[ aquarius records catalogue

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Showing results 2851 through 2900 of 3006.

We're still not sure if/when there will be a domestic release of this new Muse opus, so in the meantime, here's the pricey import version. Muse? That's the British band that anyone who wishes Radiohead had made "OK Computer Parts II & III" instead of "Kid A"

RealAudio clip: New Born
RealAudio clip: Space Delerium

A beloved mailorder customer from far far away brought this one to our attention. It's a record we never paid much attention to, what with being on Maverick and having a godawful cover. But shit man, it's pretty cool. The best way to describe it is as lost Radiohead record (and the music is dead on Radiohead) with Jeff Buckley singing. Or some twisted mix of Jeff Buckley, Thom Yorke, and Freddie Mercury. It's like 'Paranoid Android' stretched into an entire record. Definitely a guilty pleasure, but Jim and Andee find themselves throwing this one on almost every day. Perfect if you need something to tide you over until the next Radiohead record. (see also Justin Clayton)

Oh boy! A DVD filmed at San Francisco's famed Musee Mechanique, that fantastic collection of turn of the century penny arcade machines!! Cool. We figure that many of our customers who've bought the cds of music from the Musee that we sell (three volumes so far, you'll find 'em elsewhere on our site) haven't actually had the chance to visit the place themselves, so this is perfect. And if you HAVE been to the Musee -- especially the old Cliff House location -- you'll want this for the memories. And it'll make you want to head on down there soon enough again to visit in person, so it's double the nostagia trip (for the early 1900's, and for the last time you were there). For those who haven't even heard of the place, basically the Musee Mechanique, now located on Pier 45 down at Fisherman's Wharf, is filled with coin-operated mechanical amusements ranging from music boxes and player-piano type contraptions (several with an orchestra's worth of sounds) to various games of skill and chance to quaint "peep shows" to fortune tellers to animated dioramas (what are called "working models") to Musee mascot Laughing Sal... all are to be found on this DVD, filmed in action, as collector/curator Edward Zelinsky takes viewers on a guided tour of the Musee's many attractions, even stopping to try his hand at the "Love Tester". Sometimes he talks about when/where/how he ended up acquiring the machine he's showing off, but just as often he just drops the quarter in and gives a "hey, wow, gee whiz" reaction just like a kid. The documentary has its cheesy (but charming) moments -- someone gets carried away with video effects a few times, for instance -- but we're mighty pleased with it overall. It's very cool to get a glimpse at the inner workings of both the Musee and its machines. Maybe our favorite thing about this DVD is the way the camera really gets up close and personal with the "working models", taking the viewer into the scene (fire house, farm, graveyard, and our favorite, the opium den!!) in a way that you can't really experience even in person. Especially with that creepy opium den diorama, we were reminded of a Brothers Quay film or Tool video... Ed Zelinsky passed away in 2004 (his tour was filmed when the Musee was still at the Cliff house) but his collection is in the capable hands of his son Daniel, who had been running the Musee and fixing the machines for many years already, and appears in several of the "extras" included. Total running time 68:45.

Long, long ago we stocked an LP of recordings from San Francisco's own Cliff House-based Musee Mechanique. Sadly this album went out of print a few years back, leaving many sad customers who'd found out about it too late. Well weep no longer, as AQ now has an all new disc (the first of several, we're told) of recordings made of the machines at the museum. The Musee Mechanique, for those who've never been, is a hands-on museum of early penny arcade machines (some over a century old) kept in their original working order for the public's enjoyment by the determined work of curator Edward Galland Zelinsky. Every time we have visitors from out of town, we take' em here. Stereoscopic peep shows, moralising fortune tellers, old baseball game machines, nickelodeons, prisoner art made out of toothpicks, music boxes, player pianos, "test your strength" challenges, animated dioramas, and more are constantly kept in tune -- it's both historic and entertaining. (Including everyone's favorite -- Laughing Sal, a larger than life size doll who just laughs and laughs and laughs. Wonderful.) The 27 tracks found here are all new recordings of the various machines (mostly player pianos playing assorted rags), captured after museum hours, so it's free of unwanted tourist chatter (although they nicely left the sounds of the coins falling into the slot as lead ins to each track.)

