[ aquarius records catalogue

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

Showing results 351 through 400 of 2079.

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SORRY. NOW ON VINYL! Terrify your turntable with this soundtrack... Dawn Of The Dead is pretty much the greatest zombie movie ever made. It definitely set the standard, and EVERY walking dead movie since has basically just been a riff off the original. And of course the Goblin score was amazing, proggy, scary and occasionally silly, but always perfect in some unlikely way. But most of the REALLY scary parts weren't scored by Goblin but instead were one of over 2000 musical cues used in the film. This comp collects some of the longer cues (many were mere seconds long, that in the context of the film were perfect, but wouldn't make for good listening here) and some of the most memorable songs that weren't included in the Goblin score. Most of this stuff is creepy and scary and totally brings back all the spine tingly feelings you had the first time you saw the movie. But there are also some super dorky bits that were as much a part of the film and its subtle (or not so subtle) humor. There's the opening track "The Gonk", a goofy, bouncy ragtime / cartoon music workout, the hippy coutry folk ditty "Cause I'm A Man" played by the Electric Banana (which just happened to feature members of the Pretty Things!!). And who can forget the scene in the mall, and the weird medley of marching band / ragtime / progressive rock organ workout that accompanied it? But outside of those whimsical moments, the rest of this collection is really really intense and spooky. From creepy, slithering orchestral drones, shimmering gongs and tinkling chimes to Bernard Hermann-ish suspenseful minor key soundtrack stuff, all tense strings and foreboding DUH DUH's to scary outerspace synth sounds, reverbed and super affected to good ol' classic Halloween / Friday The Thirteenth style horror movie suspense music. So awesome!

MPEG stream: Cosmogony Pt. 1
MPEG stream: Sinestre
MPEG stream: Cause I'm A Man

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Finally this all-time AQ favorite is back in print! Dawn Of The Dead is pretty much the greatest zombie movie ever made. It definitely set the standard, and EVERY walking dead movie since has basically just been a riff off the original. And of course the Goblin score was amazing, proggy, scary and occasionally silly, but always perfect in some unlikely way. But most of the REALLY scary parts weren't scored by Goblin but instead were one of over 2000 musical cues used in the film. This comp collects some of the longer cues (many were mere seconds long, that in the context of the film were perfect, but wouldn't make for good listening here) and some of the most memorable songs that weren't included in the Goblin score. Most of this stuff is creepy and scary and totally brings back all the spine tingly feelings you had the first time you saw the movie. But there are also some super dorky bits that were as much a part of the film and its subtle (or not so subtle) humor. There's the opening track "The Gonk", a goofy, bouncy ragtime / cartoon music workout, the hippy country folk ditty "Cause I'm A Man" played by the Electric Banana (which just happened to feature members of the Pretty Things!!). And who can forget the scene in the mall, and the weird medley of marching band / ragtime / progressive rock organ workout that accompanied it? But outside of those whimsical moments, the rest of this collection is really really intense and spooky. From creepy, slithering orchestral drones, shimmering gongs and tinkling chimes to Bernard Hermann-ish suspenseful minor key soundtrack stuff, all tense strings and foreboding DUH DUH's to scary outerspace synth sounds, reverbed and super affected to good ol' classic Halloween / Friday The Thirteenth style horror movie suspense music. So awesome!

MPEG stream: Cosmogony Pt. 1
MPEG stream: Sinestre
MPEG stream: Cause I'm A Man

The truly "true" amongst you, metal-wise, should already be familiar with the German hellions known as Sacred Steel. We've given horns-up reviews to several of their more-metal-than-thou albums in the past. Dawn Of Winter is Sacred Steel's doom metal side project, featuring two members of that band, guitarist Jorg Knittel and, crucially to our enjoyment of it, vocalist Gerrit Mutz, whose unusual wavering wail, as we've said before, comes off like a cross between Scott Reagers (Saint Vitus) and Jello Biafra! Dawn Of Winter have been around for years and years (since 1990) but haven't made that many records, possibly 'cause sloth is their modus operandi, playing as they do the lethargic, lumbering strains of traditional doom metal. This is only their 2nd full-length. You could say we were slow too, in reviewing this, as The Peaceful Dead came out last year ('twas in heavy rotation in Allan's iPod around Christmas time). Perfect for the bleak winter months of course, but now it's gotten better US distribution and we've managed to get a few for the store. Whilst Sacred Steel are almost always speedy, with the occasional doomy detour, in this band Knittel and Mutz fully indulge their love of all things slow and low. Indeed, opening track "The Music Of Despair" is a doom/cult metal shoutout of sorts, the lyrics making references both subtle and overt to a bunch of DoW's favorite bands, including Penance, Manilla Road, Witchfinder General, Mercyful Fate, Angel Witch, Cirith Ungol, Pentagram, Saint Vitus, Pagan Altar, Reverend Bizarre, Candlemass, and of course Black Sabbath. The other nine tracks here pretty much do their utmost to live up to all that, with plodding tempi, gothic imagery, loud-soft dynamics, and dramatic crescendos. Soooo dramatic! Mutz's hammy (but sincere) thespian delivery is perfectly suited to the melancholic majesty of this music, songs that are seemingly weighted down by the crushing distortodoomidelic guitar accompaniment, o'er which Mutz' emotive vocals are declaimed. So, if the epic doom metal of the Heaven & Hell and Candlemass albums reviewed here recently has whet your appetite for even more in the way of hoary, Sabbathy riffs and wizened wizard vocals, and you're down for something a little more underground as well, then Dawn Of Winter might be just the ticket. We'd have highlighted this, too, but are aware that DoW are only for the "true"!

