[ aquarius records catalogue

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Showing results 2751 through 2800 of 3006.

Dronologist and sometime string plucker Geoff Mullen, whose fantastic thrtysxtrllnmnfstns we so recently highlighted, is back already with his 2nd full-length compact disc, this time on the Last Visible Dog label, which makes perfect sense. Maybe murkier and even more abstract (we're pretty sure he's playing guitar, but we don't hear any back-porch banjo here) than his debut, The Air In Pieces features eight tracks, each one for the most part a gentle, slowly unfolding ballet of dense, deep drones and whispering vibrations from below. It's the music of subterranean behemoths, Lustmord-like whale calls, sleeping, dreaming, but very physically present. Material that could perhaps be spooky, but in Mullen's hands all this low-register distortion is bent towards light-filled blissfulness. We're very pleased. Two for two for Mr. Mullen, and neither record really sounds entirely like the other.

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Want to hear a wonderful "glitch-banjo-drone" recording? This is it! New Englander Geoff Mullen's impressive debut album thrtysxtrllnmnfstns is a homemade electro-acoustic soundscape of steel strings and swarms of lovely abstract drones, made with guitar, banjo, electronics and amplification. Geoff plays broken-down, Takoma-esque American Primitive fingerpicking style, rambling over a bed of insectlike buzz and stuttering static. Melodic figures drift in and out, his old tyme instrumentation often receding fully into the misty fascination of the crackly drone-zone he's created... warm and fuzzy and alien and really pleasant! Back porch folk electronic textures, both soothing and mysterious. Recommended, 'specially to fans of Fennesz, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Loren Chasse, Tim Hecker -- and John Fahey at his most experimental. (Probably P. Jeck and Wm. Basinski too, though this isn't as looped-sounding.) Cool packaging, including in lieu of regular cd booklet, a hand-sewn fabric pouch containing a few random photos.

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A private pressing from Keith Fullerton Whitman of a live recording of a collaboration with Geoff Mullen back in 2006, through the Uppercase Sound series that Brendan Murray curated in Somerville, MA. While both of these avantniks have been known for their heady guitar-driven dronesmears, this mostly finds the two grappling with all of the filters, oscillators, pedals, and electronics that can be crammed into a suitcase. Guttural renderings of pink noise, refracted vibration, and Derbyshire punctuations of tonal electronics slide in and out of rhythmically tapped structures amidst indeterminately placed squiggles and LFO sweepings. Much of the electronics mirror a deep-space, cosmic exploration although the 'recorded in the middle of the room' quality of the recording somewhat tempers any transcendent qualities. Well, it WAS recorded in the middle of a room. And yes, they did bring their guitars; and Mullen provides some choice moments of narcotized strums cast through heavy amounts of delay, which combined with Whitman's somber tone-bent electronics foreshadows the industrial psychedelia of Emeralds or Infinity Window. Each LP comes with a slightly different cover, with each featuring a still from the video documentation of the event, or something similar. In any case, it's limited to 300 copies... and give it about ten to fifteen years, this soon to be out-of-print document might just show up as a Creel Pone cd-r. Ha!

A new batch of Upstairs cd-r's means a whole bunch of cool spaced out synthy weirdness, which makes sense as Upstairs is the microlabel run by Daniel Lopatin, the man who is also sometimes known as Oneohtrix Point Never. Geoff Mullen and Keith Fullerton Whitman are both long time aQ faves, but even so, they seemed like a weird choice for an Upstairs cd-r, since the label tends toward lo-fi synth obscurities, but the duo have worked together in the past, and in those collaborations displayed a propensity for space-y sounds, some Radiophonic Workshop bleeps and bloops, cosmic electronics, swirling supernova squiggles, all of which are in full effect here, woven into weirdly propulsive krautdrones, or infused into some skittery minimal thump and shuffle, while the tracks sprawl and ooze and expand into dubbed out abstract blurscapes, laced with sci-fi streaks of planetarium ambience, wrapped around starfields of glitch and crunch, slow burning Blade Runner ballads, loping synthy swirls blurred into otherworldly edge of the universe, celestial sub atomic dreamscapes, a gorgeous space-y bit of electronic bliss. Lovely indeed. LIMITED TO LESS THAN 100 COPIES. We got a bunch, but these will most likely go pretty quick so grab one while you can.

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Amazingly alchemic guitar compositions in the primitive / wooden / post-Appalachia vein. Lovely.

