[ aquarius records catalogue

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Showing results 1551 through 1600 of 3202.

A new ep from these solemn gents from Ohio. They've followed up their fine debut album Who Will Walk In The Darkness With You? (which we just got back in stock too) with another five shadowy numbers. Sex Brain is imbued with a slightly more druggy feel than the full length, but still falls in step with the likes of Tindersticks. Well done!

MPEG stream: Friends
MPEG stream: Dark Plums

The Black Swans third stop in the land of indie record labels is the appropriately named La Societe Expeditionnaire. Their music traverses the shadowed terrain between Tindersticks and Bob Dylan -- particularly in Noel Sayre's slow moody fiddle creep and Jerry DiCicca's vocal inflection. More rugged than the former, less travelled than the latter, and more raw and fierce than either. You might recall this Bay Area band's last two fine pit-of-despair releases the full length Who Will Walk In The Darkness With You? and the Sex Brain cdep which came out on Delmore and Bwatue respectively, but are unfortunately now out of print. But you shan't despair too much once you get yer paws on this new one because Change! packs its own deep, dark, earthen wallop. The electric guitars slash at the handwringing of the strings, then melt into snaking melodic streams. A gripping listen.

MPEG stream: Hope Island
MPEG stream: Coats

The answer to the title's question appears to be... The Black Swans! Although this band has been together since 1999, this is their debut album. Who Will Walk In The Darkness With You? contains some of the darkest, slowest and most brooding music this side of Tindersticks and the Dirty 3. In fact, lead singer Jerry DeCicca's deeeeep vocals are practically a deadringer for Stuart Staples' of the aforementioned band. For those in the most somber of moods (or for those wishing to be made so)!

MPEG stream: Song Without You
MPEG stream: Rocks In My Shoes

Two of the dudes from Polvo (who aren't named Ash Bowie) are back with Black Taj, which also include in their ranks members of the Idyll Swords. Rockin' out in more of a bar-band mode than Polvo...with some Far Eastern influences woven in.

As of late 2008 and early 2009, there's been some serious hubbub over Slumberland, the stalwart indie label of Brit-inspired, shoegazing bliss pop, thanks to a couple of kick ass records from Crystal Stilts and Pains Of Being Pure At Heart. So a revisitation into perhaps the quintessential Slumberland outfit seems appropriate. Black Tambourine was a shortlived project featuring two of the guys from Velocity Girl, a chanteuse named Pam Berry, and Slumberland label boss Mike Schulman. They only released three singles, contributed a track or two to compilations, and played less than five shows before breaking up in 1991. Go figure that Complete Recordings anthologizes all of these tracks plus an unreleased single. Black Tambourine's songs begin as jangly, melodic pop which gets tousled about in a blur of amplifier distortion piled onto reverb piled onto more amplifier distortion and just a little more reverb. Yup, it's the same wonderful sound that was also broadcast from the Shop Assistants, My Bloody Valentine (circa Isn't Anything, well cuz Loveless hadn't been released yet!), Jesus & Mary Chain, the Pastels, and almost any given band on Creation circa 1988. But no matter how great that all consuming shoegaze sound can be, the band has gotta have good songwriting chops; and Black Tambourine had 'em for sure. At times, there's that ramshackle quality of good old American DIY indie pop, but for the most part, the songs are effortlessly catchy and melodic with a swagger pushed forth by Pam Berry's reverb drenched and melancholy vocals. Still sounds great after all these years!

MPEG stream: Black Car
MPEG stream: Pack You Up
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A previous version of this collection became available again not too long ago, and we were so excited we decided to make it our Record Of The Week, and then whattaya know, a year later, Slumberland go ahead and repackage it, reissue it, AND add a handful of bonus tracks (ironic, since the earlier edition was entitled "Complete Recordings"). And this time they've also put it out on vinyl, too!! So if you negelected to pick this up the first time around, now's the time, and if you did, you just gotta figure out if you want to buy it again for the four bonus tracks, which are pretty dang great. Here's what we said about the so-called Complete Recordings version: As of late 2008 and early 2009, there's been some serious hubbub over Slumberland, the stalwart indie label of Brit-inspired, shoegazing bliss pop, thanks to a couple of kick ass records from Crystal Stilts and Pains Of Being Pure At Heart. So a revisitation into perhaps the quintessential Slumberland outfit seems appropriate. Black Tambourine was a shortlived project featuring two of the guys from Velocity Girl, a chanteuse named Pam Berry, and Slumberland label boss Mike Schulman. They only released three singles, contributed a track or two to compilations, and played less than five shows before breaking up in 1991. Go figure that Complete Recordings anthologizes all of these tracks plus an unreleased single. Black Tambourine's songs begin as jangly, melodic pop which gets tousled about in a blur of amplifier distortion piled onto reverb piled onto more amplifier distortion and just a little more reverb. Yup, it's the same wonderful sound that was also broadcast from the Shop Assistants, My Bloody Valentine (circa Isn't Anything, well cuz Loveless hadn't been released yet!), Jesus & Mary Chain, the Pastels, and almost any given band on Creation circa 1988. But no matter how great that all consuming shoegaze sound can be, the band has gotta have good songwriting chops; and Black Tambourine had 'em for sure. At times, there's that ramshackle quality of good old American DIY indie pop, but for the most part, the songs are effortlessly catchy and melodic with a swagger pushed forth by Pam Berry's reverb drenched and melancholy vocals. Still sounds great after all these years!

MPEG stream: Black Car
MPEG stream: Pack You Up
MPEG stream: Drown

Yet another psychedelic dispatch from the mysterious world of Black Thread, aka Greg from space/kraut duo Von Himmel, who as Black Thread explores a soundworld well removed from the monolithic collaged-krautscapes of the VH mothership, specializing in a crumbling, super distorted world of washed out murky, of muddy melodies and blurred ambience, merging the faded Victrola flashback of The Caretaker with the psychedelic soft noise of Tim Hecker, but way more lo-fi and homebrewed, utilizing all manner of primitive analog recording gear, the sounds seemingly dubbed from tape to tape to tape, then perhaps played back on a microcassette player held up to another microcassette recorder, then onto an old VHS tape, played back through a crappy black and white TV, recorded onto an old answering machine, then re-recorded onto a busted up old 4 track, before being broadcast at extreme volume, where it was all then recaptured a final time, and recorded onto a good ol' cassette. At least that's what it sounds like to us. Where the other Black Thread tapes tended toward the more melodic side of the soft noise spectrum, Aurora is definitely a bit more aggressive, and caustic, opening with a dense cloud of roiling grey noise, but with headphones on, or at least speakers cranked, this cloud seems to barely be obscuring all manner of softly tangled melodies, and slowly swirling textures. Eventually, the noise recedes, leaving some hushed staticky drift, some woozy foghorn like melodies, lots of crackle and muted feedback, the middle portion of the A side downright pretty, but soon that grey/brown noise rears its only mildly ugly head and wraps that prettiness in hazy sheets of pulsing buzz and near dreamy distortion, rendering the noisiness almost shoegazey. The flipside follows a similar sonic path, balancing tranquil drift with blunted noise, the sound erupting into gorgeous blossoming billows of majestic sound, buried beneath layer upon layer of sonic grit and recording detritus, which only gives the sound a faded, sun bleached feel, the B side definitely wilder, getting super crunchy, the buried melodies transformed into wild distorted squiggles, a heady swirling skree of psychedelic soft noise that eventually fades out and gradually works its way through various stages of static, dense TV static white noise, transforming into a a field of hissy crackle, transforming again into barely there, warm, liquid thrum, before fading into a hushed, haunting slow fade to silence. Like the other two recent Black Thread tapes, super limited of course, each cover is unique, all cut from a larger image. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!

