machine like metallic buzz, field recordings of footsteps and birdsongs, wheezing chordal swells, cricket like skitter and crumbling distorted low end, ethereal komische synth shimmer, weirdly processed melodies, haunting fields of crackle and hum, all of which Forslund winds her sultry voice around, channeling classic seventies British folk and transforming it into something more alien, more murky and moody, tense and intense, definitely one of the darker releases on TRS, and thus, maybe one of our favorites. As with all the Time Released Sound releases, there are two version, one super limited and quite deluxe, and as always, no expense is spared with the packaging, the deluxe version this time around is LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, and comes in a hinged reel-to-reel box, which is adorned with collaged images from a 100 year old book on butterflies, the front of the box cut out, making it resemble an old fashioned specimen box, a small magnifying glass affixed to one corner of the box. The cut out reveals the insert an accordion like fold out adorned with more butterflies, and hand colored leaves and flowers, beneath which lies the disc, in a picture sleeve, with printed lyric sheet. So nice! Then of course there's also the less expensive standard version, which comes sans box and insert, housed in a simple standard picture sleeve, with a printed lyric insert.

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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. The debut album from this enigmatic New Zealand noise outfit who recently released an album for the great Drunken Fish label. Nauseating electronics, guitar noise, and cymbal crashing that comes off as an amalgamation between Solmania and Skullflower. Packaged somewhat annoyingly in an oversized 7" package and zip-lock bag.

Along with the recent reactivation of Kiwi noisemaker Campbell Kneale's Our Love Will Destroy The World project, as well as some solo work, comes the rebirth of his long running, and aQ beloved, Birchville Cat Motel. There were times, we'll admit, when OLWDTW began, that to us it seemed like less of a new group/project/sound and more of a new name, with the two 'groups' sharing the same sonic palette. But this recent spate of releases is demonstrating that there just may be a method to Kneale's madness, with Our Love Will Destroy The World focusing on a sort of prismatic psychedelic Ur-drone, all wild sonic tangles, fractured beats, and dizzying sonic density, and with the last solo record veering into caustic pure noise howl. With Birchville, or at least this new one, Kneale seems to be exploring returning to a mysterious hushed minimalism, a surprisingly expansive soundworld of gristled textures, of whirring thrum, static and hiss, the background here could be a field recording of some abandoned power plant, still running on low power, machines way off in the distance rumbling ominously, plenty of keening tones, everything dialed way back, shadowy and atmospheric. Dripping water gathers in puddles beneath the archaic machinery, the first nearly ten minutes is mostly a haunting wander through this strange alien space, until other sounds begin to surface, barely there melodies, grinding low end tones, fields of whispery shimmer, clanks and clangs, but again everything washed out and seemingly way off in the distance, the vibe here more like sound design, at times sounding like the ambience of Freddy Kreuger's basement, but when nothing is happening, just a creepy abandoned space, rife with malevolent potential, but otherwise strangely hypnotic and tranquil. Eventually Kneale introduces some pulsating kosmische melodies, which quickly erupt into a psychedelic soft noise squall, before exploding into a chaos of jumbled metal bash, and churning brownnoise howl, laced inexplicably with some distorted guitar riffage, as if the song might launch into some full on rock, and that 30 minutes was just a protracted intro, but instead, that riff just loops and loops, more and more lost in the swirling, dizzying noisiness above. Finally, for the last few minutes, that noisiness abates, and we gradually sink into more moody tranquility a la the first half of the record, all hazy cinematic drift, sinister soundscapery, and a final stretch of near Hitchcockian atmospheric creepiness. Housed in the now familiar Don't Fuck With Magic style full color oversized sleeve, and always EXTREMELY LIMITED, and aQ is one of, if not THEE only place in the US carrying this. Get one before they're gone!

