[ aquarius records catalogue

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In recent years, Chicago's Kevin Drumm has unleashed an impressive cacophony through a handful of recordings of gnarled distortion and tempestuous noise. Having collaborated with the black-clad noisemonger Prurient and the power electronic technician Lasse Marhaug, having released an album for Hanson Records, and having composed a kick-ass disc called Sheer Hellish Miasma should be enough to let you know what the man is capable of. But listen closely to each of those albums, you'll find hints of glinted melody and a subtle beauty just below the surface of the chainsaw buzz. Here on Imperial Distortion, Drumm focuses entirely upon the contemplative and introspective gestures in the form of the huge longform drones similarly embraced by Eliane Radigue, Andrew Chalk, BJ Nilsen, etc. Gone are the attack, the aggression, and the noise; but the dark, the doom, and the hellishness are what remains in these icy drones. His strategy is pure hypnosis through slippery layers of elongated electronic drones and bell-tone like resonance. On first listening to disc one, the subterranean gong clatter soaked in reverberation could easily tear themselves apart into digital chaos, but Drumm molds the gritty klank into an ominous dronedirge. This softening of potentially destructive sounds becomes Drumm's modus operandi throughout the first disc, with each modulation toward excess pregnant with malcontent energy reigned in for a severely dark moodscaping. On disc two, Drumm sets up soft transmissions from controlled feedback undulate with a slow moving rhythmic pulse, which gradually doubles upon itself into a topographical drone with the all of the same-but-different patterns of wind swept sand. Here, Drumm most recalls the unnerving minimalism through refined feedback manipulation that Nurse With Wound concocted on Soliloquy For Lilith. By the end of the record, the shadow and disease which could be read into some of the tracks on the first disc dissolve into a shimmering ambience that's just damn pretty. Let it be known, Imperial Distortion will be one of the best drone records of 2008.

MPEG stream: Guillain-Barre
MPEG stream: More Blood And Guts
MPEG stream: Snow (Part Two)

The 2008 opus Imperial Distortion took a lot of people by surprise, as that album signaled an abrupt shift in Kevin Drumm's aesthetic trajectory. For many years, Drumm had been embracing a full tilt noise agenda on such self-evident albums as Sheer Hellish Miasma; but with Imperial Distortion, he steered into the cold waters of an impeccable, glacial doom-ambient sound. That album was much more in line with the disgorged ambience, bleak isolationism, and perfected minimalism of Eliane Radigue, Thomas Koner, and Andrew Chalk. Imperial Horizon is the suitable follow-up to that earlier album, and it clearly shows that Drumm's success on Distortion was no fluke. While coming from the same train of thought, Imperial Horizon isn't a mere redux of Imperial Distortion. Drumm opens the album with a brighter, silvery set of sinewaves, looped feedback, or maybe just a refined set of synth patches. Gradually, the layers of sound separate to allow for a subtle two note melody to push out of the background. Deeper subterranean tones eventually overtake those silvery tones at the beginning, with another complementary pairing of harmonic notes an octave or so lower than before. This compositional rotation of drone, revelation of melody, and collapse into drone continues over very long stretches, several times throughout the duration of the piece. In the brighter tones on Imperial Horizon, this album sparkles and shines like the glistens of frost and ice from a wintery sun, as opposed to the nuclear fall-out deposits from Imperial Distortion's far bleaker aspirations. Nevertheless, Imperial Horizon is a stunning piece of dronescaping. For those of you out there who embrace Drumm's screaming noise recordings too, don't despair. He's still working quite diligently in this vein as well. Check out the electro-terminus cacophony of his recent album Impish Tyrant!

MPEG stream: Just Lay Down And Forget It

Holy shit! Drumm's back with the noise! The last two releases we had from Chicago's Kevin Drumm had shifted focus toward an introspectively bleak set of drone recordings on Imperial Distortion and Imperial Horizon; but with this redux of a 2004 cassette, the full-blown excess of noise abrasion returns. Yeah, those watershed noise albums, Sheer Hellish Miasma and Land Of Lurches, are the clear comparisons in Drumm's noise assaults. The album has a pedal driven quality that seeks a constant series of explosions, not in the continuous jet engine roar that you would get from a Zbigniew Karkowski construct or even the psychedelic excess of Merzbow; no, this is constantly pounding against the ear with short, sharp blasts that never let up, nor do they leave any breathing room whatsoever. Whew!

