[ 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 801 through 850 of 2775.

Cex certainly has some artistic talent, but "Starship Galactica" shows him to still be just a dorky kid from Baltimore. The majority of this album features what Cex does best -- Autechre / Funkstorung breakbeats with sad, romantic chords derived from both warm acoustic instruments and cold digital algorhythms. However, he inexplicably drops in skits / introductions to these

New record from the underground rock scene's Brian Austin Green (c'mon, you remember, from Beverly Hills 90210....made a rap record....it was BAD) Let's ruin the only 'funny' bit (a skit of all things, a take off of an Eminem skit) on this otherwise dreadful album of white bread, stupid pointless hip-hop by transcribing it here: Jeremy deVine (of Sonna and Temporary Residence) with a tone of businesslike urgency: "Hey Cex, what's up?" Cex goofily unaware: "Hey Jeremy deVine! Good to see you! What's up?" Jeremy: "Cex could you come in here and have a seat, please. Vanessa, shut the door." Cex: "What's up, how's Otis (?) looking for the first week?" Jeremy: "It would be better if you gave me nothing at all. This album is less than nothing. I can't sell this fucking record. Do you know what's happening to me out there?" Cex: "What's the problem?" Jeremy: "Bjork told me to go fuck myself." Cex: "Who's Bjork?" Jeremy: "Aquarius Records told me to shove this record up my ass. Do know what it feels like to be told to have a record shoved up your ass? I'm going to lose my fucking job over this. Do you know why Radiohead's album was so successful? They're singing about homosexuals and Vicodin. You're rhyming about dodgeball and bicycles. Have you been in my office again? Look at this desk! There's a spring busted and it's all messed up. Either change the record or it's not coming out." Cex: "Wait. What am I supposed to do?" Jeremy: "Get the fuck out of my office. Now." For the record, it was Cex who was to be the recipient of record-ass-shoving, not Jeremy deVine. But Jeremy'll do.

RealAudio clip: Gigolo Knights
RealAudio clip: K-12 Days Of Hell
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Number two in the $ series of Tigerbeat6 singles, this one's got Baltimore's Cex and Los Angeles' Electric Company. Don't know how limited, but I wouldn't wait on these hotcakes...

Second in Klangkrieg's Connected series (volume one featured DJ Scud and Pthalocyanine). Baltimore's Cex reworks the unstoppable Venetian Snares (aka Aaron Funk) and vice versa. Bubbly drill'n'bass from two prolific playas in underground electronica.

Greetings! Your hostess Miss Lady Hand Grenade is here with her Olympia, WA friends Nikki McClure, Miranda July, Old Tyme Relijun, and a crowd of others for a grand indie pop show time. If there's one thing you can always count on with the Oly folk, it's a barrel of fun: theme shows, puppetry and music with something to say.

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SORRY. 3-song, 20 minute ep from a freaky avant-pop band featuring Jean-Herve Peron of Faust and Chris Karrer of Amon Duul II, two krautrock legends up to strange new tricks.

Eugene Chadbourne (you know him, you love him?) teams up with two Berlin-based free jazzers for this tribute to the late great saxophonist Albert Ayler on the always interesting Grob label. Joe Williamson (Kletka Red) plays double bass, Uli Jennessen is on

RealAudio clip: Omega Is The Alpha
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SORRY. European import hand delivered by the charming Mr. Chadbourne hisself. Duets with Derek Bailey, Han Bennink, Charles Tyler, Volcmar Verkerk, and John Zorn.

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SORRY. Eugene Chadbourne (no introduction needed, we hope) is joined for a free improv freakout by downtown NYC avant jazzers Mark Dresser (bass) and Susie Ibarra (drums) as well as normally-more restrained improv guitarist Joe Morris.

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SORRY. Eugene brought these in himself last week. Here he teams up with the original Mothers of Invention drummer in a tribute to Captain Beefheart.

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SORRY. Circa-1980 recordings from this fun pair. On Derek Bailey's improv label.

By this point the charismatic Ian Svenonius is most loved as a indie cultural icon, his ramblings, writings, and TV show (Soft Focus on VBTV.com) are all so undeniably entertaining and compelling. Though, we have to say we haven't been too thrilled with most of his musical output since he pulled the plug on The Make Up. But before that most of us were all pretty obsessed with his first band Nation Of Ulysses as well as the ultra short lived Cupid Car Club. His newest project Chain And The Gang is closest in aesthetic to the gospel funk of The Make Up. Lots of call and response vocals, tons of sharp witted sass, and darker take on that classic girl group sound. We'd still probably rather hear Ian shoot the shit or read his latest manifesto but this is sounding pretty darn OK to us. Not amazing by any stretch, but Ian Svenonius diehards (and we know you are out there!) will definitely want to snag this.

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Killer debut of swaggery, gothy murk-punk / noise rock from these East Coast knuckledraggers, whose sound seems to channel everyone from the Stooges to His Electro Blue Voice, Slug to Pussy Galore, Unwound to Cop Shoot Cop. Shambolic and chaotic, wild and unhinged, a sort of bastard blooze, with loose-limbed octopoidal drumming, filthy guitars, howled feral vox, all recorded super hot and in-the-red, lurching from wild almost psychedelic freakouts, to doomy, dirge metal creep, some moments smack of classic glam rock (a la Hanoi Rocks, Smack) but doused in distorto-noise and rolled in dirt and broken glass. Even at its noisiest, some killer melodies and surprising hooks surface throughout, moments of extreme poppiness here and there, but almost always buried beneath an avalanche of crumbling distortion, strangled guitarnoise, flurries of drum damage, psychedelic squalls, out of which emerge some seriously kick ass and weirdly groovy sludge punk not to mention some unlikely and impossibly catchy, dirge-gloom noise pop. Killer stuff. LIMITED TO 50 COPIES!!

