[ aquarius records catalogue

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Showing results 101 through 150 of 1106.

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Downtown NYC alto sax player Ori Kaplan combines international (Israeli, North African, Arabic) influences with both avant and trad jazz composition/improvisation, with the help of pianist Andrew Bernkey, and percussionists Geoff Mann and the wonderful

Some of you are probably familiar with Kapotte Muziek (which translates roughly to 'broken music') a recording project of Dutch sound artist Frans De Waard, who also runs the Korm Plastics and Bake Records record labels. Kapotte Muziek has recorded, released or contributed to hundreds and hundreds of records, so it makes sense that an odds and ends collection would end up sprawling over the length of FOUR cd-r's. De Waard has explored all facets of sound, from minimal electronics to somber drones but KM would have to be qualified as 'noise music' wethinks. Not noise like Merzbow, although their are moments, but more like simple forms of noise, sculpted into new shapes, and alien sounds. White noise, pink noise, static, distortion, electrical currents, all deftly maneuvered and recontextualized. Each disc is packed to the gills with lost recordings, alternate versions, sound experiments, ambience, harsh noise and everything in between. Slow soundscapes of staticky hiss that ebbs and flows like some strange electronic sea, drones constructed from what sounds like wind and crickets and a million marbles rolling down metal stairs, siren like sinewaves twisted and pitched into clicks and bumps and squealing swoops, shimmering lowercase worlds of rumbles and clicks, creepy and subterranean, lunar landscapes of space-y woosh and robotic bleeps and bloops, and that's just part on one disc. This is definitely not easy listening. This is difficult listening, but as we know, that can often be the most rewarding. Includes extensive liner notes, with in depth text about the genesis and execution of each and every track. Packaged in separate sleeves and held together by a Japanese style obi.

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Kaptain Sun are from Sweden and obviously owe quite a bit to their fellow countrymen Entombed. They mix in a bit of Cathedral, make it a bit more melodic, a little more straight ahead and mid tempo and add some heavy stoner groove. Pretty cool. On UK label Rage of Achilles.

If you remember the Pan-Thy-Monium disc we raved about years ago, then you'll have some clue about what Karaboudjan sounds like, and how weird and amazing it is, as it's basically Pan-Thy-Monium mastermind (and celebrated Swedish metal

RealAudio clip: Plan 714 Till Sydney

Hopefully you already picked up the awesome collection of rare tracks by Turkish psych guitarist Erkin Koray that Sublime Frequencies recently released. If that put you in the mood for more vintage psych pop rock from Turkey, we've also just received this import disc of stuff by one of Koray's contemporaries, the late Cem Karaca, former member of Mogollar. His is a name that's certainly up there in the Anatolian rock pantheon, along with Erkin Koray, Baris Manco and Edip Akbayram. Originally released in 1972, it compiled songs circa '69-'71, recorded for 45rpm singles by Karaca with his bands Kardaslar ("The Brothers") and Apaslar ("The Apaches"). The general tone of these tracks is towards the romantically, dramatically bombastic and orchestrated, with strings and horns and vocals that are almost operatic. He's like the Turkish Tom Jones at times... but there's some satisfying stabs of fuzz as well, and of course those irresistible Anatolian folk rhythms and melodies. While this disc isn't quite so killer as that Koray one, it's still pretty cool. Cd booklet includes liner notes, photos, all that good stuff.

