We haven't gotten any of these in yet, but figured some of our weirdo music / obscure art-vinyl obsessives might want one of these, especially folks into the whole Trunk Records scene of strange lost audio from yesteryear. These are EXTREMELY expensive, but exquisitely handmade, so this is in fact a pre-order, cuz we'll only be getting as many copies as we get orders for, so if you want one, and order one, we'll charge you for it now, and ship it in a couple weeks when it comes in, either on its own, or with whatever order you have pending at the time.
So here's the skinny. The Trunk Records label is definitely a good reference point, as this record really does seem like it could just as easily have ended up on Trunk. Mary Millington was the most famous pornstar in 1970's Britain, appeared in all the most famous adult magazines, even had some film roles in proper non-pornographic films. Around the mid to late seventies, Millington began to record 'porn audios' which were included with many magazines at the time, which were, as you might imagine, Millington simply talking dirty, playful and casual and conversational, telling sexy stories, being nasty, stories about peeing on her suitor, and being peed on ("Lovely Little Tinkle"), giving blowjobs ("The Longest Tongue In The World"), and giving underwater wanks ("Come Play With Me"), laced with little aside ("Ooooh, it's hot!", "I've got pubic hair in my mouth!"), and all set to groovy, soft focus psychedelic jams, all remastered from the original tapes and some of the flexi-discs included with the above mentioned magazines.
If you were a fan of the Flexi-Sex release on Trunk, which collected some of Johnny Trunk's favorite sexy flexis, you'll have an idea of just what you're in for, sexy, goofy, funny, playful, weird, total outsider audio from a lost era.
And as mentioned above, the packaging is super super deluxe, pressed on 140 gram 10" opaque blue vinyl, housed in fancy gatefold sleeves using recycled card stock and conservation glue, hand pulled screenprint artwork by Walden Press on the front and back, as well as a saucy full length image of Millington inside, on 1970's style newsprint.
EXTREMELY LIMITED!!! We can probably only get a handful, so (pre)order now if you want one!
Well, if you've wondered where in the world has Robert Millis been for the past year, the answer is India, as the avant-everything guitarist from the Climax Golden Twins somehow cajoled his way into getting a Fulbright Fellowship to spend a year conducting ethnomusicological research on the subcontinent. Truth be told, our man Millis stained his fingers on curry and cigarettes while thumbing through old '78s for a year. Not a bad gig, if you can get it! But his working vacation was a productive one too, as a spate of new releases are on the immediate horizon of his sidereal collages for prismatic drone, raga mysticism, and polyglot psychedelic narcosis. Millis declares this cassette to be a re-imagined construct of solo material and Climax Golden Twin tracks of old; but even for CGT / Millis completists like we are, it's hard to pick out much of anything that is obviously tied to a gem like the Imperial Household Orchestra, Dream Cut Short In The Mysterious Clouds, or those asskicking AFCGT records. Millis stitches together disembodied drones, skittering satellite transmissions, and swampy field recordings that on the A side of this tape could be some unearthed Steven Stapleton / Chris Watson collaboration. Until that improbable event happens, we'll happily settle for Millis' tape. The flipside is all slippery minimalism through purring overtones and sensually rippling glissandos hitting all the right sweets spots of La Monte Young transcendentalism, before Millis introduces some found recordings of Jonestown-esque ritualized vocal incantations that turn the vibe from pleasantly opiated to seriously creepy. Fucking great stuff that's limited to something like 200 copies.
Polyglot might be just the right word to describe what Robert Millis and his Climax Golden Twins have been up to for the past two decades or so. An album might be a ramshackle collage of blisterfuck noise-rock, another might be a graceful set of murder ballads, and yet another might hypnotize the listener through an alpha-state minimalism. And then, there's Millis' acclaimed collections of olde-timey '78s and raw field recordings of indigenous folk songs, much of which has been released through those tasty labels Sublime Frequencies and Dust-To-Digital. The solo work from Millis tends more toward the dronemuzik and hallucinatory collage axis of CGT's multi-headed agenda, although he has been known to strum out a sadsack blues number that might straddle the worlds of Alan Bishop and Roscoe Holcomb; but here on the impeccable new album Relief, Millis tunes in and drops out with a blearily psychedelic album of forgotten sounds, ghostly fragments, and Pacific Ocean drones. The album begins with a comedic outburst from one of Millis' 78s with a helpful direction to "hear the secret sentence played out on the talking typewriter" followed by a jaunty clatter of a manual typewriter all wrapped in scratchy-vinyl, crackling goodness. Immediately, the album delves into a swarming tone-float of harmonic overtones pecked with trilling glissandos. The source for this sound has got to be a plung - a Bangladeshi mouth-organ used specifically by the Murung peoples living deep in the rainforest, as this sound is uniquely atonal and wrigglingly eerie in its wavering notes. Millis furthers this wooziness by rarifying these sounds into the holy minimalism conjured by LaMonte Young, Angus Maclise, and company. After swimming here in these golden pools for a good five or six minutes, Millis drops the needle on a dramatic orchestral swell that would be the envy of the Caretaker's sunken ballroom recordings. A couple of hip-swaying recombinations of temple music rhythms and Les Baxter exotica glide in and out of Millis' glassy-eyed shimmeriness and post-Eno piano constellations. The album's finale is an impressionistic driftscape of languid, temple bell & gong tones stretched into a gorgeous, expansive cloud of lush harmonics giving way to a metronomic wooden rhythm that leads to a set of solitary piano notes suspended over Mariana trench diving-bell ambience. Limited to 400 copies, and comes with the requisite download code. So fucking good.
