[ aquarius records catalogue

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Showing results 901 through 950 of 1521.

Around these parts (Aquarius), 'post-rock' has become sort of a dirty word, synonymous with 'adult contemporary' or worse 'really bad jazz'. Yet a few gems have escaped the black hole that is Tortoise's all encompassing influence on the current state of indie rock, and done something interesting... Fridge's latest album "Eph" being one, and another being Fonn's "Field 831". Fonn's sonics do touch on the jazzy rhythmic elements of the Chicago scene, but employ the experimental spirit of Faust and bring a number of space rock guitar tricks to the realm of electronica, not unlike Bowery Electric.

Fonoda is a German post-rock quartet that leans heavily on the blissed-out precendents of that genre, with plenty of nods to Seam, Low, Mogwai, Slint, and other proponents of cinematic, melancholic intrumentals. Quite pleasant.

RealAudio clip: Analogie In Zm

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SORRY. One of Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth's very favorite artists, Brigitte Fontaine did a kind of acid-folk French pop thing (from the early 70s) that's just delicious. These are reissues.

Newly reissued by Superior Viaduct, Brigitte Fontaine's debut album from 1968 is a beautiful anomaly in the career of one of France's most groundbreaking artists. Produced by Jean-Claude Vannier, this is the closest Fontaine gets to a mainstream French pop record, even if it's hardly mainstream. Coy and alluring with a sultry mystery that gives the arrangements an artful sheen, Fontaine sounds like the best parts of Serge Gainsbourg, Francois Hardy and Nico combined. There are a couple of tracks that go into a goofy cabaret mode, but that was so indicative of the time, Fontaine could be forgiven for it. Especially considering the avant territory she would later explore with the Art Ensemble of Chicago and her longtime percussionist partner Areski on Comme a La Radio (also reissued on Superior Viaduct and reviewed elsewhere on this week's list). But for a fantastic French pop record with incredible production, this album comes highly recommended!!

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MPEG stream: Comme Rimbaud
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SORRY.

Attention les francophones!! If you've heard some of this new Brigitte Fontaine album, you may want to like it more than you actually find yourself doing so. If this is true, may we point you in the direction of Louise Forrestier? Please don't think we're simply generalizing when we say that stylistically there are many parallels between the music of Louise Forestier and Brigitte Fontaine. Much like that of chanteuse Fontaine, French Canadian actress/singer Forestier's music might initially strikes you as being fairly standard French Pop performed by seemingly straight-laced studio musicians, however listen closer / further to her Avec Enzymes album and you'll discover that's it's considerably more challenging and theatrical, at times drifting off into subtle eccentricities and some downright bizarre tangents. Quite campy but very cool. If you're a die-hard Fontaine fan, you'll find her musical companionship with Areski here once again crafting futurist french pop tunes detailing her street and neighborhood. -- Very nice.

Brigitte Fontaine may get filed next to yeh-yeh girls like Francoise Hardy and Chantal Goya, but the eclectic avant-folk records she has been making with the help of percussionist Areski Belkacem since the seventies take the pop seed and mutate it far beyond the reach of any other French chanteuse. She cut a record with Art Ensemble of Chicago in 1971, and is making amazing records to this day, as evidenced by last year's excellent "Kekeland," featuring collaborations with the likes of Sonic Youth in addition to Areski. This is a reissue of her self-titled album from 1972, and it moves through the sounds of gorgeous pychedelic folk, string and organ-backed polyphonic liturgical-style chants advocating power to the people, medieval prog stylings, bizarre poetics, spoken word, barnyard avant-jazz, and the odd bout of screaming or anti-capitalist rallying. Her seductive voice grounds a kind of dada futurism that emerges alongside the deft navigation of styles, a hallmark of her work. Brigitte Fontaine's brand of cerebral pop experimentalism puts her in a strata attained by few artists. What reference points I can dig up-- Art Ensemble (of course), the best Os Mutantes records, Yoko Ono as a French situationist-- don't really suffice to explain Briggitte Fontaine's haunting oeuvre. Let me just say that listening to this album makes me giddy with joy (seriously!), and comes highly recommended, as does the reissue of 1971's "L'incendie."

