[ aquarius records catalogue

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Showing results 101 through 150 of 1104.

Now on vinyl, once again! England's snotty teenage first-generation punks get their due with this nice vinyl reissue of their insanely enjoyable album, The Album. Never the smartest of the punk scene (they literally were snotty little teens), the band still possessed undeniable songwriting chops, influenced by the glammy side of Bowie, the Velvet Underground, and the rest of the usual suspects. Above all, Eater are super charged and out of control fun, and the boundless enthusiasm of their work has held up surprisingly well over the years. Here's our review of the cd reissue that came out last year: Maybe not the most important nor most influential '77 punk band from the UK, no, but definitely one of our personal all time faves! And Eater were both one of the earliest (forming in '76, debuting with a single in March '77) and youngest (they were literally schoolboys, their drummer Dee Generate was only 13 years old!). That's pretty punk, innit? Being snotty and pissed off wasn't a problem for them. Neither was writing high energy, highly catchy tunes that usually did the dirty deed in under two minutes, tops. Gotta love the poppy punk power of tracks like "Public Toys", "Room For One", and their age-adjusted Alice Cooper cover, "Fifteen". They also covered tracks by T-Rex, David Bowie, and the Velvet Underground, always infusing 'em with their own teenaged punk 'tude. Which admittedly (and not unexpectedly, giving their age/testosterone combo) gets a little un-PC on their own "Get Raped", though that's still a catchy number too... Maybe you've heard the Sex Pistols a few too many times, but probably not Eater.

MPEG stream: Room For One
MPEG stream: Fifteen
MPEG stream: Get Raped

Maybe not the most important nor most influential '77 punk band from the UK, no, but definitely one of our personal all time faves! And Eater were both one of the earliest (forming in '76, debuting with a single in March '77) and youngest (they were literally schoolboys, their drummer Dee Generate was only 13 years old!). That's pretty punk, innit? Being snotty and pissed off wasn't a problem for them. Neither was writing high energy, highly catchy tunes that usually did the dirty deed in under two minutes, tops. Gotta love the poppy punk power of tracks like "Public Toys", "Room For One", and their age-adjusted Alice Cooper cover, "Fifteen". They also covered tracks by T-Rex and the Velvet Underground, always infusing 'em with their own teenaged punk 'tude. Which admittedly (and not unexpectedly, giving their age/testosterone combo) gets a little un-PC on their own "Get Raped", though that's still a catchy number too... They're all here, 'cause this comprehensive Eater anthology consists of their album, The Album, and a bonus disc collecting their singles cuts. Maybe you've heard the Sex Pistols a few too many times, but probably not Eater. We're pretty stoked to have this new reissue to recommend. Get it!!

MPEG stream: Room For One
MPEG stream: Fifteen
MPEG stream: Get Raped

Japan's EM Records, our new favorite label for totally unknown reissue surprises -- from singing saw records to electronic brainwave music to New Age psych -- come through YET AGAIN with this fantastic album of guitar music by a long-haired, Viking-looking dude from the '70s named William Eaton! A gentle soul, judging by his gorgeously mellow music on this disc, all instrumental, all improvised, originally self-released on vinyl in 1978 in an edition of just 1000 copies. The simple drawing on the cover, with the rays of the setting sun and puffy clouds in the sky, really gets at what these 18 tracks are all about. Languid, blissed-out acoustic and electric string caresses, music that seems heaven-sent... You can imagine him sitting, cross-legged, eyes closed, with a meditative calm belying the virtuosic skill with which he plays. Rooted in hippy psych folk this is, but with some hints of more difficult, avant-garde new music, for sure like John Fahey, and perhaps like a very very listenable Derek Bailey, or better yet, like FMP-label guitarist and inventor Hans Reichel. And if we say it's just a bit New Agey, don't let that scare you off. We think all fans of the whole wonderful "wooden guitar", John Fahey / Robbie Basho worshipping, neo-Appalachia, modern day "American Primitive", steel string guitar improv scene today -- Jack Rose, James Blackshaw, Ilyas Ahmed, Richard Bishop, Matt Valentine, Sean Smith, etc. -- will really find a lot to like here!! Another point in common with Hans Reichel, is that the instruments Eaton plays here he built himself. A mystical luthier from the Arizona desert, William Eaton crafted some AMAZING instruments, depicted in the pages of the thick cd booklet. Totally baroque-looking works of art like his 26 string Elesion Harmonium, or his beautifully sculptural harp guitar. And just check out the curves of his double neck Quadrophonic electric... wow. So, totally recommended. Oh, and this disc is one of the first beneficiaries of EM's new Japanese AND English liner notes policy! Yep, English language liner notes, and lots of 'em... along with the usual full-color photos and album art found in most EM cd booklets.

MPEG stream: track 2
MPEG stream: track 10
MPEG stream: track 17

Four juggernauts of transgressive noise literally plugged their brains into mixing consoles for this wild documentation of high-concept / high-impact sound-art. For those not hip to the names of these jackbooted folk, Rudolf Eb.Er and Joke Lanz are two of the figureheads of the seminal Schimpfluch-Gruppe of Swiss aktionists, with the former taking on the moniker Runzlestirn & Gurglestock and the latter performing as Sudden Infant. GX Jupitter-Larsen is the principle architect (or demolition expert) in the California noise-project The Haters; and Mike Dando is best known for his unseemly power-electronics pseudonym Con-Dom. The high-concept in question was to sonify the EKG signals from these four extreme musicians as they sat, zen-like on a stage. Is it noise that streams through their veins, channels through their nerves, and vibrates the very molecules that comprise their corporeal bodies? In this context, the answer is a resounding YES! Over the course of the performance - which took place as the grand finale of the 2012 Extreme Rituals festival in Bristol which celebrated the excesses of all things Schimpfluch - the four brains dialed up a rancorous transmission of sawtooth waves and generative blossoms, recalling the complexities of digital programmers like Florian Hecker or the spasmodic Serge-synth modulations from Thomas Ankersmit. It's easy to think of this piece as a feedback loop, with the atonal squiggles from one participant's noggin translated into a particular sound which in turn triggers a thought in another participant's head, and so on. It makes for brilliantly impossible listening!