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We've always wanted to list something by Italian occult doom metal master Paul Chain (ex-Death S.S.), he's a true underground legend in the realms of magickal violet-hued heaviness and improvised downer psychedelia. We've referenced him in several reviews, when discussing the likes of Blizaro, Black Hole, and Tony Tears, but never before have we had any of Paul Chain's own stuff available to list - until now. A whole bunch of his rare '80s and '90s albums have just been reissued on the Minotauro label, and so we finally get to review 'em, starting with this sought-after classic, 1995's Alkahest. Out of print for years, it now makes a welcome return on both cd (in a miniature lp-style gatefold sleeve, with obi) and limited edition double gatefold vinyl. Alkahest is a good entry way into the master's extensive discography, as it possesses much of his unique, weird vibe while not being nearly as experimental and abstract as some of his other albums. Instead, Alkahest functions as a solid, spooky slab of traditional doom metal, offering up plenty of plodding, heavier-than-thou riffage that any fan of Black Sabbath, Saint Vitus or Cathedral ought to happily bow down to. We mention retired UK doom gods Cathedral in particular 'cause their frontman, Lee Dorrian, who's a HUGE Paul Chain fan, happens to sing on about half of this album (a thrill of a lifetime for him), Dorrian's gruffer guest vocals quite a contrast to Paul Chain's own strange, haunted, higher register croon, and not just because there's actual lyrics to the songs Dorrian sings, while Paul Chain's vocals are, as is his wont, all purely phonetic, not in any language at all (see what we mean by him being experimental?). Dorrian's gravely gargle mellows out a bit for the mournful ballad "Lake Without Water", quite lovely with medieval lute and acoustic guitar, sort of in the vein of Sabbath's "Solitude"... Overall, Alkahest is brimming with doomed, despairing, druggy atmosphere, the Sabbathic riffs and psychedelic soloing supported by strains of doleful church organ and hints of synth, an Italian prog/soundtrack influence definitely present. Really an excellent album all doom hounds (especially those into early Cathedral) should have in their collection! And in a way, strangely uplifting for something so hopelessly dark and doomy. Ok, next up, Detaching From Satan by Paul Chain's Violet Theatre...

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Another installment of Finnish madness from the brilliant and unpredictable Bad Vugum label. Chainsmoker were born from the ashes of Bad Vugum stalwarts Sweetheart, but the sound is far from Sweetheart's freaked out guitar rock. Chainsmoker are a strange mix

RealAudio clip: Drop Test
RealAudio clip: Out Of Tranquilizers

ATTENTION FINNISH ROCK OBSESSIVES!!! It's time for another strange missive from the Finnish combo known as Chainsmoker, a band created from the bits and pieces of Finnish legends Sweetheart. But where Sweetheart were a corrosive guitar based rock band, Chainsmoker are more of a dramatic, sort of gothic new wave band. If these guys were living in NY and going to all the right parties, getting remixed by DFA, partying with Fischerspooner, they'd be huge. Touring with the Scissor Sisters and screwing Lindsay Lohan and Ashley Simpson. But alas, they are marooned far away from the glitzy nightclubs and drugged out dancefloor kids who would be dancing and fucking and fighting the nights away to their spacey new wave techno groove rock. But there's more to it than that, these guys are Finnish after all, so it goes without saying that they have a bit of a twisted take. They incorporate morose vocals, saxophone, swirling outer space FX, Nick Cave like dramatic crooning, strummy acoustic guitars, cinematic synths, fuzz guitar, full on casiocore freakouts and pretty much anything else they can think of into their jet set, cocaine party, private jet, Studio 54, faux fur, dead of winter, NYC via Paris via Finland, Fischerspooner and Pet shop Boys in a back alley knife fight dance party!

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SORRY.

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Boy, were we looking forward to this: A strange 1974 French sci-fi based concept album that claims comparisons to both Alain Goraguer (La Planete Sauvage) and Jean-Claude Vannier (L'Enfant Assassin Des Mouches, Melody Nelson), by some composer we had never heard of, Jacky Chalard, perhaps originally made under the assumed identity Gilbert Deflez (the booklet has the puzzling backstory). We were blown away by the opening number, "L'Agonie", almost fulfilling the promise of the B-Music folks' claims. But then almost all the following tracks are either spoken word, or strange radio plays in French (sort of in the same wacky spirit as Les Maledictus Sound), which we wouldn't mind normally, except the spoken stuff is on almost every track on the record, and after awhile, we want to just hear the backing music alone, because it IS so good! Occasionally, there is a French woman singing which is nice and there's a couple of Massiera-ish disco pop numbers, but overall, the narrative aspects becomes just a bit tedious. At least it's in French, though, that helps. We're sure this is a must have for some folks who dig the stranger realms of french prog-pop, but we can't recommend it as highly as La Planete Sauvage, Jean-Paul Massiera, or Jean-Claude Vannier.

