[ aquarius records catalogue

Possibly the most polished and "full" sounding album (of the several we carry) from San Francisco's beloved Beth Custer, the restless innovator who, whether as a solo artist or in her prolific past as part of Club Foot Orchestra and other intrepid musical

RealAudio clip: In the Broken Fields Where I Lie

Collected solo work from reeds playin', multi instrumentalist Beth Custer, founding member of Club Foot Orchestra and Eighty Mile Beach, and all around San Francisco institution.

Great San Francisco musician and composer Beth Custer (Club Foot Orchestra, Eighty Mile Beach) assembled these players and instrument builders for the Yerba Buena performance recorded on this disc.

Treasured local composer Beth Custer has self-released another collection of her clarinet-led music. Along with the clarinets Ms Custer also wields the piano and the keyboard sampler, and she sings. The Tin Hat Trio and the Club Foot Quintet (both groups also local gems) make appearances, as do several other folks. This is wide-open music with no attitude and plenty of originality. Silences and single-instrument passages that are evocative as much for what they don't say as for what they do. Gritty noir tangos that wouldn't be out of place in a Jim Jarmusch film. The (very occasional) vocal parts don't do much for me but I'm sure they were entirely appropriate in the context of the dance pieces these tracks were originally composed for: What the Body Knows, Take/Place, Undertaking Harry, and The Maverick Strain, all performed by the Joe Goode Performance Group. Nice.

RealAudio clip: Hamlet
RealAudio clip: Tango
RealAudio clip: Tribal Duets

Beth Custer can't be stopped and who'd want her to? She's one of the most prolific and most varied musicians in the Bay Area. You might recall one of her most recent projects was the scoring of the historic silent film A Trip Down Market Street (now on dvd). It's a wonderful treasure! Or how about Clarinet Thing! her clarinet collaboration with Ralph Carney? Or the electronic dance/jazz fusion duo Eighty Mile Beach? Or the inimitable Club Foot Orchestra? She's pretty much done it all, always with a meticulous eye for detail and usually with an unconventional twist. Bernal Heights Suite finds her performing with The Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, and it's her first chamber music cd. These vocal and string arrangements are lively, colorful and have a definite theatrical feel. For non-SF savvy folks, Bernal Heights is the neighborhood directly south of the Mission District. Custer has lived there for over a decade, and this is her musical tribute to her ol' stompin' grounds. Terrific.

MPEG stream: Little Lundy's Lane
MPEG stream: Daikon Radish

Wow, we've got not one, but two new releases featuring Ms Beth Custer! Not only do we have her wonderful Clarinet Thing collaboration with Sheldon Brown, Ralph Carney, Ben Goldberg and Peter Josheff, but also this politically charged cd of her latest ensemble work with Carney and Goldberg (this time handling horn duty), the amazingly dextrous keyboardist Graham Connah, and Charming Hostess' Marika Hughes on cello, among others. Custer might be based here in SF but she's a music nomad through and through, covering an astounding expanse of styles from Latin jazz to ambient to country to trip hop and beyond (both as a solo artists and in groups such as the abovementioned Clarinet Thing, Club Foot Orchestra, Eighty Mile Beach, and Trance Mission) on an equally broad array of instruments. She simply can't/won't be pinned down. Respect As A Religion is no exception. It frolicks, grooves, wrestles, and enchants.

MPEG stream: Empire Of The United States
MPEG stream: High Sense Of Adventure

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

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Cut Chemist really needs no introduction, he is a pioneer in the worlds of hip-hop and turntablism, being a part of one of the most refreshing and innovative hip-hop acts ever, Jurassic Five, as well as playing in Ozomatli, collaborating with folks like Madlib and DJ Shadow, and releasing his own solo albums that showcase his awe inspiring turntable skills. With Sound Of The Police, you can tell that he and Madlib are in a similar state of mind as far as really appreciating psychedelic sounds from the past and from all around the globe. Here CC takes amazing sounds from obscure records from South America and Africa as well as some modern tracks influenced by those musical movements, to make a seamless hip-hop spirited mix that is as infectious as it is flawless. What's totally mind blowing about this record is that it was recorded live with Cut Chemist creating the mix using only one turntable, one mixer and a delay pedal. No laptops involved in this creation and it really shows, as you hear the warmth and the crackling vinyl of these groove filled sounds that he pieces together into a distinctly hip-hop mix but while still being totally respectful and so appreciative of the sounds being sampled. Definitely turning into one of our favorite end of summer jams!

MPEG stream: I
MPEG stream: II

The longtime dj collaborator and aQ fave turntable wizard Cut Chemist, who over the years has jammed with the likes of Jurassic 5, Ozomatli, DJ Shadow, Shortkut and Madlib, finally goes it alone... well, sorta. He's got a little help from his friends and the backing of a major label. Markedly absent is an abundance of wildly kinetic displays of scratchin' dexterity. With the exception of The Audience Is Listening's final track (and theme song!), his ol' over the top acrobatics on the decks have been tempered into the for the most part even-keeled energetically groovin' tracks. Its potential appeal is far broader. Although he is most renowned as a jaw-dropping turntablist, Cut Chemist has effectively done his part to further define the turntable as an everyday instrument rather than gimmick/trickster accessory -- muting its presence rather than trumpeting it. His beloved wit and playfulness are fortunately still fully intact in his samplin' selection as is evident in tracks such as "Spat". Other standouts surface midway through the proceedings, the sixth track "What's The Altitude" which features Hymnal (who along with Edan and Mr. Lif on "Storm" contributes the scant MC presence on the album -- both tracks shine a little bit extra) and the seventh "Metrorail Thru Space". A solid, skillfully composed and assembled solo debut.