MPEG stream: Wellenfeld (excerpt)

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Wow! Some sorta transformation has taken place with this band in the couple of years since their last release, the 2003 Mur Murs ep. They're definitely much more confident, complex and dynamic, and these developments are made more than apparent right from the get-go. Indeed, you need look/hear no further that the excellent lead-off track "Sonorous", but of course with such tantalizing edgy pop sounds you'll want to! It's a lengthy number (subsectioned into "Time To Echolocate" and "Ear Of The Other") that effectively presents the many facets of the band. They've veered away from they're former Chicago post-rock scene leanings, into something more un-pinpointable. Their increased attention to song structures and arrangements do much to define a sound of their own. Like an agile juggler they keep their atmospheres, time signature shifts and multi-part vocals aloft. Speaking of which, the vocals are definitely a key ingredient in Ebb & Flow's magic. The wonderful soaring female vocals contrast nicely with the male ones which approach a moody, withery Interpol-ness. Pretty darn great!

MPEG stream: Sonorous
MPEG stream: Body And Soul

A short six-song introduction to this new SF band. This half dozen has a definite Chicago jazzy post-rock feel with some great horn accents, interesting textural details and arrangements. There's a nice vocal contrast from song to song too: breathy yet strong female leads on one, yearning, slouchy male voice takes over on another, a very Exene/John Doe-ish interplay on yet another. Me thinks, The Ebb And Flow would fit perfectly on a bill with Mates Of State and/or Call & Response (if they haven't already!). Very nice.

MPEG stream: Throop
MPEG stream: Contra Verse

Debut release from Seattle based electronic artist Eblake (aka E. Blake Davis). A beautifully cold, dark record full of pulsing beats and lush sonic landscapes. Fans of Autechre's "Amber" or the Chain Reaction label take note.

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SORRY. Indeed! Similar to labelmates Sigh, if only in that their take on "black metal" is as qually bizarre as that of those Japanese horror-masters. Ebony Lake, though, hails from England, and have a twisted, absinthe-fueled musical vision, making songs with suprisingly chaotic structures not unlike some sort of Gothic Voivod!

Superstar DJs/collectors Peanut Butter Wolf and Egon from the Stones Throw/Now-Again label are back with another from-the-vaults '70s funk find: Indianapolis' Ebony Rhythm Band, who recorded the cuts found here circa 1969-70. You heard a taster on the The Funky 16 Corners compilation. Now here's all the eleven tracks that have been unearthed from the ERB. Mostly instrumental funk from pretty hot band with rock/psych influences, who were also heavily into The Meters. They do some funky, soul-jazz cover versions of pop/rock hits of the era (including "Light My Fire" and "Sunshine Of My Love") but the highlights might be the ERB's originals, including their winning tune from an anti-drug music contest entitled "Drugs Ain't Cool" (reportedly performed live with all band members stoned and, I guess, uncool). Comes with with extensive, illustrated liner notes in the thick cd booklet. Along with the recently released/reviewed Midwest Funk compilation, definite proof of how the funk once flourished in the fly-over states, not that any was necessarily needed.

MPEG stream: Drugs Ain't Cool

It's been a while since we've heard from Ata Ebtekar, an Iranian sound artist and electronic composer born in Germany, who previously recorded for Warp under the name Sote, creating a clutch of killer records that were furious and fractured, beat heavy concoctions that found him fusing rave and drone and jungle into something much more dense and confusional. And dense and confusional is definitely a good way to describe the music he makes under his own name, a 'world music' of his own invention, but unlike the collaborative record he released with the Iranian Orchestra For New Music, released on local label Isounderscore, on which he took recordings and manipulated them, other than some prepared traditional instruments, Dear Iran is a wholly original work, of vast sonic scope. We read up on Ebtekar, and could have just paraphrased the dense academic description of his work, and this record, but odds are most folks just want to know what it sounds like, and Dear Iran is incredible, dense and dizzying, at times almost overwhelming, layer upon layer of textures and mutated percussion. There are no 'beats' to be found here, this is definitely not a beat record, but it is rhythmic, it just so happens that the rhythms are often implied, gnarled tangles of cascading tones, of garbled processed crunch, fractured melodies, and gristled fields of blurred glitch, it's actually quite difficult to describe, as it really does sound unlike most of what you've heard. Some tracks are almost cinematic, sweeping sheets of buzz and squelch, bits of clang and clatter seem to be pulled apart at the molecular level, and recast as flurries of splatter and skitter, which is then sculpted into almost melodic shapes, bell like tones surface throughout, lending the record most of its melodic heft, but those tones are often all twisted up, smeared into hazy chordal streaks, or laid atop one another creating strange pulsing harmonies, or alternately, lush minimal stretches of hushed bleep and bloop, all wreathed in clouds of electro static thrum. The rhythmic component surfaces throughout as well, but not in any way you might expect, a burst of tangled melodic squiggles, will suddenly coalesce and transform into a lurching stutter step pulse, before dissolving into a fog of pixelated prismatic flutter, or a seemingly freeform assemblage of rumble and whir, will gradually take the shape of mysterious propulsive soft noise streaks, before once again, splintering into a field of strange digital crunches and shimmery, or fractured swirls of darkly droney, woozy electro-minimal psychedelia. Gorgeous stuff for sure, as equally suited to academic deep listening, as pure sound, audial overload sonic bliss out. WAY recommended.

MPEG stream: Bang O Bargh
MPEG stream: Lilac Nilak

Originally released as a super limited tape on Digitalis back in 2010, Sonic Within, from Iranian sound artist and electronic composer Ata Ebtekar (aka Sote) finally gets a proper reissue on vinyl, via local label 333 Recordings, and it's a beautiful collection of modern electronic flecked chamber music, Ebtekar teamed up with pianist Mazdak Khamda and cellist Betty Wu, the core of the sound, Khamda's delicate, crystalline piano, plaintive and haunting, the piano ties every track here together, with Ebtekar working around the soft clusters of chordal thrum, and darkly pointillist melodies, conjuring up deep swells of metallic buzz, adding a subtly ominous vibe, weaving in Wu's moaning cello creating gauzy clouds of sonic shimmer. Some track are warbly and woozy, as if someone had their finger on the record, manually changing the pitch and tempo, like chamber music via Philip Jeck, lilting and lovely, but just slightly twisted. The piano drifts resolutely through fields of crystalline glimmer, and is draped over distantly churning backdrops of low end swirl and blurred abstract FX, all applied with a deft hand, so often, sans headphones, it sounds like solo piano, but deep listening here is definitely rewarded. The flipside however is definitely more traditionally classical, at least on the surface, with the production tricks and studio affectations dialed back, once again letting Khamda's lyrical playing take center stage, but Ebtekar is still there, lurking in the background, subtly tweaking the sound, swaddling Khamda's piano in soft cottony clouds of ambient thrum, the B side building to an almost Hermann Nitsch style cacophony, before setting back down for a brief, playful and melodic outro. So nice. LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!!

