[ aquarius records catalogue

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Showing results 751 through 800 of 1549.

Hot on the heels of their greatest hits comes a brand new studio album. The timing seems just a little bit unwise, as it demonstrates just how little progress the band has made since they released their all time classic 'Streetcleaner' 12 years ago. In fact, if anything, it shows that they've actually regressed, sounding way less visceral and way less significant. With boring

Godflesh were one of those bands that came about in the late eighties/early nineties which teetered on that fine line of post industrial ridiculousness and pure crushing brutality. The combination of heavy Sabbath riffs and Big Black informed drum

It's weird to think that amongst the legions of fans out there who LOVE Jesu, there are probably loads of folks who don't realize that Jesu was born out of the mighty behemoth that was Godflesh. Justin Broadrick, who started off in grind pioneers Napalm Death, made a quick pitstop in Head Of David, and eventually struck out on his own in Godflesh. These days, drum machines and metal are not strange bedfellows, but back in the day, this was some seriously what-the-fuck action. Metalheads and punk rockers alike were confused, but got over it pretty quick once they realized that Godflesh might just be the heaviest fiercest thing they had ever heard. And Godflesh at their heaviest was to be found right here, on Streetcleaner, adorned with the now iconic image of crucified men on crossed in front of a cascade of burning lava (a frame from the genius movie Altered States), this record, originally released in 1989, still sounds as fearsome as ever. And now that we have a handful of Jesu records to reference, it's easy to hear that some of the seeds that would eventually blossom into the dreamy shoegazy metallic bliss of Jesu, were present even back then, albeit buried beneath a black hole crush of churning downtuned riffage and blistering skull rattling programmed beats. Our old three sentence, 14 word review of this still says it best: "One of the heaviest, scariest "metal" albums EVER. Drum machine doom death. Godflesh's best." NOW ON VINYL!!! And holy crap if that cover doesn't look even more amazing all blown back up to its proper lp size!!

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This pioneering industrial-metal duo return with another slab of sledgehammer pain. Too bad they're just to stoned to know that the drum'n'bass breaks they're using are just a little tired. And Justin Broadrick's grunting vocals haven't gotten any easier to take. Still, this delivers some of the trademark Godflesh sound that made their classic Streetcleaner one of the most nihilistically heavy albums ever.

Some of you may know the name Matt Rosin from past collaborations with AQ faves Dead Raven Choir, but here, as Godheadscope, he is now called�M. Kolophonium, and is single handedly attempting to craft a sort of classical black ambience, the label suggests Arvo Part conducting and arranging a performance by Corrupted, which sounds amazing, and while we see what they're getting at, we're not sure that's wholly accurate. The label also suggests that Godheadscope is for fans of Wolfmangler, Boris, Jesu, Dead Raven Choir among others, and that really just sort of sounds like it would be for most aQuarius customers then, eh? But this is indeed an epic and gorgeous chunk of experimental ambience. And unlike most offerings falling under the same banner, this is not simple or really minimal, not guitars against the amps SUNNO))) style drone, not lo-fi single note drones, no this is dense and layered, composed and arranged. The songs are set up in gradually developing movements, strings and synths woven into delicate frameworks, allowed to breath, to expand and contract, to swell and pulse. The record seems to be separated into two movements, the first two tracks, are like a sonic wave pool set in motion, then slowed down and stretched out, dark languorous waves of sound, that ebb and flow, gorgeous and glacial, with extended spaces between the notes, a truly majestic and cinematic sprawl, but within the swells, there seems to be a lot going on, synths and guitars, even voices, all smeared into strangely lush organic drones, twisted into strange lovely shapes.� The second half of the record is much more tranquil, still adhering to that swell and shimmer pattern, but everything softer and more spare, an ambience to balance the first half's energy, culminating in the moody drift of the final number, lush pianos laid over a haunting field of electrical crackle and anguished distant wails, woven into a jazzy shuffle, sounding like a super abstract tribal Necks, some freaked out kosmiche free jazz that unwinds into a gorgeous piano / feedback coda, trailing off into nothingness...

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Second record we've had from Godheadscope, whose last release was on God Is Myth, and found this one man band attempting to conjure up a mysterious classical black ambience, described by the label as "Arvo Part conducting and arranging a performance by Corrupted", which was not all that far off the mark. This latest disc, however, is less heavy, and more atmospheric, with vocals, male and female, soaring strings, delicate piano, all woven into the minimal black ambient background, which makes for a delicate sort of blackened chamber music, quite cinematic, mournful and melancholy, hushed and expansive, long tones drift over lush strings and synths, the vocals dramatic, yet minimal, bass throbs dot the soundscape, streaks of glitch and electronic shimmer wrapped tenderly around sweetly sorrowful melodies, pointillist piano, there are some intense and brooding movements, but the record never explodes, instead opting to pulse and throb and smolder, and while the vocals do occasionally tread perilously close to cloying, dipping into some ethereal 4AD goth territory, they tend to be more hushed and whispered, adding an ominous element to a sound already haunting and otherworldly. Originally released as a download only, we managed to get a small handful of the "Poet's Edition", which is a cd-r, bundled with an oversized hand assembled, numbered and signed book, featuring liner notes and, obviously, poems.

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More thunder-core from these two maniacs, the biggest sounding bass-drums duo in the world. The hit single this time out? A cover of "In The Air Tonight" that will give Phil Collins nightmares, similar to the tongue-in-cheek, metaller-than-thou cover art and spiky logo.

Sebadoh performed a new song at Sub Pop birthday bash recently; the lyrics went something like "MYWIFETHINKS GODHEADSILOARETHEGREATESTFUCKINGBANDINTHEWORLD!"

