[ 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 2701 through 2750 of 3006.

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You would think a band that's twenty years into their career would be a whole different beast, a pale imitation of the snarling punks they were when they were young and hungry and all drugged up. But then there's Mudhoney, who sound just as vital and vibrant, snotty and badass as they did nearly two decades ago. Recent records dabbled with horns and more drone-y song structures, but even then they always remained not that far removed from the band they once were and apparently always will be: a kick ass, stripped down grungey, druggy, snotty, garage rock punk rock catchy as fuck head butt to the bridge of the nose. Not sure if it's the big 20th anniversary, or the recent release of Mudhoney's seminal Superfuzz Bigmuff, but damn if the Lucky Ones doesn't sound like it could just have easily come out back in the early nineties. The guitar thick and gnarled, the riffing thick and super distorted, the drums off kilter but SOLID, and Mark Arm's distinctive wail, in such fine form it's like he just got finished recording "Touch Me I'm Sick" five minutes ago instead of nearly 20 years. But it's not just the parts, it's the songs, and the songs this time around, as always, kick some serious ass. But they're super charged, blown out, heavy and buzzy, garage-y and WAY punk rock, with bits of tripped out spacieness, even some Green River style almost glamminess, and while there are nods to the more recent records, this is Mudhoney rocking it like it's 1990, and putting most, if not all of their current rock contemporaries to shame. Big time!

MPEG stream: The Lucky Ones
MPEG stream: Inside Out Over You

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SORRY. Includes a cover of a song by the Cheater Slicks.

Man, do we love Mudhoney. So few bands have managed to go through so much and remain so fucking great. Caught up in the big grunge feeding franzy, suffering through the grunge backlash, signed to a major label, dropped from a major label, seeing other bands not nearly as good get huge, world tours, drugs, whatever, nothing could faze this band. C'mon how bad ass is that? Where are we at, a dozen records by now? Close to that surely, and EVERY single one of them is great. Sure some are better than others but not a bad one in the bunch. Their first two are stone cold classics, packed with some of the best songs EVER written ("Touch Me I'm Sick", "Sweet Young Thing...") and one of the best versions of a song written by someone else ("Hate The Police") but their last record Since We've Become Translucent was great too, being the record that introduced a dronier dirgier Mudhoney, and you gotta love that. Their sound changes subtly with each record, but is always instantly recognizable, swaggering, filthy, distorted, bluesy, hooky, droney, grungy, stumbling, ass-kicking rock and roll. Under A Billion Suns is classic Mudhoney for sure, but with more of an emphasis on pop, with crazy hooks and HORNS everywhere. That's right, horns. Not like the jazzy / krautrocky horns they dabbled with on the last few records, no these are full on horn-section horns. So much so that some of the tracks even sort of reminded us of Rocket From The Crypt. But there's no mistaking that Mudhoney superfuzz bigmuff guitar sound, or Mark Arm's glass gargling yowl, equally rough and ragged, warm and croonsome, whiskey soaked and gorgeously raw. And the songs as always are fantastic, the sound once again a sweet, sloppy, glammy update of the Stooges swaggering punk rock sprawl. They even dabble in politics this time around with the appropriately titled "Hard On For War". As much as we loved and still love Soundgarden, Tad, Nirvana, Skin Yard, Gruntruck, Alice In Chains, Mother Love Bone, Malfunkshun, Screaming Trees and all their grunge rock brethren, our hearts will always belong to Mudhoney (and maybe Green River, but that's basically the same thing)!

MPEG stream: Where Is The Future
MPEG stream: It Is Us

We love Mudhoney. How could you not. WHY would you not? Every time we decide we maybe don't care about Mudhoney anymore, or decide they're no longer relevant, they release a new record that kicks our asses, or we see them play, and have our minds blown thoroughly. At some point, we decided to just stop going through that. And just understand that Mudhoney are one of those rare bands, who sound as good now as they did in the old days. Vocalist Mark Arm still has one of the most distinctive yowls in rock and roll, Steve Turner's guitar playing is untouchable, and Dan Peters is still a madman behind the kit. So fuck it. We love Mudhoney, we always will. And sure, maybe they won't ever make another Superfuzz Bigmuff, but then they don't have to. There are definitely some moments on Vanishing Point that had us doubting, mostly some painfully trite lyrics, but we're tempted to believe that we're just not getting it. Like maybe those lyrics are meant to a -parody- of truly trite lyrics, cuz c'mon, these are the same guys who wrote "Touch Me I'm Sick", "Sweet Young Thing Ain't Sweet No More", "Burn It Clean" and about a billion others. But sonically "Vanishing Point" is a monster, from loping Stoogesy swaggers, to furious pounding punk rock blowouts, to blown out grungy dirges, to slithery Green River like grunge-blues breakdowns, the guitars thick and viscous, howling and screeching, chugging and buzzing, the rhythm section tight as fuck, plenty of wah guitar freakouts, the heavy psych vibe all over Vanishing Point, but ultimately, just another face melting, head banging, post-grunge classic slab of Mudhoney crush, which we're digging more and more with every spin. While they last, we have the super limited Loser Edition of the lp (that means colored vinyl and a bonus photo booklet)...