MPEG stream: What's The Altitude
MPEG stream: The Audience Is Listening Theme Song

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

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Now on vinyl! Here's what we said about the cd: Justice, Digitalism, Crystal Castles. The list of contemporary indie-electro goes on on and on. And it's all at least slightly retro: disco, French house, video games, or whatever. But what we have to high five Australia's Cut Copy for is attempting to revive the orchestrated power-pop sounds of bands like Electric Light Orchestra! Take that, throw in a drum machine, maybe a few heavy post-production filters, and that's where they're at. Above and beyond anything else, and unlike some of their contemporaries, these guys seem to understand that they're essentially making pop music. Whereas projects like Justice sometimes rely too heavily on form rather than content, Cut Copy has their eyes on the songwriting prize. Much like British producer Richard X, they have a healthy and addictive affection for the '80s. Severed Heads, Tears for Fears, even maybe a little Roxette. Yeah! Don't come expecting a challenging musical experiment, or something as conceptual and cohesive. But if you can handle great pop tracks, just give in and let your feet do the dancing. Recommended.

MPEG stream: Out There on the Ice
MPEG stream: Far Away

Justice, Digitalism, Crystal Castles. The list of contemporary indie-electro goes on on and on. And it's all at least slightly retro: disco, French house, video games, or whatever. But what we have to high five Australia's Cut Copy for is attempting to revive the orchestrated power-pop sounds of bands like Electric Light Orchestra! Take that, throw in a drum machine, maybe a few heavy post-production filters, and that's where they're at. Above and beyond anything else, and unlike some of their contemporaries, these guys seem to understand that they're essentially making pop music. Whereas projects like Justice sometimes rely too heavily on form rather than content, Cut Copy has their eyes on the songwriting prize. Much like British producer Richard X, they have a healthy and addictive affection for the '80s. Severed Heads, Tears for Fears, even maybe a little Roxette. Yeah! Don't come expecting a challenging musical experiment, or something as conceptual and cohesive. But if you can handle great pop tracks, just give in and let your feet do the dancing. Recommended.

MPEG stream: Out There on the Ice
MPEG stream: Far Away

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

SORRY.

The last album from Australia's Cut Copy, In Ghost Color, is without a doubt one of our most listened to pop records of the last several years. It proved to have such amazing legs and grew on us so much so that even when we look back at the initial review we wrote, we would change it to speak more to what a perfect offering of uplifting, ecstatic pop it truly is. Zonoscope keeps our full on love for Cut Copy going super strong, as this album further proves these guys as some of the most skilled and talented folks around at crafting infectious and memorable pop that sticks in your head and seeps into your skin like crazy! They take the blueprints of the Hacienda sound (Happy Mondays, New Order, etc.) and flesh it out with such a crisp and focused delivery that definitely taps into what folks like M83 have been moving towards in recent years. With nods to OMD, Erasure, Tears For Fears, Pet Shop Boys, even Men At Work on "Take Me Over" and of course New Order, CC have found a way to merge the romantic and dance minded side of '80s pop music glory into a sound that is so totally modern and refreshing. You can also tell they have a HUGE appreciation for the dynamic epic/huge pop sound that folks like ELO, Queen, and Cheap Trick were carving out in the '70s and have figured out how to inject a modern sensibility into that classic pop prowess. Listening to Cut Copy is like being shot up with a rush of adrenaline and endless energy. All you want to do is jump and dance and run and accomplish all the things you have your heart set on. Not many folks are able to truly inspire that reaction with their music. Zonoscope is proving to be the greatest pop record so far in 2011 and we have a feeling at the end of the year we will still be saying the same thing.

MPEG stream: Need You Now
MPEG stream: Pharaohs & Pyramids
MPEG stream: Hanging Onto Every Heartbeat

Now on limited edition vinyl, split into two volumes, each with bonus tracks!!! Here's what we wrote about this awesome, intense album when it came out on cd earlier in 2011... What happens when a middle aged, extreme noise musician suddenly gets all voodoo "drum circle" on us? Cut Hands is what happens. Ethno-forgery, not exactly, ethno-freakery more like it! Let's say this up front, so there's no confusion: this Cut Hands disc is bloody awesome, and nobody here at AQ (except maybe Jim) is all that big of a Whitehouse fan, either. We mention that 'cause Cut Hands is the new project by William Bennett, the perverse genius (?) behind infamous '80s industrial noise terrorists Whitehouse, who are up there with Merzbow in the noise that annoys pantheon. We appreciate the extremity of Whitehouse, sure, but unlike Merzbow, never really enjoyed listening to 'em all that much (maybe that's the point). As a result, we really weren't aware of the extent to which, in recent years, William Bennett had been getting into this so-called "Afro Noise" bag of his, with some of his more recent Whitehouse albums (like 2003's Bird Seed, which contained a track called "Cut Hands Has The Solution") incorporating the use, and probably abuse, of authentic ethnic Central African instruments. Although, we do remember when, in 1997, Bennett's label Susan Lawly put out an amazing compilation, now long out of print, called Extreme Music From Africa, that we totally loved. It featured a bunch of mysterious artists like Rorogwela, Vicious Teengirl, Electricity Featuring Fire Eater, and National Bird, that we'd never heard of before or since, doing tracks that somehow combined what sounded like genuine African tribal music with Whitehouse style noise... and was really quite listenable, too! We always half-suspected it might not have been on the up and up, that the bands weren't really from Africa, and were instead the work of Mr. Bennett and friends, and we'd still like it just as much anyway... Cut Hands certainly makes us further assume that might be the case, since our description of the sort of sounds found on Extreme Music From Africa would also describe this Cut Hands disc quite well: "Chanting and hand drums are buried in washes of hiss and white noise. Merzbow style blasts of crunchy feedback dissolve into tribal rhythms and explode again into shards of jagged buzz. Intense and aggressive and totally great." In any event, Cut Hands is the next logical step in Bennett's "Afro Noise" obsession. While there is of course an electronic noise component to this, it almost takes a backseat to the rhythmic, almost machine-like intensity of the hand percussion. Bennett has apparently amassed quite a large collection of Congolese and Ghanaian percussion instruments, and he puts 'em to use here, 13 varied tracks of primal, polyrhythmic, electro-acoustic pulsations. Djembes and doundouns played with jackhammer precision, mixed with washes and waves of hiss and drone. Some tracks attack with feedback, others are more quietly sinister and even shimmeringly atmospheric. There's one track with vocals, declaiming something in what sounds like an African language, amidst divebombing distortion and shuddering glitch, while the rest are purely instrumental. And all it is frighteningly trance-inducing. It's kind of insane, kind of incredible. We like, a lot.

