[ 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 301 through 350 of 1521.

MPEG stream: Drowning The Old Hag
MPEG stream: Mouth
MPEG stream: Taking Cassandra To The End Of The World Party

We all love the Cure, their music informs so many of the sounds we love these days, from gloom pop to doom metal, the music of the Cure is so evocative, so dark and textured and epic, while remaining incredibly catchy and poppy. Elsewhere on this list you'll find a 2cd tribute to the Cure, which is worth buying ONLY for the Jesu track, but if you're looking for some serious Cure love and obsession, not to mention some killer covers, then the latest issue of Fear Drop will definitely hit the spot. A whole magazine dedicated to the Cure's Pornography, a short study of the music, the band, the songs, the sound. Extensive and well researched, in both English and French, but even if you're not crazy obsessed with the Cure, you still might be pretty excited by the accompanying cd, all the songs from Pornography, covered by groups like Nadja, Troum, Dirge, Savage Republic, Year Of No Light, Contagious Orgasm, Kill The Thrill and Wild Shores. The Nadja version of "One Hundred Years" is awesome, a loping fuzz drenched dirge, weary vocals, thick crumbling guitars, sweeping and epic. Troum tackle "Cold" and create a thick sprawling smear of warm ambient dronemusic, thick and layered, the vocals an ominous whisper, cinematic, creepy, and hauntingly beautiful. Probably worth it for the mag and those two track, but thankfully, the rest of the tracks are pretty excellent as well, ranging from Neurosis-y metallic doom dirge (Dirge doing "A Short Term Effect"), to blissed out shoe gazey new wavey blur (Kill The Thrill doing "A Strange Day"), to buzzing brooding industrial folk, rife with militaristic drums, dramatic strings, squiggly radio interference, and moaning melodies (Contagious Orgasm doing "Pornography"), to sweeping washed out post rock swirl (Year Of No Light doing "The Figurehead") and on and on. Essential for obsessive Cure fans, but the disc is rife with dark, gloomy, buzz drenched heaviness, that would no doubt make the Cure proud.

MPEG stream: One Hundred Years
MPEG stream: Cold

We only got TEN copies of this, and even that was a stroke of luck as these are already out of print. This is not brand new, but we missed it when it first came out, and Mr. Fear Falls Burning himself graciously let us have his remaining copies. Another absolutely gorgeous collection of abstract guitar experimentation, but that makes it sound too clinical, these are experimental, but they are also warm and melodic, thick and textured, like all the FFB releases, the sounds hover somewhere between the corrosive slow motion sludge of bands like SUNNO))) and Boris, and the glistening abstract shimmer of folks like Jonathan Coleclough or Andrew Chalk, the difference being that this is ALL guitar. The copies we got are the super limited tour edition, so not only do they have the lp, but also a bonus tour cd. The lp is three long track, the first a swirl of thick humid clouds of guitar whir, rich streaks of buzz and throb, that warp around each other, creating subtle melodies and delicate overtones. The second track sounds almost like a harpsichord, the guitars unfurling lustrous metallic reverberations, a strange symphony of sympathetic vibrations and singing metals. The final track is dark and meditative, drifting melancholy melodies over a slow shifting sea of low end rumbles and distant pulses, finishing off with a dreamy delicate soft guitar coda. The bonus disc is much more chordal and riff based, not nearly as abstract, but just as lovely. The songs drift from Spacemen 3 like mesmer, to Galaxie 500 like soft focus drift, to epic orchestra-tuning swells, to dreamy minimal blurs, to shimmery subtle swells to Loren Connors like reverbed strum. All subtle and dark and so lovely. Gorgeously packaged as always. Thick black cardboard innersleeve wrapped in a textured paper outer sleeve, with a red wax seal on the front, inside, the cd is affixed to a nub on the sleeve, and inside also is a vellum envelope, containing the liner notes, black ink on thick textured black paper. So nice.

Drums are maybe the last thing you might expect to hear on a Fear Falls Burning record, which makes the opening of the new FFB, Frenzy Of The Absolute, all the more fascinating, since it opens with JUST drums, a huge crash, a doomy drum plod all spread out, spacious and spare. But eventually guitars enter the mix, and slowly take over. Fear Falls Burning is the one man guitardrone project of axeman Dirk Serries, and over the last year has released numerous cds and lps, each filled with his unique take on the otherwise played out doomdronedirge sound. Fear Falls Burning is a much more musical take, no less thick or corrosive or caustic or heavy, but Serries makes his walls of downtuned drone, and whirring buzz, glisten and shimmer, shot through with melody and unlikely texture, about as poppy as a music this un-poppy can get. And it's no different here. Well minus the HUGE difference of having a drummer. Or should we say drummerS! Serries is joined by a series of guests on Frenzy, most notable the drummers from Swedish post-metallers Switchblade and Cult Of Luna. At first we were worried that adding drums would just turn FFB's ethereal doomic drift into something much more generic and run of the mill, but just the opposite is true. Serries and his guests subtly transform the sound of FFB into something wholly different, the opening track says it all. That sprawling simple, spread out drumming, continues on throughout the first three quarters of the track, pounding away, not pummeling, but pounding, almost delicately if that were even possible, while Serries introduces soft shimmery delicate melodies, that drift dreamily in the background, the whole thing underpinned by a thick, gradually building Niblock like static guitar drone. But that little lullaby like melody, keeps the track from becoming pure dirge. There's way too much space. It's almost like a seriously metallicized and doomed up slowcore band. This is Low covering SUNNO))), a dreamy droney soporific downtuned dreamlike creep. The guitars thicken, the ambience grows ever more woozy and buzzy, the various swells of distorted buzz, wash in and out, various melodies surface and then drift off, the song slowly transforming into something much blackened and sinister. Until with about 5 minutes left, the track switches gears and becomes a roiling blur of washed out industrial buzz, muted picked apart riffage, processed percussion, the drums slowly surfacing from below, creeping into earshot, like some black beast clawing its way up from the abyss, creating a dirgey sort of Godflesh / Jesu jam, but way more muddy and murky blown out, blurred and soft focused, and somehow still weirdly pretty. The second track is way more in line with past FFB recordings, huge heaving slabs of buzzing low end, a vast expanse of fluttering, reverberating guitar growl, slow motion swells of whir, peppered with clouds of cymbal shimmer, shooting star streaks of high end, all blearily blurred into one fluid, constantly shifting dronescape. This track too grows in intensity, becoming more cacophonous, more ominous and atonal, a deep black hole of swirling black melody and thick textured guitarscapery. Like a dreamier, blissier Wolf Eyes. The final track begins like some super charged Spacemen 3 jam, a crumbling distorted space rock riff, doused in delay, the last note allowed to pulse and skitter off into the ether, before the riff re-engages. Over the top, in swoop more layers of guitar buzz, synth sounding whir and warble, all very trancelike and mesmerizing, the drums don't even kick in until near the end, and even then, they just offer up a huge pulse like pound, a skeletal framework for the swirling buzzing blissy blackness above, the drums finally exploding into an actual rhythm with about 2 minutes to go, the guitars soaring into a serious frenzy, suddenly it sounds like the climax of an Explosions In The Sky song AND the finale of a Godspeed song all woven together into one explosive blown out finish. As much as we love pretty much everything Fear Falls Burning, this record has us hoping this drum thing is not just a one off, but even if it is, we'll dig it while we can.