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

SORRY. You really can't go wrong with improv/experimental percussionist Gunter Muller and his various projects. Here he teams up with fellow percussionist Le Quan Ninh (who I'm sorry to say we don't know much about) and together they produce a 75 minute (edited down from 4 recorded hours) jumble of electronics and percussion, a busy aquarium of sound to be immersed in. This disc's title references a book called "Water And Dreams" by some French philosopher, and I can see how they felt that was appropriate. Gunter plays his "selected drums", Minidiscs & electronics, L� Quan Ninh utilizes "surrounded bass drum" & electronics.

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

SORRY. Happenin' German free-improv go-getter Gunter Muller (on electronics, Minidiscs, and what I'm always amused that he likes to call "selected" percussion) again teams up with the fantabulous Japanese gutiarist Taku Sugimoto (someone my ears sometimes mistake for David Grubbs). Previously they collaborated with Keith Rowe on the "The World Turned Upside Down" cd. Quiet, sparse, beautiful.

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An electronic improv scrape-scape from world reknowned sonic experimentalists Otomo Yoshihide (electric guitar, turntables, electronics) and Gunter Muller (iPod, minidisc, electronics, and of course 'selected' percussion). Yay iPod! The duo conjure tones and drones that are quiet, textured, well-paced, and pleasing. Pretty, even. There's unspecified twitter and glitch that could be guitar notes or field recordings of forest birdsounds, or both, and probably is. Erstwhile has become the most reliable label out there for wonderfully detailed, abstract modern free improv stuff that incorporates electronics as much as it does "regular" instruments. So of course this neither Muller nor Otomo's first appearance on Erstwhile.

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Final pressing!! It's taken a long while to get enough of these in stock to list, as they've flown out the door since we started stocking it back in June, and then our distributors kept being sold out of it. Makes a lot of sense that folks have been freaking out over this, as the sounds on Science Of The Sea are some of the most blissed out sounds we've ever heard. Originally recorded in 1982 (there is debate over that, we will get to that later) by an oceanographer in Germany while living on a houseboat. The sounds on the album undoubtedly talk to the sounds and feeling of the sea. You not only feel like your floating but often that you are underwater yourself. With soft waves glowing in their ripple, as such warm shimmering sounds come gliding out of the grooves of this record. Imagine the right kind of new age bliss injected into the most pastoral & ethereal side of kosmiche glory and you begin to get a picture of what kind of beautiful sounds are found on this album. While some doubt has been risen as to whether this really is a reissue of some obscure private press from 1982, or in fact the work of a modern artists, perhaps even Brad Rose, the man behind Digitalis. But who knows, and in the end who really cares, as its the music that matters, and the music on this album is beyond gorgeous!

What could be cooler than a French guy in the '70s, hanging out with naked chicks and teetering stacks of analog synths, making underground DIY futuristic psychedelic new wave punk drone proto-industrial music??? Uh, not much. Particularly when said French guy (Thierry Muller) is so good at it. Longtime AQ list readers might recall us raving some time ago about something called Ilitch and something else called Ruth, both bands/projects of Muller reissued on the Fractal label. Now, those discs are all out of print (why? they should repress!), but the label has just presented us with a collection of mostly previously unreleased material from the man's various projects over the period indicated in the subtitle... and even the stuff that has been available is super rare. None of it included on those previous Fractal cds of Ilitch and Ruth. For the uninitiated, let us say, Thierry Muller was a French pioneer in the realm of electronic/prog/punk weirdness, an "early Industrial" genius indeed! This disc is all the proof you need. There's material from five different Muller led projects: Arcane (1974), Ilitch (1975), Breaking Point (1978), Ruth (1978), and Crash (1984). The progression, if we can generalize, from "band" to "band" is from the more abstract, lo-fi distorted homebaked soundscape-psych displayed by Arcane all the way to the robotic sci-fi FX pop of Crash. But it's all got a kind of tense krautrock meets the new wave vibe, and if you like the likeminded work of Muller's countryman Richard Pinhas (Heldon) you should check this out! You could buy it just for the blissful 28 minutes of Ilitch's 1975 "Un Jour Come Tant d'Autres" and get your money's worth. Highly recommended!!

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Rap from the Sun City Girls camp... ??? WTF?

