[ aquarius records catalogue

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Showing results 351 through 400 of 3006.

Killer two way doom split, the A side, from witchy Idaho heavies Uzala and the B side from Texan sludgelords Mala Suerte. Uzala are another band you can add to the current crop of female fronted doom outfits, fans of Loon, and Royal Thunder and Jex Thoth and all the rest will most definitely dig these guys and gal, the riffs a little bit Sabbathy, the sound dirgey and sludgey, vocalist Darcy's got a wicked croon, the track heavy and a little bit psychedelic, definitely has us wanting to hear more. The flipside finds Mala Suerte pushing their doom into a more psychedelic realm, opening with swirling psych leads over some laid back slo-mo doom. But it's the vocals where things get really weird, almost folky, delivered in a gruff, sing songy monotone, sort of OM style, but more like some twisted doom metal sea shanty. Weird, but for sure kinda cool. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!

Took us a little while to get around to reviewing it, but we ARE excited about this, the third album from Bristol UK duo Malachai, a band originally championed by Geoff Barrow of Portishead, who released their debut on his Invada label (and plays drums on one cut here). We LOVED that album, The Ugly Side Of Love, as well as its follow-up Return To The Ugly Side, and now this one too, Beyond Ugly. The methodology on all their albums is the same - using loops and samples, as well as their own live instruments, they make beautiful (not ugly) music that sounds like a mashup of paisley '60s psych pop and proggy '70s acid rock. Retro sounds, modern technology. Fuzzy guitars, groovy organ, subtle electronic embellishments, junkshop record crackle, killer breakbeats, all stitched together DJ Shadow Endtroducing-style, tracks that are either super catchy or super moody (or both), but with sing-song melodies carried forth by the vocals, from one half of the duo, which are delivered in a sometimes soft, sometimes raspy, distinctively English "'Allo, guv'nah!" voice. The dozen cuts on this new disc run the gamut, from dreamy mellow pop to hard rock groove, several almost sounding like they could be off of one of those "Electric Asylum" compilations of vintage glammy, proggy "Rare British Freakrock", if you didn't know better. The two songs here with credited samples borrow from Bollywood and The Stranglers, though, demonstrating Malachai's inspirations range far and wide. Like their previous efforts, we're totally sold. Love it! Maybe only hardcore aQuarius customers who always read our list will 'get' this comparison, but if you can imagine a hybrid of When (circa Lobster Boys) and White Stripes, Malachai are somewhere in there. Of course, if you're that much of an aQ customer, you probably already have the other Malachai albums and know you want this one too!

MPEG stream: Sweet Flower
MPEG stream: Holes
MPEG stream: Down To Earth

Last year's Ugly Side Of Love, the debut from UK sampledelic duo Malachai, was a surprise hit around here, we loved it from the second we first heard it, we just didn't realize HOW much. We ended up playing it to death, and it ranked as one of our favorites of the year, so much so that we found ourselves lamenting the fact that we didn't make it a Record Of The Week. Which it no doubt should have been, a dizzying assemblage of samples and proper instruments, woven into what sounded like some some lost seventies retro rock, proto metal, fuzzy, groovy, heavy psych jam, and barring some little bits of obviously electronic filigree, it totally could have been. So we were super psyched to discover a new record, and while on first listen, it doesn't sound -quite- as catchy as their debut, the more we listen, the better it gets, and we're pretty sure we'll find ourselves obsessed and kicking ourselves all over again. But whatever, just don't sleep on this, so fuzzy, and heavy and groovy and goddamn good. And strange. Simultaneously warm and familiar, but also like nothing you've heard, from the super cinematic opener "Monster", a string heavy bit of dramatic ambience, with big skittery beats, and a gorgeous soaring orchestral outro, which leads directly into a heavy shuffling drum beat, laced with some hazy guitar buzz, some swirling atmospheric shimmer, and then some reverby vox, the sound again some impossible hybrid of then and now, past and present, sixties psych wrapped around looped beats, and wreathed in shimmery effects. "Mid Antarctica (Wearin' Sandals)" is super heavy proto metal buzz, the riffs epic, the organs whirring, the bass thick, the beats big, a sort of hip hoppy groove underpinning some serious psych fuzz, occasionally breaking down into ethereal drift, but always lumbering right back into some thick churning heaviness. "Rainbows" is all hazy and reverby and echoey, with gorgeous boy girl vox, the strums muted and washed out, everything wreathed in a patina of soft focus shimmer, and so it goes, the record shifting and transforming, from hushed balladic drift, to shuffling sunshiney hippie folk, to buzzy druggy groove, to piano driven super dramatic creep, to what might be our other favorite track, "Monster" which sounds like DJ Shadow, if he were raised on sixties psych as well as hip hop, epic and bombastic, moody and broody and so good. And it just keeps getting better. The sort of 'psychedelic sixties Entroducing' vibe becomes more pronounced as the record progresses, finishing off with the twangy, woozy buzz drenched strum and shuffle of the closer "Hybernation", pepper with some unlikely boomin' system low rider bass, and yeah, we're kicking ourselves now for not making this Record Of The Week, so just figure this is an UNofficial ROTW, which means this is about as recommended as it gets...