MPEG stream: L'Agonie
MPEG stream: La Collecte Des Couers
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**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** Another lost seminal punk rock classic, this one from DC's Chalk Circle, an all female punk rock band (supposedly the first to record and perform in DC), who existed for a couple years in the early eighties, and played alongside the usual DC suspects, but were definitely doing their own thing, challenging the prevailing sound and gender scene politics of the day. With a sound that would fit sonically alongside groups like the Slits, Delta 5, Lilliput, Raincoats, X-Ray Spex, Essential Logic and the like, Chalk Circle combined punk rock crunch with teenage energy, raw and urgent, frantic and frenetic, loose and ramshackle, but with some killer hooks, not so much 'punk rock' as indie pop / garage pop, this stuff would have been right at home on K Records or Kill Rock Stars in the early days. The sound varies quite a bit (as does the recording quality), from bouncy almost danceable jangle punk, to reverby new wave, fuzzy pop-punk pound to primitive off kilter pop, bass heavy almost dubby post punk to spidery skeletal pop minimalism, laced with occasional bits of extra percussion, shouted back up vox, all held together by a super distinctive style and sound, which has us thinking there are a whole bunch of folks out there that would have loved these ladies back in the day, and anyone into the current crop of female punks: Brilliant Colors, Grass Widow, Pens, Yellow Fever, Sandwitches, etc. will probably dig this like crazy! This lp collection gathers up various tracks from compilations, live shows, demos and unreleased tapes, and includes a big booklet with photos, press clippings and liner notes by Don Fleming (Velvet Monkeys, B.A.L.L.) whose Velvet Monkeys headlined Chalk Circle's first shows.

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A return, of sorts, by the longstanding aQ favorite drone composer Andrew Chalk, who offers up another beautiful album of sparkle, glisten, and drift. In recent years, Chalk's recordings have reconfigured away from the static drama of high minimalism and into collections of miniatures - intimate, languid, sometimes haunted, always lovely snatches of sonic ephemera that could be pieced together as a koan of lost memory and forgotten landscape. It's the same filigree of impressionist tone and suspended atmosphere that is at work on A Light At The Edge Of The World, but he extends such passages and figures for over 40 minutes. Chalk cites his own 2012 album 49 Views In Rhapsodies' Wave Serene as the starting point for this album, in terms of recapturing the faded coronas that hang upon his clustered notes of electric piano and subtle analog synth articulation. An evanescent echo and artfully accreted drone trickle throughout the album, all of which are swimming in illumined, golden baths of hallowed light. Again, the allusions to Erik Satie's furniture music and Brian Eno's Music For Airports or Thursday Afternoon are quite apt on this lovely, lovely recording.

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We often talk about the heaviest, the fastest, the loudest, and the most fucked-up musics, as we cram more and more letters into the word doom to express how much we love this record or that. Yet when it comes to the minimalist beatitudes crafted by the British drone engineer Andrew Chalk, our hyperbole fails us. With a humility and a reclusive demeanor, Chalk's work stands as an elegant document of what you can do when striving for anything excessive. For years, Chalk has impressed upon us that few artists have been able to craft something as simple as a drone with such a pristine balance between impressionistic abstraction and phenomenological precision. Starting out the mid-80s recording toxic noises under the moniker Feral Confine, Chalk joined David Jackman in the seminal project Organum for a couple of melancholic recordings of acoustic minimalism. Shortly thereafter, he founded Ora with Darren Tate and Colin Potter; and more recently, Chalk and Christoph Heemann established Mirror. Nowadays, Chalk is venturing out on his own to remarkable success after a couple of beautiful recordings that he's self-released on Faraway Press. Blue Eyes Of The March is the third cd from Chalk's own label, and has been entirely crafted from piano. Given the dreamy soft-focus that Chalk has applied to the instrument, there's very little of the piano's instantly recognizable hammered attack that remains. It's as if he stretched all of the piano's strings across the bow of a Victorian cruise ship, deliberately sank it, and then recorded the sounds deep in the blackened sea off the northern coast of England. Haunted, subaquatic, and timeless, Chalk's swirling sounds spiral effortlessly into a ghostly antiquity whose references may be found in the equally elegant re-constructions of Bartok and Satie by Akira Rabelais on Eisoptrophobia, but done through analogue and not digital processes. As with his previous recordings, Chalk has spared no expense with the packaging, offering a stunning duo-toned silkscreen design upon shimmering silver paper.

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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. Andrew Chalk's haunting drones (from his work with Organum and Jonathan Coleclough) have become favorites here at Aquarius. And this collection of his earliest recordings from the late '80s is no exception. The influence that Brian Eno's ambient work had upon Chalk becomes apparent with the emergence of a few fragile arrangements for piano and decidedly synthetic spacey keyboard sounds. But even at this stage in Chalk's development, his talent at constructing textural collages of bowed metal and hazy tonal reverberations is as solid here as on his recent recordings. This disc includes contributions from David Jackman (Organum) on one track and a remix from Christoph Heemann. Highly recommended.

Easily, one of the most important reissues of 2006, East Of The Sun available again though Andrew Chalk's own Faraway Press, complete with breathtakingly resplendent packaging: a silkscreened and embossed printing. These recordings originally came out in 1994 as a cassette, released through Ora's in-house label, Ora being an early collective that revolved around Chalk, Colin Potter, and Darren Tate with occasional assistance from Jonathan Coleclough, mnortham, Lol Coxhill, and a handful of like-minded British drone enthusiasts. A few years later, the Italian label Hic Sunt Leones convinced Chalk to reissue the cassette in digital form. That CD version of East Of The Sun compressed the two sides of the cassette into a single 50 minute piece and was flushed out with some complementary dronescaping. Chalk was never happy with the Hic Sunt Leones version; and thus his reissue of the album returns to the original version found on the cassette, now gloriously remastered in its entirety. For those persnickety types, the 17 minutes or so which concluded the Hic Sunt Leones version is not here; but that is a minor loss compared to the pinnacle of drone-based minimalism found here. Sure, Eno's ambient records On Land and Thursday Afternoon were milestones in the realm of ambient music, setting an impressionist context through which any number of the images, thoughts, and ideals could be imagined; but that strategy was perfected by Andrew Chalk on a couple of records. There was his ephemeral album Sumac in collaboration with Jonathan Coleclough, there was the first Mirror album Eye Of The Storm, and there's East Of The Sun. Very dark without becoming unbearably cold, East Of The Sun is a constant bloom of nocturnal frequencies, whose origins may be thoroughly blurred bass guitar or possibly some resonant artifact from Chalk's acoustic work in Organum. Regardless, the resultant drones drift with no beginning and no end, merely rippling, reflecting, and turning upon themselves in a perpetual, very slow motion turbulence. Leaves tumbling in autumnal twilight. Fog spilling over coastal hills. Moonlight tickling the agitated surface of a pond. Any of these organic references for meditation on simplicity to reach the sublime and the profound could easily apply to Chalk's East Of The Sun. Not just recommended, this is required listening.