Omni has been kicking our asses with weird and wonderful outsider country reissues, one of our favorites so far was that awesome Plantation Gold collection we made a Record Of The Week, and if you remember, one of our favorite tracks on that double cd (and there were tons of contenders) was "I Am The Grass" by Dee Mullins, who we had never heard, nor even heard OF, before the release of that comp. "I Am The Grass" did seem on the surface like a straightforward country classic, if it weren't for the strange percussion, the wah wah guitar, the haunting spoken word intro, the lyrics about literally being the grass - especially the part about being the grass over someones's grave, dark. And of course the weird super effected metallic buzz of the chorus. But this was no gimmick, Mullins had an incredible voice, and his songs were catchy, and fantastically arranged. Lush, and heartfelt and bittersweet. Listening to this collection, it seems criminal that he wasn't HUGE. "Texas Tea" sounds like it could have been a hit for Kris Kristofferson or Willie Nelson, "Guilt Box" is total classic honky tonk, with an awesome main riff, and some incredible vocals, "War Baby" is an intense anti war track which incorporates passages from "Wild Blue Yonder" (or whatever that song is called), as well as some cool processed E.L.O.-like background vocals. Then there's the slide guitar laced gospel of "The Next Face I See" about a prisoner facing death (the next face he sees will be the Lord's, get it?), and telling tales of how he got there (murder!). And that's the thing with Mullins, these songs on the surface are gorgeous, classic sounding country, slippery slide, shuffling drums, lots of twang, and Mullins' voice which is incredible, but these songs are dark, really dark sometimes, and a little bit twisted, but that's also what makes this stuff so special. Mullins only had one hit, a sort of novelty track, "The Continuing Story Of Harper Valley P.T.A.", a response to the original, and it's a shame really, since almost ALL of the others could have and should have been even bigger hits. Of all the Omni reissues, this might just be the best one so far, a perfect combo of twisted and dark, and total classic country, with some of the best and catchiest country songs we've heard, maybe ever. As with all the Omni releases, tons of rare photos, and lots of liner notes in a big full color booklet.

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Long before local garage rockers Thee Oh Sees were Thee Oh Sees, they were in fact called the OCS (need proof? Check out the double cd on tUMULt!), and were a much different beast, a duo, equal parts bedroom folk and abstract experimental noisiness, the duo at that point was made up of John Dwyer and Patrick Mullins. At some point, Mullins left, Dwyer expanded his 2 piece OCS into the 4 piece Oh Sees and the rest is history. Mullins went East, became a baker, but kept recording, and Don't Go To Sleep is the result. A haunting collection of fractured meandering abstract soundscapes, dreamlike drones, and constantly shifting textures, from twisted dark electronics-laced folk to minimal musique concrete, to deep swirling dronemusic, to blissed out soft noise, all assembled from field recordings, electronics, effects, guitar and musical saw. The opener is lovely, sounding a bit like Scott Tuma jamming with Whitehouse, a high end electronic pulse laced over delicate slow-mo Appalachia, hypnotic and alien, but so mysteriously beautiful. That's the sound that grounds most of the record, with Mullins constantly returning to that sort of woozy softly psychedelic glitchy electronic folk. But in between, the record constantly shifts gears, from pure field recordings, voices, and insects, thunderstorms, to drone-y minimal electronics, lushly layered yet raw and primitive, from blown out hazy Tim Hecker like blurscapes, to thick corrosive downtuned minimal doomdrone churn, to fields of gauzy drift, rife with buried melody and muted guitar strum, to glitched out digital crunch, to barely there ambient shimmer, finally culminating in the lengthy close, which begins as a hushed thrum, only to expand into a strange soundscape seemingly constructed from the sounds of rushing water, processed into textural smears, and laid over lush deep chordal swells. So nice! LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!

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The moody, obscurantist ensemble Multer had its origins in the industrial / field recording outfit ABGS, who in turn had some connections to Cranioclast. Of course, these are references that mine the post-industrial currents of German experimental music; those dour atmospheres persist in the current Multer guise, but with an ear for what the likes of Village Of Savoonga had been up to (remember how great that band was?), in addition to all things Drone Records. The first of the three tracks on this 10" interweaves drone guitar chords into a two note melody that oscillates plaintively above of a set of electrical pulses. The whole ambience of the track is thoroughly evocative in its gloom that elegantly sits upon the lattice work of skittering rhythms and that simple turgid melody. The second cut wraps fuzzed out stabs of guitar noise above angular march of drum machines and electronics. Much closer to the Morr Records sound than what's ever appeared from Multer in the past. And the finale returns to the guitar drone, but blown out through distortion, all shoegazing and maudlin in its slice of noise that sheds all of its layering to reveal the melody hidden with. Really nice work found here; but limited stock!

