[ aquarius records catalogue

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Showing results 551 through 600 of 1631.

The Swedish sound artist B.J. Nilsen has been recording as Hazard since 1996 as a means of investigating the physical and psychological effects that natural sounds hold upon the human body. The pursuits of sonic research are refinements of Nilsen's Industrial heritage which began with a handful of epistomologically grim albums as Morthond for Cold Meat Industries and has continued with the Janitor collaboration with Baby Doll Lima of Deutch Nepal. Unlike those projects, Hazard engages a stronger poetic sensibility in the digital processing of field recordings from snow, ice, water, wind, etc. The resultant cold, cold, cold drones dappled with rich, textured detailing always imply a malevolence within natural phenonemona. As on the Hazard album with its self-evident title "Wind," "Land" finds Nilsen collaborating with respected field recordist Chris Watson to capture source material worthy to be run through the Hazard bank of DSP patches. Again, it's wind that Nilsen is after, transforming the violent whippings of Arctic winds into huge rumblings of low frequencies that burst into climatic squalls of rushing drones crackling with a rough-hewn digital grit. As the album progresses, the sense of foreboding and dread which opens the album dissipates and reveals brighter tonalities that are worthy of comparison to Eno's ambient recordings. All of these tracks on "Land" have been treated from live recordings made over the past year through Hazard's numerous performances across Europe. Another great album from Hazard!

RealAudio clip: Substation
RealAudio clip: Church
RealAudio clip: Kissing Gate

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SORRY. BJ Nilsen (the individual hiding behind this disc's grey packaging and the name Hazard) may also be hiding from his former Cold Meat Industries moniker Morthound. While the overall isolation and dispair of Swedish winters is found in both of Nilsen's projects, Hazard has shed the Satanic/Catholic themes of Morthound in favor of post-structuralist abstraction that results in shivering grey drones striated with a variety of scrapes and shimmers. We'll agree with the evocative description the Wire's Ian Penman came up with for this: the sound of a stealth bomber thinking to itself 'I'm getting too old for this shit, and I'm heading for the far away places to shiver and rust'.

Having difficulties in making wind recordings for his new project, Benny Jonas Nilsen (aka Hazard) asked field recording specialist Chris Watson for some help. Coincidentally, Watson had just finished, of all things, a radio program all about wind for Following the approach of juxtaposing natural acoustic phenomena with synthetic computer based processing that he utilized on his "North" and "Wood / Bridge / Field" albums, Hazard here generates a wide miasmic range of deep drones and dark looping passages from the manipulated wind recordings, but not overly-structuring the material, instead favoring an organic presentation of the sounds. The addition of Watson's pro recordings add a great deal of color to Hazard's otherwise cold grey timbres, with his dynamic recordings of wind whistling through creaky window frames, environmental recordings of westerlies whipping around mountainous peaks, and violent thunderstorms! The result is a fantastic record on par with Andrew Chalk's "East Of The Sun" or Zoviet France's "Mohnomische."

RealAudio clip: Stream
RealAudio clip: Anemo
RealAudio clip: Sough

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SORRY. Hazard's third album sprawls across a cd and an lp, packaged together as one cohesive body of work. Moving further and further away from the industrialist tendencies that Hazard's B.J. Nilsen employed for his previous work on Cold Meat Industries as Morthound, Nilsen deftly manipulates field recordings made in various Swedish forests to evoke an unforgivingly barren Swedish landscape that normally doesn't translate so well on field recordings (unless you're Chris Watson). Hazard's grey sweeps of electronic dronescapes are sparsely punctuated by residual scrapings of what could be wood, leaves, and dirt for a spectacularly chilling work.

"Light" is an all-exclusive precursor to the 2001 Touch Tour with Hazard, Fennesz, and Biosphere. Unfortunately, that tour is only taking place in England, so the rest of us will have to make do with this CD. Hazard's track is an eerie drone that rises quickly

RealAudio clip: C-Street

Some of you may know Grant Hazard from Oakland-based band The Very Hush Hush, whom we have carried records from in the past. For his first solo effort, Hazard gives us an instrumental cd of icy cool but beautifully melodic ambience. Comprised mostly of minimalist solo piano inflected with spacious textures and droning loops, Hazard's classically-trained musicianship serves him well in recalling the dulcet tones of impressionist composers such as Debussy and Satie, the modern day minimalism of Brin Eno and William Basinski, and touches of the dark-natured cinematic temperaments of Bohren & der Club of Gore. Limited to 500 copies. An excellent debut!

MPEG stream: Marionette
MPEG stream: Trepanning
MPEG stream: Shards

Also now reissued on vinyl. Funkadelic guitarist (of "Maggot Brain" fame) steps out solo, 1977. Includes funkadelicized covers of "California Dreamin'" and "I Want You (She's So Heavy)"!