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Second release from the Teranga Beat world music reissue label, who are fats positioning them as a new label to watch, the first, Halleli N'dakarou, by Guelewar, we reviewed on the last list and everybody flipped for it, a primo slice of vintage African psychedelic soulfunk, notable in part for the fact that their classic African sound was augmented by very modern Moog synthesizers. Karantamba is actually related to Guelewar, in that it was the last band of Bai Janha, who founded the group Alligators, which would in fact become Guelewar. And like that Guelewar record, it was the cover that first grabbed us, the band performing love, Janha (we assume) in front of the organ, with a synth on top, guitar strapped on, playing the flute! Fuck yeah. The music here, while not featuring the Moog, is definitely very much in keeping with the sound of Guelewar, which makes sense as Janha is credited with inventing this sound, a sort of African psychedelic soul. And we find ourselves about as obsessed with this record as we were/are with the Guelewar. The sound lush and drivingly rhythmic, laced with some incredible, intricate guitar playing, and AMAZING drumming, there are either multiple drummers, or one insane superhuman drummer - just check out the closing minute of the opening track, spidery guitar melodies draped over wild chaotic drumming, and what is essentially a full on drum solo, one we didn't want to end. So great. The whole record is fantastic, soulful, fuzzy, groovy, the guitar playing is unique and inventive, beholden to classic African music for sure, but taking all sorts of influence from the West, not to mention some serious sonic invention/innovation beholden to NO ONE. There are horns, and organs, call and response vocals, it's jubilant and energetic, but also a bit dark, and minor key, but for us, it's really the relentless guitar/percussion interplay, that makes this so incredible. All it should take is listening to the first sound sample below, and we're guessing you'll be hooked too...

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"I've lost my calculator" or so we believe a line of the lyrics went to the second track of this two song, 26 minute ep. An intentional wink of humor? It's rather hard to say with this oft self-serious breed of apres-rock bands. It appears Karate have

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Sophomore album from these popular, poppy, emotional guys.

The In The Fishtank Series coordinated by the Dutch label Konkurrent has reached its twelveth installment, and we're a bit puzzled by it. With very few exceptions, the Fishtank releases have been on-the-fly collaborations (and some damn fine ones at that!), but here... Karate goes it alone. WHY? Did no one want to play with the Karate kids?

Sounds like the Karate kids have been listening to lots of '70s AOR soft rock and R&B. The first song seems deeply inspired by Santana's song "Spooky" -- indeed, the first few songs do seem to be Karate's 'Meditations on Santana' or something to that effect. It's all smooth and mellow, easy listening guitars, but with sensitive, spoken-sung boyish vocals over top. From there they revert back to their former more familiar long-standing post-rock selves for a couple of songs with plenty of loud/quiet Slint-isms, and then sort of vacillate back and forth noncommitally between their old and new selves for the remainder of the album. It's all well executed, but somewhat confusing to say the least. An added treat: Chris Brokaw (Codeine, Come) pops in mid-album to contribute some guitars licks to one song "Cacaphony".

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Nine overwrought, self-serious, and longwinded (only one is shorter than 4 minutes, four exceed 7 minutes), jazzy postrock numbers (including one bonus cd-only track). This is just as bad as if not worse than their disapointing Cancel/Sing EP released earlier this year. Santana and the Grateful Dead these guys are definitely not, although they often sound like that's what they're aspiring to be. Good musicians does not equal good music. Snooze. Sorry, Karate fans...

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E-m-o. EMO. Emo. Good though. Our favorite: the song whose only lyric is "COS I SAID SO... COS I SAID SO... COS I SAID SO... WHYYYYYY?"