Record number two from these mathy noise rock heavies, and like the first one, it sort of sounds like it was transported here directly from 1995. It's actually some lost record that was meant to come out on AmRep in 1994 but never did. Multicult are that band that opened for Helmet on the Born Annoying tour, the one who only had crappy cassettes for sale and shirts they had screen printed in the parking lot before the show. But they're not. In fact, we'd be willing to guess these guys might even be too young to have been there the first time around. But sonically, they sound like grizzled vets, this is the sort of music that makes us think big beards, shaved heads, old broken amps and a beat to fuck drum kit, touring the country in broken down old white Econoline, and whether or not that's all true or not (and it most certainly is NOT), fans of that stripe of noise rock heaviness, this is the sort of stuff, you probably find yourselves wishing bands still played, and thankfully, some (very few) still do! The songs are dense tangles of angular guitars, thick slithery serpentine bass, pounding intricate drumming, howled vocals, and a surprising amount of catchiness, like the first record, repeated listening is required for these jams to blossom into the kind of songs you get stuck in your head, but take it from someone who has, they do. If your record collection looks (or looked) like this: Big'n, Halo Of Flies, Slug, Surgery, Tar, Helmet, Unsane, God Bullies, Janitor Joe, King Snake Roost, Chokebore, the Cows, Guzzard, Hammerhead, well, odds are you're gonna wanna add Multicult to that motley crew. Includes a download coupon.

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One of two new releases this week on the Sleeping Giant Glossolalia label, the other, the debut from the new Mick Barr / Brooks Headley duo Oldest reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, and this, the debut from this rhythmic lo-fi post punk noise rock combo, whose sound is a super distorted, lurching, lumbering mathed out monster, all gristly guitar buzz, blown out rehearsal space drumming, the sound fuzzy and washed out, but dense and tense and thick. The songs tangled arrangements of churning downtuned heaviness, of stop/start math rock stutter, angular and chaotic, with the occasional weirdly almost arena-rock sounding chorus, in fact most of the songs have some buried melodies that transform Mutlicult's blasts of rhythmic frenzy into something much more than just noise rock workouts. The basslines are thick but brittle, the vocals a buried bellow, there's definitely an AmRep vibe, but there's also a sort of early eighties UK post punk thing going on, some of the jams downright groovy, everything wreathed in crumbling distortion, but the pop hooks are there somewhere, and seem to surface with repeated listens, but they are subtle, Multicult is more about woozy, dirgey, muddy heaviness, a sound that seems to melt and ooze, almost like someone is dragging their finger along the record as it spins, which only gives the sound an even more tripped out psychedelic feel. For all their pound and crush, the band don't shy away from the rhythms that drive their sound, often striping things way down, and letting the bass and drums take control, it's at those points that Multicult sound more like they could be some lost eighties punk/funk artifact, but as rhythmic (and at times, groovy) as these guys get, they never ever stray too far from another blast of churning skull caving noise rock crunch. Packaged in a red 12" style sleeve, with a green and yellow sticker.

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Here's the second wee 3" cd single from Mum's Summer Make Good album. It begins with a majestic instrumental (which we're not sure of the title... is it "Kostrzyn" or "Kastryn"? the handwriting is pretty illegible!), then drifts into the shimmering "This Nothing Blowing In The Faraway". The love-her-or-hate-her, baby-voiced singer Kristin Anna Valtydottir is featured most prominently on the third song, the album track "Will The Summer Make Good For All Of Our Sins". It's got lots of cooing and murmurring that'll have listeners either swooning or scurrying. The fourth track "Books Of Fog" seems much like a deconstructed rendering of the second. Note: Once again the cd comes in a lil' digipak that is encased in a useless clear plastic blisterpak.

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Confusingly enough, there are two Mum's who have popped up at around the same time and revolve around similar artistic spaces in electronica. The Mum we're talking about here is the Icelandic Mum and is the Mum which has been garnering tons of rave reviews and Sigur Ros-esque hype as being the next big thing from Iceland. Boards of Canada, Sigur Ros, Bjork, and even Belle & Sebastian are adequate jumping-off points in describing Mum. The latter reference may be of interest as Mum's twin singers Kristin Anna and Gyda Valtydottir had been cover stars for Belle & Sebastian's "Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant". Mum builds bright-eyed, electronica tunes filled with childlike wonder, but contextualized by the grown-up disillusionment that those dreams will never step beyond the realm of innocent fantasy. Thus, a benign sadness seeps through Mum's adept orchestrations that (like Bjork) seemlessly integrates live instrumentation (accordion, melodica, glockenspiel, synthesizers, music boxes, guitars, bass, and cello) and laptop tricked-out beats and tweaks. All in all, Mum is pretty good, but never really jumps beyond any of those references.

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Finally here, and well worth the wait! Icelandic princes and princesses Mum shake things up a little bit on Go Go Smear The Poison Ivy. Still very shimmery and splendidly sweet, but far from a typical Mum record. Album #4 is definitely more song oriented, bursting forth like an effervescent chiming pop parade. Horns, accordions and harpsichords (we think!) frolic as high vocal melodies tumble about in the sunny warmth like baby pandas. Really this cozies up close to the sound of Flaming Lips, Polyphonic Spree, and the most recent Caribou album. A beautiful surprise!