Funkadelic guitarist (of "Maggot Brain" fame) steps out solo, 1977. Includes funkadelicized covers of "California Dreamin'" and "I Want You (She's So Heavy)"!

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SORRY. One of Lee's rarest records (it saw just a limited release in Sweden only), this 1972 gem is full of horns and upbeat songs about, according to Lee, "pimps, whores, pushers, dopers, gangsters, and bottom of the human-chain shitheels. Now you're probably thinking I'm writing about major record companies and their unscrupulous executives, but this time, you're wrong! I'm describing the characters in my cd '13'" Recommended!

Light in The Attic continues their awesome Lee Hazlewood archival series with this rarest of rare releases, a 1975 soundtrack to the last (and least known) of the many films for Swedish television Hazlewood made with longtime collaborator Torbjorn Axelman. Half surrealist anecdote and half documentary, A Room Safe for Tigers is a bizarre self-portrait of the artist as he embarks on a new life in a new land. Filmed on the island of Gotland, Hazlewood shoots various scenes with the local townsfolk, running a marathon, trying to convince Swedish children to take sides against Nixon, and seeking protective spells from a witch. The centerpiece of the soundtrack, the song "Soul's Island", reads like a pastoral response to the Nancy & Lee classic, "Some Velvet Morning" with its epic orchestral sweeps and never-ending fade out. There are a couple of revisitations from the back catalog, namely "The Nights", a spoken-sung epic about Native American genealogy and genocide and an early Shackletons' cover, "Little Boy Blue". But the bulk of the release is material never released before including instrumentals, some country-funk numbers and a strange duet with Axelman as he recites all of Hazlewood's lines in Swedish. As seen with the last archival release, The LHI Years, Hazlewood's less heard '70s Swedish output was just as vital and essential as the famed sixties material he was best known for. Kudos to Light in The Attic for continuing to make the work of this eccentric American voice more widely available.

MPEG stream: Souls's Island
MPEG stream: A House Safe For Tigers
MPEG stream: Absent Friends

The man with the give 'em hell attitude towards life takes the same approach towards death on what is widely reported to be his farewell record. Suffering from renal cancer, and getting his affairs in order, Hazelwood, the gravelly-voiced singer and producer of some of the most exciting and weirdest country-tinged pop, refuses to wax poetic about his inevitable fate. Full of rollicking new numbers, some duets with non-famous friends, and a couple of visits back to his two best known hits with Nancy Sinatra, "Boots" (featuring Duane Eddy on guitar) and "Some Velvet Morning" (with counter vocals sung by Lee's granddaughter, Phaedra, who thought the song was about her), this is not the kind of record that Hazelwood's fans would have ultimately wanted which would have him harkening back to his late sixties heavy reverb sound, or the sad lonesome burn of songs like "My Autumn's Done Come" recently featured on Air's Late Night Tales compilation. Instead this is a cheerfully black-humored ode to a man who has defined everything on no one else's terms but his own, remaining every bit of a nutter all the way to the very end.

MPEG stream: The First Song of The Day
MPEG stream: Anthem
MPEG stream: Boots (Original Melody)

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SORRY. Here's what our pals at Revolver Distro say: "Free to ramble in the post Boots days, a newly minted Lee Hazlewood (legendary NANCY SINATRA/DUANE EDDY collaborator/songwriter) struck out for Europe, sampling Spain, France and Germany before landing in Sweden, a locale which would inspire some of his strongest work. His key artistic associate in Sweden was the film director TORJORN AXELMAN, and together the two masterminded the film and album project Cowboy In Sweden. The album went gold in Sweden and was a precurser to their next collaborative masterpiece, A House Safe For Tigers. Now reissued by Smells Like to give you Lee's trademark singular synthesis of cowboy rambles, rock rhythms and symphonic pop. Joined by vocalists NINA LIZELL and SUSIE JANE HOKOM (of the INTERNATIONAL SUBMARINE BAND led by GRAM PARSONS) who lend their heavenly voices to the sophisticated humor and raw subject matter of Hazlewood's material. Eleven songs of hard luck tales, pragmatic politics and love odes fueled by dark, poetic lyrics and esoteric images declaimed with wit, irony and wry honesty. One of Hazlewood's finest and most original offerings-a true gem in uncut form."

Yes, this is a *new* Lee Hazlewood album, his first domestic release of new material in over 20 years! Lee and the Al Casey Combo tackle a bevy of standards, including "Makin' Whoopee" and "Try A Little Tenderness". The liner notes, fixating on Lee's imaginary (we hope) "scotch bus", are even stranger & funnier than the record... but it's too bad the music is nowhere near as good as it was when Lee was in his prime.

