[ aquarius records catalogue

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And now the third installment in our series of reviews of the recent Cocteau Twins' re-issues... From the first two songs of Cocteau Twins' second album you get the feeling that this was perhaps the most haunting, mysterious and yes, goth album of their just shy of two decade long career - showcasing much dynamic and emotional depth. It's not until the third song that they suddenly release their firm shadowy hold on the dour, echoing catacomb depths, bursting forth with the glorious shimmer-pop number "Sugar Hiccup" and continuing the momentum on from there with much more aggressive guitars of "In Our Angelhood". With the departure of their fellow founding member bassist Will Heggie, the group was pared down to just the duo of Robin Guthrie and Elizabeth Fraser. Guthrie's guitarwork slinks, lurks sears and blisters through each of these ten songs. It's a perfect contrast to Fraser's unmistakable breathtaking fairy-speak vocal performance, and one that would only blossom and deepen immensely on following releases. Simply beautiful.

MPEG stream: Sugar Hiccup
MPEG stream: The Tinderbox (Of The Heart)

Beggars has just reissued the Cocteau Twins catalog. We're gonna try to list 'em all, one by one...starting (why not?) with this one. Heaven Or Las Vegas was originally released in 1990. Their music swoops and floats as if conjured by the wings of the most lovely and magical deepsea birds. Somehow it's at once immensely majestic, deeply comforting and sweetly infectious. Robin Guthrie's glistening guitars and Elizabeth Fraser's voice spiral together effortlessly while Simon Raymonde forms waves of regal bass lines that anchor the proceedings. Features the beloved Cocteau Twins' hit "Iceblink Luck".

MPEG stream: Iceblink Luck
MPEG stream: Heaven Or Las Vegas

Finally a good Cocteau Twins collection on vinyl! There has been plenty of anthologies and collections of this ethereal dream pop trio coming out since the band's 1996 break-up. We suspect that is partly to satisfy fans by collecting all the odds and ends the band recorded (they have 4 cds worth of singles and B sides alone), but perhaps also to get more fan influence to pressure the band to finally release their scrapped and abandoned last album. Here's hoping! Stars and Topsoil is a vinyl reissue of an 18 song compilation originally released on cd in 2000 of the band's picks from their essential 4AD catalog, from Garlands to Heaven Or Las Vegas, including rare ep and single tracks. Diehard fans who already own the records will no doubt have this stuff already, but for new fans or the newly curious, this is as good as a place to start as any. You can hear so many recent artists (Beach House, Gang Gang Dance, Ulrich Schnauss, M83, Sleep Over, Grouper, Puro Instinct, to name but a few) in the gauzy DNA strains of this seminal group.

And now we continue our re-visiting of the Cocteau Twins' recent reissues... Without question, on this the Cocteau Twins' third album originally released in 1984, Elizabeth Fraser's vocal performance nears the sublime. You may not be able to decipher a single word of her secret tongue, but waves of emotion crash and swirl gloriously around you nevertheless. Each element - guitar, voice, bass and percussion - is perfectly executed and arranged. Truly stunning and almost magical, it's an enduring classic that more than lives up to its name.

MPEG stream: Ivo
MPEG stream: Lorelei

MPEG stream: The Thinner The Air
MPEG stream: Little Spacey

It's been about 3 years since we last heard from these avant black metallers, whose first record, Nouveau Gloaming, we described as sounding like a black metal Interpol, and whose second, Resplendent Grotesque, managed to take everything we dug about that first record, and hone it into the perfect hybrid of croony, gothy gloom rock and furious blasting grim blackness. And while we talked a lot about the poppier, gloomier side of their sound, sonically they were and are definitely beholden to the first wave of truly avant/post black metal outfits like Dodheimsgard and Borknagar, the bombastic almost symphonic arrangements, the clean vocals, all wound up into a framework that at its core is classic buzzing black metal, made for a pretty revolutionary sound back in the day, and while that sound might be passe at this point, we're pretty sad that bands don't make music like that anymore, although apparently these guys still do. This time around, the sound is definitely even further removed from the black metal that, at least partially, defined Code's sound in the early days, sure there's plenty of black buzz, and sick vokills, even blast beats, but much of the record is spent in a strange black-prog gloom metal netherworld that make their sound tough to classify, for true grim metalheads, Augur Nox is likely too all over the map, too poppy, and not nearly metal enough, but for folks into gloomy poppy heaviness, who can handle sounds seriously fucking fierce and frantic, there's so much to dig here, which is precisely what makes this record so appealing, even when the band are in full on goth pop mode, they'll bust out with a grinding tangle of buzzing blackness, or a furious flurry of insectoid riffing and mathed out drum pound. And by the same token, songs buzzing and blasting full bore will suddenly splinter into weird poppiness, or some crazy catchy melody or guitar line, will suddenly transform the song. To our ears, this time around there does seem to be a bit more moody, dramatic dour poppiness a la Katatonia, but it's supercharged and revved way up, and some of the proggier moments like "Harmonies In Cloud", sound a bit like a black metal Marillion, which sounds weird, but is actually pretty goddamn great. Like the last two Code albums, Augur Nox is quickly turning into one of our most listened to new records, and with every listen, the songs reveal themselves more and more as avant black gloom masterpieces, masterful arrangements of dark, psychedelic hookiness, churning, buzzing crush, and epic sonic majesty. Another record that swoops right in, just in time for year end top ten lists, and we can guarantee this will be on ours!