NOW ALSO AVAILABLE IN SPECIAL 'ETCHED COVER' VERSION. For a just couple dollars more than the regular vinyl version we listed last time, which we still have some of too. Originally released as a super limited tape on Digitalis back in 2010, Sonic Within, from Iranian sound artist and electronic composer Ata Ebtekar (aka Sote) finally gets a proper reissue on vinyl, via local label 333 Recordings, and it's a beautiful collection of modern electronic flecked chamber music, Ebtekar teamed up with pianist Mazdak Khamda and cellist Betty Wu, the core of the sound, Khamda's delicate, crystalline piano, plaintive and haunting, the piano ties every track here together, with Ebtekar working around the soft clusters of chordal thrum, and darkly pointillist melodies, conjuring up deep swells of metallic buzz, adding a subtly ominous vibe, weaving in Wu's moaning cello creating gauzy clouds of sonic shimmer. Some track are warbly and woozy, as if someone had their finger on the record, manually changing the pitch and tempo, like chamber music via Philip Jeck, lilting and lovely, but just slightly twisted. The piano drifts resolutely through fields of crystalline glimmer, and is draped over distantly churning backdrops of low end swirl and blurred abstract FX, all applied with a deft hand, so often, sans headphones, it sounds like solo piano, but deep listening here is definitely rewarded. The flipside however is definitely more traditionally classical, at least on the surface, with the production tricks and studio affectations dialed back, once again letting Khamda's lyrical playing take center stage, but Ebtekar is still there, lurking in the background, subtly tweaking the sound, swaddling Khamda's piano in soft cottony clouds of ambient thrum, the B side building to an almost Hermann Nitsch style cacophony, before setting back down for a brief, playful and melodic outro. So nice. LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!!

We first heard from Ata Abtekar under his pseudonym Sote, with a flurry of releases for Warp, then Dielectric, and a sound that definitely hit the spot, a deft amalgamation of fractured jungle, old school rave music, downtempo beatscapes, and shimmery dronemusic. More recently he helped compile a double disc compilation called Persian Electronic Music: Yesterday And Today (1966-2006), still to be reviewed, which collected the work of legendary Iranian new music composer Alireza Mashayekhi on one disc, and Ebtekar's more modern compositions on the other, drawing a sort of sonic timeline between Persian new music past and present, which leads directly to this double lp. A long in the works 'collaboration' between Ebtekar and Mashayekhi. For these extended sonic explorations, Ebtekar took pieces composed by Mashayekhi, and performed by the Iranian Orchestra For New Music, and then applied various techniques to the sounds, taking live recordings, studio tracks, and then processing them, rearranging them, adding effects and samples, synthesizers, adding original sounds, harmonies and melodies, for a unique sort of modern classical Persian musiq concrete. The original sounds are definitely present, this is most certainly not a case of the sample being rendered unrecognizable, those original sounds are as important to these pieces as anything Ebtekar had to add. Flurries of piano, moaning cellos, pizzicato plucks, soaring strings, subtle percussion, all surface here and there, and often, they are wreathed in fuzzy drones, or chopped into strangely percussive loops, or jumbled up into something much more chaotic, but just as often, Ebtekar's machinations are much more subtle, playing along as if he were not a remixer per se, but another player in the orchestra, only armed with a computer and effects instead of a flute or violin. The sounds are varied and wondrous, from fantastical flurries of wild freaked out electronic flecked free form soft noise, to delicate tinklings and hushed moonlit drift, spacey metallic shimmers to haunting alien music box like lullabyes, Eastern sounding folk fragments drifting in soft swirls of rumble and hiss, long stretches of barely there melody and wispy streaks of distant rumble. Really quite mysterious and beautiful, whether you're into modern classical, electronic music, abstract dronemusic, or all of the above. ESPECIALLY all of the above. Beautiful screened sleeves, with a printed insert, detailing the project, as well as the various performers and composers.

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SORRY. 4 singles from Digital Hardcore Recordings, Germany's nastiest, most extreme hardcore techno label, issued here in tasty uninitiated-friendly 7" format by the Beastie's Grand Royal label. A cheap way to learn all about what the hell is going on.

20+ more minutes of Berlin digital hardcore. Angry screaming techno jungle punk. Female vocals similar to those of Japanese spazzcore band Melt Banana. If you thought Atari Teenage Riot were pissed...

A techno-noise-punk headache served up by this reliable Digital Hardcore band. By reliable, we mean more of the same, really: frantic female punk vox, heavy beats, outrageous sloganeering, and distortion, distortion, distortion. Not veering much from the sound established by DHR leader Alec Empire's own Atari Teenage Riot. While we're much more enamored of the solo work done by EC8OR's Patric Catani, his band's new disc should satisfy those thirsting for that basic DHR headache party mentioned above.

Here comes another lost gem from Brazil. This time it's from 1970 by a group led by the thrilling piano playing of Luiz Eca (who was in Tamba Trio / Tamba 4). This is dazzling and bright dynamic pop swimming in samba, African rhythms, and an undying pep that radiates throughout the recording. Joining Eca is a cast of 13 adding an onslaught of sounds and voices to the affair. The seven minute opener "Homen Da Sucurasal /Barravento" is one of the best lead off tracks we've ever heard! Catchy, bizarre and all the right and unexpected twists and turns. As the record plays out its samba roots are explored. On it, and throughout the album you can hear hints of the sounds of many bands that would came decades later like Stereolab and White Magic, of course all drenched in a samba vibe that would make Sergio Mendes proud.

MPEG stream: Homem da Suc / Barravento
MPEG stream: Las Vamos Nos

Another new list, another new dream pop offering from Slumberland, this one from a UK outfit called Echo Lake, whose sounds, as befitting the label they call home, hovers somewhere between the gauzy slowcore reverb drenched jangle of Galaxie 500 and something much more abstract and ethereal, a sort of 4AD via My Bloody Valentine by way of Brian Wilson / Phil Spector. The opener is some pitch perfect dream pop drift, all hazy layered vocals, swirling soft focus harmonies, angelic and softly spectral, driven by a barely audible rhythmic pulse, and wound up in a crystalline latticework of spidery guitar melodies, and muted softly distorted buzz, in fact that track's more like an intro, just letting us know what these folks are capable of, but instead of offering up a seriously experimental slab of shoegaze abstraction, they dole out that stuff judiciously (for the most part), instead, weaving it into a more standard Slumberland style pop, simple spare drumming, reverby drifts of soft focus guitar, and those gorgeous ethereal vox. But then right when you think you have a handle on their sound, they unleash something like the title track, which channels Stereolab through the Teenage Filmstars, a warm whirring organ, drifting over a thick distorted drone, peppered with trippy backwards rhythms, the vocals weightless, warm swaths of gauziness laid over the already blurred dreamscape, and so it goes for the rest of the record, all the dream poppy things we love about Slumberland bands, given a sort of psychedelic makeover, slipping easily from dream pop, to surprisingly rocking shoegaze blowouts, and from swirly psychedelic experiments and back again. So nice!!