Rusty Axe is one of the few cult underground black metal labels that can seemingly do no wrong. "Raw Fucking Metal" is what they do, and they do it better than almost anyone else. Always with a demented twist, all of their bands damaged and demented in their own way, some seriously fucked up, others just with a unique vision, but a seriously outsider aesthetic, which obviously appeals to the AQ sensibility. In the past, we've had Rusty Axe releases from damaged modern doom masters The Wizar'd, the putrid metallic black noise of Enbilulugugal, and the Midwestern redneck black metal of Blood Cult. And the recently released Rusty Axe sampler has had us chomping at the bit to hear more from Baphomets Horns, Defecated Corpse, Demonic Mortuary and of course Finisher (best band name ever?). To hold us over, we've got the latest release from Puerto Rican church burners Godless, an actual cd (not a cd-r) of ultra primitive blackblackblack lo-fi buzz. Definitely steeped in the Norwegian tradition, Godless have been around since 1990 and were the first black metal band from Puerto Rico, and they definitely sound like it. Church Arsonist is like a black metal time capsule from the nineties, Mayhem, Emperor, Darkthrone, Immortal, extreme Ant-Christian buzzing epic black metal majesty. Black guitars soar and squirm over relentlessly thrashing blast beats, incredible riffing, that goes from jagged razorsharp brutality to blown out dirgey doom, harsh howled vocals way down in the mix, insane dizzyingly manic leads, the whole disc peppered with bits of ambient sound and strange samples, chanting monks, machine gun fire, nighttime forest sounds, World War 2 news clips, dive bombing planes, there seems to be a distinctly warlike element to Godless as well, which actually suits their sound (just as much as the church burning, anti-Christian themes), which spends much of its time loping along at a buzzing Burzumic midtempo, super anguished and bleak, downtuned guitars evoking sorrow and misery, but with every miserable dirge countered with a blazing blast of blackness. Incredibly cool booklet and art, lyrics and photos, and check out one of the band members, in full medieval cloak/tunic, chainmail and tights, gauntlets on both hands, clutching a mighty broadsword, leaning into the fire (although in the live shot he's wearing jeans and a venom t-shirt, but who can blame him, playing live in chainmail and tunic is rough...) An awesome, classic modern slab of blackened primitivism. Grim. Check. Cult. Check. Black. CHECK.

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*Acid Mothers Temple alert* *Acid Mothers Temple alert* *Acid Mothers Temple alert* Spacey, swirling, not-un-heavy trip-out rock jamming from some dudes who really know how to do that sort of thing, since some of 'em are members of Japan's Acid Mothers Temple, including the bearded one himself, guitar guru Kawabata Makoto! Higashi Hiroshi from AMT is on hand as well on electronics. Hence the alert sounding from your computers loudspeakers right now (what, it's not working? well, you can read the alert above). The other three musicans (guitar, bass, drums) here all appear to come from another Japanese psych band called Mandog, who we weren't familiar with before but maybe should investigate! Together, this AMT-Mandog collab called Godman has conjured up two long tracks ("God>><><

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"The early Manchester scene was anchored by The Fall, Joy Division, a few straight-ahead punks, and the more idiosyncratic denizens of the Manchester Musicians Collective. And Gods Gift out-did them all - in diffidence, darkness, pure feral energy and gleeful musical anarchy. Their successes were epic, but their failures, too, left indelible impressions. Guitarist Steve Murphy put it simply: "If things were going wrong, we'd make them go more wrong." Singer Steven Edwards once shouted out to a baffled London crowd, "Wotcha dancing for? � it's tuneless, you pillock!"Pathology spans GG's career from 1979 to 1984, drawing material from their records, a Manchester Musicians Collective compilation, several demos and two full-length cassette albums. 12-page booklet with photos and extensive bio; 75 minutes of pounding, insistent, magnificent noise"

Second cd from these political punk rockers. Jarring, chunky yet oddly catchy hardcore that takes some weird twists and turns. Sort of early Fugazi/Bad Religion-ish. Includes a cd-rom of video clips and zine stuff. Recorded by Ryan Massey of American Steel.

While it does take a while for this Canadian nine-piece to build through the opening murky drones, this debut album (originally issued on vinyl through the small Canadian label Constellation) evolves into a dynamic orchestration that falls somewhere in between Dirty Three and Village of Savoonga. The most innovative album from Kranky in a very long time!

The Canadian ensemble Godspeed You Black Emperor has provided a Quebecoise doubling of the title of their third release: one in English, the other an Anglicized French. Throughout their relatively brief but impressive career, Godspeed You Black Emperor has successfully translated a melodramatic psychic desolation into droning orchestrations that soar into majestic crescendos for strings, a trio of guitars, twin bassists and percussionists. Totally majestic and epic. However, the aura of socially-concerned pretentiousness -- which had been held at bay on the last two releases -- really makes itself known on this record. The title's blatantly obvious search for pathos, more unneeded street poetry, and some 'ironic' found sounds from a grocery store's intercom sales announcement are some of GYBE's pretentious excesses on this album. Musically, Godspeed You Black Emperor moves along similar paths as on their previous records... sure it's beautiful, sure it's emotional (except the first track on disc one, in which GYBE tries to make happy music -- a mistake). What was so great about Godspeed's first releases was the remarkable freshness of the sound, as if they emerged from nowhere to produce incredible compositions. But with nothing really new or innovative to push them forward, Godspeed You Black Emperor has gotten a little schmaltzy, a little stale. Mood music without meaning. Furthermore -- put your gossip hats on -- we hear that Godspeed rather repeatedly behaves like uptight cheap assholes to more than several bands they agreed to play shows with, but that's another story. Sorry to be so negative, folks -- it's a fine record and if you haven't heard them before then you should most definitely pick up a Godspped record. It's just that if you're already a big fan, this might disappoint just a little.

The second release from the Canadian nine piece ensemble is about as epic as 28 minutes can get. As with 'F#A#oo", Godspeed render the psychic desolation of the Canadian tundra as an intense soundtrack that swells from glacial strings to dense yet melodic orchestrations for guitars, bass, bells, percussion, and their string section. Certainly inspired by Morricone's mighty scores, "Slow Riot..." is also reminiscient of the dark musings of their contemporaries: Village of Savoonga, Rachel's, Mogwai, etc... Haunting. Beautiful. Awesome. A unanimous staff favorite.