Robert Millis is a man of many talents: a Climax Golden Twin, a collector '78s resulting in the impeccable Victrola Favorites book & compilation, purveyor of searing avant-scum-noise-rock in AFCGT, a world traveller in search of esoterica for Sublime Frequencies, a field recordist of frogs, birds, blue jeans salesmen, etc. etc. etc. Despite his many activities, Millis' recorded output has almost entirely been by way of collaboration, making this self-released gem of a solo album all the more special. This is closer related to the collage work that Millis has contributed to the Climax Golden Twins, bridging all of those aforementioned interests in a polyglot of psychedelic drone smear pocked with snippets of conversation, poetic extracts from his collection of '78s, and a judicious amount of vinyl crackling. An album such as this would easily be confused for the hermetic revelations that Philip Jeck extracts from his rough shod vinyl and turntables; but Millis seems to counterpoint the crackle and the clean with more drama than Jeck, almost positing the crackle like a punchline in a joke that breaks through one of Millis' blissed out shimmers constructed from loops and drones from guitar, bells, and glass harmonica, where haunted melodies from times long gone whisper through the mix. But at another instance, Millis leaps geographically from a field recording of loosely played Thai temple music into a shortwave burst of noise seamlessly mixed through a cloud of insects and back into one of his sleepy drones. The logic of the album may seem absurd from afar; but the internal logic is peculiarly sensible, as if Millis were tapping into some stream of consciousness that subcutaneously connects all of these intermingling sounds. Limited to something like 50 copies, but maybe we'll be able to get more... maybe not. Very highly recommended no matter how you slice it.
It seems like field recordings from southeast Asia have become one of the most popular emergent genres here at Aquarius Records. And while we're not sure if just 'cause you took a trip and recorded stuff you should really get your name on record (like you're some sort of hoity-toity 'sound artist'), we still appreciate the efforts of such recordists as Loren Nerell, the Bishop brothers, and now Robert Millis. The truth is, ambient sound from some street in Thailand or Indonesia can be a lot more fascinating than yet another disc of computerized feedback or lowercase glitch! Never a substitute for going places yourself and using your ears (and other senses) but certainly a valid listening option at home. So no complaints, we'll continue to sing the praises of quality releases in the 'field recordings' genre like those on the Sublime Frequencies label. And certainly if you liked the recent Princess Nicotine disc on Sublime Freq, you'll probably also want to check out Leaf Music Drunks Distant Drums. Actually Millis (a member of American experimentalists Climax Golden Twins) had some involvement in the production of the Sublime Frequencies' dvd release Nat Pwe: Burma's Carnival Of Spirit Soul, and portions of this release were recorded on the same 'expedition'. Listening to this artfully edited distillation of the hours and hours of recordings that this disc represents, you'll be able to tell that Millis obviously spent a lot of time on the ground in SE Asia, ears alert for interesting sonics (musical and otherwise). It'll transport you into an environment that includes the following and more: "improvisation performed by an elephant mahout using only a leaf, ethereal temple orchestras, blind street musicians, insect choruses, stagecoach rides, singing cabbies, drunken spirit orchestras performing Leo Sayer songs..." Byram was especially taken with the track that sounds like a guy sobbing through a bullhorn! A great listen thats very well mixed, segueing nicely, and at a nice pace, from track to track.
Our favorite "world music" label has gotta be Sublime Frequencies, their dedicated operatives backpacking through the far reaches of the non-Western world, documenting so much amazing music and sound. While SF mostly does limited edition vinyl and cds, they also do dvd releases too, adding equally 'exotic' visuals to the mix.
Here's one such dvd, a film by Robert Millis of the Climax Golden Twins, whom you probably know also as a prolific field recordist and collector of 78s. Here he shares the sound and imagery from a journey he took, from Mumbai to Madurai and back.
"Filmed live and in the moment in South India" this is a narrative-free exploration of the wonders (to us) of what must be rather mundane (to them, there). It's fascinating, odd, dreamlike, colorful, with much beauty, and moments of humor. The film is full of woozy close-ups and cross-fades of peeling murals painted on pockmarked walls. Religious processions. Traffic-clogged streets. Beach amusements. Strange scenes on flickering TV screens. Temple performances. Laundry being done. Street musicians. Cows, elephants! It's all reality, yet unreal, a bit hallucinatory. Helped along by (of course) the evocative field recordings and Bollywood samplings that serve as the soundtrack.