RealAudio clip: Cancione
RealAudio clip: Laughing Sal
RealAudio clip: Roses From The South

The Musee Mecanique at San Francisco's historic Cliff House is one of our favorite things in the whole city. We *always* take visitors from out of town there, and they always love it. The Musee is a collection of antique coin-operated arcade machines, lovingly restored and cared for, including animated dioramas ("The Opium Den" is a favorite), crank-operated racing games, mechanical strength-testing devices, boxing and baseball games, fortune tellers, and many automated musical instruments (player pianos, music boxes, and the like), which fill the place with great old ragtime tunes. They've been recording the machines (complete with the sound of coins dropping in to start 'em) and have plans to release a whole series of cds documenting this delightful old-timey music. Volume One came out last year (and we sold quite a few), and now we've got Volume Two! Yay! These 27 tracks are similar to the stuff on the first volume, perhaps "more bouncy" though. And the famous Laughing Sal (the giant, manaically whooping automaton who dominates the entrance to the Musee) makes another appearance, closing out the disc with one of her always-disturbing outbursts of hilarity... A nice way to keep some of the spirit of the Musee Mecanique in your home, and to help support their preservation endeavors!

RealAudio clip: Dizzy Fingers
RealAudio clip: Don't Give Up the Ship
RealAudio clip: Goofus
RealAudio clip: Piano Roll Blues
RealAudio clip: Temptation

Everyone here at Aquarius was SO happy and relieved when the Musee Mechanique -- that wonderful place full of antique penny-aracade machines that's one of our favorite San Francisco cultural/fun spots -- found a new home at Fisherman's Wharf. Previously it had been a highlight to a trip out to the historic Cliff House next door to the ruined Sutro Baths up above Ocean Beach, but the Park Service decided the Cliff House needed a renovation and gave the Musee an eviction notice. Thankfully, rather than close up, they managed to make a move down to the Wharf, which while not as picturesque a location, still seems to have worked out well for 'em. You'll now find the Musee at pier 45, shed A, right alongside the Jeremiah O'Brien and that WWII submarine. Not only did the Musee find a new home, but now they've released a third volume of recordings documenting the player-piano-roll operated mechanical musical contraptions you'll find there. Vols. 1 and 2 were hits here at AQ and with good reason. Vol. 3 picks up where they left off, featuring more of the music made by their collection of lovingly preserved orchestras-in-a-box from decades and decades ago. For the first time ever, the machine pictured on the cover, the huge and impressive "Englehardth", finally appears in all its sonic glory on disc, as they finally got it fully restored into working order. As with the other volumes, these are excellent recordings and each track starts with the coin drop, a nice touch. Musically, you can expect lotsa charming old timey tunes with titles like "Maurice's Irresistable Tango", "Grandpa's Spells", "There's A Shanti In Old Shantitown" and "My Song Of The Nile". Some you'll recognize, some won't be so familiar. All are quite quaint to modern ears, yet lively and spirited. There's 27 musical tracks here, from jaunty foot tappers to romantic melodies -- and then as always, the Musee's mascot, Laughing Sal, wraps things up with her disturbingly forced, truly hysterical laughter. Next best thing to actually visiting the Musee Mechanique, which we highly recommend.

MPEG stream: Maurice's Irresistable Tango
MPEG stream: You Tell Me Your Dreams And I'll Tell You Mine
MPEG stream: Grandpa's Spells
MPEG stream: My Song Of The Nile

Kick ass Italian '70s prog band's only album, from 1973, reissued on cd in '97 and now here in our store. It's hard to talk about these guys without comparing 'em to other, equally obscure Italian prog acts like the New Trolls and Il Rovescio Della Medaglia,