MPEG stream: Slipping Away
MPEG stream: What To Do With The Neutral
MPEG stream: The Only Son Of The Widow From Nain
MPEG stream: Sing This Song Of Joy

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SORRY. Where to even start... HAWKWIND. The mighty lords of drugged out space rock, without whom, most of the bands we love might not even exist. These four Hawkwind records: Doremi Fasol Latido, Hall Of The Mountain Grill, In Search Of Space, and Space Ritual, are pretty much all anyone needs to know about space rock. Or whatever it is that Hawkwind do, long sprawling jams, extended psychedelic workouts, heavy and trippy, totally drugged out and divine, while at the same time, surprisingly catchy. But yeah, aQ folks probably already know how much we love Hawkwind. So if we were to pick six bands to cover classic Hawkwind tunes, we might not have picked these six, but then again, we very well might have: Mudhoney, Mugstar, Acid Mothers Tempo And The Cosmic Inferno, White Hills, Kinski, Bardo Pond. Holy hell! If this were just a comp with those bands, we'd be all over it, but the fact that they're covering Hawkwind seems like it was made just for the aQ faithful, and who knows, maybe it was. Spread out over three 7"s, we almost didn't list these separately, but as a set, 'cause to our minds, who the heck would only want one or two of these? But you never know, so for those of you who didn't already freak out and toss all three into your cart, here's a brief bit about each specific 7": The first of the three, subtitled "Motorheads", features two aQ favorites (as do they all), Mudhoney and Mugstar. Mudhoney tackle "Urban Guerilla" and totally make it their own, so much so, that minus a little chunk of extended droney space rocking in the middle, those not well versed in Hawkwind would certainly be forgiven for thinking it was a Mudhoney original. Mugstar on the other hand are a DEAD ringer for Hawkwind, their sound murky and muddy, squalls of psych guitar, clouds of swirling spaced out FX, droned out jams, all tangled up and slowly unwinding into a long sprawling space rock jamscape. Hawkwind would be proud. The packaging is brilliant, perfectly tripped out psychedelic acid flashback, with naked lady, geometric design, cribbed from the original Hawkwind artwork (or at the very least, an incredible simulation), the sleeves are printed complete with shelf wear and corner creases (so don't complain, they're meant to look like they've been on your shelf for decades), each one SUPER LIMITED, and already sold out at the label, we have a bunch, but these will be the only copies we'll ever have!!

Wow. We just did the math, and the four members of Mudsuckers, Pete and Gabe from the Yellow Swans, Tom Carter from Charalambides, and Robert Horton, have between the four of them, released over 27,000 cd-r's. Or at least it seems like it. We're not complaining though (okay, maybe we are a little since we seem to constantly be scrambling to get all of these guys' records reviewed) 'cuz pretty much everything we've heard, we've dug, a lot. The Mudsuckers sounds a bit like an extension of the Yellow Swans, so any YS obsessive who have been hankering might do well to grab this right now. Horton and Carter seem to have dived right in, contributing their own bits of thick murky sound to the melee, the first half of the disc is dense with thick swirls of muddy guitar grrr, blown out synth, and lots of Crash Worshiping drum damage, about midway through, the sound is stretched out, still murky and muddy, but much more glistening and sparkly, hiss and fuzz and buzz and whir all shined up real pretty and let loose to drift dreamily. The second to last track features some tortured Jandekian guitar, whose angular riffing gradually melts into thick pools of dirgey drone. The final 16 minute closer, is a slow building wall of N.O.I.S.E., starting out delicate and dark, but growing into a hissy beast, but close listening reveals all sorts of melodic action and rhythmic shuffling beneath the surface of the Mudsuckers' roiling and caustic sonic sea. Nice!

MPEG stream: Endocrine Disrupters
MPEG stream: Here Comes The Mud Dragons

This collaboration between notable electronic improvisors Gunter Mueller (adding selected percussion), Voice Crack (cracked everyday electronics), and Erik M (turntables) are white-hot sound constructions which extend from slicing drone work to layered blasts of noise. Fans of Otomo Yoshihide's recent work should take note!

Jeff who? Oh, he's in June of 44. Cool. Quiet, subdued, acousticky stuff.

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MPEG stream: Nothing Changes
MPEG stream: The Only Constant Thing Is Change

Don't know too much about Jon Mueller. Other than he plays in Collections Of Colonies Of Bees (who we know very little about, except that Jon Mueller is in the band), sometimes rocks his axe with Rhys Chatham, and more importantly has offered up a seriously kick ass slab of avant guitarism for his installment in Table Of The Elements' new guitar series of one sided etched 12"s. Mueller lays down a looped stuttery riff, but more than stutter, it skips, a grinding chug, every three or four seconds, locked into a super hypnotic mesmerizing loop. The effect is spaced out and trippy, and not a little bit hypnotic. The spaces between are filled with a weird buzzing rattling sound, which if we're not mistaken, is the a snare drum vibrating sympathetically, It takes a little while, but eventually that background buzz gets louder and louder until a second guitar joins in offering up a chiming melodic counterpoint to that static central riff. All of a sudden, everything drops out, leaving just a strange haunting little high end interlude, feedback and squawky squeaky abstract guitar noodling, before the main riff kicks back in all machine like and intense, locking immediately back into that buzz drenched anti-groove which plays out until the end. It doesn't necessarily grab you all at once, but once your ears and your brain lock on, you are hooked, and want it to go on forever and ever and ever. Pressed on thick clear vinyl. One sided, the other side with a super bad ass Savage Pencil etching, housed in a thick vinyl sleeve, and of course, as always LIMITED!

There's just something about when amazing drummers/percussionists go it alone, those experiments and explorations can produce such adventurous and wonderful sounds. Lately we found ourselves spending LOTS of time with Glen Kotche of Wilco's solo records so weird, enchanting and diverse. And this solo outing by avant garde percussionist Jon Mueller is further proof that despite being the butt of many rock 'n' roll jokes, talented drummers and percussionist just might be the most innovative and creative musicians of them all. Mueller, has played with groups like Collection Of Colonies Of Bees and the Bon Iver side project, Volcano Choir, but it's on this, his Type full length where is creative prowess really comes bursting forth. With influences as wide ranging as Steve Reich's outstanding album Drumming, aQ fave Moondog, gamelan, Tibetan Buddhist rites, and even the creeping ambient elements of black/dark metal, The Whole is a fully realized excursion into the possibilities of percussion. The lp version comes with a bonus cd, featuring 30 minutes of extra material NOT on the album proper.