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Black Thread is a mysterious offshoot from the likewise mysterious Von Himmel, aQ faves who have graced us with some of the most amazing and least predictable psychedelic gems of the last few years. With so many of the bands we love, things are coming from a definite rock n' roll stance, but Von Himmel have always taken a more meditative approach based around pure sound and less obvious influences. Which brings us to this tape featuring two sidelong excursions of blown out blissful atmospheres, where the sound constantly builds and morphs over the length of each side. There is a certain hugeness overall while also sounding, in the best and most dramatic way imaginable, very fragile. Swells of washed out orchestral melodies are overtaken by noise and looped to gradually reshape the sounds into new forms. As we like to say, this is a good one to get lost in. Just zone out and let it overtake you. In the process you will note a strange and beautiful emotional resonance lacking in many other projects who attempt to play around with tape loops and effects pedals. No, this is composition, creation, and expression, maybe not with any clear narrative, but the result of patience, understanding, and pure dedication. The sounds of decay and rebirth featured here are strangely majestic and somewhat gloomy, but never depressing. Sonically, it fits perfectly within the Von Himmel family approach but will certainly appeal to fans of Leyland Kirby, William Basinski, Indignant Senility, Tim Hecker, and the like. Come to think of it, it sounds sort of like the new Buddha Machine. Highly recommended, and not surprisingly, quite limited!

MPEG stream: Dead Antlers I
MPEG stream: Dead Antlers II

Shadowy Von Himmel offshoot Black Thread returns with another tape of gorgeous blown out meditations, where kaleidoscopic melodies decay and regenerate in equal measure. Sounds collapse in on themselves and billow out of the fuzzy cinders in an interesting balance between control and chance. Unlike the previous tape, Black Antlers, Descending Heliotrope Shards is more melodic and pretty, though the huge walls of looped sound conjure a similar overall density that manages to stand alone as something unique. Utilizing two 4-track cassette decks for some uber-primitive sound-on-sound recording, basically the sonic equivalent of a dirty needle, there is an element of randomness here that's super exciting and unpredictable. The process, though, fascinating as it is, ultimately plays second fiddle to the songs themselves, which display an inherent sense of melody and structure amidst all the chaos. The sounds are majestic and pulsing, rhythmic with a forward momentum that gives them their own sort of lifespan, but also disembodied and free from both the constraints of conventional songcraft and wanky new age sungazing. The method of creating music fits well within Von Himmel's approach, but also displays influences, specifically some electronic ones, not as readily apparent on VH records, such as minimal techno, industrial grind, and a healthy dose of earsplitting harsh noise for a tape that throttles as it soothes.

MPEG stream: Descending Heliotrope Shards
MPEG stream: Untitled

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

SORRY.

Latest mysterious musical missive from this offshoot of two time Record Of The Weekers Von Himmel, but unlike the spaced out psych of VH, Black Thread explore the dusty corners of the shadowy sonic underworld they inhabit, opening with what at first blush sounds like pure static, a TV playing between-channel snow, or a car radio unable to pick up any stations, but then the static begins to stutter and crackle, and suddenly it sounds like maybe an old record, spinning on a busted turntable, the provenance of said static though is not as important as the dreaminess that lurks beneath, as hushed hazy melodies drift and shimmer, surface softly and fade out. Imagine a sound somewhere between Philip Jeck, the Caretaker and William Basinski - a blurred, decayed, crumbling sonic beauty, the buried melodies wreathed in a warm haze of sonic detritus, those melodies gradually growing more and more distorted, eventually vying with the static for sonic supremacy, the final few minutes a gloriously blown out swirl of soft psychedelic noise. The relatively short title track acts as a sort of buffer between the two epics on either side, another smeared sprawl of prismatic noise, washed out and gauzy, a dreamily distorted ambience, that seems to grow more distorted and decayed as the track goes on, even glitching out here and there, but like the first track, it's the sort of soft noise that's more dreamy than brutal. And finally, BT delivers an opening salvo on the closer that reminds us of Skullflower, distorted and dense, albeit doused in hiss and hum and static, but then the underlying melodies quickly become the focal point, the song turning into a strange blown out lullaby, which quickly settles into a more subdued, tranquil Caretaker like drift, all faded and indistinct, washed out and weary, slowly working itself back to another crescendo, a shoegazey squall that fades out as quickly as it was created, leaving the tape to unwind in a fog of crackly noisy hum, which blends perfectly with the background tape hiss, for an ultra minimal final fade out... Super limited of course, as tapes like this usually are. Each cover is unique, all cut from a larger image. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!

MPEG stream: Orchid's Inky Vapor
MPEG stream: Intangible Star Arteries

Another new tape from this local experimental soundscaper, whose 'day job' is playing in spaced out psych duo Von Himmel, but who, as Black Thread, tends toward a much more washed out and ethereally psychedelic ambience, the sound of Black Thread settling closer to folks like Tim Hecker, or Philip Jeck, or even more accurately, The Caretaker, as BT's sprawling soundcapes ooze the same sort of faded melencholia, sounding a bit like old records spinning lazily on broken dusty Victrolas, miraculously still spinning, as they sit in some old abandoned building, the sound drifting through the empty rooms, and out the broken windows, offering a fragmented glimpse of what once was. Both sides of Pinkfire offer up a similarly wistful bit of audial ambience, the A side all gauzy and hazy and sun dappled, everything wreathed in hiss and hum, the melodies warbling beneath a patina of crackle and static, a sound out of time, the perfect lonely late night soundtrack, or alternately, the perfect score for a wander through some desolate city, an afternoon full of shadows painted by grey skies and impending darkness, gorgeously washed out and woozy, the sort of stuff we could listen to forever. The flipside is a bit more abstract, as if someone was trying to broadcast the A side from another time, or another world, and the transmission arrives garbled, dragging much of the cosmic interference with it. More gristly and murky, the main melody a bit more pronounced but also more distorted and damaged, to some ears it might just sound like bad reception, but BT masterfully sculpts the original sounds, and the decaying crunch and crumble, into something that captures the same sort of emotion as the A side, loss and loneliness, faded memories, other times, other places, long forgotten. Fantastic as always. And LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!

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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.

