[ 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 601 through 650 of 1104.

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

SORRY. "While You Were Out" is a collection of the singles from Japanese noise artist Kazumoto Endo, who specializes in screeching noise tears, distorted lumbering rhythms, and digitally abused techno pop appropriations. Comparisons to Merzbow are quite apt.

Very impressive. Much less randomly aurally assaultive than her previous works. Atari Teenage Riot's Ms Endo has steadied her aim, and carefully selected her angles of attack. Not a constant barrage of pummelling abrasiveness, but instead more of a

RealAudio clip: One Night Domination
RealAudio clip: The Program And The Brides
RealAudio clip: Mask Identity
RealAudio clip: Neon Sunrise

MPEG stream: Process Of Elimination
MPEG stream: The Defectors
MPEG stream: They're Guilty

As always, these Ultra Eczema lps are amazingly packaged, in gorgeously designed sleeves, pressed on nice thick vinyl, and limited to 400 copies, most of which are sold before we even realize they're out. So we only got a tiny handful of these (5-10 copies) so don't get your hopes up. A selection of rare and unreleased tracks from these infamous Swedes. Recorded in the mid to late eighties, these tracks mix electronic experimentation with industrial pummel, abstract noise, sound collage, processed vocals, all tangled up into drummachined blasts of grinding squealing, squeaking, pounding fuzz drenched, super distorted freak out. Think a more newwaved Throbbing Gristle. Dance music for the one legged. A musical metal helmet strapped on and set to stun, ears bleeding and toes tapping. Bogens Massage Institut is a gloriously dense assemblage of thick and corrosive, but sort of surprisingly playful, alien sounds and noises. Includes an insert with extensive liner notes and discography.

One of the more obscure, if highly regarded Swedish industrial / experimental projects, Enema Syringe (aka Kai Parviainen) operated in the constellation of projects surrounding the fledgling Cold Meat Industries in the late '80s. Most of the Enema Syringe catalogue remains unattainable with a recent album on Ultra Eczema being one of the only things that may have been available. Parviainen was also one of the members of the eccentric Swedish collective En Halvkokt I Folie, who did publish one of the most baffling and bizarre albums for Cold Meat Industries, coming across much more like Smegma or Keukhot rather than the signature death-industrial dirges of CMI. This single dates back to 1987, right when Parviainen was beginning to find his stride in constructing his deranged, brut-noise assemblages, and these three tracks had never been released up until now. The title cut laces monotone vocal samples and vaudeville piano melodies about a bluster of tone-deadening low-end rumble, that all joins together in a Jorg Buttgereit amalgam of the macabre and the comedic. The other two pieces are prototypes of modern day power electronics with blown-out synth sequencing, squelched frequency modulation, and yelped vocals. Super limited stock on this one!

MPEG stream: Upshutlenvolte
MPEG stream: En Krullig Mongoloid

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

SORRY. EnemyMine is one guy from LOW and one guy from godheadSilo doing pretty much what you'd expect.

New band from Slauter Xystroyes original vocalist!! Killer '80s style over the top METAL!

Our second favorite band from the Heavy Artillery roster - after Vektor - make the step up from that now-defunct retro-metal specialist label to the big leagues, Nuclear Blast (boom!), with this, their third album. While the venue has changed, Enforcer hasn't, it's more of the same and that's just fine with us. Enforcer continue to enforce the law of headbanging here, in style. Maybe they've cranked the speed up a bit, but that's about it. Another nine tracks of shredding, spandex-tight '80s styled metal, hitting hard (and hitting falsetto highs) with youthful energy to burn. Lotsa catchy rockarolla flashes by here in a 35:48 blaze of glory, this disc totally in their home country's proud tradition of classy '80s metal mastery (a la bands like 220Volt, Torch, Heavy Load, early Europe, etc.) though of course NWOBHMer's Iron Maiden are probably still Enforcer's biggest influence most obvious to the layperson. While we'd say this album doesn't quite scale the heights of its shining predecessor Diamonds, it's still quite good and undeniably full of gusto. Any fan of the New Wave Of Old School Metal (or whatever you want to call it) populated by the likes of Cauldron, Twisted Tower Dire and Zuul, not to mention fans of the actual First Wave Of Old School of metal too, ought to dig this big time.

MPEG stream: Mesmerized By Fire
MPEG stream: Run For Your Life
MPEG stream: Death Rides This Night

These young spandex-clad Swedish shredders are back with their second strike of speedy, melodic, refreshingly retro '80s styled metal! Yeah, that's right, they make it seem fresh again somehow, they've got a lot of the right spirit, like their pals Helvetes Port, with whom they share the same fashion sense. However, Enforcer aren't so eccentric, seeming a bit more "pro" though. And the other thing they've got, that really counts, are cool songs! Not only do they go for the gusto with galloping guitars, high pitched shrieks, heroic choruses, etc. but yeah these are catchy, actual songs with a "pop" element like bands wrote back during the glory days of the early '80s, the era that so inspires these guys. Obviously NWOBHMers Iron Maiden is one influence, we're also hearing some Grim Reaper, and, crossing over to the USA, maybe Riot and Alcatrazz (the latter especially on the Japanese-themed "Katana", and remember, that band had a rather famous Swedish guitarist after all). And, though they're definitely intent on staying "in genre", doing songs with titles like "Roll The Dice", "Midnight Vice", and "Live For The Night", with lyrics about sleazy fast livin', violent death, and so forth, it's not all formula, Enforcer provides some interesting surprises, like the way the title track starts off as an instrumental ripper before seguing by the the end into a drifting wordless la la la blissful outro, not what we were expecting. Among today's crop of eighties metal revivalists, Enforcer, along with fellow AQ faves Cauldron from Canada (with whom they've toured), lead the pack amongst those who totally shred authentically -without- neglecting the pop, a rare breed!

