[ aquarius records catalogue

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

Showing results 1551 through 1600 of 3006.

Mike Paradinas (a.k.a. u-ziq, Jake Slazenger) and Richard James (a.k.a. Aphex Twin). English import.

Mikey Dread is one of those cats from the history of Jamaican music that, while not as big a name as some, is about as responsible for bringing reggae to a greater world audience as anyone. In his early days Mikey Dread was a hero through his night job as the first DJ to broadcast reggae over the radio on JBC. He got the gig by convincing the station manager to let him start DJ'ing on the station (where he was working at the time) at 12am, when they normally would shut off the transmitter anyway. Due to some weird draconian regulation Mikey wasn't allowed to speak on his own show. Instead a woman with a sexy voice, who was an authorized radio personality, would do all the introductions and song disclosures. Apparently she wouldn't stay the entire length of his show (which went until 4:30 in the morning) so Mr. Dread would record his own jingles and sound effects to break up the monotony of just playing endless tracks. Eventually Mikey began working more and more with the likes of Lee Perry, King Tubby, Joe Gibbs and other heavy hitters on the island and began recording tracks with them as well. We're all familiar with the World War III album from 1981 (AQ list #143), but he also put together a collection of his own tracks that he recorded over the years edited together to play like one of his radio shows and called Dread At The Controls. This collection is the dub equivalent of that set and features exclusive mixes by and for Mikey Dread that were recorded at Channel One, Joe Gibbs', Treasure Isle, and King Tubby's. Interspersed throughout are some of Mikey's jingles and promos and mixed into the tracks themselves are all of his crazy sound effects. This is very much a crucial dub record to own, up there with Pick A Dub and the Impact All Stars albums. Highly recommended!

MPEG stream: Saturday Night Style
MPEG stream: Resignation Dub
MPEG stream: Pre Dawn Dub

Our friends over at Ernie B proudly present Mikey Dread's 1981 seminal album World War III. Though Mikey Dread earned a reputation in the mid-seventies Jamaica for being the first DJ in Jamaica (on the Jamaican Broadcasting Corporation station) to play exclusively Jamaican artists, his international renown was sealed in 1980 when he worked with British punk band The Clash on several singles and their triple lp opus Sandinista. Featuring the newly formed Roots Radics band as back up and recorded by Scientist, WWIII is arguably the zenith work for Mikey Dread. Their influence on his work is not nearly as evident as Mikey's was on the Clash, so you won't hear any punk and or rock stylngs here. However, Dread's unique buzzing, nasal voice pierces through the mix with his mesmerizing chants in a way that could almost be described as punk in his own distinctively Jamaican way. The album's production itself is a prime example of the best eighties reggae had to offer: an excellent live studio band -- with some ridiculous great bass tones -- augmented by a plethora of engineering tricks and effects -- including the ubiquitous eighties Star-Trek-like synth explosions -- from Scientist. Along with the original 9 tracks that made up the album Ernie B has included 6 bonus dub tracks from the session. This release is, how you say, crucial.

RealAudio clip: The Jumping Master
RealAudio clip: Mental Slavery
RealAudio clip: DATC Masterpiece

While our Japanese section at AQ is known for its loud & noisy disposition, we know that there's another side to the wonderful sounds coming out of Japan and this record by Miko is some of the best shoegaze dream pop we've heard from -anywhere- in ages! Like an amazing combination of everything we loved about The Softies and the first couple records by Mum, Miko uses electronics with such a tender and warm touch while crafting songs that Tujiko Noriko might make if she was on Too Pure or Creation. Swirling melodies that can be both hypnotic and playful, daydream vocals that transport us into wide open blue skies with the most lovely and fluffy soft clouds to roll around in. What makes Parade such a special record is that unlike so much other dreampop that tends to become a bit monotonous over a whole album, there is enough variety, and really well paced, well crafted songwriting here that the record manages to always be enthralling and intriguing yet never too busy, never distracting from the ultimate beauty of these songs. The album makes us wish we could astrally transport ourselves to the Japanese countryside, floating over rolling hills of lush green grass where Miko plays her breathtaking songs, as we lay on our backs staring into the sky, as the wind takes us wherever it wants. So beautiful!

MPEG stream: Parade
MPEG stream: Jagajaga
MPEG stream: Rocket

Analog synths galore! This Washington DC duo mix electronics and violin to make some kraut-friendly (Conrad Schnitzler comes to mind) electro drones, with moments of melody and beats...very nice!

RealAudio clip: Sonerone
RealAudio clip: Sawg Warz

Extend by Milanese was hands down one of our favorite records of last year. A confusingly brilliant mashup of grime, dubstep, hip hop, big beat and jungle. Beats massive and filthy, loops and samples weird and fucked up and so goddamn perfect. Complicated and weird enough for armchair listening, but funky and groovy enough to send dancefloors into paroxysms of pleasure.� We weren't even expecting a follow up this soon, but this ep showed up and knocked us on our asses. If anything it's even cooler and more convoluted than the full length. It is mostly remixes after all. "Mr. Good News" (a version of a track off the full length) is a loping dubstep shuffle, with wailing sirens, super blown out synth stabs, pounding rhythms, and some demonic toasting over the top. "Sight Beyond Sight (Hardvision Remix)" is some skittering buzzing jungle, all super drilled� out beats, and stuttering chopped rhythms. "Mr Bad News (Clark Remix)" is an even filthier, and slightly junglized version of the same track from Extend. "Barry Dub" might be our favorite track on the disc, a lurching mechanical dubbed out groove, with thick basslines, simple ultradistorted drums, and some seriously creepy vocals, intoning "Murder him..." among other things. "So Malleable (Cold Mix)" spends its first half sort of drifting and shimmering, but then launches into some killer raga dancehall drum and bass, with ominous strings and super clipped rhythms. "Double Face" is killer, a buzzing electro jam, but has some questionable diva like vocals and house-y synths. Then "Dead Man Walking (DJ Distance Remix)"�probably our favorite track from Extend gets the remix treatment. The differences are subtle, the backing tracks a bit more streamlined and stripped down, and the vocals wrapped in strange metallic FX. And finally, "Billy Electron (Venger Remix)" is an old school electro hip hop jam, with cool weird synth melodies, and some ultra blown out buzzing synths and some crazy monster toasting. This stuff is so awesome! It may be an ep, and it may be mostly remixes, but we'll take all the Milanese we can get...