MPEG stream: The Music Of Despair
MPEG stream: Throne Of Isolation

Superheavy jagged post-math-metal with trumpet, from Germany. Like Jesus Lizard crossed with Brasil 66!

All hail! At last, a follow up to the critically-acclaimed (and by us as well) 2010 album Nucleus, from this idiosyncratic lone genius metal cult. Yes it's the return of Dawnbringer, masterminded by guitarist/drummer/vocalist Chris "Professor" Black, he of also, amongst others, AQ faves High Spirits. Interestingly, Dawnbringer started off years ago as the one-man band of *somebody else*, but early on, Chris Black joined on drums, and then the other guy subsequently quit, making Dawnbringer into Black's own one-man band! (Though he does get help from friends.) For those who've heard Nucleus, you know that Dawnbringer plays truly classic metal, but with an experimental edge, informed by black and death and other styles, though those elements have been toned down in recent years. Dawnbringer's latest comes quite close to the sound of the NWOBHM-ish High Spirits, with some of the power/proggishness of another band the Professor plays drums in, Pharaoh. Dawnbringer must be lauded for their real, honest-to-god heavy metal songwriting, unafraid to be a bit 'pop' - track five even gets a little power-ballady, we love it! Other trademarks include the powerful drumming, TONS of gorgeously shredding guitarwork, various quirky details, and, crucially, the whiskey-weary, Lemmy-phlegmy, soulful vocal stylings of Black - the earnestness of which go a long way toward making the weirder aspects of this seem worth taking seriously, 'cause yes, the album title kinda sounds like the name of a D&D module, and indeed it's fantastical. The sticker on the shrinkwrap says that this album is "the story of a naive assassin, his bizarre journey, and its tragic end". But beyond that, for a 'concept album', very little is revealed. The disc is broken up into nine completely untitled tracks, there's no 'story' provided in the cd booklet, and only a few lines of lyrics are printed. You just gotta listen. And, whether you follow the plot or not, you'll enjoy the masterful metal music, full of killer riffage, galloping rhythms, and impassioned vocals... Dawnbringer here can certainly be compared to their former Profound Lore labelmates, Slough Feg and Hammers Of Misfortune (the latter especially due to the pounding '70s prog Hammond organ you'll hear on track VI, in particular). Also of course, such bands as diverse as Iron Maiden, Blue Oyster Cult, Bathory, Manowar... In sum, this album is an artistic, ambitious attempt at 'Epic Metal', and it's a huge triumph. Definitely in competition for best heavy metal offering of 2012!

MPEG stream: I
MPEG stream: II
MPEG stream: VI

The fertile metal mind of talented guitarist/vocalist/drummer/songwriter etc. Chris "Professor" Black brings us his latest opus, this time an album from his critically-acclaimed epic metal project, Dawnbringer, whose previous two albums on Profound Lore we've lauded as well. Now, as you hopefully are aware, aQ fave High Spirits is one of the man's other bands, but this, while sonically similar in many ways to High Spirits (fist waving metal), is more like, Low Spirits. Maybe the band name should have changed here to DUSKbringer... While as melodic and majestic as ever, there's something super bummed out about all these tracks, however anthemic and even flat-out rockin' they are. It's not exactly doom metal, more like gloom metal. Negative, downer vibes permeate, with songs like "Damn You", "Nobody There", and "Crawling Off To Die", the latter appropriately enough the album-ender (with its title also being the brief, sad song's only lyrics). Not smiley stuff. Certainly you'll get your fix here of tasty guitar leads, crunchy heavy riffs and Black's distinctive, warm, weary vocals - but you might need to up your dose of Prozac when listening to this... Tempos and everything else are mostly sorta sluggish sounding - excepting the blasting, black metallic attack of "Not Your Night", towards the end of the album, where some other surprises lurk. Black metal being an aspect of the Dawnbringer equation heard in the past but not such much recently, so when that track hits, if you're not paying attention you might think you're listening to a different disc entirely, as Black also trades his 'clean' singing voice for a more rough/raspy 'vokill'. And likewise, you could really be confused by the very next cut, "Funeral Child", Black's vocals on that one sounding like a tribute to King Diamond & his falsetto shriek! Unexpected. But, again, not unknown in the Dawnbringer discography. However entertaining this display of Black's vocal versatility is, it's the sad, folky, balladic likes of "One-Eyed Sister" from midway through the disc, sung in his usual melodic manner, that seems more in keeping with the primary, melancholic mood intended here.