It's a new Godspeed record, and it's got all you've come to know and love about them. Yanqui U.X.O. shows their epic cinematic post-rock gestures getting perhaps even more sweeping and grandiose. The various samples making pointed social criticiscms that appeared throughout Lift Your Skinny Fists... are absent this time around, much to the relief of several AQ staffers who found the politics heavy handed. That doesn't neccesarily mean this record is apolitical-- the taut, tension filled sounds still feel like the soundtrack to a revolution, and the back cover diagram explicates connections between various major labels and weapons manufacturers. GYBE are not going to give up resisting Yanqui neo-imperialism just because they're an instrumental band. The irony of resisting the capitalist war machine by selling a product is not lost on the band, but then again, you might just want to close your eyes and let the warm sheets of Godspeed sound wash over you, and not think about any of that political stuff, right? Well allright. Cryptic message from the liner notes: "& hope still, a little resistance always maybe stubborntiny lights vs. clustering darkness foreverok? thankslovegodspeedyou!blackemperorbyexoxoxox"

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Godspeed are one of those rare bands who enjoy a slavish dedication from their fans, a nearly unrivaled level of hero worship style extreme fandom, the sort of thing enjoyed by very few others (Neurosis? Neutral Milk Hotel?), with fans treating GYBE like a post rock Grateful Dead or an alternative underground Phish, following them from show to show, state to state, hoarding live recordings and patiently awaiting the second coming. And by second coming, we of course mean the first Godspeed record in a decade! And ever since word leaked, that there was in fact a new record on the horizon, and especially as soon as the band started playing shows, and playing the new material, we've been barraged with requests for the new record, questions about the release date, months and months before it was actually released (heck, probably before it was even recorded). But here we are, and the new Godspeed is in fact among us, and we are pleased to say, it's definitely pretty goddamn great. We had actually cooled a bit on Godspeed, having LOVED their debut, and Slow Riot almost as much. But both Lift Your Skinny Fists and Yanqui didn't quite do it for us the way those first two did. This one though, is a whole 'nother story. The record is split into two twenty minute tracks, and two 6 minute interludes, the two proper tracks are exactly what you'd expect, and want, from a new Godspeed record, droned out psychedelia, layered tones and soft swirls of melody, the opener all brooding slow build mesmer that over the course of the few minutes builds in lush billows of sound, before the drums kick in, and the song gains momentum, sort of Hawkwindy at first, before exploding into what sounds to these ears like full on psychedelic space rock, as in Heads, White Hills, and the like, driving, distorted, spiraling leads, swirling effects, propulsive almost krautrock like drumming, but it is Godspeed, so there are plenty of Eastern melodies, strange textures, lush layers, and after a bout of FX drenched wig out, the song gradually settles down into a slow fade outro, one that is pocked with bursts of psychedelic freakout and shard of abstract heaviness, looped and cyclical and gorgeously majestic, the final two minutes, near symphonic and utterly breathtaking. The second proper track is much more subdued, the strings taking up much of the melodies, tinkling chimes over spidery guitars, and simple spare drumming, the sound dynamic and dramatic, but never quite exploding into full on freakout, instead just building and releasing tension, the way only Godspeed can. There is a bout near the end, where they again dabble in some psychedelic space rock, but it's Godspeed style, and like the first track it leads to another final few minutes that explode dramatically and tug on heartstrings, creating another majestic finale. The shorter tracks are more abstract, droned out and minimal, textural and atmospheric, definitely gorgeous in their own right, the first, acting as a brief interlude between the two slabs of post rock bombast, the second, a haunting outro, a winding down, a fading out, after the sonic catharsis that is Allelujah! FYI, the vinyl version of this is currently MIA, being repressed, so we'll have to list it another time, soon we hope...

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We didn't think we'd be able to get any copies of this in at all, there seemed to be some issues with the licensing or something, but somehow, finally, we managed to get a handful of these in. A super deluxe reissue of the iconic score by legendary Japanese composer Akira Ifukube, for the classic 1954 monster movie Godzilla, that's right, the ONE, the original, the monster movie that started it all, and Ifukube's score is as much a classic as the movie itself. And what better way to celebrate Godzilla's SIXTIETH birthday (and anniversary of the movie/score) than with a deluxe Death Waltz reissue! And deluxe it is, as always, but more on that in a second. The music itself is stunning, as is pretty much everything we've heard by Ifukube (in partiuclar, his score for King Kong Vs. Godzilla, which we raved about here back in 2006), a mix of lush orchestration, sinister strings and traditional Japanese folk. There is of course the instantly recognizable theme music, with it's tense, soaring strings, but then the lilting percussive exotica of "Ootojima Temple Festival", quickly followed by the droning, plodding, ominous "Stormy Ootojima Island, which builds and builds, driven by booming percussion that sound, as they're meant to, like Godzilla's lumbering footfalls, there's the jaunty military fanfare of "Japanese Army March I", which leads right into the arrival of the monster, the strings darkening, like the skies above, as the monster approaches the shore, tense and intense, the refrain from the opening theme returning, but this time even more frantic and frenzied, and then "Godzilla's Rampage", which is so scary, and creepy, the horns moaning malevolently, a funereal dirge, a haunting threnody, and so it goes. There's plenty more, and all of it's great. Has us wanting to watch the movie again to, BAD!! And as we mentioned, Death Waltz does another fantastic job with the packaging, this time featuring striking new cover art by Cheung Chung Tat, which is reporduced inside on a folded movie theater style poster, the vinyl is a grey swirl, the music itself is presented on vinyl for the first time ever, remastered from the master tapes at Toho Studios, there's a Japanese style obi too (of course) with some liner notes and credits, and as you might imagine, this is also VERY LIMITED!!