MPEG stream: Who No Know Go Knows
MPEG stream: Shut Up And Bleed

Now on limited edition vinyl, split into two volumes, each with bonus tracks!!! Here's what we wrote about this awesome, intense album when it came out on cd earlier in 2011... What happens when a middle aged, extreme noise musician suddenly gets all voodoo "drum circle" on us? Cut Hands is what happens. Ethno-forgery, not exactly, ethno-freakery more like it! Let's say this up front, so there's no confusion: this Cut Hands disc is bloody awesome, and nobody here at AQ (except maybe Jim) is all that big of a Whitehouse fan, either. We mention that 'cause Cut Hands is the new project by William Bennett, the perverse genius (?) behind infamous '80s industrial noise terrorists Whitehouse, who are up there with Merzbow in the noise that annoys pantheon. We appreciate the extremity of Whitehouse, sure, but unlike Merzbow, never really enjoyed listening to 'em all that much (maybe that's the point). As a result, we really weren't aware of the extent to which, in recent years, William Bennett had been getting into this so-called "Afro Noise" bag of his, with some of his more recent Whitehouse albums (like 2003's Bird Seed, which contained a track called "Cut Hands Has The Solution") incorporating the use, and probably abuse, of authentic ethnic Central African instruments. Although, we do remember when, in 1997, Bennett's label Susan Lawly put out an amazing compilation, now long out of print, called Extreme Music From Africa, that we totally loved. It featured a bunch of mysterious artists like Rorogwela, Vicious Teengirl, Electricity Featuring Fire Eater, and National Bird, that we'd never heard of before or since, doing tracks that somehow combined what sounded like genuine African tribal music with Whitehouse style noise... and was really quite listenable, too! We always half-suspected it might not have been on the up and up, that the bands weren't really from Africa, and were instead the work of Mr. Bennett and friends, and we'd still like it just as much anyway... Cut Hands certainly makes us further assume that might be the case, since our description of the sort of sounds found on Extreme Music From Africa would also describe this Cut Hands disc quite well: "Chanting and hand drums are buried in washes of hiss and white noise. Merzbow style blasts of crunchy feedback dissolve into tribal rhythms and explode again into shards of jagged buzz. Intense and aggressive and totally great." In any event, Cut Hands is the next logical step in Bennett's "Afro Noise" obsession. While there is of course an electronic noise component to this, it almost takes a backseat to the rhythmic, almost machine-like intensity of the hand percussion. Bennett has apparently amassed quite a large collection of Congolese and Ghanaian percussion instruments, and he puts 'em to use here, 13 varied tracks of primal, polyrhythmic, electro-acoustic pulsations. Djembes and doundouns played with jackhammer precision, mixed with washes and waves of hiss and drone. Some tracks attack with feedback, others are more quietly sinister and even shimmeringly atmospheric. There's one track with vocals, declaiming something in what sounds like an African language, amidst divebombing distortion and shuddering glitch, while the rest are purely instrumental. And all it is frighteningly trance-inducing. It's kind of insane, kind of incredible. We like, a lot.

MPEG stream: Munkisi Munkondi
MPEG stream: Ezili Freda

Black Mamba was the 2nd full-length album from the amazing "Afro-Noise" project of Whitehouse's William Bennett. We made it a Record Of The Week when it came out on cd in 2012. Now, at last, the tracks from that cd (most of them anyway) have made their way to vinyl, spread across two records - Afro Noise Volume 3 and 4. Two of the tracks from Black Mamba aren't included, but making up for that, these records DO contain a bunch of non-album tracks, including all four tracks (in remastered and/or reworked form?) from last year's hard to find Madwoman 12", plus what appears to be an entirely new cut, "Vaudou Take Me High" to lead off Volume 3. Our review of Black Mamba is pretty big so we're not going to repeat it here (you can look it up elsewhere on our site if you like) but just a brief excerpt for those unfamiliar with Cut Hands: ...It's about the beats, stunning, stuttering polyrhythmic tick-tockery, in and out of which Bennett weaves elements of distortion and noise to great effect. So it's a lot like the debut, only with the "almost machine-like intensity of the hand percussion" perhaps pushed to further extremes, but the harsh noise factor in fact toned down somewhat. Bennett's carefully constructed attacks of primal boom bap and metallic click-track chaos are powerfully "possessive", a pleasant sensation in combination with the more ambient, moody elements of this disc, of which there are plenty. Vol. 3 features "Vandou Take Me High", "Krokodilo Theme", "Immersion", "Erzulie D'En Tort", "Witness The Spread Of The Dream", "No Spare No Soul", "Kongo", and "Madwoman". Volume 4 has "Eat Them Like Bread", "El Palo Mayombe", "Black Mamba", "Inchantment", "River Mumma", "54 Needles", "Nzambi Ia Ngonde", and "Nine-Night". Each limited to 750 copies only.

MPEG stream: No Spare No Soul
MPEG stream: Krokodilo

Black Mamba was the 2nd full-length album from the amazing "Afro-Noise" project of Whitehouse's William Bennett. We made it a Record Of The Week when it came out on cd in 2012. Now, at last, the tracks from that cd (most of them anyway) have made their way to vinyl, spread across two records - Afro Noise Volume 3 and 4. Two of the tracks from Black Mamba aren't included, but making up for that, these records DO contain a bunch of non-album tracks, including all four tracks (in remastered and/or reworked form?) from last year's hard to find Madwoman 12", plus what appears to be an entirely new cut, "Vaudou Take Me High" to lead off Volume 3. Our review of Black Mamba is pretty big so we're not going to repeat it here (you can look it up elsewhere on our site if you like) but just a brief excerpt for those unfamiliar with Cut Hands: ...It's about the beats, stunning, stuttering polyrhythmic tick-tockery, in and out of which Bennett weaves elements of distortion and noise to great effect. So it's a lot like the debut, only with the "almost machine-like intensity of the hand percussion" perhaps pushed to further extremes, but the harsh noise factor in fact toned down somewhat. Bennett's carefully constructed attacks of primal boom bap and metallic click-track chaos are powerfully "possessive", a pleasant sensation in combination with the more ambient, moody elements of this disc, of which there are plenty. Vol. 3 features "Vandou Take Me High", "Krokodilo Theme", "Immersion", "Erzulie D'En Tort", "Witness The Spread Of The Dream", "No Spare No Soul", "Kongo", and "Madwoman". Volume 4 has "Eat Them Like Bread", "El Palo Mayombe", "Black Mamba", "Inchantment", "River Mumma", "54 Needles", "Nzambi Ia Ngonde", and "Nine-Night". Each limited to 750 copies only.