The sound of science! This is not the fictionalized abstraction of synthesized tone and pulse that come across as sci-fi dramas in the works of folks like Oneohtrix Point Never or Klaus Schulze, instead field recordist Ernst Karel has ventured into the various laboratories at Harvard to capture the environmental sounds found within! To astrophysicists, chemists, and cognitive science researchers these are the quotidian noises of work; but beyond the walls of any given science institution, these clanks, hums, hisses, and groans can take on any number of allusions. Such a strategy is not uncommon, as John Duncan had the opportunity to capture the sounds of the Stanford Linear Accelerator for his potent powerdrone masterpiece The Crackling, and Francisco Lopez brought focused sensibility to his Machines. Karel's approach to his source material seems to be one of cautious awe and political neutrality. On the first track on Heard Laboratories, Karel captures the metronomic clicks from an organometallic chemistry process that results in atomic layer deposition. There is a rather clinical definition of what this process is, but no explanation as to what this could be used for or why. The various clicks emerge from a growing vortex of precision tuned motors and pressurized hiss, broken on one occasion by an incoming telephone call. Elsewhere, the sounds of sterlizers and centrifuges take on a particularly ominous set of rasped bursts of noise that bear a bone-chilling resemblance to a dental drill. Marathon Man, perhaps? The tiny bird-like squeaks from the tamarins being used for cognitive research infiltrates Karel's sound field, bracketed by massive vibrations from cooling systems used to protect much of the equipment. The clinical hiss of a canister of liquid nitrogen resonates with the cycling pulse of a lazer that it was intended to cool takes on an almost musical quality of chorale-like minimalism touched with slow crawling rhythmic swells. Karel offers a pretty amazing set of field recordings here, certainly recommended for anyone interested in the aforementioned John Duncan, Francisco Lopez, M. Behrens, Tarab, Eric La Casa, etc.

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Ever been to the Alps? Well, even if you haven't, you can imagine that in a landscape of towering mountain peaks, tiny human beings might have to find some unusual ways to get around. Travel along the vertical, as well as horizontal, axis, is the necessary norm. The ground may be crazy steep, or far far below. Field recordist Ernst Karel, whose Heard Laboratories cd documenting "the sound of science" we've previously recommended, visited Switzerland and produced this disc which will help you to imagine that lofty Alpine landscape, in a unique way, by presenting the sounds of the various modes of, indeed, Swiss mountain transport that he encountered - various suspended gondolas, an aerial tramway, a "transverse-seat chairlift" (the last one in Switzerland, now out of service, we're told), a helicopter, and a couple funicular cable cars (inclined trains, which are wonderful things, as depicted on the back cover of this release). Of course, as a sonic experience only, this "documentation" is as (deliberately?) mysterious as it is enlightening. The mechanical clanking, the whirring, the wind, the murmurs of passengers... these ambient sounds sometimes quietly soothing, sometimes noisy, certainly curious. Makes for a nice companion to Chris Watson's El Tren Fantasma highlighted last list, for those into journeys through sound (of journeys) - though this one is raw audio verite, not a "fictionalized" construct like Watson's disc. A few color photos are provided on the packaging, along with location, date, etc., specifics of the individual tracks (details for, ahem, trainspotters). Nicely done, from the same great field recordings label that last brought us the Water Beetles Of Pollardstown Fen (more of those soon on the way, btw!).

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SORRY. Kahimi's ultra-sweet baby doll vocals twit and twitter around a Gainesbourg/Bacharach-sque melodious stew. Much like a super amped up Pizzicato Five. Lots of Momus here (words, music, production, etc), but Add 'N' to (X), Stereo-Total, and Buffalo Daughter also put in their two bits worth. Soaring pop on a grand scale. Warning: may induce sugar shock.

Super saccharinely sweet female vocals from this woman who has been called a female Cornelius. He guests on this record, as does Momus.

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MPEG stream: Taa On Katastroofi, Saatana
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We had never heard of Kark before, but boy is this a serious slab of free sonic exploration! Kark are a revolving ensemble of over 50 musicians, and it sounds like it. Featuring various Louisville luminaries who also do time in Sapat, Valley of Ashes, Virgin Eye Blood Brothers, Son of Earth, Taiwan Death and others, The Hermit begins with some barely there glitch and crumble, a mumbled murky soundscape, which just sets the listener up to be knocked the fuck out when the group explodes into a furious blast of some sort of demonic big band jazz, a dizzying angular atonal jazz dirge, like Sun Ra possessed by the spirit of Merzbow, splattery drums and bleating horns, a cacophonous percussive chaos, free jazz gone haywire, but always, at least tenuously, linked to some shadow of traditional jazz. Some tracks seriously swing, albeit in a seriously unhinged manner, others sound like free jazz filtered through Masonna, like an orchestra being hurled down a thousand flights of stairs. Pretty amazing, probably too much for run of the mill jazz-niks, but the for the jazz-noise inclined this just might be pure heaven. Packaged in a full color sleeve with a full color, and of course information-less, insert.