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"Abri" is the eighty-eleventh album from Goem -- the hyper-prolific Dutch trio of musique concrete artists doing minimalist techno. By now, the Goem sound is starting to show the limitations of working with minimalist rhythms that are so minimal that

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Goem is the exceedingly reductive post-techno ensemble comprised of Peter Duimelinks, Roel Meelkop, and Frans De Waard. Drawing from both the gentle modulations of Terry Riley's minimalism and the stripped down techno rhythms of Jeff Mills, early Pan Sonic,

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Goem is the post-techno production team comprised of three guys (Roel Meelkop, Peter Duimelinks, and Frans De Waard) known more for their contemporary musique concrete /drone work. For this record, Frans De Waard commissioned remixes of the material found on the "Reduktie" which embraced the hyperminimal clickery and tone generation of Mika Vainio's solo work as �. The remixologists have for the most part left a good chunk of the structure intact with a monophunk techno minimalism, but have rearranged / reconstructed / recycled the various bleeps and blips through the wonders of the laptop. Featured remixes are Stilluppsteypa, L.O.S.D., Taylor Deupree, Kim Cascone, Jos Smolders, Starfish Pool, Surge, Radboud Mens, Institut Fuer Feinmotorik, and /Slo-Fi.

At one time, Goem seemed like a great idea - a bunch of Musique Concrete informed post-industrialists trying their hand at Pan Sonic style minimalist techno. For a couple of releases, it worked quite well; but "Gast" proves how incredibly limited Goem have become with their project, and how boring the microsound community has become as a whole. This album is a collection of remixes /

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

SORRY. Goem's austere post-techno explorations have taken this Dutch trio (Frans de Waard, Roel Meelkop, and Peter Duimelinks) into a realm subaudible tones and muffled static rhythms on this effort. Their entry in the well-regarded Mort Aux Vaches series of radio broadcasts brings them much closer to the Studio 1 sound that Wolfgang Voigt pioneered with Mike Ink / M:1:5. Monochrome pulses phase through various EQ settings and knob twiddling effects that could easily make this pass for a release on Kompakt. It may thus be not surprising to learn that the source material for the final cut originated from Mr. Voigt himself!

Kick ass packaging aside (well over 1200 holes punched into cardstock and etched jewel case, so be careful!), Goem's "Punik" is one of the more interesting releases in the current deluge of lowercase / post-techno albums. Using a Student Simulator (simply qualified as a device used in medical school, for what, we don't really know) and a broken Doctor Rhythm drum machine triggering Boucle synthesizers at Stockholm's EMS Studios, "Punik" percolates with electron squiggles and ping-pong motorik slabs of rhythm, that could be the sound equal to Bridget Riley's Op-Art modernism.

We are told that the track "ems een" utilizes music by Muslimgauze, but Goem (the post-techno collective featuring Roel Meelkop, Frans De Ward, and Peter Duimelinks) has systematically elimated everything from Muslimgauze's Arabic electronica except for a somatic bass pulse. Clinical rhythms and terse electron manipulation in the same vein as Mika Vainio and Ryoji Ikeda.

The latest release from one of our favorite modern masters of drone and drift and doom and dirge, the oddly monikered Gog, who in Heavy Fierce Brightness, has composed two nearly 20 minute epic soundtracks for an art installation of the same name. But regardless of the inspiration or ultimate application of the sounds contained within, Heavy Fierce Brightness is simply a continuation of Gog's endless sprawling exploration of some grim black space, a hellish otherworld, captured alchemically and represented sonically, a harrowing, harsh, blackly abject landscape of minimal low end thrum, and corrosive grinding glacial crunch, two slabs of slowly decaying melted metal filth, allowed to ooze blackly into great sonic tarpits of sound, audial black holes, their blinding black glow dulling all the colors around their slowly collapsing centers. "Dragged By A Black Cat" begins as a hushed creep, a low thrumming drift, peppered with strange bits of scrape and clatter, the low end billowing up in great gauzy clouds, so low the speakers struggle to keep up. A haunting cinematic ambience, like the score for a descent into some great yawning abyss. Eventually streaks of feedback, and sheets of buzz are laid atop the throbbing low end, wreathed in electronic crackle, in gouts of tremorous glitch, building into a crumbling wall of cascading buzz and grinding crunch, the chaos and clamor gradually settling into a long bit of processed drift, a slow swirly sea of near static tones and subtle harmonic shifts, a Niblockian expanse of soft sumptuous swells and lush layered thrum. "Heavy Fierce Brightness", begins much like the first side, some hushed minimal rumble, some ominous drone, but quickly the sound grows tense, a wash of smoldering buzz quickly enveloping the softly chiming minimal shimmer beneath, but that underlying melodic swirl, remains throughout, while the more corrosive sounds above, roil and churn like some storm swept sonic sea, the various layers coalescing into something strangely shoegazey, a warped undulating dronescape of looped and layered tones, of crunch and shimmer and buzz and whir, keening distant melodies, and lush rumbling whirs, all blurred into a slow shifting panorama of blown out black bliss, a muted harshness, that somehow still manages to soothe and entrance. The final stretch a series of mesmerizing slow burning swells, dark and deep, truly heavy dronemusic, a sound that is anything but minimal, a constant slow motion barrage of downtuned guitar crunch, squealing electronics, deep metallic reverberations, whirling layered tones, strangely textured thrum, gauzy ambience, all woven into a caustic and creeping doomdronedirgedrift crawl. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES! Housed in a gorgeous embossed jacket, with original artwork by Colin Stinson (and featuring images of the HFB installation).