MPEG stream: Mr. Good News
MPEG stream: Barry Dub

This is hands down our favorite new grime / dubstep / what-the-fuck big beat sort-of-dance record. It's so heavy and fucked up and groovy and weird. Some impossibly tangled up mess of Jungle and grime, hip hop and dub step, IDM and full on dub, all pulled apart and reassembled into this fucking super tripped out, big beat, Frankensteinian dancefloor destroyer. Every track is some sort of super stripped down grimey dubbed out slab of skitter and stutter. HUGE crunchy beats stretched into lazy loping hiccupping grooves, almost like some killer jungle 12" played at 16 rpm. But with all the guts and organs yanked out leaving massive skeletal rhythmic beasts. There are all sorts of strange sound effects and random sonic flares all over the place. But judiciously applied, leaving the overall sound still spacious and spare. That instantly recognizable Star Trek warning klaxon gets chopped into weird melodies, bits of bleep and bloop, swoosh and shimmer, drift and hover between the pummeling thump and skitter. Beneath it all, some unbelievably MASSIVE, fuzzed out super-dense low end crunch, supporting occasional disembodied ragga toasting that gets all tangled up in the crunchy grinding beats. At one point a sweet lilting female vocal drifts into the picture but is soon crushed under some black hole heavy bass fuzz and spears of digital speaker shred, all the while a killer loping beat keeping heads nodding and toes tapping. Milanese is like some DJ cast into the pit, damned to an eternity of spinning nothing but demented demonic slow motion jungle dub for all of the other cursed souls writhing spastically on blackened dancefloors all over hell. You know what they say about Hell and Satan and all the best bands and tunes and all that, well, we can only imagine the same applies to DJ's and electronic music, and if you ever needed absolute proof, Milanese rises from a black breach in the ocean floor spewing broken beats and belching black fire, all to a killer freaked out funky stuttery apocalyptic soundtrack. So recommended!

MPEG stream: Mr. Bad News
MPEG stream: Dead Man Walking
MPEG stream: Caramel Cognac

Milanese's Extend record from back in 2006 instantly became an all time aQ favorite. A total headspinning mix of old school jungle, hip hop, ragga, grime and who knows what else. A massive block rocking, dancefloor destroying, speaker shaking dancemusic freakout. We still throw that one on all the time. Then came Adapt, which was remixes, and took Extend and twisted it up and freaked it out evern MORE. And now we have Lockout, which seems like a proper new full length, although it's jam packed with remixes and guests and multiple versions, but right out of the gate, we're totally sold. Big phat buzz synth basslines, swooping space FX, and some super tweaked helium vocals, until part way through when everything shifts, the beats flip backwards, the tempo drops to half time, and a new vocalist joins the fray, his lazy flow perfectly matching the woozy buzzy lope. The second track is more of the same, a sort of supercharged junly techno, with a dash of dubstep, and some tongu twisting rapping over the top, the whole thing peppered with weird distorted tracheaotomy croaks and warped computer vox. And it just gets weirder and weirder and better and better. Skittery hiccupping beats wrapped around creepy looped little girl voices, huge chopped jagged shards of low end, warped stumbling big beats, some twisted Tracy Morgan like flows, clipped sirens, clouds of squelch and glitch, a bunch of awesome samples and fractured melodies, a definite Sensational / Dr. Octagon vibe all over the place, as well as a gritty sheen of buzzy grime, a couple tracks dip their toes into diva / radio hip-pop, but even those jams are plenty tweaked. Another winner for sure, and another record from Milanese that manages to go way beyond dubstep or grime or techno or hip hop or whatever other label you can come up with that barely begins to cover whatever the fuck is going on here. Awesome.

MPEG stream: Baby Blue Remix Ft. RQM & Oliver Grimball
MPEG stream: Disclosure Ft. Ben Sharpa
MPEG stream: The End (Off Mix)

Holy shit! More incredible grimey dubstep weirdness, this time from the mysterious Milanese who we had never heard of before, but who have teamed up with the Virus Syndicate, maybe one of our favorite grime outfits ever (we raved about their full length a while back), who are the perfect match for Milanese's ultra creepy dubbed out bass-scapes. The A side features huge thick ominous washes of low end rib cage rattling bass drone, over a strangely brittle dubbed out hip hop beat, it ends up sounding like some demented electronic haunted house music. Over the top, Virus Syndicate spit some super aggressive lyrical flow, all growly and raspy. The B side has to be one of the weirdest tracks ever, a sun baked flamenco guitar, accompanied by handclaps, underpin a confusing flow of multiple vocals, all sort of swirling and smearing and bumping into one another. There is some sort of rhyme and reason but it's so amazingly confusional, each voice sort of stumbling all over the others, really bizarre sounding. And mixed in are all sorts of weird vocal tics incorporated into the rhythms, sudden inhalations or exhalations, lip smacking, all floating around amidst bits of tinkling bells and electronic chimes. Another record that has us almost reconsidering our no dance policy!

Another cd-r release from Heart and Crossbone, the label that brought us records from Israeli blackened spazz rock duo Barbara and one man thrash-grind band Cadaver Eyes (reviewed elsewhere on this list). This Mildew cd-r is a bit high concept. The idea is that you download a script and the piece will play at random pre-determined starting points, making the songs a bit different every time. Or something like that. Cool, huh? Musically this is a lot different that anything we've yet heard from Heart and Crossbone. All electronic, spastic programmed drums, squelching synths, occasional sampled metal guitars, jagged pounding industrial rhythms, moaning minor key melodies, brief spurts of drill and bass, some full on metal riffing sliced and diced, martial percussion, some blissed out dubbiness. Really cool. Definitely for fans of Aphex Twin, stuff on Planet Mu, or any of the more out there electronic stuff on the Jester label.

MPEG stream: Flat On The Face 1
MPEG stream: Flat On The Face 2

What do you get when three ladies from groups like Godspeed You Black Emperor and A Silver Mt. Zion come together to form a "string auxiliary"? One intense and beautiful album, that's what! With cello, viola and violin employed with full force, this is a record that maintains a compelling tension from start to finish. Almost what you would imagine Rhys Chatham, Glenn Branca or Steve Reich would come up with if they were to use a string ensemble to score a lost Hitchcock film. Suspense filled sounds played with a piercing perfection. Kind of like a more forceful version of the Rachels' with the same elegant touch but a punchier disposition. This is totally recommended! Came out a while back (last year) but we only just mangaged to get some more in, it's a Canadian import. Not sure when/if we'll be able to get more when we run out...