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SORRY. In conjunction with the release of "Total Lee! The Songs of Lee Hazelwood," "For Every Solution There's a Problem" presents a collection of previously unreleased songs, some in their rawer demo form and some fully fleshed out productions. There's some low key Hazelwood classics here, especially the oh-so-dark opener "Dirtnap Sories," the aaalmost country of "Buying Back," and a late but worthy entry into the Lee + Lady duet canon recorded in the 'nineties and featuring "Melissa," a singer whose last name is unremembered by the musicians and producers involved. There's some goofy moments ("Dolly Parton's Guitar"? Hmm..), but if you're a Lee lover, this is a nice collection. As with the tribute album, Lee comments on every track in the liner notes.

RealAudio clip: dirtnap stories
RealAudio clip: dolly parton's guitar

The Lee Hazlewood reissue train keeps a rolling with three new previously unreleased reissues from his early days: His second and third albums, The N.S.V.I.P.'s (Not So Very Important People) from 1965, and Friday's Child from 1966, as well as his ninth album Love And Other Crimes from 1968. The N.S.V.I.P.'s (Not So Very Important People) and Friday's Child are both full of quirky songs and song stories about eccentric folks and down-and-outers and their often surreal downfalls. These records have Hazlewood's trademark twisted take on popular songforms like country-folk and Tin Pan Alley-ish novelty tunes with his uncanny knack for sublime production and wry humor. Love And Other Crimes was recorded after the two Nancy & Lee albums he did with Nancy Sinatra, and the songs have a groovier almost psych-pop quality, even though there is some novelty schtick happening as well. Love and Other Crimes does however have some of our all time favorite Hazlewood tracks, especially the Byrds-by-way-of-Johnny Cash number "Pour Man" which is a gorgeously dark and groovy murder ballad, that we once thought referred to the relationship of Nancy Sinatra and Billy Strange, who arranged many of Nancy & Lee's signature songs. But their love triangle was merely played up for the press and didn't really exist, so we're told. Still a great record in a slew of great reissues!!

MPEG stream: Friday's Child
MPEG stream: Houston

You know it's been a cold and lonely world since Lee Hazlewood left it, not that he wasn't constantly reminding us what a cold and lonely world we live in while he was still alive. But somehow listening to his preternaturally world-weary songs -- sung in his trademark wooly baritone; sheathed in their unique, and at times kitschy, baroque country-pop splendor; resigned to epic restlessness, heartbreak, loss, and death; and yet resolutely and often humorously self-defiant -- feels even sadder, now that he's gone. His back catalog is huge and for the uninitiated can be difficult to navigate but thankfully Water has reissued his first three MGM recordings from the mid-sixties for the first time separately (the 2002 2cd Big Beat reissue, These Boots Are Made for Walkin': The Complete MGM Recordings compiled all three albums together). Beautifully arranged by Billy Strange and newly remastered, they are the perfect entry point into Lee's left-field western cinematic sound. We're reviewing our two favorites here, the third will be on the next list! Lee Hazlewoodism: Its Cause and Cure from 1967 continues in the same vein as its predecessor (The Very Special World of...) but includes more of his half-spoken / half-sung epic narratives such as "Jose" about a young boy's quest to be a matador, and "The Nights", about the harsh life of a white woman who decides to join a clan of Native Americans. Peppered with more upbeat numbers than ballads, the best of which are "In Our Time" with its Byrds-like 12 string guitar, "The Girls In Paris" and "Dark In My Heart". As with most Hazlewood records, listeners have to deal with some cheese, here most represented by the vaudevillian "Suzy Jane Is Back In Town", but that is grist for the mill when dealing with someone whose sound world maneuvers fearlessly into many of the strangest niches of American popular music. It's best to brave these minor moments than ignore one of the best examples of pop production put to tape. R.I.P. Lee!

MPEG stream: The Girls In Paris
MPEG stream: The Nights
MPEG stream: In Our Time

MPEG stream: Pour Man
MPEG stream: The House Song

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SORRY. Vintage Lee Hazlewood, the man who Nancy Sinatra says "wrote three quarters of the songs I'm performing" (but always refused to marry her).

Late seventies Nashville-inspired country record recorded in Sweden. In similar vein to his 1963 debut, Trouble Is A Lonesome Town. Equally sublime and goofy!

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

SORRY. Vintage Lee Hazlewood, the man who Nancy Sinatra says "wrote three quarters of the songs I'm performing" (but always refused to marry her).