MPEG stream: Remembered As
MPEG stream: Hearts
MPEG stream: Remembered

Jon Mueller's career as a percussionist began in the early '90s after studying jazz with Hal Russell and steadily marching into the territory of avant-garde improvisation. One of the many projects Mueller has embarked upon is the Collection of Colonies of Bees, which also features Jim Schoenecker, Mueller's partner in crime for The Interview. With a cyclical build of scraping cymbal sonorities, Mueller is the one to speak first, which perhaps makes him the interviewer and Schoenecker the interviewee as he responds with a series of tinnitus-inducing set of tones. The gravitational pull of minimalism is only so strong on The Interview, as the glistening drones and delicate scrapes from the two musicians continuously detour after abrupt changes and erratic sinewave tweakings. Mueller and Schoenecker steadily build the muffled tappings, low-end throbbing phase patterns, and shattered piercings into a detached, cold crescendo of shortwired electronics before collapsing into a restrained fizzing of activity. Phew.

MPEG stream: The Interview (excerpt 1)
MPEG stream: The Interview (excerpt 2)

Oh my! This is a totally awesome collection of 7" and compilation tracks from LA punk-pop vets The Muffs. With the often-hilarious liner notes written by queen bee vocalist/guitarist Kim Shattuck and bassist Ronnie Barnett, it's quite an entertaining historical overview. Many of the 30 (yes, 30!) punchy cuts here show the Muffs in their truest, rawest, rockin'est, take-no-shit-from-anyone form. Jangling guitar melodies, solid rock riffs and enough of Kim's vocal harmonies to make any g.b.g. (that's "girl band groupie" by the way) positively swoon. With covers of Kim Wilde's "Kids In America" (from the Clueless soundtrack) and Elvis Costello's "No Action" among others, plus special guest appearances from C.C. Deville of Poison, the Bangles' Susanna Hoffs and Steve McDonald of Redd Kross, how can you go wrong?

Mugison is already a big star in his native Iceland; he recently beat Bjork for Best Pop Album and Best Song at the Icelandic National Music Awards. Mugimama! Is This Monkey Music? is a like a super rummage sale disco....his technique seems to use a bit of alchemy; a bit of a Stone Soup, throw-noises-in-a-pot until a magical rainbow appears method that is not unlike a that of the younger Beck. The album sounds more like something from a meeting of mid-'90s Los Angeles and bedroom-rock indie Midwest than the blips and glacial swirls we've become more accustomed to hearing from Iceland. Comparable at other moments to the John Spencer Blues Explosion, to a cleaner shaven (on track one, he sings, "Guess what! I shaved off my beard!") Devendra Banhart, or toward the end of the album, to Will Oldham. Mugison's vocals swing from scratchy-surly to cheek-to-cheek sensitive, the latter highlighted when he pairs up with his girlfriend, Runa, on some tracks. On "Salt," the skating violins, seashell castanets and childlike spoken poetry performed by Mugison's sister call forth an Iceland we're more familiar with musically. This is someone to look out for. He could become a musical pioneer, taking things in a totally new direction as his career progresses, or, with this third album, he may have just stumbled into an eclectic attic of happy accidents. Either way, this album is diverse, adventurous, and quite enjoyable overall.

MPEG stream: I Want You
MPEG stream: Salt
MPEG stream: Hold on 2 Happiness

The latest from aQ beloved psychedelic space rockers Mugstar is not a proper new album, but is instead a soundtrack to a film called Ad Marginem, Mugstar providing a brooding and moody score, their usual space-prog heaviness dialed back a bit, the group weaving lush landscapes of tribal drumming, and low slung riffage, a perfect match for the film, shot mostly in black and white, with dramatic burst of abstract color in the beginning, and at certain points throughout, Mugstar spend much of the record/film locked into a sort of hypnorock mesmer, that most fans of Circle will find immediately appealing, a single riff, looped and layered and repeated, while the group wreathes that main groove in subtle sonic colorations, the vibe is definitely post rock, or very minimal psych rock, the guitar slipping from jangle to muted chug, the drums driving and propulsive, but the whole thing tense and dramatic, a very slow build, swirling organs drifting in and out, Slint like minor key melodies, quite effective and intense, it's not until near the end of the first side, and obviously at an appropriate place in the film, that the band lets loose, exploding into a stretch of rollicking psych rock, laced with soaring leads, pounding drums, the sound fierce and heavy, before slipping right back into the more pensive sonic brooding. The B side follows a similar pattern, spending most of its time in loping cyclical dirge mode, still minor key and moody, this time, near the films end, slipping into a long stretch of slow, hushed, near ambience, a drifty bit of psychedelic shimmer, brooding and ominous, until finally, the drums slowly creep in, the guitars build to a roar, the sound explodes into something more heavy and hypnotic, super intense and dramatic, a sort of space psych Godspeed moment, a noisy super intense sonic coda, as the film fades to black. The film might be something you watch only once or twice, but like the best scores/soundtracks, Mugstar's music for Ad Marginem, even separated from the visuals, still sounds amazing, and essentially plays like a Mugstar record proper, albeit a slightly more mellow one, but fantastic nonetheless!