RealAudio clip: Dell'Eterno Ritorno

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Attention gamers! (We know some of you are gamers, yep, don't deny it.) Also, perhaps, attention druggies! We've been waiting for this. From the same crazed minds that brought us the "Necro-Demonic dungeon crawl" board game Cave Evil, comes this REALLY bizarre design. It's an "adventure board game" for 2 to 5 players, simulating a psychedelic magic mushroom trip! Each player is, like, supposed to be an apprentice shaman, competing to become the next chief shaman by having the most intense and enlightening experiences while high on 'shrooms. (Note, the rule book explicitly states that "this game is absolutely unplayable on Mushrooms!", which would indicate that they tried�) Even the veteran gamers here at aQ have never seen anything quite like it. It's nothing if not unique. And very elaborate. And truly psychedelic. Our copies of The Mushroom Eaters just showed up in the mail a few days ago, so this is not a 'playtest' review. It says it takes "90-120 minutes" to play, but we're pretty sure our first session, learning how to play, will take way longer than that; we're looking forward to finding some time soon though to give it a try! Especially since Cave Evil, which have played, is great. While this is a very different sort of game, we're pretty sure it's going to be awesome too. It certainly LOOKS fantastic, the colorful, psychedelic artwork found on every part of the game being super strange and trippy - AND, get this, the board is printed in 3-D, and the game comes with rainbow prismatic 3-D glasses for each player to wear!! (Though, it's not required.) We're still not quite sure how it all works, we'll have to read through the 16 page rulebook a few more times before we attempt playing it, but we're pretty intrigued by the concepts involved. To give you some idea (or perhaps scare you off), the game includes such components as "Player Mood Cards", "Personal Path Octagons", "Breathe Tokens", "Large Focus Cubes", "Small Nervous System Cubes", a "Shaman Drum Board", "Wisdom Tokens", "Paradox Tokens", and "Mantra Answer Tokens" among many other things. Uh, wow! Like Cave Evil, it's a fairly DIY production, but an impressive one. You get a LOT in the large box, all of it as we said covered with weird, trippy artwork, by a whole bunch of artists, some of whom also worked on Cave Evil, though that was all black and white and this, as we said, is quite the opposite, very colorful indeed. There's a thick game board that unfolds, several other separate smaller boards, a die, a pawn ("representing the mushroom"), various cardboard tokens, two decks of cards, lots of wooden cubes, and of course, five sets of 3-D glasses! Our minds are blown just looking at it, so playing must be some kind of trip. We don't know if it's a good way, or not, to see what it's like to "get high" without actually taking any drugs, but even attempting to play it does seem likely to create an altered state of consciousness� By the way, while Cave Evil had the black metal connection, this one's not as directly music-related (though a lot of the folks who did the art are also musicians) - but we're sure any aQ customer interested in this would have plenty of appropriate music in their collection to use as a soundtrack. And as with Cave Evil, it's a limited edition. We have just 3 copies in stock. We get 'em direct from the designer/publisher, Nate Hayden, and he says we can probably get a few more if we need 'em, but maybe not for long, fyi.

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SORRY. Uptempo stoner rawk from yet another group of Swedes caught up in the post-Kyuss band frenzy. Good though. Vocalist Spice was drafted in from his main band Spiritual Beggars, and as a result this doesn't sound too different from that band, just lacking the Hammond organ and some of the more overt metallic guitar hero elements. Quality.

Album number two from this Swedish stoner rock outfit. Vocalist Spice, now an ex-Spiritual Beggars member, definitely still brings in much of the vibe of his former band. The Mushroom River boys rock hard and heavy, playing Kyuss/Monster Magnet style, seventies-inspired stuff just as you'd expect. As with their first album, another solid but same-y Swedish entry in the stoner rock sweeps.

RealAudio clip: Time-Laps

Sounds like someone's been eating their Lucky Charms cereal!! As a sticker on this cd proclaims, this is the "indietronic pop trio" comprised of Mogwai's Luke Sutherland, To Rococo Rot's Stefan Schneider and Tontraeger's Volker Bertleman. What these three fellows have assembled is more an unassuming series of dreamy interludes rather than full songs. Chiming musicbox-ish tones and guitar pluckery frolick and melt while bass lines drip like molasses. Vaporous clicking beats and suitably softly murmurred male vocals offer some drifting movement to each track. Very very gentle, unobtrusive and pretty.