One of the most mind blowing bits, for us at least, was the visit to the Experimental Instrument Museum in Chennai, revealing such treasures as the "revolving tambura". Wow. Makes Lark In The Morning seem pretty lame. Want. To. Go. There.
55 minutes, indexed into chapters accessible from the menu screen. Also includes an equally compelling photo gallery slideshow section.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
"Instead of creating space for a melody to shine, Mils have an IDM maven's infatuation with exotic textures. But unlike other glitch artists, whose work often suffers from a prevailing sense of prefabrication, Mils have found a way to enliven their creations: Even the most robotic numbers are swabbed with impressionistic dabs of color. From the trilling flutes and clarinets that introduce "Les Mecaniques du Pic" to the vibraphone and lightly plucked harp behind "Societe Duret-Mol", each composition breathes with a deep lifeforce."
Ever since we discovered M83 and their gorgeous shimmery blissed out shoegazey electronic pop, we've been desparately trying to track down more stuff on Gooom, the French label that M83 (and Cyann & Ben as well) call home. While a lot of that stuff is already out of print, we did just manage to get a few titles in enough quantity to list. This is the debut album from Mils., another Gooom mainstay. Mils. weave an exotic soundscape of soundtracky electronica/jazz, sort of like David Holmes meets DJ Shadow, with fluttering flutes, shuffling skittery percussion, subtly funky bass, occasional electronic glitchery, and weird warbly sound effects here and there. Sounds like it could be the soundtrack to some bizarre seventies soft porn / cop show or something. Propulsive and hypnotic. Just funky enough for the headz to get into, but weird and dark enough for everybody else!
Kristin Miltner is one of many very talented electronic musicians from the Bay Area who has gone through Mills College with a deft understanding of Max/MSP language and how to apply that understanding to a post-techno framework of electronica. While she has collaborated in a couple of other recorded projects, Grains stands as her solo debut, and it's quite a gem of twinkling glitch-based electronica and crunchy rhythmic skitter. Fragmenting tiny snippets of her own voice and splicing it all back together with all of the digital threads exposed, Miltner builds looping melodies that hold the same languid sensibility found on those beloved Colleen records, but with the additional pixel smear patina from the likes of Tim Hecker and Fennesz. Using these melodies as the building blocks to her pop-song length pieces, Miltner stacks these sounds with increasing density and jagged drum machines, all the while maintaining the basic tune of the melody. Grains emerges as a short and sweet reprisal of the classic Autechre use of melody with plenty of technological tricks up its sleeve to keep it charming, fresh, and unique. Very nicely done.
So here's a new record from longtime AQ fave Antony Milton, who runs the kick ass cd-r label PseudoArcana. Not a new record entirely, actually originally released on cassette, then on cd-r and now on cd (our sincerest apologies to anyone who will be buying this for the THIRD time), this time re-re-released by Last Visible Dog who now seem to be the go to guys to have your already released cd-r's released once again! But hell, most of you probably missed out the first two times around (we sure did), so here's a chance to catch up and make it right! This isn't at all like the Antony Milton we've come to adore, which in no way is a bad thing. Milton has bestowed upon us record after record of sublime drones and experimental ambience, all of it pretty darn amazing. But this is a whole 'nother side of Mr. Milton, a more lo-fi, home recorded, bedroom folk side. And quite a nice side it is. Originally Recorded in 1997 and 1998 the two records that comprise this disc are intimate folk pop songs, lots of strummed guitar, simple percussion, and Milton's quavering almost-falsetto sadboy vocals. Drifting and delicate, simple and insistent, sweetly innocent but with haunting otherworldly filigree. Certainly in the tradition of New Zealand bedroom songsmiths Alastair Galbraith, Peter Jeffries, Roy Mongomery, but with definite shades of the US four-track underground (Sentridoh, Iran, Supreme Dicks, etc.). Towards the second half of the record, the freakout factor definitely picks up, with stretches of wild guitar and slabs of almost-noise, but at it's core this is still a ultra personal, super lovely slab of folky pop lovliness!
Pseudo Arcana head honcho starts this disc off with some real Raster-Noton style static clickery but manages to sound way more organic, with throbbing pulses of low end that abruptly cut out and become a dreamy, thrumming, humming wash of warm drones ans slowly shifting spaced-out swish and whir. The rest of the record runs the gamut from noise-y drone ala the Dead C, with bursts of harsh noise and looped samplesforming loping 'rhythms', to all out N O I S E, to dreamy subterranean dronescapes reminiscent of Birchville Cat Motel, to almost-pop buried under fuzz and hiss and distrorted to the point of being pop-no-more.