Recently we reviewed a soundtrack from psychedelic space rockers Mugstar, for a film called Ad Marginem, and we remarked that the band's sound was appropriately moody and brooding, appropriate for the film certainly, and thus weren't too surprised that in this context, the band's usual progged out bombast was tamped down a bit. And while we assumed that this shift toward brooding moodiness was perhaps a one off for the film, their most recent record displays something sonically similar, perhaps displaying an overall new direction for the band, but on Axis the band manage to bridge the gap, infusing their sonic brooding with a bit of their earlier bombast (Lime, Sun Broken), but only a bit. Opener "Black Fountain" (originally on a split with SF spacepsych combo Carlton Melton) is a churning sprawl of mesmering hypnorock, dirgey and murky, the drums dense and busy and driving, driving the whole song, a relentless tribal pound that pulses beneath the chug and churn of the bass and guitar, building tension, but never totally exploding, instead slipping back into another stretched of brooding minimal mesmer. The second track "Hollow Ox" opens with a very This Heat sounding electronic melody, before bursting into some serious progginess, but again, the band seem to stretch out and let the sounds drift and drone, the keyboards heavy here, hence the progginess, but the sound remains locked in an almost looped sounding expanse of seventies progginess by way of Circle's relentless repetition. We're not knocking it at all, in fact we quite like it, and find ourselves listening to these tracks constantly, getting lost in their hypnotic heaviness. "Tangerina" also channels Circle, but adds more warmth, and more organic proggy swirl, even building an almost epic post rock coda part way through. The sort-of title track "Axis Modulator" is the band at their heaviest, chuggy and mathy and proggy, the riffs churning, the drums relentless and driving, the sound washed out by thick swaths of droney keyboard thurm, building to a seriously rocking sprawl of krautrocky space-psych, that definitely harkens back to previous Mugstar records. "Upturnsidedown" returns the band to that new brooding murk, before finishing off with the almost Stereolab-ish "Vehicles Of Spain", which weds playful psychedelic keyboard melodies to dense drumming, and heavy clouds of woozy washed out psychedelia. While at first blush, Axis most definitely seems like a departure, much broodier and moodier, darker and a bit less rocking, on repeated listens it reveals itself as the perfect follow up to their last full length Lime, and the more we listen, the more we can't seem to get enough.

MPEG stream: Black Fountain
MPEG stream: Hollow Ox
MPEG stream: Tangerina

Brand new 7" from UK space rockers Mugstar, who pack some serious spaced out psychedelia into these two short sides. The A side begins with a weird drone-y chant-like whir, along with some tribal drumming and distant guitar plinks, gradually building and building, the minimal vocals transforming into some serious howling, when suddenly everything drops out, leaving just the drums and some super processed guitar strum, very rhythmic and strangely spacy, eventually the rest of the band kicks back in and locks into a cyclical angular groove, looping and repetitive, a furious grinding riff over the relentless drumming. Epic and exhausting. The flipside is way more synth heavy, some weird sort of post punk noise rock, almost kind of mathy, a bit like a supercharged, way more metallic Stereolab, which intensifies until it explodes into wild psychedelic squalls of acid fried synths and freaked out guitarnoise. Packaged in a fold over full color sleeve, with a 45 sized hole and one of those old school yellow turntable adapters already in the hole!

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SORRY. Like the Carlton Melton double live lp reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, this new one from aQ beloved UK psychedelic space prog combo Mugstar, was also a special ultra limited (300 copies!!) Record Store Day release, and like the Carlton Melton, we ordered as many copies of the Mugstar as we could get. We sold most of them already, and are left with less than ten, so any of you who still want one of these, best act fast, cuz once these are gone, they are gone for good. Centralia is the first release we've managed to get on the Cardinal Fuzz label, and it's definitely an auspicious introduction, with Mugstar blending kinetic psychedelic progginess, with wild drumming, swirling guitars, loops and samples and FX, and blissed out cosmic minimalism. The B side starts off super mellow and blissed out, sounding almost like a way more tripped out Pink Floyd, before building to some seriously dense riffing, thick swells of chordal buzz, and more wild drumming. The record finished off with some seriously kick ass post rock infused psychedelia, that kills!!! As we mentioned above, we have less than ten copies, of only 300 pressed. These are the very last copies we'll be able to get EVER, so act fast!

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SORRY. Another killer blast of blown out mathy space rock freak out from one of our new favorite UK combos...

We said it before, and we might as well say it again, these guys should really be WAY more popular than they are, everything we've heard from them has totally ruled, a few singles, two full lengths, one of which we made our Record Of The Week, and let's not forget their bad ass Hawkwind cover in the Sonic Attack 7" series (reissued on cd, one of THIS week's Records Of The Week!), so it should come as no surprise that full length number three is just as good, if not better than all the stuff that came before. Not as blown out and super rocking as Sun Broken, Lime is 4 tracks clocking in at 40 minutes, and is a bit more subdued than past efforts. That's not to say there isn't some seriously psychedelic ferocity on display here, it's just judiciously doled out, and set amidst some more minimal psychedelia. Although opener "Sunburnt Impedance Machine" might have you convinced otherwise, exploding right out of the gate with a killer fuzzed out Hawkwindy riff, chanted vocals, some soaring spidery leads, some killer staccato mathy breakdowns, huge squalls of spacepsych freakout, until finally at about the halfway mark, the track shifts gears and locks into a churning chugging krautrock groove, the instruments locked in tight, only the organ let loose, to whir and warble and buzz, laying thick undulating swaths of chordal buzz over everything, intense and hypnotic, and definitely the sort of thing that should appeal to Circle obsessives. Which becomes even more obvious on the second track, the 13 minute "Serra", which is a dead ringer for our Finnish hypnorock pals, a sprawling motorik groove, you sort of almost keep expecting Mika Ratto to start singing over the top, but instead, synths swirl and shimmer, horns bleat and skronk, effects swoop and sway, organs get all proggy adding melodic counterpoint, but the main groove never wavers, mesmerizingly epic and relentless, 13 minutes is not nearly enough, could/should go on for hours... "Radar King" returns Mugstar to the realm of the rocking, locked into another hypnokraut groove, this one minor key and mathy, before breaking down into some spaced out psychdrone drift, all clouds of cymbal shimmer, little melodic squiggles, swirling effects and hushed synths, barely there guitar jangle, eventually the build begins, pulsing, throbbing, growing louder, and more intense, the effects more frantic, the drums heavier, finally exploding in a climax of tangled guitar freakout, and splattery drum pound, all wreathed in dense spaced out FX. Finally, the band finish off with a gorgeously hazy psychedelic dronedrift, that lays a woozy bassline, under a thick droning organ, the drums minimal, skeletal, like the tracks before, the organ takes control, adding all sorts of rhythmic texture to the proceedings, a total drugpsych tripout, all anchored to the seriously solid groove at its core. Some seriously epic and proggy psychedelic spacekraut to the max, fans of Circle especially should dig these guys if they don't already, and like the last record, absolutely recommended for anyone even remotely into Salvatore, Magyar Posse, White Hills, The Heads, Burnt Hills, Gnod, 3 Leafs, Bardo Pond, Gunslingers, Eternal Tapestry, Heavy Winged, Sleepy Sun, Plastic Crimewave, Titan and the rest of the current crop of modern psych rockers...