When we first discovered Black To Comm, they were described to us as sounding like Fennesz, Pimmon, and Earth jamming with Merzbow, which at the time wasn't all that far off. Since then, they seem to have dialed back on the Earth and Merzbow, leaving their sound much more shimmery and blissy and looped and electronic. Oval was another good comparison, with that same sort of underwater digital looped soft focus glitchscape vibe going on. The band have also seemingly become more of a band, letting the organic instruments show through, processed sure, but allowed to ring out and resonate, which makes their move to the Type label all the more appropriate. Their sound is still woozy and washed out and hazy and warbly, but on the opening track, everything is driven by a piano, it's notes reverbed and repetitive, a sort of chamber music set amidst a field of static and crackle, the delicate melodies, wreathed in constantly shifting clouds of electrical interference. The second track loops backwards guitars over a field of warm crackle, letting the loop define the haunting melody, the background buzz gradually intensifying, eventually building to a blinding, glimmering high end ur-drone, all the edges rounded so instead of a field of skree, it's pulsing wall of crystalline shimmer and buzz. Like a warped music box, the record plays out like some half remembered dream, delicate little melodies drift through a haze of moaning distant guitars, murky post rock is pulled apart into some strange spidery lo-fi dirgescape, pizzicato strings and urgently strummed harps are wound into a tense cinematic swirl, long streaks of clanging reverberating metal are laid atop warm vacuum cleaner drones, surrounded by clouds of clatter and clang, deep brooding rumbles finally give way to crackle and pop flecked soft focus easy listening pop ambience. Another gorgeous collection of mysterious musical manipulation, essential listening for any one into dronemusic, minimal ambience, abstract electronica or just strange and beautiful far out sounds...

MPEG stream: Jonathan
MPEG stream: Forst
MPEG stream: Hotel Friend

A brand new disc from this mysterious German outfit, long time aQ faves Black To Comm, who you might assume might be some sort of garagey rock thing based on their name, but nope, these guys make drones, epic twisting layered expansive beautiful drones, three guys, tones of instruments, but you might not know it by listening. Organ, tape loops, electronics, metal percussion, violin, toys, water, shruti box, bells, whistles, feedback and pictaphone, the recipe for sort of cacophonous Avarus style foresty free folk freakout is some hands, but in the hands of this trio, the sounds conjured up with those instruments is melted down, swirled and shimmered, smeared and blurred, into a looooooong single track. A gorgeously blissful hazy drift, at the center of it all is THE DRONE, a lush, softly shifting stream of layered tones, fluttering flickering notes and melodies, warm whirring textures and all manner of muted overtones, but all around it, a sea of other sounds swirl and spin, high end trills, mechanical creaks, slivers of feedback, glitchy electronics, and what starts out as serene and dreamy, grows ever so much more ominous, the sounds filling out, the edges sharpening, the heft seeming to expand exponentially. Instead of some sort of lowercase minimal dronemusic, the sound here is epic, majestic, sprawling spacedrone, blinding blistering sonic effulgence, a whirling ur-drone rife with strange FX, and a dense throbbing core. The last few minutes finds the spaced out drone wreathed in a soft cacophony of blurred noise, a patina of washed out distortion, a wild tangle of squiggly high end, the entire track a lurching, slow swelling spaced out loop, totally mesmerizing, and in its own way heavy and dense and intense. It's hard to get a feel for the power at work here with only a fleeting listen, but taken as a whole, these sounds surround you, and suck you in. Strap on your headphones and you'll find yourself falling willingly under Black To Comm's tripped out space drone spell, drifting endlessly throughout their gloriously and deliriously hazy, woozy and wildly psychedelic world of sound.

MPEG stream: Charlemagne & Pippin

The latest from longtime aQ faves Black To Comm is a bit of a departure, a soundtrack for a Singaporean silent film (one that has been soundtracked by other artists in the past, including Oren Ambarchi among others), which was apparently recorded while Marc Richter, aka Black To Comm, was under sedation and on heavy pain killers recovering from an injury, which seemed appropriate considering the film itself was about slowness and decay, sleep and death, and while we have yet to see the film, the music on its own is quite striking. A dizzying collage of samples and electronics, singing bowls and singing saw, and some singing too, the result is heady and psychedelic, dark and droney, grim and gristly. The opening track drapes some woozy crooning over a shimmering dronescape laced with wheezing melodies, glitched out electronics and random rhythmic clatter. The follow up track is much more contemplative and spare, softly processed acoustic guitar, gently glitchy, hints of Oval and Ambarchi, swooping backwards effects, a crystalline psychedelic folk, drifting along side more of those hauntingly crooned vox, those vox getting deeper and more dramatic and weirder and weirder. The music seeming to detune alongside. From there, the soundtrack drifts dreamily, delicate piano floats serenely through soft clouds of static, over lush chordal swells, all hazy and crystalline, the vox a dark dreamy croon, a strange sort of almost Caretaker sounding ballad, before expanding into an almost Our Love Will Destroy The World sounding soft cacophony, swirling swaths of tinkling chimes and woozy loops, layered high end shimmer and lush soft focus thrum, the vocals this time drifting way down in the mix, and finally, the score finishes off with a gorgeous bit of druggy cabaret, gauzy and bleary and gently blurred into a softly churning driftscape, rife with strange animal sounds, buried rhythmic pulses, and dark delicate vocalizations, maybe our favorite track of the bunch. Definitely a lot different than past B2C releases in some ways, especially the vocals, which for some here were a dealbreaker, but to most of us, it sounds a bit like Antony from Antony & The Johnsons singing over a strange swirl of dark electronics and abstract psychedelic loopscaping, a gorgeously haunting songsuite of dark electroballads blurred and smeared into something much more abstract and atmospheric, which we are digging quite a bit!

MPEG stream: Stickstoff II
MPEG stream: Water

A brand new record from this weirdo German drone combo (or maybe it's a one man band), and it's a doozy. We have been pretty into everything we've heard from BTC, so we were pretty excited to get out hands on this new one. In the past, we, and other folks have compares Black To Comm to groups like Oval, Pimmon, Fennesz, Earth and Merzbow, but the truth is in fact much stranger, and much more difficult to describe. This is definitely drone music, but it's so mysterious sounding, not all low end rumbles or shimmering high end skree, instead, it's a seemingly haphazard assemblage of sounds and musical fragments, looped and processed and chopped up, then woven into looooong undulating dronescapes, that churn and shimmer and buzz and whir, but also twist themselves into strange shapes, offering up incidental melodic overtones and subtle rhythms. And the strange thing is the parts really don't matter so much, in that they are eventually transformed into something entirely new. It reminds us of an exhibit at the museum, where a voice would repeat a single word or phrase over and over, and you would try to pick out the word, but it was practically impossible, the looped speech immediately turned into something sonically mysterious and impenetrable. Fractal Hair Geometry is similar in that the source sounds are super varied, but within minutes, even seconds, the source becomes meaningless, instead it is simple an element in a swooning and swaying and woozily hypnotic whole. Chanted vocals, whirring organs, mysterious shimmers, squiggly melodies, buzzing Theremins, electronic glitches, analog synths, wheezing harmoniums, and those are just guesses, cuz just like that museum exhibit, it's difficult to tell what the source sounds are. We also didn't try that hard. It's like trying to peek under the table to see how a magician does a trick. We don't want to know. It's more fun to get lost in these mysterious sounds. One track even introduces a muted techno throb, and for a brief second it sounds like the weirdest record Kompakt never released. It's really hard to describe this stuff, which is probably why we like it so much, check out the sound samples, and hear for yourself!