MPEG stream: Sequences of a Warm Front
MPEG stream: Thunderheads and Radar

Chapel Hill, NC post-hardcore, synth rockers Milemarker sound as though they really want to rage but fall short on firepower. For instance, the angstful, aggressive male and female voices seem to be grasping for the Atari Teenage Riot umph that's just out of their reach. Nevertheless when they step back a bit, details like piano lines and driving rhythms shine through. This actually

On the last list we reviewed a 12" from Miles, better known as one half of witchy electronic weirdos Demdike Stare, we mentioned in our review of that record, that we had been trying to get a hold of the full length for ages, and finally here it is, more than fulfilling the promise of that 12". Like a more techno Demdike Stare, Miles delivers some seriously dense skittery darkness, much in keeping with a lot of recent dark dance favorites from folks like Shed, Terrence Dixon, Vatican Shadow and Silent Servant, and as we mentioned before, anyone into any of those outfits, will flip for Miles' dense driving darkness. Right from the start, the opening track a mesmerizing dubby skitter, that wreathes the beats in crumbling noise and fractured FX, the beat tribal, mesmerizing, surrounded by a swirling cloud of noise, squiggly FX and crumbling textured layers, total head trip, dance floor bliss out, the sort of deep rhythmic mesmer that almost functions better on headphones late at night than on the dencefloor, which is just fine with us. And all of Faint Hearted is equally dark and devastating, "Irreligious" is murky and glitchy, like Pole via Andy Stott, minimal, but darkly driving, with some dense, pulsating low end, while "Status Narcissism", is like some Kompakt style jam pulled apart and reassembled as a swirling, skeletal house-y drone-dub. "Sense Data" is all serene synth drift, deep oceanic mesmer, but laced with some warped woozy, processed metallic melodies, "Rejoice" is more deep dub, but this one super abstract, a little bit muddy and washed out, like a Wolf Eyes dub, and "Archaic Thought Pattern", is all ping pong beats and woozy swoonsome strings, that explodes into some super distorted beat heavy crunch, that sounds like some bad ass MC should be dropping rhymes over the top, sorta like The Caretaker via DHR? And finally, the record finishes with "Loran Dreams", which is Miles' tweaked take on kosmische synthscapery, which pulses and swirls cosmically, but is underpinned with some deep rubbery bass pulses, and wreathed in a haze of psychedelic shimmer. So goddamn good. Fans of Demdike Stare, Andy Stott and other weirdo electronic aQ faves, this is absolutely essential (as is the previously reviewed 12", of which we have a very few copies left)!

MPEG stream: Lebensform
MPEG stream: Irreligious
MPEG stream: Status Narcissism

You might not recognize the name Miles, but fans of dark, twisted modern electronic music, might know him better as one half of Demdike Stare, or one half of Pendle Coven, or even as Suum Cuique, all of which we've raved about here on the aQ list. For whatever reason, we've been unable to get enough copies of Miles' most recent full length on Modern Love to list, but while we wait, we did manage to nab a handful of this even more recent 12" ep, which finds Miles delivering some raw, distorted, dark dark dark dance music, fans of recent aQ faves like Shed and Terrence Dixon, will definitely dig, as will folks into Vatican Shadow and Silent Servant, which is in fact closer to the sound of Unsecured. Some seriously noisy, dark, skittery techno, big distorted bears over ribcage rattling bass pulses, wreathed in a thick sonic gauze, and laced with cinematic synth swells, hazy and gristly and a little psychedelic, adding some acid-y squelch at the end of the first track. That track bleeds into some skeletal Kompakt sounding house music, gritty and grime-y, woozy and darkly tripped out, the beats seemingly sculpted from bursts of white noise static. The flipside is much more industrial sounding, with a strange Art Of Noise vibe, very soundtracky with ominous synths, simultaneously funky and noisy, which leads into the brooding closer, all droned out ominous ambience, pulsing layered drones, that gradually mutates into something more skittery and squelchy but over a serious sprawl of sinister low end drift.

Elsewhere on this week's list you'll find the first release from the Monopoly Child Star Searchers, a Skaters side project that we have been digging like crazy, it's also the first release on a new cd-r label run by Spencer from The Skaters called Pacific City Sound Visions, mostly to release his Monopoly Child Star Searchers cd-r's, seeing as 4 of the first 5 releases are in fact his own records, but the 5th is by some mysterious entity called Miles Devens, which we later discovered was in fact another moniker for the fellow behind aQ faves Ignatz, which made perfect sense when we threw this one. And thus, this is essentially a new Ignataz record, two tracks of alien Appalachia and haunting ambient buzz. Two tracks, each over twenty minutes long, but each, split into movements, separate songs woven together. The opener begins with haunting glimmering high end shimmer, soft sweet melodies, a sea of sparkle and upper register effulgence, strings buzzing, the track shifts into a sing songy little lullaby, all hushed vocals and tiny melodic curlicues, which are soon overtaken by some deep raga like buzz, a shimmering metallic whir laced with murmured melodies, a woozy warbly sprawl, which shifts again, and becomes a muted campfire hoedown, more hushed vocals, little flurries of acoustic twang, eventually giving way to a super distorted, lo-fi ballad, with mumbled vocals, angular guitar, and lots of gauzy reverb and delay. The second track begins super spare, a lonely acoustic guitar, lots of room reverb, a slow hushed drift, dreamy and haunting. The second part is all frenzied guitar squiggle, like sped up Applachia, some drawled effected vocals, which gives way to a murky cloudy dreamy dronefolk drift, soft stately melodies, in a dense field of effects, vocals wrapped in reverb and allowed to float and flutter, the low end rolling off until the sound is like some alien shortwave broadcast, all twang and strum, but all treble, fading into a gorgeously murky swampy slow motion electronic drone outro.

MPEG stream: 1
MPEG stream: 2

Earth Has Doors is the first solo record from Fresh & Onlys guitarist Wymond Miles, and while in many respects it's sonically similar to the F&O's mothership, Miles paints a much darker musical picture, twangy and dirgey, heavily reverbed, a little bit swampy and gothic sounding, Miles' vocals are haunting, deep and dramatic, and while these songs are heavily rooted in Miles' study of eschatology, anthroposophy, and Gnostic and Hermetic symbolism, one might not necessarily hear that, even on close listening, although the sounds here are most definitely dark and mysterious, reminding us at times of Scott Walker, Woven Hand, Mark Lanegan, and other similarly dark spirited songsmiths. Miles' vocals do definitely also remind us of Fresh & Onlys frontman Tim Cohen, which makes sense, and sonically, Miles's first foray is again not that far removed from his main band, which of course means F&O's fans will definitely dig, as long as they're prepared for a bit more darkness than they're used to. But that said, Earth Has Doors is its own dark beast, with some strange production, sweeping strings, buzzing synths, proggy arrangements, tribal percussion, lots of buzz and drone, some thick spaced out effects, as well as some surprisingly catchy songs, all wreathed in a darkness that somehow only makes these songs that much more appealing. Great stuff!!

MPEG stream: Temples Of Magick
MPEG stream: Earth Has Doors, Let Them Open

Another release from our new favorite French label, that last brought us the amazing new Hint album reviewed last time, as well as Guapo, Double Nelson (above), etc. More conventionally "post-rock" a la Don Cab, June of 44...Good stuff for fans of that style of loud, rhythmically challenging mathy stuff. Pandaemonium is almost single-handedly changing the unfairly prejudiced view that almost everyone holds of the French rock scene (Magma excepted of course).