You know it's been a cold and lonely world since Lee Hazlewood left it, not that he wasn't constantly reminding us what a cold and lonely world we live in while he was still alive. But somehow listening to his preternaturally world-weary songs -- sung in his trademark wooly baritone; sheathed in their unique, and at times kitschy, baroque country-pop splendor; resigned to epic restlessness, heartbreak, loss, and death; and yet resolutely and often humorously self-defiant -- feels even sadder, now that he's gone. His back catalog is huge and for the uninitiated can be difficult to navigate but thankfully Water has reissued his first three MGM recordings from the mid-sixties for the first time separately (the 2002 double cd Big Beat reissue, These Boots Are Made for Walkin': The Complete MGM Recordings compiled all three albums together). Beautifully arranged by Billy Strange and newly remastered, they are the perfect entry point into Lee's left-field western cinematic sound. We reviewed the other two on last week's list, this is the third, not our favorite necessarily but still pretty dang good, and fans will of course want all three... The Something Special album from 1968 is unique in that after it was recorded and given a catalog number and cover (nice tan, Lee!), MGM decided to cancel it. So it has been given "lost album" status, making this the first time it has been issued on its own. The opening track "Shades" was actually recorded during the Lee Hazlewoodism sessions but the rest of the set, which covers more jazzy and Tin Pan Alley territory than the previous two records, doesn't quite reach the same majestic pop realms. In fact it features some bizarre Louis Armstrong style scatting (provided by Billy Strange himself) that will have less brave folks running. Not Hazelwood's finest moment as a whole record but for completists who have missed this, there are more than a couple of worthy moments. R.I.P Lee!

MPEG stream: Shades
MPEG stream: Little War
MPEG stream: Stone Cold Blues

A fantastic compilation of Hazlewood tracks from his late-sixties/early seventies output when the country-pop production genius found himself in Stockholm and recorded some of his most weirdly romantic and beautifully bummed out records. Most of the tracks come from 1969's Cowboy and The Lady (with Ann Margaret), 1970's Cowboy in Sweden (with Nina Lizell and Suzi Jane Hokum) and the most awesomely embittered break-up record ever, Requiem for an Almost Lady from 1971. But fans familiar with those albums might not have everything here, including rare B sides and an unreleased track, "I Just Learned How To Run". The burnt out surrealist western influence came about largely from his collaborations with Swedish filmmaker Torbjorn Axelman who Hazlewood worked with throughout the seventies. Yet these albums were sometimes a bit much on their own, having a flair equally for epic wanderlust as they did for cornball humor. But by taking the best tracks from these albums, it really puts a spotlight on Hazlewood's druggy pop genius, and shows that his best years weren't behind him with Nancy Sinatra and his amazing output for Reprise. Anyone that dug those Water reissues a while back (The Very Special World of Lee Hazlewood and Lee Hazlewoodism: It's Cause And Cure) should pick this up too. A compilation that we couldn't heap more praise upon if we tried. FYI, there was a vinyl version of this that came out on Record Store Day; of course, it's long gone, but we do hear that they plan to repress it sometime...

MPEG stream: Califa (Stone Rider)
MPEG stream: Leather & Lace
MPEG stream: If It's Monday Morning
MPEG stream: Nobody Like You
MPEG stream: I Just Learned To Run

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

SORRY. Vintage Lee Hazlewood, the man who Nancy Sinatra says "wrote three quarters of the songs I'm performing" (but always refused to marry her). This has one of the best of 'em all: Lee's self-relexive version of "These Boots are Made for Walking" wherein he punctuates his singing (Nancy's voice isn't missed here) with narrative comments like: "and then [producer] Billy Strange said we'd better fade this out or we'll all get arrested..." (on "The Many Sides of Lee").

MPEG stream: I'm Gonna Fly
MPEG stream: Go Die Big City

You know it's been a cold and lonely world since Lee Hazlewood left it, not that he wasn't constantly reminding us what a cold and lonely world we live in while he was still alive. But somehow listening to his preternaturally world-weary songs - sung in his trademark wooly baritone; sheathed in their unique, and at times kitschy, baroque country-pop splendor; resigned to epic restlessness, heartbreak, loss, and death; and yet resolutely and often humorously self-defiant � feels even sadder, now that he's gone. His back catalog is huge and for the uninitiated can be difficult to navigate but thankfully Water has reissued his first three MGM recordings from the mid-sixties for the first time separately (the 2002 2cd Big Beat reissue, These Boots Are Made for Walkin': The Complete MGM Recordings compiled all three albums together). Beautifully arranged by Billy Strange and newly remastered, they are the perfect entry point into Lee's left-field western cinematic sound. We're reviewing our two favorites here, the third will be on the next list! The Very Special World of Lee Hazlewood from 1966 is one of his best albums ever. Opening with "For a Moment", a ballad of hurt marked by a wall of phase-shifted strings and a chorus of female back-up singers, we're taken through a set of gloriously arranged ballads and loungey pop numbers including the original versions of "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'" and "Sand" (a duet with Suzy Jane Hokum, that he later recorded with Nancy Sinatra). But it's the centerpiece meditation on dying, "My Autumn's Done Come" that's worth the price of admission. It's hard to say if Scott Walker heard this record before embarking on his own string of baroque balladry the following year, but there are surely definite parallels. R.I.P. Lee!