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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. The opening track on Astro Catastrophies, this brand new triple disc set from Birchville Cat Motel, finds BCM tackling the RIFF, the static drone and blurred soundscape of past releases converted into a sort of druggy stoner rock, a hypnotic metallic krautrock. Think some minimal blissed out version of Kyuss, Circle, Pharoah Overlord, Gore, and Skullflower at their riffiest. In fact the sound here is similar to the transformation Skullflower went through when they released Exquisite Fucking Boredom. Harnessing all that free noise into churning spaced out riffage. "Sublime Prince Of The Royal Secret" begins like any other BCM record, drifting black clouds of low end churn, leaning toward the more overt heaviness of BCM offshoot Black Boned Angel, but then the drums drop, and the riff unfurls, a huge sun baked, blown out, glacial crush, looped and mesmerizing, repeated and robotic, the drums pounding, a gorgeously heavy and hypnotic dirge. In the background though is an epic expanse of grinding murk, and glistening shimmer, keening coruscating sheets of bassy rrrroooaaar, haunting chimes, and howling feedback, building until the riff and the rhythms are swallowed up completely. The rest of disc one follows a similar pattern, long drawn out smears of processed guitar, dense and roiling, muddy percussion and downtuned melodies, that seems as if they might drift on and on forever, before once again, the rhythm and the riff kick in, on "Driving Golden Dopamine", it's some unlikely splatter of clapping, that gives way to a strange stuttering Spacemen Three like riff over a motorik drum machine rhythm, and on "Divinity Soldiers", the washed out high end ur-drone becomes a chugging Hawkwind style doper up outer space exploration, relentless and intense, once again wreathed in glistening, glimmering shimmers of sound. The other two discs are just as heavy, and riffy and kick ass, each track subverting the riff, turning it into some blissed out BCM cloud of sound, but rocking in a way Birchville never really did before. Andee had been bugging Kneale to record a record next time he was in SF, with him playing BIG LOUD drums, thinking it would be an amazing combo, a crushing rhythm section sunk into a dense black hole of buzz and drone, and damn if this doesn't come pretty close. From stuttering single notes peppering a shuffling rhythm, the whole thing processed into machinelike loops, to almost My Bloody Valentine style blown out metallic bliss pop, to almost choral sounding streaks of glimmering high end sparkles over blurred guitars and fluttering melodies, to super chaotic kitchen sink clatter demarcated by a blooping bleeping drum machine, to the truly bizarre "Hells Silver Titans", that begins as a glorious chime flecked drone, but suddenly erupts into straight up AC/DC riffage (so much so that we're still not entirely convince It's not just a sample, and actually, after more listens we're convinced it absolutely is, a single riff, the clicking hi-hat, chopped and looped into a simple, head nodding jam, like Philip Glass composing with classic rock riffs, and finally, "Damn Infinity Hairtie", which closes the set with a slab of buzzing black noise, going from grim funereal low end, to amp destroying FX drenched stun guitar psychnoise freakout. As with all Celebrate Psi Phenomenon releases, packaged in that immediately recognizable wall paper sleeve, with three printed inserts, one for each disc...

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Another release from the oh-so-prolific Campbell Kneale aka Birchville Cat Motel. And as much as we scoff occasionally at musicians who seem to release a record a week, Campbell's output has managed to remain relatively dud-free, even being one of the most prolific. The difference this time is it's a real cd, not a cd-r, and not just a cd, but a double cd! Exactly the way this sort of stuff was meant to be heard, stretched out forever with plenty of time to develop and expand, burn brightly and fade away. Two discs, six tracks, all but one twenty minutes plus. Drone nirvana my friends. A low rumbling drone that over the course of 30 minutes swells to a keening resonant whine with clicking and chirping (think crickets, pebbles, geiger counters) splattered throughout. Shakers, chimes, rattles, and bells manage to be clattery and distinct, but at the same time become a meditative and sonorous whole. Warm chords stretch langorously into the ether, while instrument crackle and amp buzz provide rhythmic support before spreading into a gauzy, indistinct raga. Chords and notes are smeared into a noir-ish cinematic blur-scape. A warm fuzzy expanse of late night swoosh, bookended by creaking springs and ambient clatter. A forty minute coda of clatter and croon and creak and crunch and click and calm. So goddamn good. Employing an unlikely arsenal of electric, acoustic and fake guitars, synth, cheap organ, recorder, clarinet, contact mics, wired turntables, violin, bells, baby rattles, firecrackers, piano, cymbals, melodica, steel pot lid, drums, space phone, tape loops and floorboards, Kneale may have sealed BCM's fate with an all but unbeatably perfect two plus hours of divine Ur-drone.