MPEG stream: Black Rumination
MPEG stream: Becoming Host
MPEG stream: Ecdysis

When we first threw this on we were greeted by a huge frosty gust of blackened brrrrrrr, like nothing we'd heard since the first few Satyricon records. In fact we were all ready to push this as the perfect record for everyone who missed the good ol' days of Dark Medieval Times and Nemesis Divina. And it definitely is just that, but only some of the time. The rest of the time, Code traffic in some strange sort of haunting blackened metallic cabaret. Thick swaths of Burzumic fuzzguitar, a seasick swoon, droning and drifting hypnotically, like a smeared Slinty black metal a la Ved Buens Ende, and with similarly strange croony vocals, but here they are a sort of sea shanty croon, like old timey vocals broadcast on an old forties radio or maybe even like that cartoon frog that only sings "Hello My Baby" when no one else is listening. It's not humorous or anything, but that is definitely the timbre, old and sing songy, sort of wearily melodic, sometimes turning into a gorgeously mournful sort of gothy vocals that are a dead ringer for Interpol. Sounds weird, and like it couldn't possibly work, but it really is quite amazing. Beneath all this buzzing and crooning, the music occasionally slips into full on doomy Swans-y stuff, but still sort of lush and majestic like later Swans, with some truly odd warbly underwater basslines, slippery and woozy, giving the whole record a sort of dizzy dreamy vibe. But even those tracks that are mostly midtempo with the lush crooned vocals, veer back into ultra blackness now and again, with howled demonic vocals, huge thick riffing, very Khold-like at times, thick and snarling and buzzing wildly, before eventually slipping back into some kind of loping black waltz. Another blast of black metal that manages to retain its black heart while pushing in all sorts of not-so-black directions!

MPEG stream: The Cotton Optic
MPEG stream: Brass Dogs

We'd been trying to get copies of this record for ages, but couldn't find it anywhere. We loved the first Code record so much, a record we described as sounding a bit like a black metal Interpol, and we had heard bits of the new one, and if anything the two disparate elements that made the first record so good, the strange croony gothic component, and the blasting classic Norwegian style black metal, were both somehow MORE and BETTER, if that was even possible. Well finally, we managed to get in touch with the band directly, and ordered a bunch from them, and it's just as good as we hoped or imagined. Like the first record, the root sound is full bore, super tight and polished Norwegian black metal, a la Satyricon, incredible blackened riffs, insane super technical drumming, majestic melodies, dense convoluted arrangements, but here, those elements have a strangely industrial vibe, not to mention that weird coldwave goth pop influence that so infused their debut. The arrangements this time around are impossible, constantly shifting and twisting, dizzying song structures that manage to baffle and confuse, but remain fierce and furious and most importantly catchy. The band are not shy about their black metal, often lurching into furious bursts of black blasts, howling shrieking thrashing mayhem, but just as often, they shift gears, and the music stretches out and in come the clean vocals, very much like later Borknagar, and like we mentioned before, Interpol, although on Resplendent Grotesque if we needed to break it down comparison-wise, we might describe the sound as Satyricon meets Katatonia meets Deathspell Omega, the pop element is certainly undeniable, but even at its poppiest, the guitars are still grinding away underneath, or the band is lurching through mathy breakdowns or seasick rhythmic changeups, there's plenty of other weirdness too, spaced out collaged interludes, with processed vocals, and delayed acoustic guitars, super hooky Khold-like riffing, but it's the songwriting that really makes Resplendent Grotesque so transcendent, "The Rattle Of Black Teeth" almost sounds like black metal Morrissey, and "Jesus Fever" has a super impassioned wailing clean vocal finish, that is as dramatic and emotional as any of the blacker more metal moments, if not more so, and "A Sutra Of Wounds" starts out as pure pop, before the clean vocals are teamed up with harsh vokills, for a seriously demonic harmony, that extends throughout the whole track. The whole record is a constant battle between light and dark, pretty and ugly, harsh and melodic, and that battle is exactly what makes the sound so unique, so intense, so weird, but so utterly enthralling and fucking brilliant. Definitely a weird record, and probably not for everybody, grim TROO metalheads might scoff, but we're all about pushing the boundaries of the genre, and moving beyond the typical tropes, hearing sounds and songs that confound and confuse and perplex, we love pure black metal, the grimmer and colder the better, but we also love the endless hybridization of that sound, seeing where it can go, and how far out it can be taken, and these guys have taken the sound somewhere entirely new, and we're loving it. Definite contender for black metal record of the year...

MPEG stream: Smother The Crones
MPEG stream: In The Privacy Of Your Own Bones
MPEG stream: The Rattle Of Black Teeth

While we wait for the repress of the entire awesome 6lp+3cd When I See The Sun Codeine boxset, and while we're still reveling in their recent visit, and mind blowing Great American Music Hall reunion tour performance, we might as well take a second to focus on this, their breathtaking debut, now re-released individually, separate from the boxset, fleshed out with a handful of bonus tracks, Peel Sessions, demos and rarities, thus totally essential for obsessives like us (or you?) - well, at least those among us who haven't already gone whole hog and bought the boxset. But for all you vinyl freaks who have been waiting to check these guys out, this is the perfect introduction, to one of the most beautiful, intense, moving, and hauntingly lovely chunks of slowcore indie rock EVER, the 1991 debut from Sub Pop slow-core specialists Codeine. Definitely one of those records that Andee, Allan, et. al. here will tell you, if you don't have it already, you oughta get one now...seriously. Emo, indie-rock, post-rock, whatever this is, it's a classic. A classic of majestic melancholia. For the Frigid Stars LP, this NYC-based trio consisted of Stephen Immerwahr on bass and vocals, Chris Brokaw on drums and guitar and John Engle on guitar. They employ the soft-loud dynamic that their former Sub Pop labelmates Nirvana already made famous (or would around that same year). Not that they sound much like Nirvana. They sound a bit more like Low, albeit a lumbering downtuned Low. Codeine's own brand of moody, melodic misery wouldn't, couldn't be an MTV hit. Indie-pop it was, but so sad and slow... The songs here share slowly crawling tempos, and echoey drum hits and big distorted guitar chords crashing down to give extra weight to Immerwahr's weary vocals and love-lost lyrics. We've always wanted to hear a metal band do a cover of some track from this record, maybe "D". But even though this isn't really "heavy" in a metal sense, it still IS heavy. A great record for when you're sad and alone. Strange how something like this will make you feel better, but it will. As a side note, one aQ-er first heard this album over the phone. Not the whole album, but sound clips much like the ones on our website. That's right, way back when before the internet and the mp3 and all that, somebody got the idea to do a dial-up music service where you'd get to check out new music over the phone, by calling a 900-number, and using a touch-tone phone to choose what you wanted to hear. It had something to do with the old Factsheet Five 'zine as we recall. We have vague memories of looking at the album cover reproduced in the 'zine - a negative photo of black stars floating in white emptiness - and hearing the long-distance sounds of those Frigid Stars like a transmission from that deep space void... even under those circumstances, maybe especially under those circumstances, Codeine were so effective. We might just have selected it to listen to on the basis of the album cover and title alone, and were not disappointed.