MPEG stream: Impish Tyrant 1
MPEG stream: Impish Tyrant 2

The Hanson label (home to Wolf Eyes) brings us some heavy duty electronic noise hijinks from Chicago guitar experimentalist Kevin Drumm. Basically, if you just can't wait (five minutes) for the next Merzbow release, you'll be more than satisfied with this one from Drumm. He's really left behind the abstract avant-improv silences of his earlier recordings for the sheer hellish miasma of grinding drone chaos (as typified by his Mego album from last year entitled "Sheer Hellish Miasma"). That's what you get here, the sort of electronic music that non-fans will deride as 'vacuum cleaner' or 'lawnmower' or 'low-flying plane crashing into my house' music while those of us into this stuff say 'heck yeah!'. The first of the this disc's three tracks moves in sixteen minutes from pleasantly distorted drone-destruction (your stereo speakers or headphones will sound like they are continuously blowing up) into more chaotic, violent territory that's harder to zone out to, before Kevin steamrollers everything heard previously with some REALLY hardcore noise. After than, the screaming clanking howling mayhem of the six-and-a-half minute second track is practically dancefloor material. Actually this one's got industrial sounds of a nightmare factory thing going on that's almost silly. Next up is the 13+ minute third and final track, which just happens to be our favorite here, a slowly swirling, swooping symphony of insectoid drone sound. Dense, yet smooth, and like all the cuts on "Land of Lurches", definitely dangerous at high volumes (though not so much as track 1 or 2). A good one for fans of Koji Asano's drones. All in all, noisebuffs will find this Kevin Drumm album a bit like Merzbow's "Hard Lovin' Man" intercut with slices of Masonna. Heavy drone noise meets maniac freak noise. MPEG Download: "track 3" [/audio/drummlurches3.mp3]

MPEG stream: track 3

A miasma is defined as a heavy, vaporous emanation or atmosphere, also used to describe a corrupting influence (thank you, dictionary dot com!). So obviously, Chicagoan Kevin Drumm has been hanging around miscreants Peter Rehberg and Masami Akita and has decided to drop a nasty, pungent aural fart on all of us. Normally, guitarist Drumm crafts near inaudible soundscapes which leave much to be imagined. But "Sheer Hellish Miasma", his first recording for the stalwart experimental electronic jetset label Mego, is just FUCKING LOUD!!!! As to be expected from Mego, there's an abundance of clicks and whirrs, digital chirps and skitters, but I repeat, it is FUCKING LOUD!!!! (!) This'll probably be up for Prix Ars Electronica against Whitehouse. Or not. Who knows what those Ars Electronica people are thinking? The closing "Cloudy", in contrast, builds a simplistic, yet wonderful shimmering drone that ends the disc quite gorgeously. Well done. A necessity for all you pure noise freaks out there. Epic and apocalyptic, much like the work of Zbigniew Karkowski, Boyd Rice as NON, the overdriven sonic capacities of Whitehouse or the more hellish punishments of Merzbow (it's a bit like "Hard Lovin' Man" in its trance-inducing aspects).

RealAudio clip: Inferno
RealAudio clip: Pavement

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SORRY.

Imperial Distortion was the album that opened a lot of people's ears to multi-dimensional sound tactician Kevin Drumm; yet the artist himself had admitted some self-doubt in regards to that 2008 release. He did eventually recognize the subtle power of Imperial Distortion's isolationist pall; and the relative popularity of Imperial Distortion led him to follow up that album with Imperial Horizon, another masterful album of bleak, shapeless dronescaping. With Tannenbaum, Drumm returns once again to the ambient strategies of those two previous albums. And while Hospital Productions situates the album within the realm of 'malign electronics,' Drumm's timbral choices are golden, warm, and nocturnally rich; and there's not much of a threat to be heard within the near two hours of glacially paced dronemuzik. The hour long "Nightside" is perfect dreamtime music, with not-quite static drone subtly undulating toward a chord change that slowly creeps into the realm of perception some 32 minutes in, only to ebb back towards a glistening shimmer of lush ambience. Much more akin to an Andrew Chalk album than anything close to what Prurient might have to say. The second disc is comparatively more dynamic, although that's only due to the incorporation of near-silent passages at the beginning of the aptly named "Winter Ice" which adheres to an arcing composition that glides up to an elegant, melancholy plateau of fluttered electronic drone, hinting at something which may be a melody buried somewhere inside. "Taurean" follows the Phil Niblock approach to minimalism, "no melody, no rhythm, no bullshit" with its gilded set of tones that gracefully bends within a small axis of subtle variations. Another mighty fine, mighty beautiful album from Kevin Drumm.

MPEG stream: Nightside
MPEG stream: Winter Ice
MPEG stream: Taurean

The debut album from KD, reissued on vinyl for the first time and expanded with previously unreleased bonus material! Gorgeous cover (with embossed lettering), super heavy gatefold packaging, 180 gram vinyl, comes with digital download.

With an album title that sounds like it could be the name of the next Immortal record, this new release from Chicago guitar experimentalist Kevin Drumm takes the inspired-by-black-metal aesthetic of his recent Mego-label cd "Sheer Hellish Miasma" even further (what's he been doing, hanging out with Weasel Walter?). In fact, he teams up here with an actual Norwegian! Lasse Marhaug of noisy electronica act Jazzkammer joins Drumm for this live-in-Oslo session, his laptop computer vs. Drumm's guitar and analog synth. Their collaboration/clash results in some dark and droney sounds that are semi-appropriate to the apparent black metal concept, being generally quiet and creepy rather than massive or mayhemic. The guitar, when you can tell it's a guitar, is more Derek Bailey than Burzum. And the arctic winds evoked on here hiss rather than howl. But, there's no mistaking the simulation of the sinister crackling of burning churches, and perhaps even the twittering of malicious goblins in dark forests, via Drumm and Marhaug's electronics. So, of course, we love this. Leaving aside the black metal business, this is atmospheric ambient glitch drone improv at its best -- and most eeveeiil.