The return of these blackened psychedelic doomdrift dronelords, with their second record for Utech, and what appears to be the second Heavy Fierce Brightness record, the first being a limited lp only release from a while back, the soundtrack to an art installation (we still have a last few copies, act fast!), this one a new proper full length cd, this HFB further described as Spells Of The Sun, three new tracks, nearly 50 minutes of rumbling low end mystery and abstract avant blackness. The ritual begins with the 8 minute sort of introduction "Spells Of Shadow", a smoldering sprawl of metallic buzz, and muted industrial throb, all manner of grinding metallic crunch, and swirling spaced out effects, the sound corrosive and distorted, but still hypnotic and soothing, a thick undulating black drone, the various layers surprisingly active, spinning off sparks and constantly changing tone and timbre, all the while underpinned by a hazy high end shimmer. Blackened dreamy dronemusic of the highest order. "The Opening" unfurls yet another expanse of lush layered blackness, hazy and washed out and gorgeously mesmerizing, but before you know it, the song shifts gears and the band kicks in, pounding drums, distorted guitars, a sort of doomy lope, hypnotic and propulsive, wrapped around streaks of high end skree and feedback, then the vokills come in, SUPER distorted, the whole thing splintering into a blown out black squall, the main lumbering riff and rhythm still in place, but all around it, blackened clouds of crunch and chug and whir and buzz swirl and shimmer, a strangely pretty bit of motorik blackness. The metal fades out leaving traces of melody, stretched out into hazy smears of softly kaleidoscopic sound, some hushed minimal droney drift, only to explode once again into some dense doomy pound. Finally, the 21 minute title track finishes things off, a sprawling layered dronescape, that shifts slowly from glassy almost new age-y minimalism, from soaring howling psychedelic squall to crumbling distorted doomdronedirgedrift, from keening high end ur-drone, to wild storms of swirling feedback and finally to murky minimal shimmer. As always, gorgeous stuff. Packaged in cool oversized black and white four panel poster sleeve with artwork by Locrian's Terence Hannum.

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Latest sprawling dronedoom epic from this aQ favorite one man band. For whatever reason, we always forget to mention that the Gog guy once did time in some other aQ fave heavies Unruh and Wellington, but for the last little while has been trafficking in something much more minimal and abstract, that would be Gog, whose sound is a constantly mutating black sonic cloud. While already a strange beast, Gog seems to have gotten even stranger here. Four sides, all spinning at 45 (although they sound even murkier and sludgier at 33!), the first of which begins with a long stretch of grinding metallic industrial blackness, like the hum of machinery magnified into a glorious drone-y din, occasionally coalescing into something resembling SUNNO))) like riffage, before ultimately fading out in a blur of muted shimmer. The B side introduces some spaced out jazzy drumming, a strangely out of pace shuffling rhythm, draped over a fog of blackened whir, the vibe very Necks-like in its spacey almost looped sounding mesmer, rife with swoonsome melodies, and a final movement that's all washed out lo-fi drift and click splattered low end churn. The second record begins as a thick, caustic industrial dirgescape, again flecked with some jazzy rhythms, that continually shift, and at one point transform into what sounds like looped fills beneath sheets of whirring buzz, only to explode into a corrosive finale, all keening high end skree. And finally, the D side unfurls a blurred bit of gauzy ambience, the loveliest of the bunch, at least briefly, a very Tim Hecker-ish feel, that quick grows more corrosive and caustic, the drums come shuffling in, the sound growing more rhythmic, tribal and dense, laced with samples, the whole thing subtly dubbed out and heavily effected, making it a sort of tripped out psychedelic coda. So cool. LIMITED TO 220 COPIES!! Pressed on white vinyl, and comes with a 33"x22" poster!

The return of Gog, and yet another monolithic slab of avant heaviness, this time based on, according to the label at least, the death of the American dream, with much of the sounds coming from Gog mainman Mike Bjella's family blacksmith shop, hence the title. And sonically, it is a gorgeous dark and depressive epic, the opening track a strange bit of atmospheric ambience, constructed from a weird brittle blast beat, beneath a crumbling all of distorted low end, buried melancholic melodies, and what sounds like the clank and clatter of metal on metal, the sound eventually builds into something much more melodic, that opening buzzy brittleness, overlaid by a dreamy washed out guitar, all blurred and shimmery, eventually the buzz and blast dissipating completely, leaving just spidery guitars over the sound of churning machinery, plaintive piano, before finally exploding into a wall of Tim Hecker like buzz. The rest of the tracks aren't all so lovely, instead they often veer toward blackened industrial crunch, and smeared blacknoise, often with deep vocals drifting over the top, but just as often left to churn and squeal and howl and rumble. "God Says To Love You In Chains", though, IS as lovely as the opener, at least in the beginning, another melodic noise hybrid, delicate buzz, echo drenched anguished wails, pointillist piano, all beneath a crumbling cascade of blown out distortion, and mysterious percussion, building to a caustic and chaotic frenzy, the strange percussion giving the track a tribal fee, all the while wheezing swirling synths or organs drift beneath, adding a strange bit of atonal drone to the proceedings. "A Promised Eternity Fulfilled With Cancer" too is a dark beauty, haunting piano wreathed in a cloud of static and hiss, crunch and crumble, a more abject take on Tim Hecker / The Caretaker, or perhaps a more blissful lovely take on Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, either way, the sampled sound of machinery, or what sounds like it, drives the track, grinding away beneath the piano, and the psychedelic haze. After a track of what sounds like pure processed field recordings, those sounds murky and muffled, gradually more and more processed, into sheets of noise and haunting rhythmic pulsations, the record finishes with a lovely bit of melodically sculpted noise, "I Draw My Strength From You", is a brooding drift, rife with thick blurred swaths of low end, and the distinctive sounds of hammer on metal, a gorgeous bit of collaged ambience, the sounds gradually growing more and more corrosive and distorted, crackling and in-the-red, a coda of blown out buzz, which quickly settles back into a long slow sprawl of grey noise and lush, textured ambience. Packaged in a super striking black on black embossed jacket, includes a download coupon, and is LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!