MPEG stream: D
MPEG stream: Cave-In

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

SORRY.

Finally repressed, so we can review it! We had been waiting for this FOREVER, a gorgeous, super deluxe comprehensive career retrospective from slowcore legends Codeine, a group who most aQ-ers count as all time faves, and whose sound most definitely influenced a legion of slo-mo outfits that would surface in their wake. This box collects both their albums proper, Frigid Stars and The White Birch, as well as the Barely Real ep, and on top of that, piles on TONS of rarities, single B-sides, compilation tracks, unreleased demos, live songs, Peel sessions, essentially everything they ever recorded, all housed in an impossibly lavish box, which includes SIX lps and THREE cds, as well as a huge booklet which includes essays by Sub Pop's Jonathan Poneman, Love Child's Alan Licht, and the Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne and Steven Drozd. There was originally an oral history compiled as well (Please Kill Me style), which included our very own Andee, but for some reason, that was not included, and will supposedly show up in print somewhere else eventually. But really, it's all about the music, and Codeine's music is truly breathtaking. Their recent reunion show here in two was one of the best shows we've seen. And even at that show, these boxes were sold out! But for now, we have a few in stock, and should hopefully be able to get more. But you never know... We recently reviewed Codeine's debut, Frigid Stars, on its own, but that review most definitely also describes their body of work as a whole, and barring some subtle sonic shifts over the years, applies to all three of their records, which combined, exist as one of the most beautiful, intense, moving, and hauntingly harrowing collections of slowcore indie rock EVER. Definitely one of those bands that Andee, Allan, et. al. here will tell you, if you don't have all of their records, you oughta get them now... seriously. Emo, indie-rock, post-rock, whatever Codeine is, it's totally classic. A classic of majestic melancholia. They employed the soft-loud dynamic that their former Sub Pop labelmates Nirvana already made famous (or would around the same time). Not that they sound much like Nirvana. They sound a bit more like Low, albeit a lumbering downtuned Low. Codeine's own brand of moody, melodic misery wouldn't, couldn't be an MTV hit. Indie-pop it was, but so sad and slow... The songs share slowly crawling tempos, and echoey drum hits and big distorted guitar chords crashing down to give extra weight to vocalist/bassist Stephen Immerwahr's weary vocals and love-lost lyrics. We've always wanted to hear a metal band do cover Codeine. But even though this isn't really "heavy" in a metal sense, it still IS heavy. The perfect music for when you're sad and alone. Strange how something like this will make you feel better, but it will. Highest recommendation!

MPEG stream: D
MPEG stream: Cave-In
MPEG stream: Tom
MPEG stream: Sea

MPEG stream: Tom
MPEG stream: Sea

Oh yeah, the original country bad boy. For all the tough guys who acted the part, snarled and swaggered, none could hold a candle to David Allan Coe, who spent a good amount of his younger years in prison before he headed to Nashville to make it big in country music. He was bad ass and prison tough before it was cool. But once the big boys decided it was cool, they all came crawling back, dying to hear Coe's tales of life behind bars. This is true life, bad ass, foot stomping, boogie woogie country blues. Tales of drugs and fighting and lonliness and death. As well as one of our favorite Coe tracks "Death Row", where Coe unveils his impossibly exotic and ridiculous requests for his last meal. After all, a man can't die until he's had his last meal, so if you have to track down a double yoked egg from an albino pigeon, with fried bat wings over easy, well you'll be sitting pretty for a long long time. Each song is a stone cold classic, wild guitars, honky tonk piano, wailing harmonicas, shuffling rhythms and Coe's lazy countrified drawl. All packaged in a gorgeous digipak reissue that faithfully recreates the original lp's die cut bars and has extensive liner notes that tell Coe's unbelievable life story. But nothing says it better than Coe's dedication on the sleeve: "Pennitentiary Blooos - O.K.! So my spelling is bad! I'm not a colledge graduate. I didn't even finish high school. I was in prison. Most of my life. Reform Schools, reformatorys, and prisons. But I'm a songwriter and a singer. Over the years I've made millions of dollars, Writing songs for Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennnings, George Jones, John Cash, Johnny Paycheck, Tanya Tucker, Elvis, the Dead Kennedys, Unkle Kracker, Kid Rock. And many others. All kinds of music.Rock + roll, rap, country, pop, hip hop, do wop, ragga and blues. THIS WAS MY FIRST ALBUM. I'm 65 years old now. And as I listen back to these songs I realize I've always been part of the blues and the blues have always been a part of me. The blues isn't a black thing or a white thing. It's a black and blue thing. you have to experience it. Sincerely, David Allan Coe,ïEx-convict" Fuck yeah! Includes a bonus booklet along with the liner notes, an excerpt from Coe's book "Ex-Convict", called How To Pull Time And Parole. Complete with reproduced original typewritten pages and one of Coe's early mugshots.