RealAudio clip: Brigitte
RealAudio clip: Marcelle
RealAudio clip: L'Eternal Retour

Issued once again on vinyl, it's great to see this beautiful record available once more. Released in 1974, L'Incendie is an amazing collection of avant-folk French pop songs. Not as difficult as some of her other recordings, the songs here are rather simple and short, with spare arrangements of guitar and percussion, with occasional electric guitars and other studio effects coming into play. Both Fontaine and Areski sing together and the blend of their voices work the best here than on other recordings they did together. Fans of Emmanuelle Parrenin, the recent Francoise Hardy cd we reviewed, La Question, or Nico's more pop-folk moments should definitely check this out!

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SORRY. An awesome, quirky slice of French hippy avant-pop with lots of ethno-electronic action. Allan's favorite of Fontaine's ouvre.

I somehow missed out on the first round of this reissue a little bit ago, but luckily for all of us, it's popped up again! This is an amazing collaboration between two totally incredible musical explorers, french chanteuse Brigitte Fontaine (with percussionist partner Areski) and avant-jazz greats Art Ensemble of Chicago, recorded during the Art Ensemble's stay in Paris in 1969. Though coming from very different backgrounds, each artist's idiosyncratic approach, commitment to experimentation, disregard for genre boundaries, and keen sense for improvisation and working collaboratively yields an album that pushes each performer to new heights. The blend of Fontaine's vocals, Areski's understated percussion, and the Art Ensemble's horns is really seamless, evoking the mysterious, intriguing sounds of lounge jazz in a dada cafe, or, well, an intellectual french chanteuse melding avant-folk with free jazz, which is exactly what it is. Brigitte Fontaine is becoming more and more cemented as one of my absolute favorite artists ever whith each reissue I get my hands on. So great, so recommended!

RealAudio clip: Comme � La Radio

Newly reissued by Superior Viaduct, this is an amazing collaboration between two totally incredible musical explorers, French chanteuse Brigitte Fontaine (with percussionist partner Areski) and avant-jazz greats Art Ensemble of Chicago, recorded during the Art Ensemble's stay in Paris in 1969. Though coming from very different backgrounds, each artist's idiosyncratic approach, commitment to experimentation, disregard for genre boundaries, and keen sense for improvisation and working collaboratively yields an album that pushes each performer to new heights. The blend of Fontaine's vocals, Areski's understated percussion, and the Art Ensemble's horns is really seamless, evoking the mysterious, intriguing sounds of lounge jazz in a dada cafe, or, well, an intellectual French chanteuse melding avant-folk with free jazz, which is exactly what it is. Brigitte Fontaine is becoming more and more cemented as one of our absolute favorite artists ever. So great, so recommended!

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We do declare this "Tortoiselab". Second album from these ex-Jessamine boys. Faux-krautrock groove/ambience.

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Fontanelle is the band comprised of ex-Jessamine folks attempting to evoke the wide open spaciousness of 1970s electric Miles Davis, such as "In a Silent Way" or "Get Up With It". But, no matter how much they may love jazz, face it, this is merely instrumental post rock with mighty pretensions. A disappointment.

As we all know since the last Foo Fighters' album Dave Grohl has kept himself knee-deep in high profile projects -- drumming for Queens Of The Stone Age, Tenacious D, and Killing Joke as well as his own 'metal' collaborative monstrosity Probot. He's certainly contributed much to the other bands he's played with and they in turn have left their influential marks on him. Unlike the likes of Keith Moon or Bill Ward, few drummers these days have honed their own distinct personal sound. Grohl is an exception. His drumming and songwriting both have an unmistakable Grohl-ness. This is apparent right from the lead-off track of In Your Honor. That song (which is also the title track) sure sounds like he nicked a few useful cues from the awesome force that is Killing Joke and encorporated them into the Foo Fighters realm. It introduces a much more unforgiving pummel to their already thoroughly punchy sound. In Your Honor has a loud/heavy disc and a quieter/gentler one -- embodying the two sides of Grohl. Where both sides of Grohl stumble a bit this time out however is in the lyric department. He's pulled out some serious cliche rhymes. But for fans who want some big catchy glossy rock (and maybe some more moody subdued mellow glossy rock to go along with it) this will probably hit the spot!