MPEG stream: Black Mamba
MPEG stream: Nzambi Ia Ngonde

When the first Cut Hands disc came out in 2011, we raved, saying "It's kind of insane, kind of incredible", and a year later we're still pretty obsessed with it. In hindsight we feel we should definitely have made it a Record Of The Week, just like this one. Not sure why we didn't, but maybe at the time we were taken so much by surprise, since it was the work of William Bennett, the Englishman best known for the misanthropic harsh noise of underground '80s outfit Whitehouse. But even those of us who don't care at all about Whitehouse, absolutely loved Cut Hands. It has a noise element, but also an "Afro" one. "Afro-Noise" instead of Industrial Noise. Meaning, intense rhythmic workouts utilizing authentic ethnic African hand drums, mixed with electronics and distortion, in the tradition of a (possibly fake) compilation he released some years before, called Extreme Music From Africa. Pretty original (excepting perhaps the "cultural appropriation" factor, which can be debated) and compelling and so incredibly well done. Really remarkable that the person famous (or infamous) being a seminal artist in the noise genre would, later in life, come up with something if not completely different, at least pretty darn different, and do it so well that we suspect Bennett could have a career with Cut Hands to rival the success of anything he did with noise terrorists Whitehouse. Bravo. So, here at last is Cut Hands' follow-up full-length, named for an especially venomous snake, and we're excited, our appetite for this whetted also by having seen Cut Hands in person down the street at San Francisco's Elbo Room a couple months ago, on his US tour. When we went to that show, at first we were a bit disappointed that the stage wasn't covered with exhibits from Bennett's extensive collection of Congolese and Ghanaian hand percussion instruments to be played live, and instead it was evident that he was going to be performing like a techno DJ, mixing pre-recorded sounds from multiple laptop computers, all the while dancing spasmodically and ecstatically with his shirt open. But pretty soon we, and everybody else in the club, were completely enraptured and entranced, the frenzied rhythms invading our nervous systems. Sure, some of the people in the place were probably on drugs, but they didn't need 'em. When his set at a certain point devolved into a rhythm-less Whitehouse-like pure noise barrage, that broke the spell, but up 'til then were were, in a word, possessed. We were wondering if this new Cut Hands would go to that level, and have that same raw, quasi-techno sound to it, some of it does, but there's also lovely stretches of much mellower, if eerily sinister, ambient/drone drift here too. But for us, yes, it's about the beats, stunning, stuttering polyrhythmic tick-tockery, in and out of which Bennett weaves elements of distortion and noise to great effect. So it's a lot like the debut, only with the "almost machine-like intensity of the hand percussion" perhaps pushed to further extremes, but the harsh noise factor in fact toned down somewhat. Bennett's carefully constructed attacks of primal boom bap and metallic click-track chaos are powerfully "possessive", a pleasant sensation in combination with the more ambient, moody elements of this disc, of which there are plenty. Easy to understand why several tracks from this have already been utilized for cinematic soundtrack purposes (even for a documentary set in Siberia, oddly enough, didn't know they had voodoo cults up there). Very impressive and immersive, and highly recommended! (By the way, if you're a fan who has been desperately looking for the expensive, hard to find, Japan-only Cut Hands cd ep release that came out sometime last year: among the twelve tracks here you'll find all 3 songs from that ep, yay.)

MPEG stream: Black Mamba
MPEG stream: Nzambi Ia Ngonde
MPEG stream: No Spare No Soul
MPEG stream: Krokodilo

Another blast of twisted rhythmic "Afro-Noise" from William Bennett, most famously known for his confrontational harsh noise combo Whitehouse, but who around here is probably more beloved for this project, Cut Hands, his most recent project, which fuses traditional African rhythms, with industrial electronics and techno rhythms, creating a series of dark tangled grooves, that somehow push all our buttons. And this new one basically continues on where the recent Black Mamba ep left off. The A side is a furious polyrhythmic barrage, that slips easily from tribal groove, to lurching, loping, stuttering, industrial crunch and back again, driving and fierce, percussive and pretty goddamn hypnotic, the sort of thing we could listen to forever, and we just listened to the A side about four times in a row, and basically had to force ourselves to stop. The tracks on the flipside are a bit less aggro, sounding a little like old Muslimgauze, or like some current Dom Fernow project (Christian Cosmos, Vatican Shadow, Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement), the beats muted and blunted, at times downright mellow and blissed out, at others, rhythmic but dialed back, sort of murky and moody, but still tranced out and seriously psychedelic...

MPEG stream: Damballah 58

William Bennett (of White House infamy, the misanthropic '80s UK noise terrorists) is back with another chop-chop-chop attack from his amazing, electronic-ethnic "Afro-Noise" project, Cut Hands. The previous Cut Hands, Black Mamba, we made a Record Of The Week, and this new third full-length album is just as good, Bennett further refining and honing his precision, hyper-rhythmic hybrid of traditional African hand percussion beats and computer-aided techno-like track construction. We've been mainlining it since it arrived, makes you work faster and more accurately! (Maybe.) By now, we can probably assume most of you are as big fans of Cut Hands as we are, after spinning their records many times, and witnessing one of Cut Hands' intense & ecstatic live shows a while back. So not a lot more to say here, then, really; it's just another heavy dose of what we love about Cut Hands. Machete-like slicings of beats, kind of like some isolationist, industrial-techno artist on the Hospital Productions label (say, Vatican Shadow) hacking their way through a dark jungle, the rhythms wreathed in a miasmic swamp gas of distortion, atmospherically drone-cloaked. Festival Of The Dead is another essential entry in the somewhat convoluted Cut Hands discography - by which we mean, of the dozen excellent tracks here, most are brand new, though a few it seems are reprised from 2013's Damballah 58 and Madwoman 12"s, and one, "Vandou Take Me High", appeared earlier this year, added to the first half of the two-part vinyl incarnation of Black Mamba.