MPEG stream: Nobody There
MPEG stream: Xiphias
MPEG stream: Hands Of Death

Now that the Profound Lore label has released this Chicago-based metal band's fourth full-length, we think more people are gonna start paying attention to 'em. We know WE are. Though we thought we knew what they sounded like before, we were blown away by this. Note we said "metal" band, and didn't qualify that in any way. Didn't say black, thrash, doom, true, etc. That's 'cause Dawnbringer are sorta ALL those things. Well, they used to have a lot more black metal aspects, death metal too, as we remember. But through a process of experimentation it seems they've arrived at THIS sound, a perfection, a distillation, a PURE metal sound that is traditional... yet advanced and yes, still experimental. On Nucleus, Dawnbringer bring it, all right. They can be triumphantly shredding in speed metal glory, or NWOBHM-ishly rockin' ("Swing Hard"), or thrashy ("The Devil" approaches black metal velocities), and then slow, sad and majestic... sometimes all within the same song. And SONG is the operative word, as is singing, the versatile vocals often approximating the melodic gruffness of Lemmy, or James Hetfield, sounding tough, yet vulnerable... so Dawnbringer have their Motorhead and Metallica sounding moments, also musically reminding us of Maiden and other old school metal greats. Another reference point would have to be Hammers Of Misfortune, if you stripped away most of Hammers' prog elements and exposed the metal core. 'Tis utter headbanging heaviness, inspiring "invisible orange" style air-grabbing for sure, but not without neo-classical artistry as well. Impressive as hell, especially considering it's mostly the work of one man, Dawnbringer being masterminded by multi-instrumentalist (and singer) Chris "Professor" Black, a former member of psychedelic black metal act Nachtmystium, also drummer for power metallers Pharaoh and the genius behind NWOBHM worshippers High Spirits (whose demos cd we HAVE to review here soon!).

MPEG stream: So Much For Sleep
MPEG stream: The Devil
MPEG stream: Cataract

This is not really new, but we've never been able to get enough of these to list until now. From the label that brought us Benighted Leams, Contra Ignem Fatuum, Dark Ages and Meads Of Asphodel comes another confounding blast of black metal, this time from a mysterious group called Dawnfall. The first three tracks are 11+ minutes each, every one a convoluted, twisted swirl of stumbling midtempo black metal weirdness and swooshing keyboardy ambience, with some of the most tortured vocals we've ever heard. Somewhere between the anguished shriek of Weakling and the inhuman howl of Rehtaf Ruo. Each prickly spikey tangle of blackness is peppered with squirrelly Greg Ginn like guitar freakouts, random tinkling chimes and warm wooshes of synthesizer. Dizzying and totally brilliantly confusional. Warm fuzzed out guitars wrapped loosely over a framework of thudding pounding drums, while maddeningly slippery guitar squiggles slip and slide in and around the blackness colliding with the harsh vocal wails. Amazing. But that's just three tracks in. Track four is some sort of faux harpsichord driven electronic ambient soundscape, like Benighted Leams playing Dead Can Dance covering Autchre or something? Skittery beats and a dense wash of thick metallic string strum. As if it couldn't get weirder, the next track is mostly sped up and slowed down vocals, mixed with strange spacey effects, swooshes, and beeps and a hiccupping dsrum machine. Weird! But it's not over yet, the second to last track is a ten minute soundscape of skittery synthesizers, warbly keyboard squiggles, all smothered in reverb and other space-y ambience. A creepy, splattery minimal crawl through some outer space fun house. Finally, the record finishes with a weird one minute blast of synthesized circus music, maybe like a lite Killing Joke, with wooshy synth stabs and casio style drum beats. Woah, not sure what to make of this. We love it. For sure. Just not sure why. Definitely too weird for most metalheads, you all can quit after the first three tracks, that is if -those- aren't already too weird for you. But folks who have been digging all the crazy shit Supernal puts out, and anyone up to trying to wrap their brains around something amazingly weird and wonderfully obtuse, definitely check this out!