MPEG stream: Negative Volumes
MPEG stream: Orange Record
MPEG stream: Play Eggchess 3

Yeah, it's a legendary MC5 track, and sure, it's also a cool music 'zine, but now it's also a mysterious drone outfit from Germany. We were kind of intrigued when we read a description that described Black To Comm as sounding a bit like Fennesz, Pimmon, and Earth jamming with Merzbow. That's a lot to live up to, and while maybe that's not how we'd describe it, this disc is still pretty dang amazing. Dense collages of manipulated sound, processed samples and digital electronic improvisations, all woven into gorgeous dreamy drones and subtlely melodic sonic drifts. The first thing that came to mind was Oval, but where Oval created lush underwater symphonies out of skipping cds, Black To Comm are starting out with source sounds that are more organic, so the resulting sounds and songs are that much richer and more sonically detailed. Dense soundscapes of looped samples are stretched and smeared, twisted and tangled until the constituent parts became something totally new, and are reborn into new sonic shapes, some warm and sun dappled, others cool and moonlit, all of them dreamlike and otherworldly. And that's exactly why this record is so magical. The process may be fascinating, but it is quickly forgotten, once you're submerged in some murky mysterious new world of sound. There's nothing to do but look, and listen, to let the sounds and sights slowly sink in, like wandering through some alien world, where everything is fresh and new, every sound is a mystery. Each track is massive in microscopic scope. Look close and you can see forever in each of these songs, climb into your stereo and carefully work your way down, layer by layer, each layer a magical new world, until you arrive at the heart of the song, a warm, soft, dreamlike place, where you can lay down and curl up, and let the layers and sonic worlds wrap tight around you, drinking you in until you become part of the music.

MPEG stream: Laciffer Lacca
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One of two new seven inches from Irish label Trensmat, who most recently brought us those bad ass Hawkwind tribute 7"s. Elsewhere on this list you'll find the brand new Expo 70 "Sunglasses" 7", and this here's a new two tracker from German experimental dronelords Black To Comm, two mesmerizing loopscapes, strangely titled "The Soba Noodle Shop Incident" and "The Convenience Store Incident", both seemingly linked sonically and thematically, each crafter from a dense flurry of looped and repeated Reich / Riley style dronescapes. The A side is like Riley doing Sunroof!, a high end symphony of overlapping tones, locked and looped, mesmerizingly repetitive, all underpinned by strange percussive bloops and blurred streaks of creak and squeak, eventually, the sound of whirring machinery surfaces and transforms the track into an almost Boards Of Canada bit of squelch and skitter. The B side begins as another stretch of looped stuttering tones, faster and more frenetic this time, and within those looped tones, another series of strange sounds lurks, a fragmented melody, an off kilter counterpoint, playing out beneath, also chopped and looped, but strangely vocal sounding, as if it was some weirdly processed alien voice, the result is equally hypnotic and mesmerizing. Cool stuff for sure, a dizzying hybrid of Sunroof!, Boards Of Canada and Terry Riley, meditative and space-y, but dense and very very layered and kinetic. Packaged in cool full color sleeves, super LIMITED of course, already sold out at the label, so these are likely the last copies we'll see.

A brand new record from one of our new favorite drone outfits, the strangely named Black To Comm, who do indeed share their monicker with a killer MC5 track and a bad ass magazine, but whose sound is well removed from any sort of garage stomp, instead, these guys occupy some glorious netherworld where the sounds of Fennesz, SUNNO))), Earth, Merzbow and Troum all blend into one epic organic whole. Utilizing a relatively limited musical palette, organ, tape loops, feedback, vinyl loops, computers, voice as well as the less obvious kitchen gamelan and harmophon, Black To Comm weave epic slow motion doomscapes, as textural and dreamy as they are dense and heavy. The disc opens with huge organ drones, reminiscent of Niblock or Palestine, rumbling and whirring, massive waves of thick sound, while beneath lurk microscopic squeaks and creaks. The tones and layers subtly shift as does the stereo panning, making the sound intensely immersive and almost dizzying. It eventually builds into an impressive squall, with the addition of swooping and bleeping spacey FX buried beneath the cascading organ tones. And that's just the first track! The second track begins with a constant foghorn tone, mesmerizing and thickly layered, while far off in the distance tiny sonic events occur, melancholy pianos record crackle, the whole thing transforms into a cacophony off brass-like skree, piled atop warbly snippets of sound, somehow managing to remain dreamy and hypnotic, even at its most chaotic. The flip side of the first disc begins with a super dense blast of blinding sonic effulgence, so rich and thick and glistening, sparkling with a million fluttering notes all swirling and whirling and beginning to crumble in that gorgeous dying sun sort of way. This intensity eventually gives way to a strange acoustic second half, all serene steel strings and distant kitchen sink clatter. Side C is all rumbling low end warble, draped thickly over strangely twisted fun-house-mirror melodies and little alien squiggles of sound, the low end pulsing and beating offering up super subtle almost-rhythms. And finally, the record closer, which takes up ALL of side 4, and epic droning monster, that begins like just another slab of rumble and shimmer, before some serious dissonance is introduced, more brass-like tones that give the sound a very Nitsch like quality. If you can imagine a Pop Ambient Hermann Nitsch you might be close. And c'mon! Pop Ambient and Hermann Nitsch in the same sentence, in the same review, that is all you should need to hear. Way recommended. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!

Whereas past BtC releases have reminded us of Oval, in their manipulated glitchery and warm underwater shimmer, this latest, a split with Aosuke, is quite different, while managing to incorporate many of the same elements we loved so much about past releases. A nearly sidelong track that begins with a wavering Goblin-y synth, that buzzes warmly and endlessly, an epic stretch of near static drone, drenched in overtones and subtly flickering variations in texture, and surrounded on all sides by distant barely audible sci fi melodies and field recordings. Eventually this synthdrone is joined by another tone, this one more grinding and distorted, that slowly builds and builds along side the first, the intensity growing and growing as well as the volume, and the various surrounding sonic events seem much more frenzied, until everything levels off in some sort of Niblock style drone, the various layers beating against one another, notes and tones shifting subtly, the sound seemingly alive, flecked with shards of melody and bits of buzz and swirling effects. It's a glorious sound that enraptures and entrances, eventually, fading out and releasing the listener from their glorious trance. The side finishes off with a brief coda of humid late night soundscaping, the sound of the moors, or the plains, some mysterious dark emptiness, droning and ominous, with creepy reverbed vocals and all sorts of night sounds tangled up in the track's undulating shimmer. The flip side features a group called Aosuke, who we weren't all that familiar with, but whose sounds are as dark and gorgeous and Black To Comm's. But where BtC focus on sound and drone, Aosuke focus on melody as much as texture, with guitar being the focal point, a blissy soft focus guitar ambience, crystalline notes drifting through clouds of space-y effects and strange processed and blurred vocals, it sounds almost like how you might imagine a Durutti Column record on Morr Music might sound. Organic melodies, natural sounds, all tangled up in strange electronic soundscapes, very meditative, a little krautrocky at times, and so so pretty.