MPEG stream: Penitentiary Blues
MPEG stream: Cell #33
MPEG stream: Death Row

For those versed in all things Jewelled Antler, Loren Chasse should need no introduction thanks to his magnificent elemental scraping and poetic hymnal minimalism in Thuja, The Blithe Sons, The Franciscan Hobbies, and others. As prolific as Jewelled Antler have been, Loren has somehow still managed to find the time to continue his Coelacanth collaboration with AQ's very own Jim Haynes. There are a lot of similarities between Coelacanth and Jewelled Antler stuff, as Loren and Jim do perform with a mess of rocks, moss, twigs, rust, wind, water, copper, metal, etc. and apply that source material to their own imagined sciences and areas of sound research. Through their expressive performances, hermetic field recordings, and site-specific events, Coelacanth transmits empathic swells of organic textures nestled into immersive droning sounds. Mud Wall marks the third album for Coelacanth; and rumor has it that Mud Wall may have been partially recorded in what we call "The Slaughterhouse", the storage area behind Aquarius which acts more as a damp repository for grit and dust than for anything macabre. Mud Wall nevertheless is Coelacanth's darkest album to date, begining with intense low rumblings that inevitably give way to sustained tones encrusted with shadowy textures. It's one long 60 plus minute adventure of sonorous physicality, which moves in a number of different directions yet all the while maintains a singleminded focus. So beautiful. This is actually the second pressing of Mud Wall, and we desperately tried to get our hands of some copies of the first pressing which came out as a CDR on some label from Belgium. That first pressing proved to be prohibitively expensive (who wants to pay $22.00 for a bloody CDR?). Fortunately, the enigmatic Helen Scarsdale Agency, who released Jim's first album Magnetic North, decided to repress Mud Wall as a proper CD. The second pressing is a vast improvement, not only featuring 20 minutes of extra material culled from the original sessions seemlessly interwoven into the composition, but also some very nice silkscreened artwork.

MPEG stream: Mud Wall excerpt 1
MPEG stream: Mud Wall excerpt 2

Once known simply as "the rust record", this is the debut recorded collaboration between AQ-fave sound artist Loren Chasse (id battery, Thuja, himself, etc.) and AQ-fave staffer Jim Haynes! Jim, known for his decay-oriented visual art, provided the

RealAudio clip: Mirrors/Needles
RealAudio clip: Fossil And Transmitter
RealAudio clip: Chronograph In Phosphorescence

Second release from this droning duo. Coelacanth is our very own Jim Haynes and AQ pal Loren Chasse (Jewelled Antler, Blithe Sons, Thuja, Franciscan Hobbies, Id Battery et al). Four extended tracks of gorgeous space-y drone-y almost-ambience. Forests of cricket-like chirps are blurred into smeary ambient washes of cool greys and pale whites, beneath smatterings of clinking clicking clatter. Keening, indistinct moaning tones sound like distant foghorns, reflected from the slowly shifting terrain. Underwatery warped sonic shudders billow outward as vague melodies drift and float, chiming and reverberating, eventually dissipating into misty clusters of ethereal almost transparent notes. Hissing, fuzzy high end buzz whirs machinelike over industrial clatter that has been smoothed out into pulsing, barely-there rhythms. So so nice. All of the sounds were collected from various public and private Coelacanth performances over the last couple years, before being assembled into the Glass Sponge. Released by local sound art nonprofit 23five.

MPEG stream: The Electric Hydrometer
MPEG stream: The Hexactinellidae
MPEG stream: The Violet Shell and Its Raft

In the two years since we last heard from Coelacanth, other drone based groups have unleashed hundreds of cd-rs of extended vibrations, treated field recordings, and fucked-up droning noise; and Coelacanth could have easily fallen into that camp, releasing any number of perfectly adequate live recordings. But they didn't. Instead, Loren Chasse (Thuja, Blithe Sons, Of, Child Readers, and many things Jewelled Antler) and aQ's own Jim Haynes chose to labor on the details of their recordings so that every timbre, every drone, and every tactile grain of sound was perfectly aligned with the sounds of their elemental objects and particular environments. In the world of Coelacanth, there are rocks, rust, sand, leaves, strobe lights, weird electrical devices, shortwave, and plenty of oceanic field recordings (in honor of the fish they're named after); and from those sounds, Coelacanth creates multiple layers and deep textures, all together in a mesmerising tapestry of sub-aquatic abstractions and chiming reverberations. Perfecting their tactile dronework was just the beginning in preparing for their fourth album Wrack Light In Copper Ruin, as they also began collaborations with the film/sound artist Keith Evans in finding a visual corrolary for their sonic abstractions, utilizing breathtakingly hypnotic film and video installations to compliment Coelacanth's music and vice versa. Evans is also a member of Silt, a multimedia collective that specializes in elaborate multi-projection / kinetic-sculpture installations -- one of which was featured at the Whitney Biennial back in 2002. Given that Evans has previously worked with Chasse for a Thuja performance in Scotland a couple years back, a Coelacanth / Keith Evans pairing seemed logical. So, Wrack Light In Copper Ruin is both a CD and DVD, with the audio portion finding Coelacanth not only collaborating with Evans on some of the recordings, but also Matmos who had asked Chasse and Haynes to join them for part of their 96 hours of performances at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Underwater bell tones, raked stringed instruments, ringing glass harmonics, and gaping drones saturated in a density of texture so complex that it almost sounds like an acoustic version of a Fennesz album! The DVD features Evans' jaw-dropping video work: abstract undulating landscapes of refracted light, all scored to a subtle Chasse / Evans remix of the sounds on the CD. The rippled linear patterns seem innocuous at first; but like the hypnotic primal power of fire, it totally sucks you in. So gorgeous!

MPEG stream: Nerine
MPEG stream: Sessile Rotifer
MPEG stream: Alluvial Dust

It should come as no surprise that on his extensive musical resume Dennis Coffey can boast to scoring blaxploitation films as well as session playing on numerous Motown records and other soul and funk outings from his hometown of Detroit. Big City Funk compiles tracks from his four studio albums released on the Sussex label over the years 1971-'74. His fried and fiery delivery of instrumental funk has been a mainstay with crate diggers forever. In fact over the years he's been sampled by the likes of the Beastie Boys, Public Enemy and LL Cool J. When he's on, his tracks are on fire, reminding us at times of such disparate sounds as the Childrens Television Workshop and groups like Stark Reality. The overall sound and feeling of Coffey's songs would make the perfect soundtrack for a wild cop car chase or for those soft focus slow tease moments in classic '70s porn. Really fun and oh so '70s!

