[ aquarius records catalogue

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

Showing results 951 through 1000 of 1521.

Channel Pressure is a record that seems wholly devoid of irony, even though everything indicates that it should be dripping with it. Daniel Lopatin is the mastermind behind the polygon electronica of Oneohtrix Point Never, and together with Joel Ford, he recorded one hell of an electro-pop single as Games that could have been lifted from any club circa 1986. That sense of time travel is still being dialed in for Channel Pressure (authored by Ford + Lopatin, who have dropped the Games moniker for something more in keeping with Stock, Aiken, and Waterman, although their sound is firmly American). This album is completely unashamed of its mid-'80s electro-pop aesthetic, with many of the boyband falsetto vocals popping out of the slick, urban-pop productions like ghost-jams of forgotten MTV wannabes of that time period. The spry electronic rhythms and bent-synth melodies become all the more ridiculous with the hair-metal guitar solos that spring to life for no good reason other than because they could. Ford + Lopatin even managed to convince Mexican Summer to spring for them to record in Jan Hammer's studio. Yeah, the same Jan Hammer who scored the Miami Vice theme song! Where Oneohtrix Point Never expresses some dripping emotions through the mainframe of sci-fi computing, Channel Pressure has its head buried in a pile of cocaine, imagining itself as a sci-fi lovestory with robots and super-computer, but comes across more as a pretty straight homage to the production styles of Nile Rodgers and Harold Faltermeyer. A new New Jack Swing awaits.

MPEG stream: Emergency Room
MPEG stream: Joey Rogers
MPEG stream: Break Inside

We've sad it before and we'll say it again. We love Maria Forde. She can draw anything. Famous directors, zombies, vegetables, and eventually, she's gonna draw all of us! You'll be able to see all the various AQ folks rendered in Maria's inimitable style. But until then, you can count down the days with this bad ass Maria Forde calendar. A Cautionary Calendar About Junk Food you can hang on your wall, small enough to keep in your bag or even your pocket, and packed with awesome drawings. And it's not just the drawings, it's the subject matter. Just like her various series of directors, actors, her choices are unlikely but so so perfect. So here we have a year's worth of images, legends and misfires of the junk food world: the inventor of Dubble Bubble (originally called Blibber Blubber!), Hostess cupcakes, Frosted Flakes, Lik-M-Aid, the man who invented the process of freezing McDonalds French fries, and helped create Cheez Wiz, the inventor of sliced bread, Baby Ruth bars, one of the possible inventors of the TV dinner, the inventor of Mountain Dew, Gene Hackman as Willy Wonka and more!!! We're having a snack attack already!

You may remember us pimping our pal Maria Forde's artshow a list or two back, featuring sketches of veggies and things. And if you live in the neighborhood, you for sure have seen her bad ass drawings and paintings of various classic movie stars and starlets, as well as some wicked zombie drawings, which have found their way onto shirts and buttons. We're even discussing having here do a series of AQ employees and AQ favorite records!! She also even painted a portrait of our very own Andee which you can see on the very out of date staff page on the AQ website. We've had random bits of here art here in the store over the years, she's still quite partial to the zine, and heres are always amazing, super detailed, ultra personal, intimate and funny, fun to read and packed with awesome drawings and weird shapes and ideas. Read This To Get Your Enjoys is the latest from Forde and her merry band of like minded collaborators, various writers and artists. Packed with stories, and drawings, comics, photos, with gorgeous colored pencil full color front and back, inside and out covers, the front even has a little pocket with a stick of gum for you to chew on while you curl up and dig in. The back cover has a little pocket too, that one has a little tiny mini zine in there, to check out once you've worked your way through. We'd tell you more, but you should just buy it, and discover all the special hidden things inside for yourself. Limited to only 50 copies, each signed and hand numbered, and a total STEAL at only four bucks...

One of our favorite local artists returns with volume two of her Read This To Get Your Enjoys zine. The first one was a huge hit around here (we still have a few left, just ask), killer art, funny stories, even a piece of gum! Local folks might know Maria Forde from her drawings of movie stars and directors that have graced walls, shirts and buttons, across the street at video shop Lost Weekend, her art an impossible blend of playful childlike wonder, super technical focus, and poignant whimsy for sure. This time around, for number two, everything is a little bit bigger and better. Full color covers, inside and out, lots of contributors, an extra full color mini-zine insert, and even a cd-r mix tape. And just like mixtapes, we never get tired of zines, super personal and intimate, cleverly laid out, creatively designed, sometimes super sleek and smooth, other times more scribbly and lo-fi, found letters, photos, doodles, elaborate illustrations, it's easy to tell from looking at Read This... that Maria and her crew love the form and are helping it to thrive and flourish. We could describe each piece and part, but it's sort of pointless, if you're into zines, and cool art, and like us don't get nearly enough small press bliss, pick this up. Funny, weird, sad, melancholy, goofy, playful, earnest, heartfelt, beautifully drawn, and lovingly assembled. Plus a bad ass disc, in a little pocket inside the back cover, filled with killer hip hop from one of the zine's contributors, part of his answer to the question posed to him as to why he makes hip hop. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a song must be worth a million. Just like the first issue, WAY recommended.

A couple years ago, San Francisco minimal-wave / shoegaze outfit Foreign Cinema handed us a 4 song ep - Non-Synchronous Sound - which quickly became a staff favorite around here, with its wintery atmospherics wrapped around sublime songs that reminded us of The Cure (circa Faith / Seventeen Seconds), Slowdive, and Crystal Stilts. With just four songs, we did keep on wondering (sometimes aloud to the band when they dropped off more and more copies of Non-Synchronous Sound), when a full album would come out. While we're totally stoked that the band has finished a full album, we're still somewhat scratching our heads why Foreign Cinema hasn't caught the attention of somebody like Sacred Bones, Captured Tracks, or hell 4AD for that matter. Yeah, they really are that good! Anyway as for Monochromatic, the spatiousness and spectral songs which we loved so much on Non-Synchronous Sounds continue here. The songs all have a complexity that along with those earlier references seem to meld the artful tumble of Wire with the post-rock dynamics of Bark Psychosis. Rolling basslines that slide out of noir-tinged melodies into a low-slung, darkened dub countering the synth and drum machines, all given a good old Martin Hannett style production. The spindly guitars of Dave Han leap out of the songs with a simple, graceful sadness to match his distantly mixed, minor key vocals. For all of the referecnes to darkened atmospheric pop, Foreign Cinema conjure a sound that is pretty much all their own. We'll be ballyhooing this one as much as we did the earlier ep, until they sell out of the 300 copies they pressed up for the lp, which also comes with a cd-r of the entire album.

MPEG stream: Airport
MPEG stream: Palace Of Fine Junk
MPEG stream: Vampire Empire

You can probably imagine that we get lots of bands sending and dropping off their cd's for us to check out. As painstaking and time consuming as it can be, we really do try to listen to every single thing that ends up in our hands, even though it sometimes takes us forever to do so. But damn we've been reminded why all that listening is worth while, as buried deep in a stack of cd's to check out from months ago laid this absolute shoegaze gem from a local San Francisco duo who deserve to get some major attention with this stunning ep. Reminding us in equal parts of Slowdive and The Cure circa Faith, these are songs to get lost to, bathing the listener in a perfect seductive daze. We've got to say we've become big fans of ep's as of late, a format that requires the musician make the most of every single moment, as the four songs/twenty minutes of music on Non-Synchronous Sound are all absolutely hypnotic and satisfying. Reminding us of the heyday of Sara records or a more shoegazey Pains of Being Pure At Heart joining forces with a less rock minded and more blissed out Crystal Stilts. Slumberland, Matador, 4AD, Captured Tracks, if we were your A&R reps we would be begging you to sign this duo, as this is a band who deserves to get their music out to a way wider audience. Totally stunning!