MPEG stream: Frenzy Of The Absolute
MPEG stream: He Contemplates The Sign

Fear Falls Burning is quickly becoming one of our favorites artists in the suddenly way-too-crowded scene/genre/movement of guitar-doom-drone-sludge-whatever. A lot of it has to do with that while yes, FFB is one man, a very large amp, and a whole mess of effects pedals, he is much more concerned with mood and texture, structure and timbre, than just mass or heaviness. And somehow, as is often the case, the music that strives the least to sound heavy, is the music that ends up actually sounding the heaviest. Although heavy in its own peculiar way. I'm One Of Those Monsters Numb With Grace (great title!) consists of two side long epics, the first, begins as a crumbling rock riff, looped into oblivion, repeating and repeating as it gets less and less distinct, beneath a sky filled with gauzy high end streaks of soft melodic shimmer. The track builds and builds, but not into the seemingly requisite huge explosively sludgy 'chorus', more of a glistening thick drone, a dense assemblage of layer upon layer of guitar, multiple melodies all tangled up, everything churning and squirming and growing in density and intensity more than volume. The second side opens up with a soft minimal shimmer, tranquil and so dreamy, eventually working itself up into a completely (and impossibly) catchy hiccuping stutter, a sort of Spacemen 3 style minimal psych rock jam, but with a main riff that could almost be nothing more than a skipping cd player. It actually sounds like our favorite part of our favorite Teenage Filmstars song ("Teenage Graffiti") with it's fucked up skipping backwards production stretched out into a whole song. So amazing!!! This is a super limited vinyl only release, LIMITED TO 399 COPIES! Packaged in a breathtakingly designed, super heavy gatefold jacket, printed with a super close up image of the bridge of a guitar, housed in a printed inner sleeve, and pressed on ultra heavy 180 gram vinyl.

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

SORRY. Fear Falls Burning is the work of one Dirk Serries, who is probably better know for his work as VidnaObmana. FFB was started a little over a year ago to allow Serries to explore the world of post rock and lo-fi drone music. This dvd-audio disc contains over 4 1/2 hours of recordings from a series of live shows in Germany, The Netherlands and Belgium and are all lengthy slow burn improvisations for thick, slithering distorted drone guitar. If you can imagine a way less metal SUNNO))) or maybe a super distorted big amped version of Loren Mazzacane Connors you might get an idea of FFB's sound. It's spare and spacious, but thick and textured, the guitar more like some droning noisemaker than an actual guitar, letting wispy tendrils of warm shimmery fuzz unfurl, and twist and drift, often becoming more and more tangled into thick dirge like walls of slow motion riffing. Ghostly abstract melodies rendered in downtuned chiaroscuro, grinding string scrape smeared into layered swirls of buzz, twinkling harmonics drift like little clouds of glitter, the throb and pulse create abstract rumbling rhythms while in the distance all sorts of soft focus colors fade and blur. Perfect late night, spaced out, free drift, dreampsych guitar drone bliss. Fans of Growing, Main, Spacemen 3, SUNNO))), Chalk, Coleclough and all practitioners of the droney drift will be in absolute heaven. Amazing oversized 6 panel textured and stained thick woodgrain paper sleeve manufactured exclusively for this release by Shantilal & Sons of Bombay, India, a built in pocket, three oversized postcards printed with cool blurry live shots, and an elaborate folded set of liner notes printed in metallic gold ink on beautiful paper embedded with bits of glitter and tiny little colored cloth fragments. Around the outside is wrapped an obi printed in the same ink on the same lovely paper. One of the nicest packages we've seen! LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!

This one has been a long time coming. Especially for us. The long rumored, even longer in the works 5lp Fear Falls Burning collaborative remix collection came out a while back, but when our box arrived from overseas, the box was smashed, and while the lps were all in perfect condition, the outer sleeves were not, so we had to wait patiently for them to make more sleeves, specifically for us, and then pray that the box of new sleeves showed up without also being crushed by the Postal Service. Well, finally, the box arrived and the new sleeves were as close to perfect as we could hope. And thus we can finally list this ambient guitar drone masterpiece. One of our favorite purveyors of blissed out guitar doomdirgedrone, remixed, reworked and reinterpreted by a bunch of bands that couldn't be more kick ass if we had picked them ourselves!!! And gorgeously packaged to boot! Let's start with the music. Five lps, twenty minutes a side, over three hours, one band to a side, the source material for each side original recordings by Fear Falls Burning, each artist, adding, removing, remixing, or reimagining the sounds given to them by FFB, the results uniformly gorgeous. The first side is Bass Communion, who turn FFB's droning guitars into chiming choral blissy bell like tones, which eventually build into thick buzzing Spacemen 3 like drones, but which near the end slip back into whirling soft focus ambient drift. The flip side features Final, the solo guitar project of Justin Broadrick (Godflesh, Jesu, etc.). Broadrick takes his FFB material and stretches it out into a moody meandering soundscape of layered distorted strum and thick crumbling swells, a lovely slowcore guitar drone, peppered with bits of melancholy melody and subtle harmonies. The second disc starts off with Freiband, aka Frans De Waard, the most minimal of the bunch, a glistening dark ambience, a slow trawl through fields of ephemeral sonic sparkle and soft drones rumbling way off in the distance. The B side of disc 2 is Harvestman, the solo project of Neurosis' Steve Von Till, and his take on FFB is a haunting dark psychedelia, thick slabs of reverbed guitar allowed to drift through the ether, chunks of almost metallic riffing surface throughout, but are suffused with muted shimmer and soft whispered whirring. The A side of disc 3 is Campbell Kneale's Birchville Cat Motel, and his FFB source material is transformed into a glorious keening ur-drone, all upper register buzz over a wash of shifting overtones and blurred chordal resonance, like drifting on some ominous black sonic sea, haunting and subtly ominous. The flipside is Byla, featuring one of the guys from Behold The Arctopus, but don't be expecting any weirdo tech metal, nope, the do Fear Falls Burning proud with a wall of grinding feedback that is smeared into a weirdly soothing high end drone, while downtuned guitars warble and pulse, shimmer and drift, abstract melodies floating atop the rumbling low end, like some disembodied Appalachia. Disc 4's A side is occupied by perennial AQ fave Aidan Baker (Nadja), one of the only collaborators here who added nothing, no extra instruments, used only the original tracks given to him, but the results are just as unique, a mysterious landscape of ghostly echoes and whispered guitars, long stretches of blisssy drift and dark washes of distorted hiss. The B Side is occupied by Johannes Persson, whose track is a sea of big billowy downtuned riffs, reverberating and fading out above buzzy angular riffs, everything washed out and blurred beneath layers of fuzzy rumble, a strangely active ambience, with a bit of twang ala more modern Earth, eventually building to a gorgeous Godspeed like crescendo. The A side of the final disc features another long time AQ fave, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma of local space drone alchemists Tarentel, who creates a dark murky dronescape rife with subtle glitches, and grinding distorted guitar smeared into smooth swells, a constant droning buzz running throughout, everything effulgent and haloed in glistening otherworldly glimmers, weirdly enough the darkest and most ominous of the bunch. And finally, finishing things off, is 3/4hadbeeneliminated's Stefano Pilia, who unfurls a warm folky drift, with occasional distorted drones surfacing here and there, all washed out sun dappled and so serene, finally building to an epic and intense soft shimmery crescendo. Needless to say, if you're a fan of Fear Falls Burning, any of the collaborators, or experimental guitar ambience and dark droning drift, this is totally essential. The packaging is pretty dang deluxe too. Each lp is pressed on ultra thick 180 gram crystal clear vinyl, the liner notes printed on the lp labels, each lp housed in it's own printed PVC sleeve, blue metallic ink, allowing the clear lp to be visible through the blurry blue images and text, all housed in a library / analogue tape style cardboard outer sleeve, printed in full color. So gorgeous. A note to vinyl obsessives. These are not sealed in plastic. The design is such that the outer sleeve bends and gets damaged easily, so we removed the outer plastic wrap, and inserted a 12" cardboard flat inside the box alongside the lp sleeves, which protect the lps, and keep the outer sleeve from being damaged. And when shipped these will be extra carefully packaged for their arduous journey to your doorstep. Already sold out and out of print. We have a bunch, but as always, these probably won't be around for long...