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A Mum completist's must-have! All others may find this lil' 7" less of a necessity. Just two songs from those glistening triste Icelanders. One of them is a Kristin-sung number from their latest album Summer Make Good. The other is a chimey, shufflin' instrumental. 8 minutes and 46 seconds total.

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Hey, fans of Mum! Here's the reissue of their second release (the one just before the beloved Finally We Are No One). It's comprised of two originals, one 'interlude' and six remixes of those two songs by Arovane, B. Fleischmann, Isan, Phonem, Christian Kleine, and Styrofoam. Unlike their latest Summer Make Good on which they embody the now-familiar "Icelandic" glistening atmospheric sound and their childlike qualities prominently take center stage in the vocal form, Please Smile My Noise Bleed's visions of infancy are much more subtly infused -- only hinted at like faintly glimmering memories. Very chiming musicbox lullabies meet programmed thud-beats and scritch'n'scrape sounds. Nice!

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When Mum first hit the scene, they were part of that amazing Morr Music scene, when that label was releasing dreamy and delicate electronic tinged pop that soared and melted with such ease and lasting impact. Mum were really one of the best of the bunch, an Icelandic group who excelled in making sounds that sounded more like a magical music box than a regular old rock band. Several years later and much has changed, Morr Music is no longer the quite so dependable label they once were and Mum have found themselves on several labels since those early days, as well as going through some major lineup changes, all of which resulted in a pretty serious shift in sound on their last record, Go Go Smear The Poison Ivy. Their evolution of sound continues as they move more towards a much more full sound rife with rich and lush instrumentation as well as a delicate use of electronics, which they use much less frequently than on their earlier recordings, but when they do, they really find simple and engaging ways to make it sound magical. Much of the full and lush sound can be attributed to cellist Hildur Gudnadottir who has helped flesh out the groups sound since joining the group as a full member. While so many records tend to be front loaded we actually find that Sing Along To Songs You Don't Know gets better and better as the record goes on with many of its best moments found on the second half of the album. SO perfect for the crisp and cold days to come...

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Where you stand on this new Mum album (not physically! haha!) very well may be hinged on where you stand on adults singing like creepy little kids. As expected, their instrumental arrangements are total glistening elegance, however the vocals all adhere to a frail, childlike affectation, and they're chose to present them very prominently in the overall mix. Plenty of comparisons have been drawn to fellow Icelander Bjork -- sonically, not simply because of their common homeland -- however unlike that of Mum's vocalist Kristin Anna Valtydottir, Bjork's otherworldly dynamic delivery covers a much more vast range, veering in and around the pixie-like. Some may find Ms Valtydottir's voice positively enchanting, while others may find it maddening.

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Mum fans, you're probably already aware that Mum's debut album has been reissued, aren't you? But if you've yet to acquaint yourself with the shimmering pop majesty that is Mum's music, you simply won't go wrong with any of their gorgeous albums, but this one is a mighty fine place to start. Here's what we had to say the first time around... Mum hails from Iceland, a land whose musical exports have received proportionally higher praise per capita than bands from any other country on the planet. And, yes, Mum has been hailed as the next big thing from Iceland after Sigur Ros. This outfit places themselves within the border regions of electronica and post-rock, where they augment delicate IDM algorithms with Durutti Column-esque guitars, trumpets, and clarinets, but never dabble in the stagnant Tortoise sound. As a result of incorporating acoustic instruments into digital structures, their sound has a rich color palette somewhere between rich acoustic warmth and glistening digital. Mum's sound often recalls the romantic leanings of the early IDM sound (Aphex / Reload / Autechre), but without any of the big floor-filling techno rhythms. It's the aural equivalent of layer upon layer of delicate tulle, gauzy blankets, and goose down duvets. May we say this is dramatic and ever so much more than ok.

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Ultra PC "kick in the balls" to indie kid complacency. Mumia, accused of killing a cop, speaks from his cell on death row. MITB add their two cents by bashing in your skull with a two-bass-and-drums hash-induced 4 song assault. PC, my ass. (Includes contributions from Allen Ginsberg, Jello Biafra, Assata Shakur, and Bob Dole. Really.)

Collection of pioneering electronic composer Gordon Mumma's works composed between 1963 and 1985. Having collaborated extensively throughout the 60's with contemporaries Robert Ashley, David Tudor, Pauline Oliveros, Alvin Lucier and David Behrman often helping

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"Studio Retrospective" is a collection of six of Mumma's electronic compositions dating from 1959 to 1984. Four of the pieces were originally composed for the quadraphonic theater systems, and have been digitally remastered in stereo for this collection. Mumma's work is full of grinding metallic drones, (think Stockhausen, Nordheim, Ussachevsky) electronic pings & clicks, and buzzing FM synthesis. Evocative (and not too stodgy) academic work.