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Sounds like Mr. Grohl's been hangin' out with Queens Of The Stone Age... oh, he has. Seriously though, if you dug the most recent QOTSA album "Song For The Deaf" (which we did), this newest Foo Fighters record will probably also tickle your fancy. While not as 'weird' as the Queens, the Foo Fighters here mine similar territory, playing melodic and poppy hard rock, even flirting with full on metal (but never quite going all the way). This is definitely their heaviest, "grungiest" (!) album yet, again quite like QOTSA -- though the Foos' own trademark heartbreaking pop smarts shine through as well. We've loved Grohl & Company's previous albums too, and if there's a band you're gonna have to hear on the radio and in the mall and on the plane, might as well be an ass kicking rock and roll band like the Foo Fighters and not Celine Dion or O-Town! Recommended. (The copies we've got right now come with a limited bonus DVD disc with a video & live footage, dunno how long these will last though).

RealAudio clip: All My Life
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We love the Foo Fighters... but this acoustic record blows.

4th album from Norweigan avant-fusioneers, 2nd for Rune G.

We liked the other Food discs, but this one's just a bit to wanky fusiony whatever for us, sorry.

Norway's Rune Grammofon label has become one of those imprints whose releases we ALWAYS have to pay attention to -- and not just 'cause of the lovely packaging courtesy artist/designer Kim Hiorthoy in which they are invariably resplendent, but because they are often quite excellent. As is this one, Food's "Veggie" (housed in, of course, a handsome Hiorthoy digipack). Apparently it's the third album from this experimental jazz group. The other two, unheard by us, were live recordings, but with "Veggie" Food move into the studio, and not just any: the "Audio Virus Lab" of Norwegian sound artist Deathprod. In the context of Helge "Deathprod" Sten's electronics-infused production, this becomes something rather other than normal "jazz". It's experimental indeed. Led by British saxophonist Iain Ballamy, the Food quartet also features Supersilent's Arve Henriksen on trumpet, Mats Eilertsen on acoustic and electric basses, and Thomas Stronen on drums (and most of 'em are also credited with "sampler", so it's not just Deathprod doing the electronicky stuff). If you count Mr. Deathprod, who is also a Supersilent member (and who actually gets a whole track here, "Nofood", all to himself), this band is 2/5ths Supersilent, and boy, do we love Supersilent -- they're our favorite Norwegian "death-jazz" improv n' electronics group. So already we were anticipating good things from "Veggie", and you don't have to listen for very long to encounter echoes of Arve Henriksen's breathy solo album "Sakuteiki", the glacial drones of Supersilent's "5", and the electronic chaos of Supersilent's "1-3" as well. Bubbling underneath with electro-acoustic beats and drones, this is spacey, lyrical, melodic, 21st century jazz, establishing a range of moods from a mellow Miles Davis trumpet at sunset looking over a North Sea fjord kind of thing to more abrasive, paranoid glitching and shrieking experience... Really nice. Good, and good for you.

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Another bad ass chunk of pounding post punk math rock heaviness from Virginia. We raved about Tigershark a while back, some seriously chugging riffery, then The Catalyst more recently, who knocked us on our asses with their weird post hardcore stoner grunge screamo (we still have a few of those left, check elsewhere on the aQ site), not sure if Food are related, but they might as well be, they're heavy as fuck, and offer up a similarly supercharged post punk, but while The Catalyst and Tigershark both channeled AmRep (The Catalyst mixing in plenty of Sub Pop), Food take that sound even farther, with their super thick distorted fuzzed out guitars, pounding caveman drums and thick ropy bass, they weave a pretty thick, almost dirgey at times, post punky metallic garage rock stomp, but it's the vocals that seal the deal, a wild feral howl, falling right between Rick Froberg of Drive Like Jehu / Hot Snakes and Mudhoney's Mark Arm, plenty of vitriol and swagger, and a paint peeling yowl that perfectly compliments Food, chug and churn. Dense loping grooves give way to stripped down tribal workouts, give way to complex mathy jams, which give way to seriously murky, dirge-y, almost Brainbombs-ish sludge, slathered with plenty of squealing Eyehategod style feedback, and all locked into pounding metallic repetition. Some seriously killer garage-y metallic post punk for sure. Incredible packaging, eye popping cover art, all recycled materials, heavy printed insert, and pressed on INSANELY thick vinyl. And probably pretty limited too.

DJ Food's trip hop ironies appear not so tongue in cheek now, as if the jokes once required within the hip hop tricknological breaks to be a Ninja Tune record aren't a part of the matured DJ Food. Filmic scores of sweeping strings, stand-up basslines, and so-downtempo-you-gotta-be-stoned breaks. In spite of the seductive spoken poetry of Ken Nordine, there's an atmosphere of sadness that pervades the moody theatricality of this album. Nice.