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Bird Sister Blasphemy is the most recent release on Battlecruiser, the outsider metal sublabel of the mighty Celebrate Psi Phenomenon which in the past has birthed such hellish AQ faves as Black Boned Angel, Mirag, Mrtyu, Wardagger, Wings Of Vengeance, Wolfskull, You Should Have Slain Me, Ghoul, Ming, Cicadashrine and The Cops among others. This is the first time a Birchville disc has found its way onto Battlecruiser, but once you hear it you'll understand why. A�sort of a dark side addendum to the also just released (and reviewed elsewhere on this list) full length�Birds Call Home Their Dead. Four songs, twenty six minutes, a no brainer if you're a BCM fan obviously, and especially if you just bought�Birds Call Home Their Dead. The first track begins a dark meandering drone before the band launches into what sounds remarkably like a blown out version of the intro to Van Halen's "Hot For Teacher", and the song just sort of locks into step right there, turning that sort-of-intro, into a looped free-rock space jam, relentless drum pound, swirling clouds of freaked out FX, throbbing rumbling bass, and squiggly guitars and synths all over the place. The second track is like the harshest buzziest black metal record, made somehow even more harsh and buzzy, a relentless blast of blown out white noise fury, with some semblance of rock, buried way way way way down in the mix. Track three is some sort of tribal ur-drone free-skree raga workout, with layers of buzz and drone, what sounds like guitars and bagpipes and clouds of feedback and amp buzz and thick swells of screech and shimmer, all underpinned by a relentless drum corps krautrock rhythm jam. The title track finishes things off, and manages to take all the sounds from the first three songs and blow them to smithereens, whatever color comes after red as in "in-the-red", that's where this track is, pegged WAY beyond the red, a wall of vacuum cleaner guitar and squealing horn skree and some wild tribal drumming, relentless and circular, threatening to shred ear drums and speakers, before drifting off in a soft swirl coda of chants and mumbled percussive flutter. Phew. Maybe not as metallic as many� of the Battlecruiser releases, but in no way is this the softest or the easiest on the ears. Fierce and furious and dense and harsh, but as with most BCM stuff with plenty of melody lurking within the chaos.� Bird Sister Blasphemy definitely holds up on its own, and is as good as anything in the series, but�once you dive in, it's easy to hear the sonic connection to its�Birds Call Home Their Dead big brother, and it's equally easy to see that you probably need both!

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Latest blast of brutal beauty from the Kiwi king of soft noise, Campbell Kneale, aka Birchville Cat Motel.�Birds Call Home Their Dead is a three track epic, packaged in new ultra fancy packaging (more on that in a sec) and as always as lovely and dreamy as it is harsh and heavy. The opener, the title track, is nearly a half hour, beginning with layers of slowly shifting keyboard swells, little clouds of glitch and buzz, and a slowly developing krautrock beat. The keyboards sound like some damaged loop, yanked out of "Baba O'Reilley" and turned inside out, allowed to shimmer and shake, and to eventually erupt into a thick coruscating wash of jagged buzz and swirling noise. The drums remain an incessant pulse, like a Can rhythm track dropped into a Dead C b-side, and everything run through Kneale's magical bank of special FX. Like a supercharged outerspace noiserock Godspeed or something, that builds and builds and builds until the whole thing explodes into a full on in the red space rock free jam, like Monster Magnet, Hawkwind, F/i, Mugstar, the Telescopes, Circle and the Heads all jamming simultaneously. A dense cloud of FX, psych guitar, clouds of swirl and shimmer, streaks of feedback, walls of amp buzz and high end skree, all hovering over that unstoppable motorik beat. Eventually, the guitars drift off leaving just some strange random clattery and the sound of birds and insects and nature.� The second track is a brief burst of gorgeously languid high end shimmer, layers of guitar and tangled melodies as well as deep reverberant swells all woven into a swaying static sound field of notes beating against one another amidst a dreamlike raga drift. A pretty killer one two punch.� And as if that wasn't enough, for those of you who snoozed and losed on the recent ridiculously limited tour only cd-r�Her Anger Is Limitless, well, you're in luck, cuz that whole disc is tacked on here as track number three.�A single half hour track, created out of what sounds like manipulate samples of voices, is transformed into a massive glistening technicolor shower of sound. You know how when it's crazy hot, kids open up the hydrants and just run around in the street as tons of cool water rains down on them. Imagine a similar situation, except when the hydrant is cracked, out comes thick torrents of billowy fuzz and grinding whir, all sparkling and dense and warm and thick, and you just close your eyes and let the sounds wash over you and fill your ears. It sounds like a million guitars, and guys outside cutting down trees and tossing them in the wood chipper and some sort of futuristic synth battle and thousands of little bells and chimes and a roomful of amps turned on and buzzing with no instruments plugged into them, all smeared into one gorgeous glimmering sonic deluge. As always, so absolutely amazing. And as we mentioned before, this is the first release in the swank new Celebrate Psi packaging, a full color, eight paneled digipak style sleeve, the outside retaining the CPsiP wallpaper motif, but the inside offering all sorts of gorgeous photos and some minimal liner notes, with the cd affixed to a little foam nub on one of the panels. Nice!