MPEG stream: Sand
MPEG stream: My Autumn's Done Come
MPEG stream: I Move around

Light In The Attic continues its deep digging into Lee Hazlewood's LHI archives with a beautiful and welcome reissue of Hazlewood's 1963 recording debut, Trouble Is A Lonesome Town. Lying somewhere between Johnny Cash and a bohemian Porter Wagoner, Hazlewood takes the listener on a travelogue of a tiny backwater called Trouble and its crazy cast of colorful characters. A sort of country novelty record, it's Hazlewood's deft handling of song-writing, narrative delivery and musical production that gives it a lasting quality that elevates it beyond kitsch. This expanded reissue comes with 15 bonus tracks of Hazlewood's singles and productions from the mid-fifties to the mid-sixties that paint a fuller portrait of the legendary artist in his early years, including tracks with Duane Eddy. Beautifully packaged with an 8 page booklet featuring a previously unpublished interview from 1998. Fans of the other LITA Hazlewood reissues should jump on this!

MPEG stream: Long Black Train
MPEG stream: Peculiar Guy
MPEG stream: The Girl On Death Row

This metal band from the mean streets of San Francisco (featuring members of Walken, Orb Of Confusion, Owl and others) claim to play "epic blackened stoner thrash" and it's hard to argue with that self-assessment. They do play such a thing, if you can imagine that, and it's definitely cool. Gruff guttural vokills roughly rasp desperate battlecries, singing of smoke and mountains, o'er top heaving lumbering grooves and punked out grind. It's sick, and it's sludgy, but it also rocks, way more than we were expecting (was that a cowbell?), with chugging riffery and spirals of old school shreddtastic soloing in spades - the dual axework influenced by classic '80s thrash all right, even as the band's raging sonics range overall into crustier territories redolent of burnt churches, smoldering bongs, and other black and doom metal signifiers. Hazzard's Cure are in and out in about 38 minutes, seven slayin' songs, including amidst 'em an acoustic-y interlude or two, even. They remind us a LOT of another band that's a favorite 'round these parts, the shredding heshers in Saviours. And, in their dynamics and diversity, also the likes of (early) Baroness, High On Fire, Behold The Monolith, and local duo Black Cobra.

MPEG stream: Psilocybin
MPEG stream: Clashing Of Hordes
MPEG stream: Great Dishonor

It's a bold move to offer a debut recording as a DVD; but that's what the East Bay improv / drone / noise HBK Trio has issued forth. Well it's DVD-R; but still! This trio features such stalwarts of the Bay Area sound community as Jim Kaiser (Petit Mal, NF Orchest, French Radio) on his trusted bowed bicycle wheel and other slabs of metal, Angela Hsu (NF Orchest) on violin and electronics, and Adrian Bayless on horns and electronics. As an ensemble, the three capture the spirit of AMM or even some of the Fonal adventurousness (minus the freak folk attributes) with all of the intertwining gestures and expressive bouts of sustained tones and softened noise generated acoustically and tempered with effects. The film comes in two distinct variations; but both of which document the biodiversity of the many creatures living in the East Bay: wasps, beetles, ravens, blackbirds, ants, and bees seen amongst the hurricane fencing, train tracks, and telephone wires. Shot digitally in video, the film enjoys some very nice static shots of insects scurrying about, then with rapid cuts of ravens marauding in the sky. You might ask yourself, is this limited? Hell, yes!

ATTENTION DOOM FANATICS, DOOMLORDS and DOOM MAIDENS!!! HC Minds began life way back in the early nineties, in the placid little town of Eugene Oregon, and while the name might not be immediately familiar to many of you, the bands that were spawned from HC Minds most likey are familiar: the legendary YOB, and the not nearly so legendary, but equally awesome Aldebaran. HC Minds released a handful of records, including a split with Japanese sludgelords Dot [.], most of which faded away with little or no fanfare, but maybe it was just that their doom was a bit ahead of its time. Now that we're in the midst of a doom renaissance, what better time than now for HC Minds to rise from the grave and offer up a new batch of filthy, downtuned doomy sludge! Their first record in 6 years, The Beginning Of The End is a gloriously heavy sludgefest, doomy yes, but not ultra doomy like Corrupted and Bunkur and Moss, no this is way more rocking, we're talking Eyehategod, Grief, Bongzilla, Weedeater, Acrimony, Church Of Misery, that sort of thing. The opener here is a short sharp blast of groovy stoner doom, with a killer almost NOLA sounding main riff, recorded HOT and way in-the-red, lo-fi, but fierce and intense, but that brief blast quickly gives way to some massive slow motion Sabbathian doom, lurching, lumbering, tuned way down, the drums spread way out but pounding heavily, total classic old school dooooom. But the record closes with another uptempo jam, a super heavy grinding stoner doom workout, mathy, jagged, with wild drumming and a killer main riff. The first track on the B side is the record's centerpiece though, HC Minds get all Corrupted, starting off with 5 or 6 minutes of dark languorous piano, atmospheric and haunting, before the hammer falls and the band launch into the meat of the song, WAY heavier, but no less atmospheric and mysterious, this time bordering on ultradoom, with the riff unfurling and ringing out into long stretched spaced out crumbling decaying distortion, before the riff winds up and goes again, the drums a massive pound, but striking every few seconds, the vocals a raspy whisper, the whole thing gorgeously depressive and sloooooooow. The band close out with an even slooower doom jam, super abstract, and ultra distorted, a lugubrious crawl, but peppered with furious squalls of wild grinding psychedelic freakouts, and some harsh demonic almost black metal vox, so fucking awesome, almost wish this track had been given a whole side of its own. Heavy, and slow, and doomy, and downtuned, which in case you're still not getting it means total stoner doom dirge NIRVANA. LIMITED TO 380 COPIES!!!! On black vinyl, although amidst the 30 copies we got, there are 4 or 5 of the super limited white vinyl version, maybe you'll get lucky. Comes in an awesome full color eye popping sleeve, with a printed insert, and an equally eye popping poster of the cover.