Another reissue of heavy psychedelic weirdness from early '70s Japan, in the same series as the Flied Egg and Flower Travellin' Band discs we've listed lately. Food Brain features the Hammond organ excess of Hiro Yanagida and the acid fried guitar of Shinki Chen (names you might know from other outfits like Speed, Glue and Shinki, Love Live Life +1, April Fool, and solo too). As well, Hiro Tsunoda (the Jacks, Strawberry Path, Flied Egg) is on drums, and Luis Kabe (Golden Cups) on bass. Together on this, their only album (1970), they cook up a progressive, confusionally avant-garde feast of bluesy riffage, freeform improv, drug-addled humor, and hippie rawk heaviosity. There's plenty of raw jamming, the sort of stuff these guys would probably have loved to bring to the ballrooms of San Francisco... but amidst and among, there's lots of weirder moments too, more at home in the krautrock realm perhaps. For instance, the brief track five, "The Conflict Of The Hippo And The Pig", what sounds like a guy maniacally playing a straw. Or the entirety of the epic quarter-hour 8th track, "The Hole In A Sausage", which features a horn-grunting free jazz freakout in collision with a near-metallic distorted bass riff on a famous classical symphonic theme.

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These oddly monikered psychedelic electro kraut synth wranglers return, after the super awesome Mango Sunrise record we reviewed a little while back, which was equal parts classic Klaus Schulze, synth-kraut worshippers and aQ faves Bitchin Bajas, and of course John Carpenter and Goblin. But on this new 12"s FP take those sounds and focus more on their dancier side, still weaving lush tapestries of layered synths, and electro skitter, which were definitely all over Mango Sunrise, but here that sort of retro cinematic futurism is given a dancefloor makeover, the end result being a sound closer to, say, Majeure than Zombi, that sort of Italo-disco style soundtrackery, fused to Food Pyramid's undeniable krautrock leanings. The opener, had the beat been removed, would be a pulsating groover, but with the house-y beat, and the reverb drenched megaphone vox, this sounds like some weirdo dance party, noisy, a little post punky, but most definitely groovy, funky and tranced out. The second track adds a whole mess of murk, positioning the sound more toward the James Ferraro side of the sonic spectrum, a sort of old VHS tape vibe, but then when the thick buzzing synth comes in, it could almost be Daft Punk or something, albeit a much more raw and underground version. The flipside offers up two similar jams, the first a super driving groove, with super distorted, crumblingly distorted guitars over what almost sounds like a calypso beat fused to a house music pound, again, sans beats, this would be some blissed out ultra distorted guitarnoise psychedelia, so imagine that sort of sound anchored by a churning looped groove. The closer is more sparse and skeletal, cheesy eighties synth pads over blurry synth drifts, the background almost sounding like ABC or Spandau Ballet, but then female vocals drift in, and the song becomes a glimmering late night downtempo driftscape, that sounds like a more post punk 4AD given a modern krautdrone synth wave makeover, the whole thing hazy and gauzy and dreamily druggy. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Housed in a cool, full color DJ style 12" sleeve, and includes a digital download as well.

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Ecstasy And Refreshment is the latest from these psychedelic new age kraut worshippers and might just be their weirdest yet. It's sonically all over the map, although you might not immediately realize that from the openng track, all swooshy and washed out, airy vocals drifting over pulsing minimal krautock, sorta like Can crossed with Stereolab, but then the second track immediately mixes things up, a little more cold wave, all icy electronics, and steely female spoken vox over a sort of electro new wave vamp, laced with swirly FX and synth throb, still managing to be sort of shimmery and psychedelic but definitely something we haven't really heard from these guys before. And from there on out, while the record does dip occasionally back into swirly krauty psych, it spends much of it's time way more far out. Like the spaced, slowed down, tribal electro jam that sound like an even more psychedelic Omar Souleyman (!), echo drenched vocals wrapped in tons of FX and swirling swath of thick billowing synths, and then things get even more African sounding, like we're suddenly listening to one of those Saharan Cellphone comps, groovy, and propulsive, before the sonic gears shift again, and suddenly the vibe is almost disco-y, total dancefloor throb, and yet, still peppered with some noisy crunch, and glorious cascades of dubbed out FX. Finally, the band slip back into more tripped out krautrocking motorik shimmer, but this time with sultry witchy vocals that end up making it sound like it something that would be right at home on the Italians Do It Better label, before getting even more blurry and dreamy, super blissed out and ethereal toward as we near the end of the record, returning to the washed out kraut-age of the opener, but instead of ending like that, they toss in one more sonic curveball, with a closer that gets a bit funky, adding a deep bassline, some more chantlike vocals, that again remind us a little of Omar Souleyman, as well as some trippy FX and some turntable squiggles, all in all a heaping dose of serious slinky grooviness transforming what would otherwise have been a dark dubbed out swirl into a woozy groovy electro-dub slow-jam. Cool!