MPEG stream: Katana
MPEG stream: Diamonds
MPEG stream: Live For The Night

And Enforcer's 2nd album, now picture disc vinylified too!!! These young spandex-clad Swedish shredders are back with their second strike of speedy, melodic, refreshingly retro '80s styled metal! Yeah, that's right, they make it seem fresh again somehow, they've got a lot of the right spirit, like their pals Helvetes Port, with whom they share the same fashion sense. However, Enforcer aren't so eccentric, seeming a bit more "pro" though. And the other thing they've got, that really counts, are cool songs! Not only do they go for the gusto with galloping guitars, high pitched shrieks, heroic choruses, etc. but yeah these are catchy, actual songs with a "pop" element like bands wrote back during the glory days of the early '80s, the era that so inspires these guys. Obviously NWOBHMers Iron Maiden is one influence, we're also hearing some Grim Reaper, and, crossing over to the USA, maybe Riot and Alcatrazz (the latter especially on the Japanese-themed "Katana", and remember, that band had a rather famous Swedish guitarist after all). And, though they're definitely intent on staying "in genre", doing songs with titles like "Roll The Dice", "Midnight Vice", and "Live For The Night", with lyrics about sleazy fast livin', violent death, and so forth, it's not all formula, Enforcer provides some interesting surprises, like the way the title track starts off as an instrumental ripper before seguing by the the end into a drifting wordless la la la blissful outro, not what we were expecting. Among today's crop of eighties metal revivalists, Enforcer, along with fellow AQ faves Cauldron from Canada (with whom they've toured), lead the pack amongst those who totally shred authentically -without- neglecting the pop, a rare breed!

MPEG stream: Katana
MPEG stream: Diamonds
MPEG stream: Live For The Night

What are they enforcing? The law of metal, of course. We welcome the discipline. We almost overlooked this band 'cause we thought they were just another one in the current glut of generic retro-thrashers (many of whom make their home on the Heavy Artillery label). But we're glad we gave it a listen, 'cause Sweden's Enforcer turned out to be a nice surprise, more 'musical' than most and party hardy too. They're a young n' energetic band forging '80s-ish metal along the lines of NWOBHM stuff like Savage, Saxon and Diamond Head. We're also hearing echoes of Riot, Metal Church, early Megadeth, Exciter... No it's not that original, either, but that doesn't stop it from kicking ass (see also Bullet, and Wolf). It's just a good ol' old school rip fest. Speedy but also melodic, with high pitched shreiky (but not too shrieky) singing, shredding leads, and lots of catchy grooves - the bass lines are active and audible, galloping away Maiden style. Death and black and (now) thrash metal bands are a dime a dozen these days but it's impressive when kids kick out something like this, sounding like the real deal from the early eighties, though with better production! The disc is packed with neck wreckers and should have you headbanging and air guitaring with abandon. It's not epic or eccentric or doomy, but sometimes pedal to the metal spandex-clad rockin' is enough! You can buy your umpteenhundredth grim black metal album (we have, and counting...) but once in a while you want metal that's fun and exciting. And for that, Enforcer is just the thing... also check out the Heavy Metal Killers comp on Earache (also reviewed this list) which features a track from this Enforcer album among many other current true heavy metal up and comers.

MPEG stream: Black Angel
MPEG stream: Mistress From Hell

This retro slice of Swedish steel, now available in the best format for it: picture disc vinyl!!! What are they enforcing? The law of metal, of course. We welcome the discipline. We almost overlooked this band 'cause we thought they were just another one in the current glut of generic retro-thrashers (many of whom make their home on the Heavy Artillery label). But we're glad we gave it a listen, 'cause Sweden's Enforcer turned out to be a nice surprise, more 'musical' than most and party hardy too. They're a young n' energetic band forging '80s-ish metal along the lines of NWOBHM stuff like Savage, Saxon and Diamond Head. We're also hearing echoes of Riot, Metal Church, early Megadeth, Exciter... No it's not that original, either, but that doesn't stop it from kicking ass (see also Bullet, and Wolf). It's just a good ol' old school rip fest. Speedy but also melodic, with high pitched shrieky (but not too shrieky) singing, shredding leads, and lots of catchy grooves - the bass lines are active and audible, galloping away Maiden style. Death and black and (now) thrash metal bands are a dime a dozen these days but it's impressive when kids kick out something like this, sounding like the real deal from the early eighties, though with better production! The disc is packed with neck wreckers and should have you headbanging and air guitaring with abandon. It's not epic or eccentric or doomy, but sometimes pedal to the metal spandex-clad rockin' is enough! You can buy your umpteenhundredth grim black metal album (we have, and counting...) but once in a while you want metal that's fun and exciting. And for that, Enforcer is just the thing...

MPEG stream: Black Angel
MPEG stream: Mistress From Hell

Paul Gonzenbach is the gent responsible for the guitar, vocals and piano in Bay Area band Jim Yoshii Pile Up. They've been on an indefinite hiatus for a while, so a couple of years ago he busted out on his own solo mission under the moniker Enforcer with this album called Baby Panda! However, there's another band with that same name who recently released a cd too - reviewed here last list, they're a Maideny metal band - hence, he's now making music as Baby Panda. Anyhoo, here's his solo debut album! It's a moody, slow paced indie rock beauty... in turn, it's a bit reminiscent of Seam, Built To Spill, Death Cab For Cutie, and yes, JYP. Earnest, sensitive, well crafted with subtle dynamics. Hopefully we'll get his more recent releases soon!