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Another stunning album from British composer Andrew Chalk. While our man started out smashing acoustic noise through bowed cymbal skree and wild tape machinations in the mid '80s through his Broken Flag alias Ferial Confine, Chalk quickly settled down into the heavy gravity of the drone supreme. The albums that followed in the Ora / Mirror axis and his solo work conjured some of the finest drone mesmerism that we've ever heard. Oh, and we've heard a lot of dronemuzik! Chalk conjures sounds that are shimmering yet lucid, controlled yet open to all possible movements, occasionally dark yet always beautifully sublime. And now, after some 20 years of working with long-form composition, his love affair with the drone seems to be waning. In its place is a restrained impressionism for subtle melodies from a bleary piano, soft filigree of shadowy organs, and the occasional smeary echo of burbling cosmic-synth drift, as can be heard on the elegant fragmentation of albums like Violins By Night, Ghost Of Nakhodka, and The Cable House. Chalk continues that trend on Forty-Nine Views In Rhapsodies' Wave Serene in which he stitches 49 separate miniatures of delicate ambient passages into what could be seen as Andrew Chalk's take on Selected Ambient Works Volume II. Chalk's flickered melodies and soft focus ambience have the rich gold hues and nitrous oxide weightlessness found on Aphex Twin's classic, but Chalk's sounds express none of the midi-fired digitality or sequenced precision. Instead, Chalk's subtle gestures are clearly wrought by human hands, molded through arcane means, and slipping through his cottage industry in a moss-encrusted part of England. Satie and Eno also cozy up nicely to these Forty-Nine views. As with all of the albums that Chalk releases on his Faraway Press imprint, the packaging is equally as lovely as the music. Of course, it's recommended; it's Andrew Chalk!

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BACK IN PRINT, WITH DIFFERENT ARTWORK!!! Here's the cd reissue of a 2009 cassette from the emissary of British dronemusik, Andrew Chalk. That cassette, like this cd version, had been released by the Japanese imprint Siren Records, although it seems that Chalk himself did all of the printing as with all of his Faraway Press productions. So, it certainly looks as lovely as it sounds. The album opens with a 22 minute abstraction of piano tones, smeared, stretched, and warbled by a process that seems more attuned to tape decay techniques than the placid smooth surfaces that have come from Chalk's recordings as of late. This has the sound more of the misty psychedelic ambient tapestries from Natural Snow Buildings or the hauntological loops of Indignant Senility. There's something very prescient about this track, as if Chalk were responding to many of the divergent streams of drone-based constructions that are happening throughout the world right now. The rest of the album is definitely a detour for Chalk, as he presents a series of sad, sodden snippets composed on guitar, koto, synth, piano, and field recordings. Unlike so many who attempts an album of gossamer, minimalist sounds, Chalk seeks the same chromatic hues through his sources. It's the same melancholy which runs through his impressionist drones that can be found in an ellipsis for untreated acoustic guitar or a melody upon cosmic-minded synth or an atypical strum upon his koto. That makes for quite a remarkable album for Mr. Chalk, once again.

MPEG stream: Ghost of Nakhodka
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You may be thinking, there was an album by Andrew Chalk with this exact same title. And you would be correct but for one small distinction - the 2009 album was called Ghost Of Nakhodka and this 2015 album is Ghosts Of Nakhodka. Ah, the difference of plurality! The album is pegged as a sister to that 2009 album though Chalk has implemented a different set of tools on this one. Instead of piano and guitar laced with placid droning effects that was found on the singular Ghost album, here he's using a monophonic synthesizer occasionally dappled with field recordings and a few choice effects. It becomes very clear this a Chalk record through the albums' impressionist fragments spilled across 13 tracks, each rich with his languid sense of space and his elegant timing in placing this free-roaming kosmische blorp here and that swollen ambient blur over there. Brian Eno's Discreet Music and Apollo would be the closest references to what Chalk is up to here, though his production methods are qualitatively rough hewn in the synth manifestation of melancholic nostalgia with little of the portent that Eno imbues into his work. The miniatures presented are exquisite jewels coming from a craftsman keen on showcasing his work to a select few and within an deliberately intimate setting. It would seem far out of Chalk's character to broadcast works such as these at the Guggenheim or even the ICA. Instead, a humble English cottage with a sod roof and a console-sized cathode ray television as the only means of transmission. Ah, the wonders of Andrew Chalk never cease.

Goldfall is Andrew Chalk's highly anticipated new vinyl-only album, released on his own Faraway Press imprint. After pretty much of all the Mirror records had been released as super limited vinyl-only editions (with a couple of those getting reissued later on cd), Chalk's recent solo endeavors have been extended droneworks that weren't suited to the LP format. He's clearly outdone himself with the packaging on this return to vinyl, as he's situated the thick slab of vinyl within a dense cardstock sleeve with a die cut opening exposing silkscreened print beneath; and he's sealed the sleeve in a delicate piece of tissue paper that also features an elegant print reminiscent of Shoji screen prints. In contrast to the floral artwork, Chalk's sound production within is a far darker and heavier experience. Sourced from the meandering piano interludes of Vikki Jackman, Goldfall is a dark, shadowy record of protracted reverberation and timbral rumblings. In comparison to Chalk's previous piano album Blue Eyes Of The March or to other exceptional piano abstractions (i.e. Jonathan Coleclough's Period or Brian Eno's Thursday Afternoon), Goldfall is downright ominous. And you all should know that Andrew Chalk + ominous = highly recommended. But you should also know that Goldfall is limited to 300 copies.