Recently, we reviewed Brazil's Modulo 1000... Before that, Thai Beat A Go Go volume 2. And the Lemmy-goes-to-India sounds of Sam Gopal. And the Juan dela Cruz Band from the Phillipines. And Turkish music galore. And all those incredible Cambodian Rocks comps. Et cetera, et cetera. Yup, we've had a lot of vintage heavy rock and psych reissues from all over the world now, but this is maybe the first time we've gotten our hands on something from Korea (and hopefully not the last -- we'd love to get Sanullim discs too, someday). Recorded in, yay, 1971, pressed in a ridiculously limited (promotion only) quantity of 300 copies each, and subsequently all but forgotten, these two records by Korean psychedelic groovesters the HE 6 are some gems indeed! With the exception of the closing side-long seventeen minute cover of "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" (which faithfully does indeed include the obligatory drum solo as per the original version, along with what sounds like a police siren and also an added *flute* solo!) all the tracks on the two albums Go Go Sound '71 vol. 1 and Go Go Sound '71 vol. 2 included here are instrumental jams -- numbered themes with titles like "Theme 2. 4/4 for Guitar" and "Theme 3. Running Human". And even "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" is mostly instrumental of course. Listening to the other tracks on this disc it makes sense that they would choose Iron Butterfly's opus as the sole tune to cover. Like that tune, all of their originals are extended jams led by fuzzed-out electric guitar and Hammond organ. In addition, the aforementioned flute gets a workout too. (Yet another victory for the flute, so often mistakenly perceived as diminutive instrument! But the flute can certainly hold its own in this heavy, groovy, acid-rock band.) And it's crucial to mention that HE 6's rhythm section is darn tight! Indeed, this stuff's funky enough that we're sure they were probably just as much influenced by James Brown's band The JB's as they were by the likes of the Vanilla Fudge and Iron Butterfly. If not so obscure, we're sure this would have been plundered by DJs looking for the swank breaks... who knows, maybe hip hop producers in Korea have done so? So, very much recommended to all you folks into these sorta swinging '60s/'70s sounds -- especially if you dig the Cambodian Rocks and Thai Beat comps! 'Tis an expensive import, but the packaging helps justify the price: a gorgeous heavy-duty mini-LP styled gatefold sleeve, complete with a booklet featuring extensive liner notes (in English!) and photos, plus you even get two colorful HE 6 stickers! Nice.

MPEG stream: Theme 1. Introduction Music
MPEG stream: Theme 5. The World of 6/6

Anyone here looking for black buzz or grimnoise or punked out heaviness or bizarre metal, should turn back now. Cuz as much as we love that stuff, and sure we subsist on a steady diet of buzz and howl, pound and crunch, but one most definitely can't survive on that stuff alone. And most of us here, if you dig past the buzzy droney exteriors, will find a heart of pop. Which is exactly why we've been loving this, the debut from Seattle folk pop outfit The Head And The Heart, who apparently sold 10,000 copies of this record on their own before Sub Pop swooped in to repackaged and reissue this. Which is a good thing, cuz we would have never heard it otherwise. The first track is all it'll take to convince you if this is your cup of tea or not, a sub two minute chunk of dreamy folky strum, with gorgeous vocal harmonies, simple acoustic guitar strum, some sweet piano, all woven into a perfect little chunk of folky pop, that sounds like it would fit somewhere between Fleet Foxes, Iron And Wine and Belle And Sebastian, there's maybe even a little Decemberists in there too. And some classic power pop a la The Zombies, The Kinks, Beach Blys, etc. The vibe is definitely pop, leaning a bit toward old timey pop, mixing in lots of classic twang and folk, the vocal harmonies are a little bit gospel-y, the songs slipping from brooding and ballady to rollicking and rocking, to soaring and bombastic, hooks a plenty, but also plenty of moody atmosphere. It's hard to say exactly what it is about this record that hooked us, but it did, big time, and we find ourselves listening to it more than we thought we would, so much so, that a few of these songs have gotten lodged solidly in our heads, and show now sign of leaving any time soon, which is just fine with us!