Four tracks of droning dreaminess. Track one is a stuttering, wheezing violin drone over absent mindedly strummed, downtuned guitars sounding like a doped up Roy Montgomery. The second track is an industrial landscape of machinery buzz and electronic hiss
Siren Performance was devised as an installation using the sounds of air raid sirens and the various sonic harmonics and overtones that resulted from multiple / competeing sound sources. This disc contains a 15 minute recording of the source material for the installation as well as a performance featuring the air raid sirens, as well as Campbell Kneale on electronics, Antony Milton on sampler and broken violin, as well as a few other folks on bass, guitar and more electronics. The sound is stark and beautiful, mournfully wailing like ghosts and wind, slowly pitched up and down. The performance takes those sounds and turns them into a thick drone-y wash of sirens and vigorously bowed stringed instruments which takes the piece into Conrad / Cale / Maclise / Palestine territory.
Antony Milton is one busy man, not only does he run the amazing PseudoArcana label, but he also makes tons of music as A.M., Mrtyu, in the Stumps, the Nether Dawn and more. Did we also mention he's a postman?
The End Of This Short Road is the latest from this underground dynamo, and is most definitely the most song oriented. We know full well Milton is capable of weaving gorgeous expanses of droney bliss, as well as monstrous slabs of downtuned brutality, but who knew he had such a deft hand at delicate songsmithery, but he does, and pretty much every track on The End Of This Short Road is a gem. Fear not, the weird lo-fi warbles and buzzy drone drenched whirs are still present and accounted for, but they tend to be beneath bits of jangle and croon, instead of on their own (although that does happen here and there).
The quieter pretty songs sound a bit like a more lo-fi Sparklehorse, with a little Alastair Galbraith mixed in and maybe with Roy Montgomery on guitar. Soft whispery vocals over delicate melodies, all filtered through that distinctly NZ filter. While the more rocking songs, are super psychedelic, with aggressive strumming, lost of reverb and delay, intense little squalls of minor key jangle and crunch, that manage to be both noisy and pretty, intense but strangely sad and wistful. Recommended for soft hearted noisies and noisy hearted folkies...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Ilhan Mimaroglu is a composer more people have heard of than actually heard. We probably have Keith Fullerton Whitman to thank for that as he christened his distribution empire Mimaroglu Music Sales in homage to the pioneering composer. In the early '60s, Mimaroglu studied at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Center under Vladimir Ussachevsky, occasionally finding time to work with Edgard Varese from time to time. While Mimaroglu went onto compose a large body of work for ensembles and orchestras, his biggest impact was through his dense squiggles of electro-acoustics and controlled tape splutter. His first recording was released on one of those compendiums of electro-acoustic music finding himself in good company next to John Cage and Luciano Berio. His own imprint Finnadar Records was responsible for the bulk of his discography; and during the 1970s, Mimaroglu was quite active in getting his work out in the world. Unfortunately, there's been little in the way of reissues since then, with this cassette version of Wings of the Delirious Demon being a rare exception to that rule. The title track is a mind-bending exploration of radiophonic tone-bleeps and flutter-n-wow tape manipulation coupled with a ring-modulated clarinet in full-spectrum free-jazz skronk. The electronics quickly rip through the various effects with an amazing speed (probably with everything sped up on tape in order to achieve the color-coordinated-with-corduroy tone-splutter), with arching squalid vibratos from some stringed instrument and doppler-effected echoes acting as the rare bridges between Mimaroglu's dense collages. Mimaroglu states that the work is programmatic in its conceptualization from literature and geometry (to name two concepts on this album); but it's very difficult to hear much beyond the multidimensional polygons of sound slicing through each other. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!!
MIMEO stands for Music In Movement Electronic Orchestra, a massive ensemble of European electronic musicians and improvisers that includes Keith Rowe, Phil Durrant, Kaffe Matthews, Jerome Noetinger, Gert-Jan Prins, Cor Fuhler, Thomas Lehn, Marcus Schmickler,
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Along with LSD-march's Shindara Jigoku, here's another slab of vinyl on Siwa from another excellent underground Japanese psych unit. Tokyo's Miminokoto (who, like LSD-march, have also released a cd on the Last Visible Dog label) present their appropriately titled third studio recording as a limited, vinyl-only edition boasting a nice hand-screened cover. Collectors will want this, but also anyone into garagey guitar psych... And we weren't aware of this before, but Miminokoto is somewhat of a Tokyo psych veteran supergroup, with a line-up that includes: Masami Kawaguchi (Broomdusters, LSD-march, Aihiyo), Koji Shimura (White Heaven, High Rise) and Takuya Nishimura (Che-Shizu)!
Glory be! We've got not one but TWO new albums from Miminokoto, who you may already know as one of the new wave of Japanese psych trios (along with LSD-march and Up-Tight also) making the rounds of late. Miminokoto currently consist of singer/guitarist Masami Kawaguchi (LSD-march, Broomdusters, Aihiyo), drummer Koji Shimura (White Heaven, High Rise) and bassist Hiroaki Takeuchi. How does this particular unit stand apart from their peers? Well, although quite capable of building up into big, burning, fuzzed-out guitar clangor (and when they do, they get just as gnarly as the rest), they have a mellow side to 'em, one that's very melancholic and emotional, that they explore in perhaps greater depth and duration than those other bands tend to do. With weary vocals of which maybe even Jandek would be proud, Miminikoto can create a sense of sadness which makes Kawaguchi's howling guitar, when it kicks in, all that much more cathartic. They also aren't afraid of some poppy jangle too, so you're never sure what's around the corner. From track to track, one cut might be a punked out stormer, the next a gentle web of fragile notes.