This is the CD reissue of Andrew Chalk's "Over The Edges" which originally came out in 1999 as a vinyl-only release in a somewhat reasonable edition of 545 copies. Having composed "Over The Edges" in a single day at Colin Potter's ICR studio using only two strings of an acoustic guitar played with an E-Bow, Chalk brings a raspy, magentic buzz to his typically sublime, drone hypnosis. Here, subharmonics undulate beneath a chorus of static guitar-string vibrations, and shimmering waves of feedback elegantly flutter throughout. Not immediately as expressive as "Sumac" or some of the Mirror recordings done with Christoph Heemann, "Over The Edges" recalls the purist minimalism of long string composers like Alvin Lucier and Ellen Fullman.

RealAudio clip: Over The Edges 1

It remains to be seen if the duo of Andrew Chalk and Christoph Heeman will ever collaborate again, after rumors surfaced describing an acrimonious falling out in the wake of an ill-conceived Mimir / Mirror performance. Sure, Mirror has certainly produced some amazing recordings; Eye Of The Storm, in particular, is an impeccable document of droned-out environmental eerieness. But in all honesty and fairness to Christoph Heemann, Andrew's solo albums are where he really shines. Yet after all of his collaborations with Organum, Ora, Jonathan Coleclough, Giancarlo Toniutti, The New Blockaders, et cetera, his solo output is woefully thin, and almost entirely out of print. Fortunately, Chalk salvaged two recent cd-rs (Shadows From The Album Skies part one and two) from terminal obscurity as they had originally been released on the Mirror imprint Three Poplars in editions of less than 100. Both of the chapters of Shadows find Chalk channelling extended guitar mantras into a beautifully rich minimalism that could easily be confused with the work of Phill Niblock or Eliane Radigue. Both tracks here are constructed from slowly revolving patterns of delicate harmonics floating around an omnipresent timbral drone, with one being considerably darker thanks to an emphasis on low-end frequencies. For all of the times that we've referenced Mr. Chalk's work in describing somebody else's dronings, it's very nice to actually hear something from the master himself. Oh yeah, all of the copies have handmade sleeves and have been signed by Chalk himself. Very highly recommended.

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The arrival of a new Andrew Chalk album is always a cause for celebration, doubly so when it's one of his scarce productions on vinyl. Mr. Chalk has long stood as one of our favorite drone composers over the years, beginning with his early contributions to the more placid Organum recordings, through his exemplary collaborative work in Mirror and Ora, and onto his near perfect catalogue of solo recording self-released through his Faraway Press. Through the more recent recordings Goldfall and Time Of Hayfield, the timbre of Chalk's work has brightened a bit, even as that brightening occurs between the spectrum of shadowy grey to sodden blue. Like Goldfall, The Cable House is an album sourced from piano; but where the notes on that earlier album loosely trailed amidst a gossamer web of bleary dronings, The Cable House has a considerably more purposeful set of melodic structures, pushing Chalk's work much closer into the realm of Satie's Furniture Music than ever before. Nonetheless, Chalk is masterful at extracting soft ringings of echo, restrained attack, and muted reverberations from his piano. It would be hard to imagine even someone like Eno or Basinski being able to craft something more elegant, more shimmering, more beautiful. The artwork features hand printed woodblock prints, rendering each piece just slightly different from one another. As a result of the laborious printing process, Chalk has only made 300 copies.

Andrew Chalk records are the jewels of the English underground. The noise of Ferial Confine gasped with an existential blurt of obstinate tactility, violent in their self-immolation but never directing a rage outward. The gaze was inward. Then, when the drone grounded much of Chalk's classic works in the '90s and '00s, these slippery, elegiac croons of sonic impressionism dripped with an opalescent beauty that also spent a fair amount of time splashing around in the mud. More recently, Chalk has been exploring the poetic fragment, cracking the lens of British avant-folk eccentricity and scattering the results on stunningly beautiful albums like The Circle Of Days. The curious introductory track here sports a clattering of wood, recorded in situ with longtime collaborator Daisuke Suzuki, with a church nearby, whose bells chime the solemn Westminster Quarter melody. The following track pools rounded tones from Chalk's open-body electric guitar, finding a counterpart in the stoner-folk of Tom Carter's early work in the Charalambides. Piano, chord organ, and more guitar flesh out further tracks of nocturnally impressionist details that hang like constellations in the night sky, curving steadfast against the traffic of satellites, planes, and planets. The course of the second side reprises that of the first, with equally wandering expositions of intimate ambient swath, gossamer half-melody, and the soft-spoken mystical charm that has graced many an Andrew Chalk record! Very highly recommended as with everything that Chalk touches.

