[ aquarius records catalogue

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

Showing results 2501 through 2550 of 3202.

RealAudio clip: The Light On The Dalta
RealAudio clip: Simple Like

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

SORRY. WOW. And do we mean WOW!! Fifteen classic free jazz records from the late sixties / early seventies, long out of print, finally getting the ULTRA deluxe reissue treatment. Incredibly limited, these will probably be out of print before you know it. Comes in a gorgeous diecut fullcover three panel sleeve, with new artwork, as well as a huge booklet with the original album sleeve notes, new liner notes in french and english as well as a bunch of cool photos. So nice!

Completely mindblowing live 4 disc set from Anthony Braxton recorded in 2005. We got these direct from the label, only got 5 or 6 and once they are gone we won't be able to get more. they're a bit pricey, but the packaging is super nice, and it is 4 discs after all, of Braxton performing solo, running the sonic gamut from gorgeous and soulful to demented and ultra challenging.� It's hard to know what to say really about Anthony Braxton and his music. Sure he's a genius, and yeah he's probably completely insane, he's collaborated with Wolf Eyes which is something very few jazz legends would probably do, but his music, no matter how confounding, or how delicate and lovely, is pretty much always totally and utterly mindblowing. But by now, most of you know all that. And if not, for chrissakes pick this set up and immerse yourself in 4 hours of dizzying brilliance. Solo Live At Gasthof Heidelberg Loppem 2005 is a�massive 8 panel, 4 tray-ed digipak, with all the song titles rendered complex magic markered squiggles and little black arrows and numbers, each classified numerically as well. It's always been unclear the taxonomy Braxton uses to classify and catalogue his pieces, but it almost doesn't matter, it only adds to the magic and mystery, and it's all about the music anyway, and the music here is divine. Very low on the difficulty meter, most of the tracks here are lovely and lyrical, long drawn out notes, the sound lush and lustrous, the melodies alternatingly emotional and playful, dark and melancholy. This is absolutely essential for Braxton obsessives, but would also make a pretty nice introduction for folks who have yet to explore the Braxton and his expansive catalog. Way recommended either way.

MPEG stream: Candy
MPEG stream: Comp No. 307a
MPEG stream: Violets For My Furs

Saxophonist and composer (and professor) Anthony Braxton always blows our minds. Sometimes with his out-there jazz music. Sometimes just with his rather weird conceptual ideas. Of course, the two are closely related. This album got us right from the cover picture. What the fuck is that thing he's playing? We've never seen a saxophone that big. It's gotta be like five feet long. And then there's an even bigger one (the mother?) sitting behind him. Wow. On top of that, this disc, with Braxton's Diamond Curtain Wall Trio (sounds vaguely like some acid folk or "floorcore" band we'd be selling cd-rs or cassette tapes by), features Braxton not only playing oversized saxes but also doing live electronics via a laptop computer! Intriguing at the very least. So, of two recent Victo discs to come out of Braxton's performances at the 2007 Victoriaville new music festival (the other with a "12+1tet"), we've chosen to review this one. It's a single hour-long piece (""Composition 323c", the title being a drawing of a spiral intersected with a dashed line, joining a pink circle and a orange half-circle, with another dashed line branching off diagonally terminating in a blue circle, accompanied by the equation (40-B) with a vertical line and a Q under the 40... yeah that's way we love Braxton so much!). Despite the size of the saxes, this starts off all quiet-like. Braxton's bleats and blurbles respectfully leaving space for the electric guitar of Mary Halvorson and the various horns (cornet, bugle, trombone, trumpets, etc.) played by Taylor Ho Bynum. Together they weave a tangled web of sound, sometimes calm, sometimes frantic, full of bumble-bee flights of horn blurt balanced between melody and out-and-out skree. The guitar and electronics add further cross-currents of texture, a vibrating sheen of drone sometimes surfacing as the band tiptoes around melodies. And when Braxton wants to blow in the bass frequencies, those bigass horns allow him to belch out a bowel-shaking rumble all right! You'd probably have to take a music theory and/or mystic philosophy class to figure out what's going on here and why, compositionally speaking, but even for casual fans of Braxton's eccentric jazz it's a varied hour to enjoy.