Don't know much about this new Ektro release -- all the info we can find is in Finnish and of friend Jussi of Ektro/Circle has a cryptic way about him -- but we do know that it's a reissue of a '70s Finnish folk/prog LP by a band with the pleasant sounding name of Mummi Kutoo. They play a weird (and you may think wonderful) concoction of rustic folk, psychedelic rock, New Orleans jazz, honkytonk, and bluegrass...one track might be all flutes and Floyd, the next a brass band number! Quite diverse in mood and musical style. In parts, it's a bit like a countrifed Dungen, if you're familiar with that current-yet-retro Swedish band. And it's certainly the soft seventies mellow pop psych cuts, the dreamiest stuff on here, that we like the best. With 23 songs on here (14 from the band's self-titled album released on Love Records in 1975 plus another 9 bonus tracks from the era) there's plenty to enjoy.

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Punked-out garage stomp done by three fellas wrapped in bandages. Do you gotta be good when you've got a gimmick like that? Well, I guess they think so, that is if your idea of good is the same as theirs -- crazy raw manic distorto rawk with song titles like "Die!" and "Food, Sickles & Girls". Lo-fi, low-brow, and proud. They never cross that line into truly absurd avant-garde mayhem a la Guitar Wolf, they're just a little too vulgar and frat-house for that. But their brand of sickness is still gonna always sound good with a beer cracked. This disc collects 22 or so tracks taken from rare out-of-print 7" vinyl, dug up from the Mummies' Daly City, CA tomb for your pleasure.

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Ahhh The Mummies, my (Sadie) garage rock heroes from right here in S.F.!!!! I remember seeing their fucked up mummy mobile, an old '60s ambulance with "The Mummies" painted across the side in scary writing, when I first moved here, parked in Bernal Heights, and I'd get so excited. They wore filthy rags as Mummy costumes, and just totally kicked ass. Simple, trashy, reverb-y garage rock. This is their first (and only) full length released only on vinyl in 1992, here on cd for the first time and with bonus tracks! It may be a cd but you can even hear the needle hit the record on the first track. So lo-fi and distorted but a total lean, mean sixties-garage dance party. Essential.

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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.

SORRY.

We really like this album, but went through a few phases in appreciating it. First off, when we heard about it, we were like, cool! This first-time-on-cd reissue of an extremely obscure, self-released 1971 LP checks out pretty well, on paper: it was a one-off record of tragic love songs done in late '60s psych pop style written and recorded by a teenager from Cyprus recently relocated to New York City. Heck, Middle Eastern psych, we can't get enough! But when we actually heard it, at first it was a little hard to get past how odd it sounded -- it wasn't quite what we were expecting. Marc Mundy's voice and lyrics eventually charmed us, but it's easy to see why he never make it big on the pop charts in the USA, with his foreign accent and amateur (but decent) singing skills. Then there's his lyrics, written in English, which perhaps explains how awkward his turns of phrase can be -- though again, in the end we found ourselves marveling at his heartfelt, heartbreak poetry. Such lyrics as "baby I love your lips / when they're wet with wine and desire / I love your hair / when it is messed up in the wind / baby I love your arms / when your soft, warm flesh touches mine / I love your eyes / when the lovelight lies / not for me the cold, calm kiss of a virgin / not for me / the bless of a saint..." might at first seem like typical love song stuff, but not really... coupled with his so-sincere delivery, Marc's words will find their way closer to your soul than most pop music lyrics ever do. Maybe it's the atypical metaphors, situations and stories that crop up in his songs, some of which must be inspired by the Mediterranean/Middle Eastern folk songs he'd heard in his youth. For example, "How Can I Marry This Language" is about a father refusing to allow his daughter to marry the song's narrator, in language that he (the frustrated narrator/suitor) can't even understand. It's actually (intentionally, we think) humorous, which isn't the case with most of the sad, melancholic material on this album! Another track, "The Tragic House", is about an empty, abandoned house where the narrator's love used to live, before she vanished to who knows where, or why. Yup, super sad and melancholic. There's definitely lots of stuff on here if you ever need material for a breakup mix tape!! "Our Love Can Never Be", "Give Up Your Pride", "I'm Crying Your Name", "Don't Love Me Anymore", and others... Yet despite the sadness, these songs percolate along, Marc taking the melodic lead on vocals and guitar, accompanied by a now-anonymous band of musicians, sounding vaguely exotic while also of its time and place (the Greenwich Village coffeehouse folk-rock scene, also home to The Devil's Anvil you'll recall). Ethereal female backing vocals also add to the lovely moodiness... This reissue is one of those wonderful finds you've got to thank some obsessed collector for, and comes complete with lyric sheet and new liner notes. And it's fully authorized by Marc, whom we're told gave up on music as a career soon after this album was originally released and now lives back on Cyprus, teaching school (and hopefully not still pining for lost loves!).