The killer, groovy music from around the world, out of the past, just keeps on coming... and more often than not we have the fantastic Soundway label to thank for such vintage international reissue discoveries. Here's their latest, a rescuing of the sole release, circa 1976, from a group with the promising name of the Black Truth Rhythm Band. It's an album rife with soulful call-and-response chants, polyrhythmic percussion, some spacey synth, funky horns, whistling flute, and sprightly kalimba melodies... We'd have thought the BTRB were an Afrobeat band from West Africa, but it turns out they're from Trinidad, so this is Afro-centric funk with a bit of mellow Caribbean, calypso flavor as well. Though, Africa is their main thing, and and we're not just talking the jungle noises heard on the track "Kilimanjaro". The BTRB has both a gentle touch, and deep, DEEP groove. So good, why the heck has it been out of print for so long? And why did they only make the one album? The occasional synth squiggles remind us of the JB's, like James Brown getting down on "Blow Your Head", but the real big influence here was probably Fela Kuti - and BTRB leader Oluko Imo (bass, kalimba, conga, flute, percussion, lead vocals, whew!) indeed did get to record with Fela later on in the '80s. This first-time reissue includes a bonus track on the cd version, while the 180 gram vinyl comes with a bonus 7" single, and includes a download code for the entire album as well. Damn fine stuff, highly recommended. Using those terms "killer" and "groovy" with regard to this album is NOT in any way hyperbole.

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MPEG stream: You People
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Backwoods Appalachian folk twang from this trio composed of fiddle, guitar, and clawhammer banjo courtesy one of the members of Virgina's drone-psych outfit Pelt. This is straightforward old-timey music with absolutely no modern affectations. Warbling vocals and the sounds of distant trains a'passin' by. Almost all the songs are traditional numbers such as "Fair and Tender Ladies",

RealAudio clip: Spike Driver's Blues
RealAudio clip: Fair and Tender Ladies

Second full length from Virginia backwoods trio who play old timey music heavy on the fiddle. Serious barnstorming party music. Cello and homemade baritone banjo make appearances. Any fan of those Revenant releases that have done so well here at AQ (Dock Boggs, Charley Patton, Charlie Feathers, Stanley Brothers) will like these guys.

RealAudio clip: John Brown's Dream
RealAudio clip: This War is Killing Me

Got just a little handful of these special Record Store Day singles from Thrill Jockey country string band the Black Twig Pickers, two songs of old school Appalachia and back porch bluegrass hoedowns, the A side a rollicking, foot stomping barn burner, all sawed fiddles and intense fingerpicking, replete with hoots and hollers, the B side though a much darker affair, a haunting dirge-like lament, a dark folk ballad all minor key, melancholy and brooding, with sorrowful vox and wailing mouth harp. Gorgeous stuff as always. Super limited too, so once these are gone, they are most likely gone for good. Includes a download coupon as well!

Third album from these Virginia natives formerly known as the Black Twig Pickers. Building on their previous albums the now quartet -- fiddle, banjo, guitar and bass -- has expanded their sound outwards from their strictly old-timey roots to include more of a bluegrass repertoire. They're vastly improved by the change, with the songs on this album having a greater variety of tempos and arrangements: from lush bluegrass ballads to sparse high lonesome tunes with scratchy fiddle and clawhammer banjo. Additionally the Black Twigs have been woodshedding their songwriting skills, the results of which here are a majority of originals and only four renditions of traditional numbers and standards. Those still lamenting the demise of The Bad Livers should definitely pay heed.

MPEG stream: Original Natural Bridge Blues
MPEG stream: Twilight on the Radford Army Ammunition Plant

Sinsemilla is a total masterpiece, originally released in 1980, but which somehow most of us managed to miss out on completely, until just recently. When we finally did hear it for the first time we knew this would be one of those lifer discs, a record that would never leave our collection, and that would get repeated play for years and years to come. Black Uhuru formed in Jamaica in the late '70s and with this, their third album they drafted the blueprint for the possibilities of how wide reaching and soul satisfying reggae songs could really sound. We stress SONGS as this is a collection of some of the most well crafted, melodic, catchy and deep grooved reggae jams we've ever heard. So good, it's tough to imagine that this isn't some sort of greatest hits album, every single track sizzles with a personality of its own that grabs your attention and keeps you coming back for more. With nods to Patrick Adams, a revolutionary spirit and a true yearning for that elusive state of happiness, this is a record that even though we discovered late, will most likely rank as an all-time AQ reggae favorite. Eternal summer jams!