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Two extended tracks from label overlord and sole member of the very prolific Birchville Cat Motel. The first track is 20 minutes of growling modulated wheeze, thick and low and rumbling, with subtly shifting melodies suspended jsut below the surface. Over the

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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. Managed to get a little handul of these back in, not sure how long they'll last.... Before you get too excited, Birchville Cat Motel, the long running project of Mr. Campbell Kneale, is still defunct, this is not in fact a new record, but instead, an album that was originally intended to come out as an lp, but for whatever reason was shelved, until now! So yeah, THAT you can be excited about, and should be, cuz this long lost sonic missive from BCM is one of the prettiest we've heard. One of three new blasts from Kneale's Don't Fuck With Magic label, the successor to his beloved Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label, the others being a collab between Our Love Will Destroy The World (Kneale's post BCM project) and Finnish noisemakers Tomutonttu, and the first release from Tmpls (Kneale again), a furious face melting blast of super distorted New Zealand noise. But this, what could be the last we hear from the late great Birchville Cat Motel, Came A Great Stallion Whose First Leap Sparked The Celestial Star, is dreamy and pretty and melodic, even by BCM standards, a slow, smoldering shimmerscape, all warm whirring thrum, swirling muted melodies, lush layered textures, it's like a Campbell Kneale Pop Ambient record, a glorious washed out landscape of blurred loops, of abstract ambience, plenty of buzz and rumble, but smeared into hazy streaks, all building to a gorgeously gauzy soft cacophony, before, wait for it� the drums come in. Yup, a buried rhythm, motorik and krautrocky, a simple skeletal framework, chugging away beneath a sky full of sonic solar flares, and fiery sheets of super nova sound, which seem to slowly coalesce into slow motion melodies, wound up in a darkly dreamy bit of krautnoise bliss. The drums do eventually fade out, leaving a soft focus squall of intertwined electronic tones, looped effects, and warbly alien melodies, a shimmery hazy dreamdrift outro� Wow! So good. How this remained unreleased is definitely a mystery, and as much as we hate to proclaim a record so limited as such, this just might be one of our favorite Birchville recordings EVER. CRAZY LIMITED! As in we have HALF the pressing, HALF of which we've already sold, so be quick, before these disappear.

Long in the works 'career retrospective' from one man free noise avant rock doom drone wrecking crew Campbell Kneale and his long running Birchville Cat Motel. Six discs, spanning the life of BCM, unreleased tracks, rarities, long out of print lathe cuts, lps and cassettes, a mighty impressive and awe inspiring overview of a project that as far as we're concerned has yet to release a bad record. Which is sort of mind blowing considering the sheer volume of material Kneale has released over the last however many years. So Chaos Steel Skeletons is definitely essential for all of you BCM fanatics. No matter how on the ball you were, how much of a constant eBay lurker you've been, there's no way in hell anyone, except the man himself, has all of these tracks. And the crazy thing is, this six disc set, is just a -selection- of tracks, a true comprehensive retrospective would have required some sort of box set of Merzboxian proportions. Not that we would have complained, in fact, just like most of you, we wouldn't hesitate to sign up for a 50 cd Birchbox RIGHT NOW. Just say the word. For BCM newbies, we would probably recommend Chi Vampires or Our Love Will Destroy The World, as Chaos Steel Skeletons might be a bit much, or a bit expensive, but hell, it's all fucking great, and the more we think about it, the more we realize that maybe there might not be any better place to start that a 6cd set. But now those unfamiliar with the Birch are probably wondering, okay then, but what the hell does it sound like? Well, as stated above, Birchville hovers in some amorphous musical area we'd have to label 'free noise avant rock doom drone' or something like that. Imagine Sunroof! and the Dead C and Reynols and Hototogisu and Vibracathedral Orchestra and SUNNO))) and Wolf Eyes and the disparate sound worlds each inhabits, now imagine one little man who can flit effortlessly between them all, going from grinding chaos to soothing drone in the blink of an eye. From huge buzzy fuzzed out ragas to grinding downtuned pummel to blissy ambience to plinkplonk and clattery mayhem to shrieking high end skree and everything in between. The stuff on these discs tends toward the noisy (there's even a sort of Sabbath cover on volume three) as these are what might be referred to as 'the early years', but even at his noisiest, Kneale manages to sneak in some wondrous melody or soothing sound, even if it does often get totally obliterated moments later. You can by these double discs separately, but c'mon, you're not fooling anybody, buying two discs of a six disc set is sort of like petting half a kitten, or playing half a guitar, or watching half a movie, it just isn't right!!! As always, SUPER LIMITED, handsomely packaged in cool wallpaper sleeves, and each disc comes with liner notes about each song, not always entirely informative, but usually pretty darn funny! VERY RECOMMENDED!!!