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The first of two Anthony Braxton albums released in the BYG/Actuel series. Recorded at the Studio Saravah in Paris on September 10, 1969, featuring Leo Smith (trumpet), Leroy Jenkins (violin) and Steve McCall (drums). Pressed on 180 gram vinyl, original artwork is restored on a beautiful gatefold sleeve, with pics of a movie-star handsome young Braxton. Vinyl only. (Oh, and it's

Imagine Neil Hamburger backed up by a drunk Albert Ayler. Imagine the worst comedian you've ever seen competing for your attention with an avant jazz musician in the same room. Imagine a 10 minute comedy sketch based on the assumption that DVD stands for I mean, we're well aware that there's a healthy chunk of Aquarius customers that scan our lists specifically for things we describe as 'fucked' or 'ridiculous' or 'bizarre' or even just 'stupid'. Well, you're in for it now. You have been warned. Anthony Braxton, much revered performer/composer/improviser, in yet another incomprehensible collaborative epiphany, has finally teamed up with...a stand up comedian. It's true. And of course, it wouldn't be true improvisation if the comedian weren't improvising as well, so what we're left with, is a series of skronks and squeals, and a series of witty (read: fucking stupid) riffs on newspaper headlines that are NOT FUNNY. REALLY NOT FUNNY. I don't mean Neil Hamburger not funny, I mean plain old bad not funny...unbearably painful. So painful in fact that our own Andee qualifies this as a must own!!

RealAudio clip: Composition No.281

Another new release on Oakland tape label Sanity Muffin (along with Moevot, Starlite Coffins, Rich Jacobs and more on this week's list!), this one from new to us Oakland outfit Bre'r, who traffics in the sort of sound we can't ever seem to get enough of, sun dappled and dusty expanses of hazy drift, washed out and softly psychedelic, faded and wreathed in a sort of soft focus gauze, sounding a little like Stars Of The Lid recorded By Tim Hecker, or something that might end up on Time Released Sound, pastoral smoldering drifts of reverbed guitars, floating above soft swirls of rumbling drones and roiling soft noise shimmer, meditative and tranquil, darkly contemplative, blissfully burnt zoner drift of the highest order, the perfect late night soundtrack, the ideal headphone score for a lonely wander through the empty streets of some mysterious city, lush and lovely, but with just a hint of sinister sonic shadow. Gorgeous. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!!

MPEG stream: Loitered Reference In First Person
MPEG stream: Base Reading

Blurry, dusty, and hazy. That's how we like 'em. It's no secret that we've long had a soft spot for the woozily droning psychedelic sounds of Stars Of The Lid and Tim Hecker, and this template for ambient driftscapes can be all the more effective when dumped onto cassette with all of the tape hiss and aural detritus adding to the dreaminess of it all. Mobility In Six Parts by Oakland's Bre'r falls down this aesthetic rabbit hole thanks once again to Sanity Muffin. These longform, meditative tracks swirl and whirl with hypnotic slow-burning melodies repeating through the shimmering guitars and lonely soft-noise smolder. It's hardly the shoegaze model of overblown distortion denatured through an excess of reverb; Bre'r is far more of a lush minimalism run through pools of echo and the ambient hushed shadowiness of a late-night recording session in a rumpled bedroom studio in constructing an emotional soundtrack for somebody's personal communion with a lonely street light whose luminous sulfur glows in the night sky, oblivious to everything around it. Somewhere near the drum-less space of Tarentel and the instrumental folk-drone of Natural Snow Buildings. Limited to just 100 copies as well.

MPEG stream: Mobility Part One
MPEG stream: Mobility Part Four

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

SORRY.

Here's a cool concept, particularily if you could see 'em in person: a live funk covers band does the work of a hiphop dj. That is, they play a groovy medley of classic funk/soul breaks all segued together in a very dancable mix. On noted DJ Peanut Butter

"Don't You Forget About Me"

Hard to figure this one out. Ok, let's start with the line-up: Paul Lemos and Joe Papa of Controlled Bleeding infamy, plus the maniac drum stylings of Tatsuya Yoshida from the Ruins (!) on half the tracks!! Actually, Yoshida's presence here isn't *that* surprising, as he's an '80s guy no doubt into Industrial Culture scene at the time, and has guested on another recent Controlled Bleeding album. Plus the music on here in in keeping with the sillier, improv messing-around side of Yoshida's output. Lemos, Papa, and Yoshida are backed by a large band of horn players and others -- everything from clarinets to contact mics. Trombone, sax, trumpet, harmonica, violin, sitar, lots of absurd vocals, etc. All that gets thrown into the mix, mostly with a falling-down-the-stairs kind of sound. Babbling squawking chaos skronk jazz rock is what's going on here, yet while on the noisy side this is still kinda song-oriented. There's even recognizable if malformed covers of tunes by The Doors and Bo Diddley! All this is Residents or Sun City Girls-ish weirdness for weirdness' sake, no doubt. Probably *not* essential for Ruins and/or Controlled Bleeding fans, but some of you will like it. Watch out for the photo of Joe Papa as "Birdman Baby" inside the cd booklet, it's at least as disturbing as the music...