MPEG stream: Further Down
MPEG stream: Another Day
MPEG stream: Wild Peace

We continue to be obsessed with the darker side of techno and house music, the strains that are all murky and shadowy and mutated, the four on the floor beats slowed down to a dying-heartbeat pulse, most of the dancefloor sucked out of the sound, leaving just the twisted skeletal remains. Elsewhere on this week's list you'll find a new record from Lucy, whose sound is just that sort of dubbed out techno-murk we can't get enough of, but this new one from Echologist is something else all together. We just discovered this is the TENTH record by Brendon Moeller, aka Echologist, but the first one we've heard, and we are totally smitten. Not nearly as murky and dark as much of the stuff we dig, what Moeller does is, is something similar to The Field, creating super lush, layered repetition, little blurts and pulsations, bits of glitch and static, sculpted and woven into deep undulating electronic soundscapes, that only sound tangentially like proper techno, and instead, sound super tripped out and psychedelic, almost like some sort of avant experimental noise music, but in the guise of techno. The opener here "Frequency Of Love" pretty much lays it all out, exactly what is so amazing abut Echologist and why we knew this had to be Record Of The Week. A dense field of pulsing squelch, all hazy and gauzy, some alien machine language transformed into sound, a glorious blend of droned out raga-shimmer, and percolating electro, droney and trancey, and less about the rhythm, as the texture created by the rhythm, and when the low end drops out, as it occasionally does, the sound becomes some sort of airy drift, before the low end swoops back in and the sound gets, well heavy again, for lack of a better word. But then heavy is the word for what happens next, when the sound begins to thicken, the tones all gradually descending in pitch, those sounds suddenly coalescing into a thick, buzzing drone, which grinds away malevolently, before dropping out completely, leaving just a field of glimmering chiming melody, and a hazy keening high end drone. Fuck! We say it a lot, but that track, could easily have been the whole record, and we still would have made it Record Of The Week. We're guessing it'll take some serious will power to keep from setting that track on repeat play. But you know, fuck it, go for it. Still worth the price of admission if you never make it any further in. But if you do, you'll be rewarded with more of Echologists, haunting, propulsive and mesmeric machine music, from churning industrial crunch, to loping tranced out techno, and from squelchy and cinematic low end deep dub, to gristly static drenched skitter, and from lush, almost poppy, drone-gaze electro, to stuttery sci-fi glitch-buzz groove. But those thumbnail descriptions are only part of the equation, cuz once Moeller sets the scene, lays down the beat, loops the sample, whatever electronic voodoo he does, it's all about how the sounds develop, and pro/re-gress, tone and timbre in constant flux, the background sounds a dizzying, hyperactive soundworld all their own. The sound impossibly immersive, the sort of rare electronic music that manages to be weirdly dancefloor appropriate, while still the perfect bliss out / chill out / come down soundtrack, and equally rare in that sonically, it's way more than 'dance music' or 'techno', it's a fantastically next level mutant strain of electronica, or even more specifically, some modern minimalist avant electronic experimental soundscapery, that just happens to involve elements of techno and house music, and that we find utterly and endlessly addictive. We're guessing most of you will too...

MPEG stream: The Frequency Of Love
MPEG stream: Next Exit
MPEG stream: Storming Heaven
MPEG stream: Deep Fried
MPEG stream: M13 + DPO

Latest disc of languid minimal abstract dub house bliss from the dynamic duo of Rod Modell and Steve Hitchell, who we've raved about in the past, the two have sort of taken that Chain Reaction heroin house sound, and Pole's skeletal dub, as well as a little Kompakt style Pop Ambience, and woven all that into their own hazy atmospheric drift, which often sounds more like some Philip Jeck turntable performance more than some techno producer, which is probably why we're so into it. Case in point, opener, "In Echospace", a sea of staticky swells, softly churning, pulsing dreamily, all hazy and murky and washed out and otherworldly, very Jeck or Tim Hecker sounding, a slightly rhythmic blurred dronescape that could have been a Gas track, and that we find ourselves playing over and over. But when we don't press repeat, it glides right into "Summer Haze", which sounds anything but summery, the cloudy murk of the opening track remains, but a woozy reverby beat slowly surfaces, the sounds wreathed in crackle and hiss, a heartbeat like pulse, flecked with dub, and soft focus streaks of melody. The rest of the record follows suit, just check out the titles, "Firefly", "Float", "Warm", there's definitely a theme, although it's only loosely referenced, if at all, "Sub-Marine" ditches much of the gauzy hiss and blur, leaving just a loping rubbery beat, wrapped in subtle squelches, drifting on a layer of shimmery synth thrum, "Burnt Sage" is total heroin house, the beat sounding like it's coming from another building or a passing car or from underwater, the surrounding sounds soft and vaguely industrial, but all smoother out and smeared into soft focus streaks, the next few track find the beats getting bigger, thumps and crunches, still woozy and warbly, but about as close to block rockin' as this stuff will ever get, but as the record progresses from that point on, it seems to follow an arc, slowing down, and blissing out, gradually returning to the primordial sonic murk that started things off, ending with the aptly titled "Warm", which is indeed warm, and languid, soporific, a whirling blurscape of soft tones and muted melody, mixed in with the sounds of the city, voices, buses, cars, life, a gorgeously dreamlike soundtrack to late night life in some lost city... And all those field recordings are not random, the duo have been obsesed with location recordings, and have actively been gathering sounds from all over, and the second disc here actually contains 80 minutes worth of those original raw field recordings...