MPEG stream: Monsters
MPEG stream: (My) Ambulance
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This was a total left field surprise, what on the surface appears to be some lost seventies retro rock, proto metal, fuzzy, groovy, heavy jam, is in fact, the work of two electronic musicians who cobbled this disc together via samples, computers, effects and yeah, some actual instruments. We weren't sure how we felt about it at first, but after a few minutes we were pretty much sold. And have been jamming this ever since. For actual seventies proto-metal freaks, and retro reissue obsessives, this could definitely rub you the wrong way, but for the rest of us, who can dig some twisted modern take on the shit we LOVE, then this might totally hit the spot. The guitars are fuzzy, the organs are warm and warbly, plenty of twang, some Morricone-esque moodiness, some rad old hard rock drumming, killer vox, hand claps, plenty of jangle, hooks galore, there are also plenty of rad psychedelic interludes, with twisted backwards guitars, swirling FX, all sorts of primitive electronics and layered collaged sounds, but it's the songs that seal the deal. Super heavy, totally groovy, while to these ears it sounds like classic proto-metal, to some folks around here it sounds more like current retro revivalists like White Stripes, Earl Greyhound, Wolfmother, but this stuff is so much cooler and weirder, the little studio tricks that make certain notes stutter, the samples that are played like an instrument but are still wreathed in record crackle, lots of backwards sounds everywhere, it's like some lost sixties psychedelic hard rock lost gem, reimagined and reinterpreted using modern day technology and it RULES.

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Awesome. A few years ago, some friends of ours -- the Jewelled Antler guys as a matter of fact -- had a once-in-a-lifetime record collector wet dream come true experience while on a day trip up north of San Francisco. They came across some sort of town dump / recycling center place where a whole bunch of old vinyl lps had been left free for the taking. Like, someone's entire record collection! Of course our friends expected to find the usual beat-up Bread, Eagles, Simon and Garfunkel albums, but took a look anyway, just in case... and soon realized they'd stumbled upon a small cache of extremely cool, rare records! Obscure psych rock and free jazz stuff. Terry Riley and Alice Coltrane and even some Yahowha 13 lps!! Lucky bastards. Among the treasures was an album on Verve by someone called Malachi. We got to hear it, were wowed, and ever since have been hoping to find a cd reissue... at last, here it is!! Psychedelic New Age before either terms were widely known or even invented, Holy Music was recorded one late San Francisco evening in 1966 by proto hippie Malachi. While most people consider psychedelic music of this time to be from garage rock bands who used sitars, Holy Music was truly one of the first psychedelic recordings in the way we define that term nowadays, meaning long and druggy, hypnotic, droney and blissed out. These five pieces named Wednesday (the day in which he recorded them) are raga-tinged guitar cycles accompanied by Jews harp, tom toms and meditative chanting, that bridged an eastern ornamentalism with earthy western counter-cultural invention. Malachi was the Animal Collective of his day. Allen Ginsberg was a big fan, and if you like your psychedelia to be both dreamy, drifty and earthy then we're sure you'll be big fans of Malachi too. Recommended!!!