MPEG stream: The Claw
MPEG stream: Damballah 58
MPEG stream: Vaudou Take Me High

What happens when a middle aged, extreme noise musician suddenly gets all voodoo "drum circle" on us? Cut Hands is what happens. Ethno-forgery, not exactly, ethno-freakery more like it! Let's say this up front, so there's no confusion: this Cut Hands disc is bloody awesome, and nobody here at AQ (except maybe Jim) is all that big of a Whitehouse fan, either. We mention that 'cause Cut Hands is the new project by William Bennett, the perverse genius (?) behind infamous '80s industrial noise terrorists Whitehouse, who are up there with Merzbow in the noise that annoys pantheon. We appreciate the extremity of Whitehouse, sure, but unlike Merzbow, never really enjoyed listening to 'em all that much (maybe that's the point). As a result, we really weren't aware of the extent to which, in recent years, William Bennett had been getting into this so-called "Afro Noise" bag of his, with some of his more recent Whitehouse albums (like 2003's Bird Seed, which contained a track called "Cut Hands Has The Solution") incorporating the use, and probably abuse, of authentic ethnic Central African instruments. Although, we do remember when, in 1997, Bennett's label Susan Lawly put out an amazing compilation, now long out of print, called Extreme Music From Africa, that we totally loved. It featured a bunch of mysterious artists like Rorogwela, Vicious Teengirl, Electricity Featuring Fire Eater, and National Bird, that we'd never heard of before or since, doing tracks that somehow combined what sounded like genuine African tribal music with Whitehouse style noise... and was really quite listenable, too! We always half-suspected it might not have been on the up and up, that the bands weren't really from Africa, and were instead the work of Mr. Bennett and friends, and we'd still like it just as much anyway... Cut Hands certainly makes us further assume that might be the case, since our description of the sort of sounds found on Extreme Music From Africa would also describe this Cut Hands disc quite well: "Chanting and hand drums are buried in washes of hiss and white noise. Merzbow style blasts of crunchy feedback dissolve into tribal rhythms and explode again into shards of jagged buzz. Intense and aggressive and totally great." In any event, Cut Hands is the next logical step in Bennett's "Afro Noise" obsession. While there is of course an electronic noise component to this, it almost takes a backseat to the rhythmic, almost machine-like intensity of the hand percussion. Bennett has apparently amassed quite a large collection of Congolese and Ghanaian percussion instruments, and he puts 'em to use here, 13 varied tracks of primal, polyrhythmic, electro-acoustic pulsations. Djembes and doundouns played with jackhammer precision, mixed with washes and waves of hiss and drone. Some tracks attack with feedback, others are more quietly sinister and even shimmeringly atmospheric. There's one track with vocals, declaiming something in what sounds like an African language, amidst divebombing distortion and shuddering glitch, while the rest are purely instrumental. And all it is frighteningly trance-inducing. It's kind of insane, kind of incredible. We like, a lot.

MPEG stream: Who No Know Go Knows
MPEG stream: Shut Up And Bleed
MPEG stream: Munkisi Munkondi
MPEG stream: Ezili Freda

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

SORRY. Panacea and Future Boi team-up to make more bad-ass distorted pummelling beats that stutter with violence.

One of the few contemporary projects from the crate-digging local label Dark Entries, Cute Heels is the work of the Belgian electronic music Victor Lenis, with Spiritual being his first outing in a physical format. Squelchy, almost acid-like syncopations glide through each of these mid-tempo yet steroid-injected drum machine grooves that maintain a retro-garde pastiche of the Robert Gorl / Chrislo Haas productions of early D.A.F. / Liaisons Dangereuses and the darker moments of early Detroit techno, especially those Model 500 and Cybotron singles from the mid-'80s. Going through each of the tracks on Spiritual, one can pick out very specific homages in his jagged, industrially-minded productions. "Watch The Neon" and the title track cop the same angular, fetish-club funk that Front 242 barked on albums like Geometry and Official Version, where "Metal Disco" pops its limbs out of joint with the cyborg jitteriness of Chris & Cosey's Songs Of Love & Lust. While many of the Lenis' influences used these types of arrangements within the context of popsongs complete with vocals, lyrics, and ego, Spiritual is wholly instrumental leaving the electronics to speak through the blacklight and strobe-fired grids of rhythm and modulated step sequencing.

MPEG stream: La Symphonie
MPEG stream: Watch The Neon
MPEG stream: Metal Disco

Not at all surprisingly this new band The Cute Lepers hail from garage pop rawk haven the Pacific Northwest. Why do we say that? Well, because they dish out super retro bubble power pop with all the genre's prerequisites - jangly electric guitar strumming, carefully picked out uncomplicated crunchy guitar solos, upbeat walkin' basslines, snappy drum beats, just as snappy handclaps, generous shakes of the tambourine, and girl group backing vocals. Remarkably faithful to both the original '60s and the late '80s revival sounds. It made us wanna dig out our old albums from Flop and Buzzcocks! They even use the appropriate fonts on the cover art! It's also maybe not at all surprising that this album has been released on Joan Jett's record label. In fact the first song sounds like some sort of bastard child of "Bad Reputation" and "Summertime Blues". Ultra snappy fun from start to finish!