It's on kick ass Japanese reissue label EM. It's a cd reissue of a 1978 Indian private press lp of far out and freaky Indian psychedelic funk. And it RULES! Really what else do you need to know? One of our favorite EM releases in a while, every time we play this people flip out and need to figure out what the heck it is. And what it is, is a fantastical, dizzying collection of wild percussion, fluttery flutes, reverbed guitar jangle, chaotic drumming, heavy fuzzy bass, sexy grooves, wheezing organs, surf guitar twang, skronky horns, awesomely twisted Moogs, all wound up into totally off the hook seventies Indian party music, lots of influences from the US, from the Middle East, from Latin America, Eastern melodies wind around more traditional rock and pop, Indian folk music gets tweaked and twisted, old fashioned Indian pop gets a Joe Meek style kitchen sink makeover, guitars are distorted, processed, reverbed, melodies are playful and sunshiney one second, murky and mysterious the next, the sounds are festive and funky and so fun, definitely reminiscent of Dengue Fever's Cambodian pop, of some of the Sublime Frequencies collections, but somehow, more freaky and far out and psychedelic. We seriously can't stop listening to this. One of our favorite reissues this year so far...

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For all of the sonic force that Zbigniew Karkowski has inflicted on the world over the past two and half decades, it can be easy to forget that Karkowski had studied under Iannis Xenakis, the architect who turned to avant-garde composition by way of mathematics. Karkowski's signature performances of toxic orchestrations and polluted noise can be downright brutal. So when it comes to a restrained piece of electronic minimalism, as in the utterly compelling Attuning / Attending, it's much easier to hear the connections in Karkowski's composed sound to the Apollonian facets of Xenakis' work. On this hard-to-find Polish import, Karkowski presents an extended set of flickering vibrations and electrical tones which modulate and mutate against undercurrents of sinewaves and clouds of static. Occasional subharmonic rumblings, shadowy drones, and metallic, flanging rasps of grey noise allude to Karkowski's ill-tempered noise constructs; but they are always kept in check within looped, repetitive structures. All of this shares more than a passing glance at Xenakis' Concret PH, the seminal electro-acoustic piece composed from the crackle of burning coals. Karkowski's sources seem to be wholly digital in nature, but they are tempered with a granular tactility reflective of Xenakis' embers. Quite a nice surprise!

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Zbigniew Karkowski has been generating physically impressive sound collages for the past 2 decades, with a number of solo projects as well as in collaboration with Merzbow, the Hafler Trio, John Duncan, Sensorband, Aube, and others. Karkowski, like Duncan, approaches sound as a pure energy that has the potential to overwhelm and control the listener with an almost totalitarian force. While his sounds resemble the pure sine waves of Ryoji Ikeda or Noto, he contextualizes such sounds not as theatrical abstractions of '60s minimalism, but as violent rips in time & space. "Choice of Points for The Application of Force" begins with a noxious low end rumble that fills any space with huge standing waves that resonate through the body. Slowly, gritty chunks of digitized noise explode against the low frequencies, building up to mid-range static buzzing and black-hole energy. An excellent addition to any catalogue of digital clickery, with a definite emphasis on the darkside.

Contributing to the ongoing "Cinema pour l'oreille" series of 3" CDs from Metamkine, the uncompromising electronic composer Zbigniew Karkowski offers another noxious slab of low frequency sound that ripples as massive standing waves and chugging fluctuations. As the short 19 minute program continues, Karkowski intermittently inverts the low frequencies to painfully high ones modulated with all sorts of ray-gun effects and the psycho-acoustic play between slightly detuned stereo channels (i.e. Ryoji Ikeda, Alvin Lucier, etc). Karkowski has claimed that "he is not interested in traditional definitions of what is music; in his opinion, all theory and systems of music as cultural concepts have to be destroyed." Yet, contarian that he is, Karkowski continues by stating his work is an allegory (a very common linguistic / narrative device) concerned with "realizing drama with sound [as] electronic and acoustic walls with scores based on architectures of ruins." Of course, Karkowski would claim little allegiance to the realm of language preferring to build his own monuments dedicated to himself and his self-deterministic free-will through the sheer power of sound. A Fitzcarraldo-like testament to the glory of hubris.