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

SORRY.

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

SORRY.

MPEG stream: The Singsong Waters Of An Endless Sea
MPEG stream: Vibrant Shores, Horizons

Super sunshine indie pop in a very Beulah meets Pavement-esque fashion... It's San Francisco's Milk Chopper! Breezy boyish harmonies abound with a subtle bit of twang and snippets of sound samples shuffled in here and there. Quite a pleasing pop debut.

RealAudio clip: Rubber Balls

Found a VERY small stash of these original 1993 vinyl pressings at one of our suppliers. At original 1993 vinyl prices too! (Yes, remember when vinyl was cheaper than cds?). This release was the debut from Milk Cult, a beats-and-sound-collage side project of Dale "C.C. Nova" Flattum from San Francisco's late great grungy noiserock heavies Steel Pole Bath Tub, and it predates our "list" by a couple years, so we've never reviewed it, though much later on we did make Milk Cult's fourth and final album a Record Of The Week (2000's Project M-13, now long out of print unfortunately). Love God opens with the title track, well worth the price of admission alone, 10+ minutes of chugging distorted Slayer riffage meets turntablist whip-whip-whap in a sampledelic maelstrom. All kinds of other insanity enters into the pounding mix, from flamenco dance music (?) to police sirens. It's apparently the soundtrack to a short film by Frank Grow which we've never seen but we figure it must be pretty freaky. From then on, the warped vibe of underground '90s plunderphonic noiserock industrial soundtrack mayhem continues, in a surrealistic style where, like, moments of sepia-toned old tyme record crackle loopage that could be from a Leyland Kirby disc, will be rudely juxtaposed with sudden onslaughts of -actual- Slayer samples, or even blasts of machingun fire. It's definitely very '90s, in a good way, think Pain Teens, early Scorn, Sucking Chest Wound, experimental Melvins, Cosmonauts Hail Satan, WordSound label dubby "illbience", and of course Steel Pole Bath Tub themselves - they always used samples, weird voice-overs and whatnot, and if you're familar with them, what you'll hear here will remind you of that aspect of their sound, but given center stage. Chaotic and/or creepy for sure, but "groovy" too in a way. Needless to say, these are the last copies we're gonna see, and when they're gone, they're gone. (Honestly, we only found 4 of these, so apologies in advance if they're all been snagged by the time you read this.)

MPEG stream: Love God
MPEG stream: Drag Strip Riot Dream Sequence
MPEG stream: Clown Party Pt. 2

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

SORRY. Wow -- one of the rare AQ Unanimous Staff Favorites. Ex-members of ye olde local band Steelpole Bathtub have put together this AMAZING Milk Cult record. Sounding nothing like Steelpole whatsoever, this is an experimental melange of dance, rock, and lounge music that's so f***ing accessible and so kickass serious fun that we sell a copy almost every time we play this in the store. It features everything from throaty French singers to earth-trembling bass to random noises and disco, plus lovely wailing guitar soloes, exotica, bird calls, you name it. The recipients of a French arts grant, Milk Cult spent a month recording "traditional Corsican singers; Buddhist chanters; Algerian folk improvisors; French folkies; industrial noisicians; rockers; jazzbos; hip hop artists; spoken word artists; electronics experimenters; a thirty-piece African orchestra; a Conch player; all of whom played along with backing tracks prepared by Milk Cult but never with each other..." The entire thing is put together so well it is seamless, and we predict you will love it. Highest recommendations for a record that really shouldn't be overlooked.

One of a handful of new releases this week from local label Superior Viaduct, a killer batch of legendary/infamous oddball rarities, elsewhere you can check out Departmentstore Santas, and Homosexuals side project L. Voag, and then there's this, the only record from UK DIY art school post punks Milk From Cheltenham, originally released in 1983 on the War Boys label, run by Jim Welton aka Amos of the Homosexuals (the man responsible for the aforementioned L. Voag lp). Milk From Cheltenham set out to make their own Pet Sounds, but ended up with something far stranger, a damaged avant pop songsuite cobbled captured on an old cassette recorder, utilizing all manner of bits and bobs, cans and pieces of metal, boxes and veritable kitchen sink's worth of junk-as-instruments, and maybe most hilariously, a primitive "surround" function on the tape recorder, which more than anything made the sound even LESS Pet Sounds and more gloriously WTF? At its core, the sound falls squarely in eighties post punk territory, but goddamn, it's so much more, and so much stranger, a home brewed concoction of sonic fragments, processed vocals, gorgeous lo-fi, layered atmospherics, jagged, blown out live recordings, stumbling, drunken jazz, seriously psychedelic freakouts, vocal experiments, skeletal punk-funk, loads of tape warble and feedback, moaning strings, handclaps and primitive FX, analog synthesizers, and electric sitar, bizarre vocal harmonies, field recordings, practice space noise jams, disembodied piano vamps, avant sonic collages, angular punky pop, and pretty much a million stops in between. They'd also play the various sounds and recordings through big speakers and then re-record them, almost like a more primitive Taj Mahal Travellers! It's far out, and all over the map, but it's also gleefully inventive, and a total fucking blast to get lost in. It's not at all hard to understand why Triptych Of Poisoners was a crate digger holy grail, and thus was long, long overdue for a serious vinyl reissue! Nice packaging as always from Superior Viaduct, includes a download code as well!

MPEG stream: The Man Who Cried
MPEG stream: Das Elefantenkalb
MPEG stream: Passport To Happiness!

We had been hearing about this for ages, local pop heroes the Ovens had been RAVING, as had our very own Andrew, and about a million blogs, hailing these guys as the second coming. Of what you ask? Husker Du? Dinosaur Jr? The Wipers? All three is more like it, these guys offer up six songs in 21 minutes of buzzing, grungy, slightly sludgy ultra heavy indie pop, that takes that classic punk / pop sound, and adds some Torche-like heft, the guitar impossibly thick and crunchy and fuzzy, the songs hooky as hell, the vibe sorta washed out and woozy, a little druggy and laid back, the perfect mix of nineties guitar rock, eighties punk rock, and modern post punk heaviness, super emotive about-to-crack vox, and the solos, total J Mascis guitar tone, short and simple, just sort of mirroring the vocal melody, and then right back into it. Stripped down and simple, every jam a goddamn anthem, total windows down, stereo cranked, feeling young again, summer jam bliss, and fuck, if a band like the Ovens, who write catchy pop songs like it ain't nothing, lose their minds over a band, proclaiming them THE BEST EVER, well, then, you know you better figure out what the fuck is up, and what the fuck is up, is that this just might be your new favorite band.