We've had some Fear Falls Burning cd-r's in the past, but this is the first proper release we've been able to get enough of to list, and it is quite simply amazing. Utilizing several guitars as well as an ensemble of Crate, Bahringer, Peavey, Laney and of course Marshall amplifiers, FFB have captured their own take on the glacial dirge. And it's quite unlike the majority of practitioners, in that it is strangely melodic and dreamlike. Very reminiscent of past record of the week Hjarnidaudi, in its ability to drip sunlight and warmth on a sound both dark and dreary. But unlike the band arrangements of Hjarnidaudi, FFB is nothing but guitars, amps, and effects, all deftly woven into a washed out deep ambient whole. Imagine Earth 2 or Sunn 0))) but lighter, and dreamier, less caustic and more soft and billowy. A soft bed of crumbling distortion, a swirl of grit and grrrr, but over the top lie sweet swoons of glistening feedback and thick swells of melody. It sounds almost like one guitarist playing soft and sweet through the biggest loudest most distorted amp ever, while another guitarist plays harsh buzzing drone, but through the tiniest, lowest wattage amp ever. the two mixed together create the perfect dreamlike heaviness. From huge walls of sound to soft humming shimmery buzz, My Bloody Valentine-ish blown out bliss to raga like buzz, this is absolutely gorgeous. A truly unique and surprisingly melodic take on doom and drone. Amazingly packaged on gorgeous thick sparkly blue sleeve, with an actual photo of one of the amps used to make the record affixed to the front. Pressed on 180 gram white vinyl. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. ONCE THESE ARE GONE THEY ARE GONE FOREVER!

Another gorgeous installment in Dirk Serries' exploration of the electric guitar, the amplifier, and just how far both can be taken with as little interference from human hands. As we've mentioned before, a quick listen might have you lumping Serries and his Fear Falls Burning in with his sludgier compatriots, Earth, SUNNO))), etc... but FFB is not about sludge and pummel, it's about drift and shimmer, finding much more in common with outfits like Nadja or the Angelic Process or Hjarnidaudi. But unlike those groups, FFB is just guitar and amp, allowed to feed off each other and slowly unfurl, huge sonic tapestries, lush with subtle overtones and muted melodies, a massive massive minimalism, that continues to rub us exactly the right way. These two tracks, recorded live, demonstrate again the breadth of Serries' delicate mastery of the amplified guitar. Soft sonic shimmers slowly fluctuate, sounding more like Niblock than anything, overtones shifting and intertwining, steel strings reverberating and stirring up microscopic whirs which all smear together into one living breathing sonic drift. The overtones become more pronounced, taking on melodic shapes, and sounding almost choral, little angelic events, subtly reminding us of Arvo Part. So lovely. Side two seems to continue on from the very same point side one left off, a delicate serene shimmer, that slowly transforms into an undulating low end crumble, but far from sounding sludgey or even doomy, this is some sort of mystical glistening and sparkling Ur-drone, taking the thuggish caveman throb of the more well know sludgelords, and transforming it into absolute beauty, powerful, physical and surprisingly musical. Awesome. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, each copy hand numbered.

Another amazing sonic document from the one man guitar outfit known as Fear Falls Burning, and much like the 7" reviewed elsewhere on this list, Fear Falls Burning, aka Dirk Serries is proving himself to be a modern master of metallic minimalism, not so much SUNNO))) or Earth as maybe Morton Feldman. His compositions display a similar emotional warmth while retaining quite a bit of musical restraint. Less is more, resulting in way way more. This 10" begins sounding like Earth 2 on 45, a buzzing alien low end melody, tangled and slowly unfurling amidst an expansive backdrop of oozing low end rumble and layer after layer of buzz and whir. The whole of side A ends up sounding like some sort of string section, albeit with strings that just so happen to be downtuned and distorted. Side B jettisons side A's melody almost completely, leaving in its place a ghostly afterimage, transparent swirls of abstract glimmer, guitars that sparkle, dreamy and sun dappled, melodies exist, but they are barely visible traces and streaks in an already blindingly effervescent soundscape, like a super mellowed out Sunroof!, so nice. A gorgeous picture disc on nice thick vinyl, both sides close up images of the bridge of an electric guitar, packaged in a thick plastic sleeve with a printed color sticker (complete with liner notes) sealing the sleeve shut. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!

It was definitely tempting to toss Fear Falls Burning into the pit with all the other guy-with-a-guitar amp-on-ten-slow-sludge-drone outfits that have been popping up like crazy in the wake of the SUNNO))) / Earth dirgedronedoom explosion. But the more we hear, the more we realize the music of Fear Falls Burning, while sharing some sonic similarities with his downtuned dirge brethren is actually exploring completely different territory. This is not just amp against the amp feedback, or heavy metal riffs played as slow as humanly possible, instead this is an exploration of the electric guitar, of the amplifier, of distortion and feedback as tools of modern minimalism. So much so, that much of the time, Fear Falls Burning almost sounds like Morton Feldman composed for electric guitar. On the two tracks on this 7", recorded live in 2006, FFB crafts two chunks of modern minimalism, from thick sheets of guitar, and a rumbling low end, managing to deftly arrange each into whispers and shimmers more than any sort of metallic crunch and pummel. Side A is delicate and abstract, glistening peals of high end, warm swells that expand like some slow motion super nova, underpinned by the thick rumble of controlled amp buzz, a dense and thick whir spread out beneath a sky of shooting stars. Side B, is similar, but much more lyrical, haunting melodies, played out amidst and within huge swirls of abstract guitar texture and slow, floating steel string abstractions. So gorgeous. Packaged in beautiful, textured paper sleeves, printed in a barely visible gloss ink, and pressed on thick clear vinyl! And of course, super limited, only 500 COPIES!

Here's another matchup that had to happen eventually. And it's the rare one of those that actually sounds as good as one might hope. Like all great collaborations, it's not just so much jamming together, as it is getting each contributor to not only give their all but to push the other collaborator to do the same. It's not a competition, but the spirit is similar, with both parties trying to get into the head of their counterpart, a push and pull, that can sometimes result in the players going places they don't normally on their own. The long drawn out guitarscapes of Fear Falls Burning are the perfect foil to the more incendiary ambience of Campbell Kneale and his Birchville Cat Motel. Both are capable of face melting heaviness, but both are also quite comfortable crafting intimate worlds of soft sound and distant shimmer. This 49 minute single piece tends to fall more toward the latter at least in the beginning, with the incipient heaviness relegated to smoldering in the distance, while the foreground is a deliriously drifting set of abstract strums, folky fragments allowed to ring out and float freely amidst an almost Wolf Eyesian backdrop of keening feedback, grinding black whirs, and huge resonant swells. The sound is intense, humid, and very cinematic. Eventually the sounds build, layers upon layers, erupting into a blinding heart-of-the-sun nearly static raga, what sounds like a million guitars all left to drone endlessly amidst a cloud of tinkling glimmering sparkles. The last twenty minutes or so, finds all the high end swallowed by the low, the guitars begin to grind and rumble, pulse and throb, until the sound becomes a dark viscous river of crumbling distortion, growing less and less distorted, until finally, all that's left is a warm, minimal whir, that gently shifts and drifts until it fades out completely. Most folks (like us) see FFB and BCM and already know this is a must buy, but this is indeed pretty fantastic, even amidst the seemingly neverending (let's hope!) avalanche of amazing releases by both of these prolific noisemakers.

MPEG stream: Untitled

As a music obsessive, it's inevitable that you spend some time fantasizing about the perfect musical match ups. Most of them could never happen, or maybe should never happen, others wouldn't sound as good as one might hope, but some have in fact taken place (SUNNO))) and Boris) and far surpassed our expectations. Which brings us to this, a collaboration between Canadian dream doom duo Nadja, and Dutch one man guitarmy Dirk Serries. These two powerhouses have met up once before, as part of that super limited Conspiracy Records anniversary series, and the sound here is quite similar, hovering somewhere between the colossal crush we know both are capable of, and a surprisingly dreamy drift. Four lengthy tracks, each more sound than song, but that's exactly as it should be. The opener takes the blown out vacuum cleaner buzz of Total or Skullflower and smears it into soft edged swells, an almost static, barely undulating wall of whirring warmth, which quickly dissipates, leaving just a muted minimal shimmer. The second track is more of the same, a massive pulsing rumble smeared with wispy swaths of fuzzy distortion, but with a bit of percussion added, an industrial clang and thump buried way down in the mix, while above the roiling guitars are draped spidery streaks of coruscating feedback, a sort of Skullflower / SUNNO))) style mashup. Blissful and blown out, but at the same time dark and strangely ominous. Track three is the anomaly here, the 'quiet' number, a sort of spacious drift, with tons of room sound, simple drumming way down in the mix all Dead C style, some ghostly melodies, and haunting snippets of clean guitar surfacing here and there and what sounds like seasick organs warbly and wavering. So haunting and pretty. And finally, the closer, which begins with some slightly atonal Nitsch style drones, a wash of what sounds like moaning horns but must be guitars, tense and intense, drawn out for what seems like forever, when suddenly a wall of crumbling distorted guitars drop from the sky like it's raining anvils, a plodding drum beat underpinning the now suddenly caustic riffage, a gorgeously blown out slab of impossibly heavy, and simultaneously strangely lovely, ultra dooooooooom.