MPEG stream: Ice Machine
MPEG stream: Arbitrary Map Mode
MPEG stream: Lovers And Killers

Foreign Cinema's debut ep was a huge hit around here, about a year ago when we finally realized it had been sitting in a box of cds to check out for way to long, we put it on and were totally blown away. In fact it's become one of those cds that pretty much gets played in the store every week at some point. It's just so perfect in its shoegaze, daydream perfection. They seem to be taking their time crafting a proper first full length (The Soft Moon were equally wise in releasing a handful of 7"s before their first album). These two new songs show there's plenty of wonderful, dark and breezy shoegaze pop to come from this awesome duo in the near future (we hope). We gotta give them extra props for naming the A side "Palace Of Fine Junk" after our favorite random junk/thrift store in the Tenderloin. In fact listening to Foreign Cinema is a lot like taking a dazed and hazy late afternoon walk through this city. "Velvet Sky" may be on the B side, but damn if it's not one of the most seductive and sensual slow burners of the year! Beautifully packaged, hand stamped, and limited. So grab one while you can.

Subtitled: "beats to rock while bike-stealin'." ...Hey don't steal my bike!

MPEG stream: Proto
MPEG stream: Joy Powder

Now available on vinyl. Packaged in a super deluxe woodcut looking chip board sleeve! This record is so Aquarius it almost feels like they made it just for us. And you of course! Taking all sorts of crazy stuff that we love and stuffing it all into a single band. Ostensibly, Forensics are a metal band, a really heavy, metal band. But their peculiar brand of metal includes, extended hypnotic bass-heavy post rock work outs, dreamy dark ambience, full on fuzzed out stoner rawk (think Boris' Heavy Rocks), crushing minimal sludge and mathy spazz rock. But somehow it all fits together perfectly. Like Neurosis, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Codeine, Bastro, Dazzling Killmen and Old Man Gloom all got together to jam, and this is what came out. Super dramatic and epic, lengthy super repetitive jams that give way to squalls of metallic fury that then give away to creeping minor key slowcore. Chaotic bursts of grinding spastic metal bookended by Slint-ish hypnorock. Huge blackened slabs of glacial riffage that decay into pulsing minimal krautrock. A massive, crushingly heavy, emotionally compelling cinematic soundscape. I swear if I was a film maker I would be getting bands like this to score my films for sure. Features members of Burning Airlines, Corn On Macabre, Pg.99, Trial By Fire, and Waiffle.

MPEG stream: Sidewinder Passage
MPEG stream: Did You See What God Just Did To Us, Man?
MPEG stream: Circling Bloody Animal Tracks

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

SORRY. Attention doomsters! Doom metal alert! From Poland, one of the doomiest of all doom magazines we've ever seen. Interviews with and articles about Esoteric, Mournful Congregation, Spiritus Mortis, Swallow The Sun, Pantheist, My Shameful, Runemagick, Nadja, Until Death Overtakes Me and loads more! The best thing about this is that there's lots of cd-r and demo reviews of bands even we have never heard of, but now have to try and track down. Thankfully this 'zine also comes with a double cd-r (packaged in a DVD style case) with tracks from Moss, Skepticism, Swallow The Sun, Mournful Congregation, Mirror Of Deception, Unsilence, Dark Embrace, Chamber Of Sorrows, Cambian Dawn, Centurions Ghost, Nadja, Dysperium, Enoch, Forever Autumn, Stone Wings, The Gates Of Slumber, Tefra, Until Death Overtakes Me, Souls Entwined, Solicide, and Troglodyte Dawn (great name!).

Yes, buzzing black metal fiends, there IS another cd from Russia's Forest that we hadn't yet reviewed, so here it is at last. The poetically-titled As A Song In The Harvest Of Grief was Forest's fourth and final album, recorded in 1999 but reissued on cd more recently. At this point in their history, the band had made themselves masters of raw, primitive black metal done the ye olde Nordic way, carrying on the black-burning torch of Darkthrone and Burzum, whilst sometimes allowing their own experimental and improvisatory tendencies to surface amidst the fuzz-drone. This album is no deviation from the Forest path. Opening track "Into The Mouth Of Breath" (?) sounds like a swarm of bees interpreting some minor-key piece of classical music. Then the ceaseless pounding of drums and throat-torn terror begins, each track a distorted and monotonous (in a good way, mind you -- this is black metal) lament, with melodic lines to stab the heart, the tempo of the drums quickening even as the overall mood of the music becomes almost static, dismal. Sheer trance agony fuelled by fuzz, gorgeous fuzz. And, as always with Forest's cds, it's not over 'til it's over: there's a bonus track! For fans of Darkthrone, Weakling, Eikenskaden, etc. And by the way, we really like how Forest's rather coniferous logo has been sort of incorporated into the treeline depicted on the cover, silhouetted beneath a giant blood-red moon and fantastical northern lights.

MPEG stream: Into The Mouth Of Breath
MPEG stream: As A Song In The Harvest Of Grief

Not to be confused with the *other* band called Forest also being reviewed this list, here we have one of several recent reissues by the entity that we usually refer to as the black metal Forest, who hail from Russia. You may recall us praising this Forest's self-titled album a couple of years ago, likening it to a blend of the primitive Darkthrone/Burzum/Weakling style of black metal and the Jewelled Antler psych-improv-folk-drone aesthetic. Foredooming The Hope For Eternity dates from 1998 and it's certainly also a trance-inducing Darkthroneathon. Not exceptionally original, but exceptionally good for the genre. Raspy screams, buzzing guitars, drums beating a constant, almost static thwap-thwap-thwap. Forest's minor key laments make a virtue of monotony. I love it at low volumes, as a purely background drone...or, playing it loud, it becomes an all-encompassing sonic cocoon. And that would be good enough to sate our raw, old-school black metal needs. But, being Forest, there's more... two lengthy unlisted tracks at the end of the disc which contribute something a little different to the proceedings. The first is a sort of an extension of the last listed track, with the drums receeding in the mix, revealing a beautifully majestic strummy drone, sounding not unlike Earth gone black metal! That's followed by another ten minute bonus track that adds moaning, wordless vocal chant. "Ah-aaah..." So very epic, and almost Swans-ish, looping more distortion and folkiness. Definitely an interesting, effective band within (and sometimes without) the confines of the tradition to which they aspire. (And too let us praise the beautiful cover painting -- oh those purples! -- though there's no need for the excess border-graphics.)

MPEG stream: Unfinished Song Of These Woods
MPEG stream: The Bolverk Spirit
MPEG stream: bonus track #1