MPEG stream: What've You Been Up To?
MPEG stream: Heko

Cheap is a Viennese label that seems to have gotten sort of wacky evidenced by the electron purity of Robert Hood and Sil Electronics, and now August Engkilde's "Police Beat Box" extends Cheap's propensity for silliness, with this computer-manipulated mix of the brassy jazz laden rock of Engkilde's band Inner Urge and a Bollywood gangster movie.

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

SORRY. Hip hop remix. Rhythm = "Southern Hospitality" (Ludacris).

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

SORRY.

One of two new Touch singles this week, this mysterious batch of 'incongruous harmonies' comes from Australian composer / sound artist / musician Lawrence English, and these two tracks were both composed and recorded for an installation called Regarding The Joy Of Others, and are both mysterious and amorphous, textural and abstract. The first is a series of gritty washes, deep swells pocked with streaks of crumble and crackle, buried melodies glowing from within a softly heaving surface of burnished thrum and muted static, bleary and blurred and subtly smeared, a gorgeous soundscape of indistinct harmony, quite Jeck-ian in fact, something very lovely, disguised by a gauze of soft noise, the two elements not competing so much as bleeding into one another and becoming a hauntingly beautiful melody infused, slowly unfurling buzz. The flipside peels back some of the grit and grime, leaving something more serene and a bit more ambient, a darkened landscape of distant churning rumbles, shot through with shards of looped high end, almost like a mellowed out Wolf Eyes, but it's not really all that mellow, it's still ominous, and tense, and a bit haunting, a sprawling dronemusic that subtly throbs and pulses with some implied rhythm, while layer upon layer shift and overlap and intertwine, the track actually growing less and less dark, the low end fading away, leaving just the mysterious keening high end warble to drift like some alien distress call. So cool. And like with all Touch releases, super striking design and layout by Touch Records boss Jon Wozencroft.

Kiri No Oto is the first album that Lawrence English has released for the venerable Touch Music. This after a number of releases through his own Room 40 imprint, which bridged environmental recordings and somber electronics with sublime results; but there's been little to indicate that he would generate something as stellar as Kiri No Oto. The Japanese title loosely translates as 'the sound of fog' or 'the sound of mist.' Both are applicable to the extended blur that this Australian sound-artist generates, with its miasma of soft-focus distortion arching into long-form compositions of minimalism. The album doesn't exactly erupt, as the sounds are more soothing in their softened textures; but English cuts into one of his grey-mass drones with little fanfare. English slowly glides his 'sound of fog' down to a muffled static, then brings up tectonic rumblings and kicks the overdrive in on his distortion box (or more likely, some patch on ye olde laptop) for one of those digital distorto-drones that Tim Hecker and Christian Fennesz have been sculpting over the past few years. And yes, we'll throw in an obligatory My Bloody Valentine reference, well because there are plenty of parts here which have the blissed out wash of the ambient interludes on Loveless. Given that similar dynamics appeared on one of the last great Touch albums - BJ Nilsen's The Short Night - it made us wonder if these gestures toward static-laden, shoegazing noise bursts dappling the almighty drone were a coincidence for Touch, or if Touch were handing out particular Max/MSP patches to accommodate this sound. It's probably the former; but the similarities to many of the other Touch artists is too great not to comment. As with all of the Touch releases, Jon Wozencroft delivers his perfect design with an overcast sea-side photograph to match the depth, mystery, serenity, and subtle darkness of this very impressive album.

MPEG stream: Organs Lost At Sea
MPEG stream: White Spray
MPEG stream: Allay

Originally released on Touch as a cd, now available on vinyl via the always kick ass Digitalis... Kiri No Oto was the first album that Lawrence English released for the venerable Touch Music label (now, as mentioned above on Digitalis). This after a number of releases via his own Room 40 imprint, which bridged environmental recordings and somber electronics with sublime results; but there's been little to indicate that he would generate something as stellar as Kiri No Oto. The Japanese title loosely translates as 'the sound of fog' or 'the sound of mist.' Both are applicable to the extended blur that this Australian sound-artist generates, with its miasma of soft-focus distortion arching into long-form compositions of minimalism. The album doesn't exactly erupt, as the sounds are more soothing in their softened textures; but English cuts into one of his grey-mass drones with little fanfare. English slowly glides his 'sound of fog' down to a muffled static, then brings up tectonic rumblings and kicks the overdrive in on his distortion box (or more likely, some patch on ye olde laptop) for one of those digital distorto-drones that Tim Hecker and Christian Fennesz have been sculpting over the past few years. And yes, we'll throw in an obligatory My Bloody Valentine reference, well because there are plenty of parts here which have the blissed out wash of the ambient interludes on Loveless. The art, as on the Touch cd version, matches the depth, mystery, serenity, and subtle darkness of this very impressive album.

MPEG stream: Organs Lost At Sea
MPEG stream: White Spray
MPEG stream: Allay

Peregrine falcons are impressive birds of prey that can be found in almost every ecosystem, known for their extreme speeds in flight sometimes reaching over 200 miles per hour. Being quite adaptable, they are often found in urban areas where the pigeons are plentiful; and it can be quite spectacular to see these birds streaking through the skyscrapers of San Francisco reducing the pigeon population one at time with a precision that's the envy of any military campaign. The Australian ambient-laced sound artist Lawrence English came to his appreciation of the Peregrine by way of a book of the same title by J.A. Baker who obsessively mapped the daily activities of a pair of peregrines in England with a purported magical lyricism in his writings. English's ornithological portrait is all about flight and soaring - it's unclear whether English took after Baker by seeking out these birds on his own or if English's work is solely articulated through the lens of Baker's prose. But, English has long been able to express a poetic simplicity through the fog of sound; and he's proved once again how deft he can be. Smeared synth drones and grey-tone ambience streams through each of English's tracks, with subtle melodic interludes of low-end bass tones girding the compositions, coming across as something between Popul Vuh and Tim Hecker. A beautiful record for sure, and one that captures a sublime element of the majesty of the nimble falcon. Limited to 500 copies and comes with a download card.