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We reviewed a cd by these Canadian grinders a long ways back, a furious twisted atonal slab of spazzed out math grind, that reminded us of Drop Dead or Crossed out all tangled up with the Locust and as we said before sounded quite a bit like your head hitting concrete. Well we managed to get a small handful of these tour only singles, and it's more of the same. But here, the sound is even more convoluted, chaotic, spastic, angular off kilter riffing, freaked out drumming, super dense and dizzying arrangements, with long drawn out stretches of droney repetitive chug, peppered with bits of lightning fast blasts, the guitar constantly slippery and slithery, the chords unhinged, the notes seeming to twist and warble, almost like a slide guitar, but this woozy weirdness gives the whole records a super unhinged feel. Reminds us a whole lot of some long lost Gravity band, which is a VERY good thing indeed. (and we just might have a few copies of the HHC cd in stock, check elsewhere on the site). LIMITED TO 200 COPIES.

Can't think of a much better description for Head Hits Concrete than...well...um...your head hitting concrete. This Canadian noise grind juggernaut is a massive metallic sledgehammer, sounding a bit like some unholy union of Drop Dead, Crossed Out and more spastic contemporaries like the Locust or the Daughters. Relentlessly buzzing and thrashing, but with all sorts of squiggly guitar harmonies and weirdly ear twisting atonal melodies and full on blasts of utter chaos as well as the occasional burst of classic metal riffery, albeit dressed in spazz/grind clothing. Then just mix in song titles like "The Anal Cavity Is Coming Up Roses", "I Shit God", "We Love E. Coli", "The Pastor's Cock Is In My Mouth (Hooray!)" and you've got one of the coolest, heaviest, sonically fucked records in recent memory. 47 songs in 60 minutes. Yes.

MPEG stream: The Anal Cavity Is Coming Up Roses
MPEG stream: The Practical Impossibility Of Denying Emotion
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Look out! Lurching, lumbering, mesmerically repetitive & rambling, doomed-out blackened metal comin' at ya here, from Stockholm, Sweden, brought to us by a label that sure knows their hard-to-pigeonhole, psychedelic "occult rock" heaviness (The Ajna Offensive, who most recently brought us both the latest Aluk Todolo and Sabbath Assembly efforts). Head Of The Demon's debut is indeed demonic "head" music, the sort of thing meant for late night listening, with the lights low, when you're in a particularly Luciferian and/or Lovecraftian mood, doing some grim partying all by yourself, working your way through a few cans of beer, cranking tunes that aren't meant for the light of day nor the ears of the innocent. Under such circumstances, it's easy to embrace the plodding desolate atmospherics of the 9+ minute "They Lie In Wait - Riding The Waste", for instance, and groove to the chantings of "By Titan Hand"... Head Of The Demon's weird vibe is in part due to the guttural, slightly goofy vokills (that grew on us), channelling Tom G. Warrior deathgruntage at times, Pete Steele gothic crypt-speak at others, all echoed and effected. Even more crucial is the chiming and buzzy but still rather clean guitar, that's wielded by an ex-member of doomlords Saturnalia Temple. The guitarist plays some almost Eastern-inflected riffs, kinda coming across like dismal, doomic snake charmer music, super raw and hypnotic - with eerie organ tones and drones also adding to the effect. A sickened Sabbath is an obvious reference, also we should cite The Wizar'd, Hellhammer, Negative Plane to explain other aspects of Head Of The Demon's sound. And the cyclic chug of "Phantasmagoria" could be a black metal incarnation of Pharoah Overlord, perhaps! Definitely not a normal "metal" album, but one that for sure fits in with the avant/extreme Ajna aesthetic of darkness and doom.

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Found just TWO of these tucked away in the closet, we got em way back in 2005, and for whatever reason, we never got around to reviewing it, which is a shame cuz this is some crazed kick ass stuff. A sort of manic twisted post punk, thrash pop, or something, from back in the nineties, angular, crusty, chaotic, noisy, atonal crunchy buzzy guitars, wild octopoidal drumming, super melodic basslines, unhinged vocals that flit from keening croon, to punk rock yelp to banshee wail, it's really hard to describe these UK weirdos, we'd say if you dig Crass and Rudimentary Peni and that sort of crusty punk rock, but mixed with some over the top, almost proggy aspirations, with the songs devolving into mathy freakouts, or soaring punkprog epics, then these guys are right up your alley. Hard to believe more people haven't freaked out over these guys, cuz this stuff is baffling and brilliant, noisy, dense, loose, epic, twisted and heavy. And way recommended. Sadly we only have 2 copies. Killer packaging too, a cool cd sized softcover book, with full color covers, and inside pages and pages of lyrics, drawing, photos and collages. The cd contains the group's only LP, their only 7", a demo tape and a bunch of comp and unreleased tracks!