MPEG stream: Big Wheel
MPEG stream: Supercharger

The grimy and oozing, sludgey and slimy, sonic apple does not fall far from the musical tree, as Harvey Milk bassist Stephen Tanner turns an aborted attempt at writing a new Harvey Milk record into his own solo record, the evocatively titled, and ultra personal Music Blues, a droning, dirgey, downtuned rumination on Tanner's life, from birth all the way up until right goddamn now. With a heavy focus on a recent spate of blues-worthy bad times, heart break and homelessness, death of friends and depression, Tanner crafts a brooding sprawl of epic slo-mo heaviness, that really could have been a new Harvey Milk record, with long stretches of murky churn butted up against impossible metallic majesty, soaring and epic, dirgey and doomy. At time it's actually a little bit difficult to not imagine HM's Creston Spiers bellowing over the top, but even sans those distinctive vocals, Tanner's soundscapes of tarpit riffage, knuckle dragging drummige, churning, crumbling low end, and tripped out, droney, abstract, almost psychedelia, make for some sweet, and sweetly abject heaviness. Peppered amidst all the low slung sludge are brief bits of weirdness (or maybe more accurately, weirder weirdness), woozy stretches of pitchshifted ultra lo-fi downer country strum, transformed into some twang flecked murk, or moments that sound like intros to some Fucking Champs-like shred, but which instead just lock into stretched out stasis, minimal and metallic and mesmerizing. But the songs themselves, for being as minimal as they often are, are pretty riveting, and hypnotic, heavy for sure, but also textured and strangely nuanced, with varying levels of fidelity, the sound slips easily from massive crush, to home brewed heaviness and back again. Many of the sounds here are obviously beholden to the 'Milk mothership, and channel the sound of classic metal (Kiss, Priest), and like HM turn it into something that sounds like it's being played by someone with serious head trauma, and spinning way too slow on some old busted up turntable (check out "Trying And Giving Up). But there are also moments of monochromatic mesmeric metal trudge ("Great Depression"), murky, hazy, atmospheric soundscapery ("Failure") and surprising poppiness ("It's Not Going To Get Better"), which perhaps not surprisingly at all, does not stay poppy for long. This will definitely tide over Harvey Milk fanatics until the next HM full length (assuming there ever is one), but really, anyone into droned out, melodic minimalism, and droney, doomy heaviness, will dig these here Music Blues.

MPEG stream: Premature Caesarean Removal Delivery
MPEG stream: Hopelessness And Worthlessness
MPEG stream: Trying And Giving Up

When the first line of lyrics you hear on a record are something about "velveteen clouds" you know you're listening to something psychedelic -- in this case, a reissue of the rare 1969 album by LA psych-popsters the Music Emporium. Swirling organ, fuzz

RealAudio clip: Nam Myo Renge Kyo
RealAudio clip: Gentle Thursday
RealAudio clip: Sun Never Shines

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The Music Now Ensemble 1969 is a vital missing link between the arcane studies of Cornelius Cordew's Scratch Orchestra and the free-noise continuum of AMM's extended family. This huge collective featured Keith Rowe and Eddie Prevost (both members of AMM) as

RealAudio clip: Silver Pyramid excerpt

Now considered something of a classic, here's an awesome acid-folk rarity recorded thirty-five years ago by a gaggle of hippies in Barcelona. This is something we've had sporadically in stock before ('cause people in the know were asking about it) but now at last we've got enough to list -- and they're cheaper than they were before, too! This, Musica Dispersa's only album, was originally released in 1970 and now appears on cd, digitally remastered, in a nice digipack complete with folded booklet/poster (the liner notes are all in Spanish but there are lots of sepia-toned photos for non Spanish readers to look at). Their sound is both danity and drugged-out, occassionally playful but most often melancholic and mellow... with moaning vocals, sad flute, organ, mandolin, piano, bongos, and various other percussion instruments, Musica Dispersa made quite quiet and gentle, dismally beautiful music (that was apparently very political in the context of their times/place as well). They tend to draw comparison to both the archaic, acoustic approach of the Incredible String Band and other UK folk acts of the era, and the freaky freeform ramblings of early Amon Duul. And we're strongly reminded of another krautrock band, AQ faves Siloah. Definitely something for which the phrase "weird and wonderful" was always intended. Recommended.