RealAudio clip: Infant Mode
RealAudio clip: That Joey Rejection

We've raved about these damaged metal weirdos in the past, from their band name (with its constantly shifting spelling), to the always garish and usually puerile cover art, from the amazing song titles (always "Something OF Something Else") to the amazing warped take on classic metal, and that's not even mentioning the twisted lyrics and ridiculous vox. As we mentioned before in a past review, we first discovered these guys on a split with faux handicapped metal outcasts Faxed Head, which makes perfect sense, these guys seem like Faxed Head's more earnest, equally drug addled little brothers, and their half of that 7" consisted of nothing but metal song intros, repeated over and over and over. Twisted but genius. The lps are not so high concept, in fact if anything, they're extremely LOW concept. This lp is not a new one, in fact, it's a reissue of an early record, but even back then, all the Breathilizor parts were in place. Album name: "For The Ultimate Pain Of Medusa's Love a.k.a. Evil Grotokhan VI". Check. Cover art: a drawing by the infamous Mike Diana (of Boiled Angel infamy) of a snake headed, Old Crow drinking, satellite crashing (?), limb severing monster lady. Check. Song titles: "Baby Of Witch", "Graveyard Of Night", "Nuclear Of Power", "Sombrero Of Doom", "Dracula Of Hell", and of course "Something Of Something Pt. IV". Check. The music: total classic metal riffing, with harmonized lead guitars, occasional bursts of blasting thrash, but usually more sort of eighties style riffery, and the vocals, ridiculous and over the top, sorta raspy and metally but also goofy and almost cartoonish, ridiculous over the top lyrics, shit, what's not to love. Total classic weirdo whatthefuck outsider metal radness! Includes a printed insert with all the LYRICS!!!

These guys have to be the dumbest, most brilliantly demented and damaged metal band ever. Which we know, is saying a lot, cuz as a genre, you'd be hard pressed to find a more concentrated selection of dumbness and ridiculousness, but then there is Breathilizor, tangentially linked to Midwestern retardo punks Sockeye, these guys first came to our attention via a split single with the legendary, and legendarily silly Faxed Head, the Breathilizor side was basically an epic metal intro played over and over and over and over. Every time, just when you thought the song was about to kick in, they'd play the intro again. And again. Sounds annoying, and it sort of was, but it was also funny as fuck, and the thing was, the metal was AWESOME. It didn't even occur to us that they might still be a band, but the man behind black metal weirdos Cloak Of Displacement decided to put us in touch with them and are we ever glad they did. Apparently, they've released an lp, and a clutch of cd-r's, but this here, is their latest, the ridiculously titled Metal Dump Of Outer Space's Confusion AKA Hamburglar's Toast. And it rules. And it's totally dumb. Let us count the ways we love Breathilizor. One: They change the spelling of their name seemingly arbitrarily from Breathilizor to Breathilizer and back again, whenever. Two: Every song is called "Something OF Something Else". Every song. On every record. This time around it's "Creatures Of Prehistoric", "Pirate Ship Of U.F.O.", "Monster Of Loch Ness", Count Chocula Of Blood", "Demon Of Ice", "Ghost Of Cowboy", "Gnome Of Entrapment" and "SLC Of Death Metal". Three: The music rules. They lay down some killer classic sounding metal, chugging hooky riffs, wild leads, pounding drums, somewhere between slowed down death metal and classic New Wave Of British Heavy Metal. Four: That classic timeless metal is balanced by totally goofy insane and ridiculous vocals, a whiney nasally Venom-y voice that more speaks than sings, cramming way too many words into each line, and spitting out some of the most ridiculous shit ever. Tales of monsters and demons and space and aliens and basically anything they think of. We could go on, but by now, you know if you need this or not. The dumb factor is through the roof, but goddamn it's funny, and the songs rule, and there are lyrics too so you can follow along, which only makes it that much funnier and stupidly brilliant.