MPEG stream: 2.
RealAudio clip: 1.

The Russian noise-artist Nikita Evsuk has adopted the apt moniker Fear Konstruktor; and at least for the couple of cassettes we've heard from him, he lives up to the name. Ball Metall, released through the impressive Black Horizons imprint, is an appropriately grim offering of abject ambience and post-industrial bleakness. It's a very murky sound that Evsuk generates, with the desolate melodies from what might be a synth, might be a guitar, might be a voice, all treated with FX to sound as if dripping with tar, soot, and moldering soil. He stitches in burbling electronics and creaking loops of disarming textures that could be the sounds of stretched ligaments and disembodied sinews. Bowed metals and bashed steel resonance also litter the soundscape, giving everything a very cold, post-Neubauten feel. All of the tones and drones which ooze from the cassette crumble and fall apart into a morass of gray production murkiness. As a whole, it seems that the Russian industrialists (Fear Konstuktror included) seem to fully embody an existential bleakness that their German counterparts certainly achieved, but never sustained. More swanky packaging from Black Horizons with sparkly card-stock, marbled art-mini booklet, and gold offset printing. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!

MPEG stream: Windows For the Dead
MPEG stream: In The Hourglass

MPEG stream: Fragments Of Wisdom
MPEG stream: Tale Of Prophecy

MPEG stream: Evil Premonition
MPEG stream: Frightful

Much black metal has been coming out of Cascadia lately, Wolves In The Throne Room, Fauna, Echtra, but not all is grim and frosty and cold and buzzy and black in the Pacific Northwest. Fearthainne is the work of the two players who make up Fauna, whose Rain record we raved about a while back. But in Fearthainne, all of the buzz and lbuster have been replaced by delicate crystalline guitar, gruff emotive vocals, deep ominous drones, all woven into a slow, drifting, meditative mountain folk. On the same label that in the past has brought us mysterious sounds from At The Head Of The Woods, The Elemental Chrysalis, Ruhr Hunter, Alethese and Beneath The Lake, Fearthainne sound right at home, blending dense whirring minimal soundscapes, with gentle meditative folk rituals. Long long tracks that slowly blossom, smoldering, clouded in warm browns and cool greys, strings weep and moan, effects gently cradle the various elements, adding texture more than changing the sound. Mesmerizing, trancelike ruminations on nature, on death, on the beyond. Simple percussion demarcates sprawling folk strum and fields of lilting shimmer and and delicate flutter. The vocals are a strange contrast, almost atonal, moaned more than sung, reminding us of solo records by either of the Neurosis frontmen, giving the proceedings a much more ominous vibe, ritualistic and hauntingly spiritual. Gorgeous in its simplicity, mysterious in its minimalism, Fearthainne is the soundtrack to a land outside of time, of trees towering over a world unspoilt, clouds drifting across empty skies, night turning into day, the cycle of life continuing on, the world and the universe around it gradually moving into a new, more magical existence. Beautifully sublime. Incredible packaging, full color 6 panel oversized sleeve, amazing images of ancient forests, late night rituals, and the band gathered beneath a mighty tree, cradling a baby, dressed like witches, and looking like a band of bearded forest dwellers (which they may very well be!).

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MPEG stream: The Veil

Dust-To-Digital are known for their excellent reissue work, unearthing and preserving music from scratchy old shellac 78 rpm recordings and the like. Bringing us vintage blues, gospel, Tuvan throat singing, and more, all with elaborate packaging and incredible attention to detail. They've been responsible for a host of fine cds, boxsets, and books, among 'em Victrola Favorites, Opika Pende, Steve Roden's I Listen To The Wind That Obliterates My Traces, and Goodbye, Babylon. But THIS handsome book + cd set may be their most remarkable release yet, at least in terms of radical sound-conservation technique. It's certainly their most unusual. For example: one of the tracks here is an excerpt of an after-dinner speech given by late-19th century American orator and politician Chauncy M. Depew. You can listen to it on the cd, and distinctly make out the speaker's words, voice, and phrasing, amid a thick patina of hiss, hum, and distortion. Sounds like a poorly-preserved old gramophone disc. But, that sound isn't coming from the disc itself being played (and re-recorded for release on the cd). It's actually derived from a PICTURE of that disc, reduced by 2/3rds original size, that appeared in a 1898 magazine advertisement. The spiraling grooves on the record were pictured clearly enough that with creative use of off-the-shelf computer software, author Patrick Feaster was able to "play" a fairly accurate semblance of the sounds originally encoded on the gramophone record being advertised!!! Ok, that's pretty cool! Talk about DUST-to-Digital. And it's but one example of the MANY different, quite intriguing excercises and investigations in "playing back" sound from such antique and/or unusual "recordings" that Feaster and his colleagues at the First Sounds initiative have come up with, presented in fascinating detail in this fancy (gold gilt edges!), hardback 144-page book and accompanying 28-track compact disc. Of course, one can argue, just what IS a "sound recording" anyway? In large part, that's what this is about; in fact, Feaster's introduction is devoted to that very question, which turns out to be both a philosophical one, as well as a technical one. Even in Feaster's expansive notion of the term, the idea that "sound recordings" exist from as far back as the year 980AD is perhaps a fanciful one, as he will admit, but still fruitful to consider. Because, what this book is also about, more generally, is how human beings have sought to understand sound phenomena (from nature, voice, and music), through the ages, how sound has been "captured" and put on paper in graphical form to be perceived and studied visually. These visual representations of sound, are essentially all in the form of graphs of frequency, or amplitude, over time: sound spectrograms, sound oscillograms, phonoautograms, melographic inscriptions, manometric flame sketches, and many more. Various techniques, applied to various subjects. Found in these chapters and tracks, there's FBI voice-recognition studies from the '70s, phonophotographs of Negro spirituals from the '20s, and examples of Athansius Kircher's "Magia Phonotatica" circa 1650 (works which bring to mind Conlon Nancarrow's Studies For Player Piano), among others. So, this is all very historically & scientifically interesting. Also, completely compelling just for the beauty of these images alone, which may or may not directly reflect the beauty of the sounds they represent - this is a lavishly illustrated book, with full-color reproductions of these various "sound recordings" to accompany the insightful text explaining it all. And the magic really happens, when you experience the book and cd in tandem, as each track on the cd, even the briefest, has an entire several-page chapter in the book devoted to it, and it really helps to read about and look at the visual sound source, while listening. Some tracks sound like antique recordings we're used to from wax cylinders and 78s, complete with the surface static we love so much; others like strange field recordings or ghostly experimental drones or balloons being rubbed together; still others like music boxes or similar devices� This is the sort of unusual sound document to file with such aQ faves as the mysterious Ghost Orchid EVP recordings, the VLF recordings of Stephen McGreevy, or even the famed Conet Project (soon to be available again, with a bonus 5th disc!). In fact, one of the exhibits here, an 1890 phonoautogram by Emile Berliner, kind of reminds us of a Conet "numbers station" track, being a spoken series of numbers and letters recorded at varying speeds. All in all, an astonishing, thought-provoking, and simply gorgeous book and cd, recommended to anyone interested in sound, science, OR art; meaning, probably everybody reading this!

MPEG stream: This Is A Sound Spectrogram
MPEG stream: Scripture's Curves
MPEG stream: Phonophotography
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MPEG stream: Phonoautograms From 1857
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New tour-only full length cd-r from hippie psych-folk collective Feathers. Nine Songs in round robin style, each one dedicated to the likes of Arthur C. Clarke, Carl Sagan, Nabob (from Brightblack Morning Light) and the Dictionary, amongst others. Like the previous cd-rs, "Kurt Sings" and "Tour Paint" (both sadly unavailable), these are hand-printed, colored and sewn, and so very, very limited!