A release we've had before, but not for a while, 'cause it's been hard to get -- but recently Allan & several of his friends really really got into Forest, so he managed to track down and order a bunch (though, probably not enough...). This double cd contains Forest's entire output -- two albums, one from 1969 and one from 1970 -- and should definitely be of interest to anyone into that whole '60s British folk-psych vibe. Y'know, if you liked the Tony, Caro & John or Fairport Convention reissues we've recently listed, or dig that excellent current interpreter of the genre, P.G. Six. Forest were a trio of hippie musicians (Martin, Dez, and Adrian) from the town of Walesby in Lincolnshire. All three of 'em are responsible for the quite excellent male vocals that help make these albums the amazing lost treasures they are, along with their strong songwriting, and their adept and varied instrumental backing (mostly acoustic, with guitars, harmonium, mandolin, pipes, cello, electric harpsichord, organ, percussion, etc.). Their vocal harmonies recall the folkish stuff on those great early Wishbone Ash albums. Their songs and lyrics are rural, pastoral, lovely -- with titles like "A Glade Somewhere", "Rain Is On My Balcony", "Bluebell Dance", "Lovemaker's Ways" -- and darker too ("The Midnight Hanging Of A Runaway Serf", "Famine Song", "Graveyard"). But, while 'folky,' this is by no means trad folk; they are down with prog rock moves that remind us as much of Pink Floyd as the Incredible String Band. They can be sunshiney and twee a la Tyrannosaurus Rex, but also have a pagan, dark aspect as we said, coming pretty close to Comus territory at times (with the song "Fading Light", for one). Yep, 'folky' but not folk -- the ruined castles and fairy folk that inhabit the forests and fields of Forest's world exist, shadow-like, in the present day (well, Forest's England of thirty years ago), so it's not surprising when a song like "Hawk The Hawker" has kind of a Lou Reed/VU vibe, for instance. Their music is informed by the ancient British ballads, but you can tell that Martin, Dez, and Adrian were three young long hairs sleeping in a van, no matter how idyllic their songs sometimes sound. This double cd reissue includes John Peel's original liner notes from the first album -- they're quite silly, but accurate at least in his closing comment "It would be nice for the Forest if you purchased these results of their lives and labours -- but nicer still for you." Definitely one of those "this is SO good why didn't these guys get famous??!" listens.

RealAudio clip: A Glade Somewhere
RealAudio clip: Fading Light
RealAudio clip: Gypsy Girl & Rambleaway
RealAudio clip: Graveyard

Cult...Russian...black...metal. That's the real raw, primitive, Darkthroned stuff y'know. For/by persons who really *believe*. Forest you may recall is the black metal band whose mastery of the fuzz-filled Norse black metal style and weird forest-dark ambient atmospheres have caused us to draw comparisons to such strange bedfellows as Burzum and Avarus. Ok, mostly they're along the lines of Mayhem or Burzum (not a bad thing) but sometimes they'll venture into areas that sound more like the Swans or a Jewelled Antler band or something, more folky or droney than expected. Their second album Like A Blaze Above The Ashes (released on cassette circa 1997, and on cd only recently) falls chronologically between their 1996 self-titled recording and 1998's Foredooming The Hope For Eternity that we reviewed a few lists back. And like those discs it provides both blasting buzzing attacks and more atmospheric vistas. The centerpiece to this four song, 44'33" album is the nearly 17 minute epic of distortion and majesty, "To The Fiercest Frost". But we're also much taken with album closer "Obscurity", a wordlessly chanted Viking lament that trudges for twelve minutes through a misty vale of near-acoustic melody and sadness.

MPEG stream: By The Roar Of Hammers Call
MPEG stream: Obscurity

Ok, this is a black metal band, but non-metallers into the improv-drone sounds of the Jewelled Antler collective, Richard Youngs/Simon Wickham-Smith and the like should keep reading! Not to be confused with the other Forest we've raved about (the psychedelic British folk band from thirty years ago), *this* Forest is a Russian black metal outfit, and a pretty good one belonging to the raw, primitive, corpse-painted end of the genre. The first four tracks on here consist of blasting, frozen Darkthrone worship, keeping alive the cult spirit that so few bands today still possess -- maybe because those tracks were actually recorded in 1996. Malevolent, majestic pagan metal full of Burzumic mayhem. Fans of this vein of true, trancey black metal darkness will be pleased. And if that was all that was on this disc we'd think it was cool. But then comes the fifth and final track, a surprise twenty-minute opus called "Winter Howl" taken from a 1994 rehearsal tape. Suddenly Forest isn't so obviously black metal at all, they've entered a psych-drone realm that's more akin to the aforementioned Jewelled Antler stuff (Thuja, The Birdtree, etc) or Taj Mahal Travellers or Reynols or Amon Duul's krautrock jams, still as forest-y and primitive as the preceding metal songs though. A wavering whispy wordless vocal winds over a bed of lost, primal percussion and haunting washes of mild feedback. Simple melody lines on guitar wander through the increasing haze, with deeper vocals providing additional layers of drone. If you really heard this in a forest you'd be mesmerized and scared, but it's really nice and pretty (in a damaged way) when heard at home...pretty to us anyway, dunno if Kaldrad and Dagorath meant it to be so! The vocals, until they get a little more metal-ly, totally remind us of the bliss-out singing by British folk experimentalist Richard Youngs or Jewelled Antler's pop soul Jason Honea. If Finnish avant-forest-folk folks like Avarus and Kemialliset Ystavat or the Jewelled Antler collective decided to make black metal, this is what's we'd imagine it would sound like! (Actually, there IS an upcoming black metal-inspired release from Jewelled Antler, a 3" cd-r by a group they call Tomes, but Tomes takes an even more subtle approach than "Winter Howl"...look for that here at AQ soon!) Meanwhile, on the black metal side, fans of Mistigo Varggoth Darkestra, Caacrinolas, Potentiam, and other weird ones should dig this track, along with Forest's other more typical black metal sounds. Recommended.

RealAudio clip: Enburnst The Christians
RealAudio clip: Winter Howl

Apparently, this UK duo, Ben Moon and Richard Sides, aka Forest Creature, have dabbled in all manner of noisemaking in their brief existence, creating huge crushing walls of speaker shredding brutality, or super glitched out psychedelic beat heavy crunch, or howling, live, drum driven psychnoise freakouts, and while traces of those sounds are still present, we have to say, we're pretty partial to the twisted noise captured here, a seeming distillation of those disparate sounds, into something much more refined and focused, perhaps equally varied sonically, but somehow still strangely cohesive, and epic 'song' suite, due in no small part to the editing and sequencing as the actual music making itself. The label drops names like Black Dice, Fuck Buttons, Animal Collective, Autechre, and those all do pretty much apply, but to our ears, there seems to be much more to Forest Creature than just aping their influences, we hear the ominous cinematic synthiness of Goblin, the intense late night noir buzz of recent aQ faves D.A., the murky swirl and shimmery out-of-time new age-y drift of the recent crop of pop hypnogogists, but here, those influences, as well as a handful of purloined sounds, are all reimagined, reinterpreted and all tangled up into constantly squirming and unraveling soundscapes, that skitter from almost kraut-like mesmer, to nineties style IDM, to looped woozy minimal synth wave, to gorgeous haunting murky heroin house, but no matter what the sound, or where the songs seem to be headed, Forest Creature mold all those elements into something truly original, lush, and deep, and dark, sometime super chaotic and hyper rhythmic, other times hushed and ominous. "Edit 4" begins as a foreboding minimal slow burning drone, but eventually builds to a warped synth loop, that gets more and more crunchy and buzz, the low end billowing out like a black cloud, the effects eating away at the original loop, super intense and totally mesmerizing. "Edit 5" is all rumbling low end whir, a distant beat, buried way down in the murk, looped and skittery, hovers below a black ambience that seems to swirl and shimmer in slow motion. "Edit 3" might be the prettiest of the bunch, beginning with a skeletal high end looped rhythm, which is soon joined by some warm warbly synths way off in the distance, the rhythm remains steady, but that low end grows thicker, and buzzier, creating thick warm slabs of chordal hum, playing out a gorgeous melancholy slowcore melody, a haunting depressive slow pop crawl, run through with that skeletal skitter, until both the buzz and the beat, begin to crumble, and intensify, until the song is transformed into a noise drenched psychedelic swirl. So awesome. And a little bit surprising coming from Blackest Rainbow, whose past releases have tended more toward groups like Jazzfinger, Barn Owl, Bong, Starving Weirdos and the like. Frustrated Analogue is some fantastically twisted, blissed out, synth heavy electronic psychedelia, repetitive, hypnotic, spaced out, warped and glitchy, drone-y and rhythmic, moody and mysterious, a dizzying melding of This Heat, Goblin, John Carpenter, old Warp Records 12"s, early Chain Reaction, modern synthdrone, early analogue synth music, and the groups we mentioned up top (Fuck Buttons, Black Dice, Animal Collective, etc.). Way way recommended. Easily one of our new favorites...