Of these two new releases, one's an import studio recording, and the other's a domestically released live album (though this sort of stuff always seems live). There's five magnificently meandering and oft harrowing new tunes on the Alchemy disc Green Mansions, while the live disc on LVD, Orange Garage (named for the venue where these void-vibes were conjured), features new n' heavier versions of three previously recorded Miminokoto tracks plus three other totally new compositions, culminating in the 16+ minute "Kumononaka". Can't really pick between 'em, either or both should be of interest to any Japanese psych-scene follower...
The last time we heard from Tokyo underground psych-meisters Miminokoto, with their 2009 PSF release All About Mimi, they were calling themselves New Miminokoto. On account of how they'd replaced longtime lead singer/guitarist Masami Kawaguchi with Suzuki Junzo (ex-Overhang Party). Well, that's not news any more, so now they're back to calling themselves just plain Miminokoto. Suzuki Junzo is still capably fronting the group, wearing shades (we presume) and wranging his guitar through the usual distortodelic psych storms and melancholically poppy ramshackle jangle we expect from these exemplars of the hazy, heavy lidded, late-night "Tokyo Flashback" sound. Singing in Japanese, his voice is hushed and weary, the music often likewise, though they rev up for some of those feedback filled, Rallizes style blowouts we love at times too. On All About Mimi, the band covered a couple songs by the late Jutok Kaneko (Kousokuya), here they do another one, along with six others of their own, equally emotive and wrecked composition.
The label that put this disc out calls their style "decadent death doom" and while that might be a bit misleading to those of you who think you already know what "death doom" sounds like ('cause this definitely ain't metal, though it may be decadent), that description definitely captures the downer vibe. For sure they've got the blues, though this also isn't "blues" as commonly known, either. What it is, is a sad and gorgeous session of shimmering amp bliss, burbling bass, slow shuffling drums, aching vocals, creaky chords, and minor key melody.
Fans of prior Miminokoto output (new and old) as well as other Tokyo flashbackers like LSD-March, Up-Tight, Suishou No Fune, Kawaguchi New Rock Syndicate, Overhang Party etc. etc. should definitely dig!!
Last Visible Dog brings us the first US release for this Tokyo-based trio, a self-described 'romantic psychedelic band'. Recorded live at Tokyo's Penguin House back in January of this year, this disc starts off with a raucous tangle-jangle of bright garagey guitars ("Tottemo"), followed by a melancholic pop dirge that then erupts into sky-scraping psych guitar overload ("Subeteha"). The rest of the set follows a similar pattern, juxtaposing the quiet and folky with the loud and shrill. You'll get a song that features mopey Japanese vocals over jazzily listless instrumental backing, that'll be followed by piece built around some severe, noisy guitar rockin' and crashing drums. Often one thing builds into the other, which is quite satisfying. Definitely a 'Tokyo Flashback' style band, for fans of Shizuka, Nagisa Ni Te, White Heaven, Kousokuya, all that sort of thing!
Glory be! We've got not one but TWO new albums from Miminokoto, who you may already know as one of the new wave of Japanese psych trios (along with LSD-march and Up-Tight also) making the rounds of late. Miminokoto currently consist of singer/guitarist Masami Kawaguchi (LSD-march, Broomdusters, Aihiyo), drummer Koji Shimura (White Heaven, High Rise) and bassist Hiroaki Takeuchi. How does this particular unit stand apart from their peers? Well, although quite capable of building up into big, burning, fuzzed-out guitar clangor (and when they do, they get just as gnarly as the rest), they have a mellow side to 'em, one that's very melancholic and emotional, that they explore in perhaps greater depth and duration than those other bands tend to do. With weary vocals of which maybe even Jandek would be proud, Miminikoto can create a sense of sadness which makes Kawaguchi's howling guitar, when it kicks in, all that much more cathartic. They also aren't afraid of some poppy jangle too, so you're never sure what's around the corner. From track to track, one cut might be a punked out stormer, the next a gentle web of fragile notes.
Of these two new releases, one's an import studio recording, and the other's a domestically released live album (though this sort of stuff always seems live). There's five magnificently meandering and oft harrowing new tunes on the Alchemy disc Green Mansions, while the live disc on LVD, Orange Garage (named for the venue where these void-vibes were conjured), features new n' heavier versions of three previously recorded Miminokoto tracks plus three other totally new compositions, culminating in the 16+ minute "Kumononaka". Can't really pick between 'em, either or both should be of interest to any Japanese psych-scene follower...