MPEG stream: In Echospace
MPEG stream: Summer Haze
MPEG stream: Sub-Marine

A few years back, we were enraptured by a strange alien sound, one that opened our ears to a whole genre we had ignored for the most part up until then, an offshoot of techno that eventually became affectionately (and surprisingly accurately) referred to as 'heroin house'. A strangely propulsive sound mired in dense fields of hiss and murk, of fuzz and blur, the beats relegated to a distant pulse. The label was Chain Reaction, and its tiny stable of bands, Fluxion, Matrix, Hallucinator, Substance, Vainqueur, Porter Ricks, Monolake and a few others, completely changed the landscape of techno, and had us all in a frenzy. Albeit a nocturnal druggy soporific one. Chain Reaction folded, but the sound lived on, in the abstract dub of Rhythm And Sound (the same producers behind the Chain Reaction sound), in the sound of German Chain Reaction acolyte Pole, and the Pop Ambient of Kompakt, but as much as we love all that stuff, it wasn't quite the same. The sounds were similar, each twisted into some new shape, but there was just something so special about those Chain Reaction releases. So mysterious, the sound so haunting and otherworldly, like a rave on the ocean floor, barely audible through the walls of your submarine, further obscured by the hiss and low level buzz of all the onboard machinery. Or some DJ playing microhouse into the wee hours, 5 or 6 floors below you, or better yet, in the old concrete bunker across the street, the only hint of anything going on the muted throb felt more than heard. It's one of THOSE SOUNDS we always go on about. Like old school ragga jungle or black metal buzz, a sound that is so pleasing to our ears, we could almost listen to a simple loop of those sounds forever. The Chain Reaction sound is another, gorgeous and creepy, moonlit and languorous, the perfect music to drift off to, or to troll the dark rainswept streets of some mysterious European city. Thus we come to this debut full length from Echospace, the duo of Rod Modell and Soultek's Steve Hitchell, both legendary techno producers, who released a handful of 12"s at the tail end of the nineties, and who were taking the Chain Reaction sound in their own new direction. Years later, the duo returned to THAT SOUND and goddamn if it doesn't sound like being transported right back to mid-nineties Berlin. Using only old school analog equipment: Roland Space Echo, Echoplex, Korg tape delay, vintage signal processors, noise generators, Sequential Circuits 8-bit samplers and analog synthesizers, the sound these two have conjured up hews crazily close to Chain Reaction, but manages to make it sound modern and new at the same time. All the tracks here are super creepy, slow motion, underwater muted blurs of abstract techno, where the beats seem like more a byproduct of the soundmaking than the reason for it. Some tracks do thump and bump but others merely drift in a thick haze of hiss and crackle. Basslines are deep and rubbery, drenched in reverb and pulled apart into super spare space dubs, bits of percussion are sent careening into a black void, but it's the textures and the ambience that make this record so special. The opener spends the first half of its 6+ minutes offering up huge slow motion crashing waves of surf like static, of buried melodies and off fuzzy shimmer, before any beats even surface, and when they finally do they pulse and throb for a couple minutes before they're swallowed up by the wash of soft white noise. In fact, in addition to sounding underwater, it sounds like the whole disc is being broadcast over a radio between stations, all the sounds wreathed in sonic gristle and buzzy static, but all smeared into huge billowing clouds of sound. Most of the tracks definitely have a groove, a super slithery abstract alien funk, but more often than not, it's buried beneath gorgeous layers of constantly shifting sound, offering up some barely audible thump, a four on the floor framework for the glacially shifting tectonic sonic plates above. But there are some that don't, like the 11+ minute "Ocean Of Emptiness", a muted smeared ambient drift, that sounds like standing on some vast windswept snow covered plain, under a black sky, watching the snow fall, each snowflake a tiny bit of hiss or crackle, coming in epic waves, glistening and glimmering but strangely warm and inviting. Our favorite track might have to be "Winter In Seney", which sounds like a more dubbed-out Gas. A warm swirling hissy gristly minimal smear, sprinkled with bits of record crackle, and haunting echo drenched bits of glitch and melody, the whole thing wrapped in a gorgeously hypnotic, super spare rubbery bassline, the notes blurring into each other, spreading out like a thick black cloud of dub, totally and utterly mesmerizing. There's been so much amazing techno lately, lots of Kompakt action, The Field, Gui Boratto, the last Pop Ambient comp, then there was the long overdue Vladislav Delay Chain Reaction reissue (C'mon! Someone reissue ALL those out of print CR discs!!), but this disc has been OWNING the cd player. At work, at home, and has quickly become the new drifting off, late at night, chill out, space out, record of choice. WAY recommended!

MPEG stream: First Point Of Aries
MPEG stream: Abraxas
MPEG stream: Ocean Of Emptiness
MPEG stream: Winter In Seney

From deep within the Cascadian forests comes this beautiful piece of heavily atmospheric blackened bliss, the solo project of Echtra from black metal duo Fauna, whose awesome Rain album/song we reviewed a few lists back. As with Rain, listening to A War For Wonder requires patience and time, with two highly meditative tracks stretching out to 23 minutes each. Unlike Fauna, however, Echtra's solo work is a much more subdued affair, but no less gorgeous or awesome. It never quite ventures into full on black metal territory, and even when the relentless double bass drums and Darkthrone style blast beats enter the mix the sounds are still much more gentle, with highly melodic acoustic guitars and plenty of 4AD soft squall going on in the background. Sure, there are plenty of bands that incorporate post rock grandeur into their blackened attack, but this is something removed from furious metal almost entirely. It's actually quite strange, and totally mesmerizing, to hear such beautiful, dreamy melodies played out over the relentless, nonstop drumming. Strange as it may sound, the results are actually life affirming, or at least affirmative of something worthwhile... probably not human life, you know, this is still no doubt black as fuck in its peculiar way. Just looking at the four quotes in the album's gatefold, one is able to detect Echtra's take on mysticism, where man's insignificance is laid bare within the glory of the unknown. Such a realization of truth is comforting in itself, and the sounds within A War For Wonder perfectly mirror this knowledge.

MPEG stream: A War For Wonder I
MPEG stream: A War For Wonder II

Latest from this Cascadian black metal outfit, the solo project of, as the band name suggests, Echtra, who is one half of aQ faves Fauna, whose sound is definitely reminiscent of their sonic and geographical brethren in Wolves In The Throne Room. But unlike Wolves, or even Fauna, the music of Echtra is a much more personal and intimate affair, minimal and hushed much of the time, with haunting ambience and dark dreamy folk woven into what is actually more a sort of blissed out doom, than black metal buzz, spidery tendrils of distorted melody wrap themselves around delicately plucked steel strings, all draped over a downtuned dirge, the drums distant and way down in the mix, the vibe washed out and hazy, even at its most distorted and aggressive, the sound is still woozy and dreamlike and a bit shoegazey, the deep growled vokills also buried in the mix, adding more layers to the already thick layered sound. Fans of Megaton Leviathan should definitely check this out, as it's got the same sort of druggy psychedelic vibe. Occasionally the sound grows dissonant, or the drums erupt into some furious double kick, but even then, it's more ominous and sinister than heavy, the sound almost like a blackened folk. The second track starts out even dreamier, the same Appalachian style steel string guitar, but here wreathed in clouds of gauzy shimmer, the whole thing a gloriously sun dappled prismatic blur, fuzzed out dream folk, that does eventually explode into some blasting buzzing blackness around the nine minute mark, but even then the metal is smeared and muted, the acoustic guitar supplying the melody, again transforming the black buzz into a strange sort of frenetic blackened folkmusic, which gives way to some spare fluttery folk drift, before finishing off with a brief bit of downtuned dirgery. Someone pointed out recently that all the Echtra songs are 23 minutes long, on ALL of their records, which is in fact the case here too, not sure if there's some sort of significance, but for these 46 minutes, it's easy to get lost in Echtra's gorgeous folk flecked blackened mystery. Super swank packaging too, metallic gold ink on a heavy textured black cardstock digipak style jacket, both the inner and outer panels embossed too.