RealAudio clip: track 2

Chicago experimentalist Kevin Drumm has teamed up with Quebecois turntablist Martin Tetreault for spartan duet for delicate pings, plucks, whirs, scrapes, and other particulate matter that have all been recorded as dryly as possible with a deadening silence surrounding each and every sound. If Bernhard Gunter tried to make a record of his ultra-quietness using live instruments, it might sound like this.

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SORRY. Quiet and sparse guitar improvisations akin to Derek Bailey's more contemplative moments.

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SORRY. We imagine it's quite a rare occurrence when Kevin Drumm gets outnoised on a record. By anyone! But it looks like it's finally happened on this here split. That's not to say Mr. Drumm is not noisy here, he most certainly is, it's just that in this case, 2673 are a bit noisier. Drumm's side of this lp is a thick slab of buzzing rhythmic insectoid electronics, chopped and shuffled and assembled in such a way that it sounds almost techno-like, pounding and stuttering out an impossibly complex rhythm, before a suffocating swarm of high pitched squeals and beeps descend like some sort of seventies computer gone completely haywire. Unlike the first twenty minute blast of screech and stutter, the final few minutes are downright serene, an abstract soundscape of greys, distorted white noise smeared into blurry barely there melodies. Quite nice. 2673, who you may remember from their split with Unicorn a few lists back, definitely bring the noise here, with an opening salvo of shrieking squealing high pitched skree that had dogs down the block barking as we were listening to this. The rest of the side is less high end, but no less noisy, with massive slabs of crumbling distorted electronics and overblown loops of prickly feedback and speaker shredding crunch. Woah! In a beautiful sleeve designed by Steven O'Malley (of SUNN O))), Khanate, Burning Witch, etc.) that is even printed on the inside!

Not a collaboration but a split between Chicago's experimental guitarist Kevin Drumm and Vienna's powerbook cruncher Pita. As far as the Kevin Drumm side, this is the most accomplished piece that this Jim O'Rourke protege has released so far. Behind a muffled yet spartan clatter of metallic objects, Drumm situates a simple melancholic melody (perhaps a french horn, but more likely just a

We were crazy obsessed with last year's debut record from these guys, due in no small part to the track "Let's Go Surfing", which had to be the jam of 2010, to quote our review, "with its whistled melody, its sped up Joy Division bassline, clipped simple drumming, Smiths guitar jangle, handclaps(!), vocal harmonies, fuzzy synth bits and an absolutely KILLER summery sunshiney chorus." Also in that same review we described these guys as sounding like "some mix of Echo And The Bunnymen, the Cure, the Boo Radleys and Surfer Blood". That whole record was a dreamy collection of new wave jangle and sunshiney surf pop, and were really hoping for more of the same with Portamento, and we were not at all disappointed. Everything we loved about that record is present and accounted for, tons of jangle, a little gloom pop, dreamy vocals, lush harmonies, impossibly irresistible hooks. If anything, this new record seems a bit more understated, the sound more muted and minimal, the hooks more subtle, but the sort of subtle hooks that become less and less subtle with every listen, opener "Book Of Revelation" sounds like someone threw Animal Collective along with the above mentioned bands into a blender, and took the resulting sonic stew and let it steep in the warm summer sun. The record unfolds like some sort of new wave new romantic daydream, laced with lots of 'oooh's and 'aaah's, loads of jangle and swirl, all anchored by more of those sped up Joy Division basslines, at times sounding almost like a sunshine pop version of Interpol, but most often sounding like some lost eighties new wave combo transported here from the past, set up in a modern studio, and left to make a modern new wave classic, that sounds strangely as if it too was plucked from the past.

MPEG stream: Book Of Revelation
MPEG stream: Days
MPEG stream: What You Were
MPEG stream: Money