Here's one I remember reading about in one of them rare-ass record collector books and thinking, wow, I'd like to hear that. A 1970 jazz-rock improv trio from Norway, featuring the young guitarist Terje Rypdal (later an ECM staple), balanced somewhere between psych-rock and Impulse-inspired energy jazz. Well at last it's been reissued on cd (first time ever legit reish we're told) and it is indeed damn good. Rypdal makes a good claim here to being Norway's answer to Sonny Sharrock or Ray Russell, and rips it up on some soprano sax as well as electric guitar. The six tracks here range from sheer freakout implosions to calmer, groovier stuff, with bassist Bjornar Andresen's Mingus-meets-Cream composition "Champagne of Course" being a monster highlight. Definitely a jazz record more than a rock one, but quite intense and heavy and experimental and sometimes beautiful too. And it's another NWW-list entry by the way. Recommended.
Traditional Chinese music played on the pipa by virtuoso Xiao-Fen, nicely recorded by AQ-customer Carl Stone. Intricate, beautiful, even DJ Spooky couldn't improve upon this.
After a year or two of track stealing cameos, on records by Mariah Carey, Kanye West, Lil Wayne and loads of others, Nicki Minaj finally unleashes her long awaited full length, and people for the most part seem to be bummed out. Mostly because it seems she decided to go pop instead of straight hip hop. But it would definitely be a mistake to write off Pink Friday, cuz there's some seriously twisted kick ass shit here.
For those who need a history lesson, or who have been living under a rock, pretty much every hip hop jam of the last 24 months, if it was worth hearing had Minaj spitting some twisted rhymes on it. Probably most notably on the recent Kanye West record, where her cameo on "Monster" dusted even Jay-Z. She's a mini bombshell, pneumatic figure, robotic composure, and a voice that slips from sweet croon, to deep bellow, slipping in and out of accents, making sound effects, woofing like a dog, growling like a dragon, spitting expletives like a longshoreman, but what a way with rhymes, and for the most part, that's on display here big time, the bummer is that there's also plenty of pop fluff. But like we said, it's still worth it. And as far as pop stuff goes, it's pretty decent. And hell, we'd much rather see Minaj all over the radio than Katy Perry.
By now you've probably heard the Buggles sampling "Check It Out" (the video is a kick, and if you're not crushed out on Minaj after that, there's something wrong with you), with it's "oh oh" refrain, and Wil.I.Am, and yeah, we sort of dig it, but even here, Minaj's rap is twisted and fucked up and WAY weird, rhythmically off kilter, the rhymes unlikely and funny as fuck. And on "Blazin", with its classic '80s sampling loop, Kanye returns Minaj's "Monster" favor and delivers a pretty excellent guest spot of his own.
But the two best jams are tucked away right at the beginning, after the pop opening, "Roman's Revenge" is spare and stark and fierce and fucked up, the music minimal, and Minaj is on fire, mean and nasty and funny, and she's teamed up with Eminem who spits out his own serious nastiness over a weirdly creepy children's choir backdrop. A whole record of this sort of sick hip hop genius would have made Minaj a legend for sure, and all the haters would be bowing down, but a track like that would never make it on the radio. Neither would the next one "Did It On 'Em", a woozy, synth driven syzurp slither, with its "Did it on 'em, shitt'd on em" refrain, and some gleefully nasty lyrical madness, including "if I had a dick, I would pull it out and piss on 'em", all over a stripped down lo fi beat, and a hazy wheezing buzz.
But sadly, those two tracks are really the only vestiges of the mixtape Minaj everyone wanted more of. That Minaj does pop up here and there throughout the rest of the record, but only occasionally and briefly. So if you have a low tolerance for radio pop, then Pink Friday might be tough going, and you'd probably be better off tracking down those infamous mixtapes, but if you don't mind a little pop, you could definitely do worse, and you get the occasional blast of bafflingly brilliant Minaj, which to us, seems well worth it.
So far, the only thing we've reviewed on the awesome Ormolycka label, run by aQ pal Jason, was the cassette version of Liturgy's Renihilation, the one that featured a bad ass Liturgy jungle remix courtesy of our very own Andee. But we do carry everything else on the label, we just get such limited copies, they never make it onto the list, tapes by Pistol Disko, Anthro Rex, Synt.Tofs, Shams, M Ax Noi Mach, Modern Witch, Dubknowdub, GDFX, Pushups, Diamond Black Hearted Boy, A Magic Whistle, Juiceboxx, Frak, Narwhalz, Death Grips, Pictureplane, Kalambya Sisters and more! Phew. Ormolycka has also just started doing 7"s, the first two of which we have in stock, and we've go just enough to list!
Although we've never reviewed anything by Mincemeat Or Tenspeed, some aQ folks have been fans for a while, in fact he played a while back at a secret brunch show in a cave right by the water. We have no idea who Dan Friel is [2013 edit: now we do, and he's got a great record called Total Folklore coming out on Thrill Jockey in February], but this is some sort of collaboration, hence the tongue twisty moniker.