MPEG stream: Sunburnt Impedance Machine
MPEG stream: Serra

This is yet another one of those records that seems like it was cooked up in a lab specifically for aQ, one of our favorite tracks from Lime, the most recent record from UK psychedelic space rockers Mugstar, remixed and stretched out (from 13 minutes to 37+ minutes), by Robert Hampson, member of the late great aQ beloved combo Loop, and who later went on to perform as Main, another longtime aQ fave. So while we may have been imagining Mugstar reimagined as soft swirls of abstract drift, maybe the drums stripped away, the guitars blurred and smeared into hushed rumbles and warm whirs, and on first listen, it seemed we were right, a strange bit of muted distant buzz, some twisted glitches, super abstract, until about 2 minutes in, when the original song seems to surface, a pulsing krautrock style groove, now wreathed in that opening buzz, which has grown more intense, and has been joined by all manner of mysterious electronics, the sound drifting lazily from speaker to speaker, dreamily dizzying, the vibe closer to Loop, already a huge influence on Mugstar we'd imagine, and for the first 15 minutes, it seems that Hampson may have just looped a bit of the original, that motorik groove allowed to just unwind, while all around it he applies thick dollops of buzz and swirl, of shifting textural streaks, and stuttering shards of feedback, subtle enough that it could be just some super tripped out space rock jam, but different enough from the original to keep it totally mesmerizing, but then eventually that loop drops out, the rhythm is discarded, and Hampson is left to drift freely though space, the song becomes a gorgeous abstract bit of kosmische bliss, impossible to tell what exactly he's reused from the original, but it hardly matters, as he conjures up dark crumbling swells of bristling buzz, distant swirling spaced out shimmers, a dreamlike soundscape of cosmic thrum and hushed blurred thrum, glistening and glimmering, a sonic night sky of shooting stars, hazy and hypnotic and totally fantastic.

MPEG stream: Serra (Distant Sun Mix) (excerpt 1)
MPEG stream: Serra (Distant Sun Mix) (excerpt 2)

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

SORRY. More mathy Amrep style Hawkwind worshipping Loop meets Halo Of Flies / Monster Magnet meets Scratch Acid, acid fried, hypno spaced out post rock from these bad ass UK musical drug runners...

It was inevitable really. After a handful of 7"s, and a single mostly overlooked and way under appreciated full length that we raved about way back when, these guys are finally getting their due. This new full length on Important should finally position these guys at the head of the class, in the pantheon of modern spacerockers. White Hills, The Heads, Burnt Hills, Gnod, 3 Leafs, Bardo Pond, Gunslingers, Eternal Tapestry, Heavy Winged, Sleepy Sun, Plastic Crimewave, Titan, we love em all, but they're all gonna have to step up their games, cuz Mugstar has definitely thrown down the drug rock heart of the sun gauntlet. Sun, Broken is a colossal slab of speaker shredding, in-the-red, druggy, psychedelic, hypnotic Hawkwind channeling space rock bliss. Heavy, lush, dense, mesmerizing, sprawling and expansive, epic and majestic, incredible drumming, tangled guitars, warm whirring organs, complex mathy almost proggy arrangements, songs that lock into looped stretches of near static throb and pulse, before splintering into convoluted freakouts only to explode moments later into black hole supernova psychspace blowouts. "Technical Knowledge As A Weapon" pretty much sets the stage, a swirling cloud of effects gives way to a tribal chunk of primal hypnorock pound, which lurches into a killer stop start Hammond organ stutter, before launching right back into the fray, the track growing ever more urgent and explosive, peppered with organ breaks, the whole thing dense and repetitive, and so so epic. "Ouroboros" starts out all tangled and mathy, a churning hypnotic almost looped sounding sprawl of metallic prog, which slowly transforms into a sort of muted pulsing minimal space rock, swirling effects surround a static guitar melody, and dense drum flurries, and tripped out vox, before the inevitable psych-skree outro, all tangled and jagged fucking FIERCE. "Labrador Hatchet" is the record's first breather, a two and a half minute space-y trip out, all thum and throb, through a billowing cloud of heavily effected scrapes and clicks and glitches, which gives way to "Today Is The Wrong Shape", a dead ringer for Finnish hypnorockers Circle at their leanest and meanest, the main riff and the pounding krautrock rhythm, like a super charged way revved up Circle, with a cool, angular proggy breakdown, before yet another crushing bout of extreme spaced out damaged FX heaviness. Another brief bit of swirly psychedelic effects weirdness leads into the nearly 14 minute closer, "Furklausundbo", which begins with warm melodic swells, before the bassline slips in, then the simple stripped down rhythm, and from there it's a totally mesmerizing slow build, locked and looped, riff and rhythm in perfect sync, while all around, streaks of sound swirl and swoop, unlike the other tracks, there's no explosive climax, no freaked out space rock free for all, instead the songs twists and transforms, slipping into a doomy plod at one point, getting downright twangy at another, the main groove getting doused in clouds of reverbed high end guitar at another, but all the while, the pulse, the beat, stays solid, and unfailing, total mind trancelike hypnotic dronerock mesmer, that eventually dissipates in a blurred smear of layered organ and washed out drones. Easily the space rock, kraut drone, buzz drug, psych swirl jam of the year!