Somehow we never managed to review the debut ep from retro new wave poppers The Drums (not to be confused with local double drums duo also called The Drums, featuring members of Oh Sees and Ezeetiger), which is a shame cuz it was one of our favorite records. And then we managed to track down an import version of the full length, but couldn't get enough to review, and were forced to wait for the domestic version, which is finally here, so now we can gush over this fantastic chunk of moody retro pop. Probably best to skip right to THEE JAM, "Let's Go Surfing", with its whistled melody, its sped up Joy Division bassline, clipped simple drumming, Smiths guitar jangle, handclaps(!), vocal harmonies, fuzzy synth bits and an absolutely KILLER summery sunshiney chorus. Imagine some mix of Echo And The Bunnymen, the Cure, the Boo Radleys and Surfer Blood, if that makes any sense, totally hook filled jangly new wave pop, with just enough modern weirdness to fit in with the current crop of retro pop futurists, but looking way back to the best of Creation and Factory records. "Best Friend" is all spidery guitars, earnest crooned vox, heartfelt lovelorn lyrics, plenty of ooooh's and aaaah's, all wrapped around an almost funky bassline and another stripped down rhythm. "Skippin' Town" is like "Let's Go Surfing" part 2, jaunty melodies, sweet vocals, more oooh's and aaah's, still more fuzzy synths and handclaps, and another dreamy hook. "It Will All End In Tears" is like a jauntier peppier take on Ultravox, "I'll Never Drop My Sword" adds a cool buzzy synth bassline, and some strange lyrics about Jesus, but all wrapped around that impossibly perfect jangle pop and some total minor key Cure synth shimmer. So good! Totally catchy, impossibly irresistible, breezy and Britpoppy, perfect summery retro dream pop jams that we can't stop listening to...

MPEG stream: Let's Go Surfing
MPEG stream: Best Friend
MPEG stream: Me And The Moon
MPEG stream: Down By The Water

Massive double cassette from Drunjus, a mystical magical offshoot of free noise folk outfit Davenport. Monstrous, thick, reverberating tones, like dragging a horsehair bow across the roof of the Astrodome, a dark deeply felt vibration, a subterranean string section, playing a single low low note, balanced by sections of full on chaotic skree, grinding warped guitars, blown out acid drenched psychedelic squalls, crunchy abstract clatter, a buzzy, blurry, speaker shredding sheet of corrosive trancelike urdrone. Double cassette wrapped in a hand screeened Japanese style obi. LIMITED TO 50 COPIES!!!!

MPEG stream: On The Heels Of Sleipnir (excerpt 1)
MPEG stream: On The Heels Of Sleipnir (excerpt 2)

Dynamic, jangly and sentimental with bits of Elephant 6 pop obtuseness put with Movietone's melancholic meanderings.

Oakland's ironic cock rock masters bounce back from the demise of their former label Man's Ruin with this new album for Tee Pee. Ironic? Yep, that's the one problem we might have with these boys. Otherwise, they rock hard, crankin' out good party tunes like something from your older stoner bro's record collection circa 1973-1980. They fit right in with other modern bands doing that retro rock thing, like Cherry Valence, All Night, Boulder, and even Drunk Horse pals The Fucking Champs in their more Thin Lizzyish moments. Drunk Horse are great players, indulging in total '70s worship...but I can't help thinking that they learned their riffing from Cheech & Chong's "Earache My Eye" rather than from the real, non-goof rock bands of the era. Maybe that's not fair, but I can't help but imagine how good these guys would be if there wasn't the joke element going on. Sure, these are smart guys playing dumb rock...but can't you be genuine about it though? Maybe it wouldn't have to be so dumb if they didn't make it intentionally so, with songs about Lube Jobs and so forth. That said, this is pretty darn good AND kinda funny too so maybe I should just enjoy the witty lyrics, kick-ass guitars, and sweaty songwriting regardless. Plus when they go off instrumentally you know they are -- or could be -- more than just a campy pastiche of '70s rock cliches. There's hints of jazz fusion, genuine pop smarts, and mucho guitar intelligence, so someday I want to hear the Advanced Drunk Horse record. Whatever, whoop it up!

RealAudio clip: National Lust
RealAudio clip: The Bitch Is Bach

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SORRY. With "Dirty Mind" on the flip -- yep, both are Prince covers, done up all rock n' roll by SF's smartest '70s style rockers.

Sheer rawk powah. Just tune into the first cut "Strange Trangressors" from this, the third and best album yet from Oakland-based hard rock throwbacks Drunk Horse, and get blown away by the power of riff and sweaty rhythm section action (and some tasty slide work courtesy of our pal Josh who used to play in Drunk Horse, after leaving The Champs). It's sophisticated riff rock, a bit more clever and complex than you might realize, when you're busy hoisting beers to their boogie as you should be. Though titled In Tongues, this album certainly seems less overtly tongue-in-cheek than Drunk Horse has in the past... The jokey element is here pretty much limited to slightly humorous song titles like "Reformed Asshole" and "Nice Hooves". Drunk Horse have always taken themselves and their music seriously, but now they're letting us know it too. For sure Drunk Horse have grown, and gotten even better. One major area of improvement would be the vocals, Eli took a lot more care with his singing this time around and it shows. The band has always had a lot of chops in other areas, so now they're even closer to becoming the new millenium's answer to the classic likes of ZZ Top, Humble Pie and Thin Lizzy. In Tongues is bursting with clever arrangements, wicked leads, gorgeous twin guitar harmonies (there's the Thin Lizzy...), and pop hooks. And that aforementioned sheer rawk powah. Unbeatable.