RealAudio clip: Consiously Unconscious, Unconsciously Conscious

The uncompromising Zbnigniew Karkowski has recently been screwing around with the sound of raw data as it streams across the internet, resulting in a number of experiments that produced little in the way of interesting sounds. Fortunately, his first release for Mego is a return to the sound of his great collaborations with the Hafler Trio in the early 90s. "It" is a blistering collage of mutilated sine waves and gut churning bass tones sounding like a grittier / more organic version of Ryoji Ikeda phase patterns. Excellent work!

kHz is the second collaboration between the globe trotting sonic bruitist Zbigniew Karkowski and Asphodel's inhouse engineer par excellence Xopher Davidson (aka Antimatter). Where so many Karkowski records push noise to the extremes of volume, pressure, density, and masculine expressivity, kHz follows Function Generator -- the 2001 collaboration with Antimatter -- in setting forth a composition of relatively soft, low-end rumblings from sinewave generators and analogue electronics (another detour for the increasingly digitally dependent Karkowski). Karkowski and Davidson coax a surprisingly gentle purr out of those machines; but never fear, the two eventually build up to a psychoacoustically antagonistic crescendo of noxious frequency pulses and white noise accumulations. Altogther, this stands as one of the most listenable Karkowski records in a very long time.

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Karkowski (who has collaborated with the Hafler Trio, CM von Hausswolff, John Duncan, and Ulf Bilting) now finds his time shared with Helmut Schaefer for an album which draws very complimentary comparisons to Mille Plateaux's Restgeraeusch in obliterating electronica beats in a gritty digitized blast of static as if Chain Reaction records were being broadcast on a shitty AM radio. Metallic drones ala Muslimgauze and distorted beats degenerate into roaring static pulses ala Xenakis, Bohor I and ...rain... very beautiful and highly recommended.

Within the condensed format of this 3" CD, Zbigniew Karkowski and Francisco Lopez get to the point very quickly. Eschewing his typical approach of incredibly slow building compositions, Lopez allows himself to be relatively active in his sound-collage. At a brief 10 minutes, "Untitled #132" ramps up through variable passages of processed white noise, some of which appear to be his cricket / locust field recordings while others might be the amplified electrical hum of a computer hard drive. Regardless of the source material, Lopez steadily brings the volume up on his bristling sounds, then cuts the power. He has set up multiple tracks of these ramp-up-to-drop-outs to fill the entire sonic spectrum. The final terminal snap is all the more unsettling only because Karkowski's power-violence is lurking around the corner. It's possible that both artists are applying the same source material to their signature sounds. While Lopez is a little bit more dynamic than usual, Karkowski follows his brash noise approach. Every sound is as loud as possible, as distorted as possible, as misanthropic as possible, and as ugly as possible. Note: limited quanity in stock, as we got 'em directly from Mr. Karkowski when he dropped by the store the other day, and we don't expect to get more.

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Polish-born, Japanese-dwelling experimental electronics artist Karkowski (well known for his solo work, as well as his many collaborations with the likes of Merzbow, the Hafler Trio and John Duncan) here teams up with one Xopher Davidson (who has

Latest and possibly greatest album by this always kinda-good-but-not-quite-there-yet-until-now-perhaps stoner rock band. What sets Karma To Burn apart from their peers is that they're a purely instrumental outfit, despite label-forced flirtations with having a vocalist. This stuff is dark and heavy and metallic and chock full o' riffs. You'd think a band like this, without singing, would

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Before there was irony-metal (C-Average, Godheadsilo, etc...), well not really before, but definitely pre-short-pants-white-belt-devil-sign-in-the-air-in-mock-love-of-satan-and-heavy-metal, there was Karp. Three fucked-up,

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Three Oly boys makin' quite an awesome racket. Heavy-duty teen riff firepower. Lick a battery, salt those wounds... all in the name of Karp.