MPEG stream: 1870-1906
MPEG stream: Tasks Which Destroy Body And Soul
MPEG stream: God Says To Love You In Chains

In a world (our world at least) full to overflowing with drone records, dirge records, doom records, and yes, dirgedoomdrone records, the mysterious Gog have somehow always managed to transcend. From their very first release, the subtly spectacular Noriah Mills, Gog have continued to mine similar territory as so many other soundmakers, but with the resultant whole so much more than its constituent parts. The music of Gog, while on the surface, perhaps seemingly simple, minimal, abstract, is the sort of sound that requires deep listening, upon which, the guitars then reveal themselves as so much more than electronic tone generators, the long strands of feedback and the layers of dense billowy buzz, so much more than just texture and timbre. And while on past releases, the band hinted at something a bit more black, their occasionally blissed out ambience drifting into darker and darker greys, on Mist From The Random More, the band have fully committed, creating what for them is a haunting otherworldly black metal suite, a droned out, blissed out, buzz drenched, almost static expanse of smoldering grimness, shot through with glimmering glistening effulgence, a bit like wrapping a black gauze around an exploding sun, the results, again, transcendent. The record begins with a gorgeous, slow burning bit of guitar drone, that owes more to the kosmiche sounds of krautdrone than the downtuned glacial fug of more doom-ed entities. These guitars soar and shimmer, warm gouts of feedback enfolded by deep rich sheets of coruscating soft focus heaviness, any other band would stretch this out to fill up a whole album, and rightfully so, we'd probably be gushing just as much if Gog chose to do the same thing, but these Sunroof-ian solar sonics are only part of Gog's grand vision for Mist From The Random More. The title track, taking up the bulk of the record, finds Gog fully immersing themselves in black metal, or at least their (very) loose approximation of what black metal is, or could be. The sound is grim, and frosty, but only in the sense that it reflects much of the black metal that came before, in every other way, it's anything but, the guitars glow, the riffs are fluid, organic, wrapped in a soft burnished buzz, that reminds us a bit of Jesu or Nadja, but the arrangement is more Necks. In fact, a shorthand descriptor might be "a black metal Necks", which if you're anything like us, would be all it would take. Simple skittery minimal drumming, almost looped sounding if it weren't so abstract, beneath a roiling cloud of layered guitars, grinding and whirring and hissing, and within that cloud, some gorgeously melancholic low end melodies, difficult to describe the strange blend of loveliness and heaviness, but there it is, a distinctly lovely heaviness, washed out and blurry, and hypnotic and epic and melodic, within this seemingly static structure, the sound swings and slips through various incarnations, moving from total blurred buzz, to a more slowcore lope, always wreathed in swirling clouds of blackened shimmer, until the end, when the track explodes in climax of effects drenched psychedelic churn. The closing track offers a chance to decompress, a strange assemblage of soothing tones, shot through with streaks of feedback, very cool and clinical, almost a Raster-Noton sort of sound, there's a brief burst of super distorted crumbling sonic chaos, almost Merzbowian in its intensity, transforming into a haunting post industrial doomscape, before again returning to the relative tranquility of the first few minutes, eventually leaving just a single upper register tone, which also finally fades into the shadows. Another fantastic record from Utech (after a whole mess of incredible releases, including last list's Aluk Todolo Record Of The Week), gorgeous packaging, an abstract skull, rendered in some kind of white dust (cocaine?), on a spare black background, a gatefold with printed liner notes inside, and yes, probably limited...

MPEG stream: Night Zoe
MPEG stream: Mist From The Random More

Every once in a while we'll get a disc in the mail, that has us intrigued before we've even heard it. Take Gog for instance. Well, to begin with, they're called Gog. Or so we believed. The cover wasn't entirely clear. They could have been called Sounds Of Battle And Souvenir Collecting, which is just as intriguing. The cover art is kind of trippy, a little bit spacey, still no sure sign of what was in store musically. So we tossed it on, and wow, nice, some sort of soft drifting shimmer, like signing bowls, bowed metal, deep resonant chiming over a thick soft backdrop of deep dark ambience. Another perfect late night drift record we're thinking, when all of a sudden the 21 minute long second track kicks in and holy shit, suddenly we're in a whole 'nother place, and it's not nearly so pretty and tranquil. A huge Earth 2 like riff, sprawled out and massive, a glacial low end crush, churning, downtuned and buzzing, each chord pulsing and throbbing, just as suddenly, some strangely beautiful melodies surface, and start drifting right along side the main slow motion riff, and suddenly it's both epic AND lovely, pretty, but ominously heavy, underneath, all manner of murky sounds swirl and whirl, a constantly shifting sea of drones and muted underwater FX, then again Gog knock us on our asses when the drums finally kick in at about the 10 minute mark, and the song transforms into some sort of lumbering sludge doom behemoth, the cymbals sizzling way up in the mix, the drums pounding, the riff more corrosive and harsh, monstrous and massive doom metal that unfurls even as it launches into action, subtly blissing out, until Gog's doom is heavily laced with My Bloody Valentine fuzziness and the sunburst blown out beauty of bands like the Angelic Process and Nadja. An gorgeously blinding blast of sludgy brilliance.

MPEG stream: Hovering Lake
MPEG stream: Noriah Mills (excerpt 1)
MPEG stream: Noriah Mills (excerpt 2)

Gog is definitely one of our favorite modern purveyors of droning doomic filth. From the massive downtuned multiple o'd doom of�Noriah Mills to the more abstract but no less heavy split with Apparatia (the one with the metal cover we just reviewed, only a few copies left), it's as if Gog the man is on some hell-bent mission to explore the foulest pits of hell and dredge up the crustiest, doomiest, ugliest, foulest sonic ooze in existence.� And we're fully supportive of this endeavor, as we're the ones who benefit. We're the ones with an insatiable appetite for all things grimy and sludgy, slow and low and heavy heavy heavy.... We got this slab of black ambient brutality at the same time we got the split, but we only got a fraction of the copies we requested since this one is already out of print. We have about fifteen of these in stock, so be prepared to leave empty handed, but at least the most fleet fingered amongst you doom obsessed will leave here with a big sick grin and an earful pockets full of oozing black beauty. Four tracks, about a half hour, the opener is a stone cold black ambient doom classic, thick glacial slabs that shift and growl, pulse and throb, blown out and distorted, crumbling and overdriven, heavy and thick, but seeming to decay before our very ears. A gorgeous melancholy melody rendered in black tar and allowed to melt in the hot sun, clogging your ears and speakers. The rest of the disc is not so distorted, a bit more tranquil, but with hints of the doom metal that lurks just below the surface, thick swirling washes of rumbling crumbling whir, chunks of fragmented riffs, doused in reverb and sent spinning into the ether, dense foghorn like swells, crazy hyper delayed and dubbed out squalls of hiss and static, snippets of distant percussion, whirring soft shimmer, all slowed down and smeared into glacial black blurs, settling at the bottom of your speakers like some sort of hellish doomdrone silt. Awesome. And again, already out of print, only 15 copies or so in stock, once these are gone that's it.