MPEG stream: Fertile Ground
MPEG stream: Beyond Living

Milk Music's Beyond Living lp was the sort of record we could barely keep in stock. The band hyped to high heaven for ages before we actually heard them, but somehow, when we finally did get an earful, it more than lived up to all that hype, an explosive hybrid of classic nineties indie rock, fuzzed out noise pop, equal parts Dinosaur Jr, Husker Du, the Wipers, and fuck, pretty much every band we've loved from the last four decades. Fuzzy and hooky and heavy, jangly and crunchy, super melodic and crazy catchy. But still pretty goddamn punk. Which is why we were pretty surprised when we discovered their new record was on Fat Possum, home to the Black Keys among others. But then they were sort of primed for mainstream success anyway. And while we're definitely digging Cruise Your Illusion, the group's sound has changed a lot. At first blush, it's way less fierce and furious, more laid back and fuzzed out. The Dinosaur vibe is huge, right down to the guitar tone, fat and buzz drenched and blown out. Not to mention the fact that once we're 3 or 4 minutes into the record we're already in full on psychedelic guitar jam territory. But you know what? It suits them, and it still sound pretty great, you just have to prepare yourself for something a little less sweat soaked and headbangable, it's more that sort of bounce up and down, nod along nineties style college rock jangle, there's definitely a big shoegaze vibe going on too, with some of the songs boasting explosive tranced out riff heavy blissouts, but for every one of those ("Cruising With God") there's another shuffly jangly groover ("Crosstown Wanderer"). We're tempted to think these guys are actually engaged in a super high concept musical hoax, but if that's the case, why are some of these songs so goddamn great! The vocals too, way higher in the mix than last time, wavery quavery keening about-to-break sad boy indie rock vocals, reminding us again of Dinosaur, but of course also early Soul Asylum (back when they were GREAT), and in fact, there's a huge Soul Asylum / Replacements / Husker Du feel to the whole record, which is most definitely not a bad thing. We'd be surprised if folks who dug Beyond Living didn't dig this too, but in some cases, it could be borderline too jangly and indie poppy. But for folks who love that era, and that sound, there's probably not a new band doing that old sound better than these guys.

MPEG stream: Caged Dogs Run Wild
MPEG stream: Illegal And Free
MPEG stream: Cruising With God
MPEG stream: I've Got A Wild Feeling
MPEG stream: Runaway

Debut album from 1969 sees itself reissued on disc. This NYC-based duo were popular for their tender ballads played out on classical and acoustic guitar and cello, with the added flourishes of maracas and harpsichord, and appropriately fey vocals. Will

RealAudio clip: Wonderous Fairy Tale
RealAudio clip: Signs of the Invisible Chalk

Here's an apparently much sought-after rarity now reissued (thanks again to the fine folks at Sundazed), that we have to confess we'd never heard of until now. But that's one of the great things about reissues, isn't it? And as reissues go, this one's a doozy: three discs of sugary, sunshiney psychedelic pop dating from 1965-1968, produced by the interrelated studio groups The Millennium, The Ballroom, Sagittarius, Summer's Children, and others (all creations of, among others, songwriter/producer Curt Boettcher, a man whose work we're told Brian Wilson was stunned by). Demos, singles, instrumentals, unreleased alternate takes, plus the full albums (Ballroom's "s/t" and The Millennium's "Begin") from these guys: it's all here. And it's all pretty great -- magical, even. Often dreamy. Well, sometimes goofy too (unfortunately reminding us of that "Drugsachusetts" Kroft Super Show parody sketch from Mr. Show!). Ok, if you're not in the mood, it'll make you vomit, but if song titles like "Dancing Dandelion", "Sunshine Today", "Milk And Honey", and "Karmic Dream Sequence" make you smile, then you'll want to have this for those special moments when today's Elephant 6 output just doesn't cut it. (And by that we mean to suggest that if you're a fan of Olivia Tremor Control or Apples in Stereo, you'll find so much to love here -- the music is as sweet as the Olivias but with a really good grit to it too.) 62 tracks total, that's almost 3 hours of material, all direct from the original analog tapes in Columbia's vaults. This massive reissue package, which includes extensive liner notes and many photos as well as those three compact discs of geniune genius '60s "Soft Pop" music, was assembled with the active cooperation of the original musicians.

RealAudio clip: Love's Fatal Way
RealAudio clip: To Claudia On Thursday
RealAudio clip: Magic Time

Finally got a new batch of these amazing books, tailor made for us music geeks. Super in depth examinations of some of our favorite records! The cool thing is that they're not just the same old rehashed stories about the bands or artists, and who they slept with and where they grew up (although we like those too!), instead they're about the creation of those specific albums. The writers go really deep into every facet of the creation. The writing is often quite dense and so informative. Like a Mojo article expanded a hundred fold! We wanted to give each one an in depth review, but they are all so good and they keep coming fast and furious so we figured we oughta just list em. Basically, if you love the record, you're definitely gonna want the book! Also got the Joe Pernice Meat Is Murder book back in stock as well as Andrew Hulktrans's book about Love's masterpiece Forever Changes. And if you're anything like the music geeks here, you're gonna want all of em! Future volumes include My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures, Radiohead's OK Computer, Jethro Tull's Aqualung.

Another Record Store Day exclusive, and one of the few we had enough (maybe) copies of after the big day, to list and review, for all our beloved aQ-ers who live far and wide. And it's a good one. Matching up Jenks Miller, he of big time aQ faves Horseback, and James Toth, of Wooden Wand, and once again, as with recent Horseback joints, Miller continues to confound, pushing his sound in whole new directions, moving ever further from the blackdrone creep of those early HB records. After a brief bit of psychedelic blooze drift, Miller launches into some organ driven, super distorted twang flecked post rock, all grizzled melodies, motorik rhythms, swirling FX, still pretty bluesy, but a sort of minor key psych blues, which is even more surprising when the vocals come in, a softly distorted croon, transforming the sound into something like a more metallic, more psychedelic Sparklehorse maybe? Not a bad thing at all. The final track from Miller name checks Roy Montgomery in the title, and sonically is essentially an homage, a sky full of layered, pulsing guitars, looped into slow shifting shimmers, and smeared chordal swirls, before disappearing into a cloud of dreamy distortion, and adding some subtle propulsion, the second half a gorgeous, fuzzy, druggy, droned out psychedelic drift. So good! Toth's side is much more stripped down, acoustic guitars wedded to wheezing harmoniums, and strange clattery percussion off in the background, a woozy campfire drone-folk that's quite lovely. And while the vibe is abstract and spacey, the vocals bring it back down to earth, transforming it into more of a dark Appalachian psych folk, but the minute the vocals fade out, the song seems to soar skyward once again. The other two tracks are shorter, and less abstract/experimental, the first, more psych folk, the second like some lost Laurel Canyon classic folk-rock B-side, right down to the female back up vox. SUPER LIMITED, as in these are likely the very last copies we'll see, so you know the drill. Also includes a download code, and comes housed in a handsome full color, matte finish gatefold jacket.