MPEG stream: How Can I Marry This Language
MPEG stream: Don't Love Me Anymore

We sure do love Slim Cessna's Auto Club. One of our favorite shit kicking, country punk creepy folk ensembles ever. Hailing from the lovely land of Colorado, which also of course gave us Sixteen Horsepower, Woven Hand and Boyd Rice, Slim and his crew are like some wandering band of wild testifyin' redneck gypsies. Slim's mainman and musical sidekick is one Jay Munly, who when not helping create the freaked out end of the world apocalyptic country rock of the Auto Club, spends some quality time on his own making his own music much more personal and somehow WAY weirder. The vibe is certainly similar, but Munly on his own is way more of a loose canon. Mixing fifties rock, with bouncy pop, indie rock jangle, mumbled country blues, his voice swooping from Buddy Holly croon to weird falsetto and back again. On this, the recently reissued debut from 1996, Munly seems to still be feeling his way around. Or alternately, and maybe much more likely, he just doesn't give a fuck and we just can't get it unless we climb into his head, which we probably won't do cuz it's scary in there. Shambolic and gloriously indifferent to any overreaching sonic theme, Blurry is a series of tweaked pop vignettes. The country twang that would define so much of Munly's later output is hardly present at all, instead this is some sort of damaged indie pop. Fans of Ariel Pink might really dig this, as it is sort of the same ultra personal cracked musical universe. Super lo-fi but surprisingly catchy. We like! Remastered. Limited to 100 copies.

MPEG stream: Virgin Of Manhattan
MPEG stream: Hang On With Eskimos
MPEG stream: Tonto

We sure do love Slim Cessna's Auto Club. One of our favorite shit kicking, country punk creepy folk ensembles ever. Hailing from the lovely land of Colorado, which also of course gave us Sixteen Horsepower, Woven Hand and Boyd Rice, Slim and his crew are like some wandering band of wild testifyin' redneck gypsies. Slim's mainman and musical sidekick is one Jay Munly, who when not helping create the freaked out end of the world apocalyptic country rock of the Auto Club, spends some quality time on his own making his own music much more personal and somehow WAY weirder. The vibe is certainly similar, but Munly on his own is way more of a loose canon. Mixing fifties rock, with bouncy pop, indie rock jangle, mumbled country blues, his voice swooping from Buddy Holly croon to weird falsetto and back again. De Dar He is record number two, originally released in 1997 and what a difference a year makes. The twang is now in full effect. You can hear the sound that would later blossom into Munly & The Lee Lewis Harlots as well as Slim Cessna. It's still lo-fi and a little bit scattershot, but the framework is now much more distinctly country. Accordions, harmonicas, steel string twang, the whole deal, but Munly's tweaked pop sensibilities are still plenty present giving these tracks the sort of twisted humor that made us dig him in the first place. While the debut was much more of a random damaged pop gem, this is definitely more of a cool country hoedown, wild and wooly, foot stomping, fiddle sawin', definitely the first step on Munly's path to his future as a swoonsome dark and twisted country folk troubadour. Awesome. Remastered. Limited to 100 copies.

MPEG stream: Chutzpa
MPEG stream: My Erziehung
MPEG stream: Shoot Her With A Good Hand Gun