MPEG stream: Terminal Boredom
MPEG stream: Prove It

This new SF group sure do indeed have their cute dial turned up to 'full', bringing together very childlike singsong female vocals, chiming musicbox and piano melodies, and an occasional indie boyish vocal too. That said, they don't completely induce sugar shock by tempering the tracks with some buzzing and hissing IDM interventions. It's a promising direction to take, although it can be somewhat jarring to the flow of the album at times -- as if they weren't quite sure where to go next or perhaps as if individual members wanted to try their hands at different things. It'll be interesting to see where they go from here... whether they'll further fuse the two distinct styles or focus more on one or the other or something altogether different. Anyways, it's a very homespun affair right down to the packaging: both the jewelcase and cd-r are handscreened with an image titled "Polar bunny in a snowstorm" (sorta reminiscent of Zappa's Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A Drowning Witch album illustration) and a sparkly sticker graces the traycard.

MPEG stream: Large Grain Container
MPEG stream: Sprocket

It's kinda of ironic that what sounds to me like a fully authentic power pop record from the early '70s was actually made this year by young 'uns from Oakland! This is so pitch perfect Nuggets-y that even the purists amongst us will be impressed. The singer sound a li'l bit Tom Verlaine/Television, a li'l bit Ric Ocasek/Cars. The sweet poignancy of some of the tracks recalls "#1 Album"-era Big Star, when they rocked more than they wept. Recorded in Memphis with Greg Cartwright of the Oblivians. Recommended. MPEG Download: "How Can I Get Through" [/audio/cutshowcaniget.mp3] MPEG Stream: "How Can I Get Through" [/audio/cutshowcaniget.m3u]

MPEG stream: How Can I Get Through
MPEG stream: Flip A Coin

The third cd long-player to come from these local sharp-dressed rock and roll revivalists about town, The Cuts. Yay! Every time we've seen 'em play, they've been great -- but just a little bit different from the last time. At one gig they'll come across all Cars-y, keyboards to the fore. The next, it's guitar-heavy rawkin' with an early '70s Alice Cooper vibe. Ya never know quite what to expect, except that they're always impressive and a real authentic rock n' roll good time. Just like this album. We dug albums one and two, but number three might be the best yet. It's like some amazing power pop band from the early '70s that you somehow never heard of, whose album just got reissued and makes you go, wow, they just don't make 'em like they used to. But they do, and The Cuts are doin' it. From Here On Out sees them honing their craft (and they ARE careful craftsmen, with so much attention to songwritiing, arrangement, and performance), doing their influences proud, from '60s garage to west coast ballroom psych to new wave pop. There's out-and-out guitar rock action here as well as lovely, pretty pop moves too, with vocal harmonies and all. Recommended.

MPEG stream: Demons
MPEG stream: Lemonade

Two Oakland bands on Birdman, here for your consideration. The Gris Gris just came out, The Cuts has been hanging out for a few months (and is a first time on cd reissue of their debut vinyl album anyway) but both get the thumbs up from the garage psych squad here at the store. Starting with The Cuts...well you can chalk another one up for the rock and roll revival. Yeah maybe the Stripes and the Strokes made the world safe for labels to release retro rockers like this, but that's fine 'cause a band like this shouldn't have to toil in obscurity anyway...plus we know our pal Dave who runs Birdman isn't about hopping on trends, he just puts out music he likes (which explains a few things). And The Cuts are the real deal too, with all kinda influences stirring in their pot...Zombies, Big Star, Television... A lot of you (and us) liked their 2nd album (first cd) 2 Over 10, which did the '70s power pop thing to perfection. Hearing this, first I thought hey weren't they supposed to be some sort of Cars-like proposition, with their keyboards and all?, but this sure harks back further than those New Romantic Waver whatevers, all the way back to the Electric Prunes!! Rockin' the joint with lotsa fuzz and great Nuggety songs/vox. Next up, The Gris Gris...

MPEG stream: Salt In My Wounds
MPEG stream: Lovers Lane

Record number two from the new project of Chris Spencer of late great NYC nineties noise rockers the Unsane, and while the sound of The Cutthroats 9 is maybe a bit less metal, it still retains much of the negative sonic energy of Unsane. Skull caving riffage, thick, corrosive bass buzz, pounding drums, and maybe most notably, some bad ass slide guitar (peep the cover photo, a close up of said slide guitar happening) which adds a definite distinctive sound, CT9's down tuned grooves laced with slippery melodies, the band locked into explosive churning heaviness, Spencer's slide guitar woven throughout, adding some surprising melody to the proceedings, a nice balance to the unhinged ferocity that oozes from pretty much every other part of the record, with Spencer's throaty bellow, cracking into more unhinged near-shriekiness on tracks like "Trouble", which sound essentially, like a groovier, more melodic Unsane, which is most definitely not a bad thing at all. The AmRep noise rock vibe is pretty huge too, hugely beholden to that label, and that era, fans of eighties and nineties pig fuck heaviness will dig this stuff like crazy, but then the band whip out a track like "Dissension", where the slide is right up front, and suddenly it almost sounds like a more metal Raging Slab, sort of, cuz really, the blood that adorned most of the Unsane records seems to still flow through Spencer's veins, and thus through his amp, dripping all over these jams as well, so fans of Spencer's old outfit will feel right at home, but really, any one whole likes it heavy and groovy, step right up... Includes a download code too!

MPEG stream: Speak
MPEG stream: Trouble
MPEG stream: Eraser

Wow! I can barely remember the last time I heard a record as jubilantly bursting with Life and Laughter and Energy as this lost treasure of Dutch jazz. This record swings and stutters and gallops like Charlie Mingus' "Black Saint", like Rahsaan Roland Kirk's almost-rocking sets, like Otomo Yoshihide's spirited Ground Zero outfit. Imagine Vince Guaraldi's Peanuts piano taken on a roller coaster ride, and Charlie Brown's running around swearing like a sailor, and there's lots of thrills amidst the cacophony, and Lucy's stomach turns over when the roller coaster's upside down, and at some point Charlie loses his virginity. Yeah. That's how good this record is. Recorded in 1981(!), the only existing document of pianist Leo Cuypers as leader, this recording also features the all star talents of unbelievably great percussionist Han Bennink, legendary reedist Willem Breuker, and bassist Arjen Gorter. All players had at one time or another been part of the esteemed Willem Breuker Kollektief, but here under the guidance of Cuypers, their skills are combined to produce one of the most EXUBERANT pieces of modern avant jazz I have ever heard.