MPEG stream: Paragate I
MPEG stream: Paragate II

This Czech Republic ensemble made a big stir in the early '90s with a number of exceptional shoe-gazer singles on par with the best Creation work from Ride and Slowdive, but dissappeared from the hipster radar after a questionable ambient-techno album. "In Dust 3" marks Ectacy Of St. Theresa's first album in nearly a decade, and finds them eclectically mixing the dark synth pop sheen

Whew. Two guys, two guitars, all instrumental, kinda fast and spazzy, also trying hard to be light and pretty. It's sorta mathy and, yes, sunshiney. A cutesily maddening half-hour or so of electric guitars, just guitars, frantic and sprightly. By/for indie rockers who dig such bands as Deerhoof, Heavy Vegetable and Hella, and who like to drink lots of coffee with lots of sugar.

MPEG stream: Ramontana
MPEG stream: Swirling Hearts

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

SORRY. First of all, be warned, these took nearly six months to show up from Sweden; and we will most likely not be restocking these when we sell out of this batch, or if we do, it could very well take ANOTHER six months. But back in the late summer of 2011, we caught wind of what seemed like a really fascinating piece of damaged, witchy pop narcotic from the Swedish sisters Nadine and Tanya Byrne (aka Ectoplasm Girls). Shortly, there after, The Wire raved about the album; and then we simply waited for the box to show... Fortunately for a lucky few of you, that box did indeed finally arrive! The Byrne sisters could very well be ghosts from the mid-80s cassette culture of DIY electronics, industrial antipathy, and corrosive psychedelia. As half-formed / half-forgotten songs of deconstructed piano, looped abstractions, and bad vibes, the Ectoplasm Girls arrangements aren't too dissimilar from those that Zola Jesus primitively sketched on her earliest recordings. Like Zola Jesus, voice is also key to the hauntological pop that the Ectoplasm Girls create, although they take it in an entirely different direction. At times, they adopt a baby-faced atonal lunacy with shrill lullabies above their murky tunes, abstracted rhythms, and macabre electronics; and at others, they utter mantras in dull monotone as if these strangely seductive passages were culled from their own exorcisms. "Sexodrome" takes all the right cues from Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire, with vocal fragments orbiting a skeletal rhythmic plod that's all gotta reference Cronenberg in some way shape or form. It's too creepy not to! A blast of hurricane noise launches "If Your Mother Asks" which surges forward through driving techno stomp akin to TG's ceaseless march "Discipline" and complementary slashes of noise and vocal gaspings. If we thought we could get more, we might expound more on the subject of the Ectoplasm Girls; but as it stands, we've got less than a dozen. So, delay now and perhaps delay forever.

We were first introduced to the mysterious Estonian outfit Edasi by aQ pal, weirdo black metal / noisescaper Cloak Of Displacement. And he did not steer us wrong. Edasi's, goofily titled Freddy Krueger Death Chant was a pretty incredible collection of distorted ambient ritualism. The sort of stuff that appealed to metalheads as much as dronelords. This week we got two new releases from Edasi, both STUPIDLY limited. A cassette, of which we got EIGHT copies, reviewed elsewhere on this list, and this here cd-r, limited to just THIRTY copies, of which we got 20, and then that's it. And we would recommend grabbing both of these, or at the very least this one, a gorgeous assemblage of super distorted blown out ambience, mournful melodies drifting beneath thick crumbling sheets of superdistorted crunch, it's noisemusic, but here it's surprisingly listenable, a melancholy lament wreathed in squelch and static, the opening track sounds almost like a lo-fi take on that sort of gauzy Hecker / Jeck washed out minimalism. The sprawling second track is more percussive, and even more lo-fi, the tape hiss in some places as loud as the music itself. A swirling field of buzz and clatter of muted chordal pulses and decayed melodies, a strange bit of rhythmic blur, noisy and a bit blackened, it sounds at times like it might launch into some actual black metal, but instead, much of the noise abates, leaving a strange stumbly rhythm and layers of Eastern sitar like buzz, before collapsing into a final cloud of mysterious percussive detritus and warm whirling static. The next track fuses a sort of primitive electronica to a woozy warbly bassline, and some spidery guitar melodies, which makes it sound almost like some twisted take on James Ferraro or Ariel Pink, a loping pop rock, wreathed in careening percussive effects, undulating sheets of pink noise, and all manner of crunch and buzz and hiss, but like the other tracks, it too seems to devolve as it goes, eventually the drums transformed into wildly sputtering machinebeats, wrestling with atonal synth buzz creating a dizzying synthscape gone haywire. The record closes with a brief bit of distorted drone, a warm liquid low end drifting darkly though caustic clouds of staticky hiss and brittle buzz. LIMITED TO 30 COPIES! Each one hand numbered. Once these are gone, they are gone for good...

MPEG stream: Solemn Ritual Dance
MPEG stream: Earth, Wind And Fire Dance

Along with a new Cloak Of Displacement cd-r, reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, the maniac behind CoD has also dug up this weird bit of looped, hypnotic psychedelic blackness, all the way from Estonia! Edasi weaves a high concept, 74 minute sprawl of haunting, noise drenched drift. The label describes it as sounding like a bar fight between Silvester Anfang and Havohej, and we have to say that's not really all that far off. In the beginning, it does sound like some ritualistic bit of forest folk ambience, distorted steel string buzz, muted electronics, simple percussion, processed demonic vox, it's tripped out and tweaked, the blackness more implied, the whole thing rife with a seriously ominous vibe, but musically, this could just as likely be some strange lo-fi free noise collective from Finland, or some bedroom doom folk one man band from the midwest. It's a smoldering, creeping expanse of skittery ambience, of chiming melodies, streaks of feedback, the whole thing tethered to a strange propulsive glitch and crunch, managing to be weirdly tranced out and tranquil, yet, fucked up and seriously demented at the same time. Way too far removed from 'proper' black metal to appeal to the typical metalheads, but fans of Cloak Of Displacement, as well as the weirder fringes of black metal, a la Circle Of Ouroborus, Dead Reptile Shrine, Stalaggh, and the like, as well as anyone into warped outsider sounds, will definitely dig this a LOT. LIMITED TO 50 COPIES, each one hand numbered, comes with a printed insert detailing the genesis of this particular chunk of sonic weirdness, as well as a miniature reproduction of the bizarre painting that spawned these sound.