MPEG stream: Technical Knowledge As A Weapon
MPEG stream: Ouroboros
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We first heard from UK spacerock outfit Mugstar on a super limited 7" we listed a while ago, where we described them as sounding like a supercharged, way more metallic Stereolab, but HOLY SHIT, that 7", as much as we loved it, just did not do these guys justice. They are so much weirder and heavier than that ep let on, it makes sense that it took a full length record for us to see that, their sprawling drone drenched FX doused instrumental metallic space rock is way more suited to the extended format, with the tracks being allowed to stretch waaaaaaaaaaaaay out, locking into mind blowingly cyclical psychedelic spacekraut blowouts. It's hard not to hear a lot of Loop, as well as some Spacemen 3, and yeah some Stereolab, definitely some Circle, but as much as it may be hard to believe, and a little sacrilegious to even say, lately we're digging this a whole lot more than any of that other stuff. A lot of it has to do with not just the sounds, but what these guys are able to do with them.� The opener is a planet crushing, skull caving slab of glorious Hawkwind worship, propulsive, relentless rhythms,�dense swirls of FX,�churning bass lines, over nearly static, looped sounding riffs, it's a gloriously unholy tangle of space rock and krautrock. And while that tends to be the basic template for most of the record, it manages to veer dramatically in all sorts of different directions. A handful of the tracks devolve into�dense blown out noise jams, that are so distorted and washed out and in the red, they sort of sound like M83 being broadcast through a vacuum cleaner. Awesome!! Some tracks get all blissed out and sort of lope along lazily, still spacey and druggy and trippy, but sounding more like some sort of�hard rocking Necks, albeit with a serious doom bent, lurching and trudging through dense blackened clouds of acid fried shimmer. Some tracks are jagged and hyper rhythmic, the drum pulse and guitar crunch locked into mesmerizing loops of pulse and throb, reminding us of a metallicized Neu! Elsewhere the guitars get tangled up in dense little melodic snarls, or are spread into diaphanous sheets of gauzy thrum, but always wrapped around a dense core of relentlessly rocking rhythms and killer heavy riffing. So fucking awesome! Fans of any of the above mentioned bands need this for sure, as does anyone into blown out spaced out freaked out drugged out heavy rock spacegroovekrautpsych!! So recommended.�

MPEG stream: My Baby Skull Has Not Yet Flowered
MPEG stream: Crempog Smultron
MPEG stream: Good Posture Vs. Bad Posture

The return of aQ beloved UK space rockers Mugstar, who have teamed up with another fave of ours, East Coast noise rockers Oneida, and neither side disappoints. Mugstar offer up another killer chunk of spaced out psychedelia that would have been right at home on Lime or Sun Broken, opening up with a fuzzy organ drone, which quickly gives way to a badass Hawkwindy groove, all motorik mesmer and fuzzed out space rock pound. The organ giving the proceedings a serious prog vibe, the track chugs away until about halfway through when it collapse into a super rad mathy tangle of drum / guitar freakout, all repetitive and almost looped sounding, with FX swirling all over the place, before finally resolving in a blissed out stretch of murky psychedelic shimmer, only to eventually emerge as a stripped down, more krautrocky groove, with soaring dramatic vocals way down in the mix, pounding away all druggy and dreamy and laid back. Oneida counter with what could be their coolest / weirdest jam yet, what appears to be their twisted take on space rock, exploding immediately into a wildly chaotic freakout guitar/drum squall, the band taking their sweet time to lock into a proper groove, and in fact, they almost manage not to at all, super loose and free, the drums intricate and mathy and almost the star of the show, pounding away beneath some freaked out guitar skree, until about halfway in, when in swoops some chiming guitar, draped over thick bass buzz, even more progged out and wildly trippy, until finally, they reel it all in, and finish off with a very Wooden Shjips sounding outro, but even then, way more tripped out and space-y. Killer stuff from both bands, and some of THEE coolest packaging we've seen, eye popping pink sleeve, with lots of white and brown 'o's and 'm's!

Although young enough to be their son, Nico Muhly seems to have a great grasp of the kind of elegance in chamber music that folks like Steve Reich and Philip Glass have developed over the last several decades. The first release on a new label from Iceland, Muhly's name is no upstart in Icelandic music circles as he helped Bjork on Medulla as well as for her score to Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9. The company Muhly keeps gives pretty good insight into the majestic and moving music that he creates. As well as Bjork, Muhly has also collaborated with Philip Glass on lots of stage and film works, and Antony of Antony & The Johnsons, who appears on the last track here. Muhly has a sensitive songwriting hand which keeps the songs on Speaks Volumes subtle enough to remain riveting but with enough emotional weight to keep us coming back for more. So very nice!

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MPEG stream: Pillaging Music

Once again, further evidence that the Finnish underground is populated by more than freak forest gnomes and droney hypno psych-rockers... There is a whole black underworld, a land of evil underground forests swathed in clouds of buzzing riffs, beneath the snowy peaks, and wide expanses of undisturbed woodland, there is a mysterious black cavern, peopled by corpsepainted metal warriors, spikes and leather everywhere, the trees are black with soot, and the sky is lit by firelight, where blurry blasts of black metal wreath this lost world in a hazy hellish glow. Amidst these black warriors, lurk this particular horde, the tongue twistingly monickered Muinainen Ruhtinas, who spew a gloriously murky and midtempo, raw and primitive black metal. Raw, Finnish, black metal, that should be enough for most of you, Beherit, Uncreation's Dawn, Clandestine Blaze, Pest, that glorious raw buzzing sound, but Muinainen Ruhtinas infuse that raw buzz, with a strange forlorn melodic melancholy. As sad sounding and despondent as it is buzzing and black, minor key and mournful, strangely haunting with deep chantlike vocals buried in the mix, and a warm fuzzy moodiness that seems to wrap every bit of black buzz in thick dreamlike murk. LIMITED TO 666 COPIES!!!!