RealAudio clip: Alsdat de Olifantstand

BACK IN STOCK!!! First release from the oddly named Cvbe Ov Falsehood, the new project from one of the guys in aQ faves Servile Sect, and like that group, whose connection to black metal is tenuous at best, CoF deliver some seriously avant blackness, to sidelong 15 minute tracks that combine drifting drones, with symphonic fragments, layered strings, pizzicato melodies, churning blurred riffage, swirling psychedelic FX, what sounds like field recordings, the first track/side begins with what sounds like an orchestra tuning up, while in the background, the earth begins to rumble and the crust of the earth collapses into subterranean caverns. But that tectonic/Teutonic rumble, is soon smoothed out into a glorious bit of black drone drift, laced with all manner of subtle sonic fluctuations, buried industrial rhythms, the whole thing coalescing into a sort of murky kraut-psych, wreathed in dense black ambience. Soon the sound is wreathed in hiss and static, a cloud of swirling sibilant shimmer, that gradually becomes more and more caustic, before transforming into a strange staticky rhythm, churning machinelike to the end of the side. The flipside begins with the sounds of a gamelan (we think), lush, lustrous, resonant tones, ringing out, the sky filled with the ripples of subtle overtones, mysterious samples surface from the murk, the low end becomes more active, a strangely muted melody, pulsing, super distorted, over another barely there industrial rhythm, the result a pulsing sprawl of blackened kosmische, that gradually becomes more and more abstract and tranquil, before beginning another slow build, beginning with a burbling thrum, laced with cricket like chitter, and distant keening melodies, all draped in a black sonic gauze, suddenly erupting into some serious caustic crunch, grinding and corrosive, but somehow also weirdly melodic and psychedelic, the burst brief, soon settling back into a final stretch of deep tones, and hushed ambient dronemusic. Gorgeous packaging too. A clear tape in a black and white J-card adorned with black and white space diagrams, the whole tape then housed in a black on black embossed, textured cardstock slipcover. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Some of which include a Tarot card!

MPEG stream: Upon The Stillness Manifest

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

SORRY.

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

SORRY.

CX, former DJ for Antipop Consortium, with his first solo joint, extolling the virtues not of the drug, but of everyone else's OTHER favorite crack, the booty! Yep, this is raunchy, nasty, bootylicious hip hop electro rap punk whathafuck for sure. A who's who of guest emcees including Rammellzee, Zion from Zion I, Otto Von Schirach, High Priest and a bunch more all flowing wildly and inventively about 'the krak'. Bouncy Miami bass beats collide with cheesy synths, video game samples over super lowrider 808's, bumping bass bins, handclaps, weird sonic squiggles, and some seriously deranged and demented rhyming. At first, we were sort of confused and confounded, but the more we play this, the more we find it completely irresistible. This is demented dance party sexmusic! Fans of Rio Baile Funk, Fannypack, Miami Bass, Kool Keith's Sex Style, MF Doom, and all things weird, dance-y, sexy and goofy will LOVE this! Super raunchy cover art featuring some grafitti style artwork over a dizzying collage of low-slung jeans and lots and lots of krak!

MPEG stream: Tricky Dick
MPEG stream: Big Girl Skinny Girl
MPEG stream: Bloody Biscuits

Tech death.

The last Cyann And Ben album, Spring, on Locust Music via French Label Gooom, had us all in a tizzy, with its dark and dreary, dreamy and gorgeous, Stereolab-ish psychedelic doom pop. Definitely one of our favorite records of recent memory. If anything, the new record takes all the sounds on the first record even further. It's darker, and dreamier, more melancholy and definitely more experimental. A sweetly sour, gorgously grand record of mini moperock epics. Mournful minor key piano spread sparsely over warbly organs and shimmering drones, loping rhythms and arpeggiated minor key guitar melodies, sweetly delicate acoustic guitars, backward riffs and random found snippets of dialogue, and occasional bursts of twentieth century atonal skronk all underscore both Cyann's and Ben's ethereal vocals. A darkpop masterpiece. Huge and overwhelmingly intense like Godspeed, lush and minimal like Sigur Ros. Imagine the fuzzed out, mesmerising Krautrock worship of Stereolab, but way more sinister and creepy and downright doomy, then mix in all sorts of electronic swoosh and swoon, as songs build into massive, unstoppable throbbing minor key dirges, channelling the freaked out space out tendencies of Hawkwind and Pink Floyd but filtered through a twee pop sensibility, before settling back into spare stretches of ambient tranquility. Lustrous and luminous, muted and mesmerising. So goddamn good it kills us.

MPEG stream: Circle
MPEG stream: Gone To Waste

Parisian quartet Cyann & Ben continue their delicate steps through the shadows and glints of sunlight along dewy earthen paths. This music is transportive, shimmering with hushed guitar picking and whispery distant vocals; all embraced by blankets of drone. It's sort of the aural equivalent of being in a half-sleep state while gazing at the sky through draped layers of gauze. Visions shift and melt. It's at once intimate, grand and spacious. So dark yet so blissful. The album progresses at a slow creep, but as it does so, tensions mount with increasingly insistent electric guitar squalls. A stormy peak is reached at the seventh song "Let It Play" at which point all is stripped down to just voice and piano for the next song "Somewhere In The Light Of Time". If you dug Spring and Happy Like An Autumn Tree, this will delight you to no end. Fans of Low, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Mogwai, what are you waiting for? Wonderful!