MPEG stream: Strange Transgressors
MPEG stream: Priestmaker

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SORRY. Pretty damn good sophomore effort from San Francisco rockers Drunkhorse. Basically, these guys play a heavy, '70s inspired style of honkin' hard rawk, a la Fu Manchu and other "stoner" outfits also found on the Man's Ruin roster. But, unlike a lot of those bands, the Drunkhorse musical and lyrical IQ isn't really down in the double digits. Like current tourmates The (Fucking) Champs, Drunkhorse work on several levels at once. It's definitely music to party to, but not if you can't deal with the occasional sideways lurch into jazz fusion or musique concrete. No, don't worry, that sort of eclecticism is carefully employed, so there's always a heavy groove or boogie woogie piano break or something to balance any overt weirdness. And the singer's rock drawl conceals a great sense of hipster wit. It's hard to decide if Drunkhorse are at heart overachieving stoner rockers or dumbed down art rockers, and it doesn't matter. Get drunk, play this loud, and simultaneously exercise and destroy brain cells. If you're wondering about the title, by the way, we're told this is two miniature concept albums in one...for more info, buy it!

RealAudio clip: AM/FM Shoes
RealAudio clip: Secret Ingredient
RealAudio clip: Manchild

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SORRY. Here's an interesting new single from Drunkhorse, that SF/Oakland crew of '70s lovin', hard rockin' stoner dudes who are smarter than you think they are. As the purported volume two in a series of "Unearthed Gems" releases, it features Drunkhorse covering two way rare, obscure tunes by their rock n' roll forebears: "The Weed Elf" by Sri Lankan '80s metallers Zilla, and "Pismo", by late '70s Cali bar-rockers Andy Sherman And The Sherms. Yes, we said obscure...maybe suspiciously so... Liner notes by Dr. Armando "Mondo" Johnson of Great Crates! Magazine (which, we must confess, we've never heard of either...) provide more info, in copious detail (Zilla's lone album was called "Heavy Yeti"...believe it, or not). The Zilla tune, which in the hands of Drunkhorse comes across like a cover of something by Slough Feg, is a NWOBHM styled romp with jaunty, folky Thin Lizzyish guitars and Dio-esque lyrics. It's like Drunkhorse crossed with their pals the Fucking Champs. On the flip, the Andy Sherman and the Sherms composition is revealed to be a good-times, summer-time, all-the-time rocker, an ode to Pismo Beach were one can "relax and play hackysack". Here's to Drunkhorse for digging up these "gems" and giving them such loving treatment -- hopefully we'll see these influences shine through on their next album of originals.

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SORRY. Full length number two from this East Coast noise rock trio, finally available, self released on vinyl by the band on their own label, whose recent set at the aQuarius / WFMU South By Southwest showcase blew us all away. An insanely kinetic display of tense mathy crush, pounding feral filth, and blasting, churning, grinding, blown out heaviness. It's hard to translate that sort of live energy to disc for sure, but this new album comes pretty close. The guitars impossibly distorted and in the red, pegging the meters and seemingly transforming into some strange looped and clipped chug, the drums pounding and relentless, the vocals howled and barked and buried in the mix, the band locking into full on feedback drenched hypnorock, before letting it splinter into strange stuttery stop starts, or almost blast beat driven bursts of black energy. A few of the tracks slow it down a little, but that's about all the respite you'll get, and even the dirgier numbers are still oozing grit and filth, threatening to destroy your speakers and bloody your ears. A couple favorites, "All The Dead Dogs", with its super distorted riffy churn, bizarre blown out percussion, and killer main groove, all chug and thud, with little flurries of all out noise peppering the otherwise tightly controlled crush. "Quality Of My Life", with its opening salvo of layered feedback, pounding drum stutter, and the way the drums and guitars lock into this weird rhythmic throb, before exploding into some serious skull crushing heaviness. But hell, we could pick any of these jams, they're all fierce and fucked up and awesome, the whole record playing out like one massive, multi movement, damaged and demented noise rock epic. Essential ear punishment for fans of Brainbombs, Mayyors, No Balls, Twin Stumps, Rusted Shut, Billy Bao, White Mice, Anals, Liquorball and other similarly unhinged noiseniks. It's worth noting, though, that Drunkdriver broke up recently, under difficult circumstances, as it turns out there were some serious allegations about DD's drummer and some alleged fucked up shit in his past, and while he vehemently denies everything, and his bandmates supported him (although some online sources report otherwise), the band finally decided they just didn't want to deal with all the rumors and the constant pressure of all that nothing-to-do-with-the-music bullshit, just so you know, even though we figure if you don't have a problem with a band called Drunkdriver to begin with, you can probably separate enjoying the album from any alleged problematic actions of the persons involved in making it, after all the music's still the same awesome noisy punk rock we liked before all this hit the fan.