MPEG stream: Freddy Krueger Death Chant

We first heard from Estonian ritualistic black metal soundscapers Edasi, from our pal, the weirdo behind black metal outfit Cloak Of Displacement. Edasi's Freddy Krueger Death Chant was a big hit around here, so we were psyched to get TWO new releases from this mysterious outfit: a cd-r, reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, and this, a super limited tape. And we mean crazy limited, as in TEN copies. Total. We got EIGHT of those, odds are these will be gone in a flash, so we won't get into too much detail. Needless to say, if you loved Freddy Krueger Death Chant, you're probably gonna dig this too. Another mysterious sonic ritual, that is less black metal and more abstract forest folk or Wolf Eyes like industrial ambience, a lo-fi sprawl of super distorted sound, streaks of feedback, echo drenched percussion, blurred vocals, all wreathed in murk and mire, swirling effects, thick slabs of buzzing rumbling low end, abstract rhythms, everything smeared into haunting dubbed out blackened ambience, that manages to be fierce and freaky, but also strangely blissed out and listenable. Like a pipe fight in a huge cistern recorded on a tape player with dying batteries, a sort of ephemeral industrial doom drift. Great stuff. And again... LIMITED TO TEN COPIES. THAT'S IT!! Each one in a hand painted black stickered cassette case, sealed in a stickered plastic bag, the tapes themselves hand painted and hand numbered.

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

SORRY. From the label responsible for those Invisible Skratch Piklz Shiggar Fraggar show discs, comes this cd (no vinyl) by local SF turntablist DJ Eddie Def (of Space Travellers, El Stew, and Bullet Proof Scratch Hamsters). It's compiled from Eddie's Hemp Lords mix tape series, and features "an extremely hardcore mix of '90s turntablism acrobatics and '80s megamix styles."

Ooooh. Some really nice, gentle Japanese acid-folk here, from this female duo, first heard (by us that is) on Alchemy's Night Gallery 2: 21st Century Psychedelic Underground compilation. If you like Nagisa Ni Te, or L's Holy Letters, or the ghostliest Ghost you'll certainly welcome the embrace of Eddie Marcon's dreamy, folky, psychedelic soundworld. As with Nagisa and L, you'll find here similarly drawn out and sparse compositions infused with strange and subtle atmospheres -- mostly acoustic/electric guitars with some snare and piano (cymbal drones, scrapes, gasps -- all acoustically hand-crafted). The record also has some haunting horn blasts and lots of rattling percussion, bells, etc., and the whole thing is sedated by ongoing mallet flourishes on drums and cymbals. Vocally, this could be Takako Minekawa or Tojiko Noriko stripped of the electronica element. There's all the seductive conventions of melancholy folk with just enough eccentricities to place this in a continuum of modern Japanese underground psychedelia, such as LSD-march (an early line-up of which apparently featured both Eddie Marcon's singer Eddie and guitarist Marcon -- aha, now you see how Eddie Marcon came up with their name!) and the female bass-drums duo of Coa (singer Eddie's other band). Eddie Marcon is quite a bit more quiet and mellow than either of those outfits tend to be, though! And outside of the Japanese comparisons, we'd think anyone into anything in the psych-folk vein from Vashti Bunyan to Islaja might quite find this to their liking... Australia's Preservation label has stylishly packaged this disc in/with an intriguing minimalist graphic design fold out poster. Totally recommended!

MPEG stream: Amime
MPEG stream: Siro No Uta

Eddie The Rat is a 12 piece art-rock / choral ensemble from San Francisco, arriving at a sloppy psychedelic ceremonial music and with plenty of post-industrial / Burning Man / San Francisco 'Fringe' overtones and purposefully oblique verbal conundrums and

RealAudio clip: Waiting For (Ain't Never Gonna Get) Enlightenment...

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

SORRY. Cd reish of an early-'80s self released exotic-cult-folk-primitive-rock lp, from a guy who's been part of the Sun City Girls mythos since their days in Arizona...features James from Paris 1942, Charlie & Alan from the Sun City Girls, and Mary & Dan from Victory Acres.

While just about everything Holy Mountain puts out is awesome they also tend to focus on the heavier side of the underground musical landscape. With this debut by Eden Express they're showing their softer side, while managing to keep the awesomeness on full throttle! There would be no other time for this record to get released then smack dab in the midst of summer as this is some sun-soaked-tripped-out-bake-at-the-beach-psych-pop that we can't get enough of. Featuring one member of Cloudland Canyon, this is a group who understand how to evoke colorful and vivid sensations. Mixing Eastern tinged psychedelia with delicious hints of washed out samba with such an effortless and breezy delivery. This is a timeless sounding record that could just as easily be some lost early '70s South American psychedelic gem (which the cover design suggests) as much as a much more drugged out Antena or Brightblack Morning Light jamming on the beach with some Finnish folks like Lau Nau and Islaja at their side. Such delicious delay and reverb, just the right touches of flute and otherworldliness, and it's about time psych gets out of the forest and onto the sand. A record made to soak in sun and melt with.

MPEG stream: Skin De Sol
MPEG stream: Swelling Moon
MPEG stream: On The Beach

The minute we first heard this band we knew we had to track this record down and review it. Unfortunately we also knew that we would probably never be able to do it justice with mere words. One of those bands you just NEED to hear. This now disbanded (only temporarily we hope) UK combo manage to combine the impossibly dense chaotic metallic fury of Converge with the expansive epic wonder of bands like Godspeed You Black Emperor and Explosions In The Sky. Doesn't necessarily seem like a good fit, but oh it couldn't sound more perfect. And Eden Maine do more than just ape their influences, they take those sounds and twist them into something at once familiar and recognizable but at the same time completely original and compellingly and brilliantly fucked up. Extended tracks dense with super complex parts, stop start weirdness, delicate melodies, wildly squiggly riffing, some of the most insane and brilliant drumming we've heard in forever, bizarre guitar interplay, lots of heavy parts strangely underpinned with haunting ambience, even occasional vocal harmonies, it's the sort of record that leaves you completely exhausted, the whole record rife with slow building post rock epics, that slowly twist and change into furious blasts of metallic vitriol, which sometimes build and build even further, pushing the limit of how heavy a band can get until they just implode, but just as often the songs drift into wide open stretches of glistening melodies and quietly propulsive post rock. Eden Maine definitely fit within the new breed of post rock metal bands (Conifer, Tides, Baroness, Isis, Indian, the Ocean, etc.) but EM somehow manage to make the heavier parts even heavier, the epic parts even more epic. It's a little ineffable, but there's something about this band and this record, that make the whole thing just so goddamn great.