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Long in the works 'career retrospective' from one man free noise avant rock doom drone wrecking crew Campbell Kneale and his long running Birchville Cat Motel. Six discs, spanning the life of BCM, unreleased tracks, rarities, long out of print lathe cuts, lps and cassettes, a mighty impressive and awe inspiring overview of a project that as far as we're concerned has yet to release a bad record. Which is sort of mind blowing considering the sheer volume of material Kneale has released over the last however many years. So Chaos Steel Skeletons is definitely essential for all of you BCM fanatics. No matter how on the ball you were, how much of a constant eBay lurker you've been, there's no way in hell anyone, except the man himself, has all of these tracks. And the crazy thing is, this six disc set, is just a -selection- of tracks, a true comprehensive retrospective would have required some sort of box set of Merzboxian proportions. Not that we would have complained, in fact, just like most of you, we wouldn't hesitate to sign up for a 50 cd Birchbox RIGHT NOW. Just say the word. For BCM newbies, we would probably recommend Chi Vampires or Our Love Will Destroy The World, as Chaos Steel Skeletons might be a bit much, or a bit expensive, but hell, it's all fucking great, and the more we think about it, the more we realize that maybe there might not be any better place to start that a 6cd set. But now those unfamiliar with the Birch are probably wondering, okay then, but what the hell does it sound like? Well, as stated above, Birchville hovers in some amorphous musical area we'd have to label 'free noise avant rock doom drone' or something like that. Imagine Sunroof! and the Dead C and Reynols and Hototogisu and Vibracathedral Orchestra and SUNNO))) and Wolf Eyes and the disparate sound worlds each inhabits, now imagine one little man who can flit effortlessly between them all, going from grinding chaos to soothing drone in the blink of an eye. From huge buzzy fuzzed out ragas to grinding downtuned pummel to blissy ambience to plinkplonk and clattery mayhem to shrieking high end skree and everything in between. The stuff on these discs tends toward the noisy (there's even a sort of Sabbath cover on volume three) as these are what might be referred to as 'the early years', but even at his noisiest, Kneale manages to sneak in some wondrous melody or soothing sound, even if it does often get totally obliterated moments later. You can by these double discs separately, but c'mon, you're not fooling anybody, buying two discs of a six disc set is sort of like petting half a kitten, or playing half a guitar, or watching half a movie, it just isn't right!!! As always, SUPER LIMITED, handsomely packaged in cool wallpaper sleeves, and each disc comes with liner notes about each song, not always entirely informative, but usually pretty darn funny! VERY RECOMMENDED!!!

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Long in the works 'career retrospective' from one man free noise avant rock doom drone wrecking crew Campbell Kneale and his long running Birchville Cat Motel. Six discs, spanning the life of BCM, unreleased tracks, rarities, long out of print lathe cuts, lps and cassettes, a mighty impressive and awe inspiring overview of a project that as far as we're concerned has yet to release a bad record. Which is sort of mind blowing considering the sheer volume of material Kneale has released over the last however many years. So Chaos Steel Skeletons is definitely essential for all of you BCM fanatics. No matter how on the ball you were, how much of a constant eBay lurker you've been, there's no way in hell anyone, except the man himself, has all of these tracks. And the crazy thing is, this six disc set, is just a -selection- of tracks, a true comprehensive retrospective would have required some sort of box set of Merzboxian proportions. Not that we would have complained, in fact, just like most of you, we wouldn't hesitate to sign up for a 50 cd Birchbox RIGHT NOW. Just say the word. For BCM newbies, we would probably recommend Chi Vampires or Our Love Will Destroy The World, as Chaos Steel Skeletons might be a bit much, or a bit expensive, but hell, it's all fucking great, and the more we think about it, the more we realize that maybe there might not be any better place to start that a 6cd set. But now those unfamiliar with the Birch are probably wondering, okay then, but what the hell does it sound like? Well, as stated above, Birchville hovers in some amorphous musical area we'd have to label 'free noise avant rock doom drone' or something like that. Imagine Sunroof! and the Dead C and Reynols and Hototogisu and Vibracathedral Orchestra and SUNNO))) and Wolf Eyes and the disparate sound worlds each inhabits, now imagine one little man who can flit effortlessly between them all, going from grinding chaos to soothing drone in the blink of an eye. From huge buzzy fuzzed out ragas to grinding downtuned pummel to blissy ambience to plinkplonk and clattery mayhem to shrieking high end skree and everything in between. The stuff on these discs tends toward the noisy (there's even a sort of Sabbath cover on volume three) as these are what might be referred to as 'the early years', but even at his noisiest, Kneale manages to sneak in some wondrous melody or soothing sound, even if it does often get totally obliterated moments later. You can by these double discs separately, but c'mon, you're not fooling anybody, buying two discs of a six disc set is sort of like petting half a kitten, or playing half a guitar, or watching half a movie, it just isn't right!!! As always, SUPER LIMITED, handsomely packaged in cool wallpaper sleeves, and each disc comes with liner notes about each song, not always entirely informative, but usually pretty darn funny! VERY RECOMMENDED!!!