Easily the world's most twisted outsider metal mashup. Damaged and demented aQ faves, Midwest metal militia Breathilizor (to read more about our undying love of Breathilizor, check out the review of their Metal Dump 7" elsewhere on the aQ website), teamed up here with the brilliantly monikered Doktor Bitch, who we know absolutely nothing about, but who somehow sound like Breathilizor's sick sonic soulmates. Before we get to the music, we sometimes like to take in all the visuals, all the non musical elements that help set the scene, and in this case, what a scene. Let's take the Breathilizor side first. The cover art is incredible, super glossy and full color, some sort of zombie holiday elf, horned and fanged, eating the brain and chewing on the spind of a soon to be deceased metalhead, all beneath the album title: Imperative Of The Electron Snake AKA Baffled By The Blood Moat, and their awesome, super slick new logo. Inside, there are band photos, assembled in the shape of an upside down cross, some of the band wearing corpsepaint, some regular dudes, and much mayhem and destruction evident. There's also the legend: "Breathilizor is a nun's laughter. A nun's laughter is Breathilizor." Hmmm. And then there are the song titles, as we mentioned in the review of their 7", the songs follow a strict title code of "SOMETHING ---OF--- SOMETHING ELSE", so this time around, it's "Troll Of Spinal Chord's Destruction" (guess that's a troll on the cover), "Mountain Of Manson", "Stevie Nicks Of Goat Head Metal", "Virus Of Hollywood Sequel", "Infirmities Of Metal", "Albatross Of Gossamer", "Softball League Of Satan" and "Something Of Something Part VII". And we won't even get into the lyrics, needless to say, they are insane and brilliant. On to the Doktor Bitch side, another glossy full color cover, this one featuring a brain fondling radioactive zombie, some Japanese characters in a square puddle of blood, and the band name in big 3D blood red letters. Inside over a photo of seamonsters beating each other with sticks, the band members are listed: Alozzamas, Necroponde and Pat Minotaur, as are the song titles: "Lavender Trainwreck", "Axial Rake/Radius Gash", "Have 'N A Relapse", "Vaguilla", "How Is That For Evil? (For Poopy)", "Super Fast Night Dump" and finally "You Chop My Head Off". There are liner notes to, most tellingly, thank you's sent out to "butt, eggs, ciggies and inmates". So after all that, what the hell does it sound like? And why do both sides/halves seem like they could be the same band? Well, that's cuz some of the Breathilizors are also in Doktor Bitch! So for those not familiar with Breathilizor, imagine some sort of classic chugging metal, a dizzying mix of Venom and Slayer, all tangled up with elements of doom and sludge, but focused mostly on riff heavy super rocking, and blasting thrashing heaviness, then of course there are the lyrics, delivered in a strange nasally drawl, a sort of underground outsider metal version of Jello Biafra maybe, jamming tons of words into small spaces, spinning far out yarns, and tales of the impossible, and the unknowable and the downright evil! Doktor Bitch, somehow take the Breathilizor sound, and fuck it even further up, wrapping it in sonic murk, and transforming it it into a grinding punky metallic noise rock, plenty of chugging riffage, but those riffs often collapse into tangled gnarled squalls of churning blackened metalnoize, before eventually returning to the riff. The vocals are grunted and gurgly, the sound chaotic and loose and frenzied, laced with the occasional bit of lead guitar, but mostly heavy on the downtuned low end, a muddy, blackened sludge drenched riff rock to counter Breathilizor's by-comparison classic (albeit fucked up and fractured) metal sound. Needless to say, if you like your heaviness damaged and demented and baffling and confusional and whatthefuck, then you just may have found you weirdo metal dream team match up.

It's hard to believe it's been six years since Title TK, the Deal sisters last "comeback" effort that polarized longtime fans into either defenders or dissenters. The unpolished production and sometimes awkwardly strung out delivery of that record left many people cold at the time. Yet as time moved on, more and more folks have warmed up to its rough sheen (or at least they are now admitting it!). There's always an air of dubious speculation and scrutiny around a Breeders release that you don't find with, say a new Black Francis album. Perhaps it's due to their scant discography (only 4 records in 18 years, 5 if you include the one-off Breeders-in-drag side project, The Amps), rotating line-ups, problematic drug habits, or the hopeful but unlikely chance that they'll outshine their 13-year-old breakout hit, "Cannonball". (They don't btw, but really they've long moved on, can't we?) So here we are with a brand new Breeders album, the best work they've done in ages, but one with scars still on full display. Using the same line-up as Title TK, the arrangements are still raw but with a richer envelope of production around the edges (especially with the vocals) that harkens back to their classic sound. There are plenty of driving rock numbers, "Overglazed, "Bang On" ,"Walk It Off", tempered with softer, majestic tracks, such as "Night of Joy", and "We're Gonna Rise". At the same time, they attempt to break new ground with various song forms, not all of which are equally successful. The Eastern trance atmosphere of "Istanbul" is stunning, but the Kelly-sung Spanish ballad, "Regalam Esta Noche" delves a bit too far into Linda Ronstadt territory for us. Overall, it's a great record but one with flaws. The first half of the record is nearly perfect, but stumbles through the second half where the flow is weakened by too many meandering changes from slow numbers to faster ones. The biggest weakness being the last song, which also happens to be the title track, trailing off into a long whimper without a definable ending, when they had much stronger songs to end with. But it's really not that the songs themselves are bad, they aren't. It's just that the order of the songs adversely reveal their faults instead of highlighting their strengths. We recommend listening to this on shuffle for best overall effect. Still, a new Breeders record is always welcome, and we'll listen to it to death because they'll always have those songs that make us achingly happy, even if we can't help picking them apart. Because when it comes down to it, we'd rather listen to the worst Breeders record than the best Black Francis record any day (although his new record might have us rethinking that)!