The more one scratches the surface of Australian sound art, the more gems emerge from the search. We've uncovered a handful of artists whose work has slipped under the radar. Tim Catlin's drone guitar work is one example, Eamon Sprod's treated field recordings under the moniker Tarab would be another; we can now count Lawrence English amongst this bunch. Where those two aforementioned artists have connections to the RMIT program in Melbourne, English hails several hundred miles up the coast in Brisbane. There, he has produced a handful of processed soundfields on his Room40 imprint; and for his Transit album released on Cajid, English offers a concoction of electric minimalism pieced togethe from sources provided by a number of exceptional guest stars including DJ Olive, Robin Rimbaud, Philip Samartzis, and a handful of lesser known artists. Despite the diversity of voices on Transit, English is firmly in command of the album, digitally smearing each of his guests' source material into a spectral ambience dappled with field recordings and textural events. It's not too far off from Loren Chasse's Of recordings if it weren't for the noticable digital sheen; and at times, English hits on a similar bleak isolationism found in Thomas Koner's work. A mighty fine record.

MPEG stream: Oceanic Drift
MPEG stream: That Was A Lucky One
MPEG stream: Closing Frame

A drop dead gorgeous album from Australian drone kingpin, Lawrence English. Wilderness Of Mirrors follows along the same woolly path that he carved out on Kiri No Oto and The Peregrine. Those albums bristled with a fracturous noise that was less of the raw-nerve probing and more a blast of polar wind smashing against your skin and racing past your ears whilst peering at the smeary, gray horizon line between a sullen ocean and a leaden sky. An existential gaze of self-reflection and melancholy. Wilderness Of Mirrors offers a similar avalanche of shoegazing droneworks with English layering noise upon noise upon noise, with everything blurring into a portentous density of somber, doom-laden downtunings broken apart by sparkling radiant bursts of tape-decayed synthtone. English further slows the melodic phrasing buried within the snow-packed masses of distortion, finding his work in very good company with the likes of Tim Hecker and Christian Fennesz. The title is a reference to a T.S. Eliot poem "Gerontion" - yet another fine literary reference from the well-red English, who had adopted the quote's original sentiment along with its latter day meaning as a geopolitical meme in speaking about the prickly business of Soviets and American duplicity throughout the cold war. English posits the title in relation to his own aghast reactions to the contemporary unfolding of political crisis after political crisis; but far from being a mere political statement, English allows the album to unfurl as an allegory full of abstraction and fragmentation enshrouded in a glistening fog of emotive drone. Very nice.

MPEG stream: The Liquid Casket
MPEG stream: Another Body
MPEG stream: Graceless Hunter

Lawrence English is another unsung hero of Australian underground experimental music. We've reviewed one of his discs in the past, a dreamy digital exploration of ghostlike ambience. Sort of a less organic Jewelled Antler. On this latest disc, English teams up with Japanese composer/sound artist Yamamoto to further explore the realms of processed field recordings and minimal electronics. And lord this is some truly sublime stuff. Fans of all things Fennesz, Coleclough, Chalk, Tim Hecker, Ambarchi and the like will find much to love. Dark droning dreaminess, not as digital or electronic as you might imagine. Incredibly deep and resonant, huge smears of glistening shimmer, subtle reverberations, an expansive world of totally mesmerizing drones. Soft colors shift and swirl, organs wheeze and stretch out into thick layers of textured sound, hard to know what more to say about this other than WOW. So totally and absolutely breathtakingly gorgeous.

MPEG stream: Longing
MPEG stream: A Silent Kouta

Jeremy Enigk has made some pretty remarkable records over the years, with his band Sunny Day Real Estate he pretty much created the EMO blueprint, one that would be copied by so many bands over the years, none of which could ever hope to evvoke the true emotion and melodicism of Enigk's songs. One of his best, and sadly most overlooked records was his first solo album, Return Of The Frog Queen, which found him once again drawing up blueprints, this time for orchestral and shimmering, immaculate songcraft realized into a sound that would later make folks like Arcade Fire, Rufus Wainwright, and The Decemberists household names. We've always had a HUGE soft spot for Enigk's voice and songs, but we have to admit his last few outings have left us a bit underwhelmed. Luckily, OK Bear finds him sounding better than ever. Not quite as precious or ambitious as that first breathtaking solo outing and not as full throttle and intense as Sunny Day Real Estate at their prime (though a few of these tracks definitely go there!), but for sure finding a really nice happy medium between those two worlds.

MPEG stream: Mind Idea
MPEG stream: Sandwich Time

Many moons ago Jeremy Enigk was the singer for the beloved epic emo band Sunny Day Real Estate. Man, that band had some great songs... nailed you right in the heart. Enigk's songwriting flame still burns brightly, but these days it comes in the form akin to a lone candle or hearth. His songs are filled with a lush earthiness, warming the traditional rock instrumentation of guitar, bass and drums with piano, strings and such. The beautiful setting embraces his unrelentingly desolate, emotionally charged lyrics. Pretty darn great! A side note: You know when you hear someone's voice and it reminds you of someone else, but you just can't quite put your finger on it? Drives you crazy, and then hours or days later it dawns on you. That was the case with this album. Apologies to Mr. Enigk if he doesn't find this to be a flattering comment, but he really really sounds like Chris De Burgh. So is this The Missing Link... to the "Lady In Red"? Hmmmm.