MPEG stream: Son Of Scorpio
MPEG stream: Outrageous

Ahhh Coffins. Japan's masters of primitive, dirgey, filthy, crusty death metal return with this massive double disc collection gathering up all the group's singles, splits and compilation tracks, including the tracks from their splits with Otesanek and The Arm And Sword Of A Bastard God, which we'd carried in the past. But besides those, we'd basically heard almost none of the rest of this, and like their records proper, this is some fantastically ruling heaviness, sludgey downtuned pummel colliding with classic old school death metal crush, resulting in a nearly two hour barrage of grunted and belched demonic vokills, pounding skull caving drum damage and of course plenty of sick, murky metallic riffing. The song titles alone tell much of the story: "Eat Your Shit", "Corpse Parade", "The Cracks Of Doom", "Abysmal Blood Sea", "Cremated Remains", "Wasteland Of Terror", "Decapitated Crawl", "Bonesawer", "Acid Orgy", we could go on but you get the drift, the music sounds exactly how it would have to to go with those titles, the sound slipping from dirgey doom sludge lumber, to stumbling blasting DM blowout, but even in dirge mode, the songs are peppered with frantic riffing and double kick drumming, and similarly, even when blasting away, the sound oozes and creeps, the band sounding like they could collapse at any moment and slip right back into a blackened tarpit creep. Way recommended for fans of Acid Witch, Decepitaph, Skeletal Spectre, Wooden Stake, Hooded Menace and other modern old school death metal outfits, as well as classic combos like Autopsy, Dismember, Hellhammer and the like� Comes housed in a massive 8 panel double digipak.

MPEG stream: Eat Your Shit
MPEG stream: Corpse Parade
MPEG stream: Offalgrinder
MPEG stream: The Cracks Of Doom
MPEG stream: Abysmal Blood Sea

MPEG stream: Under The Stench
MPEG stream: Buried Death

Second full length from these primitive downtuned sludgey dirgey death metallers from Japan. And holy shit! Nothing fancy here, no crazy leads, or swirling keyboards or million mile an hour blast beats, this is just massive, pummeling crushing black hole heaviness, super old school doom drenched metal dirge. Each track buried beneath a thick wall of downtuned tarpit sludginess, with ultra low gurgling monster vocals (and the occasional black metal shriek) and some seriously killer riffing. As loyal AQ customers know, it's pretty dang hard to go wrong with Japanese sludge heaviness. Think Corrupted (the bass player is wearing a Corrupted shirt on the back cover), Church Of Misery, Dot [.], Boris, Solar Anus, Garadama, you get the idea. And while the band's sound tends to lean more toward the old school death metal of Autopsy, Grave, Carnage, Hellhammer and that sort of thing, their obvious Winter fixation, finds Coffins veering deep into SLUDGE country too, whipping up a suffocating world of glacial buzzing crawl that would make Boris or Corrupted proud.

MPEG stream: Blood And Bone
MPEG stream: The Other Side Of Blasphemy
MPEG stream: Evil Infection

Yet another killer slow and low matchup, Japan's doom sludge crustlords Coffins, versus Philadelphia's masters of doomic ultra slow motion trudge, Otesanek... Coffins blow through three tracks, spending most of their time pounding out downtuned nineties Earache style crust, like Carcass or Napalm Death or Discharge only at 16rpm, thick sludgy guitars seriously scary ultra low guttural vocals, blasting chaotic drumming, with all three tracks occasionally bursting into full on furious pummeling black thrash, but those blasts usually settle right back down into more lurching and pounding brutality (with a bunch of killer old school leads tossed in as well!). They even finish off with a Goatlord cover! How cult is that? Otesanek counter with a sidelong stretch of 3 rpm slow motion, glacial ultra doooooooooom. Think Khanate, Bunkur, Moss, but then think slower, meaner, maybe even weirder... Guitars roar and then ring out forever, the buzzing crumbling riffage drawn out until the next crushing blow, huge drum plods are spaced miles apart, the vocals are sick and super harsh (one of the vocalists is a woman too, both sound demonic and fucking frightening!), angular grinding guitars, occasional stumbling chaotic drum fills, haunted tortured voices way off in the distance, bits of scrape and hiss, squealing feedback, all draped over Otesanek's grim bleak sonic landscape. This is about as slow and low, harsh and hateful, crushing and brutal as ultra doom can get before it just grinds to a complete halt. Awesome. Packaged in a super fancy, ultra thick, full color gatefold sleeve...

Geeze, that crusty doom label 20 Buck Spin puts out sooo much cool stuff we have trouble keeping up! Here's a split release we've had in stock since, uh, last summer, but forgot to list. Coffins are of course the Japanese doomic death metal band that's been getting more and more popular lately (especially among the population of people wearing Celtic Frost or Autopsy shirts right at this very moment). On their half of this split, they churn out three brutal trax, including appropriately enough a Pungent Stench cover ("Bonesawer") in keeping with their old school death metal sickness. And I guess we hadn't ever looked at the credits before where it says who plays what in the band... doing so now leads to this terrible joke: Hey I didn't know You played drums for Coffins! hahaha. On the other "side" of this, SoCal band The Arm And Sword Of A Bastard God, offer up their debut recordings, three songs of utter stoner death doom heaviness, sludgy with guttural vokills. Goes pretty well with Coffins! Nicely packaged with rad cover art in an oversized folder thingie, a la stuff on aRCHIVE (or Half Makeshift's L'Anse Amort previous on 20 Buck Spin).

MPEG stream: Mortification To Ruin
MPEG stream: Annex Wasteland

Great Bringer Of Night was the 2009 demo from these Midwestern blackened doomlords, and has now been remastered by James Plotkin, had a couple extra tracks tacked on (alternate versions of tracks from their Profound Lore release), and been made available again, this time on vinyl, via local label Flenser. Folks who dug Coffinworm's When All Became None cd on Profound Lore, will most likely dig this as well. On Great Bringer Of Night, like on When All Became None, Coffinworm offer up a dense churning black sludge, crusty and corrosive, the guitars thick and caustic, the drums pummeling, the vocals a glass gargling howl, the songs lumbering and lurching, abject and miserable, slowing to a tarpit crawl and times, while at others surprisingly cranking up the tempo and getting downright melodic, like on "Start Saving For Your Funeral", which sounds like Lifelover with a doom metal makeover, the song slipping from chugging full-on rocking, to gnarled downtuned churn and back again. Then there's "The Inner Caligula" that fuses slow-mo sludge to something almost punk sounding, like an ultra doom version of a metalcore breakdown. There's even some full on thrashing on "Spitting In Infinity's Asshole", some blast beats too, but for the most part, Coffinworm spend their time chugging and churning, dirging blackly through a hellish sonic wasteland, equal parts Eyehategod, Unearthly Trance, early Cavity, a crusty, filthy, sludge-y, blackened doom dirge that's LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!!