MPEG stream: The Invaders Have A Search Beam
MPEG stream: The View From Under A Rock

In the early days, Gog, aka Mike Bjella, trafficked in straight up blackened drones, thick slabs of monolithic heaviness, but with each record, that sound got weirder, more difficult to classify, and more removed from that more primal, metal drone sound. This trajectory culminated in Gog's last record, Ironworks, which was mostly sourced from the sounds of the Bjella family blacksmith shop, and found Bjella fusing that early blackness, with something more minimal and hypnotic. We mentioned Aussie minimal jazz trio the Necks, and on the first track on this brand new self titled Gog record, we feel like we have to mention them again, cuz that track lays down a thick backdrop of rumbles and whirs, punctuated by a weird subtly distorted rhythm, over which haunting, melancholic piano drifts and loops, super moody and mesmerizing, those background sounds gradually building momentum, and slowly overtaking that jazziness, burying it beneath moaning sheets of sound, keening slabs of metallic buzz and clouds of gristly static, eventually transforming into something almost black metal sounding, maybe via Skullflower, a frenzied guitar riff, and buried vocals, blurred into a woozy blackened swirl. Not all of the record is so subtle or avant, as quickly the sound evolves into something way more metallic, pounding, weirdly produced drums over more harsh vokills so low in the mix, they almost sound like white noise, while swirling all around, more black buzz, the sound gradually darkening and deepening and becoming a sort of feedback drenched noise rock doom, all plodding and lumbering, and at times sounding like a breakbeat slowed down to a near crawl. But still there's no way to pin down what's going on. The next track is a barely there field of static, a deem resonant thrum, crafted from sonic gristle, while the next track begins as a dark torch song like ballad, all lush sonic swells and female vocals, haunting and almost liturgical, before exploding, quite suddenly into some seriously muddy, muted, and blown out black metal murk. And finally, things finish off with some noise flecked, loping slowcore, the piano returns once again, wrapped around a laid back rhythm, the whole thing a dark jazzy drift wrapped in clouds of caustic noise, exploding in a final bust of churning heaviness, a howling black-psych frenzy still somehow underpinned by that moody, mysterious darkjazz. So good. Definitely recommended for fans of moody, minimal heaviness, and haunting, abstract, metallic minimalism. Includes a download code!

MPEG stream: The Lies, They Want To Give You Something
MPEG stream: Before You Go, We'd Love To Tear You To Fucking Pieces

The return of the peculiarly monickered Gog, a one man practitioner of the dark musical arts, able to whip up huge swaths of drifting droney shimmer as easily as a crushing avalanche of corrosive slow motion riffage. More often than not some glorious grey area right in the middle.� Here Gog is teamed up with the unknown to us Apparatia, who proves to be a worthy match up.� Gog begins the proceedings with a 25 minute epic, blown out and buzzy, recorded SUPER hot and way in the red, a strange creepy soundscape of metallic clang, and huge reverbed guitar, not riffing, just sort of shimmering and vibrating, everything suspended amidst a barren sprawl of decay and delay, until everything explodes, and the track is transformed into an impossibly distorted, barely moving glacial wall of sound, the production so hot, the speakers seem on the verge of collapse, a massive spacious dirge that like other Gog stuff, manages to be lovely amidst all those jagged edges and crumbling chaos. Partway through, the guitars blur into just a long stretch of distorted whir, while beneath, the bass and drums continue to plod along, a strange slowed down groove buried beneath roiling clouds of fuzz. Gog finishes off his half the split with a little minute or so long chunk of random sound, peppered with vocals, a haunting little fragment of creepy ambience.� Apparatia are in fact a grim buzzing black metal behemoth, who right out of the gate, first song, launch into some seriously grim blasting, super distorted and ultra sick, the vocals a demonic croak, the guitars a blurry buzz, the drums another static roar buried in the mix. But the band do mix it up, weaving haunting clean guitar interludes, with the harsh super affected vocals crooning hellishly over the top. Raw and primitive, and gloriously intense and brutal, the�vocals and guitars in a constant battle of the buzz, the recording quality sort of damaged and lo-fi, making for some Faxed Head like audio damage. Pretty fucking cool for sure. Definitely need to hear more from these guys. But for now, this is a seriously killer one two punch, one part slow motion sludge, one part grim, buzzing fury.� AMAZING PACKAGING. A printed sheet of metal, black on silver, super heavy, like the music inside, text and images affixed to the back, the cd housed in a black and silver metallic paper sleeve, with mysterious blurred images and liner notes. Sticker on the front,�LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!!! Each one hand numbered. We got 40 and that's it. Once these are gone, we will not be able to get more...

Sounds like the GoGoGoAirheart fellows have shifted their music making approach just a little for their fourth full length, focusing more on guitars and pop-structured songs and less on their more familiar extended dubby bass, post punk jams. In the process, they've relinquished a bit of the tension that made the music on both their self-titled and "Love My Life Hate My Friends" albums so immediate and absorbing. It's in those jams that the best of GGGAH surfaces. Likewise, live, they can be hit or miss, but when their improvs lock into a groove... Hoo boy, they are amazing -- especially when the fluid bass playing of A. Vyas is given room to move. The angstful howl'n'yelp of main vocalist Michael Vermilion is still very much in the vein of The Pop Group particularly on the longer numbers ("Here Comes Attack"), but quite often in the shorter punky songs his voice also takes on a nasality reminiscent of the Buzzcocks' Pete Shelley ("Sincerely P.S."). He's joined on vocal duties by Vyas and guitarist Benjamin White. Also thrown into the instrument mix are trumpet, piano, programmed drums, Moog synths and organ.