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Derek Gedalecia is a man who gets around. The Bay Area synthwrangler has largely been releasing Head Boggle tapes on pretty much every cassette imprint under the sun (NNA Tapes, Fag Tapes, Rainbow Bridge, Tusco/Embassy, and his own Greedmink imprint amongst some two or three dozen others); and his two slabs of vinyl have come via pretty fucking high-profile venues. First up was his eponymous album back in 2012 via Spectrum Spools, and here's this album released through Experimedia. The titular instrument that Gedalecia used was found at the Electronic Music Lab at SF City College. For those synth-nerds, this particular model was probably built by Serge Tcherepnin sometime in the late '70s. Tcherepnin had designed this modular synth as an inexpensive alternative to the rather pricey Buchla synth that had been developed also on the West Coast around the same time. The schematics for the original synth are available for those with a soldering iron and considerable patience to build his or her own. With patchbay cables wildly pulled & plugged, knobs twiddled spasmodically, and oscillator switches toggled irregularly, Gedalecia creates a semi-improvisatory free-for-all feel akin to the pioneering work of Francoise Bayle or the polyglot analog+digital systems of Keith Fullerton Whitman. Seeing him do this stuff live where he's bopping around and literally head-banging to step-sequenced tone bursts, you get the sense that he's having a blast doing this stuff. What separates Gedalecia from every other dilettante with a synth fetish.

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Headboggle is an aptly named project from Bay Area product Derek Gedalecia, who landed this polydactile, outsider/avant-electronic album on the always impressive Spectrum Spools imprint. Like much of what we've heard from John Elliott's label, Headboggle filters a historical aesthetic through a contemporary-DIY lens with pretty reliable results, and Gedalecia has a pretty different take on that agenda by looking not so much to the cosmic / post-psychedelic era of progressive electronics. He's one to apply a huge amount of studio techniques and references including Tod Dockstader, Francoise Bayle, Nurse With Wound, Caroliner, Stockhausen, as well as Dilloway, Nate Young, and much of the post-noise synth wranglers, although Gedalecia is much more keen on dumping all sorts of odd samples and live instruments into densely packed, yet wholly decentered collages. Yup, he too has the suitcase full of cassette releases that have been spilling forth over the past three or four years, with a few of those popping up in the tape case here at aQuarius even. This self-titled lp is full of way-out there synth jams - citing six or seven synths in various interviews and whatnot, that give the record an 'everything-at-once' sort of overload bursting with candy-colored tones and bright-lite plastic luminosity, all topped with erratic banjo plucks, atonal harpsichords spluttering, and ragtime piano passages. What a trip!

Texas trippers Headdress have been stirring up quite the fuss lately. First Mexican Summer reissues their out of print Turquoise cd-r on wax, and now Brooklyn's infamous No Quarter offers up their most recent effort, an unexpected leap into new territory for this psych/folk turned heavy drone duo. Seems these former folkie nomads have traded their knapsacks and peace pipes for distortion pedals and tube amps, not sure if it's for the better as we really loved the airy country atmospheres the old Headdress did so well. Lunes begins with a buzzing drone that lingers on and on as layers of tremolo organ and distant electric guitar creep in and out. The band have definitely dropped their Brightblack influence and instead traded it for other, heavier influences like Earth 2 or Nadja, not exactly a bad thing, though it seems their new droneyness is a bit flat and lacks the depth of other drone outfits. Their signature shoegazy, dreamy vocals don't appear until the third track, accompanied by a repetitive twangy riff that plods on and on into infinity, like watching the sun fall behind a never-ending horizon, definitely our favorite track on the album as it reflects what really makes this band unique in our eyes. Complete with trippy psychedelic artwork in a nice looking cd gatefold package, don't miss out on this slow burning drift into the golden summer sun.

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Formerly known as Worship (they released a small cd-r pressing under that moniker), the elusive group who now answer to the name Headdress continue their dusk lit creep through the enchanted wilderness. On Turquoise they craft a beautiful loosely woven tapestry of ivy-like guitar tendrils, lichen-encrusted percussion, solemn mossy male vocals that reside somewhere between Jandek and M. Ward. The album's fifth song "Babylon" sounds strangely like a deconstructed folk rendition of America's "Horse With No Name". Whether intentional or not, the glinting familiarity of the latter's central melody adds to the existing subtle hallucinatory atmosphere of the proceedings. The crowning jewel of rough hewn Turquoise though is the sixth track titled "Moon Of Shedding Ponies". It's a frayed, meditative instrumental populated with generous turns of a rainstick and what sounds like howling wolves or banshees. If you dig the rustic, abstracted psych-folk sounds of Wooden Wand & The Vanishing Voice and the many bewitching branches of the Jewelled Antler Collective, don't miss this!

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[ aquarius records catalogue — H ]