MPEG stream: Words
MPEG stream: Sunny Morning
MPEG stream: Sweet Beliefs

Your second chance to get your hands on Cybotron's seminal proto-Detroit techno lp, Clear, has arrived. Lauded as one of the most anticipated vinyl reissues of 2013, they sold right off the assembly line, but we just managed to snag some more. This is one funky futuristic slab of electro that sounds as fresh now as Kraftwerk did back then, to the band's young members who also dug Detroit radio DJ The Electrifying Mojo, Afro-futurism, and science fiction. Perhaps noting members Juan "Model 500" Atkins and Richard "3070" Davis's affinity for P-Funk in the album's syncopations, Fantasy Records in Berkeley, California originally released it in 1983 under the title Enter. It was later reissued on cd in 1990 with a different track listing and the title changed to Clear, after the track on here with the percolating synth line that everyone from Missy Elliot to T.I. has sampled. It's as recognizable as Afrika Bambaata's "Planet Rock." Prior to Enter/Clear's release, Atkins had issued many of the tracks as singles under his Model 500 moniker. A young musician just learning to use electronic synthesizers and sequencers, his obsession with Kraftwerk makes itself known on tracks "Clear" and "R-9", while tracks like "Cosmic Raindance" and "El Salvador" align more with Europen synth pop. All ironically depict the dystopic city of man-machines working on the line building America's cars, a future that was already being buried into the past as the late '70s recession and oil crisis lead to the decline in demand for U.S.-made autos. Though Atkins was familiar with the concept of DJ mixes, he aimed to make Cybotron a band with guitar solos (by Jon "Jon 5" Howsley) and traditional song structure. The overall effect is more electro, with a dash of new wave, than for-real techno (that comes later with 1984's "Techno City" or Derrick May's 1987 "Strings of Life," but we'll let you duke that one out amongst yourselves). Fair to say that Atkins would go on to develop Detroit's techno sound alongside Derrick Mays, and Cybotron's original output remains a classic blueprint of where the world of music was heading. This second reissue on vinyl best celebrates the spirit of the Detroit techno DJ scene.

MPEG stream: Clear
MPEG stream: Alleys Of Your Mind
MPEG stream: Enter

Elsewhere on this week's list you'll find the brand new album Spirit Animal, by AQ faves Zombi, the horror soundtrack obsessed synth/math rock duo from Pittsburgh. So it's kind of perfect to list this too, a reissued, mostly instrumental, extremely electronic prog rock album from 1980 by Australia's Cybotron, a band who were basically the Zombi of their day, Down Under. Seriously, if the Zombi dudes are reading this, you're just the folks to whom we'd recommend this - you gotta hear it! Same goes for Zombi fans. This Cybotron, who are not to be confused with the seminal Detroit electro act of the very same name, were a massively synth-crazed space rock act, making music full of sweeping sci-fi synth sounds, propulsive beats, vibratory pulsations, and krautrocky electronic atmospheres, eventually venturing into a proto New Wave synthpop zone too. Band leader Steve Maxwell Von Braund had spent some time in Europe in the early '70s, checking out the freak rock scene, going to see bands like Pink Floyd, Hawkwind, Can and Amon Duul II, whilst buying crucial krautrock records as they came out, getting into stuff by Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel among others. Once back in Australia he soon formed Cybotron, which started off as an experimental electronics duo, but built up into a more prog rock oriented, symphonic sounding enterprise, reaching its peak on Implosion, their third and final album as a band. We'd love to hear their earlier ones, and also Von Braund's pre-Cybotron all-electronic solo record Monster Planet (which must be pretty cool if we can judge it by the cover reproduced in this cd's booklet). The album under discussion, Implosion, definitely displays loads of influence from the '70s German kosmische krautrock artists that Von Braund and Co. enjoyed. The title track in particular, with its melodic, happy synth motifs frolicking amidst plodding, ominous rhythms and darker, dronier electronics, is VERY Cluster / Harmonia sounding. With more than a hint of John Carpenter too as it progresses, as does much of the rest of this album. Elsewhere it's easy to draw comparisons to the likes of Tangerine Dream and Novalis, as well as to contemporaneous French bands such as Heldon and Lard Free. "Black Devil's Triangle", at about 10 minutes long, is the album's most epic and mesmerizing space voyage, kind of like something by Klaus Schulze but with an added exotic, Eastern flavor to it, via squiggly synth melodies that at moments actually remind us of the music from the video game Rastan that we have here in the store. So good. FYI, as a warning to the unyieldingly sax-adverse, there's some saxophone on the track "Encounter", which gives it more of a jazzy, '70s cop show groove. The sax returns again on "We'll Be Around", appearing along with handclaps and the rare instance of some vocoder processed chanting vocals. It's an oddly, enjoyably poppy finale to the Implosion album proper. They even released those two songs as a 7" single, which didn't exactly make the charts. Things get perhaps a bit quirkier later in the disc, as we get into a slew of bonus tracks that's mostly material from a never-completed, more commercial follow-up to Implosion, tracks that are a bit more novelty-esque, like a New Wave take on Perry & Kingsley. We're also reminded of Art Of Noise - in fact, Cybotron do a cover of Henry Mancini's "Peter Gunn" (also known to the video arcade generation as the theme to "Spy Hunter" game) which was also covered by the Art Of Noise later in the '80s if we recall correctly. Fun stuff if not exactly "kosmiche". However, the last bonus track is probably the HEAVIEST thing on here, a beefed-up "guitar version" of the already killer opening track "Eureka". Obscure krautrock reference that this track vaguely reminds us of: My Solid Ground. As with most Aztec releases, this is a fairly swanky digpack with extensive liner notes, the cd booklet also fully illustrated with vintage photos and full-color graphics.

MPEG stream: Eureka
MPEG stream: Implosion
MPEG stream: Black Devil's Triangle

This disc has quickly become one of Andee and Allan's most played. After getting over the initial surprise of absolutely *loving* a super commercial MTV style heavy rock band, one can enjoy what is in our opinion a totally great record. Definitely hyper produced, too heavy to be totally mainstream "alternative", but too poppy to be a metal record, it just pushes all the right buttons. Sounding a bit like a more metallic Smashing Pumpkins, or a smoother, non-rap Rage Against the Machine, but with what sounds like GEDDY LEE FROM RUSH ON VOCALS!!. So great. Totally kick ass, totally catchy. It's a crying shame that these guys are major-label also-rans when they are as good or even better than the above mentioned bands. The sound, the look (hottie alt-hunk lead vocalist with dyed red hair and no shirt!) -- they should be huge. Must be the totally stupid album cover. Maybe a guilty pleasure, but a pleasure nonetheless.

RealAudio clip: Violet High
RealAudio clip: Supergod

[ aquarius records catalogue — C ]