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SORRY. Newest, loudest, nastiest?

This cd contains the Rye debut 7", the Karp/Rye split 12" and an entire live radio performance by Karp.

Karpov is a wonderful new Bay Area combo whose specialty is enchanted gypsy minstrel music. Their melodies roam and reel beautifully in earthy, jewel tones. If you swoon to the sounds of Beirut and A Hawk And A Hacksaw, this might be your ears' next delight!

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So imagine you're a longhaired Japanese hippy freak in the mid-'70s. You've been grooving to the cosmic sounds coming out of Germany on import LPs for the past few years, as well as digging the homegrown stuff too. Taj Mahal Travellers, Foodbrain, Speed Glue & Shinki, Magical Power Mako, yeah. But now you're looking for something even MORE potent. And primitive. And peculiar. Thankfully, on a visit to the Tokyo equivalent of Aquarius Records, you discover this release by a tiny Osaka based record label called Voice. And you, the jaded Japanese hippy, once again your mind is blown! And thankfully for those of us not lucky enough to be born Japanese hippies in the '70s, this mind-blowingness has now been reissued on cd by Phoenix, joining that label's reissue roster of other crucial Japanese '70s prog/psych like Flower Travellin' Band's Satori and The Far East Family Band's Nipponjin (reviewed here last list). This one, if you're curious, earned the 19th spot on the Top 50 list found in Julian Cope's book Japrocksampler. It's record by a mysterious outfit known as Karuna Khyal, entitled Alomoni 1985. We're not sure why it's called that, in fact, we're not sure of much about this, not even the year it was first released ('75? '76?), except that it's freakin' far out and totally amazing. And that they're probably the same folks who recorded another awesome album under the name Brast Burn, that we assume Phoenix will also get around to reissuing (they'd both been previously put out on cd some years ago by Paradigm Disc, that's how come we're familiar with them, but those reissues are long gone). It consists of two side-long tracks, each around 24 minutes of hard to describe insanity. The first one starts off like some sort of krautrock meets Native American pow-wow, stoned vocal chant accompanied by harmonica blowing and slide guitar, flowing into a more murky zone of Can-like groove, with relaxed, rhythmic percolations from hand percussion, caressed by free improv piping. Then about half-way through the track, it takes a plunge into proto-isolationist drones and distortion, with backwards tape manipulations and echoing FX... later still, the throbbing, nodding pulse is adorned by more mumbled Beefheartian blues babble. By the end of the track, it's a looping phantasmagoria of voice, electronics, harmonica, like a backporch Philip Jeck jam! Ok? Then track two begins. Even further out, in a black void... a beat starts... steady... then it quickens, slows, stops and starts again amidst a sinister swooshing swirl of disembodied voices and electronic detritus. Wow. Weird. Bad trip territory! It builds and builds, with kazoo-like sounds buzzing and blapping over a repetitive martial rhythm violently strummed or drummed on some sort of distended, elastic instrument, a bass heavy chunk-chunk-chunk drilling deep like a trepanist's tool, through your skull into your soon to be free brain. Eventually it morphs into twisted harmonica-blowing jam, hypnotic and disturbed, voices hooting and mewling and laughing and mantrically chanting... The second half of this track is total bedlam, but still utterly hypnotic. Good grief! We have to assume the Boredoms are familiar with this record. And doubtless Kawabata Makoto would give his left arm, or even his beard, to get his Acid Mothers Temple to sound this far out. Limited edition of 1000 copies, in a cardstock "wallet" sleeve like the label's other releases.

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[ aquarius records catalogue — K ]