MPEG stream: Space Alien Blues
MPEG stream: We Are In Danger Now

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

SORRY. Folks who witnessed Feathers opening for Vetiver and Espers a few weeks back, mentioned that they were one of the quietest bands that had heard. So much so, that a rock venue was hardly the best venue to witness their delicate beauty. While the band was here we managed to snag the last of this tour-only ep, a gorgeous self released, hand sewn and packged glimpse into their ethereal dark folk world. The first track is so quiet, it's like Feathers are whispering in your ear, the candlelight flickering, their warm breaths as loud as he barely strummed guitars. So lovely. The next two tracks are much more rambunctious, some seventies British style pagan folk, with Syd Barret like vocals and lots of druggy psychedelic filligree. The final track returns to the hushed beauty of the opening song, a dark dolorous minor key lament, with angelic vocals and haunting steel string guitars. Packaged in a hand screened paper sleeve, sewn together with colored thread. Each and every one is unique. THESE ARE THE LAST 30 COPIES. ONCE THEY ARE GONE THEY ARE GONE FOR GOOD!

MPEG stream: Wandering With You
MPEG stream: Angel In The Sky

A customer turned us on to this Vermont-based group who have quietly been making their own brand of druggy hippy psych folk, releasing loads of cd-r's and this here lp, and it seems like only a matter of time before the rest of the world catches on and they'll be psych-folk household names like Joanna Newsom and Devendra Banhart. Simple strummed guitars, sweet sweet harmonies, banjo and occasional acid fried guitars, simple and insistent tribal drumming, very reminiscent of seventies British folk a la Incredible String Band, Shirley Collins, even Comus (but not nearly as psychotic). However, they do occasionally wander down a darker path, exploring moody and minor key acoustic dirges, each one curiously ominous folky swirl beneath a brooding strum and thump. There's also an old timey element to Feathers, the tracks sound so old, but timeless at the same time, almost otherworldly (assuming the other world had banjos and folk music and record players) sounding a lot like sitting in a dusty room listening to old 78's. Comes with a big poster of the band all painted up and luxuriating in the tall green grass.

Here is a 2 cd retrospective collection of the often underrated, and totally amazing rockabilly, country great Charlie Feathers. We have carried this before, now it is reissued in fancy packaging. Charlie grew up tending his parents farm. He sang in church and listened to the Grand Ole Opry. A local sharecropper named Junior Kimbrough taught him how to play guitar. He reminds me at times of Hank Williams, Eddie Arnold, and even Hasil Adkins. Feathers wrote "Can't Hardly Stand It" which was later covered by the Cramps. He has the talent of mixing the best elements of blues, country, bluegrass and rockabilly in an original and inventive way. Some songs are slow lazy sad country, and then some are rockin' and tough. As this collection proves he was hard working and eclectic in the mid '50s, but it was during the '70s resurgence of rockabilly in Europe that he was revered and appreciated. Many country and rock n rollers credit Feathers for inspiration (Johnny Cash for one). Dispite horrible health problems he persevered till the end recording and touring, mostly in Europe. Charlie Feathers died August 29, 1998 of complications following a stroke; he was 66. Here are all his Sun, Flip, King, Meteor, Kay, WalMay and Holiday Inn sides, plus rare, unissued tracks including Sun demos, alternate takes and early home recordings with the likes of Junior Kimbrough. You also get a fancy detailed 48 page book.

RealAudio clip: One Hand Loose
RealAudio clip: Can't Hardly Stand It
RealAudio clip: Everybody's Lovin' My Baby

Dirty, sludgy, poppy, grunge rock from the two worlds of Bellingham, WA and New York City. Rally Day is heavy on the power-chords and rock n' metal riffs. One of our more favorite tracks, "Nightmare Nation", features some pulled-down vocals treatments that reference a bit of Ozzy. Overall the production of this record leaves us feeling pretty ho-hum which is too bad because the energy in their songs seems to be pretty powerful, potentially. This could be one of those things that the band is totally amazing live, but falls short here by way of their recording process, cause the band certainly knows how to rock! For fans of Love As Laughter, The Apes, Part Chimp.

MPEG stream: Hydrogen, Nitrogen & Bullshit
MPEG stream: A Fear To Fly

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

SORRY. These fellas make the Cosmic Psychos seem childish. They tied your favorite singer to the rear fender of their pick-up truck and they drove and they drove and they drove fast, and in your direction.

As much as we're perpetually on the prowl for new sounds, sometimes it's the old sounds that move us the most. And it's a good time for revisiting old sounds for sure. So many classic records getting reissued, whether it's the gnarled indie rock of Archers of Loaf, all the Sebadoh records, the seminal math/post rock of Bitch Magnet, the forthcoming reissues from slowcore legends Codeine, there's no shortage of old bands who definitely deserve another listen, and there's most definitely a whole new generation ripe to discover all these bands for the first time. Which brings us to feedtime, a band whose influence amongst OTHER bands can't be underestimated, but in terms of commercial success and enduring popularity, well there's definitely a disparity, one that will hopefully be addressed with this comprehensive reissue of all four record from these Aussie minimal thud rockers, whose sound, who, listening to these records again now, influenced so many of the bands we've flipped over since, right off the bat we're hearing Wire (a band they're often compared too, although they claim at the time to have never heard), we hear the Melvins, Killdozer, Flipper, their countrymen Kingsnakeroost and Lubricated Goat, we hear Nirvana, the Ramones (albeit at a much lower RPM), Mudhoney, really, it's hard not to hear generations of bands who explored a similarly minimal take on punk rock or post punk or even pub rock, cuz really, feedtime were essentially a pub rock band gone wrong (or right), their sound in many cases like a classic rock or blues rock, slowed down and stripped down and dirtied up, their sound as much about mesmer and repetition and trance as melody or hooks, maybe even more so. Their first record, originally self released, is fantastically home brewed, lo-fi, but still noisy and heavy, and their kick ass cover of Mississippi Fred McDowell's "I Wonder What's The Matter With Papa's Little Angel Child" is most definitely THEE jam, a revved up blues dirge workout that kills, and the slide guitar (which shows up throughout the group's discography) prominently on display, and like it did the first time we heard it, it'll have you wondering why all bands don't have slide guitar. Their second record Shovel, found a marked improvement in production, but other than that the sound remained pretty similar, the songs mostly one or two parts, the band tight as fuck, but still somehow sounding loose and alive, and that slide guitar, subtly employed but adding a little something extra, the sound noisy, the vocals a guttural bark, the Killdozer vibe is huge, and we begin to hear Halo Of Flies and other AmRep bands, and this is the record where you can hear for the first time, that feedtime is all about THE BASS, driving everything, percussive and melodic, driving and dense and thick and sinewy, it gives the songs heft and a low end energy, there's also female vox, it's pretty crazy stuff, that definitely sounds incredible even all these years later. The third disc in the set is Cooper S, their cover record, on which they cover the Beach Boys, Lee Hazlewood, the Rolling Stones, the Ramones, The Stooges, Slade, the Easybeats, Animals, a traditional or two, they even make a song out of an e.e. cummings poem (maybe cuz they both start their names with lower case letters), but in the hands of feedtime, the originals are totally reimagined, and in many cases, barring the lyrics are transformed into something unrecognizable, the band stripping away tempo changes and various other superfluous elements and instead making the songs their own, maniacally minimal and dirgey and hypnotic, they even mix in some trumpet, and other sonic sweetness, but there's just something so magical about their sound and what they were able to make out of so little, and in the case of the cover, what they were able to do to classics, making them their own kind of classics, which again, in many cases, sound to these ears better than the originals, "Paint It Black" is the perfect example, the band slowing it way down, the result sounds almost more like a dirge rock Devo, the sound oozy and slithery and so much blacker than the original. The final disc in the set, was the final record for the band, Suction, and while in some ways it was tighter and more polished, it was also another disc of heady, churning noise rock minimalism, and in some ways it even manages to sound a bit more lo-fi, the slide guitar in full effect, making the whole record woozy and wonderfully warped, there's also harmonica, and some of their best / our favorite jams, "Pumping A Line" sound almost like it could be a Circle track, a sort of churning looped metallic hypnorock, or "Confused Blues" which is some serious Killdozer style pigfuck slithery blues, or the weirdly poppy, almost Velvets sounding "Ever Again" complete with slippery slide and moaning horns, fuck this stuff is so great. We never really stopped digging these guys, but having all of it together, it's a pretty intense and fantastically intensive listening experience, and one that definitely paints feedtime as a band not only ahead of their time, but a band who lots of folks owe their whole goddamn sound to. The reissues tack on all kinds of extras, compilation tracks, B sides, and the records (and cds) come in a big box, with each album in a sleeve reproducing the original album cover, and with a big booklet crammed with pictures, liner notes, as well as the notes that accompanied the various original releases.