MPEG stream: Oh John
MPEG stream: Been Here Before

This is the first we've heard from these Italian ambient black metallers, but like many of the bands on Dusktone, they definitely traffic in a strain of post black metal that we dig big time. Fusing clean guitar strum, shoegazey shimmer, and minor key melancholy, with blasting beats, harsh vokills, and buzzing riffage. And again like so many of those bands, even when they're at their heaviest, the sound is still a little washed out, tracks like "Samoht Nara" only black metal by merit of the vocals, otherwise, they almost sound like Swervedriver, and they don't shy away from acoustic guitars, or wistful melodies, thankfully, the bulk of the record finds them taking that wistfulness and melancholy, and wrapping it all up in spiky shards of blackened buzzing bombast, conjuring up a sound that's at once both black and brutal, bleak and beautiful.

MPEG stream: Samoht Nara
MPEG stream: L'arvoiri Du Cudlit
MPEG stream: Still Life

Following their very well received Live At Showboat recording for Last Visible Dog, Mukai Chie and Yamamoto Sei-ichi have hooked up with French improviser and electro-acoustic wizard Eric Cordier for a project they've entitled Enkidu. Ms. Mukai has been wandering through the Toyko improv scene since the '70 performing with the PSF band Che-Shizu, whereas Yamamoto's illustrious career finds his guitar freakouts splattered throughout the Boredoms, Omoide Hatoba, and Rovo. Harkening back to the psychedelic, ur-drone mantras of the Taj Mahal Travellers, this trio offers a delirious set of improvisations out of Mukai's trademarked two-stringed violin and percussion, Yamamoto's guitar and flute, and Cordier's hurdy-gurdy and mess of electronics. Nick Cain accurately describes the resulting sounds as "swirling and head-spinningly noisy slow burn deep-sound drone-ragas." It takes a good 10 minutes or so for their improvisation to really take off from the incredibly quite introduction of Mukai's deliberate bowing upon her violin. Deep cavernous electronic tones rumble behind, Yamamoto's neck-wrangling of jagged flourishes and Mukai's vocal wailings. The trio constantly builds dense crescendos which in turn they abruptly halt in rough, herky-jerky gestures, only to reform into a new trajectory towards another crescendo, all the while unfolding into a magnificently complex drama.

MPEG stream: excerpt 1
MPEG stream: excerpt 2
MPEG stream: excerpt 3

There's really no useful information to be found about Roe Enney. She authors a thoroughly cracked strain of bedroom electronica, one that could have been produced around 1983 in some depressed region of the world. We could say Vladivostok for someplace fitting of the sounds but in truth she hails from Phoenix, Arizona. That's pretty much all that we know about her and this tape she produced for the newly invigorated Phaserprone label, who has never shied away from grimy electronics, queasy rhythmic oppression, and fucked-up histrionics. Enney's stoned, witchy vocals would certainly draw parallels to Liz Harris and Amanda Brown, although Enney is far more of a deconstructionist, stripping away her already emaciated structures through a Spartan use of vintage Linn drum machine, synth, guitar, voice, and a fair amount of tape decay with all of these typically keeping their own orbits independent of everything else. The resultant warbling constructions are stunted, ghetto-dub mutations where voice and synth murkily blur into cough-syrup overdosed crawlings whose sewer seduction atmospheres are splattered with her puncturing drum machine programming that rarely acts as time keeper to these personal, dystopian visions. She's channelling the more idiosyncratic elements of Dome, Throbbing Gristle, Tara Cross, and The Storm Bugs, and it wouldn't be much of a stretch to situate this near the early Zola Jesus singles or LA Vampires. Limited tape-only production in a run of 100 copies. Don't expect these to last long.

Now on Vinyl!! The combination of Brian Eno and Cluster proved to be a golden match. The sounds they delicately created together have been echoed again and again in the three decades since their collaborations. A feeling of both effortlessness and a total awareness of the space and sounds they were building radiates throughout the recording. You can hear the tinkering hands of Moebius and Roedelius giving elements of warped spaced out bliss. Eno approaching the songs in a magic space somewhere between Before & After Science and Another Green World. When his vocals appear they just begin to melt and dissolve into your ears. For sure the best backwards vocal delivery we've ever heard can be found on the track "Tzima N'arki". There is such a sublime feeling of melting on this record. These three knew how to meld warmth with an motherly feeling that takes you into golden horizons, mesmerizing twilight and an afterglow that you just want to surrender yourself to. Originally released in '78, once again 4 Men With Beards has done the fine service of bringing it back to a world that's more ready for these sounds then ever.

MPEG stream: Tzima N'arki
MPEG stream: Foreign Affairs

The combination of Brian Eno and Cluster proved to be a golden match. The sounds they delicately created together have been echoed again and again in the three decades since their collaborations. A feeling of both effortlessness and a total awareness of the space and sounds they were building radiates throughout the recording. You can hear the tinkering hands of Moebius and Rodelius giving elements of warped spaced out bliss. Eno approaching the songs in a magic space somewhere between Before & After Science and Another Green World. When his vocals appear they just begin to melt and dissolve into your ears. For sure the best backwards vocal delivery we've ever heard can be found on the track "Tzima N'arki". There is such a sublime feeling of melting on this record. These three knew how to meld warmth with an motherly feeling that takes you into golden horizons, mesmerizing twilight and an afterglow that you just want to surrender yourself to. Originally released in '78, once again Water has done the fine service of bringing it back to a world that's more ready for these sounds then ever.