MPEG stream: Hanillo
MPEG stream: Gilda
MPEG stream: Fluido

International collective MEV originated in Rome in the mid-sixties as a vehicle for the live performance of electronic music. Seeking to transform "occupied space" into "created space," the group attempted improvs that might result in any three equally valid outcomes: space would be transcended immediately, "magically;" or only after necessary duration as the result of hard work;

RealAudio clip: Spacecraft
RealAudio clip: Unified Patchwork Theory

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Basically, this is what we were hoping the Acid Mother Temple's "Electric Heavyland" would sound like! Musica Transonic is yet another project featuring the wild guitar playing of AMT's Kawabata Makoto, in a trio with two other notables from the Japanese underground: the Ruins' incredible Tatsuya Yoshida on drums, and High Rise/Mainliner/Ohkami No Jikan leather-and-shades master Nanjo Asahito on bass. They've been around for a while, this is their sixth album of instrumental psychedelic improv rock in fact. Previous efforts were a lot more jazzy and spazzy, and while this has total psych guitar freakouts, they're in the context of some speedy, steamroller, straight-ahead heavy rock n' roll, '70s-style. Hence the title "Hard Rock Transonic" I guess. Not unlike the blueprint for Nanjo's bands High Rise and Mainliner: distorted garagey fuzz-fests with searing psych solos (Kawabata rips on here). The driving, riff-repetitive parts are almost metal, kinda like Circle's "Sunrise" in that way. Nanjo's rumbling Blue Cheer bass and Yoshida's solid beats, along with the aforementioned Kawabata guitar freakouts, are total head banging material. Add in the Greek song titles, the crazy cover drawing, and boob n' panty baring cheesecake shots of young Asian women in the booklet, and you've got one wild Japanese psych-metal album.

RealAudio clip: track 1

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SORRY. Third album. Nanjo, Kawabata and Yoshida return, with another blast of...yes, it's the same band as above (Mainliner), with a different name. More spastic, though, and maybe even more fuzz-blasted.

Those who've been paying any attention at all to the extremes of the Japanese prog/psych underground should already be familiar with the band Musica Transonic (responsible for five prior albums on hometown Tokyo label PSF, and one also on Fractal, their last one which came out five long years ago). At the very least, you know the three musical madmen who make up this power trio: drummer Tatsuya Yoshida of Ruins, guitarist Kawabata Makoto of Acid Mothers Temple, and bassist Nanjo Asahito of High Rise. This heavy duty improv freakout summit of theirs is thus a veritable supergroup. All three of these guys have also played together in the band Mainliner. If all that means something to you, then we're pretty sure the news that there's this new 2007 album released on the cool Polish label Vivo ought to be just about enough to get you to want a copy! Or, read on... This long-running act hasn't changed too much this time 'round. Imagine a hyper-active Blue Cheer abandoning the biker-blues riffs to play instrumental freeform jazz instead. Psychedelic skree spills forth as the band settles in to a variety of unsettled grooves. Passages of moody noodilyness collide with amped-up ADD frenzies. Essentially the album title XYOSFBIGKOU (and equally jumbled-looking track names like "Rtufujowvyt" and "Qoixvudgdoasv"), while cryptic, actually give some sense of what Musica Transonic is about. All caps (loud!!), can't understand it (crazy!), but must make some sense somehow to someone (chops?). You'll feel jumbled too after listening to this sonic spooge, sounding somewhere betwixt Lightning Bolt and the Wes Montgomery Trio or something. This recording is not as blown into-the-red as their early stuff, though no less spastic, and also is not nearly as lumberingly "metallic" as their last one, the aptly-titled Hard Rock Transonic, but boy do they grind it out with lots o' feedback on the title track at the end of the album!