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Mango Sunrise is the latest release from these Minneapolis electronic psychedelic kraut-inspired-rockers, and the first release of theirs we've gotten in sufficient numbers to review/list, and we're guessing lots of you will dig these guys as much as we do, cuz FP's sound is definitely the sort of thing we can't seem to get enough of, heady and hypnotic, sun dappled and mesmeric, reminding us quite a bit of another aQ fave, the Cave offshoot Bitchin Bajas. Like BB, Food Pyramid, approach their psych jams with a kind of wide eyed innocence that seems to come through in the sounds. The pulsating synths, the cascading melodies, the lush landscapes, it's the sort of kraut influenced mesmer that also reminds us of another long time aQ fave, Stereolab, the same sort of dreamy repetition, so easy to get lost and carried away, but Food Pyramid seem to position themselves more alongside folks like Tangerine Dream, but this is not straight up krautrock worship at all, these guys definitely have their own thing going on, just check out "Orange Alert", which sounds like some bastard offshoot of witch house, that is minus the tripped out psychedelic guitar and the SAX, sounds weird, but somehow it works. Then there's "Oh Mercy", which is a serious slab of cheesy eighties style synthfunk, touching on the whole Goblin/Carpenter axis, but way more concerned with booty shaking than mood making, and there's the strange sampled vocal too. The rest of the record unwinds in a similarly unpredictable manner, from dubbed out weirdly psychedelic almost reggae, to blissed out ur-drone psychnoise, and from Muslimgauze like Eastern tinged synth soaked groove, to blown out super distorted synthbuzz electro skitter, and then there's the closer, a sprawling field of in-the-red kosmische ur-drone swirl and shimmer, that is totally dreamy and blissful and the sort of track we find ourselves playing over and over and over.

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We dug the most recent Food Pyramid record, Mango Sunrise, a fantastic collection of psych kraut synth wave weirdness that we couldn't stop listening to. So we were super excited for this, a collaboration with the oddly monikered Roy Orb D.MT., not sure who, or what that is, but he/they make a good match for Food Pyramid, this collaboration even more blissed out and ethereal than the FP record proper. The opener sounds like a warped, lysergic reinterpretation of Vangelis' Chariots Of Fire, with swirling, soaring washed out ethereal melodies, that distinctive 'ch-ch-ch-ch' dubbed out drum skitter, the whole thing laced with eighties style drum fills, squiggly melodies, and crunchy squelchy synth swirls. The follow up is another sprawl of soft shimmery synth swirl, but here wedded to a programmed beat, which grows more and more propulsive as the track progresses, eventually the track transforming completely into an awesomely cheesy chunk of eighties VHS chase scene / credit sequence synthscapery, replete with shredding guitar leads, and pulsing Carpenter like synths. The rest of the record sonically splits the difference, from the electro pop via psychedelic hypno-rock of "Summit Expedition", to the buzzy, noisy, dubby kosmische skitter of "Sandstorm", to the prismatic planetarium, synth bliss out of "Passage Rites", to the low slung electro-funk pop synth swirl of closer "Corealis". LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!

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It's been a longtime since we've heard from DJ Food, and the funkjaztikally tricknological lingusitics of DJ Food have certainly been missed. Working on one track with the seductive baritone spoken word of Ken "Colors" Nordine, DJ Food lays down four tracks of slippery noirish trip hop that would make Barry Adamson proud.