MPEG stream: High On the Reek of Your Burning Remains
MPEG stream: Start Saving For Your Funeral
MPEG stream: The Inner Caligula

We never really thought about Indiana as a hotbed for blackened doom-ed sludge, but all it takes really is one band to change that, and by the sounds of When All Became None, that band just might be Coffinworm, whose sound is equal parts Unearthly Trance and Eyehategod with a healthy dose of black metal mixed in. Crusty, filthy, raw, punk as fuck, but WAY metal, super dynamic and melodic, there's really not much to like here. The first song alone, lays it all out for you, after a super aggro, stop/start intro, the band lurch into some seriously detuned doom, laced with howled vox, woozy spidery guitar melodies, and downtuned chug, before transforming into some midtempo melodic post metal, occasionally interrupted by blown out blackened blasts and stumbling doomic breakdowns. The vocals are incredible, a sort of crusty punk black metal hybrid, the guitars are thick and dense, the riffs epic and heavy, with plenty of groove, every song a swirling psychedelic cloud of sonic bong smoke, an ever shifting hybrid of doom metal, crust punk, sludge - but also a weirdly keen melodic side, that the band seems to try to be keeping in check, but it still seeps into all their songs, which is not at all a bad thing, but shit this fucked up and fierce, shouldn't be catchy to boot. How about the warped lurching, melting guitar crawl of "Start Saving For Your Funeral", or the churning Cavity-like chug of "Strip Nude For Your Killer", or the almost stoner rock sounding crust of "Spitting In Infinity's Asshole", with its almost Electric Wizard sounding intro? Fuck it, these guys rule. That's all you need to know. If the words crust, doom, sludge, black, psych, grind, churn, druggy, crushing, pummel don't already have you frothing at the mouth, then wethinks you just might be in the wrong review...

MPEG stream: Blood Born Doom
MPEG stream: Start Saving For Your Funeral
MPEG stream: Spitting In Infinity's Asshole

While on the road Canadian indie songstress Ms Ora Cogan came strolling into our shop with these cd-rs charmingly hand-packaged in cut up old flea market record sleeves. On first glance of the varied decontextualized artworks, you might expect her music to be along the earthy experimental lines of the Bay Area's Jewelled Antler and Jyrk Collectives, but she's definitely coming from a different place -- Salt Spring Island, BC, haha! Seriously though, she's been making good ol' down home, twilight porch swing tunes for the past seven years. Her vocal delivery bears more than a passing resemblance to Ms Jolie Holland's. It possesses that haunting, soulful quality that seems like its source is coming from deep deep within or beyond. Like a mysterious transplant from decades past, it's as though she opens her mouth and a lilting voice from the '20s comes drifting out. It's beautiful in its simplicity, just her and her guitar and a few banjo and back-up vocal additions. Cogan is part of a close knit Canadian folksy sisterhood which includes the Begood Tanyas and Carolyn Mark. If you've a fondness for those ladies (and Ms Holland too), don't wait another second. This is totally for you!

MPEG stream: Old Black Swan
MPEG stream: Take Me Home

If the earthy dusk beauty of Ms Cogan's most recent full length The Quarry charmed your ears, you won't want to miss this special treat... and don't dilly dally, this limited edition cassette is sure to be gone in a flash. Only 50 copies were made, and we got a scant five from the lady herself! So, once they're gone, it's most likely that'll be it. Although a boggy mire sounds like a rather unpleasant place to be, we think it might not be so bad with Ora by our side. She exudes a quiet strength and warm presence both in person and on record. Here, she covers the songs of legendary country, folk and blues artists Elizabeth Cotten, Dock Boggs, Bonnie Raitt, Irma Thomas, Don Gibson and Skip Spence, as well as more recent numbers by Sonic Youth and Rio En Medio, and tucks in a couple of old traditionals too. Lovely stuff!

West Coast songstress Ms Ora Cogan is back with a pair of new releases... this, a full length titled The Quarry (on cd and lp), and a cassette called The Boggy Mire. So lush yet rustic, The Quarry is perhaps a bit darker in tone and haunting in mood than her previous recordings. Deeply moving, but not despairing, each word is drawn out into almost non-verbal utterances which at times seem as much inspired by old tymey Appalachian folk as by Canadian aboriginal music vocalizations and Cocteau Twins' Elizabeth Fraser. Cogan's voice lilts and swoops amid her delicate finger picked and strummed guitar along with some dreamy dulcimer, violin, and fleeting moments of droney dissonance too. The dozen numbers take an unhurried pace, gradually winding their way into your heart. A lovely and deceptively potent aural elixir! Limited pressing of 500!

MPEG stream: The Quarry
MPEG stream: Gather

Perched on the same weeping willow branch as the lovely folksy likes of her pals Be Good Tanyas and Jolie Holland, Ora Cogan's Tatter (both in its original cd-r format and on the more recent cd release) album has been going about its kindly hushed way, charming the ears of all who've encounter it. Peep Creek is another little homespun release by this Canadian gal. It's a 2-song ep on cdr with packaging fashioned out of recycled lp jackets, sheets of fancy paper and gold star confetti. The two tunes are Spartan and lovely with simply plucked guitar, an occasional cello and lilting vocals that also bring to mind Karen Dalton and Jesse Sykes. Our only complaint is that this is far too short. More, please!