MPEG stream: Drei RaumeI
MPEG stream: Drei Raume II

Yet another fantastic reissue from local label Tompkins Square, this one of an ultra rare 1971 private press lp from fiddle player Smoke Dawson, who has a crazy interesting history, detailed in the extensive liner notes, the highlights being: played with Peter Stampfel of the Holy Modal Rounders in his first band; lived for years at Cafe Lena, the hallowed folk music venue located in Saratoga Springs, NY; spent years as an itinerant bagpipe and fiddle player; played with Golden Toad, a group that often opened for the Grateful Dead; survived cancer; and there's so much more, needless to say, a crazy confluence of coincidence led Tompkins Square head honcho Josh Rosenthal to meet the still very much alive Dawson, and to make this fantastic record available again for the first time in four plus decades. And fantastic it is, all solo fiddle, super emotive and lyrical, his technique rooted in classical music, but his playing intuitive and utterly unique, with some of the tracks here sounding like classic bluegrass, others very much UNlike traditional folk and bluegrass. Dawson claims his technique involves a bit of sorcery (hence the wizened wizard on the cover) and we very much believe it!

MPEG stream: John Brown's Dream
MPEG stream: Wild Goose Chase
MPEG stream: The Girl I Left Behind Me
MPEG stream: The Minotaur

Composer John Harrison's iconic soundtrack to George Romero's legendary horror zombie classic, Day Of The Dead, is the second release on Waxwork after Re-Animator, and comes pressed on 180 gram vinyl, the first time ever the COMPLETE score has been available, including EVERY musical cue used in the film. Also of note about this release: the 1985 master tapes were restored and remixed by former White Zombie guitarist, J. Yuenger (!!). The two lps are pressed on cream yellow marbled / 'military green' marbled vinyl, the cover is a heavy old school tip-on sleeve, with matte varnish, a full color gatefold and spot UV gloss printing, the liner notes include an essay by Romero himself, and the whole thing features all new art and design by artist Jay Shaw, PLUS, there's also an 11" x 22" replica of "THE DEAD WALK!" newspaper article from the opening credits of the film, which features notes on the music from John Harrison. So cool!!!! The sound? Much of it is very John Carpenter sounding, check out the sample below, which is pretty indicative of Harrison's score, brooding synth shimmer, pulsing rhythms, strange percussion, haunting melodies, thick swaths of ominous bass rumble, faux strings, the whole thing darkly psychedelic and truly creepy, fans of the new wave of Carpenter / Goblin worship, will be in synth/soundtrack heaven. Old school drum machines, moody ambience, shimmery new age drift, cheesy eighties grooviness, total eighties VHS credit sequence psych-funk, synth-groove radness that is totally of its age, but informs so much of the new music today. And like all great soundtracks, has us wanting to see the movie again! We had thought they were doing Rosemary's Baby next after Re-Animator, still looking forward to that, but no complaints about this!

MPEG stream: Breakdown

Wow. This is a gorgeous little thing before we even pop it in the player. A fogged plastic 3" soft jewel case, one side a super detailed photo of some sort of brilliant green caterpillar, the other a transparent smear of different greens, bright but strangely muted, revealing the tiny green disc within. The music itself is just as beautiful, thick slabs of post-Autechre skitter and thump, tangled and serpentine, but still somehow soothing and dreamy, the dense convoluted beats and rhythms all wrapped up in warm warped melodies and beautifully creepy atmospheres. Very cinematic and epic. Like some perfect mix of Autechre, Boards Of Canada and Godspeed maybe... Only 100 copies made. Of which we got 20. So act fast!

MPEG stream: Gentle
MPEG stream: Cubic Space

The first salvo of electronic vinyl madness from AQ pal Drucifer's new label comes in the form of four 12"s, beautifully packaged in distinctive orange sleeves (dance 12" style) and on nice thick vinyl, and sonically running the gamut from stuttery glitched out electronica to shimmery drones to speaker shredding digital rhythms to dreamy beatscapes. Carson Day (NOT Carson Daly!) is a 17 year old SF local who according to the Dielectric website likes Tool, White Zombie, Boards Of Canada, Autechre and loads more. Don't notice much of the Tool or White Zombie influence, but the Boards/Autechre vibe is present in spades. Stuttery, skittery rhythms over dreamy pastoral backdrops, with hyper-distorted melodies, the occasional grinding, rib cage rattling low-end bass line and bursts of almost jungle peppering these dreamy, late night electronic workouts. Definitely for fans of Autechre, Boards Of Canada and the like. MPEG Download: "Different Agendas" [/audio/daydifferent.mp3] MPEG Stream: "Different Agendas" [/audio/daydifferent.m3u]