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On the last New Arrivals list we reviewed the recently released, comprehensive career retrospective of legendary Aussie noise rock / post punk minimalists feedtime, all four of their records together with tons of bonus tracks, check out the review of that collection for the full breakdown of just how rad feedtime are, and how essential those records are, and why pretty much anyone into the sort of stuff we champion around here, will very likely be as into feedtime as we are. And it's really not until you ARE as into feedtime as we are, that you'll need to pick this up, a collection of unreleased tracks and demos, recorded in studios, hotel rooms, one track was even recorded in a hole in the ground beneath the floor in a rented house, but all of the tracks here, are the perfect addendum to that Aberrant Years collection, anyone who picked up that boxset and flipped out, and decided they needed more more more, well, this is for you. As we mentioned in the review of that collection Feedtime are a gloriously minimal concoction of Wire like riffage, thud rock drumming, and gravelly vox, all woven into something impossibly hypnotic, tranced out and rocking, but rocking in a way few others were capable of, some reference points would be the Melvins, Killdozer, Flipper, fellow Aussie bluespunks Kingsnakeroost and noise rock heavies Lubricated Goat, even Nirvana, the Ramones, Mudhoney, but feedtime, for all they had in common with those other bands were their own twisted sonic beast. The tracks here are culled from sessions for three of the group's four records, there are early demos, some live tracks, that aforementioned hole-in-the-ground, that sorta sounds like it, filthy and dirgy, with some wild caustic howled vox. There's a handful of killer covers, they do the Stones' "Street Fighting Man" and it ends up sounding like the Ramones crossed with Spacemen 3, there's a super distorted version of Fear's "I Don't Care About You", which is way more fierce and fucked up than the original, and a Flipper cover that sounds like a feedtime original, the rest of the tracks offer up variations on feedtime's unique sound, whether it's a sinewy post punk pound, or some blown out gutter blues, or some psychedelic dirgery, it's all fucking incredible, and totally recommended. If you bought the box set, you definitely NEED this, and if you didn't buy the box set yet, well, now's the perfect time to remedy that situation (then you can come back and get this one later!)... Fair warning, the cd has FIVE extra songs that aren't on the lp version!!!

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While Bill Orcutt has been carrying the post Harry Pussy torch, with his own mangled lo-fi junk blues Americana, as well as a sporadic Harry Pussy reissue campaign (starting with the recent HP oddity on Editions Mego, Let's Build A Pussy), there was in fact another guitar wrangler in the 'Pussy back in the day, a man by the name of Mark Feehan, who played in a bunch of other rad Miami noise rock outfits, but who will no doubt be best remembered for his stint with Orcutt and drummer Adris Hoyos. And like Orcutt, Feehan has definitely moved in an entirely new direction, the tracks here gorgeous exercises in looped repetitive swirl and churning minimal guitarscapery, the first two tracks sounding like a more lo-fi detuned Durutti Column, or a more spare softly psychedelic Roy Montgomery, with just a hint of the Americana that Orcutt traffics in, but here, Feehan's music sounds more like something you'd find on some mysterious New Zealand cd-r, urgent strumming, chiming, jangling, buzzing, looped and mesmeric, slipping from crunchy and brittle, to washed out and woozy. It's not until the third track, "Sopio", that things get weird, the prettiness of the first two tracks still present, this time just buried beneath a blown out rhythmic pound, and chittering high end chirps, a sort of abstract noise rock house music maybe but still all wedded to Feehan's cyclical jangle. There appears to be some vocals in there too, but all distorted an chopped up. The middle of the record does seem to lean more toward the noisy and chaotic, short bursts of heavily effected guitar howl, layered billows of tangled melodies and swirling buzz and crunch, chaotic sprawls of almost Our Love Will Destroy The World like kitchen sink soundscapery, but even at its noisiest, the sound remains sort of blissful and hypnotic, and Feehan eventually slips back into dreamy bits of guitarswirl shimmer, like the crackle drenched muted jangly thrum of "See You In Brundisium", and into almost Sun City Girls like rhythmic meanders, like the moody string laced percussion driven "Stoned Pilot B", or the downright dreamy hushed drift of "Arma Virumqu Cano", that is probably the prettiest thing here. LIMITED TO 350 COPIES!! Includes a download coupon.

MPEG stream: Salvete
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MPEG stream: Arma Virumque Cano

We somehow missed out on the Feelies back in the day, but after years and years of hearing them namechecked we were pretty psyched to finally hear them, and we ended up liking them way more than we imagined. Heavily influenced by the Velvet Underground, and in turn, heavily influencing R.E.M., the feeling infused their post punk / indie rock / new wave, with as the title of their debut suggested, crazy rhythms, the drums tribal and super busy, while the guitars wove lush shimmery layered soundscapes behind the bands frantic, frenetic punkish pop. We actually hear a lot of Television in their sound as well, especially in the guitars. Crazy Rhythms was the Feelies debut and would remain their defining record, opener "The Boy With Perpetual Nervousness" seems to capture the jittery vibe of the band both in sound and in title, with the extra percussion (all four members played percussion), the lush tangly guitars, the subtle hooks, the whole record follows suit, with the vocals often spoken/sung, a la Velvet Underground or Jonathan Richman, and the closing song and title track seals the deal, all rubbery bass, skittery drums, loads of space, wrapped around almost twangy jangle and strum, the sound practically surfy, before the big anthemic outro. So good. Kicking ourselves for missing out, but heck, better late than never!

MPEG stream: The Boy With Perpetual Nervousness
MPEG stream: Fa Ce La
MPEG stream: Crazy Rhythms

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

SORRY. We somehow missed out on the Feelies back in the day, but after years and years of hearing them namechecked we were pretty psyched to finally hear them, and we ended up liking them way more than we imagined. Heavily influenced by the Velvet Underground, and in turn, heavily influencing R.E.M., the feeling infused their post punk / indie rock / new wave, with as the title of their debut suggested, crazy rhythms, the drums tribal and super busy, while the guitars wove lush shimmery layered soundscapes behind the bands frantic, frenetic punkish pop. We actually hear a lot of Television in their sound as well, especially in the guitars. Good Earth was the followup to the perhaps-impossible-to-top Crazy Rhythms, and the band made it no easier on themselves by altering their sound quite a bit, exploring more abstract sound structures, ditching the typical verse chorus verse arrangements, mellowing out a bit, slowing down, the only remnants of their more frantic sound being "The Last Roundup", with its flurry of fast picked notes and tumble of drum rolls to match, and the propulsive "Two Rooms", but for the most part the rest of the record is way dreamier, laid back, strummier and at times almost Grateful Dead sounding, but within these new song structures the band continued to explore and do amazing, and definitely un-pop things, strange guitar parts, lots of textural layered ambience, harmonies, all in all a pretty nice balance to the more intense debut. And while they did go on to make two more records, the first two remained the ones most folks considered their finest moments. And we'd have to agree.