Killer new record from this Israeli trio, who traffic in a sort of bass-heavy, gothed out post punk / punk dub, that sounds like some twisted mix of Joy Division, Suicide and Pan Sonic. Thick, super distorted pig-fuck bass drives the proceedings, each track centered around a grinding bass riff, but anchored by programmed drums, all supporting echo drenched vox, a dark dramatic croon, that is what gives the sound such a gothic vibe. The opener sounds somewhere between Interpol and Iceage or the Holograms, albeit a bit more electronic, but then things get super twisted on the second track, a lurching, stuttering, start-stop, gothic industrial churn, with some cool sampled Queen-like harmonies, and bursts of psychedelic guitar noise, and the vocals locked into dubbed out spirals. As the record progresses, it seems like the effects are gradually cranked, with tracks like "A Path" devolving into near chaos as the rhythms get all dubby as well, careening wildly in all directions while the riffs hammer away, and the vocals slip into almost rage like drones. Some tracks sound super electronic, others almost straight post punk, but usually, those two sides of the band merge and bleed into one twistedly unique whole. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!

MPEG stream: Greed
MPEG stream: Vengeance
MPEG stream: Culture Slaves
MPEG stream: A Path

Ms. Mukai and her Chinese er-hu (a bowed, 2 stringed instrument) have been a part of the underground Tokyo improv psych scene since the '70s playing in the PSF "dream-psych" band Che-Shizu, while Osaka's Seichi Yamamoto is known to most AQ customers as the gonzo guitarist for Boredoms, Omoide Hatoba, Rovo and more. This live document, another real cd on the moving-away-from-cdrs label Last Visible Dog, sees the two of 'em teaming up for two long duets of late-night atmospheric rumble and squeak. It's totally dark in the Keiji Haino drone mode, or like Taj Mahal Travellers, all abstract and drifty, cries echoing out in a black, empty space. Real nice in other words. Plus there's a third, thirty-minute track where the Mukai/Yamamoto duo are joined by an all-star Japanese drone trio with the humorous name of Lamones Young (yes, their idea is 'what if Lamont Young played Ramones songs', though that's not necessarily what they sound like). Cellist Fukuoka Rinki, drummer Kosakai Fumio, and bassist Nagakubo Ryuichi (variously, members or former members of Incapacitants, CCCC, G-un, Overhang Party, etc.) add even more scraping, sawing drone to the proceedings, while Yamamoto's guitar and Mukai's voice, percussion and er-hu continue to generate sheer alienated psychedelic beauty as per their duo tracks. NB. if you liked the Tangerine Dream Syndicate cd we had a while back from the Alchemy Label, be aware that the Lamones Young were essentially an early version of that band. The liner notes by Tokyo psych expert Alan Cummings provide further info...

RealAudio clip: ...with Lamones Young

We have recently been obsessing over the old Nickelodian show The Adventures Of Pete And Pete, with its recent reissue on DVD. Not only is it a totally amazing, completely bizarre show, cute enough for kids, but clever enough for adults, it also has a killer theme song, performed by a band called Polara, who just happen to feature a Mr. Mark Mulcahy on vocals. I knew I recognized that voice. Mulcahy also fornted the most amazing Miracle Legion, who were a bit of a college radio mainstay back in the day. Anyway, the upshot of all this is, we had sort of forgotten how great Mulcahy was, and what a totally amazing voice he possessed and then we remembered he had just released a new record so we figured we ought to check it out and we're happy to report it's absolutely fantastic. From the warm warbly organ of the title track, with Mulcahy's gorgeous vocals (along with some strange but lovely harmonies) to the simple sunny indie strum and unforgettable vocal melody of "Cookie Jar" to the Yo La Tengo-like jangle and stomp of "I Have Patience" complete with weird ELO style vocal effects and handclaps. This record never lets up. It's like a heavenly slice of nineties college rock all gussied up and given a good twentieth century going over. And with most pop records, it's all about the vocals, and Mulcahy has such a distinct and mesmerizing voice, smooth and sweet, but just a little scratchy and totaly unique, able to slip smoothy from a sweet falsetto to a warm rich croon. So good! Another record that we always seem to find ourselves returning to over and over.

MPEG stream: In Pursuit Of Your Happiness
MPEG stream: Cookie Jar
MPEG stream: I Have Patience

I'm a sucker for a certain kind of earnest male singer songwriter. Like Sparklehorse, Nick Drake, Tom Petty, Mark Eitzel, Mark Olson (Jayhawks, Creekdippers) -- those guys with a certain kind of warbly voice that can't quite hide all that inner pain and a chin-up resolve to make it through the heartbreak. A certain kind of toned down rock flavor that's way more Neil Young than it is

RealAudio clip: I Just Shot Myself In the Foot Again

Caught us sorta snoozin' on this one! This release actually came out back in 2006, and Cup heard its strange soulful glory out in Michigan that year. However, its name promptly vanished from her memory banks and we couldn't track it down until now! From the bio provided by Stones Throw Records it sure sounds like Ms Muldrow grew up within close proximity to some cool shit! Her father invented instruments for Eddie Harris and her mother sang with Pharaoh Sanders. Whoa. Initially Olesi: Fragments Of The Earth seems like a disorienting jumbled mess, albeit a really awesome sounding one -- a bunch of different unrelated pieces heaped up precariously into a generous twenty one tracks. All the parts ring familiar on their own in their old R&B, (almost free-) jazz, hip hop and soul ways, but we've never heard them arranged together in quite as unconventional a fashion as this! As the album progresses the sense of disorientation lingers, but her fevered vocal delivery and undulating, loping grooves prove infectious. The album definitely walks the fine line between defiant genius and baked madness. Seriously 'out there', she clearly had a 'vision' for this but it might not be for everyone! A fierce and bizarre debut.

MPEG stream: Wrong Way
MPEG stream: Skaw De Beast

Have you seen this film yet? It's so amazing! Worth the price of this disc alone is Rebekah del Rio's version of Roy Orbison's "Crying", sung in Spanish and totally spine-chillingly good. You also get several tracks of Angelo Badalamenti's score, creepy and atmospheric, plus Sonny Boy Williamson doing a Willie Dixon track, Linda Scott performing a Hammerstein / Kern tune (the '50s pop number the actresses audition for in the film), and 3 tracks written and performed by Lynch himself. Bravo.