MPEG stream: Different Agendas
MPEG stream: Come Here Often

The latest from local label Time Released Sound comes from a Russian duo called Daydreamer, their record a sonic homage to French existentialist Albert Camus, the music a darkly languorous sprawl of slo-mo ambient drift, and abstract post rock shimmer, opening with a bit of Durutti Column like guitar mesmer, the record soon settles into a brooding, cinematic slowcore, horn flecked smolder, sounding like some lost David Lynch score, before transforming into a hazy Tim Hecker-ish stretch of minimal murk, which in turn unwinds as a haunting abstract chamber folk, all pointillist piano and slow burn shimmer, the sound over the course of Camus' nine tracks slipping easily from sun dappled dreaminess, to dark, ominous dronescapery, black ambience shot through with barely there rhythms, strange snippets of what sounds like subtle turntablism, a hazy sinister creep through sonic shadows, emerging on the other side, all warm, and lush, and lustrous, a softly glitchy swirl of prismatic sound, a woozy world of whirring chordal thrum woven into lush layered ambience, the final movement more straight up guitar, spidery melodies suspended in space, wreathed in barely there distant drones, surrounded by clouds of cymbal shimmer and strange abstract voices, finishing off with a brief bit of smeared psychedelic swirl, a gauzy, druggy, drowsy coda. Gorgeous! Like all Tim Released Sound releases, there are two versions, the standard digipak edition, limited to 150 copies, and the deluxe handmade art edition, this time limited to just 90 copies, and as always, extravagantly packaged. Which means for Camus, a multi page booklet, hinged on one corner, which fans open into a sort of mandala. The super striking cover image is printed to Japanese tissue paper, hand pasted and shredded. The booklet itself is printed on heavyweight Moab paper, and are hand punched, sewn, collaged, stamped and doodled. The back of each page is spray stenciled as well. And to top it off, hanging from the corner of each booklet is an actual Gauloises cigarette, packaged in a little capped vial. Everything then housed in a 6" square spray painted, hand punched and stamped translucent envelope. Wow!

MPEG stream: High Road
MPEG stream: Cloud Castles
MPEG stream: Abandoned Archangel

MPEG stream: High Road
MPEG stream: Cloud Castles
MPEG stream: Abandoned Archangel

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MPEG stream: Stupid Songs
MPEG stream: Argh Fuck Kill - Die Sinner Die
MPEG stream: Bedtime Story
MPEG stream: I Killed Mommy

MPEG stream: Fuck My Shit Stinks
MPEG stream: Fuck Satan To Death
MPEG stream: Dragons

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MPEG stream: Staring Contest
MPEG stream: Bone Fragments
MPEG stream: In The Face Of Collapse

Ah, the poor man's R.E.M. Well, that's not really fair, how about the less hooky, more underground less successful R.E.M.? The DB's were born of the same fertile scene that spawned Stipe and Co., but cruised along just below commercial radar, enjoying a bit

RealAudio clip: Amplifier
RealAudio clip: Black And White
RealAudio clip: I'm In Love

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The shorthand descriptors for DDAA have long read that they are the French equivalent of Nurse With Wound or The Residents. It has to be said that this pithy equation isn't too far from the mark, with DDAA trading in the self-taught meandering through lysergic experimentation, fractured psychedelia, surrealist stream of consciousness, prankish naivete, and the loosest of connections to European post-punk, all of which are very much akin to their stalwarts of NWW and the Residents. DDAA started back in 1979, lifting their name - Deficit Des Annees Anterieures - from an accounting vernacular of the past year's deficit, with the core membership being remarkably stable as the trio of Jean-Luc Andre, Jean-Philippe Fee, and Sylvie Martineau Fee. Like NWW and The Residents, DDAA has self-published much of their work, allowing them the freedom to take whatever detour they need to make while on their eccentric journey of crafting an album. Hazy World, published in late 2014 (not on their own label, but through the obscure Polish imprint Nefryt), is a suitably strange and ineffable record. Hand-cranked, liquid rhythmic patterns trickle through the album, sounding somewhere between the clatter of toy locomotives, somatic wheezings, and the burbled hypnosis of a vernal stream. The trio lace these organic rhythms with mumbled voice, drone-on organ, radiophonic electronics, scabby guitars, and various other instruments, crafting linear passages that might be considered motorik if such sounds weren't performed as if drunken, liminally scribbled, and / or only half-awake. It makes for quite a weirdly meditative record; and yes, those references to NWW and The Residents still hold up very nicely.