MPEG stream: Riverside

Of all the folks involved in the world of ultra stark, minimalist techno and barely there click and glitch, we've always been pretty partial to Ivan Pavlov, aka COH. Not sure exactly what it is, but he always manages to take his stark minimalism somewhere full of life and emotion and energy. What in other hands would be nothing but a sonic experiment, in Pavlov's becomes a song, or a groove, or just a big chunk of sound that resonates with energy and creativity and power. Not sure if the title is supposed to intimate something about the music within and it's supposed relation to classic pop constructs. But in no way is this Pavlov's poppiest material, not by a long shot. That's not to say it isn't great, it is, it's just much more barebones and barely there. Disc one sounds like Neu! after being dipped in acid, so all the flesh and organs have liquified and sloughed off, leaving just a skeletal framework, an intricate assemblage of static and stutter, hiss and click, with an innate funkiness that might just be flecks of melody clinging desperately to the already picked clean bones. Disc B is a reissue of a 1997 release originally released in a limited run of SEVEN copies and given only to friends. This disc is a little more all over the place, while the recurring theme is still definitely Pavlov's microscopic glitch funk minimalism, there are random moments of Ikeda like test tones, stuttering synth squelch, and once in a while even a little bleeping blooping outer space swoosh. Packaged in a cool geometrically abstract double digipak.

MPEG stream: Da Kota Rap
MPEG stream: Apex (Twig)
MPEG stream: Post-Pop Reprise

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

SORRY. The fourth in the monthly series of 20 minute compositions that countdown the end of the Millenium. COH has provided perhaps the most 'listenable' so far (which isn't to hard after the gut wrenching sine waves of Ryoji Ikeda's contribution for March)... slippery layers of soothing drones. Drifting and dreamy minimalism.

Russian sound artist Ivan Pavlov aka COH returns with a new album of ultra minimal, ultra pristine electronic ambience, a tribute to recently passed Coil mainman Jhonn Balance, who was a good friend and frequent collaborator of Pavlov's. COH, for us, is best when Pavlov is manipulating organic sounds into warm rich swells of sound, most notably on the LP-only Seasons (now out of print). But while Above Air is a much more clinical affair, Pavlov manages to somehow imbue each song with all manner of warmth and emotion. He may be a master of the glitch and the click, and the digital squelch, he proves once again that he can create art, feeling and emotion with the slightest of sounds. Above Air is a subtle, dark, contemplative mix of whispery sine waves, distant chimes, speaker static and white noise, tolling bells, gently ringing chimes, an ultra subtle glitch here and there, creating fetal rhythms, that never quite mature, remaining just another layer of sound, haunting electronic drones that waver and drift as if being broadcast from afar, pulsing chopped melodic fragments, all deftly woven into a dark but somehow surprisingly sanguine elegy for Balance. The whole record is minimal, but active and alive, subtle, but infused with disarmingly complex arrangements and dark emotion, a bit like the best Coil records, which we're sure is exactly the sort of memorial Pavlov intended.

MPEG stream: Faster Than Sound
MPEG stream: Between Heaven And Earth

After the gorgeously organic and delicately melodic experimentalism of the last few Coh releases, this decidedly monochromatic, almost straight techno 12" came as a bit of a surprise. That said, this is a pretty engaging platter of head nodding electronic bliss. Side one is a cold and minimal digital glitchscape, with clipped pulses, humming static, squeaking creaking digital errata, and cyclical muted minor key melodies that slowly build in intensity. Halfway through the side, the track seemingly repeats, this time with a little extra dynamic flair, more grit and a more solid throb, before dissipating into a serene wash of isolated notes, sounding a bit like a slowed down thumb piano. Quite beautiful. The second side starts off with a little bit of classic Kraftwerk major key melodic bounce, but quickly settles into similarly spaced out, hypno-throb territory. Imagine Plastikman on speed, or 4 on the floor techno played by Pole, or Gas trying to do 'real' dance music. Strangely hypnotic and pretty great.

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

SORRY. A lot more action packed and a bit more accessible than most Noton / Rastermusic releases (like Noto, Miko Vainio, Kim Cascone, and Signal) but still just as minimal as fuck in places. After a minute of ear shredding schreech and a few downright 'poppy' moments, the record settles down into looped out bliss. Beeps, clicks and stuttering tones coalesce into a soothing minimal whole. An exceptional record for fans of Oval.