'U.K. co-conspirators Jonathan Moore and Matt Black record under a variety of names, including Hedfunk, Coldcut, Hex, and their more widely known moniker, DJ Food. A Recipe For Disaster is a collection of tracks--some old, some new--incorporating everything from lazy, ambient hip-hop to smoking R&B/funk to blazing, hyperkinetic jungle. Headz who've peeped the pair's past releases on the Funkjazztical Tricknology compilation and the handful of releases on their own Ninja Tune and Ntone labels will be pleased to know that the relentless experimenters have not rested on the laurels of their early successes (which include everything from the legendary "7 Minutes Of Madness" remix of Eric B. & Rakim's "Paid In Full" to cuts for Lisa Stansfield and Yaz, to full-length club gear such as Coldcut's Philosophy LP) ... Recipe is among Black and Moore's most listenable efforts to date, repaying repeated listening with a good mix of body and mind--sex music for the booksmart.' --Sean Cooper

Yay! With all the drama of DJ Shadow's seminal early single "What Does Your Soul Look Like", DJ Food's new EP on the always-dependable Ninjatune label is a 16-minute masterpiece of tension, buildup, and release. But where Shadow uses hip hop as a template with which to venture outwards, DJ Food beautifully manhandles post-rock. (And thank god, seeing how post-rock's been behaving badly lately.) This is the record Tortoise should've made. Filled with sounds of glass -- rims being rubbed, sustained chimes, etc. -- the record begins with four minutes of atmospheric minimalism that sounds like you're in deep silent outer space... and then Mr. Spock radios in (really) with some deep words and you realize you ARE in deep space. With a swoosh of broken glass, the drums kick in, brightly echoing layers of active breakbeats John McEntire probably has wet dreams over. The album concludes serenely with warm glass chimes. It's so lovely, a wonderfully refreshing surprise. Highly recommended.

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Eight songs of '70s influenced (everything from krautrock to Budgie) progressive, psychedelic "stoner rock" from this new Spanish band. A bit odd, as they mix a lot of things together: Middle Eastern atmospheres, soft Pink Floydish mellowness, and raging hard

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

SORRY. Eagerly-awaited new release from this Chicago ex-Slint combo (John Herndon, Brad Wood, Brian McMahon, etc.). 6 dark, tense, quiet tracks of gorgeous foreboding for the depressed.

Slint may arguably be the most important, influential indie rock band of the last two decades, their album Spiderland, still one of the best selling records�on Touch And Go, is almost directly responsible for about a million math rock bands to come after. And rightfully so. Their sound was delicate and dark, intense and ultra personal, super dramatic and incredibly evocative. Dynamic and simply incredible. From the angular bombast of their debut Tweez, to the epic song cycle that is Spiderland, their swan song, the band had few peers, and those records, still, to this day, are pretty tough to beat.� Weird then, that post Slint ensemble The For Carnation (which also happened to include several folks who would go on to form Tortoise) seemed to sort of slip under the radar, releasing two eps, then calling it a day. But for those who heard them, Fight Songs and Marshmallows, those records were nearly as important as the Slint records that came before. When we first discovered that half of Slint were in a new band, that did sort of sound like Slint, we were thrilled, and when we finally heard Fight Songs, we were blown away, it WAS like Slint, but even darker, and quieter, less dynamic, and more brooding, but just as persona and intense. Now both of those eps have been compiled on a single disc, and sound as good as ever.� Opening with "Grace Beneath The Pines", the band drift, barely moving through a vast expanse of simple muted minor key chords, and hushed vocals, like the quietest part from some unreleased Slint track, stretched out into a whole song, with only one or two dynamic swells, with much more time spent just sort of hovering, and shimmering, lots of silence, and plenty of strange distant low end rumbles and whirs. The melody bittersweet, and so subtly catchy. The next track, "How I Beat The Devil" is about as rocking as they ever got, a brief minute and a half of minor key math rocking, instrumental, a sort of almost surfy riff, over a convoluted rhythm and some wild guitar squalls, before the band settles back down into the lazy loping shuffle that is "Get And Stay Get March", a super hypnotic riff, repeated over and over, simple sing song lyrics, incredibly mesmerizing, a sort of math rock drone, slowcore stretched out into a late night slow motion drone jam.� The second ep, Marshmallows, continues on the same trajectory as Fight Songs, brooding, minimal, sort of sun dappled and sing songy, a dark slow motion post rock crawl, creepy yet pretty, haunting and dreamy. The stand out track on Marshmallows is "I Wear The Gold", a weird almost This Heat style rhythm jam, based around a looped bass riff, and some super intricate drumming, the whole thing smeared into a seemingly endless hypnotic groove. The rest of the record is a dark whispery shuffle, the vocals hushed and tip toeing across, delicate landscapes of thrum and skitter, until the final track "Preparing To Receive You", another sort of krautrockish hypnorock jam, with a super spare mathy drum line, a looped repetitive riff, with super subtle shifts and variations, the sort of song you could imagine stretching out to 15, 20, even 30 minutes, but for those nearly nine minutes, it's absolute minimal mathy slow motion drone rock bliss.�

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

SORRY. Brian McMahon is becoming the indie-rock equal to Leonard Cohen - cool, measured, suave, and theatrical in his abbreviated deeply whispered delivery. In his first record in 4 years (due in part to spending over two years recording this album in six different studios), McMahan and the For Carnation still pack all the wallop of his former band Slint, but with much more grace and subtley. This was rumored to be the For Carnations 'soul' record, but don't expect Afghan Whigs style indie rock white boy soul. Sure this record has soul, but it's way more like the For Carnation's trip hop record. You can hear Massive Attack and Portishead and Mo Wax in their sound as much, if not more than Slint or any other indie rock references. Though the structures remain firmly rooted in rock, what was probably one of the most anticipated indie *rock* records of late, turns out to be a beautiful, dark and langorous accidental trip hop record. Nice

For Stars have done it again -- improved on that which came before. Their third album unfolds gradually, both expanding on and refining the already wonderful lush pop melacholia of their last full length We Are All Beautiful People. Their mellowness is sounding at times a little more 'shoegazer' than 'slowcore' this time out. On each of the eight songs, they take a contemplative pace as if that's all they can muster under the weight of their collective heart's burdens, and they don't hesitate to add a dissonant tone here and there effectively building tension and atmosphere. Their soaring, lilting multi-part vocals and textural flourishes are in many ways very post-Radiohead's OK Computer, and Flaming Lips' Soft Bulletin. As well, the seventh song also brought to mind a more elaborate Guided By Voices, but they're by no means simple soundalikes. Their well-crafted achingly lovely songs glow in their own right.

MPEG stream: I Should Have Told You
MPEG stream: If It Falls Apart

Wow. For Stars have always been a pretty cool band, playing a quietly melancholic brand of sadcore that pleases fans of Low and Nick Drake, etc. But on this third album their sound appears to have matured exponentially, developing into a newer better creature. Their songs now have a hushed majesty to them, with hookier (yet still minor key) melodies, and more dynamics, a lot

RealAudio clip: Wires
RealAudio clip: The Astronaut Song
RealAudio clip: Only Star

Honestly, the moment I heard the first few strains of the opening track of this album, I was transported back many a year to my childhood. Summer days spent listening to the radio, strains of Carly Simon or Bread. Not a bad thing... no, this album nudges you into bittersweet reminiscence with its slowly creeping, lonely melodies. Local slowcore, for fans of Smog and Palace; recommended.

Released in 1956, Forbidden Planet was MGM's attempt to bring the science fiction genre into the main stream by pouring tons of cash into its production. Nominated for an academy award for special effects and featuring a robot cast member, Forbidden Planet was about as futuristic as one could get in the mid fifties. So it only followed that the score for such a lavish, futuristic science fiction film should be on par with Robby The Robot and the rest of the show. Louis and Bebe Barron were just a couple of upstarts in the burgeoning field of electronic music. As it happens, the score for Forbidden Planet is often touted as the very first to use no orchestral instruments. Indeed nothing but electronically synthesized sounds and tape manipulation are used, period. Knowing that the original working title for the film was actually "Fatal Planet" makes sense when one listens to the soundtrack sans film. The series of dark bellows, squeals, bleeps and farts that are the textural aural landscape of Forbidden Planet are as creepy at times as any horror film soundtrack or any release by Barron-contemporary Vladimir Ussachevsky. It was most certainly unlike anything any Hollywood film had ever used for a soundtrack and listening to it today, it remains a truly strange and wonderful anomaly in film music history. Highly recommended.