MPEG stream: On The Roof
MPEG stream: The High Road
MPEG stream: The Last Roundup

Reunion records can be a huge let down. Sure it's fun to see a band get together and play all their old hits, but the minute you hear those famous last words "Here's a new song we've been working on", most of us tune out. So when those new songs they've been working on get maid into an actual album, we're definitely wary. But c'mon, it's the Feelies, who as we admitted to in another review, we actually missed out on back in the day, but when we did finally hear the amazing Crazy Rhythms record, and the almost as amazing The Good Earth, we were definitely kicking ourselves. And ever since those records got reissued recently, we have been playing them nonstop. And we were pretty excited to hear this new record. It has been THIRTY ONE years since Crazy Rhythms, and TWENTY since their last full length, but the second this got put on in the store we knew just what it was. The sound is definitely classic Feelies, not as jittery and percussion heavy as Crazy Rhythms, but then neither were any of the other records. The vibe is maybe a bit more mellow and laid back, the guitar playing not as strange and layered as on some of the old records, and the vocals more sung/spoken a la Lou Reed, but we're digging it, a LOT. The sound is warm and familiar, shimmery and jangly, that classic eighties/nineties college/indie rock sound we love so much, and like classic Feelies records, Here Before is a grower, the sound as we mentioned is great, but on repeated listens, the songs begin to seep in, the hooks gradually revealing themselves, and suddenly any of these songs could get stuck in your head. If you're new to the Feelies, we'd probably recommend Crazy Rhythms or The Good Earth first, although this is really not all that bad a place to start and of course if you're already a fan, you won't be disappointed.

MPEG stream: Nobody Knows
MPEG stream: Should Be Gone
MPEG stream: Again Today
MPEG stream: When You Know

NOW ON CD!!! Killer disc of droned out buzz drenched post punk dirge pop from this French outfit, their sound a Velvets inspired druggy synth/organ heavy haze, fans of Moon Duo will flip for these guys, the same sort of kraut-drone mesmer, but Feeling Of Love, with what we can only assume is a live drummer, sound a lot looser, and a lot more rocking, getting downright garage-rocky in places, but they often lace that rock with some dreamy angelic background vox and infuse everything with some seriously prismatic poppiness, which is pretty irresistible. The band sound as good rocking out jubilantly, as they do churning away in a dour sonic trance, both of which they do in equal measure, and it's a pretty fantastic combo, but the band also display a fairly expansive sonic palette, occasionally unfurling long stretches of hazy rhythms, wreathed in squealing feedback, and wrapped in smokey tendrils of psychedelic guitar, or bursting into twee pop ditties at the drop of a hat, somehow even managing to mix the two once in a while, like on "La Bas C'est Naturel", which sounds like some lo-fi drug psych rock via K Records, but then before long, they slip right back into their droney swaggery hypno-rock, but one that seems to have limitless permutations, whether it's the druggy Fuzztones via Spacemen 3 trance out of "666 Blank Girls", or the Railroad Jerk like junkyard bluesiness of "Empty Trash Bag", or the frenetic caffeinated drum heavy, yelpy vocal-ed jangle and crunch of "I Am Right, You Are Wrong" (which has a surprisingly KILLER chorus)... Fans of groups like Night Control, Thee Oh Sees, Ty Segall, Mikal Cronin, Pink Noise, etc, will dig this big time, as will everybody who loved records by aQ faves J.C. Satan, or heck really anybody into hooky, druggy, droney, garagey, psychedelic garage pop radness.

MPEG stream: Cellophane Face
MPEG stream: Dissolve Me
MPEG stream: La-Bas C'est Naturel
MPEG stream: 666 Blank Girls
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Killer disc of droned out buzz drenched post punk dirge pop from this French outfit, their sound a Velvets inspired druggy synth/organ heavy haze, fans of Moon Duo will flip for these guys, the same sort of kraut-drone mesmer, but Feeling Of Love, with what we can only assume is a live drummer, sound a lot looser, and a lot more rocking, getting downright garage-rocky in places, but they often lace that rock with some dreamy angelic background vox and infuse everything with some seriously prismatic poppiness, which is pretty irresistible. The band sound as good rocking out jubilantly, as they do churning away in a dour sonic trance, both of which they do in equal measure, and it's a pretty fantastic combo, but the band also display a fairly expansive sonic palette, occasionally unfurling long stretches of hazy rhythms, wreathed in squealing feedback, and wrapped in smokey tendrils of psychedelic guitar, or bursting into twee pop ditties at the drop of a hat, somehow even managing to mix the two once in a while, like on "La Bas C'est Naturel", which sounds like some lo-fi drug psych rock via K Records, but then before long, they slip right back into their droney swaggery hypno-rock, but one that seems to have limitless permutations, whether it's the druggy Fuzztones via Spacemen 3 trance out of "666 Blank Girls", or the Railroad Jerk like junkyard bluesiness of "Empty Trash Bag", or the frenetic caffeinated drum heavy, yelpy vocal-ed jangle and crunch of "I Am Right, You Are Wrong" (which has a surprisingly KILLER chorus)... Fans of other Kill Shaman releases, by the likes of Night Control, Thee Oh Sees, Ty Segall, Mikal Cronin, Pink Noise, etc, will dig this big time, as will everybody who loved the records by aQ faves J.C. Satan, or heck really anybody into hooky, druggy, droney, garagey, psychedelic garage pop radness.

MPEG stream: Cellophane Face
MPEG stream: Dissolve Me
MPEG stream: La-Bas C'est Naturel
MPEG stream: 666 Blank Girls
MPEG stream: Empty Trash Bag

We went absolutely nuts for Feeling Of Love's Dissolve Me record, a twisted collection of droned out, post punk, garage rock dirgery, not really sure we didn't make it Record Of The Week at the time, cuz for some of us, it was pretty much all we listened to for a while. And cuz we're the way we are (and we're guessing you are too), we immediately wanted more more more. So here's the latest blast of garage punk shenanigans from these French weirdos, not a new record, but instead a collection of singles, and comp tracks and rarities. Here's a quick run through the song titles, just at least give you a flavor of that they're all about, and why we dig em so much: "I'm Nothing But A Drunk Pussy", "The Right Bitch At The Right Place", and of course "You Rock You're Seventeen You Should Kill A Ten Years Old Kid". The sound pretty much fits perfectly with those titles - raw buzzed out garage guitar, primitive drumming, yelped echo drenched vocals, swaggery and snarly. Opener "Hand Clap Girl" sounds like a bluesier, more wasted Thee Oh Sees, the song driven by a programmed beat, that features a very loud simulated handclap, and when the kick drum kicks in, it's the sort of moment, that you can imagine inspires a crowd of sweaty, bloody kids to lose their shit. The aforementioned "I'm Nothing But A Drunk Pussy", is nothing but that line, or variations of, delivered in a drunken, garbled, heavily accented mush mouthed croon, over caveman blues, and THEE most damaged drumming EVER. And so it goes, this is Feeling Of Love at their most raw, blown out, and utterly primitive, all of the sounds are doused in crumbling distortion, totally in-the-red, this is sweat soaked, drum machine driven garage punk weirdness that like the proper record has us hooked. If you wished Thee Oh Sees was way more damaged and demented, and sounded super shitty and lo-fi, like some drug addled Neanderthal psychedelic garage rock monster mash, then this is yer shit! So goddamn great!

With members of Sone and Built To Spill.

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

SORRY.

It's been awhile since we've heard a band that channels the hook-laden swagger, sex and fuzz-filled ferocity of bands like The Breeders and Elastica at their mightiest without at all sounding nostalgic, but goddamn! this debut by LA based outfit Feels is just pushing all the right buttons! Produced by Ty Segall on the always on-point Castle Face label, veering from garage to punk to hard indie rock on the thinnest of dimes, we've been playing this in the store as often and as loud as we can. Tight and direct, surfing a mighty force without going over the rails, Feels clock in a killer set and leave us wanting more. For fans of Ex-Hex, X, The Mallard, Marnie Stern, Helium and any of the bands mentioned above. FYI, vinyl verison already gone, Castle Face never presses enough initially do they? But hopefully back soon.