MPEG stream: Bang On
MPEG stream: Night Of Joy
MPEG stream: Walk It Off

Here it is... the return of Kim Deal and sister Kelley after such a long silence, and they're joined by a whole new gang of fellows for this Breeders incarnation. It's not a bad record (think how easily it could've been!) but it's not very exciting either. Sounds like they're taking things at their own pace and not trying too hard, despite knowing that both fan and critic expectations are probably pretty high after all this time. The songs are stark and nicely stripped down, almost like demos (me, I tend to like demos better than finished stuff in general anyway, see PJ Harvey's 4-track material). Their former trademark bright, jangling hooks and harmonies are scarce. Instead, the songs are darker, and steeped with a somber, melancholic edge. Ms Deal's deliciously precise way of singing is intact, tho' she sounds slightly bummed out and fed up, but still driven to make music. There's nothing here as good as "Cannonball". Byram equated it to a musical yawn. Windy gives them a little credit for not making anyone remix them. Yet. Knock wood.

RealAudio clip: Off You
RealAudio clip: Put On A Side

The first two and best Breeder's records finally get their well-deserved vinyl reissue treatment!! A portentous title if there ever was one, 1993's Last Splash was the bands biggest release, but one that crippled their lasting impact. With Kim Deal in full control and the Pixies broken up, she was able to broker this blockbuster release on the strength of a few singles, especially the mega-crossover hit, "Cannonball". That song played everywhere!!! Its hooky riff was even used as a sample in another worldwide smash hit, "Firestarter" by The Prodigy, securing Deal plenty of royalties. With Deal's twin sister, Kelly replacing Tanya Donnelly, the band gained creative intensity with stronger songwriting. But they also gained some heavy baggage, as their sudden superstar status took the band down some dark roads in order to deal with the relentless pressures of fame and touring. It took nearly ten years for the band to release their next record, but they were forever changed. One of the best alternative rock records of the nineties, at least time has been kind to Last Splash, still holding up after all these years. But not without leaving a near-fatal mark that the band is just now finally recovering from.

The first two and best Breeder's records finally get their well-deserved vinyl reissue treatment! Pod was first released in 1990 as a side-project for Kim Deal of the Pixies and Tanya Donnelly from Throwing Muses to finally express some of the creative freedom they were lacking in their main bands. Joined by Josephine Wiggs of Perfect Disaster and produced by Steve Albini, The Breeders turned out an album with far more potential and fun than either of the two records the Pixies (Bossanova) and the Muses (Hunkpapa) put out at the time. Though the line-up was short-lived (Donnelly left shortly after to form her own band, Belly), Pod has become over the years a widely beloved record with more creative urgency and risk-taking than its more commercially successful follow-up. It pretty much jump-started what music would become in the nineties and still hasn't lost any of its timeless power. So awesome!

If Bremen weren't Swedish, and contemporary, it wouldn't be a stretch at all to believe this was some actual Krautrock beamed to the present day from Germany circa 1971. And yeah, that means for modern kraut-psych hypno-mesmer, nobody is doing it as well as these guys. Which is even more remarkable when you consider that one of 'these guys' is also in garage-dirge knuckledraggers the Brainbombs. Bremen's latest is even more blissed out than their equally genius Second Launch from 2014. Hushed and hypnotic, each track is based around a single motif, the sound blossoming, and expanding like some old Super 8 time lapse film, wheezing chords, spidery guitar leads, pulsing and pulsating minimal grooves, it's dreamily psychedelic, and at times drivingly rhythmic, a few tracks exploding into serious hypno-rock churn, but most of the record's spent drifting through fields of kosmische shimmer, or unfurling like glimmering sonic star maps. So good!

MPEG stream: On Board
MPEG stream: Through The Barrier
MPEG stream: The Art Of Non-Existence

A couple lists back, we reviewed a Brainbombs related record called Regler, which was a terrifically and geniusly difficult listen (and yeah, we still have a few copies left, just ask), consisting of one side a continuous, blasting D-beat noise jam, the other side near silence, a high concept sprawl of musique concrete, ostensibly made up of all the cutting room floor between song silences, but c'mon, why wouldn't you expect difficult listening from one of the Brainbombs? Somehow we missed out on the debut from this -other- Brainbombs offshoot, which is a much easier sonic pill to swallow for sure, but still plenty weird. In fact, if you can imagine the droned out miserablist garage sludge of that band, recast as something more tripped out and krautrocky, well, then Bremen is right up your alley. Long tracks, consisting of loping basslines, motorik rhythms, woozy, psychedelic organs, all blurred into hazy mesmeric grooves, with some weird fixation on space, so there's definitely something kosmische going on, but it's murky, and muddy, lo-fi, tranced out and darkly druggy, long layered tones draped over skeletal rhythms, and wreathed in thick siren like swirls, and nestled in thick, syrupy low-end. And that's just the first track. The sound slips into something much more ambient and downright dreamy, a swirling hazy of disembodied guitar buzz, and smeared organ chords, slivers of reversed twang, all stretched way out into a dark, mellifluous thrum, haunting and downright lovely, eventually, blossoming into sweetly soaring, harmonic flecked psychedelic shimmer. For the rest of the lp, the sound remains rooted firmly in the abstract, ditching the drums completely, instead unfurling lush waves of psychedelic space drift, droned out kraut-psych, and softly swirling cosmic ambience, only slipping into something rhythmic right near the end, a pulsing tribal rhythm surfacing amidst the pulsing murk. And so it goes, the 3rd side sounds like some strange hybrid of Expo '70 and Earth, lacing shimmering synths, with twang flecked riffage, a sprawling ambience, that sounds like the soundtrack to a moonlit desert beneath a field of stars. And that track is also pocked with coughing, as if this was just a couple guys messing around, which maybe it is, but it's also sort of weirdly transcendent and beautiful, especially considering it's the guy from the Brainbombs!!! The final side is even more blessed out and pretty, a spare, almost Durutti Column-ish guitarscape, that drifts and glimmers and shimmers, all washed out and sound dappled and impossibly lovely. Wow. Unexpected, and unexpectedly fantastic. Not at all necessarily recommended for fans of the Brainbombs, but anyone into spacey, shimmery prettiness, and psychedelic cosmic ambience, this will definitely hit the spot.