MPEG stream: Edit 1
MPEG stream: Edit 2
MPEG stream: Edit 3

Just found a few of these stashed in our closet! A 2010 release by this quite effective Hungarian ambient black metal act. Nominally an ep, but it's over 40 minutes long, containing five tracks of plodding, atmospheric metal, that definitely sounds wintery and ritualistic as per the title. This disc is truly a slow, cold creepy crawl, with so much grim buzz fuzz to it. The head-noddingly, near-dubby echoing intro to opening track "The Symbol" sets the tone. Other crucial elements here are the eerie keyboard coloration, and rasping almost-an-instrument-itself-in-the-abstract vokills. Also, the rhythmic base of Burzumic, Filosofem style electronic beats, most prominent on the penultimate track "I Feel The Claws Of Darkness". That one's followed by a chill-out, come-down track, fittingly titled "Silence" though it's not in fact, just mellow and quiet and mesmeric, with some whispered vocals and echoing guitar. Glad we finally located and listened to these! We just have a couple copies we found, not sure if we'll be able to get more...

MPEG stream: The Symbol
MPEG stream: Winter Ritual

It was only a matter of time. If Forest Swords hadn't done it, someone definitely would have, but hard to imagine it could have sounded as good as this. DRONESTEP. That's what they call it. A fusion of dark post-rock ambient drone music and skittery spaced out dubstep. Warm languid guitars, brooding atmospheres, and laid back downtempo grooves. In the wrong hands it definitely could have been lame, but Forest Swords nailed it, the result so organic and warm and mesmerizing, odds are the last thing you'll be thinking about is what to call it. Instead you can just sit back, and let these lush droned out grooves carry you off. Had this not been on Olde English Spelling Bee, it certainly wouldn't have been out of place on some upstart dubstep 12" label, it definitely has the same sort of lugubrious soporific feel as Burial or Kode9, murky, washed out, muted, muddy and bass heavy, but instead of being sample based, guitars unwind, spidery melodies all tangled up in clouds of hazy reverb, vocals drift in and out all spectral and ethereal, in fact if anything, it's like some awesome, nineties slowcore jam, Codeine, or Seam, or someone like that, remixed by Portishead, transformed into a different kind of slowcore, a bleak, moonlit, forest dancefloor slowcore, everything bathed in dark blues and soft blacks, smokey and gauzy, the beats skeletal and minimal, the guitars chiming, glistening and glimmering, the bass, rumbling and throbbing, a rib cage rattling hum, samples woven into the mix, but doused in effects, so vocals becomes little swirling clouds of truncated melody, and melodies drift heavenward like wisps of grey smoke. Every track here is a smoldering late night blur, a bleary ear-ed slither and skitter through some soft focus soundscape, dreamlike and hypnotic. Gorgeously dark, otherworldly, warmly mysterious, and darn close to being our favorite new record this year... Comes with a download coupon as well...

We made the first record from Forest Swords, Dagger Paths, a Record of The Week, way back in 2010. And like we said in that review, how could we not? Music that was originally described to us as "drone-step", and did in fact live up to that descriptor. That record definitely had a Burial / Kode9 vibe, and since then groups like oOoOO and Vessel have definitely channeled some of the same sound, but Dagger Paths sounded like outsider dubstep, created in a vacuum, and home recorded, the sounds raw and rough around the edges, as if someone who had never heard dubstep, and had been raised on experimental 4 trackery and abstract minimal noise music, figured 'what the heck? I'll give it a try.' So it was, lots of guitars, blurred into droning swaths, lots of reverb and hazy vocals, huge bass rumbles and murky beats, everything spectral and ethereal, sorta Codeine crossed with Portishead. So we were definitely taken aback a little by the new record, which at first blush, is way more polished, and lush, and high fidelity, and as much as we try not to be like THOSE people, who don't want bands to change, and just want the band to make the same record we love already over and over, it was hard to not miss the grit and the grime of the old record. But honestly, that knee jerk reaction lasted all of about 30 seconds, cuz holy shit, the new sound is equally awesome, woozy, and dark, and druggy, and lush, and layered, the beats hypnotic, the whole sound mesmerizingly tripped out, guitars are still in the mix, but they're more deftly woven into the sound, so they sound almost like orchestral swells, the vocals too, here garbled and distorted, becoming yet another part of the bigger picture, that picture being the sort of murky tarpit slo-mo soul we can't seem to get enough of. And yeah, if you already love Burial, oOoOO, Vessel, the most recent Haxan Cloak, Holy Other, etc., we're guessing a few seconds of the first sound sample below and you'll be sold BIG TIME. Everything we loved about that first record is still present, but just a bit more polished and recontextualized, the vibe is still a sort of darkly psychedelic electronic slow-core, the sonic palette is much expanded though, giving the songs here a seriously prismatic sprawl, total wasted, zoner, late night come down chill out club jamz, with occasional forays into slightly more upbeat climes, a little jungle-y skitter here, a bit of dubsteppy throb there, dub looms large everywhere, in the liquid basslines, in the reverbed and echo drenched beats, and fear not, it's still occasionally weird as fuck, with songs splintering into chaotic drifts, or crumbling into warped noise, twisted samples and Morricone-esque guitar twang, all before lumbering back into another fantastically tranced out stuttery, skittery, electro-dub drone-soul lope. So good!

MPEG stream: Ljoss
MPEG stream: Thor's Stone
MPEG stream: Irby Tremor
MPEG stream: Onward

Here's one of several Unidisc Music reissues that aren't necessarily new, but are new to us here at AQ, and we've found them to be quite intriguing and enjoyable listens. Avec Enzymes was originally released back in 1970. Now, on the language side of things, unfortunately we're not multilingual to the point of being able to tell the difference between Quebecois-French and France-French (although we wish we were!), so please don't think we're simply generalizing when we say that stylistically there are many parallels between the francophone 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 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. I mean, just check out the album's title! A little odd, doncha think? She didn't stick to any one genre either, dabbling in rock, folk, pop and even rock opera! So campy and cool!

MPEG stream: California
MPEG stream: Tzagadou

We've said it many times before, but the best album discoveries are the ones that come totally out of nowhere. Forests came to us on a tip from a friend, a Taiwanese band with little in the way of press or internet presence, and one minute into the first track we heard and we were hooked. Think "Mix Up" era Cabaret Voltaire but with the a drummer that falls somewhere between the skeletal pulse of Disappears and the repurposed junk-drumming of Einsturzende Neubauten. A lysergic swirl of strange, effects-laden synths and electronics, dark, brooding post-punk bass lines, hypnotic rhythms, and monotone vocals, all with a kind of outsider approach that makes you wonder if they've even heard the bands they sound like. Quite a welcome departure from their previous incarnation as a more Sebadoh/Pavement style indie rock band, we must say. Weird, awesome, and highly recommended! (We got these direct from the band in Taiwan, so if/when we run out, we will get more but it might take a little while, just fyi.)