Been trying to get some Drunkdriver into the store before South By Southwest, as these guys are gonna be playing our showcase, and here we go, finally, their first (?) 7", and it's a fist in the face, ice pick in the ear doozy. It sounds exactly what you might imagine a Drunkdriver might sound like, if instead of getting behind the wheel, they got up on stage with a pile of amps and a beat up old drum it, a super chaotic, unhinged, wildly careening, ultra distorted in the red chunk of drugged out, FX drenched noise rock damage. Churning riffage, wild proggy drumming, feral throat shredding vox, but the sound is surprisingly dynamic, lurching start stops, catchy melodies, weirdly hooky riffs, the A side, "Knife Day" could be some sort of noise rock anthem. The B side takes care of that right quick, even noisier, the band lock into a stuttery lurch, a controlled stumble, all crunch and crumble, the vocals unhinged and hysterical, with a killer, almost classic metal sounding breakdown, some more seriously hooky riffage, all kinds of good stuff buried beneath the blackened avalanche of skin peeling rooooaaaaar. White vinyl!

Full length number two from this East Coast noise rock trio, finally available, self-released on vinyl by the band on their own label, whose recent set at the aQuarius / WFMU South By Southwest showcase blew us all away. An insanely kinetic display of tense mathy crush, pounding feral filth, and blasting, churning, grinding, blown out heaviness. It's hard to translate that sort of live energy to disc for sure, but this new album comes pretty close. The guitars impossibly distorted and in the red, pegging the meters and seemingly transforming into some strange looped and clipped chug, the drums pounding and relentless, the vocals howled and barked and buried in the mix, the band locking into full on feedback drenched hypnorock, before letting it splinter into strange stuttery stop starts, or almost blast beat driven bursts of black energy. A few of the tracks slow it down a little, but that's about all the respite you'll get, and even the dirgier numbers are still oozing grit and filth, threatening to destroy your speakers and bloody your ears. A couple favorites, "All The Dead Dogs", with its super distorted riffy churn, bizarre blown out percussion, and killer main groove, all chug and thud, with little flurries of all out noise peppering the otherwise tightly controlled crush. "Quality Of My Life", with its opening salvo of layered feedback, pounding drum stutter, and the way the drums and guitars lock into this weird rhythmic throb, before exploding into some serious skull crushing heaviness. But hell, we could pick any of these jams, they're all fierce and fucked up and awesome, the whole record playing out like one massive, multi movement, damaged and demented noise rock epic. Essential ear punishment for fans of Brainbombs, Mayyors, No Balls, Twin Stumps, Rusted Shut, Billy Bao, White Mice, Anals, Liquorball and other similarly unhinged noiseniks. It's worth noting, though, that Drunkdriver broke up recently, under difficult circumstances, as it turns out there were some serious allegations about DD's drummer and some alleged fucked up shit in his past, and while he vehemently denies everything, and his bandmates supported him (although some online sources report otherwise), the band finally decided they just didn't want to deal with all the rumors and the constant pressure of all that nothing-to-do-with-the-music bullshit, just so you know, even though we figure if you don't have a problem with a band called Drunkdriver to begin with, you can probably separate enjoying the album from any alleged problematic actions of the persons involved in making it, after all the music's still the same awesome noisy punk rock we liked before all this hit the fan. Pressed on super thick vinyl, packaged in really nice heavy jackets...

MPEG stream: All The Dead Dogs
MPEG stream: Quality Of My Life
MPEG stream: The Accident

Gorgeous psychedelic folk from right here in SF, featuring members of aQ faves Citay, which will make sense once you hear this. Lush, eerie, dreamy and haunting, gorgeous vocal harmonies, minimal percussion, equal parts seventies British folk and seventies Laurel Canyon pop, woven into a witchy gothic brew that is totally enchanting. Strings soar, unfurling melancholy melodies, and guitars jangle, but it's the female vocals that seal the deal, a la Sandy Denny, Jacqui McShee of Pentangle, Bobbie Watson from Comus, Stevie Nicks, you get the idea, bewitching and ethereal, raw and powerful and emotional, and the harmonies, so captivating and otherworldly, wow. The Dry Spells manage to sound so timeless, this record definitely sounds contemporary, but if the lush production was dialed back just a little, this could easily have been some lost seventies psych folk reissue. Absolutely stunning. Most definitely for fans of Pentangle, Incredible String Band, Comus, as well as modern groups channeling that sound like Citay, Vetiver, Fleet Foxes... The lp includes a download of the whole record, including a killer bonus track, a cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Rhiannon", which is included on the cd version as well.