MPEG stream: Happiness
MPEG stream: Push Push
MPEG stream: Sinsemilla

It's been a while, more than a year in fact, since we last got a batch of TRUE SHEFFIELD BLACK PSYCHEDELIA, but it's finally that time once again. We were beginning to jones pretty hard. For those of you who can't quite figure it out from the name of the genre, this stuff is black metal, and psychedelic, and most (if not all) of the bands hail from Sheffield in the UK. Beyond that, this stuff is pretty hard to describe, from blown out grinding blackened psychedelic post rock to chugging in-the-red blacknoise to glistening soft focus krautdrone to pounding distorted sludge to processed machinelike buzz and stutter, and we're not even just describing the genre, most of the bands somehow manage to incorporate all of those elements into one fractured fucked up and seriously and gloriously schizophrenic sound. We'd been waiting for a proper real cd (non cd-r) release from any of these guys, and while there have been rumors of a new Ice Bound Majesty full length on tUMULt (!), it was Black Vomit who were ultimately immortalized in aluminum and plastic first, thanks to those twisted freaks at Rusty Axe. But even by Rusty Axe's already freaky standards, Jungle Death is some seriously twisted avant heavy black weirdness. The sort of stuff that will have your standard black metal knuckle dragger scratching his head and reaching for the nearest Dimmu Borgir cd. The metal component of black vomit is a sort of metal that sounds like it was cooked up by Tim Hecker, Philip Jeck, Aidan Baker and Justin Broadrick would have conjured up in some underground lair, with no small amount of black magic. Guitars that roar and howl, piled on top of one another until they're so thick, they threaten to collapse your stereo speakers like miniature black holes, the riffs grind and buzz, blurred and smeared into huge heaving walls of blown out white hot sound, usually weirdly processed too, so buried beneath the roiling surface, lurk all manner of electronics and glitch and hiss and static. Sometimes the heaviness stumbles into streaks of sonic black tar, slowing the sound down into some blown out glacial trudge, and even then, it's no ordinary doom, the sound glistens and glows, it's heaviness more a function of staring into some alien sun, the beams of light transformed into sound, wrapping you in thick sheets of effulgent buzz and black hued shimmer. The various bits of skull crushing heaviness are balanced by some of the coolest drone and ambient music we've heard, from the rumbling, muted and melodic low end intro, that sounds like some creepy krautrock bassline slowed waaaaay down, to the glistening glitched out sun dappled shimmer of "Conderlint5", with it's mysterious alien voices and skittery crystalline textures, to the moaning lonely spidery guitar drift of "Last Cries Of The Lost". The record starts out damaged, and just gets more and more fucked and freaked out as it progresses, looped tribal drumming wreathed in swirling static, laced with strange samples, gives way to stuttering processed electronic grind, which slowly transforms into a sea of warped drones and Oval like glitches, all smoothed out into an undulating underwater soundscape, wrapped in jagged shards of distorted crunch and sonar like beeps. A brief bit of indie jangle, all minor key strum and sad lilting melody, explodes in a flurry of crumbling stumbling ultra distorted post rock pound, before slipping into some almost Pop Ambient sounding drift, only to again transform into some impossibly twisted bit of cinematic mood music, complete with haunting strings, and dubbed out drums, finally opening up into "Dark Beloved Cloud", the longest track on the record, all Burzumy and murky and buzzy and blackened, woozy and off kilter, with more processed vocals, tons of effects, long stretches of tripped out psychedelic minimalism, before the pounding D-beat climax, and then a soft focus shimmery fade out, which leads directly into the record closer, a warm warped swirl of deeeeeep thrum, and slow moving melodic murk, again shot through with echo drenched voices and bits of electronic twinkle and glimmer, fading out into nearly 5 minutes of near silence. Weird. But so fucking mind blowing. Totally wiping out any boundaries between drone music and black metal and ambient noise and electronic grind and whatever other fucked up sounds these freaks fuse into their totally genius and totally unique TRUE SHEFFIELD BLACK PSYCHEDELIA!!

MPEG stream: A Premonition Of Inevitable Doom
MPEG stream: Deluge From Hell
MPEG stream: Vigilance Night
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These oddly monikered aQ faves return with a brand new full length, and return to the True Sheffield Black Psychedelia fold, aka their original label Frequency Thirteen, after a release on aQ beloved and now sadly defunct label Rusty Axe. And what a return! Like past records, Black Vomit's sound is one that's tough to pin down, an ever shifting tangle of blurred and blackened sound collage, blown out super rhythmic noise rock, field recording flecked spaced out psychedelia, they pretty much all apply at one point or another, and impossibly sometimes all at once. It takes a while for things to get rolling, a weird creeping noise drenched into, all strange samples and shimmery layered low end, all glitchy and warbly, then some Sunroof! style high end raga drone, then finally, a thick low slung bassline slithers into action, beneath a black cloud of growling croaked disembodied vox, and then finally, true to the track's title "Forbidden Dub", the various sounds peel off, leaving just a tripped out spaced out dub, everything wreathed in echo and reverb, the drums careening wildly through clouds of cymbal sizzle, more mysterious samples, moaning guitar melodies, it's like a way more grim and blackened version of Sun Araw almost, a bastardized dub, that is teetering on the edge of collapsing into full on doomy dirge. Which is where things seem to be heading until the next track, "Riding Below A Sky Threatening Snow To The Very End Of An Empty World", explodes into what quickly reveals itself as some sort of fucked up dubstep jam, but Black Vomitized, so the sounds are all blurred and tangled, chaotic and abstract, a thick bass warble holding everything together, while beats stutter and stagger, and all of the other sounds blown out and in the red, before the record switches gears once again, laying down a bit of shimmery abstraction, before an avalanche of super distorted drums come crashing through a field of swirling electronics, the whole thing like an IDM Lightning Bolt. And so it goes, every song something entirely different, yet somehow linked to the song before it, and to the whole, a twisted songsuite of beats and buzz, of low end rumble and caustic crunch, slipping from synth heavy shoegaze blur, to tripped out reverb heavy space rock jangle, from creepy almost John Carpenter-ish soundscapery to bleary minimal low slung creep, and from distorted sun dappled dreambuzz ambience, to a final 20 minute slab of abstract synth-squelch, blur-bliss shimmer. So good. SUPER DUPER LIMITED too, ONLY 40 COPIES!! we got 20 of those, which won't last long...

MPEG stream: Forbidden Dub
MPEG stream: Riding Below A Sky Threatening Snow To The Very End Of An Empty World
MPEG stream: The Loneliness Of A Rainy Dawn Enshrouded Me Quietly

More True Sheffield Black Psychedelia!!! Which is quickly becoming our new favorite microgenre. As the name implies, the sound is black metal, psychedelic, and of course from Sheffield in the UK. Although black and psychedelic only barely scratch the surface of what's going on with these discs. Post rock, blacknoize, krautrock, furious grind, blissed out ambience, hypnorock, all tangled up into fierce blasts of whatthefuck atmospheric heaviness. We've already listed amazing releases from Ice Bound Majesty, Skultroll and a split between Dukkha and Black Vomit (see the reviews on the AQ website for more on Treu Sheffield Black Psychedelia). And we were so smitten with Black Vomit, we figured we'd track down more from them. So here's another blast of Black Vomit, this time teamed up with the equally distastefully monickered Rape Rack. Black Vomit start things off with some haunting ambience, that quickly gives way to some crusty fuzzy drone, eventually erupting into some fuzzed out metallic groove, which transforms into some grunting psych power violence, the programmed drums occasionally shorting out DHR style, a blur of garage fuzz pound, murky blackness, and relentless hyperspeed krautrock. After a brief bit of ambience, the band kick out the jams on a super space-y, hyper processed Circle-style jam. Hypnotic, and relentless, the riff wrapped in FX, the drums slipping from motorik pulse to furious blast and back again, over the top, harsh howled demon vox, a weird washed out blackened krautrock, that after another brief bit of drone tranquility explodes into some straight up black buzz. Awesome. Black Vomit are like Immortal's Blizzard Beasts crossed with Circle's Zopalki. We definitely need a full length from these guys. Rape Rack offer up their own take on black psychedelia, eschewing drums completely, for some intense textural black ambience, rough and gritty, hissy and crumbling, distorted and buzzing, melodies falling to pieces, being sucked under corrosive drones, the 16 minute epic that finishes things off, is smoother than all that, glistening shimmering cavernous expanses of digital buzz smeared into soft streaks of shadowy grey streaks. Not sure about the last track, it's definitely too heavy and fucked up to be Rape Rack, maybe it's the two bands together, but it's a killer, furious lightspeed buzz, processed and heavily effected, the vocals deranged and over the top, huge echo-y bellows howling in clouds of reverb and delay, threatening to drown out the din below. A furious black coda, that leaves us wanting WAY more.