MPEG stream: Monolith
MPEG stream: Pale Fire
MPEG stream: This Era

***Jawbreaker alert!!!**** Man we haven't been able to utter those words in a long while, and as you might know by now all things Jawbreaker related strike our interest right away as they were really one of our favorite bands from the '90s. After they called it quits lead man Blake Schwarzenbach emerged with a new band called Jets To Brazil whose debut still holds as one of the best moments of that whole emo sound, a sound that would become big business for so many others in years to follow. With his new band Forgetters, he's joined by former Against Me! drummer Kevin Mahon as well as unknown to us bassist Caroline Paquita. The sound of Forgetters is much more urgent and punkish then Jets To Brazil, in fact it recalls early Jawbreaker in such pleasing ways. Scharzenbach's vocals are as impassioned and honest sounding as ever and his lyrics continue to be so poignant and poetic. Four great songs sure to please fans of Jawbreaker, as it's totally hitting the spot for us! Comes with a coupon for a digital download of all the tracks.

Another entry in this label's ongoing series of obscure, old school metal demo reissues, this one from San Jose's Forgotten Disciple. An appropriate name for 'em - pretty much forgotten they are, no surprise really, as their only studio recording, a 4 song ep done in 1990, never was even released, and the band actually only ever played one live show in the course of their short career! But, not ENTIRELY forgotten, 'cause now that ep has at last been issued on this disc, along with four more live-in-the-studio bonus tracks circa 1991. Forgotten Disciple featured former and/or future members of various other cult Bay Area metal bands of the late '80s, early '90s era like Rellik, Hellhound and Rapid Fire. It's not exactly typical "Bay Area Thrash", though, Forgotten Disciple's melodic speed metal sound having more to do with Maiden than Metallica. Vocal-wise, you've got a dramatic shrieker here, with a bit of Dickinson and Halford to his pipes. Some cuts can get a bit overwrought (though that too, can be entertaining), but at their best, on ripping songs like "Flesh Weapons" and "Last Train To Heaven", Forgotten Disciple sure show some teeth. Delvers into forgotten metal lore, who are unafraid of some especially, uh, 'thespian' sounding speed metal with a touch of power balladry, just may be inclined to flick your bics at these guys.

MPEG stream: Flesh Weapons
MPEG stream: Skulls

Finally issue number two of Forgotten Path, one of the very few metal mags going that's focussed almost exclusively on the grim, the kvlt and the obskure. This long in the works issue features a handful of faves, as well as a whole mess of new-to-us groups that will no doubt require further investigation. 1349, Abigor, Skyforger, Angantyrm, Besatt, Blood Stained Dusk, Chthonic from Taiwan, Impiety, Hekel, Berserk, Fearbringer, should be enough for most metalheads, but then there's Pagan Heritage, Har Shatan, Paroxysmal Descent, Black Messiah, Argus Megere, Argharus, Niroth, Linvsnekad, Elhaz, Hellbox, Bloodthirst, Krater, Thygrim and more! Super thick, glossy cover, tons of reviews too (300+ of shows, records, festivals) and of course as with all things grim and kvlt, it's LIMITED, each copy hand numbered!

Sure there are plenty of metal magazines, Terrorizer, Decibel, Metal Maniacs, etc. But there are very few that focus on the true grim kvlt underground. Oaken Throne obviously, and now Forgotten Path, from Lithuania, which has both of its cloven hooves planted firmly South of Heaven. In this first issue, there are interviews with AQ faves Woodtemple, Finnish legends Horna, the slightly more mainstream Agalloch, as well as way more obscure groups like: Absonus Noctis, Imperium Dekadenz, Nae' Bliss, Mordhell Stutthof, Nocturnal Depression, as well as a bunch of bands we had never heard of including Forest Of Fog, Andaja, Aaskereia, Godless Cruelty, Nebular Mystic. In addition to all that, tons of demo reviews, album reviews, loads of killer photos, the whole thing nicely laid out, on thick glossy paper, slightly oversized we've had issue one for a while now, and we're still working our way through it. And as with all magazines like this, you know they're on to something, when we already have a list of new bands and records to track down. Can't wait for issue two!

It's raining Ormolycka releases this week! One of our favorite tape labels has sent us a massive box of tapes, restocking a bunch of old favorites that we can barely keep in stock they sell out so fast, and FIVE new releases, including this one, a mysterious outfit called Forgotten Pathways, the cover looking very metal, and the sound inside, well not metal, but still very 'metal'. A sprawling chunk of weird ambient synthscapery, medieval and moody, with swirling soaring synths, dark and dramatic, and primitive programmed drum machines, stumbling and lurching, warped and warbly, and plenty ominous, rife with bursts of thunder, and super creepy raspy whispered vox, and the occasional blast of twisted drum chaos, which sounds like suddenly multiple drumlines started playing on the drum machine. The sound ends up somewhere between Mortiis, creepy carnival music, Ukrainian medieval ambient soundscaper Dark Ages, weirdo local outsider genius Fastest and aQ faves and tUMULt recording artist Varghkoghargasmal. Sounds like a fucked combo and it is, but that's precisely what makes this so good. And so fantastically twisted. Fans of that whole weirdo synthguitar/outsider metal axis that we've raved about over the years (Shevelreq, Xynfonica, Gluttony, Thursar), will probably consider this essential, as might fans of primitive doom duo Trollmann Av Ildtoppberg and Lovecraftian ritualists Ungl'Unl'Rrlh'Chchch. Needless to say, on the Ormolycka whatthefuck scale, this definitely ranks way up there, and considering some of the warped genius craziness they put out, that's saying something for sure. WAY recommended.

MPEG stream: Darkened In Caverns Deep

Found just a few of these lurking in our closet, that we hadn't listed, though they've been here since 2007. It's this mournful but rockin' Italian band's most recent release, though, and if you're looking for some sheer blackened doomic metal this disc is still quite potent. 58 minutes, 5 songs of dark depressiveness that quite befits the name Forgotten Tomb, their songwriting taking a variety of twists and turns along the way. Sounding like a black n' roll Katatonia at the start, they then experiment with some more avant-garde Slint-y bits on other tracks, and also allow vocalist "Herr Morbid" to switch between the wretched raspings typical of black metal to a clean vocal style for some of these songs. Fans of Lifelover could do well to check this out, it's in a similar vein, perhaps deliberately so.

MPEG stream: Negative Megalomania
MPEG stream: Blood And Concrete

Originally purveyors of grim depressive blackness, their sound abject and hateful and suicidal, this Italian horde has gradually been moving toward a sound more melodic, and by extension more accessible, and on Under Saturn Retrograde, they seem to have moved about as far away from that early blackness as possible before becoming an altogether different band. Folks who don't dig melody or poppiness in black metal, will have no doubt given up on these guys a long time ago, but for the rest of us, this stuff is pretty great, the sound is thick, and heavy, a little bit gothic, seriously poppy, think Khold, Katatonia, Lifelover, Alcest, the band occasionally dipping into some buzzing blackness, but for the most part, crafting hooky blackened epics, the vocals still harsh and hellish, the riffs still gnarled and minor key, but all wound into sprawling depressive buzz drenched black pop jams, which lope along for the most part, but do occasionally explode into furious blasts or stutter through weirdly dynamic mathy arrangements. The title track is split into two movements, the first about as grim as it gets here, epic and intense, blasting and black, but then the second part is all acoustic guitar, martial snare, and a final burst over super melodic guitar harmonies, soaring and majestic. "You Can't Kill Who's Already Dead" sounds like the perfect fusing of Lifelover and Katatonia, while "Spectres Over Venice", is a killer pop flecked bit of churning blackened heaviness, before finishing off with some pure heavy pop, all super epic chords, tangled guitar harmonies and soaring clean vocals, a weird finish, to a record that while poppy is still pretty black metal, but not nearly as weird as FT's fairly straight forward, slightly blackened version of the Stooges' "I Wanna Be Your Dog", which sounds pretty great actually, the guitars a little bit more blackened and minor key, the vokills appropriately harsh, some wild frenzied drumming, but otherwise pretty true to the original. We dig this a LOT, but can definitely understand how old fans would be disappointed, but anyone into the above mentioned bands, should definitely check this out.