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The thing with Campbell Kneale's Birchville Cat Motel, is everything he puts out is great. Really. There are very few bands we can say that about. And even fewer who have such a ridiculously extensive catalog of releases. So what is it that makes one record worthy of Record of the Week status? Well, to be quite honest, almost any of the BCM records -could- be a record of the week, but every once in a while, BCM offer up something -really- special. And as much as we totally love all things Birchville and love to immerse ourselves in their (actually, his) blissed out ambient drone ragas, we can't help but love the fact that lately, BCM mainman (only man?) Campbell Kneale has developed a thing for metal, even proudly wearing a Darkthrone T on his recent US tour. Better late than never we say. The first evidence of this new found metallic leaning, was the launching of a new label (Kneale owns and operates the Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label) called Battlecruiser, a series of limited 3" cd-r's chronicling a weird sect of underground metal, mostly made by NZ noise / drone guys who had also caught the metal bug (two new Battlecruiser releases get reviewed elsewhere on this list). One of the first Battlecruiser releases was by an outfit called Black Boned Angel, which just so happened to BE Campbell Kneale, and was a massive pummelling sludgy black hole of SUNN-like dirge metal. Recently re-released on cd and reviewed again on the AQ list, everyone here could not get enough of Kneale's weird drifting almost ambient take on blackened metal. Fans of Earth and SUNN and all that sort of slow motion doom definitely found a new band to love. Little did we expect that Kneale's metal would leak on over into his main project, but it has, and we couldn't be happier. The first three tracks on Chi Vampires are classic BCM, gorgeous ambient prog, like a blissed-out take on Goblin's creepiest horror film interludes, with slowly drifting swaths of thick warm sonic swirl, sun dappled and dreamily indistinct, but also slightly ominous. Completely epic and the sort of music that either rocks you to sleep, or puts you in a trance, sending you on a trip through your inner senses, dizzying and mesmerizing. Those tracks alone could have had us pushing for a BCM record of the week, at last. But then the final track "Chi Vampires" hits, and it hits hard. Huge guitar riffs, not processed guitar drones, but ACTUAL RIFFS, bulldoze and crush all in their path, massive and intense, ultra low, and ultra heavy, with haunting heavily reverbed chanting offering the only counterpoint. This is like SUNNO))), but sped up to say 18 or 19 rpm, and with actual melodies, and the chanting, so creepy, like a drone metal ritual being performed at the bottom of a massive cavern, riffs filling the room with thick low end, making it hard to breathe, hard to see, the chanting distracting you only enough to maybe worry about escaping with your life, making it to the surface without being sucked into the blackness. The riffs eventually drift off, as the mysterious makers of these sounds trudge slowly back to the center of the earth, chanting as they go, the reverb of the cave turning the chants into indistinct vocal blurs, until they too fade into blackness, and you're left dazed, unable to move, staring into the void. So intense and haunting and heavy and utterly amazing!

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A single track, recorded live during Birchville Cat Motel's last European tour, in January, at a place called The Church in Copenhagen, Denmark. Things start off with what sounds like someone sliding the pews (if it is indeed a real church) over the rough stone floor, before those sounds are joined by tinlking, chiming clatter and a distant whir of compressed melody that slowly and subtly shifts and shimmers, hums and glistens, turning the jarring opening into dreamy, sleepy droning warmth.

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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.

[ aquarius records catalogue — B ]