Tape splice surrealism of the Californian variety, care of the madmen and women of the Butte County Free Music Society, which began as something of a homage and something of a challenge to the more well known Los Angeles Free Music Society. Pseudonyms abound here, starting with the fictional Bren't Lewiis, though we can track some of these characters back to the olden days of Bananafish, that now defunct yet still delicious literary journal of crackpot / cracked-out critique. Those familiar with the unhinged, aestheticized helter-skelter of LAMFS's tape trawling, or the exasperated comedic collages of Nurse With Wound and irr. app. (ext.), or the Don Joyce era Negativland will STILL be baffled by the out-there, freeform, musique concrete sleights of hand of the Bren't Lewiis Ensemble, whose effluvia of found-sound, thoroughly fucked songsmithery (yes, there is a Van Morrison cover of one of his infamous contractual obligation tracks), radio drama gone wrong, culture jammed radiophonia, YouTube sensations, and straight-up bullshit about jellyfish make for one hell of a listen.

MPEG stream: Ringworm
MPEG stream: Chewing Gum Makes You Fall Over
MPEG stream: T.V. Cheese

Finally managed to get enough of these to list, the debut release from the oddly monikered Brennendes Gehirn, aka Matt Harries, who in his guise as BG, creates dense, stormy landscapes of sound, crumbling distorted atmospheres and murky buried melodies, squall of bristling chaotic blacknoise, and dark sprawls of haunting minimal drift. A mix of black ambience, post industrial, and electronic soundscaping, BG is the sort of thing that should appeal to fans of Tenhornedbeast, MZ412, Wolf Eyes, Wraiths, Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, Scorn and the like. Scorn seems like an odd one to include, but it's an occasional tendency toward a sort of beat driven sound that makes this truly unique, while the opening track follows a fairly standard slow build, from creeping drone-y dread to explosive roiling heaviness, the second track mixes it up, launching right into a blast of blaring howl and skree, but letting those sounds settle, and blur into each other, creating a sort of gauzy sonic patina beneath which melodies drift and unfurl, layers shift and transform, it's a drone, and a noisy one at that, but it's super active and constantly in motion, with the sort of momentum that this sort of sound usually lacks. "Annihilation (Awakens New Life)" is where it starts to get REALLY good, a looped sample of some sort of zither, over a simple hand drum rhythm, all over a dense undulating sprawl of crumbling superdistorted blackness, then some female vocals come in, are doused with effects, and the track lurches into motion, a sort of Muslimgauze via Merzbow, tripped out and heavy, but darkly rhythmic, the noise is peeled away, the drums skitter and shuffle, and then the noise returns TENfold, a massive cascade of churning almost metallic sounding riffage (although it sounds like some strange sample), before drifting off in a haze of blur and buzz. Then there's "Elegie Fur Clemens Scheitz", which is a fantastically grimy slab of downtempo loop-age, like Portishead looped and spinning at 16 rpm, super druggy and totally mesmerizing, the beat and groove surrounded on all sides by heaving barrages of noise, might be the coolest track here. But hang on for the epic 21 minute closer, that again sets a super abstract echo drenched beat down, in a wide open expanse of weird reverby emptiness, the beat never really gaining any sort of momentum, instead, the sounds seem to get more and more low fidelity, the track a slow smoldering ur-drone, constantly changing timbre, from murky and muddy, to bright and brittle, and finally to psychedelic cacophony. Interestingly enough, that 'beat' surfaces subtly throughout, as does a strange sampled voice (from Mullholland Drive), finishing off with some melancholic piano, and a surprising final burst of caustic noise. Beautifully packaged in hand stamped cardstock digpak style sleeves, released on Ordo Pestilentia, the label run by Wraiths, and most likely very very limited.