MPEG stream: Reject Existence
MPEG stream: Shutter
MPEG stream: Downlift

Oh how we love the mighty Forgotten Woods, supreme Norwegian black metal weirdos! Their new record, Race Of Cain, reviewed recently, was a mind blower, and their three cd collection of older stuff is an all time AQ best seller. For those of you vinyl freaks who have been holding off, well you are finally in luck, Forgotten Woods'�As The Wolves Gather, their 1994 full length, and disc one in the�Baklengs Mot Stupet triple cd set, has finally been reissued as an lp! It's super limited of course, we got a handful but they won't last long. Here's a slightly altered version of our review of�As The Wolves Gather from the triple cd set: So...what's the big deal you ask, why are these Forgotten Woods so unforgettable? Well, first off, and at first listen, this will definitely appeal to the whole raw, old-school, Nordic forest black metal necrocrowd. Really good grim stuff in the unholy spirit of classic Darkthrone and Burzum, but with that extra kinda inept, Benighted Leamsish fuckedupedness to it that of course makes us love it all the more. And, additionally and importantly, there's also always a strange, unexpected sort of poppiness underlying everything. As a friend (who also likes this band, and is a member of Thuja, the Blithe Sons, Buried Civilizations, the Skygreen Leopards and a bunch of other Jewelled Antler acts) put it, "man it's good...completely inept, like they're barely pulling it off, total 13-year-old-metal-kid-in-the-basement drums." A classic, but a 'damaged' outsider BM classic as far as we're concerned, this is definitely raw and necro and kvlt and grim, buzzing and black, but it also struggles and stumbles, is blown out, lo-fi and weird as fuck. As with all Forgotten Woods, WAY recommended.��

MPEG stream: Eclipsed

Never thought we'd be able to list this. Everytime we got it in, it would go too quickly, just flying out the door by word of mouth we guess. Clearly this '90s Norwegian black metal band has a cult following! Then we thought that this triple cd box had gone out of print. But thankfully No Colours just pressed up some more, and we think we scored enough copies to dare list it, even though the label may be out of it already. So...what's the big deal you ask, why are these Forgotten Woods so unforgettable? Well, first off, and at first listen, this will definitely appeal to the whole raw, old-school, Nordic forest black metal necrocrowd. Really good grim stuff in the unholy spirit of classic Darkthrone and Burzum, but with that extra kinda inept, Benighted Leamsish fuckedupedness to it that of course makes us love it all the more. And, additionally and importantly, there's also always a strange, unexpected sort of poppiness underlying everything, despite song titles like "Grip Of Frost" and "Dimension Of The Blackest Dark". As a friend (who also likes this band, and is a member of Thuja, the Blithe Sons, Buried Civilizations, the Skygreen Leopards and a bunch of other Jewelled Antler acts) put it, "man it's good...completely inept, like they're barely pulling it off, total 13-year-old-metal-kid-in-the-basement drums." That by itself would be enough to explain this band's appeal. But our sensibilities here at AQ are further stoked by the fact that the more you delve into these discs, the more you find yourself wondering just what the hell you're listening to...as Forgotten Woods mysteriously morphs by the third cd into something that sounds like jazz-inflected, naive indie-rock mopery, with clean jangly guitars that starts to sound like Felt or The Church or even Maher Shalal Hash Baz! Other tracks seem to echo The Cure, all slow and post-punkish... what a weird band! We can only wonder at what they thought they were doing, and wonder even more so at why they're so accepted by the grim black metal underground. So, even though this is a $25 import triple-disc set, it's the kind of black metal (like Benighted Leams, Xasthur, Lugubrum, Leviathan, Abruptum, Meads of Asphodel, Ved Buens Ende, and Sigh for example) that we have to recommend to all of our customers who are into (not-necessarily metal) weirdness. And in case you're wondering, this does collect the entirety of Forgotten Woods' output (three albums, plus one recorded under the name Joyless) from the years indicated in the title...

MPEG stream: Eclipsed
MPEG stream: With Swans I'll Share My Thirst

For a band we had thought at one point to be dead and buried, Norway's legendary black metal weirdos Forgotten Woods have been pretty high profile lately, with an unexpected (and unexpectedly amazing) new album, a bunch of reissues, the ever popular 3cd box set�Baklengs Mot Stupet, and now this, the first time on cd for both FW's 1993 demos, the self titled Forgotten Woods and the follow up Through The Woods, both primo slabs of ultra grim and kvlt lo fidelity buzz.� It's easy to see, even in the early stages of the band, that they were one seriously cracked bunch, the sound not just lo-fi, but damaged and bizarre, the riffing is simple and old school, but super low in the mix, with the crashing thrashing pounding drums way more prominent, but not nearly as much as the croaked blackened growls, the strange Gollum-like growls, some seriously harsh and alien vocals, perfectly suited to the crumbling blackness in the background. Going from stumbling chaotic buzz, to lurching doomy pound, Forgotten Woods conjure up some seriously fucked up and freaked out black atmospheres... The self titled demo is the more brittle of the two, all high end hiss and soul shearing buzz, whereas Through The Woods ups the production values just a bit, and the sound is definitely heavier, but also murkier and muddier, which again suits their skewed vision. Also things seem to get way weirder (if that were even possible), hinting once again at the bizarre blackened beast they were soon to become, with angular atonal melodies, damaged off kilter leads and even weirder vocals, from shrieks to shouts, all tangled up into dense black squalls of sound.

MPEG stream: Winterly Battle Over Northland
MPEG stream: Inside The Witches Cave

We've long been obsessed with black metal weirdos Forgotten Woods. The three cd retrospective Baklengs Mot Stupet 1992-1996 has been a constant AQ bestseller, and for good reason. It's completely brilliant and baffling... read the review of that set and listen to the sound samples and if you don't already have it, think very seriously about remedying that situation. Well, as much as we love those old FW records, we always assumed the band was dead and gone, but out of the blue, came this brand new record, and if anything, it's even more damaged, fucked up, and impossibly brilliant than ever. Straight out of the gate, opening with a grinding distorted intro with damaged heavily affected spoken word samples, the band then launches into a super freaky lo-fi blackened, almost new wave sounding jam, an old school grungy riff, simple practice space drumming, with the vocals WAY up in the mix, growling and rasping, surrounded by streaks of damaged off kilter guitar freakout, and a super creepy repeated minor key guitar motif over the top, a weird sort of warped angular horror movie lick, repeated over and over, so intense and so completely bizarre. The next track finds the band in furious blackened blast mode, but even here, the mix renders the song a damaged blast of chaos, with the drums way too far up in the mix, stumbling and crashing all over the place, the fills like drums being hurled down a flight of stairs, the guitar, which began as a black buzz, begins to become more and more unhinged, gradually growing more angular and off kilter, warping into some sort of Greg Ginn black (metal) flag damage before slipping into the next song, a loping midtempo eighties metal style dirge, that halfway through not only suddenly changes tempo, but also changes recording quality, almost like someone just flipped a switch, or some other band just barged in and took over... Elsewhere the band settles into weird dirgey drift, with demented and damaged crooning, like Circle Of Ouroborus or Dead Reptile Shrine, some Burzum like keyboards, and lots of thrashing buzzing blackness. The strangest song by far (although it's all relative) is "The Principle And The Whip", a drifting minor key almost-ballad, with lilting folk guitars and dreamy wispy female vocals, that had the folkies around here perking up their ears asking what we were listening to? Complete with a Comus-y coda, all tribal hand drums, and urgent strumming. Actually, that song we just said was the weirdest, well, maybe we were a bit premature, cuz the last track, "Third Eye (New Creature)", a 12 minute whatthefuck of epic proportions pretty much knocked that one well out of the running. The first few minutes are pounding blackness, peppered with mournful minor key guitars and more of those growled demonic vocals, a sort of Brainbombs meets Turbonegro meets Darkthrone, when all of a sudden, the music drifts off leaving just a recording of a disturbing excerpt from a radio show (taken from TalkBack with Bob Larson), some strange discourse between a Christian and a virulent anti-Christian, with the two touching on lots of random weirdness, throwing Christians to the lions, Hitler, the Holocaust, history written in blood, fascism, homelessness, crack cocaine, AIDS, teenage pregnancies, Heaven, Hell... when all of a sudden, after like 10 minutes of this interview, the band lurch back into action, finishing off with a groovy garage-y fuzzed out Stooges-y stomp, with the lyric "Sieg Heil" repeated several times (which got them in a lot of trouble, for obvious reasons), presumably in response to the preceding interview... Woah.... like we said, baffling and brilliant... But not like we should be surprised that these guys are still capable of such far out-ness, after all they are responsible for some of favorite, fucked up and freaked out indie-rock-jangle-meets-stumbling-free-folk-meets-grim-black-buzz... well, actually come to think of it, calling it our 'favorite' is a little misleading since that would presume that there some other bands out there making this sort of glorious black chaos, and there sure as hell ain't...