MPEG stream: Hats Off To (Roy) Montgomery
MPEG stream: The Sun Shines Brightly On The Road To Ruin

It's a sad story, but it continues to happen, someone sends us an amazing record, one what will no doubt blow our minds, one that we won't be able to help but want to share with all of you, one that begs to be reviewed and hyped to high heaven, but then that single amazing record, somehow slips through the cracks, ends up in a box, in a closet, on the floor, in a pile, and sadly, sometimes disappears forever, but thankfully, like it this case, miraculously makes its way back from the great beyond. We were going through piles of cd-r's, from boxes that had been piling up, and we came across this mysterious disc, adorned with a strange bearded mystic, painted with a third eye, a triangle superimposed over his face, that photo affixed to a cool looking digipak, surrounded by a mandala of some sort, lots of pyramid imagery, a Japanese style obi, and some strings with bells attached. We threw it on, and BLAM, totally mesmerizing tripped out raga like trance, the opening track alone, the 17 minute title track we ended up playing over and over. Andee loved it so much he played it on his radio show, after which he seemingly randomly emailed a friend of his, to ask if he knew anything about said record. To which that friend responded "I SENT YOU THAT RECORD. TWO YEARS AGO!!!" After enduring a bit of well deserved mockery, it was time to get down to business, and track some of these down for the store, and for YOU. Johnny Miller was a new name to us, but he played in a Chicago psych-kraut combo called Sadhu Sadhu, who we have yet to review on the list, but from whose ranks recent aQ Record Of The Weekers the Great Society Mind Destroyers were born. Miller though doesn't traffic in the same sort of blown out psychedelic heaviness as TGSMD, no all that shamanistic imagery was our first clue, but Miller is more about serious blissed out raga-drone, looped cyclical mesmer, heady ur-drone shimmer, and abstract free folk drift. The aforementioned title track is one of the greatest things we've ever heard, laying down a thick, slowly undulating sheet of high end shimmer, sounding like a dreamier more soft focus Sunroof!, underneath which, Miller lays down a mesmerizing latticework of melodies and rhythms, playful and looped, circular and cyclical, it adds a subtle bit of propulsion, to the otherwise seemingly weightless drift, he also adds soft swoops of backwards guitar, it's really utterly divine, and we say it a lot, but this is the sort of song that should probably go on forever, and we like to think does, somewhere. But the cool thing about Miller's record is precisely that it does NOT just do that, instead, it's surprisingly varied, layering tinkling thumb piano melodies over wheezing harmoniums, wreathing simple steel string strum in clouds of simpler percussion and softly swirling tape hiss, unfurling spare, dreamlike Appalachian folk, bare and unadorned, simple and beautifully hushed, and unleashing some churning heavily distorted riffage beneath a glimmering sky of hypnotic looped electronics and buzzing synths, sounding like a fantastic hybrid of Zomes and Amps For Christ. The other epic here, a gorgeous 12 minute sprawl, does return to the sound of the opener, but adds some gorgeous crooned chantlike vocals, the result like some ancient spiritual ritual revved up and modernized, a buzz drenched blissed out mountain top raga. LIMITED TO JUST 50 COPIES!! Each one in a hand numbered cardstock digipak, hand painted, silkscreened and stamped, with a Japanese style obi, a folded full color origami like insert, and a little string with bells hanging from the spine!

MPEG stream: Your Shining Path
MPEG stream: Pt. 3 The Jeweled Vial
MPEG stream: Casting A Stream Of Light On The Tongue Of God

We first heard Lloyd Miller on that amazing Spiritual Jazz compilation we reviewed recently, and while pretty much every track was a killer, Miller's "Gol-E Gandom" definitely stood out, beginning with a santur solo, that sounded like a sea of buzzing sitars, until the jazz kicked in, bopping bass, fluid piano, shuffling rhythms, somehow following the melody laid out by the opening santur solo. So magical. We were smitten and were dying to hear more. Luckily, Jazzman endeavored to put together this amazing collection of Miller's various recordings, which was no small feat, considering that even after a lifetime playing jazz, most of these songs were only available on super limited self released records, which made it into fewer hands, and ears, that would seem right considering the power and originality of Miller's music. He grew up in America, but his father was transferred to Iran, so his family moved there when Miller was 19, and they lived there for 5 years. Then Miller finally moved to Europe, to pursue jazz, after all, Europe was where it was happening, he landed in Germany, later heading to Switzerland, all the while creating these amazing, and mostly unheard pieces, incorporating an incredible array of ethnic instruments with some seriously intense and inspired jazz. While some of the tracks here sound like straight up jazz, flecked with bits of ethnic instrumentation, others are totally far out. "Le Grand Bidou" finds his group riffing on a single chord, while Miller inserts an Indian style tonic drone played on the micro organ, and the result is bizarre, the whole track twists and squirms and heaves, it's an odd fit, but fit it does, we can only imagine how freaked out purists must have been. and frustrated, considering the caliber of playing, but it's these twisted takes on standard jazz that makes this stuff so magical, and the fact that this was the late fifties / early sixties, it's a wonder Miller didn't become a sensation. This stuff is radical, revolutionary, considering how important the incorporation of African music and instruments into jazz became (Don Cherry, Art Ensemble), how is it that this wasn't equally if not more radical? A white kid from Utah, with impeccable jazz chops, playing all sorts of Turkish and Persian instruments, wrapping standard jazz tropes around Indian arrangements, kind of mindblowing even now. The liner notes are super detailed, and Miller's life is fascinating, but it's really about the music, and as much as we dig jazz, and fancy ourselves, if not experts, at least super fans, we had NEVER heard Miller before that comp, and this stuff is so cool, and so unlike ANYTHING we've ever heard, from the instrumentation, to the arrangements, to modal systems, some of the tracks are Indian ragas transformed, others seem to eschew the jazz completely and sound like some mysterious magical world music, but it's where the two elements mesh where things get truly magical, tablas underpinning pianos, strange horns droning over upright bass and shuffling percussion, all woven deftly into a strain of jazz that is wholly unique and original. So fantastic, and so utterly and wholeheartedly recommended. Easily THE jazz reissue of the year, if not the decade!