MPEG stream: Slippin'
MPEG stream: Close My Eyes
MPEG stream: Play It Cool

Newest (and fifth in the series, we've reviewed two others, we'll try to get to all of 'em eventually!) in a new series of ULTRA LIMITED hand made drone / ambient cd-r's from this new boutique label specializing in short form 3" cd-r's of dark drone drenched ambiance. This latest installment comes from the percussion duo of Tim Feeney and Matt Samolis, this 20+ minute piece is all percussion and is the soundtrack to a short film, documenting the destruction of a television set, from the perspective of the TV, and manages to be clattery and chaotic while at the same time being dreamy and hypnotic. A multilayered soundscape, in the foreground, a dense filed of clang and clatter, like someone rifling through a silverware drawer, or someone digging through a bucket filled with pottery shards, a jagged bit of crunching and crashing, that manages to be sort of nice to listen to, as the track progresses, it sounds more like someone bending metal, creaking and grinding, the sound of rubber stretching, rubbing against steel, sort of industrial but also sort of creepy. In the background, bits of metal moan and groan, like distant foghorns, slow, whale call like tones, drifting across the sound field all wrapped up in reverb. Later on the creaking and groaning bits of metal, get louder, more insistent, sheets of metal boom out like thunder, bits of metallic high end scream like feeding back guitars, a muted cacophony, as weirdly lovely as it is creepy and abrasive. ULTRA LIMITED TO ONLY 50 COPIES!!! Painstakingly hand assembled. Tiny 3" pale green fold over sleeves, with a glossy sepia toned image affixed to the front, sealed at the bottom with two rivets, tied with a ribbon, with a little circular badge. Inside the disc nestles between two sheets of gorgeously textured paper, hand printed and so lovely.

MPEG stream: Monument (excerpt 1)
MPEG stream: Monument (excerpt 2)

We had no idea that Thomas Fehlmann had been making music for more than 30 years, beginning with his time in the band Palais Schaumburg moving on to his work in Detroit/Berlin techno group 3MB (with Juan Atkins and Moritz von Oswald), finally playing in the Orb to this day, as well as tons of solo records, quite impressive for sure, but this one, this is something else, selections from a score Fehlmann did for a film called 24H Berlin, which is the longest documentary film in history, a full 24 hours long, the filmmakers employed 80 cameras, and followed various Berliners over a 24 hour period, documenting a day in the life in Berlin. It's hard to even fathom trying to compose 24 hours of music, thankfully, Fehlmann shared those duties with another composer, so he probably needed to only come up with 12 hours worth of music, but still, incredible. And the sounds here are of course gorgeous, that Kompakt sound we love so much, a lush mix of old school techno, modern Berlin dub, and washed out dreamlike pop ambience, if you didn't know this was a soundtrack, you might just assume this was a regular Fehlmann release, which for listening purposes it might as well be. After some cool, late night skitter and thump, the record blossoms into some truly lovely dronemusic, prismatic and crystalline, before slipping back into some clipped stuttery dub and we're off. The whole record is very warm, and soothing, dreamy, melodic, from the hushed pulse of "Speeding", definitely evocative of late night drives, to the almost Kraftwerk sounding "In The Wind II", lilting and lovely, but underpinned by a busy bit of warbly bass, to the hazy ethereal blurscape of "Von Oben", that eventually transforms into some minimal ambient techno, to the lush and warmly melodic closer "Schieben", which musically sounds like a time lapse photo of a city growing dark as the sun slips beneath the horizon, reminds us of Tim Hecker or Fennesz, so gorgeous. The songs are balanced pretty evenly between beats and ambience, the two elements constantly blurring into one another, the result being a lush, easy flowing, drifting, dolorous electronic dreamscape.

MPEG stream: Alles, Immer
MPEG stream: Falling Into Your Eyes
MPEG stream: Wasser Im Fluss
MPEG stream: Schwerelos

One of the strongest forces and brightest minds in the German electronic scene of the last few decades, Thomas Fehlman has always had two different and distinct musical sides. There is his love of Detroit born raw hard techno, and then there is his endless fascination with more spaced out and ambient sounds influenced by the likes of Fripp, Eno and Tangerine Dream. Honigpumpe is for sure a result of the latter. Dreamy and blissed out electronica with beats that aren't as much for the dancefloor as they are for the living room or the couch or the bed. We've been putting this on every time we have to do unglamorous tasks like laundry and the dishes and with this on time seems to move a little faster and so do we. As a full fledged member of The Orb and his constant producing and live dj sets, Fehlmann shows no signs of slowing down and that's a very good thing. We want more!

MPEG stream: I.R.N.I.I.Z.
MPEG stream: Stralensatz

Feist has a voice that you can't help but fall for. You may remember her from her vocal contributions on records by Broken Social Scene and Kings of Convenience. She even toured with Peaches adding back up vocals (they used to live together). This, her solo debut showcases her totally pretty voice matched with songs that are smartly written and totally well executed. So smooth and catchy but so much more smart and interesting then everything you hear on commercial radio. Makes us think a little of Dani Siciliano. A perfect sunday morning kind of record. Imagine someone holding Sade hostage and taking away all the gloss and overwrought production but keeping an inkling of her smooth voice while turning her on to an indie aesthetic and maybe you get close to what Let it Die sounds like.

MPEG stream: When I Was A Young Girl
MPEG stream: Mushaboom

For those expectin' a new studio album from this fine Canadian songstress, sorry folks, you'll have to wait a little longer! In the meantime treat your ears to an assortment of Feist-y remixes and collaborations by the likes of Postal Service, Jane Birkin, k-os, Gonzales and her Broken Social Scene brethren Apostle Of Hustle. Open Season is primarily focused around a handful of tunes from Let It Die -- a couple mixes each of "One Evening" and "Gatekeeper" as well as four treatments of "Mushaboom". While we've found some of her music to tread disturbingly close to adult contemporary / easy listening, the majority of these fifteen tracks nudge her into new pleasing downtempo-y territory. Also included is her 'live at the BBC' version of the BeeGees' "Inside + Out" as well as her cover of her ol' pal Peaches' "Lovertits".

MPEG stream: Mushaboom (Postal Service Mix)
MPEG stream: Lovertits (with Gonzales)

On The Reminder, her second album, Feist takes a much more active songwriting role including a pretty great adaptation of one of our all-time favorite Nina Simone songs, "See-Line Woman" which she altars to Sea Lion Woman. With Gonzales in the production chair once again and great guest spots by pals Jamie Lidell and Eirik Glambek Boe (Kings Of Convenience), Feist's voice continues to sound smooth and confident. There is definitely a reason this debuted on the top 20 of the Billboard charts and is probably playing in hundreds of cafes as you're reading this. But luckily it's one of those records that while totally accessible is actually really quite good.

MPEG stream: Sea Lion Woman
MPEG stream: I Feel It All
MPEG stream: Past In Present

Limited stock on this one; and it's unfortunately already out of print at the source. So allow us to be brief. Fejhed is the guttural noise collaboration between Frederikke Hoffmeier (aka Puce Mary) and Jesse Sanes (yes, that Jesse Sanes from Hoax). Hard to say when, where, how these two came into each other's orbit and recorded this cassette, but it aligns more with the Puce Mary end of the spectrum - power electronics / death industrial vibes with sicktone squalor, cancerous machined clatter, subterranean metal bashing, guttural frequency broadcasts. Seance-channelled vocalizations of the disembodied ghosts, ectoplasm, demons, etc. add a crusty layer of scabrous noise to the whole thing, so here's one hell of a cassette that would get worthy comparisons to early Lustmord (e.g. the first album on Sterile Records and the Lustmordekay tape).

MPEG stream: The Edge
MPEG stream: Haunt
MPEG stream: Transatlantic

Does anyone know what other outfits he's played with? This is a manic and intense violin freakout.

Like the album title states, all of the compositions that Morty scored for two pianists. The pieces were all composed between 1951 and 1963 and include several of Feldman's earliest experiments with using graphical scores. For those overwhelmed by the temporal immensity of Feldman's later works, this release might be the ticket, as all the pieces here are well under the 10 minute mark, though it was irreverently noted that listening to this disc you might be convinced you were listening to one long piece. This because many of the works in this collection instruct the pianists to play at such a glacial pace that a new note is not to be struck until the preceding one has faded completely into silence. Yet not all the tracks here hold this molasses-like tempo. There are a few pieces such as the mantra-like "Work for Two Pianists" and "Ixion - For Two Pianos" which are densely packed with notes -- enough notes to make a dozen Feldman compositions. Includes a nice 39 page essay by pianist Mats Persson on Feldman's career and his close relationship with the visual arts and artists. Comes packaged in a handsome hardcover booklet.

RealAudio clip: Vertical Thoughts 1 for Two Pianos
RealAudio clip: Projection 3 for Two Pianos

[ aquarius records catalogue — F ]