MPEG stream: Tzima N'arki
MPEG stream: Foreign Affairs

Perhaps the most renowned of Eno's ambient albums, Music For Airports, originally released in 1978, is a (or we should say *the*) seminal -ambient- work. The proof is over a quarter decade's worth of other artists (and some downright imitators) who've amassed an enormous collective body of work directly inspired by this one album. This is the O.G. of gorgeous shimmering atmospheric soundscapes. Truly sublime. While Eno's conceptual "hands off" compositional style is certainly one of the larger factors in his influencing other future ambient artists, the striking thing about this work that makes it so compelling is the way in which the pieces manage to impart a feeling of warmth despite the clinically mechanical way in which the pieces are played. And while the performance here is not executed by machines the impact of it carries on down, all the way to the Aphex Twin's zenith of robotic beauty, The Richard D. James album. The four pieces here (programmatically named "1/1", "2/1", "1/2" & "2/2" for their sequencing on the original LP) build one upon the next. The first is arranged entirely with electric and acoustic pianos (with some help from Robert Wyatt for this), the second a chorus of voices and the third and fourth pieces combination of those elements with additional synth help. The drifting and staggered arpeggios cascade in slow motion giving the pieces a shapeless consistency, somehow always moving forward while remaining frozen. A suitable antidote to muzak if there ever was one. If anything dates, or holds back the three latter pieces on this disc it's the now archaic synth patches. They can be charming, but I've never been able to listen to "2/2" without thinking immediately of Steve Winwood's "While You See A Chance". Needless to say, this small downside can't spoil as great an album as this.

MPEG stream: 1/1
MPEG stream: 2/2

While Plateaux of Mirror could be seen as the inspiration for a generation of new age musicians, On Land (released in 1982) is arguably a place card for a wellspring of darker ambient musicians forging soundtracks for non-existant films. Some, like the now obscure J. Grienke made careers out of this single album. Others, like Richard James on the Aphex Twin's excellent double cd Selected Ambient Works Volume 2, pay homage and move on. But hints of this dark collection of audio soundscapes can be heard from the likes of Biosphere, Deathprod, Andrew Chalk, Troum and even Village of Savoonga. The key elements involved are an elimination of melody and rhythm. As Eno puts it, quite well in fact, in the liner notes: "the landscape has ceased to be a backdrop for something else to happen in front of: instead everything that happens is part of the landscape. There is no longer a sharp distinction between foreground and background". A seminal work and a must have.

MPEG stream: The Lost Day
MPEG stream: Unfamiliar Wind (Leeks Hills)

A new rock record from Brian Eno in 2005. After beginning with the uptempo "This", a tune surprizingly similar to the Cale duet "One Word" from the pair's 1990 album Wrong Way Up, the album is primarily filled with slow tempo songs of a pensive temperment and reminiscent of Eno's collaborations with guitar tech wiz and fellow producer Daniel Lanois. Not a bad return to rock for Mr. Eno, but there's something very Rip Van Winkle in the overall production of the album, like Brian's still hammering through the eighties and has just recently discovered Tears For Fears and Simple Minds.

MPEG stream: This
MPEG stream: How Many Worlds

We didn't review Another Green World with the other Eno reissues featured a couple weeks back 'cuz they turned out to have some weird defect, but that's been fixed now and so here you go: Unlike most of the recent reissues of classic albums, Brian Eno's aren't graced / padded with extra bells'n'whistles (outtakes, demo versions and the like) nor are there swollen booklets of liner notes, photos, glowing praise, etc. No, you get the albums as they were originally released -- albeit remastered and packaged in simple digipaks with plain clear plastic slipcovers -- and frankly, with albums as timeless and remarkable as these, that's enough! Each is an inspired and inspiring work, remaining vital and compelling even thirty years later. Needless to say, each is fully deserving of an honored place in any record collection. What remains to be said about one of the all-time classic art-rock records? Here we find Brian Peter George St. John Le Baptiste De La Salle Eno (yes, that's his full name!) leaving behind the song structures of the preceding albums, and jumping straight into inventing the mood-driven, almost-snippits-but-too-composed-to-be-just-parts style of atmospheric 'songs'. A melding of his ambient sides with occasional vocals. "Sombre Reptiles", "I'll Come Running", "St. Elmo's Fire"... MAN, JUST TOO GOOD. If you've never heard this record, buy it and live with it for a few years. It'll getcha eventually... Really, just a flat-out model and inspiration for everything synthetic / experimental / art / punk / pop from Bowie's Low album to Talking Heads to I Am Spoonbender (Cup admits that IAS often uses a set of Eno's 'Oblique Strategies' cards during sessions, just like those mentioned in the liner notes to this essential release. FYI: they were a small black box containing a deck of cards imprinted with an assortment of open-to-interpretation statements... an oracle of sorts that you could refer to in times of creative blocks).