MPEG stream: Gol-E Gandom
MPEG stream: Gozel Guzler
MPEG stream: Hue Wail

A while back we reviewed a collection from unsung jazz legend Lloyd Miller, called A Lifetime In Oriental Jazz, which was a huge hit around here. We had become obsessed with Miller after hearing a track from him on the amazing Spiritual Jazz compilation (the second volume of which is out now, check out the 'in stock not yet reviewed' section of this week's list!), and the collection only furthered that obsession. The songs on that comp represented a sampling of Miller's eclectic and lengthy career, the music a killer fusion of classic jazz, Indian style drones, Eastern melodies, Turkish and Persian folk music, it's heady nearly psychedelic stuff, experimental and far out, but still emotional and grounded in classic jazz. So we were super excited to discover this new record, and were under the impression that it was in fact another collection or some sort of reissue, but is actually a brand new record which finds Miller recording with a UK collective called the Heliocentrics, whose sound seems to be a sort of Sun Ra worshipping psychedelic spiritual jazz, a sound that meshes with Miller's perfectly, so much so, that even listening to this, it wasn't until we read more about the record that we realized it wasn't a collection of vintage recordings. Which definitely speaks to the performances here. A modern production is really the only thing that might mark this as modern, otherwise, Miller and the Heliocentrics unwind longform jazz epics that alternately brood and soar, rife with all manner of unlikely instrumentation, strange melodies surfacing here and there, fluttering flutes, haunting vibes, delicate piano, some incredible drumming, hints of the Eastern musics that so informed Miller's older work abound, with some of the tracks slipping into full on ragas, while others flit from darkly meditative to wild and skronky, a few tracks are redone versions of old Miller tunes, but the originals are just as good. Some seriously beautiful modern spiritual jazz for sure. And apparently the Heliocentrics also made a record with Ethiopian jazz legend Mulatu Astatke, which we're definitely gonna have to track down now!

MPEG stream: Electricone
MPEG stream: Nava
MPEG stream: Sunda Sunset

Wow! This beautiful album not only introduces the world to an amazing but uber-obscure folksinger who recorded these songs in 1962, but it also manages to resolve the hazy origins of one of the most recorded tracks of the sixties. But more on that in a second. Niela Miller is one of those folks that should have been way more popular than she was, but always seemed to work behind the scenes or at best, hovered at the periphery. She saw Dylan's first professional performance, took up guitar after meeting Eric Weissberg (of "Dueling Banjos" fame), loaned Pete Seeger her guitar for a show, and refused a request by Judy Collins to record one of her songs. Her voice is ghostly and unusual; high in register, but delivered with an earthy blues-soaked urgency, as she sings these songs about the meaner sides of love and the men who did her wrong. Which is ironic in a sense because the guitar progression and theme of her song, "Baby Don't Go To Town" ( a track about a women who flirts with other men to get her lover to pay attention to her) were basically stolen from an ex-boyfriend and reinvented as "Hey Joe". Yes, that "Hey Joe"! The timeless track of love gone wrong and its murderous consequences covered by Hendrix, Love, The Leaves, Tim Rose, The Byrds and countless others. That A-major progression was essentially the first thing most novice guitar players wanted to learn in the sixties before "Stairway To Heaven" and "Smoke On The Water" came around. But Miller never got any credit for this song, because no original recordings were ever distributed, and she subsequently faded into other pursuits of teaching and counseling. While it's definitely an interesting back story, it's by far not the only reason to give this a listen. The ever-reliable Numero Group christen their new vinyl-only subsidiary Numerophon with this restored reissue, made from a transfer of a one-of-a-kind acetate Miller recorded at Variety Recording Service in 1962. The acetate was badly damaged with skips, crackles and a noticeable warp. Though it's not a perfect recording, the resulting sound lends itself to the kind of music Miller made, antiquated and other-worldly, cushioned with a bit of reverb and steeped in the beautiful strains of regret, loss and hope. Highest Recommendation!

Boy, this is a strange one. Not your standard old tyme fare, Polk Miller was a rare figure in the world of early American musical theater. Born in Virginia, and a Civil War veteran who fought for the South, he dropped a lucrative pharmaceutical and veterinarian medicine career (he created the first pet-care products for what would become Sargent) to follow his musical dream, leading a traveling all-black singing group, playing banjo and spinning song-stories about his plantation upbringing and singing songs that adopted the vernacular and celebrated the rural and musical traditions of pre-war black life. But a mixed-race group removed from the element of farce and without the use of black-face was a bold concept in the 1890's, garnering praise and derision from both Northern and Southern audiences. His highest praise came from Mark Twain, who suffered similarly divided criticisms for Huckleberry Finn. But the show and the group were very popular nonetheless lasting off and on for over 30 years, even after Miller died in 1913. Culled from seven cylinder recordings made in 1909 and seven rare 78 rpm recordings made almost 20 years later in 1928, this disc this has some of the earliest recordings of whites and blacks playing together and some of the best examples of pre-war American gospel music. But the most interesting songs are the strange musical theater numbers such as "Laughing Song", that sounds like characters from a maniacal Disneyland ride and "Pussycat Rag" consisting of the quartette singing like, well, cats. Songs like, ah, "Watermelon Party" may cause some cringing, but let's face it, music rarely gets as unashamedly real as this!

MPEG stream: Laughing Song
MPEG stream: Oysters and Wine at 2 AM
MPEG stream: Pussycat Rag

Oh, Rhett Miller what're you doin' to us?! You, dear AQ reader, might recall that we had a gripe with his 2002 album's cover photo (a teen magazine worthy close-up shot of his peaches'n'cream face on a green background), and we didn't even bring up the appalling cover of his early solo offering Mythologies. Shudder. This time he's all dolled up and lounging in velvets. Doin' his best Rufus Wainwright impression. Weird, but unlike Wainwright who possesses an easy jaunty elegance, Miller looks posed and unnatural. Geeeez! Alright, that's enough harshing on Miller for one afternoon, but frankly it'd be less of an issue if any of his cover art or photos to date have suited their respective albums' music OR if his solo tunes kicked as much ass as those of his full band (Old 97s) do. Instead, his solo fare is much closer to that of loads of other folks. For instance the second tune could very well be a Goo Goo Dolls cast-off (which in itself isn't all that bad, is it?). Then the very next song "Meteor Shower" sounds like it could be a re-interpretation (or in less kind words, a knock-off) of David Bowie's song "Soul Love" from Ziggy Stardust. Later in the album "I Believe She's Lying" traces a melody and strummy guitar sound that Gin Blossoms put to better use on their song "Hey Jealousy". Not surprisingly, it all sound good -- really well played and produced -- but just comes across as faceless. That said, there's certainly enough heartstring-pulling here to guarantee that you'll be hearing some of these songs in teen movies this summer...

MPEG stream: Meteor Shower
MPEG stream: The Believer

Solo record from the lead vocalist of alt. country rockers the Old 97's. And yet another chapter in the seemingly never ending saga of a band we love getting worse and worse. While the last Old 97's record still hinted at the band they once were, this is total middle of the road, singer songwriter, adult contemporary bland pop rock. Blechh.