MPEG stream: One Day
MPEG stream: III. A Landmine Reprisal
MPEG stream: The Principle And The Whip

Before all you Forgotten Woods fanatics freak out the way we did when we first saw this, let us say that most of this disc IS included in the still available Baklengs Mot Stupet 1992-1996 triple cd set. But don't stop reading, there is definitely still a good reason to pick this up, even if you have the 3cd set. There are basically two possibilities for wanting to own this, a brand new reissue of Sjel Av Natten. Either you're a newbie, who wants to check out FW, but doesn't want to drop $25. Although we can pretty much guarantee, that once you wrap your ears around this you WILL want everything you can get your hands on. Or, you already own the set, but desperately need every bit of Forgotten Woods there ever was, and the fact that this disc contains two exclusive, unreleased FW jams is enough to send you scooting toward the buy button. For the newbie, let's explain the wonder and allure that is Forgotten Woods (we'll get to the extra tracks in a second): So...what's the big deal you ask, why are these Forgotten Woods so unforgettable? Well, first off, and at first listen, this will definitely appeal to the whole raw, old-school, Nordic forest black metal necrocrowd. Really good grim stuff in the unholy spirit of classic Darkthrone and Burzum, but with that extra kinda inept, Benighted Leamsish fuckedupedness to it that of course makes us love it all the more. And, additionally and importantly, there's also always a strange, unexpected sort of poppiness underlying everything. As a friend (who also likes this band, and is a member of Thuja, the Blithe Sons, Buried Civilizations, the Skygreen Leopards and a bunch of other Jewelled Antler acts) put it, "man it's good...completely inept, like they're barely pulling it off, total 13-year-old-metal-kid-in-the-basement drums." So, this is most definitely the kind of black metal (like Benighted Leams, Xasthur, Lugubrum, Leviathan, Abruptum, Meads of Asphodel, Ved Buens Ende, and Sigh for example) that we have to recommend to all of our customers who are into (not-necessarily metal) weirdness. So for the rest of you, the ones who already love and cherish their Forgotten Woods discs, there are indeed two unreleased tracks (three, if you count the weird 10 second spoken word outro), both incredibly raw, some sort of rehearsal or practice space recordings, but even in that form, maybe especially, they completely kick ass, heavy and stumblingly brutal, but with an incredible pop sensibility buried right below the surface. The second track has a definite Slinty Ved Buens Ende vibe, but both are amazing, proving that besides being grim and true, these guys, whether they realized it or not, were incredible songwriters as well. So recommended, as is the triple cd set (maybe even more so!).

MPEG stream: Untitled 1
MPEG stream: Untitled 2

Finally, the last piece of the Forgotten Woods puzzle. We listed the amazing 3cd box Baklengs Mot Stupet 1992-1996 ages ago, and STILL we can barely keep it in stock. It collected most of the essential FW material, all of it mindblowing. Recently, one by one, the various releases included in the 3cd box have been getting reissued on vinyl. This, The Curse Of Mankind is the last one to hit wax, a bit prciey as the exchange rate sucks and overseas shipping on heavy heavy vinyl is steep, but it's a doozy. A massive double lp. If you're new to the wondrous and cracked black world of Forgotten Woods, then read on... Clearly this '90s Norwegian black metal band has a cult following! But just why are these Forgotten Woods so unforgettable? Well, first off, and at first listen, this will definitely appeal to the whole raw, old-school, Nordic forest black metal necrocrowd. Really good grim stuff in the unholy spirit of classic Darkthrone and Burzum, but with that extra kinda inept, Benighted Leamsish fuckedupedness to it that of course makes us love it all the more. And, additionally and importantly, there's also always a strange, unexpected sort of poppiness underlying everything, despite song titles like "Grip Of Frost" and "Dimension Of The Blackest Dark". As a friend (who also likes this band, and is a member of Thuja, the Blithe Sons, Buried Civilizations, the Skygreen Leopards and a bunch of other Jewelled Antler acts) put it, "man it's good...completely inept, like they're barely pulling it off, total 13-year-old-metal-kid-in-the-basement drums." That by itself would be enough to explain this band's appeal. But our sensibilities here at AQ are further stoked by the fact that the more you delve into these discs, the more you find yourself wondering just what the hell you're listening to...as Forgotten Woods mysteriously morphs by the third cd into something that sounds like jazz-inflected, naive indie-rock mopery, with clean jangly guitars that starts to sound like Felt or The Church or even Maher Shalal Hash Baz! Other tracks seem to echo The Cure, all slow and post-punkish... what a weird band! We can only wonder at what they thought they were doing, and wonder even more so at why they're so accepted by the grim black metal underground. It's the kind of black metal (like Benighted Leams, Xasthur, Lugubrum, Leviathan, Abruptum, Meads of Asphodel, Ved Buens Ende, and Sigh for example) that we have to recommend to all of our customers who are into (not-necessarily metal) weirdness.

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

SORRY. ""A fork is a cold shiny tool / To pierce, tear and ingest / Whoever has the fork in hand / Controls the meal of its choice." The opening lines for the Lard song, "Forkboy" which in turn gave the name for an Oulu-based quartet formed in 1993. Born out of love for AmRep noise, AC/DC, Dead Kennedys and driven by twenty-something angst, Forkboy recorded three demos and one previously unreleased session during their 6 year existence and it's all documented here on one disc. Furiously rocking songs packed with gritty guitars and feedback, rhythm section heavy as an elephant turd and as the band puts it, "lots of shouting". The original recordings have been carefully restored and remastered by Pentti Dassum and the sleeve features original artwork and photos by the band along with liner notes. If you were there during the late 90s noise rock craze or if you have only recently discovered its splendour or if you just have a boner for hidden gems of Finnish punk/noise/rock, this CD is for you!"

Limited cd-r pressing of 300! We've just received two releases from these young post rock instrumentalists! Recirc is their limited edition ep on the terrific Bay Area indie label Three Ring Records. As with their debut album The Form And Fate Of Lakes which we've also got, Recirc featured somber black and white photography on the cover and it suits the music well -- moody expanses which when observed closer burst with textures and dynamics. Fiery and jagged at times, thick and brooding at others, all tempered by delicately picked lilting guitar passages. Sure, we've heard the 'loud-quiet-loud' done a-plenty but we're not complaining 'cause these guys do it exceptionally well!