MPEG stream: St. Elmo's Fire
MPEG stream: I'll Come Running

The opportunity of a lifetime film score for Brian Eno: providing a soundtrack to the most, quite literally, other-worldy film footage ever shot. Eno was approached by ex-astronaut Al Reinert in the early eighties to put his ambient touch on a project that Reinert was working on documenting the apollo missions. Reinhert had sorted through 6,000,000 feet of NASA film footage shot by astronauts on those missions, picking out what he considered to be the best clips. To this he intended to add only the voices of the astronauts themselves -- both from interviews after the missions and from their transmissions to Houston during them -- and Eno's music. Though Eno's score was released in 1983, Reinert's film -- For All Mankind -- wasn't completed until 1989. Recorded just a year after his Ambient 4: On Land, the material here is quite similar. The compositions are far less conceptual than his earlier ambient works, yet the pieces here have an intuitive, textural and emotional feel without relying on -- for the most part -- melody. All but four tracks on this album use that same Eno M.O. of blurring the idea of "foreground and background", much like his previous release On Land. The guitar and bass, when the appear, are subverted from their original roles -- melodic lead, rhythm and harmony -- and instead are used for texture and atmosphere as much as the synths and electronics. The ambient tracks on Apollo have a foreboding and sublime quality -- appropriate enough for the vast eternity of space and the dessicated & bleak terrain of the moon. The four non-ambient tracks on this disc, all nestled together towards its end, are a bit of a departure from the rest of the album. "Always Returning" is probably the weakest link on the album, with its sentimental guitar part played by Daniel Lanois. Lanois however redeems himself with his pedal steel guitar playing on "Deep Blue Day", like a Sons Of The Pioneers tune, shot full of heroin and launched into the vacuum of space.

MPEG stream: Matta
MPEG stream: An Ending (Ascent)
MPEG stream: Deep Blue Day

Unlike most of the recent reissues of classic albums, Brian Eno's aren't graced / padded with extra bells'n'whistles (outtakes, demo versions and the like) nor are there swollen booklets of liner notes, photos, glowing praise, etc. No, you get the albums as they were originally released -- albeit remastered and packaged in simple digipaks with plain clear plastic slipcovers -- and frankly, with albums as timeless and remarkable as these, that's enough! Each is an inspired and inspiring work, remaining vital and compelling even thirty years later. Needless to say, each is fully deserving of an honored place in any record collection. The last of Eno's 'song' records before he drifted off into wind-blown dronespace for good (or bad?). In many ways, this album could be thought of as a more pastoral and less baroque Another Green World, with plenty of experiments near the framework of rock music. It could be that this is exactly what is meant by 'experimental pop music' -- avant garde ideas reworked so as to appear as being something like 'regular music'. As usual, this release features appearances by interesting guests: Can's Jaki Liebezeit and German electronic pioneers Cluster.

MPEG stream: Energy Fools The Magician
MPEG stream: Here He Comes

The second wave of Brian Eno reissues is of his genre creating and defining ambient music albums from 1975 through 1982. The first in the series is Discreet Music and it's in the liner notes here that Eno describes the genesis for his ambient music. The story goes that while he was recouperating in a hospital after having been struck by a car he found himself inspired through another sort of accident. Eno had been brought a record of 18th century harp music to listen to but, after having struggled to put the record on in his weakened state, found the amplifier levels way too low and one channel of the recording completely missing. Thus he was forced to strain to hear nothing but the loudest of notes above the ambient din in the room. Add to this Eno's admission that he considers himself a much better conceiver of plans than executor of them and you have the foundations for Discreet Music. Eno's goal was to set up a system which would generate music with as little input from him as possible. To this end Eno created a feedback loop into which he could insert pairs of notes and let the ensuing echo box and delay line do the rest. The flipside of this coin, included on this album, is a suite in three parts entitled "Three Variations On the Canon In D Major By Johann Pachelbel". For this piece Eno took sections of the Canon and, on each of the sections, gives the players different instructions for the treatment of those parts. In each case the directives result in different but beautiful deconstructions of the all too familiar Canon.

MPEG stream: Discreet Music
MPEG stream: Fullness of Wind

Unlike most of the recent reissues of classic albums, Brian Eno's aren't graced / padded with extra bells'n'whistles (outtakes, demo versions and the like) nor are there swollen booklets of liner notes, photos, glowing praise, etc. No, you get the albums as they were originally released -- albeit remastered and packaged in simple digipaks with plain clear plastic slipcovers -- and frankly, with albums as timeless and remarkable as these, that's enough! Each is an inspired and inspiring work, remaining vital and compelling even thirty years later. Needless to say, each is fully deserving of an honored place in any record collection. "My baby's on fiyaaaaaaa!"... so good. Eno's first solo album after leaving Roxy Music finds him in 'proto-everything' territory, pre-dating art-pop, punk and indie rock with his Dada-esque lyrics and a fresh 'non-musician' approach (those are his words, although a bit misleading -- it's not like he was a gardener before he walked into the studio!) to avant garde songs. Glammy, brooding, and exploratory. This, along with his mood-masterpiece Another Green World, comprise the essential bits of pre-ambient Eno.

MPEG stream: Needles In The Camel's Eye
MPEG stream: Baby's On Fire

Finally a new Brian Eno solo record, his first for Warp (his past two Warp releases were collaborations, mind you), and it's a record we can fully get behind without apology. His first solo record since 2005's Another Day On Earth (which was a return to rock forms), Lux is a beautiful ambient recording reminiscent of his classic period especially the records, Discreet Music and Thursday Afternoon, Lux serving as a continuum of those same ideas, namely his "Music For Thinking" project started on those records and continued on 1993's Neroli. Lux is a 76 minute composition broken into 12 movements over 4 tracks, at its core a progression of layered loops of piano and synthesizer that shift in unpredictable ways. Evolved from a work currently housed in the Great Gallery of the Palace of Venaria in Turin, Italy, if you try to listen to this with intense scrutiny, it may just come across as merely pretty and evocative, but it actually evolves in ways that are very compelling. If left to play and forgotten about, it has the ability to sink into your consciousness and subtly vibrate your peripheral surroundings with an unidentifiable charge. Eno once said that the inspiration for Discreet Music was from being in a hospital bed unable to turn up the radio in the room, so had to lie motionless listening to a barely audible murmur and was trying to recapture that strange disembodied audio-acoustic feeling. Lux works on that same level. It's a rare ambient release that we could seeing being used as a tool of meditation, as well as a score for a psychological horror film. It will play with your mind! This first edition comes with a series of prints Eno made exclusively for this release, and there's a download card with the 2lp verion.