MPEG stream: Double Windows
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MPEG stream: Lost in the Forest
MPEG stream: Threading the Labyrinth

Yup, it appears that Andrew Chalk has retained the impressive workload he and Christoph Heemann had managed for their now defunct project Mirror. The River That Flows Into The Sand is the second album in as many months to emerge from Andrew Chalk's own Faraway Press. Like it's predecessor Shadows From The Album Skies, this album is a reissue of a cd-r originally released in a very small edition. However, Chalk has decided to truly develop Faraway Press into a viable cottage industry, encasing all of his work in elaborately hand-packaged constructions, that rival the original Zoviet France assemblages in terms of innovative design. How he managed to print these is a bit of a mystery, although Cup and Jim think it to be a form of decalcomania, in which an image is delicately transferred from one surface to another. Regardless, it doesn't hurt that Chalk again has produced an immaculate drone album housed within the beautiful packaging. For many years now, the guitar has been the instrument of choice for Chalk's minimalist explorations; and here on The River, he's tightroping between the ghostly impressionism of Keiji Haino's Nijumu project from many moons ago, the narcoleptic atmospheres of Maeror Tri / Troum, the oceanic ambience of Boris' Flood, and the time-reversal qualities of Eliane Radigue. Undulations of extended sounds cascade from his guitar, occasionally rippling with beautiful half melodies. This is a a drop dead gorgeous album, and may even be better than the aforementioned Shadows From The Album Skies. We can't recommend this album enough!

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The sequel to the River That Flows Into The Sand had originally been released through Andrew Chalk's Faraway Press imprint as a super-limited edition cassette in early 2006. We never managed to get a hold of those cassettes; and it goes without saying that they disappeared before we could even blink. Thankfully, Chalk has re-released all of that material on cd, remastered by the inimitable Colin Potter. As on the first part of The River, Chalk picks up the guitar for his minimalist explorations tightroping between the ghostly impressionism of Keiji Haino's Nijiumu project from many moons ago, the narcoleptic atmospheres of Maeror Tri / Troum, the oceanic ambience of Boris' Flood, and the time-reversal qualities of Eliane Radigue, all the while putting to shame every upstart drone artist with a cd burner and an Echoplex. Just as the first River cd meanders through five variations of the cascade sound, Chalk produces another five tracks of rippling drones on this disc. Similarly, he has packaged the disc in the dotted decalcomania which graced the first cd. The major differences can be found in the gritty, growling distortion which exists just beneath the surface of these glassine drones. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!

Andrew Chalk has long been one of our favorite drone composers here at Aquarius Records (if not THE favorite!!!). Even though Mr.Chalk has been busy releasing cds in recent years, Goldfall (from early 2006) was actually the last new piece of work that this master of the drone had produced until this one, Time Of Hayfield. His work is slowly shifting toward a brightly cast sensibility, even as he continues to emply soft focus impressionism of his ringing overtones and dynamic vibrations. Again, as on Goldfall, Chalk employs the talents of Vikki Jackman on the piano as some of the source material here. The airy, ethereal ambience of Chalk's drones shimmer as if they were the reflections of the sun striking the windswept body of water of your choice. For us, it would obviously be the cold waters off the Northern California coast; but for Mr. Chalk living in the northeast of England, it's the North Sea. There's something bitingly cold about this album; but the slippery icy drones that evolve and tumble in their organic cycles enjoy a beauty so profound as to ameliorate anything threatening and hostile. A beautiful, airy, and meditative drone record. As with all of his self-released records on Faraway Press, the packaging is as immaculate as the sounds within; but there's a twist to the packaging. Chalk printed at least six different covers, each with a replication of a pastoral painting depicting some vintage slice of British country life. All are very nice, so there's no reason to fret!

MPEG stream: Temperance
MPEG stream: Suspended In The Air
MPEG stream: A World Displaced

Sometime back in 2005, Andrew Chalk manufactured a tiny edition of what had been rumored to be the soundtrack to a self-produced film entitled Vega. When several journalists published their findings about the magnificent drones housed within that instantly out-of-print cd-r on Brainwashed.com and in The Wire, many of Chalk's die-hard fans were left disappointed at the existence of what might have been one of their favorite Andrew Chalk recordings had they ever had the opportunity to actually hear it. While Mr. Chalk maintains a very quiet demeanor and hardly ventures into the public eye these days, he's been hard at work ensuring that his recently formed Faraway Press actually keeps up with the orders for the records that he's been recording. Vega is one such record that he so dearly wanted to re-release sooner, had it not been for the inevitability of delays. It's clear to see why delays would have been incurred on the packaging for Vega, as the original cd-r was housed in a filigree of black lace surrounding a paper sleeve, which amounted to a delicate and frustratingly time-consuming process in terms of putting together each cd-r. Hence, with the second edition of Vega, this time a proper CD, Chalk has expedited the hand-assembly process with an elaborately printed piece of heavy cardstock, sporting a similarly elegant lace pattern. As for the music within, Vega is simply stunning. Far more vaporous and free-floating than the previous solo outing The River That Flows Into The Sand and certainly more so than any of the Mirror recordings, Vega acts as an aural narcotic, sedating the listener through a constantly shifting, slow motion churn of chiming guitar drones, almost resembling the kosmische-tinged melancholia heard in the Aeolian String Ensemble's dronescaping. As bleary and amorphous as Chalk's drone-clusters are, he's always had the knack for keeping them just dissonant enough so that they do not fall into the ambient trap of background music. Sublime as ever. Recommended just like all of his other work.