RealAudio clip: Our Love

A whole bunch of new releases this week on local label the Flenser, the weirdest of the bunch might just be this one, mostly since it's way different than anything else The Flenser has released so far. Unlike the mostly metal Flenser catalog, there's very little that's overly metal about this release from guitarist Nick Millevoi, other than plenty of buzz and distortion. Instead, we're reminded of a more droned out abstract take on the sort of minimal psychedelic guitarscapery of another aQ fave, Blackwolfgoat. The guitar tone here is thick and crunchy, buzzy and plenty distorted, Millevoi taking riffs and looping and layering, the opener here starting out as something blown out and raga-like, before the playing grows more frenzied, and does take on a bit of a metallic vibe, but it's like Reich or Riley composing with metallic riffs, growing more and more frantic, before melting into a roiling morass of long tones and endlessly sustaining chords. "Slowly Dark" is all overtones and sustain, a bit like SUNNO))) crossed with Derek Bailey, that sort of obtuse fretboard scrabbling, set amidst long rumbling tones and deep reverberent thrum. The two part "Super-Lith" gets even more abstract, ditching much of the heavy drone, leaving notes to drift, keening high end shards, and woozy chordal shimmer, which grows more and more intense in the second part, reminding us of an even more abstract Mick Barr, the guitar emitting gouts of grinding high end laced with bits of scrap and skronk. The tape closes with the 14+ minute "Endless Unfolding Hallways", which might be the 'prettiest' of the bunch, mixing some dreamy lilting melody, into wild squalls of swirling psychedelic high end, and heaving near heaviness, along with long stretches of softly pulsing drones, all peppered with fragmented melody and softly atonal chords. Cool stuff. Probably pretty limited too!!

MPEG stream: Before A Constant
MPEG stream: Slowly Dark

We reviewed a tape from Nick Millevoi a while back, released on local label The Flenser, and at the time, it was maybe the weirdest thing on the label, precisely because it was so little like anything else they'd put out, solo electric guitar, spaced out, super abstract dronescapes, looped and raga-like, a bit like a metal Terry Riley or Steve Reich, which obviously pushed lots of our buttons. So here we are a couple years later, and we've got more new music from Millevoi, a split with some improv jazz group called Onibaba, but first up, Millevoi unfurls a gorgeously languid sprawl of distorted guitars, delivered in waves, slow subtle swells, with long extended decay, the sounds crumbling and pulsing, over the opening track's 21 minutes, growing more and more noisy, swaths of feedback winding their noisy tendrils around the increasingly frantic riffage, which by now has transformed into thick squalls of buzz, a dense psychedelic noise, that manages to be textural and listenable, but also a bit caustic and chaotic. Millevoi's other two tracks get way further out, the first all wild squiggles, and woozy detuned strings, atonal and abstract, loose and noisy, and dizzying, the second taking the first and adding some Haino-esque freak outs over the top, dense tangles of high end squiggle and grinding, avant psych shred, blurred into a swirling dervish of psychedelic noise! The Onibaba tracks, while ostensibly 'jazz', are similarly abstract and freeform, the first, a slow, smoldering expanse of buried rhythms, and moody murk, of distant clatter and industrial whir, all wreathed in soft focus clouds of keening feedback, the vibe loose and noisy and ethereal, sounding a bit like a more placid, tranquil Wolf Eyes actually, the sound growing more urgent and rhythmic, until the murk clears, leaving a sky full of chiming high end shimmer, and clouds of bowed metallic thrum. The second track is even more minimal, a hushed, lowercase dronescape, all groaning, moaning, barely there rumbles, pocked with bits of glitch and squelch, a sort of minimal industrial dub, but smeared into indistinct blurs, hazy, and heady, hushed and hypnotic. Housed in an oversized purple and white, printed gatefold sleeve. LIMITED TO 250 COPIES.

MPEG stream: Howling After The Endless Tandem Suns
MPEG stream: Sinking

When we first heard about Millie & Andrea, the duo of Miles Whittaker aka Miles, whose brilliant Faint Hearted record we raved about here a while back, and Andy Stott, whose gorgeous, ultra minimal techno we've been raving abut forever, we were expecting this collaboration to be some fusion of the two - skeletal, abstract, ambient, hauntological, ultra minimal. For the first few seconds, our guess was pretty much right on, the first track beginning with a field of reverb heavy clattery rhythm, deep bass pulses, but with something lurking just below the surface, as if the sound could take off in any direction. The sound grew more dense, more secondary rhythms surfaced, the results super hypnotic almost trancey, but still plenty spaced out and abstract... So, we were settling in for an extended occultic electro bliss out, when track two kicked in and BAM, suddenly, we're transported directly from our insular listening space, to some nineties dancefloor, the duo laying down some skittery, swirly, crunchy, clattery techno, with super distorted synth sweeps, and stuttery hiccuping beats, the vibe hovering right between old school ravery, and something more modern and freaky, some heavy IDM influences too, as well as jungle, drum and bass, garage, but the production changes everything, fantastically blown out and in the red, which gives every sound a weird psychedelic feel, like some weird sonic halo, transforming what could have been straight up dance music into something noisy and trippy and fucking awesome! The next few songs offer up variations on this way back electronic time trip, with "Temper Tantrum" getting straight up jungle, pretty sure that's a mutated 'Amen' break, but again Whittaker and Stott fuck it up big time, adding all sorts of rhythmic filigree, and part way through, some swoonsome synth swirl. "Spectral Source" is another fantastic throwback, with a stuttery vocal snippet peppered amidst synth squelch, hand claps, gristly bass buzz, and a murky pulse, all transformed by the gloriously cheesy late night chill out synths, which like much of the record, finds its niche in this weird push and pull between avant electronic experimentation, and pure, sweat soaked dancefloor groove from back in the day. "Corrosive" begins all robotic electro draped over a background of blooping bleeping melodies and gurgling low end before exploding into full on No U-Turn style tech-step, a killer blast of distorted noisy jungle that no one makes anymore, but we still LOVE. The title track two, a churning bass heavy slab of classic jungle/drum & bass, albeit plenty fucked up, and of course midway through, they fuck it up even more, pulling it apart, and cranking up the bass, thick buzzing, undulating rumbles and whirs. Nearing the end of the record, things seem to start drifting closer to the sounds we were expecting from Whittaker and Stott, albeit fused to the jungliness that came before. "Back Down" is all murky swirling melodies, hazy vocal harmonies blurred into black smears, churning, grinding bass, skittery rhythms, all wreathed in a dense sonic murk, sounding almost industrial, industrial via Huperdub maybe, and finally, the closer, wraps things up with a gorgeous bit of haunting ambience, swirling Basinski like loops beneath weird bits of rhythmic clatter, gristly tape hiss, static and glitch, all washed out, hazy, druggy, dreamy and divine.

MPEG stream: Gif Riff
MPEG stream: Stay Ugly
MPEG stream: Temper Tanturm
MPEG stream: Corrosive

[ aquarius records catalogue — M ]