RealAudio clip: Llorando (Crying)

From the same label that brought us the amazing electro-metal / glitch-grind of Whourkr (whose debut is reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, and whose newest records we made our Record Of The Week a while back), comes this equally baffling and brilliant chunk of glitched out electro deathgrind hypermetal from the oddly monikered Mulk, a one man band who basically makes some of the most twisted, complex and convoluted metal ever. With head spinning drum programming, wild gouts of lightspeed blasts and inhuman flurries of beats, chopped up and sliced and diced and reassembled into furious bursts of outsider deathmetal weirdness, laced heavily with strange effects and electronics, the sound constantly stuttering and skittering and transforming, the beats splintering into weird blasts of buzz, the sound glitching out almost as if your cd player were melting, or imagine playing a Morbid Angel record and an Immolation record at 78rpm on two tapes that were recorded on a busted up boombox on old tapes that had been left on the dash in the sun. It's like a futuristic cybergrind Faxed Head! Theres definitely a big drill and bass electronic component, but instead of mixing beats and riffs, this guy mashes them together into a single raging sound. It almost sounds like a death metal record made by Venetian Snares. It's hard to describe, if you dig Whourkr, you definitely need this, and if you're after the heaviest, weirdest most fucked up death metal / deathgrind record EVER, this is most definitely it.

MPEG stream: Putr&fact I - Part 2
MPEG stream: Putr&fact I - Part 3
MPEG stream: Putr&fact I - Part 15
MPEG stream: Putr&fact I - Part 16

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

SORRY.

Geoff Mullen, a string picker and dronelord, released two amazing records over the last few years, both huge favorites around here. Both�thrtysxtrllnmnfstns and The Air In Pieces were gorgeous, slow unfolding collections of buzzing strings and slow burning ambience. Mullen's instrument of choice was the banjo, and on thrtysxtrllnmnfstns he twisted and stretched that instrument into new and amazing shapes, whereas�The Air In Pieces found Mullen exploring even more abstract territory, smearing and blurring the source material until it was unrecognizable.� But on�Armory Radio, his brand new vinyl only double lp, he's exploring a whole new world of sound. Expansive and epic and abstract, but dense and heavy, and thick with sound, intense noisy, busy soundscapes, fuzzed out and droning, buzzy and washed out. A similar vibe as folks like Tim Hecker, William Basinski, Aidan Baker, Dialing In and Axolotl... But where those folks take their piece of music and leave it out in the rain, recording it through a dusty window onto a wax cylinder, played back on a tin can and twine, evoking faded memories, old photographs, rainy twilights, foggy mornings, everything bleary eyed and soft focus, Mullen's Armory Radio is a much more intense and sonically aggressive proposition. Beneath the fuzz and whir, the layers of grit and glitch, there aren't just simple pop songs hidden underneath or muted melodies blurred and buzzed, there's a whole world of sound, chunks of field recordings, bits of melody, huge sweeping drones, epic, slow sprawls of shimmer, of dark and light, strange arrangements fall to pieces and somehow reassemble often in completely different order then before they crumbled, or pieces from some crumbled melody will be swept up by a wash of whirling low end, and tangled up into some new, more alien melody.� Armory Radio begins�with a burst of grinding fuzz, a dense slab of furious grinding thrum, which quickly gives way to softer�squalls of glitched out buzz, warm throbbing sonic stormclouds, everything in a constant state of motion, chaotic and unmoored, but with little threads that connect all four sidelong pieces. This is�definitely a noise record, but SOFT noise, thick and corrosive, but with soft edges, like stepping into the eye of a hurricane, watching all sorts of shapes and sounds spinning around you, a grinding, thick morass of constantly shifting crunch and crumble, of�billowy soft smears, all barely obscuring a mysterious and impossible to fully grasp world of beauty beneath. So good.� LIMITED TO ONLY 500 COPIES!! Pressed on thick 140 gram vinyl, packaged in super deluxe sleeves, all hand-screened, hand-stamped and numbered.�

MPEG stream: Part 1
MPEG stream: Part 2

Latest from this experimental axeman, master dronologist and long time aQ fave, after a clutch of seriously epic and amazing releases that found Mullen dragging his guitar into mysterious musical realms, similar to the sonic otherworlds of fellow sound manipulators like Tim Hecker, Christian Fennesz, William Basinski, Aidan Baker and the like. In fact, much like the records that came before, one would be forgiven for assuming there were no guitars at all on the misleadingly playfully named Bongo Closet, instead, these extended pieces pulse and rumble and smolder, the manipulated and recontextualized guitars melded to old synths, only to blossom into haunting dreamscapes of murky buzz and rhythmic drift, the opener sounds a bit like some obscure krautdrone jam via Chain Reaction, a sort of heroin house dream drone, while the following track, melds chiming streaks of high end, and haunting backward swoops, to a glitched out almost tribal sounding rhythm, sonar pings demarcating a strange underwater sounding bit of twisted synth drift. Not long after, the record returns to the dark droning, fuzz drenched melancholy of the opening track, fields of muted glitch and cascading sheets of electrical shimmer are draped over softly shifting glacial melodies, a haunting minimal moonlit blur creates a strangely ominous and foreboding variant of new age, which leads directly into a stretch of twang flecked ghost-dub, echoey melodies splinter and fragment, the various bits drifting over a sea of softly crumbling distortions and tinkling chimes. The record winds down with a cloud of warm whirling psychedelia, a gauzy indistinct sprawl of layered soft skree, and whirring slow motion warble, all blurred and smoothed into a soporifically undulating dirgescape, a little bit post industrial crumble, a little bit late night bleary eared haze, until finally, the record finishes off with a sepia toned Jeckian dronescape of warped distorted melody, and crumbling atmosphere, a gorgeous bit of dreamlike drift, of hushed melancholy melody, nearly obscured by its thick patina of smoldering glitchy buzz, and a glowing halo of blown out, in-the-red, softly psychedelic thrum. So so nice. Fans of any of the above mentioned artists, who have yet to check out Mullen, don't wait a second longer.

[ aquarius records catalogue — M ]