MPEG stream: Over Man And Beast His Flaming Sword
MPEG stream: Chorea Imagnativa Aestimative

Now available on vinyl!!! The hermetic concern with dualities, whether they be natural and spiritual, mysteries veiled and revealed, fertility and drought, or as the the title of this disc alludes to the religiously symbolic wolf and lamb, greatly inform this collaboration between avant-lutist Jozef Van Wissem and twelve-string wunderkind James Blackshaw. Named after a 13th century cult of Northern European heretics, this is the second installment for the duo, who give us four more pieces to mirror the four from the first installment. Where on their debut disc we felt the sonic fullness of Blackshaw's cascading twelve string repetitions and on one track Van Wissem's progressive use of distorted electronics, on this new album, the sound is more ascetically restrained, favoring Van Wissem's use of reconfigured medieval and classical renaissance compositions into spiraling but lyrically melodic motifs in which Blackshaw adds interlocking labyrinthian figures in DADEAD tuning. This is sacred music for mad monks!

MPEG stream: The Wolf Also Shall Dwell with The Lamb
MPEG stream: Into The Dust of The Earth

Brethren indeed. This is the work of two consummate stringed instrument manipulators working in the improvised avant-folk idiom... Brother #1, from England, AQ fave James Blackshaw (who just blew us away with an amazing solo instore performance two weeks ago!), a dexterous master of the 12 string guitar. Brother #2, from Belgium, Renaissance lute player Jozef Van Wissem (who was also recently scheduled for an AQ instore alongside his pal Tetuzi Akiyama but unfortunately had to cancel due to a bad cold or flu). Van Wissem has received acclaim from us and others for his solo recordings incorporating electronics and field recordings alongside his innovations on classical lute improvisation. Together, it's a perfect pairing, Blackshaw and Van Wissem conjuring a delicately dense intertwining of forward-flowing fingerpicked minimalist melodies... stately spiritual praises that are all instrumental but for a brief Current 93ish spoken coda to track one, "...The Lifting Of The Veil". And track three, "How The Unencumbered Soul Advises That One Not Refuse The Calls Of A Good Spirit", is more of an electrically-charged, expansive soundscape of moody string-strike. Electronics, "tennis edits" (??) and the "feline vocals" of one Bun Bun are also woven into the mix with Blackshaw's 12 string and Van Wissem's baroque lute. To sum up: alchemical loveliness, utterly mesmeric! Really our only complaint about this is also a compliment: at just under a half hour total (28:39), we wish it were longer! The trance-like reveries this induces are too soon interrupted unless we set our cd player on repeat... (not an option with the super-limited vinyl version of this of course.) That's right, the lp version is LIMITED TO 330 COPIES. Whereas the cd is limited to a mere 1000. And we only have a few of the vinyl...

MPEG stream: ...The Lifting Of The Veil
MPEG stream: All Things Are From Him, Through Him And In Him

The hermetic concern with dualities, whether they be natural and spiritual, mysteries veiled and revealed, fertility and drought, or as the the title of this disc alludes to the religiously symbolic wolf and lamb, greatly inform this collaboration between avant-lutist Jozef Van Wissem and twelve-string wunderkind James Blackshaw. Named after a 13th century cult of Northern European heretics, this is the second installment for the duo, who give us four more pieces to mirror the four from the first installment. Where on their debut disc we felt the sonic fullness of Blackshaw's cascading twelve string repetitions and on one track Van Wissem's progressive use of distorted electronics, on this new album, the sound is more ascetically restrained, favoring Van Wissem's use of reconfigured medieval and classical renaissance compositions into spiraling but lyrically melodic motifs in which Blackshaw adds interlocking labyrinthian figures in DADEAD tuning. This is sacred music for mad monks!

MPEG stream: The Wolf Also Shall Dwell with The Lamb
MPEG stream: Into The Dust of The Earth

Frank Bretschneider is one of the founders of the German electronic collective Raster / Noton, recording as both Komet and Produkt. For his second record with Mille Plateaux, he has kept things very simple, even for the ultra-stripped down simplicity of minimalist techno that has defined the Raster sound. "Curve" begins with a simple slow motion bass techno pulse around 80-85 bpm

RealAudio clip: Blue
RealAudio clip: Curve

Bretschneider is long recognized as one of the founding engineers of the swaggering post-techno rhythms of the seminal Raster-Noton label, alongside Alva Noto, Byetone, Senking, etc. Isolation eschews the rhythmic structure but not the sine-tone and white noise instrumentation for this ghastly piece of minimalism originally scored as an installation in a former Stasi prison in Bautzen in the former East Germany. Sensory deprivation and severe solitude were common practices on the general prison population, and Bretschneider directs his piercing tones and thrumming low-end, embedding the acoustic phenomenon of the anechoic chamber (where the extreme high pitches of the human nervous system and the extreme low frequencies of blood flowing through the body become audible) into the psychologically debilitating conditions of a brutal incarceration. As grim as the subject matter is, Bretschneider's work is a somber meditation on these themes, all done with exemplary skill and technique akin to the lowercase work of Bernard Gunter, Richard Chartier, etc.