MPEG stream: Airlock
MPEG stream: He Grows

We've just received two releases from these young post rock instrumentalists! This one is their full length debut on the terrific Bay Area indie label Three Ring Records (we've also got a limited cd-r, the Recirc ep). The black and white photography of distant glacial landscapes featured on the cover suits the music well -- moody expanses which when observed closer burst with textures and dynamics. Fiery and jagged at times, thick and brooding at others, all tempered by delicately picked lilting guitar passages. Sure, we've heard the 'loud-quiet-loud' done a-plenty but we're not complaining 'cause these guys do it exceptionally well!

MPEG stream: Emoticons Vs Decepticons
MPEG stream: The Form And Fate Of Lakes Part I

Forma are a Brooklyn synth-trio, fabricated from the same mold that gave us Oneohtrix Point Never, James Ferraro, and Stellar Om Source. Their Kraut-inspired electronics revolve around brightly rendered step sequencing, squelchy percolations, soft streaming melodies and quasi-ambient pads set upon drum machines. It's the rhythms that set Forma apart from many of their contemporaries, looking back to the Connie Plank productions in the early '80s (especially those Moebius & Beerbohm records) and without any indication that Forma has ever heard a techno or disco record, well maybe they've heard Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works II, but that would be the most recently forward-thinking production that Forma would be referencing. Everything else is firmly planted at the Kosmische center of Cluster and Harmonia. Released on the suitably retrogarde Spectrum Spools imprint curated by Emeralds' John Elliott and funded by Editions Mego.

Sometimes, after listening to all of the ambient / improvised / noise / drone music we so dearly love, part of us truly longs for songs, and pop, and hooks, and choruses, and pretty singing, and cool arrangements. Which is precisely why there's no chance of our pop sweet tooth going sour any time soon. And when it comes to pop, we definitely have two distinct sides, our crashing, big guitar power pop pummel side, and our lush dreamy jangly sweet and subtle side. Every once in a while though, a band manages to touch on both, and of course, when that happens, we are in absolute pop heaven. Thus we have the Format, who definitely lean more toward the sweet jangle side of the spectrum, but manage at the same time to pack a secret serious powerpop punch. Dog Problems is a gorgeous collection of dizzying kaleidoscopic pop, lush and swirling, bouncy and crunchy, but moody and melancholic at the same time. Killer hooks constructed from sweetly distorted guitars, circus-y keyboards, shuffling rhythms, dreamy harmonies, and some seriously keening, near falsetto vocals that wail and swoop so charmingly. You can definitely hear bits and pieces borrowed from the Beach Boys, the Flaming Lips, Posies, Sloan, Postal Service and the Elephant Six Collective, but the Format, manage to turn all those bits and pieces into their own peculiar and perfect pop. We've been listening to this nonstop since we got it in! So good. Produced by retro power pop super hero Steve McDonald from Redd Kross!

MPEG stream: Matches
MPEG stream: I'm Actual
MPEG stream: Time Bomb

A second release from the mysterious Formatt, aka Belgian sound sculptor Peter Smeekins, we relisted a back-room find elsewhere on this list, a cd-r originally reviewed 2 years ago, that we dug big time, and in discovering extra copies of that release, we also found a little stash of these 3"cd-rs, released on Antony Milton's Pseudo Arcana label, a single 17 minute track featuring another brief glimpse into Smeekins' dreamy mad scientist sound world. Much like the other disc, the root of Smeekins' sound is soft hushed shimmers and ethereal drones, a sky full of glimmering sonic stars, all smoothed out into gorgeously languid long-form slow motion drifts, which on their won would be plenty pretty, and would definitely hit the spot for deep ambient late night drift off music, but the sounds here are not so tranquil, over the top of these glacial low end murmurs, Smeekins drapes all sorts of other sounds, that manage to add all sorts of depth and color and activity, somehow without taking away from the track's soporific stasis. Showers of crystalline sparkle, swirling soft focus clouds of grit and static, bis of hiss and pop, more layers of thrum and rumble... At low volume, Minor Curations exists simply as a gorgeous slice of minimal electronic ambience, but strap on some headphones and it's like that ride at Disneyland where you go through the microscope into a world of atoms and molecules, Formatt takes us on a similar ride, moving slowly through layer after layer after layer emerging finally in a strange microscopic world of inner sound. SUPER LIMITED, ALREADY OUT OF PRINT, these are the last copies ever...

MPEG stream: Excerpt 1
MPEG stream: Excerpt 2

Newest release from Belgian sound manipulator Peter Smeekins aka Formatt. A dense mix of soft droney shimmer and all manner of glitch and crunch. Imagine hearing Low or some other slow motion band through a concrete wall so thick that just the bare essence makes it through, a sort of ghostly outline, a dreamy, barely audible hum, then stretch it into a gauzy soft sound blanket and spread it out over the whole record. This soft, shimmery bed is the foundation for all of Re:Take_Repeat. Over the top of this Formatt fiddles and fidgets, like some tinkering mad scientist, glitches and crackle, bursts of shortwave interference, white noise, industrial machinery, haunting EVP like transmissions, pops and creaks, amp buzz and distant feedback, it's like some giant mysterious soundmaker upended his rusty old tool box full of sounds and dumped all of those strange sharp metallic shapes, all over the thick velvety background, like stars sparkling chaotically in the black night sky. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. We managed to get the last 20 so once these are gone they are gone for good!

MPEG stream: Keramiek
MPEG stream: Kristal

Richard Formby is someone you are probably less familiar with than most of the bands he has worked with: Vibracathedral Orchestra, The Telescopes, The Jazz Butcher Conspiracy, Fuxa, Mogwai, Spaceman 3, Dean & Britta, The Pale Saints, Hood, the list goes on. Known mostly as a producer and remixer for the past twenty years, this is his first release as a musician, and we're surprised it's taken so long as this is really quite good. Part of a planned three volume set, Volume 1 is comprised of 8 instrumental compositions perfect for a blissful night-drive. From the motorik propulsions of "Karoli" (a memorium to Can's Michael Karoli),the minimalist groove of "Oscillate", the cinematic "Universi", and the wistful chamber pop of "Crater Ives" to the dreamy loping drones of the 20 minute final track, "The Church Bells at Filey". Recommended!

MPEG stream: Karoli
MPEG stream: The Seveneight
MPEG stream: Crater Ives

Former Ghosts is a primitive darkwave trio featuring two folks we know quite well, the teen goth chanteuse Zola Jesus and Xiu Xiu's emotionally wracked Jamie Stewart; but it's the third party who's responsible for penning all of the songs for Former Ghosts. That would be one Freddy Ruppert, who also records as brilliantly named solo project This Song Is A Mess But So Am I. Even though Zola and Jamie are the supporting cast in Former Ghosts, their unique theatricality is welcomed in Ruppert's dark cabaret of cheap synths wheezing out downer melodies. The Joy Division / early New Order axis is the most obvious influence on Ruppert's songwriting, alternating between peppy minor-chord tunes and maudlin electro-dirges; yet the production veers much closer to the John Maus ethos for warped home recordings. In fact, the track "Mother" could be straight out of New Order's Power, Corruption, and Lies, minus the lack of a Martin Hannett production in favor something much more jagged around the edges. Zola Jesus mostly keeps her vocals as backing chorales of sustained trills and ululations, but on a couple of tracks she steps forward to belt out those songs with operatic prowess. As affected and gloomy as Ruppert's monotone can be, the Zola Jesus tracks are probably the standouts on the album. Certainly one to place alongside Cold Cave, Blank Dogs, and of course Xiu Xiu and Zola Jesus. Great stuff.

MPEG stream: Mother
MPEG stream: Dreams
MPEG stream: The Bull And The Ram

[ aquarius records catalogue — F ]