Munly, better known as Jay to his family and friends, is a member in good standing of Slim Cessna's Auto Club, one of our favorite sort of punk, sort of country, sort of creepy folk outfits, who hail from the fine state of Colorado. But as they say, there's something rotten in Colorado. Well, maybe they don't say that now, but they soon will. A beautiful state full of forests and snow and wildlife and mountains, has somehow become the home to the droning confrontational misanthropy of Boyd Rice, the swampy downer folk of Sixteen Horsepower, the crushing, biblical damnation of the Woven Hand, the snake oil selling country punk revival of Slim Cessna and now Munly, a bastard musical mutt incorporating bits and pieces of all the above mentioned misanthropes and miscreants. And we couldn't be more pleased. Munly definitely sounds like a head on collision between Slim Cessna and the Woven Hand. Dark and swoonsome, seasickly swampy dirges, with shuffling graveyard percussion, strummed acoustic guitars, minor key strings, fiery fiddles and banjoes. But unlike the rollicking punkiness of Cessna's Autoclub, Munly is a much darker proposition. Lurching like a strangely hideous beast, only ever glimpsed at dusk and only out of the corner of your eye, and always sending shivers down your spine. And while occasionally, the tempo does pick up, it's only the tempo that does, the mood remains one of hopelessness, bitterness and broken heartedness. And while Munly mostly sings in an ominous tenor, hovering somewhere between 16HP's David Eugene Edwards and Nick Cave, often the vocals go completely nuts: yodelling, falsetto trills, soulful female background vocals and even throat singing. And unlike the Woven Hand's stonefaced fire and brimstone proclamations from the pulpit, Munly is most definitely having fun, still warning you about the coming rapture, but at the same time planning to live it up right until the end. He also seems to be taking the piss once in a while. Which is actually pretty satisfying. Singing along, this could almost be the Woven Hand's more rambunctious less headed-for-doom little brother, but on closer inspection, the lyrics are pretty amazingly funny and absurd, tales of vampires, enemas (in the same song!) and various other seemingly unlikely topics. Enough to even make us laugh out loud a couple times. And all of these bizarre elements coalesce perfectly into perfect songs: beautiful and moving, funny and almost rocking, groovy and hypnotic, emotional and dark dark dark, but at the same time super dramatic (almost ridiculously so), campy and flat out WEIRD. Comes with a bonus disc: a surround sound DVD audio version of the whole record!

MPEG stream: Another Song About Jesus, A wedding Sheet And A Bowie Knife
MPEG stream: Cassius Castrato The She-Male Of The Mens Prison

MPEG stream: Funeral Blues
MPEG stream: All Men Are Divine
MPEG stream: Pretty Saro

MPEG stream: My Darling Sambo
MPEG stream: Circle Round My Bedside

When you think of legendary sixties jazz, you probably don't think of Australia, but this 1967 disc from Charlie Munro and his quartet might just change all that. Arguably one of the most important jazz groups to emerge from Australia, Munro's Eastern Horizons most definitely predates other more well known Eastern Influenced jazz discs of that era, and is just as good. It's definitely free jazz, but the skronk level is quite low, in fact much of the record is moody and muted, due in no small part to the presence of cello and bass violin which add a warm wistful quality to many of the songs. Plus there's marimba and vibraharp as well as "brushes on record cover" (!). Record opener "Islamic Suite" definitely sets the tone, with the horns emulating Eastern instruments, the melodies appropriately Eastern as well, based on an Arab scale according to the liner notes, long form ragas, drones, that slip smoothly into some more traditional sounding bop, but even then, the Eastern influence is still strong. "Malahari Raga" is in fact based on an Indian raga and begins all woozy and swoony, before the drums kick in double time and the song is tranformed into something much more skittery and jazzy. Many of the remaining tracks are delicate and dark, fluttering flute over warm fluid basslines, muted trumpets and lush marimba melodies, until "Minimum", a sprawling free jazz jam, where the horns finally let loose and go wild, pausing briefly for an awesome extended drum solo. There's one more mournful jazzy ballad before the record closes with another chunk of jumpin' jive, skittery rhythms, soaring horns, and an awesome bass solo outro. Killer stuff.

MPEG stream: Islamic Suite
MPEG stream: David
MPEG stream: Minimum

All right, now you can stop worrying -- we didn't forget about it, here's number 9 in the Jewelled Antler Library series of 3" cdrs. It's a disc from SF's Muons, not a Jewelled Antler band per se, but in those guys' orbit. There's five songs here, just under twenty minutes of fragile, psychedelic folk recorded live, where they really shine. Inspired by traditional British folk music, but made soooo minimal and spacey that they've been called the "Bernhard Gunter of space-folk", the Muons make forlorn lullabys for adults. For this performance, the Muons were just the duo of Greg Bianchini and Rickey Reneau. Greg, who has played with Jewelled Antler acts Franciscan Hobbies, Thuja and Blithe Sons, is an gifted instrument maker, and on this recording plays a home-built 14-string electric lute as well as sings. Rickey plays an electric dulcimer, probably also built by Greg. Greg's languid strumming and melancholic vocals seem to drift out of the smoke and mist of another era, and could be from a lost UK psych-folk comp, although this is so slow and sad and desolate that no hippy could have made it -- they'd be too bummed out. We're also reminded of some Galaxie 500, or old NZ stuff like the Chills. Certainly this is a bit different than much else in the Library series -- it's got to be the most 'composed' set of songs found on any of these 3" discs. But we think JA fans will like it, a lot. It has a 'flowers in the rain' vibe that's just lovely. And the loveliness extends to the paintings Greg did for the 3" cover. Very nice.

MPEG stream: Green Man

[ aquarius records catalogue — M ]