MPEG stream: Vega 1
MPEG stream: Vega 3

Yeah. It's $45.00. But when you see the stunning packaging, you'll understand why. There's the outersleeve hand-wrapped in bookbinders cloth with a hand-printed reproduction of a Bosch-like etching of wolverines or badgers engaged in cocktail party conversation, and printed text all in Japanese. At the opening of the outer sleeve, you will notice a thick wooden dowel mounted to a thick piece of paper. This assembly houses the innersleeve which in turn houses the very thick vinyl. It's quite a feat of engineering that Mr. Chalk manufactured all of this in his cottage in the north of England. It should also not be a surprise that this album is ridiculously limited, and the production of which has been hampered by the amount of time each object takes to fabricate. So know now that we will probably not be able to get any more copies of this stunning objet d'art, which was released in an edition of just 350 copies. Then, there's the music, which is equally sublime. The work of Andrew Chalk has become synonymous with the drone supreme, but one that shifts from the tonal aggression that Tony Conrad and LaMonte Young would conjure, and toward something impressionistic and melancholy. As Chalk developed his craft on long-form masterpieces like East Of The Sun and Sumac (in collaboration with Jonathan Coleclough), he began to explore the nuances of melody through a rainy-day kaleidoscope of repetition. At the same time, Chalk has been mastering techniques of source abstraction which are entirely his own, creating haunted smears that are curiously inviting, reminiscent of the tape-loop effects that Basinski would generate, but with less reverb and delay. On such recent work as Ghost Of Nakhodka and The Cable House, Chalk's immaculate drones have been compacted into Eno-like miniatures of mirage, shadow, and filigree, all leading to the quiet, impressionist beauty of Violin By Night. The album might be sourced from piano, guitar, field recordings, and / or synths, but with Chalk's ability to twist any sound into his particular shades of grey, a discussion of origin is irrelevant. Each of the tracks on Violin By Night fade in and out of darkness like communications from a lonely satellite, whose existence is spent transmitting mundane blips down to earth with nothing being sent back in return. As the passing orbits cross the night sky, the transmissions come into focus revealing their muffled melodies only to dissolve as the satellite ventures into more desolate territories, such as the vast tundra of Siberia or some nameless island near Antarctica. There is a wonderful poetry hidden within these flickering tones and dissolving melodies that yearns for human contact and cast with maudlin hues when that contact is lost. Worth every penny and then some.

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

SORRY. Andrew Chalk and Christoph Heemann have been collaborating extensively as Mirror over the past year, so it seems odd that the two of them have suddenly decided to release an album under their given names. It would make sense if they deviated from their work as Mirror. The source material for this album, bowed bells, gongs, and distant guitar drones, differs, and while the overall beauty and concept reveal a definite Mirror-like desire to capture an elusive spirutual voice through the resonance of drones. Extended organ chords, gentle creaking of an old wooden floors, and long reverberations of breathy flutes make for a more baroque tonal quality than the typicalChalk / Heemann sound. "The Mirror Of The Sea" is a beautiful picture disc with drawings by Andrew Chalk on each side. Of course, it's recommended.

Andrew Chalk released In Faxfleet Clouds in 2009 as a tiny edition of vinyl, something like 300 copies. We were not fortunate enough to get a hold of any of those lps; but we do have the cd to offer. It's another collaboration with Daisuke Suzuki, who has long contributed field recordings and sympathetic tones to many of Chalk's productions, dating way back to those legendary Ora recordings some twenty years ago. The album opens with a 13 minute piece that interlocks a series of brightened tones which emit the pastoral, summery glow of Cluster's cosmic synthesis, lifting above a sodden floor of recordings that sound like a bubbling stream or maybe a delicate clattering of wooden objects. Chalk has always had an exceptional way of abstracting his sources while retaining a 'natural' aura to those sounds, and those skills may certainly be in use on the undercurrent of softened noises. But those rounded, elegant, church-organ like tones that Chalk manages from whatever synth he's got a hold of are just simply gorgeous. All of these tones hang with the signature melancholy that resonates through so many of his recordings. The second piece is a bit more nocturnal in hue, due in part to the field recordings of crickets and the minor key ambience from synth and very distantly situated piano. A brief three minute track stands as the finale, with distinctly cosmic tones, gently strummed guitar, and impressionist piano. At a hair under 25 minutes, this is a rather short excursion for Chalk, but very very lovely.

MPEG stream: Queen Of Heaven
MPEG stream: Of Beauty Reminiscing

Chalk and Daisuke Suzuki have known each other for many years now, as Suzuki runs the Siren label out of Japan and had released Sumac, Chalk's masterful collaboration with Jonathan Coleclough. Suzuki is also responsible for one of the very few published interviews with the somewhat reclusive Chalk. Their friendship certainly runs deep, and out of this friendship came the impetus to collaborate once again (both Suzuki and Chalk had contributed to the now defunct Ora project well over a decade ago). Slippery drones open the album, declaring that Andrew Chalk is definitely a principle author of this album and mimicking many of the fog-enveloped sounds that Chalk brought to Mirror's Eye Of The Storm. While these sounds quiver like a distant mirage out on the open desert for a passage of time that could be 5 minutes or it could be 25, the long-string drones begin to separate into a series of alien plucks which bear more than a passing resemblance to the expressionist poetics of Keiji Haino at his most introspective. Echoes and vibrations of these plucks ripple underneath in the shadowy reflection pool of echo and shimmer. As the album progresses, the enveloping opiated drone wrapping around cold, cold, cold field recordings of arctic winds racing across a seashore becomes the center piece, reflecting just how good Andrew Chalk's sounds are. Lo and behold, it's another excellent Andrew Chalk record.