MPEG stream: Lux 1
MPEG stream: Lux 4

Here's a straggler that was meant to come out with the last batch of Eno reissues, but was pulled due to a manufacturing defect (is there some rule that at least one Eno disc in each series must have a defect?). More Music For Films stands out amongst the other Eno reissues in that, as an album, it's a previously unreleased one. Let's qualify that statement: More Music For Films contains two albums, one rare and the other rarer, from the early eighties. 11 of the tracks come from Music For Films 2 which was included as a bonus LP to the Working Backwards box set that was released in 1983. The other tracks are culled from a promo-only sampler (only 500 copies printed) which had been sent to a "select group of film directors". Much of the material on More Music For Films comes from the same recording sessions as Music For Films and the album as a whole fits neatly at its side as a companion record. The songs contained herein are all instrumentals, with a variety of moods suitable for use in just about any film.

MPEG stream: Untitled
MPEG stream: The Secret

"This album is a compilation of fragments from my recorded work over the last two or three years. Some of it was made specifically for use as soundtrack material, some of it was made for other reasons but found its way into films; most of it is previously unissued in any form." So says Brian Eno in the liner notes. And people continue to milk this album for their films -- as anyone who's taken a film class in college can attest to. Well, at least fifteen or twenty years ago it was still being used to the point of excess. Extreme over use by film students and budding documentarians aside, Music For Films still holds together rather well... okay, maybe it dates itself a little here and there with the occasional synth patch, or bass line. You can hear a lot of the ideas for what went into Another Green World and Before And After Science on here, which makes one wonder how much of this may have been recorded during those sessions and culled from the album. In fact the track "M386" here is a dead ringer for a half-speed dub mix of Eno's "No One Receiving" off of the latter. While not immediately rock in nature -- the songs lack any verse/chorus/verse structure and seem to be devoid of any beginning, middle or end -- they aren't all as flattened out to be merely texture as his other ambient works. The cast of heavy hitter musicians here include many from Another Green World, such as Phil Collins, Fred Frith, Dave Mattacks, John Cale and Robert Fripp.

MPEG stream: From The Same Hill
MPEG stream: Alternative 3
MPEG stream: 'There Is Nobody'

Unlike most of the recent reissues of classic albums, Brian Eno's aren't graced / padded with extra bells'n'whistles (outtakes, demo versions and the like) nor are there swollen booklets of liner notes, photos, glowing praise, etc. No, you get the albums as they were originally released -- albeit remastered and packaged in simple digipaks with plain clear plastic slipcovers -- and frankly, with albums as timeless and remarkable as these, that's enough! Each is an inspired and inspiring work, remaining vital and compelling even thirty years later. Needless to say, each is fully deserving of an honored place in any record collection. One of Eno's best songs kicks off TTM(BS), the ubiquitous and lovely "Burning Airlines Gives You So Much More", with a gorgeous post-Beatles melody and snaky harmonized guitar (an Eno trademark, often played by Robert Fripp on these releases). From there on out, TTM(BS) expands upon -- but doesn't often better -- the ideas that began with Here Come The Warm Jets. Slightly more introspective. It's also less sneering. Of course, Bauhaus resonated with Eno's idea of absurdist / glam / experimental pop, later covering this album's sixth song "Third Uncle". Really, this often sounds like Chairs Missing era Wire in spots, and we all know that's a good thing!

MPEG stream: Burning Airlines Give You So Much More
MPEG stream: Third Uncle

In a lecture given by Brian Eno for the Long Now Foundation last year he explained the genesis of his ideas on ambient music, which was in itself inspired by the music of Terry Riley, Fela Kuti and the Velvet Underground -- music that he felt "flattened" the "hierarchical structure" of its components. He went on to say that "In my own work this manifested in an emphasis on making what would have been called the background more interesting, and what would have been called the foreground, less and less central, thus sinking foreground elements into the background." The results of these musings culminated in, amongst others, the now highly regarded Discreet Music and Music For Airports. Discreet Music was composed of individual elements, each of differing lengths, such that the sonic soundscape would sound similar from moment to moment, but never exactly the same either. Thursday Afternoon takes a similar road map to Discreet Music, but is executed on a much larger scale. Originally recorded for a VHS tape released by Sony Japan of 7 "video-paintings" of Christine Alicino. The advent of the compact disc allowed Eno to greatly increase the length of time under which his compositions could unfold, which is exactly what Eno was able to accomplish with the audio only release of Thursday Afternoon. Thursday Afternoon is like a macro focused version of Discreet Music with every element further stretched, every minutia of hierarchy further flattened and every element of the medium -- compact disc -- exploited. Not only is the scale of the work greater, but utilizing the dynamic range of the CD Eno is able to make greater use of quieter passages with sound that previously would have been lost below the area of surface noise -- towards the end of the pieces as the individual elements drift away, you can hear the faint sounds of birds outside of Eno's studio. The increased time available on a CD, as opposed to the LP, makes for a better execution of his idea of ambient music. No more flipping the vinyl every twenty minutes, just program your CD player to repeat. Like Music For Airports, Thursday Afternoon's most distinctive element is that of a Rhodes -- or similar electric piano -- keyboard playing languid broken arpeggios, underneath which is a glistening mirage of ever shifting drones. The combination of these ever fluxuating elements creates the auditory illusion of movement and stasis.

MPEG stream: Thursday Afternoon

[ aquarius records catalogue — E ]