MPEG stream: Euojhcvisdup
MPEG stream: Rtufujowvyt

Total "Arctic Hysteria" here people! We liked this a lot when we first listened to it, before we even knew what it was. Well, we knew it was Finnish (always a plus), and released on Circle's Ektro label (also a reliable indicator of quality). It's not another "NWOFHM" band though, or even any sort of Circle side project, or even really a band at all. As it turns out, the quasi-Industrial DIY soundscapes of noise and drone created by Musiikkivyory ("Music Avalanche") are the work of one person, Mika Taanila, who was all of 15 years old when this was first released as a homemade cassette - back in 1981! That's right, a Finnish teenager in the early '80s making monstrous noise/drone tapes, contemporaneous with the likes of Maurizio Bianchi. How cool is that? Pretty cool we think. The 12 tracks here (resurrected from a couple of super rare tapes, circa '80-'81) are a wonderful witches' cauldron of throbbing rhythmic chaos, fractured grinding drones, strange voices, field recordings, and DISTORTION, lots of distortion... it's a playful sort of isolationist music, if that makes sense. And as an evidently artistically inclined kid he had every reason to want to express himself in such a fashion. Imagine being a teen with fears of nuclear war, living up near the Arctic Circle. The dark postpunk music (Cabaret Voltaire, This Heat, The Normal, Dome...) you were able to tune in to on the BBC's John Peel show might make a lot more sense than the "normal" happy Christian adults who surround you! So Mika began messing around with tape recorders, cast-off band instruments, radio static, toys, primitive percussion, etc., and pretty soon had generated enough material to fuel his own bedroom cassette label (of which it's hoped that Ektro will eventually reissue more releases), which issued limited runs of tapes not just by his own Musiikkivyory project but also by other likeminded Finnish friends... and, in fact, one by Italy's M.B. himself! (A reminder that international networking was possible before MySpace came around.) Ektro has colorfully packaged this in a fashion up to their usual spiffy graphic standards, the cd cover insert folding out into a large sheet with photos and liner notes (in both English and Finnish) on one side, the other a poster depicting one of the original cassette releases at larger-than-life size. Crude, creative, and compelling, this is quite an interesting surprise, thanks Ektro!! We'd definitely like to hear more from this corner of '80s cassette culture, hint hint.

MPEG stream: "Tulemme Kreivin Luota
MPEG stream: "Tulemme Sokeiksi
MPEG stream: Deutschland

We get so many records submitted to us for consideration, and like we've said before we really do listen to everything that comes our way (though it does sometimes take us forever!) and it's always worth it because of gems like this. We haven't heard a pop record with this much ambition, depth and dynamic range of sound in a long, long time. Michael Musika has a really unique approach to crafting not only songs but an overall feeling that flows throughout the album. With interludes filled with beautiful bells and dreamy vibes which cast an interesting spell, and then proper songs which tap into a side of quirky, orchestral pop that you just don't hear done that often or this well, these days. Taking elements of Emmit Rhodes, Biff Rose, and Van Dyke Parks, San Francisco's Micheal Musika has created his own world of cinematic pop glory.

MPEG stream: Translating The Bird's Song
MPEG stream: A Song Is Swallowed By A Fish
MPEG stream: The Clever Thief Hides Inside The Clock
MPEG stream: Playing The Violin With Broken Strings

Woah, nice grotesque, stretched flat flesh-face cover art, doods!! Brought to us by the esoteric rock gurus at Holy Mountain, what does this Musk sound (or smell) like exactly? Well, it's not metal, even though the cover art could be, and some of the vocals veer into almost guttural death metal territory, too. It IS hella noisy, a real reverb-damaged noiserock overload of an album, with much drum kit bashing, guitar/amp smashing, vocal spit splashing, you know, sheer deranged rockin' madness, bathed in distortion - part pigfuck noise, part blues rawk thwump, part fuzzed out garage punk (this wuz recorded by a guy who has twisted knobs for Ty Segall and Thee Oh Sees, as Holy Mountain helpfully points out). So imagine the drunk, bad-trippin', evil twin to one of those acts, crawlling C.H.U.D.-style out of the sewers of downtown NYC or somewhere Down Under (though they're from right here in the Bay Area, and feature a former member of a band called Tractor Sex Fatality from up in Seattle or someplace.) These eleven killer cuts are remarkably catchy considering the chaos in which they are couched. Cool!! Lives up to the awesome, unpleasant cover art. Includes download.

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SORRY. I see Mr. Jones got himself a copy of the Conet Project. The creepy numbers station broadcasts found on the infamous Conet release work very well with Muslimgauze's Arabic rhythms. As "Baghdad" progresses, Muslimgauze shifts course from one of his more standard sounds to UK digidub layered with funky basslines (!!!) and scratchy static. A different take on the prolific Muslimgauze, but a good one.