MPEG stream: Pirouette
MPEG stream: Humanity
MPEG stream: Mar Duch

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Volume two of these recently discovered long lost recordings of seventies synthesizer music from a mysterious Belgian musician named Edmond De Dyster. Like the first volume, these pieces were discovered on unmarked reel to reel tapes in a box marked simply with the year, 1975. Discovered by Ultra Eczema head honcho Dennis Tyfus, these recordings, along with those on the now out of print first volume, are only part of a trove of unreleased, and for the most part unheard recordings De Dyster made in private, who seemingly had no intention of releasing them, in fact, even his family didn't know he had been making recordings. None of this mystery would be worth anything if it weren't for the music, which is weird and wonderful, raw and primitive, all analog synthesizers, almost like a lo-fi BBC Radiophonic Workshop. The sounds are tripped out and abstract, bleeps and bloops and beeps and sine wave tones, and crumbling distorted rhythms, plodding ominous low end melodies, spooky squalls of glitch and squelch, reverbed squiggles, ghostly tones, haunting and otherworldly like a Theremin, here and there some new age flutter, deep soft swells, fuzzy staticky streaks of buzz, muted rhythmic thumps, that low end creeping and slithering through clouds of swirling tones and shimmering textures, all set adrift in wide open expanses of distant rumble and soft fuzzy whir. Amazing stuff. Think Tangerine Dream, Conrad Schnitzler, Battiato, Schulze, Heldon. And you may as well add De Deyster to that list. Anyone into experimental electronic music, should absolutely check this out. Who knows how many other lost boxes of tapes or mysterious music makers lurk in bedrooms and basements out there? Probably more than we might imagine... Gorgeously packaged in a hand screened, extra thick jacket, with a full color printed insert. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES.

Ultra limited lp only reissue of long lost seventies analog synthesizer music from mysterious Belgian musical recluse Edmond De Dyster. These tracks were recovered from unmarked tapes recently discovered, recorded sometime in the early to mid seventies. De Dyster had been recording for years, not to release, just for himself, before his family even realized he was making music nearly a decade later. A sort of lo-fi, bedroom Conrad Schnitzler, De Deyster created dense and rich fuzzed out synthscapes, buzzy and fuzzy, with psychedelic outer space FX swooping all over the place, lots of tape hiss, instrument buzz, creepy alien melodies, like a much more abstract and damaged Tangerine Dream. Crumbling rumble, grimy grit, whirring distortion, birdlike trills, strange minor key melody fragments, long passages of dreamlike bloop and bleep. So cool. Packaged in a beautiful full color sleeve, featuring washed out family photos of the artist as a young man. Also includes liner notes and a full sized insert. Limited to 400 copies, already out of print, and we only managed to get about 20 so act fast!

Arthur De Eriomem is one of the shadowy figures behind Ingenting Kollektiva, a dreamy disintegrated drone project with a keen knowledge of avant-garde music, art, film, architecture, and design, all of which gets churned through whatever arcane processes may be at work, resulting in some rapturously dark driftscaping and visually arresting videos as well. De Eriomem cites that the title of this release was culled from David Toop's Sinister Resonance, a book that runs with the idea that sound, for all of its physical attributes, operates more in the realm of the ghostly. It's an apt description, especially in relation to Simon Reynolds' appropriation of hauntology to describe particular threads of retro-futurism in electronica. Like The Caretaker, William Basinksi, and Phillip Jeck, who augment their sounds through an aural patina of antiquity, De Eriomem's slippery composition has the feel of something very, very old - like a lost wax cylinder recently discovered in some midwestern attic, covered in flecks of ash and dust. It would be easy to believe these warbling recordings are of a 19th Century hurdy-gurdy, playing doleful, repetitive melodies all the while the echoing slowly sustained drones and evanescent blossomings of golden ambience; but De Eriomem mentions the sources to be analogue delay and guitar. It hardly matters how he did it, it's just a gorgeous drone disc, one that would warrant comparisons also to The Aeolian String Ensemble and the guitar based work from Andrew Chalk. Handmade packaging in a numbered of edition of 100 copies.

MPEG stream: Drowned By Voices, Somewhat Rather Slowly

The second cd from De Facto (featuring Omar and Cedric formerly of At The Drive-In... not to be confused with Mars Volta which is their other current project) comes by way of ReStart Records in El Paso, TX. We should note that of the eight tracks included, two

RealAudio clip: Nux Vomica / Coaxialreturn

Edgy, experimental dub directions from At The Drive-In's Omar and Cedric. I saw them perform early in January in L.A., and really dug them, but it didn't really prepare me for this their first album. Whereas that performance was much more straight-up old dub sounds, Megaton Shotblast -- which was recorded in March -- is something quite different and more expansive. Sinewy dub bass, '70s

Another dose of dreamy acoustic guitar haze from Matt De Gennaro. We loved his last record, Humbled Down, and here he continues in a similar vein through a 5-piece suite of gently finger picked and slide guitar compositions. Although comparisons to the recent primitive guitar school of Fahey, Jack Rose, and Sir Richard Bishop will abound, we feel De Gennaro's airy and spacious compositions are more closely related to William Eaton's pastoral paean's to nature's lonely loveliness. Beautiful.