COH, aka Ivan Pavlov, has been a long time favorite, taking that click and beep and buzz we love so much, that austere clipped electronic minimalism, and somehow infusing it with melody, and emotion, and while we love Pavlov's contemporaries, that might just be what makes the music of COH sound so special to us. And as if we weren't already excited about a new COH record anyway, IIron is Pavlov's 'metal record', a continuation of 2000's Iron, which was ostensibly his rock record (thus the title IIron should be read as Iron with the Roman numeral two replacing the 'I', as in part two), and much like other COH records, his take on minimal electronica bears little resemblance to his peers, especially here, taking acoustic guitars, chugging metal guitars, skittery electro rhythms, synth new wave, droned out low end crush and nineties style electronic industrial, and tangling it all up into some weird electro-avant-metal hybrid, that varies wildly from track to track, but manages to weave them all together into a somewhat cohesive whole. Besides the usual minimal buzz and click programming and electronic beat crafting, Pavlov incorporates both recent guitar recordings as well as various guitar recordings made back in the eighties during Soviet era Russia, when even listening to metal music, let alone crating it, was expressly forbidden, Which also adds to the tension and emotional resonance of these tracks, which vary from propulsive and electro, to blackened and sludgey, to chuggy and noisy. The opener "Red Square" begins with a bit of delicate fingerpicked steel string guitar, wreathed in record crackle, which is soon overtaken by some pulsing industrial pulse and pound, a little Skinny Puppy, a little Ministry, but a bit more skeletal and cinematic, the crunchy distorted guitar, chopped up and spaced out into a weird sort of rock riff chug, all wrapped around a seriously creepy bit of soundtracky ambience, and a tangle of melodies that sounds almost like a electro-metal version of gypsy folk. "War End War" is where the record first gets truly metal, after some deep barely audible subsonic rumbles, the low end roils and churns, a Tim Hecker-ish bit of blurred bassy melody, all hazy and indistinct, which builds and builds until a lurching lumbering doom-ic riffscape stumbles from the murk, wreathed in swirls of glitched out electronics and strange spacey FX, the sound crusty, and crunchy, distorted and crumbling, all wound around a big thick metallic riff just chugging away, the sound gradually smoothing out, until the song has returned to the murky muddy thrum that started things off, this time laced with a simple guitar melodies, and distant little curlicues of effects, all beneath a patina of crumbling gauze, before that riff returns, only this time to get all glitched up like a super scratchy skipping record, and then to get fused with some pulsing trancey electronica, the result a buzzy, metallic bit of doomy abstract industrial electronica. The metal element is not so pronounced on some of the other tracks, or at least not obviously so, "Soii Noir" is a super minimal bit of pulsing electro, spare and spacious, sounding almost like a game of Pong, until another crunchy, lo-fi distorted riff enters the picture, but like before, it's all twisted up and distorted, wreathed in crackle and crumbling buzz, and molded into something distinctly UNmetal, but still heavy and riffy, where as "Slowup (Quadrate Fur Jah)" begins like some old demo tape of garage band riffery, only to become something much more playful and pulsing, like Neu! if they had drafted a metal guitarist to join, the same sort of sun dappled krautrocky drift, albeit with that one extra six stringed element. "Fist Of Glory" distorts the guitars even further, turning a buzzy lo-fi riff into a layered bit of glitched out textural ambience, cutting out, skittering and skipping, clipped and looped, like some decaying reel to reel of plunderphonic metal, dizzying and abstract, but in its own way strangely rhythmic and hypnotic. "All Lights Are Fire" is super spare and skeletal, the guitars muted and muddy, the electronics glitchy and squiggly, the sound somewhere between the electro dub of Pole and the krautrock of Can or Neu!, motorik, meditative, hypnotic, but as the track progresses, the guitars grow more buzzy and insistent, the production more noisy and distorted, the arrangement more chaotic. Finally, IIron finishes off with "Satsugaii", which starts out all minimal murk, spare electronic pulses, and deep low end thrum, before some seriously Shellac-y noise rock guitars come in, which are mirrored by some pulsing synths, creating a weird bit of metallic electro-noise-rock, or something, whatever it is, it's like the perfect middle ground between old school krautrock, modern Carpenter / Goblin style cinematic electro-wave, nineties industrial and noise rock, especially with the addition of wild squalls of psychedelic guitar tangle, all over thick pounding pusling electronics and crunchy clipped riffage, heavy and heady, eventually slipping right back into that opening bit of minimal electronica, and finishing off with some hushed steel string guitar, and one final blast of psychguitar skree. Awesome stuff for sure. And quite possibly one of our favorite COH records yet, which we should have assumed, considering the record bears the irrefutable legend: "HAIL TO WORLD PEACE AND DEATH TO FALSE METAL!" Swank gatefold sleeve for the double vinyl, the cd version in a nice digipack, with art and design by Stephen O'Malley.

MPEG stream: Red Square
MPEG stream: War End War
MPEG stream: Soii Noir

Raster-Noton contributor Coh (aka Ivan Pavlov) has dedicated his Wavetrap album "Iron" to heavy metal fans all over the world and has even given some of the tracks metal puns for titles ('For Whom The Dell Falls' and 'Rubbing Free' for example). Of all of the electron modulators populating the Raster-Noton roster, Coh has always had the keenest pop sensibility, often infusing his near catchy melodies with static-laden feedback bursts and pure sinewaves. "Iron" is Coh's most aggressive recording to date, filled with staticky melodies that soften (only a little) his morass of digital black box effects and synthetic noise. While you'd be hard pressed to hear anything definitively metal on this record (i.e. guitar solos, double bass-kick blastbeats, wailing vocalizations, Satan), the massive ebb and flow of the music takes its starting point from the epic heaviosity of metal and turns it into something uniquely Coh. Recommended!

RealAudio clip: Annum Per Annum

"Love Uncut" is the newest EP from Russian electron engineer Coh and it features vocal contributions from various members of Coil. More so than any of the other Raster-Noton artists, Coh is not afraid of the power of the pop song, turning Pan Sonic minimalist

RealAudio clip: Health and Deficiency
RealAudio clip: Fffetish
RealAudio clip: My Angel

According to Raster-Noton who first released this album back in 1999, "Mask Of Birth" was the debut recording for Coh, the Russian born programmer Ivan Pavlov. Originally, this was a vinyl only release published by Raster-Noton, who made a point of stating that they had a difficult time cutting the frequencies of these recordings onto wax. A mere three years later, Mego has taken up the task of re-issuing this album on CD, a medium more appropriate for dynamic frequencies. Despite his origins with Raster's pristine electronics, Coh has continued to present himself as a post-techno reincarnation of the bleak industrial arpeggiations from the early-'80s, sharing the common urgency of early Cabaret Voltaire, Coil, Fad Gadget, Konstruktivitis, Skinny Puppy and the like. He's just been using much more high tech gear than abused samplers and overblown drum machines. After his recent collaborations with Coil on the "Love Uncut" EP, the revisitation to his first productions draws the same conclusion of his historical citations. The darkened loops, tremolo vibrations, and static pulsations have similar tonalities to his peers on Raster (Noto, Mika Vainio, and Komet), but the structure of the his music is fixed back in time on those aforementioned references. As many of those bands have been forgotten, marginalized, or dismissed, Coh's electronica revisionism is certainly welcome!

RealAudio clip: Hurt Later
RealAudio clip: Utopia - Me Too

For his contribution to the "Mort Aux Vaches" series of radio broadcasts commissioned by VPRO radio, Coh (the Russian laptop technician Ivan Pavlov) continues in his electronic revisionism which defined the successes on his albums "Mask Of Birth" and "Enter Tinnitus." Again, Coh offers a constant fluctuation of arpeggiated patterns that are post-techno recapitulations of '80s new wave. Be forewarned, the buzz and blurp breakdowns may trigger visions of a bathing robot (not necessarily a bad thing!) - sonic splashing and bubbling, submersion and resurfacing throughout this 38 minute track. Seemingly straightforward techno beats emerge, but as in this track's mid-stretch of whirring, sawing rhythm, before you know it Coh has drenched it in hiss and rumble until it dissolves into something altogether different. Quite pleasant reminders of Fad Gadget, Konstruktivitis, and Giorgio Moroder with all of the kitsch elements filtered out. Limited to 1000 copies and packaged in a silkscreened piece of folded woodpanel-patterned plastic.

RealAudio clip: Excerpt 1
RealAudio clip: Excerpt 2

[ aquarius records catalogue — C ]