MPEG stream: Hail Satan
MPEG stream: I Am What You Are
MPEG stream: Murder Was Her Name

Best death metal album of all time? There sure are some runners up. Morbid Angel's Covenant? Deicide's Deicide? Carcass' Necroticism: Descanting the Insalubrious? They're all fucking brilliant, but let's not forget Edge of Sanity's phenomenal, ground breaking, and completely bizarre third album, Spectral Sorrows from 1993. Not only does it have some of the heaviest riffs of all time, not only does it feature signature production work from the band's legendary vocalist/multi-instrumentalist/mastermind Dan Swano (also of Pan.Thy.Monium, Bloodbath, and a million other projects), and not only does it stand up as one of the least dated death metal albums ever. It can also claim to have killer prog moments and a dark wave/goth track ("Sacrificed"). Oh, also a triumphant cover of Manowar's galloping "Blood of My Enemies." This is Edge of Sanity before their famed single track 40+ minute long epic-journey opus Crimson (1996), and way before their rad Led Zeppelin-esque swan song Cryptic (which stands in opposition to the rest of their catalog as it does NOT feature Swano). If any of those points fail to sell you on this record, it's probably not for you. But if you're like us yet haven't heard it, then you're in for a treat. For fans of death metal, black metal, or any other conceivably heavy music, you absolutely need this. Best death metal record ever? Who can say. Probably biggest-death-metal-head-at-AQ Cameron's favorite. Honestly, no possible combination of superlatives could express exactly how vital this is. Necessary. Essential. Brutal. Recommended. Do yourself a favor...

MPEG stream: Livin Hell
MPEG stream: Waiting to Die

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

SORRY.

Here's another one to add to the list of stellar '60s/'70s Turkish psych-rock reissues, along with Erkin Koray, 3 Hur-el, and Mogollar! From '75 or '76, Edip Akbayram & Dostlar are very '70s indeed...it's much more of a severe collision between the trad. folk tunes and the Western electric rock than some of those groups. The very first track might throw you for a loop, but past that sappy, poppy number with its soft-rock strings and horns and tinkling piano, this record suddenly gets a whole lot rockier, heavier, and funkier. Imagine an Anatolian Pop score for some groovy car-chase flick...the schlocky, sizzling vintage '70s synths enhance the kitsch value and sound good amidst the traditional ethnic instrumention (arranged by one of the Mogollar guys). Edip and Dostlar dish out the hard rock and funk with a groovy bottom end, psych guitar riffage, Edip's powerful vocals and wah-wah augmented Turkish saz. With proggy weirdness like flute attacks and studio tape speed manipulation, this is some bad-ass 'exotica' for sure. Anyone addicted to the Middle Eastern psych rock scene-sound from back in the hazy day like we are will find this a fine addition to their collection. Includes 4 bonus tracks quite like the album cuts. Real cool.

MPEG stream: Arabam Kaldi Yolda
MPEG stream: Kolum Nerden Aldin Zinciri

This week brought us a gathering of sumptuous dark pop albums from around the globe which all fit together incredibly well! Sure to keep you completely soothed and enchanted: this Edison Woods album, Come Up For Air by the Norwegian trio known as The White Birch and Leaving Songs the soon-to-be-released solo album by Tindersticks' Stuart Staples (we got an advance listenin' copy, but rest assured it's comin' out June 6th). A hushed hurrah! The very welcome third Edison Woods full length has arrived hot off the presses and direct to us from the group in New York. We're pleased as punch to find that Ms Julia Frodahl and co. continue to craft immensely moving artful music, and this time they're joined by members of Antony & The Johnsons and Elysian Fields. The album is yet another treasure trove of ornate luminous beauties with each track glimmering out of the velvety darkness with a light all its own. Once again the ensemble's approach is very cinematic, but perhaps growing a bit more song-oriented than it was on past releases. Almost imperceptibly the pieces flow from barely-there utterly minimal passages to sweeping grand orchestrations. Additionally in comparison to their previous two fine albums (self-titled and Seven Principles Of Leave No Trace), Nest Of Machines' soaring highs and lulling lows seem even much more pronounced, but remain anchored to the heart by central force and lead vocalist Frodahl's silken voice and resonant piano accompaniment. So lush and haunting are the tones and hues that it's like being enveloped in a dream state wandering by candlelight inside a giant antique music box. Sure many artists' music gets likened to that of music boxes primarily for their delicate chime-iness, but few so fully embody the genuine wonder of those meticulously crafted, timeless inventions as Edison Woods does. Supremely beguiling.

MPEG stream: Baby Doll
MPEG stream: Nest Of Machines

Hurrah! Edison Woods, the Brooklyn-based aural/visual art assembly led by Ms Julia Frodahl, have crafted and set to flight their second tapestry of song. And they've garnered the assistance of some musical luminaries to realize their vision, namely Alan Weatherhead (engineer, producer and/or mult-instrumentalist for such groups as Sparklehorse, Cracker, and Trailer Bride) and Mark Van Hoen (producer, engineer and/or multi-instrumentalist for the likes of Locust, Mojave 3, and Seefeel). As well, guitarist Simon Raymonde (Cocteau Twins) steps in to guest on the final song. Whereas their debut cast a soothing, ephemeral atmosphere resembling diaphamous veils and glistening silks, this time the fabric, no less gorgeous, may be seen as being more akin to deep, jewel-hued velvets and sumptuous brocades weighted by painstakingly embroidered personal details. Ever so gracefully composed and arranged, all elements are much more present than previously so, bringing a sense of immediacy to the proceedings. This is particularly palpable in Frodahl's vocal performance. Formerly singing in a whispery murmur, here she expresses a greater range of character and raw emotion - often approaching the deeply heartbaring lilt of Chan Marshall. Need proof? Simply give the seventh song "Fiction" a listen, as well as the album's lengthy centerpiece "Was He A Poet". Wow! Indeed, the warmth and allure of Seven Principles Of Leave No Trace brings to mind not that of a comforting blanket, but rather of glowing embers of a dying flame. A haunting, burnished beauty. Once again, very recommended!

MPEG stream: Was He A Poet
MPEG stream: Fiction

[ aquarius records catalogue — E ]