MPEG stream: Part One
MPEG stream: Part Four

Some of you might remember De Gennaro from the amazing drone record he made a few years back with Alastair Galbraith, Long Wires In Dark Museums (Vol. 1), an exploration of, well, long wires in dark museums! A shimmering drone of subtle reverberations, tonal colorations and slow shifting ovetones. This lastest solo guitar record is a lot more structured and sort of more in line with the whole free-folk 'new weird america' outsider whatever scene, you know, Jack Rose, James Blackshaw, Pelt, No Neck Blues Band, Matt Valentine, etc. but even so, much of the subtle shimmer and delicate drone of the long wires record is still found on Humbled Down, just wrapped around De Gennaro's gorgeous and understated acoustic guitar. Fans of Rose and Fahey and the like will no doubt love this stuff, but it's a lot more subtle and dreamy, each note gauzy and suspended in a fine hazy mist, sort of smeary and indistinct, melodic yet sort of out of focus like an old photograph, or how you might imagine Philip Jeck would sound if he were a guitar player. Drifting and otherworldly and very very lovely.

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**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** Another strange cool release from the mighty MISSISSIPPI RECORDS!! Who besides being obsessed with old time country, blues and gospel, also seem to have a thing for European punk rock, a la The Ex, who have had a couple records reissued on Mississippi, and now the label has released on vinyl (of course) the very first record from De Kift, a Dutch ensemble with links to The Ex, and with whom they share some sonic similarities, although De Kift are definitely their own strange and mysterious beast. The sound of Yverzucht (originally released in 1989) is a blast of classic Dutch crusty punk with a dash of cabaret, jagged and angular and tightly wound, fuzzed out bass, clattery percussion, dark and driving, but also frenzied and wild and over the top. Maybe imagine the Pogues, if they were crusty punks from Holland, jamming out in some crazy squat in the late eighties, and that's basically De Kift. Very cool, and pretty much unlike anything you've heard (except maybe the Ex, a little bit). Killer packaging too, it is Mississippi after all. Thick vinyl, old looking black and white sleeves, and a printed lyric insert.

**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** A companion release to accompany the MISSISSIPPI RECORDS reissue of De Kift's debut full length Yverzucht, this 7" was recorded the year before, and could very well be the first actual De Kift release, as we mentioned in the review of the lp, De kift's sound was classic Dutch crusty punk with a dash of cabaret, jagged and angular and tightly wound, fuzzed out bass, clattery percussion, dark and driving, but also frenzied and wild and over the top. Maybe imagine the Pogues, if they were crusty punks from Holland, jamming out in some crazy squat in the late eighties, and that's basically De Kift. Very cool, and pretty much unlike anything you've heard (except maybe The Ex, a little bit). The packaging on this is fantastic, a printed 6 panel matte finish sleeve, with drawings and lyrics, the record pressed on nice thick vinyl as well.

Boy, has this reissue been a long time coming! Seeing that it's been a holy grail for new age collectors and long-form music heads long before the new age revival began revving up nearly a decade ago, it's surprising how long it has actually taken. We in fact have been listening to our ripped mp3's for the past few years courtesy of Greg Davis's incredible (and deeply missed) new age tape music blog, Crystal Vibrations. But now Jordan De La Sierra's masterpiece from 1977 has been given the deluxe reissue treatment it deserves, and for the very first time has been released as it was meant to be. Four gloriously long form well-tuned piano tracks (one per side for the lp, 2 for each cd), that hypnotically spiral and cascade in delirious transcendent clouds of chordal clusters and glacial repetitions. Recorded and edited from hours of sessions, the subsequent tape recordings were then taken to Grace Cathedral in San Francisco and taking advantage of the space's unique acoustics and 30 second natural delay, played back and rerecorded as they transmitted throughout the deep resonant space. Hailing from California's Central Valley and later influenced by Terry Riley, La Monte Young, and Pandit Pran Nath as well as teachings from his spiritual explorations in India, De La Sierra wanted to take his classical music training to a different place when he was granted a scholarship at San Francisco's Conservatory of Music where he immersed himself in the avant garde and performed works by John Cage, Robert Ashley, and Earl Brown. He eventually moved into Project Artaud right here in our own Mission District where he worked with small ensembles of like minded artists and musicians. His spiritual curiosity led him everywhere and under the tutelage of Pandit Pran Nath, to composing music in India. But he eventually worked his way back to the Bay Area, where he met up with Stephen Hill who ran the legendary radio program Hearts in Space on KPFA, who championed De La Sierra's music and led him to the fledgling Bay Area label Unity Records, which released Gymnosphere, but not without a few hiccups. Poorly managed and hemorrhaging money, the label ditched the planned release of a double lp by De La Sierra complete with booklet of Indian inspired drawings and poems and instead only released the first half on one lp. The process had taken so long that by the time of the release, De La Sierra had moved onto other projects, one of them forming the Dylanesque folk ensemble The Jemstone Band. Gymnosphere sank into obscurity. So now The Numero Group has restored the original release to its originally intended glory, including a full catalog of drawings, poems and liner notes, housed in an embossed outer sleeve with a tantric design. Beautifully packaged, this long awaited reissue has long influenced many modern day soundmakers like James Blackshaw, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma and Gregg Kowalsky. Fans of Iasos, Lubomyr Melnyck, Ariel Kalma, Anton Batagov or any of the musicians mentioned above, this is essential!