RealAudio clip: Main Titles - Overture
RealAudio clip: Ancient Krell Music
RealAudio clip: Battle With Invisible Monster

Bay Area improv dude and Rastascan label owner Gino Robair (drums, "materials") teams up with AQ-fave Bjoern Eichstaedt (keys, voice) and fellow Germans Pit Schmidt (sax, tapes) and Thomas Maos (guitar, "mts modulation" whatever that is) for this live

RealAudio clip: Track 2

Another oddball obscurity from UK horror movie soundtrack vinyl reissue Death Waltz, this one the 1982 cult sci-fi / horror 'classic', Forbidden World, aka Mutant, which like many Roger Corman films, was a rip off of a more popular film, in this case, Alien, and like most Corman rip-offs, it was grittier, shittier, and featured a lot more nudity. In fact, our memory of this movie from our childhood, is that it was maybe best known for the infamous lesbian shower scene! Even so, it did when some awards, and did achieve a kind of cult status, in part for the score, which is pretty weird by most movie music standards, in that it was made by composer Susan Justin, who was the singer/keyboardist in an arty new wave band called Pink Plastic, and the soundtrack to Forbidden World is essentially weird sci-fi new wave, the sound vaguely John Carpenter-ish, but mostly piano and synths, over simple funky drumming, with echo heavy wordless female vocals, the sound at times spaced out and kosmische, at others, almost like futuristic porn music, and at others like super haunting, and almost a little Radiophonic Workshop sounding. The slower tracks, burble and percolate, the sounds softly swirling and ominous, haunting synthscapes peppered with strange sound effects, and slow shifting textures, while other track pulse ominously, and others explode into full on groovy psychedelic new wave. Oh and the plot? Well, some spacemen devise an experimental lifeform, meant to feed the whole galaxy, but something goes wrong, and that lifeform gestates and becomes something that is later discovered to be borne of human DNA, and said lifeform infuses its victims with some of that mutated DNA strain, which makes them melt and get all gloriously gooey and gory, and become the perfect food for the titular insectoid mutant. God bless Roger Corman! Like all the Death Waltz releases, the packaging is SUPER deluxe. The vinyl is pressed on heavy, milky clear vinyl, the sleeve is an oversized casebound tip-on sleeve, with super striking new artwork (shower scene!), that artwork also reproduced on an oversized full color poster, inside a booklet, with liner notes from the composer, the director, and the artist, as well as reproductions of the original movie posters, and rare photos of Susan Justin recording the score in the studio. And as usual, these are super limited, and thus will be gone sooner rather than later, so don't blow it, and nab one before they're gone!

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

SORRY. Hyper fast, blazing growling death-grind/fast core from members of Hellchild. This record takes the fury of Hellchild, and ups the rpm. Essential.

The second album from Providence Rhode Island art darlings Forcefield (the band who knits sweaters that they sell in art galleries for thousands of dollars, apparently, and who also performed at the Whitney Biennial!) is the second Bulb release we've noticed after the Mind Flayer album bearing a logo saying "Bulb Underworld" and a crude drawing of a twenty-sided die. Allan's D&D senses are tingling. Thus the following conversation in our office... Allan: Hey this new Forcefield is a pretty cool, textural electronic noise record! It sounds like angry rats, squeaky balloons and exploding synths. Very listenable though. Wasn't their other album a herky jerky arty rock punk kinda thing though? Andee: Yeah, I think so. Allan: Well, I like this album. Andee: Uh, I think the world's seen enough noise records... Allan: But this one's called Lord Of The Rings Modulator!! MPEG Download: "track 2" [/audio/forcefieldlord2.mp3]

MPEG stream: track 2

Yes, the Lopatin in this duo is in fact Daniel Lopatin of Oneohtrix Point Never fame - and Joel Ford was his partner in Games. For whatever reason, the duo have dropped the Games moniker, but they are still producing their earnestly reverential homage to '80s trashy electronic pop. This is the second of four singles, not sure what happened to the first one, as we never got that, but no matter as this one has all of the trappings of a Harold Faltermeyer production circa 1984 (you know "Axel F" from Beverly Hills Cop, or the score to Fletch). "Emergency Room" is all cocaine and legwarmers in its mid-tempo electro-funk groove built on sampled slap-basslines, vapid-but-catchy blorping melodies, vocoder vocals (augmented with modern day auto-tuning, mind you), and even an over the top LA rocker guitar solo thrown in for no real reason other than Harold Faltermeyer would have had an LA rocker at his disposal. The two B sides are from The Bug, who strips the song down to a slow motion crawl with lots of dubby atmospheres and little remaining but the vocals, and Gavin Russom, whose remix is a bubbly number that smoothes out many of the '80s references into a tumbling left-field techno number. Pressed as a picture disc with X-rays of spine and hands. Limited to 300 copies.

[ aquarius records catalogue — F ]