Not sure what we were expecting but it sure wasn't this, the A side starts out all awesomely gristly rhythmic buzz, wrapped in distorted keening melodies, sounding a bit like Amps For Christ or Bastard Noise, all sorts of warped squiggles, and stuttery glitched out rhythms, surprisingly melodic, almost poppy in its own way, like some fractured blast of rhythmic soft noise bliss out.
And if the A side is -almost- poppy, then the B side is full on pop, sounding a bit like some super catchy chunk of indie rock, rendered in glitched out analog buzz, a looped sort of hooky lo-fi electro that is just about the catchiest shit we've heard in ages. Awesome.
Limited too, and pressed on swank milky blue vinyl!
Gorgeous disc of strangely melodic, creepy black ambience, four long tracks that shimmer, chrip, creep, rumble and drift...
Harmonium! Tape delay! Oscillator! Oh my, this is ever nice. A solo project by Peeesseye's Jaime Fennelly, the "harmoniumist", tape delayer, and oscillator operator in question (he's also responsible for assorted synth processing, and there's other sounds such as pipe organ heard on here as well), Mind Over Mirrors is already up to its fourth album (in only 3 years) with this cd and lp for Immune, following releases on such labels as Aguirre and Digitalis, that we foolishly ignored, this being the first Mind Over Mirrors we've reviewed - and once we tear ourselves away from its warm embrace, we'll have to look into those earlier outings. 'Cause the six tracks here, ranging in length from under 4 minutes to over 18, of blissfully melodic, minimalist repetition, are all quite delightful and droneful indeed. So soothing and sacred-sounding, some with gently surging rhythms, others with placid deep drones. The mystic glow emanating from this release is hard to resist. Our newest nighttime drifting off to sleep listening favorite (we should make section for that in the store - come to think of it, we did a whole in-between list about music like that once, didn't we?), and nice to put on in the morning when you wake up, too.
Includes some guest guitar from Scott Tuma of Souled American and Matt Christensen of Zelienople, btw, and also the vinyl version comes with a download, fyi.
For some reason, we always thought Mind Spiders were from Australia. They definitely have that Aussie post punk vibe, but they are in fact from Denton, Texas, and our description in our review of their last record, still pretty much applies:
"Imagine Thee Oh Sees via Gary Numan, or the Ramones if they were on Captured Tracks, or maybe even Bare Wires covering Snowy Red..."
If anything, this new one is more stripped down, more old school power pop, with swirling synths, and drum machines augmenting the group's kinetic garage pop crunch. Just check out "Suicide", which doesn't sound so much like Suicide as it does Cheap Trick or the Cars. And in fact, those two bands are pretty good reference points, although some of the record gets more buzzy and fuzzy and punk, but even at its most revved up, the songs here are still CRAZY catchy, hooks galore, these guys tossing off timeless popisms that most bands would kill for.
But the record IS kinda all over the map. "City Stuff" sounds like it was plucked from a different record, even down to the production (and volume!), with its Casio-core rhythm, wheezing synth swirl, and Wall Of Voodoo guitar, but then it slips right back into almost Ramones sounding punk stomp, still shot through with plenty of Yellow Pills power popisms, but then a song or two later, and the sound blossoms into a sort of FX heavy psychedelic space garage, a little bit Moon Duo, a little bit T-Rex, a killer slice of kraut-glam, garage-synth, fuzz pop that KILLS. And then like the last record, the band deliver the coup de grace, another record defining jam, this time around sounding like a modern fuzzed out garage rock Gary Numan, swirling and sci-fi and psychedelic and swaggery and crazy catchy to boot. Goddamn we wish we hadn't already finished our 2013 top tens, cuz had we known, you can bet this would have definitely made it, and probably been right near the top!
When we first listened to Meltdown, we found ourselves crazy obsessed with the title track, a killer slab of synth heavy drum machine driven cold wave electro, with cool squiggly Perrey And Kingsley like analog melodies over the top, the sound raw and urgent, a bit frenetic, dizzying and psychedelic and a little bit noisy too, but also atmospheric and cinematic, definitely reminding us a little of the current crop of retro-futurist synthscapers. The rest of the record, at first blush, could hardly compare, sounding more like a straight ahead garage rock. But a strange thing happened - the more we listened, it was like all the sci-fi synthy weirdness and electro-noisiness of that title track seeped into all of the others, revealing the record as something so much more, an awesomely psychedelic melange of crunchy garage punk, seventies new wave power pop, and brooding cold wave gloom pop, with some of the songs all jangly and fuzzy and garage-y, while others are more weirdly robotic and futuristic, although even the poppier jams are peppered with rad theremin like squiggly melodies and thick buzzing synths, all tangled up with super hooky classic fuzzy punky garage pop, giving them a cool retro-future-pop vibe, and making them a bit more dark and tense than your typical garage rock. Elsewhere the band craft some seriously perfect power pop, sounding like some lost Yellow Pills style B-side from the seventies, all kinetic and crunchy, big chiming jangly chords, super melodic basslines and kick ass propulsive drumming, but the strangely new wave-y vocals once again change the feel just enough to make it sound totally original (or at least as original as something so beholden to sounds past can be).