MPEG stream: Dripping Red
MPEG stream: Witchtrial
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While we all wait patiently for a new slab of abstract heaviness to come our way from the lovely folks who comprise the Grey Daturas trio, we can spend a little time immersing ourselves in the dronier dirgier darker side of Rob MacManus, aka one third of the aforementioned Gray Daturas. So far we've only heard from BW (not to be confused with the -other- black widow), on a pair of collaborations with fellow Aussie noisemaker Blarke Bayer, so this here is the first real chance we've had to hear what BW is really all about, and we're psyched to discover it's all about the massive slow motion downtuned heavy dirgedrone. Like old Earth, or Sunn 0))) that sort of drawn out guitar drone action, but MacManus give it his own twist, sometimes letting the guitar just ooze and sprawl like some sort of viscous blackness, other times, offering some weird angular disembodied steel string thrum, but still drifting on a sea of droning shimmer, and still other times, unfurling a grinding, crumbling super distorted slow motion riff. Whichever way the sound veers, it's always infused with some haunting abstract melodic element, that in some cases is quashed by the sheer heaviness, while in others, it manages to float to the surface, glimmering and shimmering, while the grind and throb is relegated to the background. Good stuff, and more essential listening for the guitardrone legions...

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We've long been huge fans of experimental, outsider, bedroom, black metal outfit Have A Nice Life, so much so, that at one point, Andee was gonna release one of their records on tUMULt. Since then, the world has seemingly caught up, and caught on to the twisted genius of Dan Barrett's Have A Nice Life, and in the process, have also begun to discover the various other projects Barrett somehow finds time to mastermind. One of which, this record right here, might be our favorite so far. Not entirely removed sonically from Have A Nice Life, but at the same time something completely different. Apparently inspired by a recent illness, and the surrounding machines that barraged Barrett with various beeps and bleeps and tones, Black Wing is not even remotely metal, although it is dark, an it's not difficult to draw a line back to Have A Nice Life, but essentially, Black Wing traffics in a sort of gloomy electro pop, a downer darkwave that seems to be equal parts post punk, and new wave, but filtered through Barrett's cracked sonic aesthetic. The resulting record is a moody collection of droned out, minor key jams, built from cascades of sequenced synths, and primitive drum programming, all wrapped in a blurry, psychedelic song fug, and all in service of plaintive, echo-drenched vox, drifting way down in the mix. But don't get the idea that this is some straight up bummer rock, just check out "Luther", which sort of lopes and lumbers, until a second synth comes in and unfurls a gloriously melodic, and nearly sun dappled sounding melody, reminding us of a happier Cure, and when the vocals build into a lush chorale, this could almost be some outsider indie rock. The whole record is rife with those sorts of sonic surprises, the eighties production, the booming reverberant drums, the tones and drones, the buzz and shimmer that seems to underpin all the tracks, and the vocals, lilting, plaintive, a little bid sad boy indie sounding, but that's kind of what makes Black Wing so cool. It's indie pop doused in industrial crunch, a little bit burnished and blackened, but a crazy catchy melody, or sweetly swoonsome vocal hook is never far away, and really almost every track eventually blossoms into something impossibly pretty. "Black Wing" sounds like a home brewed, lo-fi, industrial-wave Postal Service, while "My Body Betrayed Me" sound like it could be some weird eighties reissue on Medical Records. While there are a few moments of twisted heaviness, the rest of the record plays out way more like some lost eighties synth pop record, albeit with extra fuzz and grit, especially the last track, which has an almost dance-y vibe, but one that is balanced by the strange harmony group vox, and a dense swirl of softly psychedelic noise. So good! Includes a download code as well.

MPEG stream: My Body Betrayed Me
MPEG stream: Unemployed

An "unplugged" Frank Black lets it all hang out on this limited edition cd and dvd set which compiles live acoustic and studio tracks that he recorded during his summer 2006 solo acoustic tour. The live footage featured on the dvd was shot at a performance in Sacramento, CA on that very same tour. Frankly (ha ha!), he hasn't sounded this good in years. His voice nails all of the far reaches of his broadly expressive range -- alternately intently focused, wildly reckless and lyrically piercing. The recordings are warm, reverb-y and sprinkled with audience hootin' and hollerin'. Some tunes do fare better than others however. Unfortunately like a bull in a china shop, he sorta tramples a few beloved old Pixies classics in the process. They might still please the diehards tho'.

MPEG stream: Bullet
MPEG stream: Wave Of Mutilation

Whoa! Twenty seven songs fill Frank Black's latest full length, a double-disc set! And it's a peculiar one. Not in a trippy wigged out eccentric kind of way, but just very unexpected and uncharacteristic. On the first disc, he's gone completely '70s country roots rock! This would be less unsettling if there were some tell-tale Frank Black Francis-isms in there somewhere, but after a few listens we haven't registered a single one! The one thing that should've given him away-- that is, his voice -- doesn't sound like him a bit. Sorta deep and gruff and weathered... or to put it another way, imagine Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen and Glen Campbell all rolled into one. Don't get us wrong this is not a bad album. It's exceptionally well done. The songwriting's as solid as ever, but it just comes across as very faceless. Was this a conscious decision? We assume so. However, that alone is the surprise (and ultimately for us the disappointment) of the first disc of Fast Man, Raider Man. Now, moving on to the second disc, we breathe a soft sigh of relief. From the first song "In The Time Of My Ruin", things are definitely more identifiably Black and characteristic of an album by such a (usually) distinct musical personality. That said, oddly enough we found many of the songs on Disc Two to be quite reminiscent of Van Morrison too. Having him swing into a rendition of "Brown Eyed Girl" would not be at all out of place. Non-diehard Frank Black fans might find themselves wishing he'd released the two cds separately.