MPEG stream: Lost Daughter
MPEG stream: Black Is The Color
MPEG stream: Sruti

When we first got this record in, we thought we had it totally figured out. Just take a look at the lineup: Tony Dryer, an accomplished double bassist and former touring member of the Flying Luttenbachers, Jacob Lindsay, local clarinet free-jazz virtuoso, and last but not least, Jacob Heule, a member of SF's only acoustic free/death/grind duo Ettrick! So naturally we figured this record would be a chaotic frenzy of fierce free jazzy madness. And while it is definitely loosely composed and rather abstract, the trio delve into some unexpected territory here. We checked out Heule's website and he describes the Idea of West as an album of "quiet and static acoustic musical territories explored through the pragmatic application of compositional and improvisational structures". Damn, and we thought we had this one figured out! "In Order to Reroute the Wind" starts things off on a rather minimal note. Rickety scratching and scraping that sound like creaking boats swaying in a harbor of sizzling electric waste. Quiet industrial, barely there type of sound meanderings, a reserved and delicate sound for these ferocious free jazz contemporaries. On first listen, the jazz aesthetic of Idea of West is a bit hidden underneath a more ambient guise. Don't get us wrong, this sounds more like a jazz collaboration than a drone/ambient record, but it defiantly lacks the smack you in the face ferocity of other releases put out by these dudes. But that doesn't mean Idea of the West isn't an awesome piece of work in its own right. On the contrary, the trio confidently evolve Idea of West into a beautifully arranged aural invitation into a strange world of alchemic precision and skilled musicianship. Like a sorcerer who meticulously adds ingredients to a potion, paying careful attention to every detail in hopes of casting the perfect spell, these dudes play with close attention to detail. The record builds up and dissipates as the trio feed off each other's playing, letting chance determination sculpt their meditations into a hauntingly beautiful sonic narrative. Perfect for those of you aQ-addicts open to the weirder, more mystical side of free jazz!! And most certainly recommended by us!

MPEG stream: Before There Was Mass
MPEG stream: Light From Another Light
MPEG stream: Meant And Memory

Spare, hovering, electronic tinkering ranging from the cyclic dissonance of Oval to eerie washes, punctuated by accelerating rhythms.

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

SORRY. Calvin & Co. continue to pack the dancefloor.

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

SORRY.

If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, then it must be the Twilight Circus Sound System. That's pretty much what The Dub Project is as near as we at AQ labs can authenticate. Facts: it's on M records; It was recorded at Studio Twilight in the Netherlands; it's got Ryan Moore's name all over it; it sounds like a new Twilight Circus album. Why he chose a new project title is anyone's guess, but listening to it back to back with say "Other Worlds of Dub" you can definitely hear how Moore's style has evolved to the point where maybe a new alias is necessary. The Dub Project, while clearly founded in reggae and dub, doesn't attempt to sound so Jamaican. If anything Moore is more increasingly sounding like the dance club is his inspiration. The steady thump, thump, thump of the bass drum in his rhythms sounds less Rockers and more 808 these days. One thing that hasn't changed is Moore's love of everything stoney, and you can't hardly listen to this album without getting cotton mouth. Great sweeping washes of rhythms run backwards, gobs of endless delay, dense reverb, and effects will soak your head. In at least one song -- "Joy", featuring vocals by Shyama -- Moore harkens back to the days of Horsie. Hazy Middle Eastern vocals showcase a track that's almost a little too Deep Forest for us. Fortunately this track is not representative of the entire album, which is actually quite good. Change, for the most part, has been a good thing for Mr. Moore.

MPEG stream: Days of History
MPEG stream: Nu Doom

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

SORRY. The band name and album title are very apropos and as far as we are concerned this label has not yet put out a bad record. Supergroup features Bill Laswell, Spectre, Him (drummer from Rex), and Dr. Israel.

One of a whole bunch of releases on our pal Jason's Oromolycka label on the list this week, everything from Middle Eastern booty bass, to Southern hip hop, minimal synth pop to witchy electro, and then there's this, a tape from a Brooklyn outfit called DubKnowDub, whose sound is a thick, noise drenched blown out downtempo avant dub, sort of. The beats are there, and they are definitely dubbed out, but they're buried beneath a roiling sea of super distorted loops, of layered drones, fractured samples, all blurred and smeared into woozy streaks of soft noise shimmer, and crunchy buzz, the noisiness peeling back now and again to reveal a loping groove underneath, the beats crumbling and chaotic, the sound constantly shifting from noisy and groovy, to lumbering and dense, to spaced out and skittery, it's the kind of thing you'd expect to hear from Kevin Martin's The Bug, or on one of those old Pathological comps, a twisted industrial dub, or warped minimal avant hip hop, but doused in some serious noise. Sweet shit for sure...