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Reissue of one of the few hip hop records everyone can agree on (another is probably PE's 'A Nation Of Millions...'). This record is so clever, so catchy and so kick ass, that even the heads who can't stand 'positive hop-hop' (like me) love this record. Unless

RealAudio clip: Me, Myself and I (Oblapos Mode)
RealAudio clip: Brain Washed Follower

The less said about this album the better. Unless you're saying, "It ain't no 3 Feet High and Rising."

Xzibit, Redman, Busta Rhymes, Chaka Khan (whom you may have seen at the Republican National Convention), Mike D & Ad Rock, Busy Bee, Freddie Foxx, others all guest on this new De La Soul album. So it's a party.

De La Soul are down off their '90s Nubian high. Can they can still play collegiate Spring Flings with this stuff? Probably not. But who cares! Holy crap, this is good fucking hip-hop! Production on The Grind Date is pretty organic albeit star-studded, with beats often steeping before getting all heavy and crazed. I can't stress how good this album is straight through from beginning to end. If this is De La's last record it'll be one of their best, by far their strongest.

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De Ma Vaere Belgiere was a black-clad Danish post-punk act, who kicked out a single in 1983 and played a couple of shows before calling it quits. That single has been reissued as a split lp with fellow Danes End Of Your Garden on Dark Entries, and yes, that single is featured on this disc followed by a pretty great live set also recorded in 1983. "Cirkler" is a deadringer for what Interpol had been producing at the beginning of their career with this impassioned, darkly tainted post-punk with death disco rhythms, galloping basslines, and spiky guitars. Siglo XX and Crispy Ambulance also pop up as a reference through the monotone vocals and the downcast mood set throughout the rest of the tracks, and a less obscure citation is made on "Synsforstyrrelse" which lifts Robert Smith's riff from "M" of Seventeen Seconds. Not a bad thing at all! On the live recordings, The Cure's influence is even more evident through the interplay between Jakob Leth's bass, which leads the songs much in the way that Simon Gallup drives so many of The Cure's greatest tracks girded by chiming rhythmic guitars. As is evident through so many of the live songs, De Ma Vaere Belgiere were gifted songwriters for urgent, moody songs that were on par if not better which any given post-punk ensemble circa 1982. The live recordings are pretty good as far as live recordings go, but had Martin Hannett gotten a hold of this band, things would have gone very differently.

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"India" was a documentary produced for Italian TV in 1966, and the music on this disc was the audio interpretation composed to accompany it by composer Francesco De Masi. That's the straight forward, factual explanation of this disc. However, the music itself is not what most of us would probably expect to find accompanying such a documentary. We have to give Francesco De Masi some credit for his creative license though. After all, it was 1966 and Ravi Shankar was yet to become a household name. I imagine that the director gave Francesco a silent print for him to view and score the compositions for the film. Having never been to India and having no concept of what the music there sounded like and additionally being encouraged to come up with something as exotic and mysterious as the images on the screen, he did the best he could. The results: fucking brilliant! De Masi definitely has skills as a scorer of soundtracks. He not only has a gift for writing evocative melodic motifs, but also in arranging and rearranging the motifs with different instrumentation, tempos, and even musical genres -- something essential to all classic soundtracks. His execution in these areas is superb. And yet, when we listen to this soundtrack today and try to imagine it accompanying a documentary about India, we sense that something is not quite right. Listening to this score with no prior information about the film it supports one might more likely guess that it was for a classic Western fused with Cold War intrigue film (though there is one giddy fife & drum reel that must have slipped in from another project on the American Revolution!) I imagine Michael Caine as an English spy in America trying to infiltrate the Navajo nation and falling in love with a beautiful Native American woman along the way. Many of the arrangements here are reminiscent of the gems of paranoid cinema (think The Ipcress File, or The Parallax View, but also Mutual of Omaha's Wild World of Animals) while also sounding like the most cliched Native American war path tune ripped from a John Wayne flick. Seems like Francesco, like Christopher Columbus before him, got his Indians mixed up. This soundtrack has it all: tension, suspense, romantic instrumentals, pensive reflections and jazzy uptempo workouts. It really is an amazing soundtrack that, were it to have been attached to a feature length film, may have been a classic by now. Not only is it fully orchestrated and creatively arranged with vibes, guitars, keyboards, flutes, horns, strings and assorted percussion, but it features sitar playing by Italian guitar and whistle virtuoso (and Ennio Morricone right hand man) Alessandro Alessandroni -- who'd apparantly never played the instrument before. Beautifully recorded and excellently remastered, this is an absolute must for all soundtrack buffs!

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