MPEG stream: Neon Night
MPEG stream: Cycle / Circle

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

SORRY.

MPEG stream: A Soft Throbbing Of Time
MPEG stream: The Big Black And White Game
MPEG stream: We Can Remember It For You Wholesale

Very interesting cd-r release from this German experimental jazz-rock group, led by Mr. Bungle fan and super-creative keyboardist Bjoern Eichstaedt. Guitar, tapes, percussion, double bass, various effects, voices, saxophone, flute, electric cello and more are

RealAudio clip: Thick Brown Air

Francoiz Breut is the modern Brigitte Fontaine, with a healthy dose of Cat Power thrown in. Acoustic loops, soaring strings and skittering drums all frame absolutely beautiful songs, full of emotion and intensity. Breut's voice is husky and deep, the lyrics all in French, making the songs dark and dreamy and romantic.

RealAudio clip: Derriere Le Grand Filtre
RealAudio clip: L'Origine du Monde

Bad Seeds or Tindersticks like songs with sultry French female vocals. Fellow Parisian Diminique A plays guitar, bass & keyboards all over the place. Very, very nice.

Isn't it nice when friends become friends with other friends? We sorta get that feeling from this release, as local boys Brian Fraser and Chris Palmatier were AQ faves upon the release of their second album Vectors and now this new disc sees them joining the illustrious ranks of the Dielectric Recordings Empire run by *our* friends Drew and Stephanie... Better yet, B and C don't disappoint with 3, it's a fine disc of light and airy (Airy?) indie rock infused electronica (or electronica infused indie rock?), very creative and summery and mellow and pretty, with room for laptops and guitars and panpipes and random voice recordings and much studio-as-instrument-goings-on. We sell a lot of the likes of the Postal Service and The Books and Boards Of Canada and there's no reason this shouldn't go in the shopping basket with the rest of 'em. Nice.

MPEG stream: Action Packed Vacation
MPEG stream: Hey Rube

Local favorites Brian And Chris get drafted by AQ pal Drucifer's Dielectric Records to contribute to their very distinctive and very cool series of bright orange twelve inches. Those of you familiar with B&C's unique post rock/electronica hybrid will to a certain extent know what to expect. Those of you new to the wonderful world of Brian And Chris this is as good a place to start as any. Side one starts off with a deep ambient drone that eventually gives way to muffled lo-fi clattery jungle beats, fluttery flutes, tinkling chimes and slow burning sonic swells before a sort-of funky bassline drops and anchors the whole thing giving it some serious rhythmic heft. The second track is all skittery and jazzy and very MoWax sounding, with warm and silky chords, wah guitars and Chinese melodies above rolling rumbling basslines. Side two are two versions of the same track. The "LP Version" is some seriously sweet post rock ala Tortoise or Godspeed, epic expansive rhythmic workouts, with shimmering guitars but with just enough electronic squelch and skitter to make it distinctly B&C. The "Dude, I Didn't Expect The Ewoks Mix" is all glitched out and stretched out and a little chopped up turning it into a sort-of dub of the original. Good stuff!

If Jim O'Rourke wasn't so afflicted with attention deficit disorder, if Boards of Canada weren't so s-l-o-w in making new records, if the Champs weren't on tour all the time -- maybe they all coulda gotten together and made a record as pretty as this one. Brian and Chris are a coolly eclectic local duo whose record is so fresh, gentle, accomplished and unhurried that it's taken us by surprise. When an album is this eclectic we are usually a little suspicious -- but Brian & Chris' "Vectors" album totally works. Bravo. Starting with a shuffling bass groove layered over with atmospherics full of texture and grit, the record would at first seem to be yet more popular electronics in the vein of Mouse on Mars or Boards of Canada. But before you know it the electronics have been replaced by echoing acoustic blues guitar that's foregrounded right in your eardrum, while tinny jungle beats cavort way in the background, used more as texture than as booty movers. It's a nice combination you'd like to hear longer, but before long chiming, fingerpicked guitars accompany a lilting, ethereal female voice, soon to be followed by angular shards of art-post-rock very similar to Gastr del Sol (in a good way, not pretentious at all). And as if that weren't fun enough, by the end of the album the perfectly seamless segueways between the genre-bending tracks have placed you squarely in the middle of a Champs-style rock guitar workout. Wow. Highly recommended!

RealAudio clip: Jakarta International Airport
RealAudio clip: Pristina
RealAudio clip: Katzenjammer

The follow-up to last year's 6-song EP "Zero: Songs From The Album 'Bravery, Repetition And Noise'" (which it should be noted actually only contained 3 of the songs from this full length) and 1998's album-proper '"Strung Out In Heaven" finds Brian

RealAudio clip: Open Heart Surgery
RealAudio clip: If I Love You

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 ]