Another strange and mysterious collection of lost and forgotten musicks, perhaps the last volume (of four) in this series of archival recordings, collecting the very few existing performances and recordings that fall under the umbrella of a mysterious movement of musicians and composers known as�The Guild Of Funerary Violinists.� Pierre Dubuisson was France's foremost Funerary Violinist, having made his name in the great funerary duels that became a bit of a fashion for a brief spell, where the deceased would leave a bit of melody to be performed after his death, two violinists would then improvise on the theme doing their best to wring more tragedy from the notes than their opponent, the winner of course was the one who drew the most tears from onlookers. Dubuisson eventually became president of the French branch of the Guild Of Funerary Violinists, and helped to integrate Funerary Violin into the Catholic ritual before disappearing under dubious circumstances during the infamous Funerary purges.� These recordings were made by Pierre's grandson Jacques, who after running away from an abusive home and an overbearing father, was discovered playing some of his grandfather's pieces at a concert in 1913, by an archivist from the Biblioteque Nationale De France, who convinced Jacques to make wax cylinder recordings of some of his grandfather's recordings. Jacques is of course not the player his father was, or his grandfather before him, but the pieces carry their own powerful emotion which easily overcomes any sort of deficiencies in the performances.� Oh, right, we always seem to forget the most important part, none of the above is true? Not a bit. Or is it? Hard to say. Or so a few of us think. Some here choose to believe (Mulder?) since the mythology is almost as fascinating and nuanced as the recordings, and imagining this lost art is so much more fun, while others are just happy to listen to this amazing music. And amazing it is. Perfectly and beautifully rendered to sound as old and antique as it most likely is not. Wailing, plaintive funereal laments on solo violin, sad and morose, lilting and so completely lovely, bathed in all manner of grit and hiss, fuzz and antique distortion, sounding like the old wax cylinders these recordings purport to be. Imagine some old timey violin music treated by Tim Hecker, and spun� in some ultra morose DJ set by Philip Jeck... The music is so evocative, of dark clouds at dusk, rain swept fields, huge brooding stone houses, lush gardens beneath grey skies, and of course, funerals, and the slow stately trudge of the funeral procession to the grave site. We've gushed about pretty much every volume so far, and by now are probably just repeating ourselves, but we just love these discs, read the other Funerary Violinist reviews for more on the music and the mythology, and you'll realize just why it seems impossible to us to not fall totally in love with such a well executed piece of what ultimately amounts to performance art. The music, dark and delicate, creepy and so beautiful, even removed from the mythology is totally amazing, the story and the text is as well (there's even a book you can track down, detailing the entire recorded history of the Guild) but the two together, are simply magical....

MPEG stream: Marche Funebre - Lent Pose Et Majestueux
MPEG stream: Vol - Magnanime Et Degage
MPEG stream: Marche Funebre - Sombre, Pourtant Ouvert Sur L'Avenir

This absolute classic is finally back in print! Predating the inclusion of chance operations into modern composition by almost fifty years, these compositions by Marcel Duchamp (written in 1913) were recorded in 1976 by the S.E.M. Ensemble of New York. Duchamp was a household word in art circles, and music seemed the least important of his various interests, yet he managed to create a small, but highly innovative body of work. Included here are two interpretations of Duchamp's "The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even". One utilizes a chance system in which notes are represented by numbers written on balls which are selected as they pass through a funnel into the open cars of a toy train. The other is based on a a random selection of numbers, transcribed into notes and performed by player piano. That's all well and good, but what does it sound like? Pretty amazing actually. This disc is worth buying for the first track alone, a gorgeous 25 minute piece, spacious and elegant, a dreamy sleepy swirl of chimes and their shimmering overtones. Absolutely gorgeous.

MPEG stream: Erratum Musical (For Three Voices)
MPEG stream: Sculpture Musicale

Predating the inclusion of chance operations into modern composition by almost fifty years, these compositions by Marcel Duchamp (written in 1913) were recorded in 1976 by the S.E.M. Ensemble of New York. Duchamp was a household word in art circles, and music seemed the least important of his various interests, yet he managed to create a small, but highly innovative body of work. Included here are two interpretations of Duchamp's "The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even". One utilizes a chance system in which notes are represented by numbers written on balls which are selected as they pass through a funnel into the open cars of a toy train. The other is based on a a random selection of numbers, transcribed into notes and performed by player piano. That's all well and good, but what does it sound like? Pretty amazing actually. This disc is worth buying for the first track alone, a gorgeous 25 minute piece, spacious and elegant, a dreamy sleepy swirl of chimes and their shimmering overtones. Absolutely gorgeous.

A new dark pop gem! Check out this great self-titled debut from L.A. duo Duchess (namely Christy Schnabel formerly of Ugly Beauty and Jerry DiRienzo formerly of Cell). This kind of brooding sounds like it should be coming from New York or Boston circa 1992 (think Come or Versus) rather than Los Angeles circa now. It immediately seems familiar and singalong-able. Smolderingly heady yet catchy at the same time. Many songs conjure images of a stormy night occupied by much distraught handwringing and perhaps even some murderous thoughts. Schnabel's vocals are the key here, reminiscent of the deeply potent voices of Nathalie Merchant and Versus' Fontaine Toups. This cd was released on Adam Pfahler's (ex-Jawbreaker) label and it definitely fits well alongside the moodily dynamic air of his own band Whysall Lane which also features Richard Balayut (formerly of the abovementioned Versus) and whose own debut album should be out any day now too!

MPEG stream: Diamond Ring
MPEG stream: Let Me Gain

[ aquarius records catalogue — D ]