Imagine Thee Oh Sees via Gary Numan, or the Ramones if they were on Captured Tracks, or maybe even Bare Wires covering Snowy Red... this is fast becoming a new favorite.
Wow. A quite wonderful surprise from The Minders, the two gal / one guy trio hailing from Portland, Oregon. 5 songs (plus 2 video tracks), each an individually perfect piece of classic British-Invasion-style pop a la the Kinks. Past affiliated with the underground pop collective Elephant 6 and having released one-off comp tracks and singles, and one full length, for a variety of labels, The Minders are obsessed with the past yet their music sounds totally fresh and unpretentious. From the Kinks-like opener "Young and With It" to the doleful piano-led "Time Machines", which sounds like the soundtrack to a 'twenties silent film, this is real honest to god beautifully written music you can sink your teeth into that doesn't copy the past so much as it is inspired by it. Recommended.
Of all the pop bands that've been coming more and more to people's attention in the past few years, bands that specialize in reinterpreting the proudly pop roots planted by the Beatles, Kinks, Beach Boys, etc., Portland's The Minders are, in my humble opinion, head and shoulders above the rest of the pack. Like the Olivia Tremor Control and Apples in Stereo, The Minders' version of toothy pop is so well-executed that what in lesser hands might get dismissed as retro pretentiousness instead seems really fresh. With female and male vocals, careful, exact instrumentation, and hooks galore, this particular Minders record reminds us of all the bands mentioned above, plus the Velvets, Big Star, and at times even T-Rex. Nice.
Sweet, strong pop very reminiscent of the Kinks and the Beatles on the wondrous Elephant 6 label, home of Olivia Tremor Control, Apples in Stereo, Neutral Milk Hotel.
3rd album (right?) from this band of Rhode Island noise dance nutters... really great, like their others, and dig that D&D module referencing/punning title!!
First an album on Bulb (last year's Take Your Skin Off), now an album on Load? Must be some trash-fi, heavy-duty freakishness... Indeed it is: it's Mindflayer, those squidheaded noisniks from Rhode Island who just wanna party! Party like it's you-know-when. The electro-noise-dance duo of Mr. Brinkmann (Mr. Brinkmann, natch) and Mr. Chippendale (Lightning Bolt) are back with another bunch of zappity zap zap for your overstimulated earholes, all pounding tin can drums, cheapass electronics, and distorted distortion distorting. Approach with caution, partygoers.
Uh oh. A Bulb release. That usually equals aggravating, though sometimes inspired, silly arty noise stuff. And that's what this is. Rhode Island's Mindflayer is named after a particularily fearsome D&D monster -- which of course earns 'em points with Allan, as long as they live up to the name, which they do! Band members Time (drums, vocals) and Space (synth, backup vocals) are pseudonyms for folks better known, respectively, as Brian Chippendale (drummer extraordinaire for the amazing Lightning Bolt), and Mr. Brinkmann (of Forcefield and, uh, Mr. Brinkmann fame).
In Mindflayer these two don squid heads (at least on the cover) and get down to some feedback-filled, uber noisy dancefloor terrorism, asking the musical question, "Are You Fucked Up?" (track six). Pounding rhythmic battery, distorted electronics and vocals...it's like a malevolent, metallic Christine 23 Onna, or early Quintron maybe. Imagine listening in on a desperate, low fi 911 phone call from a defective synthesizer held hostage by drugged out industrial rock hippies...
Yep, yet another indulgent Bulb release, but a good one -- so watch out, earholes.
MPEG Download: "Head Of State On A Plate" [/audio/mindflayerhead.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Head Of State On A Plate" [/audio/mindflayerhead.m3u]
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Sweet lo-fi electro pop for casio from this Japanese woman who put on one hell of a good instore here at Aquarius!
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Following up her recent "Ximer" remix disc, Japanese electronic-pop songstress Minekawa presents a "fun" new full-length.
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With every new record casiopop auteur Takako Minekawa gets miles better, her sampling and arranging techniques more sophisticated and varied. She's so clever to balance her sweetness with smarts! As this 7-song cd begins we wonder if Takako has hijacked "Peter Gunn", but soon we are soothed by the return to the light, dreamy electronic pop she is more known for. Still in full possession of sweet-sweet, breathy child vocals, playful samples and pretty melodies, she adds doses of solemnity and darkness to make for possibly her best record yet. With a guest sitar appearance by Keigo Oyamada (aka Cornelius).
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While Takako has been described as the female Cornelius, her sound is much more simple, clean, and not nearly as sample-reliant. However, this stellar EP finds her getting the remix treatment from Buffalo Daughter (who manage to make that ubiquitous Liquid Liquid sample sound fresh again), Land of the Loops, Trans Am, Pulsars, Portastatic (Mac of Superchunk), and Sukia. Takako's sweet voice holds the whole thing together beautifully. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
Emo! People have been waiting for this record for ages! Really intense but not really loud or rocking. A lot like Karate and Sunny Day Real Estate...