MPEG stream: Kasuri
MPEG stream: Flaxen

Andrew Chalk's well revered around these parts for sheer impressionist beauty of gauzy drones and spellbinding minimalism, but Tom James Scott is a new name for us, even though this British composer has a number of releases on the avant-everything label Bo'Weavil. A classical guitarist by training, Scott tickles the keys of the piano on Wild Flowers, handing over a set of recordings he made for Chalk to augment with his own strings and treatments. We're told that the two have performed together a few times in the past, in what must have been a live performance as part of a quartet alongside Jean Noel Rebilly and Timo Van Luijk. The former produced an album with Chalk and his partner Vikki Jackman not too long ago, and the latter records with Chalk under the moniker Elodie. It's all starting to sound very Jewelled Antler, especially with the results consistently being some of the best rainy day albums for tea-drinking melancholy and vivid introspection we've heard. Even in Chalk's repertoire, the piano is a recurring sound object, and he's long proven deft in blurring the notes elegantly into languid reverberant pools of liquid gold and silver. Where his work with Vikki Jackman would highlight the creakiness and antiquity of their living room piano with all of its flaws and warbles, the recordings from Scott seem impeccable in origin. The richness of the piano at Scott's disposal shines in these recordings, even as Chalk softens the edges and creates a beautifully oozing sadness from these pastoral, Satie-like clusters of notes. Limited to 300 copies.

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With Calluna, we are granted another sonic blessing from the beloved impressionist Andrew Chalk. Calluna is the second album that Chalk has produced with likeminded minimalist Tom Scott. The two recorded this shortly after their first live presentation in 2014, marking one of the few live performances that Chalk has made over the years. As on many of the recent Chalk productions and on the previous Chalk / Scott collaboration, Calluna is a tempered album of solitary tones dripping with radiant ambience and somnolent elegance. The piano (which still seems to be the responsibility of Scott) drifts from note to note, with a daydreaming wandering that will only occasionally snap into a recursive melody. Most all of the time, these notes are fleeting echoes and fragments, with Chalk responding to these fragments through his own production tricks of eerie dronemusik magic, flares of guitar harmonics, and the occasional deep thrum of a bass guitar that gives the proceedings a feel much closer to Bohren & Der Club Of Gore. To listen to Calluna is to stare at the starlight reflected in garden pools whose surfaces are rippled by a quiet nocturnal wind. Limited to a mere 300 copies; and cut at 45rpm!

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MPEG stream: Caprice
MPEG stream: Scirocco Sunset

Classic 1967 album from the Chamber Brothers. Here their classic soul shows slight influences from the rock and psychedelic scenes that were blooming all around them. Great stuff!

MPEG stream: All Strung Out Over You
MPEG stream: Time Has Come Today
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Our favorite Finnish label and perhaps one of our favorite labels anywhere on the globe go into the vaults for this one and we're so happy they did. Chamellows (aka Sleeping Bags) is the scrappy, playful, naive pop side of Lau Nau (Laura Naukkarinen, whose Locust release from a few years back was a big AQ favorite!) and visual artist Mikko Kuorinki. Pulled from various limited edition 7"s and cassette only releases these are recordings that date back as far as a decade ago. This is sweet and demented lo-fi pop with lively experimentation and an answering machine quality recording that suits these songs so perfectly. Had us thinking of what Ariel Pink might sound like if he were from Finland. Or The Shaggs and Daniel Johnston brought into a vacant house in the middle of Finland with some ragtag equipment and some yummy psychedelics on the tip of their tongues. So warped and wonderful!

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From NYC, mellow indie-pop that references the likes of Big Star and the Pernice Brothers. Sweet (but not sugary) stuff with twinkling vibes and wistful male vocals. Lilting and gentle. It made me think "a modern-day Bread" which is a-ok. Oh yes, and if

RealAudio clip: Hard to Be Easy
RealAudio clip: See You Around
RealAudio clip: Special Guest Star

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

SORRY. San Francisco's Champs (or C4AM95 as they prefer to be called for silly legal reasons) are an amazing two guitars and drums no bass, sometimes three guitars no drums, very rarely any vocals, trio that on this their debut album crank out over seventy minutes of catchy, complex, mostly instrumental metal in indie/math-rock clothing. Kind of like the indie-prog of Don Caballero or Breadwinner, with touches of Trans Am (the bombast and occasional "techno electronica" interlude) ...and healthy helpings of Iron Maiden, Thin Lizzy, Metallica, Carcass, Motley Crue, Priest, etc. I could go on. Mesmerizing live, they're on tour now but will be back soon so I hope y'all went to their shows. For what it's worth, there's a former member of Nation of Ulysses in their ranks. Rec-o-f'n-mended.

Trio led by tenor saxophonist Chan, with Trevor Dunn (of Mr. Bungle we must note) and Elliot Humberto Kavee. Great jazz.

Vanity Records don't get much stranger or funkier than this one. We thought it odd that Trunk Records would put this out since it was originally recorded in 1980 in Anaheim, CA, far from Trunk's usual English oddity realm. But we're glad somebody finally released this, as we've been hearing about it for years, namely the unlikely stellar post-disco jam title track,"It's Broken". We say unlikely, because looking at the cover and pictures of Bob Chance singing and recording, it kind of reminds us of our '70s dad having a mid-life crisis moment and living his dream of being a real rock and roll musician, or something like that. And there are moments on this record that TOTALLY sound like that, like the opening blues rocker, "Brown Skinned Girl", but then things get even weirder. What starts out as an anachronistic take on sixties blues-folk pop a la Tim Rose and Tim Hardin, becomes a ten-minute funky slow disco excursion that fans of Giorgio Moroder and Cerrone will most definitely dig. Its long form hypnotic breaks and peaks are executed quite flawlessly. But then what to make of the stalker ode, "The Van Man", which not only makes light of mobile date-rape units, and the creeps who ride in them, but also sounds remarkably like some obscure Bollywood pop production. "I See Her" is a candy coated kaleidescopic folk-ballad, while "Colors" is more of a Herb Alpert cruise ship show tune reminding us of that Michael Farneti album, Good Morning Kisses. The final track, "Jungle-Talk" is a psychedelic instrumental Nino Nardini like Library groover full of exotic bird calls, congos and sultry temperatures. Quite the oddity, and yet totally infectious!

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[ aquarius records catalogue — C ]