RealAudio clip: Here Comes Attack
RealAudio clip: Sincerely P.S.
RealAudio clip: When The Flesh Hits
RealAudio clip: Good Things

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

SORRY. This album fades in as though we've just encountered the GoGoGo boys well into one of their lengthy improvisational sessions. Constantly changing in instrumentation, sometimes there's two drummers, sometimes a cellist, and sometimes who knows? But it's always anchored by some truly awesome bass playing. Live, they can be a tightly wound, convulsive unit channeling the ghosts of The Pop Group and The Fall, or a quietly meditative dubby discovery of notes and rhythms. Includes a reworking of A Certain Ratio's "Do The Du".

San Diego's Gogogo Airheart play their own version of late '70s style arty post-punk. From dabbling in dub realms to punching out frenetic, spasmatic, pop dislocation, Gogogo Airheart doesn't hide their affinity with The Pop Group, whose song "Trap" they in fact cover. There are also ample references to Wire's "Pink Flag" and even neo-Krautrock by way of The Fall, making for an excellent follow-up to GGGAH's great "Love My Life Hate My Friends" album. See them live. Buy their records. Gogogo Airheart kick ass.

You might've noticed the recent flurry of Eastern European inspired bands -- for instance the dreamy rural acoustic sounds of Beirut, A Hawk And A Hacksaw and the Bay Area's own Karpov. Since 1999, New Yorkers Gogol Bordello have been taking similar influences into a decidedly more urban setting and whipping it up into an art punked gypsy-fied frenzy. Indeed, on their latest album, they opt for blinding neon brights versus the abovementioned groups' warm earthy hues. Leader of the pack Eugene Hutz might maybe have true Slavic roots but we thinks that this is not without a healthy dose of irony. At times Super Taranta! charges head first into a pirate-ish many bottles of rum drunken traipsing of the plank. Not ones for the subtle nor the soft, theirs is a garish, sweaty, loud and loose vaudevillian circus which the hipster scene has been all over for years. It screams 'New York' at the top of its lungs! This is the kind of wild, tawdry partying where glasses are smashed, clothing gets torn, and everything else gets trampled in its path. Good times? Fuck yeah!

MPEG stream: Wonderlust King
MPEG stream: Forces Of Victory

Presented for your party pleasure: this DVD compiles a performance by righteous party-monger Gold Chains at San Francisco's Beta Lounge, along with plenty of extra videos and live performances, including the awesome "I Come From San Francisco" video, shot on a BART train! Locals: look for yourself and your friends in the videos. Out-of towners: experience the magic of a Gold Chains show from the comfort of your living room. The live at Beta Lounge portion comes peppered by unfortunate amounts of clean-cut white girls in flygirl pose mode and art-school graduate ghetto parody, but Gold Chains himself puts on a helluva show as always, making the most uptight of booties shake and temporarily redeeming the white-boy indie-electronic hip-hop genre (at least until the next time I'm reminded of the existence of Cex). Although it's funny; I know I was pretty drunk that night, but I remember the show being totally crazy, like crowd surfing, buckets of sweat, jam-packed dance-your-ass-off crazy. Somehow, the video doesn't quite seem to convey the mayhem. Perhaps the filming would have benefitted from another approach, or maybe I was just more wasted than I realized. Hmmm.

Who rocks the parti? Local darling Gold Chains cracks the whip with five new dancefloor hotties giving a heads up to the Cologne and Berlin Schaffelfieber sound. Having travelled the world in his brief career as Gold Chains, Topher Lafata has absorbed the sounds of other lands to craft his own brand of electrosonic hiphop thunder. Following on his acclaimed debut for Orthlorng Musork, "Straight From Your Radio" is another brief encounter with the hard beat mystic nonmaterialistic witch doctor. Each track is very distinct from the next from the rubbery bass of the lead off track to the absurd cootchie song. So silly and repetitious, it lyrically reminded me of Snow's "The Informer" from '93. Continuing on, "Let's Make It" pumps out the big beats Sweet and Gary Glitter style. Y'know those thumpin' '70s enormo-party anthems! He even does a reworking of Samhain's "Human Pony Girl"! Come join the caravan...

RealAudio clip: I Treat Your Cootchie Like A Maze
RealAudio clip: Let's Make It
RealAudio clip: Human Pony Girl

Don't call Gold Chains a player, he's in love with you. And don't call him played out, 'cause this single is another evolutionary step for the genre twisting, scruffy-voiced laptop MC. Broken electric funk and tech-hop beats infuse one of Gold Chains catchiest, best-produced (and that's saying a lot) tracks to date. Features a hectic pitched-up remix by Kit Clayton, and a groovy house-ier mix by Luomo (aka Vladislav Delay).

Gold Chains' new abum is again a kick ass, completely weird hybrid of hip hop and bedroom electronics so over the top and colorful that it demands a lot of attention. Not as completely catchy as his selftitled debut, this is still exciting and a fun listen. And check out "Break or Be Broken", decidedly non hip hop love song with pretty rock chord progressions, a good direction for Gold Chains.

MPEG stream: Young Miss America
MPEG stream: Break or Be Broken

I can't believe that this record hasn't driven us mad. In the very near future, it very well may. But at the moment, Gold Chains certainly tickles our fancy for purposefully ridiculous, totally fun electronica/hip-hop. Gold Chains is the boisterous hip-hop

RealAudio clip: I Come From San Francisco
RealAudio clip: No. 1 Face In Hip Hop
RealAudio clip: Rock The Parti

SF indie hip-hop artist Gold Chains brings it again! Rocking a more earnest and cynical parti... When The World Was Our Friend offers up more broken electric funk and tech-hop beats for fans of previous albums, though on a slightly darker and harder note. Congruent to its title, the album is less hoochies in thongs sippin champagne in the hot tub, and more holy shit man what the fuck is going on. More emphasized this time around is frequent collaborator Sue Cie, singing a generous amount of the tracks. When The World definitely pushes Gold Chains into a different realm. Looking forward to it being pushed even harder!

MPEG stream: Better Together
MPEG stream: Come To Cali

[ aquarius records catalogue — G ]