MPEG stream: In The Time Of My Ruin
MPEG stream: If Your Poison Gets You

There was a time, before this current Pixies rennaisance came about, when a lot of us were jonesing for something, anything, by the Pixies that was even remotely rare or otherwise previously unreleased. Time was that your best bet to get anything was in mp3 format through ye olde file sharing program. Never the most satisfying way of scratching an itch if you're a music geek. We eventually got satisfaction with the BBC sessions, the Complete B-Sides, and The Blue Tape, but there are still some genuine nuggets out there worth putting on disc. A friend of mine, a swaggering pirate of the ethernet, once scored on a pillage a copy of "I'm Amazed" featuring Frank Black singing and accompanying himself on acoustic guitar. I've kept it in my treasure chest ever since. I swear sometimes I think it's better than the version with the full band that was eventually released. I always knew that if there was this one track, that there must be more out there. And why the hell wasn't anyone willing to make a little money selling it to me? Thank you Spin Art. For now we have that and 13 other gems from that same session, all classic Pixies tracks, all solo Frank Black on acoustic guitar. Like "I'm Amazed" these are all great. Whether it was all recorded in one session -- the result of a burst of inspiration -- or not, they're all quintessential un-restrained Frank Black. Obviously not intending these recordings would ever be released Frank gives running commentary on some songs "there's supposed to be screaming here", and even sings several guitar solos and a bass line. If they'd spent a few bucks more on the original recordings they could have been released as they were in 1987 and had almost as much impact as the Pixies. In an interesting addition to these seminal brain stormings is a second disc of classic Pixies tracks that Pere Ubu's David Thomas & Two Pale Boys re-recorded in 2003. We had hoped that this was going to be another collection of solo Frank on acoustic. Instead it's Thomas laying down all sorts of tracks -- guitars, keyboards, bass, drums, sequencers, effects -- using copious amounts of delay and, for the most part, destroying the great work the Pixies had done. To be fair, there are a few interesting moments: an added harmony on "Caribou" that's quite beautiful, some VU/Conrad-esque violin stylings on "Into the White" and a drugged out version of "Monkey Gone To Heaven". Just be sure to take off the disc when you've had enough of the 15 minute dub remix of "Planet of Sound" (never the best Pixies song to begin with). But after all is said and done we can't complain and can still recommend this with a clean conscience. After all, it's priced as one disc, so with the second one you can take it or leave it.

MPEG stream: I'm Amazed
MPEG stream: Oh My Golly
MPEG stream: Caribou

Though most of the throngs of Pixies fans poo pooed Frank Black's solo workings after disbanding the Pixies, both his eponymous first release and second -- "Teenager of the Year" -- were true underrated gems. Even now, I find myself picking up these albums to play more than any of the later Pixies releases, or any other rock record for that matter. So it was understandably a bit of a disappointment when "The Cult of Ray" was released, and following it, two more very disappointing Black albums. At the time, to me, it seemed that maybe a good deal of the creativity that went into making those albums was to the credit of producer / bass player / keyboardist Eric Drew Feldman (of Captain Beefheart's Magic Band & Pere Ubu) or guitarist Jeff Morris Tepper (also a Beefheart as well as a Tom Waits alum) as Cult Of Ray found these two conspicuously absent and the album self-produced by Black. With his sixth solo release though, Black may be returning to his prior songwriting glory. Returning to play with Frank for a few tracks on this album is former Pixies guitarist Joey Santiago, and Tepper lends a hand on banjo for one track ("St. Francis Dam Disaster"). To be sure, this isn't a 100% great album but it's got enough great songs on it to be an excellent short album if you just program your cd player to skip tracks 1, 2 & 6 -- at least for starters (your results may vary) and see how they grow on you in time. Among the awkward moments on this album that may require some getting used to are a couple tunes in which Mr Black apes the Rolling Stones ("I've Seen Your Picture" and especially "Hermaphroditos") and an homage to FM radio rock ("If It Takes All Night"). But there are some truly great songs on here, as good as anything he's done since the Pixies, which make this album worth giving a shot -- certainly if you own and or cherish copies of his first solo outing or "Teenager Of The Year"-- replete with Frank Black's wonderful ability not only to slip in and out of his wonderful falsetto, but his almost patented way of switching from a scream to a croon. Let's hope this is a sign of even better things to come from Frank.

RealAudio clip: St. Francis Dam Disaster
RealAudio clip: The Swimmer

This release proves how multi-faceted and talented Mr. Alan Sparhawk (of Low) is. In Black-Eyed Snakes, he switches gears from the sloooow Low loveliness to all rockin' blues garage with dirgy guitar and distorted telephone mic'd vocals. Playing it punk and

RealAudio clip: Honey
RealAudio clip: Big Black Train

Garagey blues rock meets Sonic Youth guitar squall. Yep, it's the second raw n' grungy platter from Minnesota's Chicken-Bone George and company. Chicken-Bone being better known to most as Alan Sparhawk of Low, y'know. This side project already proved with their debut from last year that Mr. Sparhawk's got some shitkickin' punked-out blues in him that Low's lovely slow sadness can't quite capture. And we're glad to hear it. Lemme crack open a brewski and crank this up. Sound distorted? Well that's the ideer ain't it! There's a dozen tracks here, including a stab at "Bo Diddley", each one fulla moanin' hollers, menacing grooves, high-energy exuberance and sheer noisy fun. Some w/ slide guitar guestin' by Tim from Califone btw. We like how it's all retro n' all but you can't quite guess what's gonna happen next, this is more creative and artier than it seems... Definitely a band in the running in the current garage revival for sure, if you're into Coach Whips and The Husbands and of course The White Stripes etc. make no mistake you oughta party with the Black-Eyed Snakes too.

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Former Pixies kingpin's latest release, doesn't disappoint.

Blackalicious, the duo of producer / musicmaker Chief Xcel along with lyricist Gift of Gab, here release their highly anticipated major label debut (anyone know why they didn't stay with Quannum?). Uplifting, substantial hip hop that's made catchy by Chief Xcel's obvious talent with beatmaking, distortion, and melody. Half of the tracks, however, feature guest vocalists, players or producers who all have their own signature styles that're more established than Blackalicious' style -- drowning the personality of the duo before we've even got a chance to appreciate / learn it. Most of the album sounds catchy and charmingly unpretentious, the music never too easy or boring. (There are a couple of bad slow jams on the record with the requisite predictable diva vocalists, but they're easily programmed out if you're so inclined.) And the album *really* finds its legs in the latter half, with four or five consecutive tracks that just kick butt. With Gil Scott Heron, Cut Chemist, Zack de la Rocha, Saul Williams, Lyrics Born (of Latyrx), Rakaa and Babu (of Dilated Peoples), Jaguar Wright (vocalist last seen doing backup on Jay-Z Unplugged), Chali 2na of Jurassic5, Money Mark, Miho Hatori of Cibo Matto, and more.

RealAudio clip: Blazing Arrow
RealAudio clip: Sky is Falling
RealAudio clip: Passion (feat Rakaa & Babu)
RealAudio clip: Release (feat Saul Williams and Lyrics Born)

Last month's The Wire cover-stars Quannum (formerly the Solesides crew) include lyricists Chief Xcel and The Gift of Gab, a duo otherwise known as Blackalicious, who have just released this new disc. Their Quannum colleagues DJ Shadow and Latyrx (Lyrics Born and Lateef) of course contribute. Deft, kick ass, and super righteous. Recommended.

Seeing as how Decibel, the Pressure Sounds anthology of dub plates by legendary UK producer / guitarist / band leader / engineer / sound system operator Dennis Bovell, did so well here it was kind of a no brainer to pick up this classic collection of dub-umentals Bovell released in 1980 under the moniker Blackbeard. Unlike much of the other dubs from this time, the tracks that make up I Wah Dub were not culled from vocal tracks, but designed solely as instrumentals. (Interestingly enough, it was only a year later that Adrian Sherwood would release his first African Head Charge album My Life In A Hole In The Ground.)

MPEG stream: Electrocharge
MPEG stream: Jazzz

[ aquarius records catalogue — B ]