With so many Muslimgauze releases, finding one with as much history / trivia associated with it is a rarity. Both "Coup D'Etat" and "Abu Nidal" were released on Bryn Jones' Limited Editions Records on vinyl in the late 80s and were compiled for the first release on Soleilmoon. That aside, these pieces represented the earliest documents of a mature Muslimgauze with the insistant tension of Jones' Arabic percussion and dark synthetic washes representing the last remnants of an industrial past.

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SORRY. "Gun Aramaic" finds Muslimgauze in one of his darker moments, sinking the trademarked Arabic percussive hypnosis deep within arid digital dub atmospherics. If you're asking, this is one of really good ones.

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SORRY. As you may know Bryn Jones (the mastermind behind the hyper-prolific Muslimgauze) died in January, 1999 of complications from a rare fungal infection. In spite of his passing, the huge backlog of material that he left behind ensures that the constant stream of Muslimgauze releases continues to remain, well, constant. With that said, "The Inspirational Sounds Of Muslimgauze" is not anything new, rather it is a 'best of' compilation from his late period Staalplaat recordings - including tracks from "Mullah Said," "Izlamaphobia," "Fatah Guerilla," and "Azzazin." While those four albums do not constitute a broad cross-section of Muslimgauze's 150 records, they do provide an excellent introduction (or refresher course) into this period of work. With sly production techniques, Muslimgauze deftly transforms a variety of Arabic percussive instruments into complex dub electronica grooves that mostly steer clear of recognizable rhythmic structures. One caveat: while Universal Egg did pick some great tracks, their graphic design aesthetic leaves a lot to be desired...

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This is a third and unlimited pressing of "Maroon" which had previously enjoyed rather fancy, strictly limited packaging in its previous incarnations back in 1995. "Maroon" remains one of the stronger Muslimgauze albums, or at least representative of some of Muslimgauze's strongest work. Vast ambience culled from sitar and organ drones tuned to Arabic cadences, dappled with indeterminant Arabic radio samples and dub inspired techno crafted from tabla rhythms and thick hovering basslines. MPEG Download: "Track 7" [/audio/muslimgauzemaroon7.mp3]

MPEG stream: Track 7

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Another posthumous release from Muslimgauze, "Uzbekistani Bizarre And Souk" is a caustic album of Arabic percussion contorted to fit into disjointed breakbeats and hypnotic electronic grooves. Originally released as a DAT (yes, a DAT only release!) from Staalplaat about 10 years ago, this disc also features a couple of selections from "Islamaphobia" an comes in a beautifully letter-pressed packagaing. Limited to 1000 copies.

RealAudio clip: Rouge Amin Fraction
RealAudio clip: The Iranian Who Found Allah

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They may be called Soft Pack now, but at one point they were called the Muslims, and were touted to be the next big thing. And like the recent Soft Pack 12", this lp makes it abundantly clear just why, a killer mix of indie jangle, and snarly, snarky post punk, the most obvious comparison is the Strokes, the opener here "Right And Wrong" definitely sounds like it could be a Strokes B-side, heck, who are we kidding, an A-SIDE!!! Catchy, and super rocking, a little bit lo-fi, but totally hooky and a little bit irresistible. If the Soft Pack record shows the band stretching out their sound, this reissue of the Muslims's self titled debut finds the band still searching for a direction all their own, still cribbing liberally from their heroes, and hell doing it as well if not better. Another super obscure reference, that definitely infuses the Muslims' sound whether they know it or not would be long lost lo-fi blues pop combo Railroad Jerk, the same sort of stripped down sound, drawled vox, simple, pounding and hooky. A little Stooges here and there for sure, but screw it, the Strokes thing is pretty much unavoidable, so if you dig that sort of thing, which hell, we most definitely do, then you'll dig this. And if you do end up digging this, check out Soft Pack, and see where these guys eventually took this totally satisfying if somewhat unoriginal sound. The original record is augmented by some singles tracks tacked on (which were originally on a bonus cd that came with the original release), which are even better than the record proper. Cool gatefold sleeve, with printed insert, download code, and holes that were shot in the sleeve with a .22 caliber pistol!!

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MPEG stream: Home In The Mountain Valley

[ aquarius records catalogue — M ]