MPEG stream: Wednesday - Second
MPEG stream: Wednesday - Fifth

Sprawling double disc of self described 'other planetary field drone' from this mysterious Aussie duo featuring members of doomsludge heavies Whitehorse, avant noisemakers Bone Sheriff, and grey metallers Krystoffkrvstoffiston, one disc of collected tracks (hence the title), the other disc a 'collaborative' collage put together by Malakat, and made up entirely of an unreleased collaboration between the now defunct Grey Daturas and the also now defunct Yellow Swans, but more on that in a second. The collected tracks disc, gathers up various jams from the last few years, all of them hushed and minimal and mysterious, strange dronescapes of abstract ambience and microscopic events, field recordings and performances, long stretches of creak and whir and thrum and rumble, laced with mysterious voices, fragments of melodies, a sound somewhere between the free forest clatter of Avarus, the ritualistic black abstraction of Abruptum and the free sonic exploration of A Handful Of Dust. Long streaks of feedback, overloaded mics, monstrous howls, low end crumble, whirring layers of glitch and hum, washed out hazy shimmer laid over murky sonar mumbles and muted clatter and clank, doomy crumbling rhythms pulled apart into sprawling industrial blurs, all smeared into creepy hushed black ambient drifts, and groaning, creaking, whispery abstract free noise minimalism. The second disc, finds Malakat assembling somewhat similar sounds, but using only a recording of the Yellow Swans and Grey Daturas from 2006 as source material, and according to the liner notes: "pots, pipes, a clay skull and a wooden tube". And it sort of sounds like it. Sort of. Ultra minimal, abstract and ambient, stretches of what sound like alien field recordings give way huge heaving swells of crumbling buzz, squalls of roiling blacknoize splinter into full on drum freakouts and blurred drone jams, deep cavernous rumbles explode into jagged shards of hissing static and beastly vocal mewling, gorgeous blown out swells of chordal whir dissipate into chiming metal-buzz minimalism, these lengthy bursts of sonic energy, which actually don't sound all that messed with, more like they're just straight up recordings of GD and YS rocking out,, but those blowouts are all separated by short interludes of barely there shimmer and hazy muted drift. Killer stuff. On bad ass Australian label Sweatlung, and most likely crazy limited...

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It always seemed a little odd that during the past couple of years, a series of unlikely remixes of Malaria! had been popping up from Sun Electric, Dr. Motte, Westbam, Chain Reaction's Moritz Von Oswald, and the reprehensible Chicks on Speed (all of this due Malaria! is clearly dated from the early '80s and sometimes shows their age. But I'll take Malaria! over Le Tigre any day.

RealAudio clip: Kaltes Klares Wasser
RealAudio clip: Macht
RealAudio clip: Tod
RealAudio clip: Your Turn To Run

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

SORRY.

We raved about Malcolm's most recent lp not too long ago, Swimming In It, a lovely disc of neo-Appalachian Fahey worship. More of that steel string swoon and twang we love so much. But it seems like Malcolm realized that maybe this whole modern Appalachia movement was getting a bit crowded, especially for someone with Malcolm's experimental tendencies, so he took his guitar, actually his guitars plural, and struck out on his own to make the singularly strange and absolutely lovely Hung. Released on fellow New Zealander Campbell Kneale's Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label, Hung is a series of solo simultaneously played multiple guitar performances. Did you get that? Multiple guitars, all played at once by the same player. No processing or effects, just a bunch of guitars. Some contact mic-ed, some with extra strings and springs and things, one at his side, one at his feet, one in his lap. And wow is this strange and beautiful. From the opening track of chiming twinkling melodies with the guitars somehow sounding just like bells, to the percussive pluck of "Drops" with the guitar sounding like a marimba, a spare and spacious slow motion meander, to the raga-like "The Bells" with one guitar offering up a sitar like buzz, one acting as a sort of scraping percussion, while the other shimmers and glistens. Other tracks sound like clangy and clanky mechanical music, others like washed out indie jangle and strum, while others are almost doomlike in their acoustic dirginess. There's even a Steve Lacy cover, totally and wonderfully transformed. Absolutely amazing, must be a wonder to see these pieces performed live too...

MPEG stream: Ghost From The Past
MPEG stream: Hung

A warm drift of buzzing steel strings, chiming overtones, plenty of space, darkly delicate melodies. New Zealander Greg Malcolm throws his hat into the fast growing Fahey worship / neo-psych-folk ring, but manages to completely mesmerize with his unique take on that droning abstract psychedelic folk we love so much. A rich, meandering, minor key exploration of the guitar and the space that surrounds it. Chords are picked apart, releasing a note at a time and allowing each note to drift lazily toward your ears, occasionally brushing by another note creating a brief harmonic flourish, but just as often continuing on its solitary path like a single ripple in a pond. Gentle strums, and rumbling drones, drift and intertwine like sperate plumes of smoke, the barriers between the two becoming indistinct and leaving us with a dark and drifty lovliness. Recorded completely live with no overdubs, Swimming In It will obviously please fans of Jack Rose, Matt Valentine, James Blackshaw, Charlie Schmidt and all that abstract free folk psych and avant Appalachia, but there's plenty of dreamy droniness to please the rest of you as well!

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

SORRY.

Sometimes it's hard to know exactly what to say about a record. Especially a black metal record. Sure it buzzes and it's grim and frosty, there are fuzzy guitars, blasting drums. But it's in the way each of those elements are employed that make the music special. French one man black metal outfit Malcuidant takes those most obvious of black metal sounds and whip them into a truly mesmerizing swirl of Burzumic black metal. One of the coolest things about Malcuidant is the drummer, who can unleash a wicked blazing fast blast beat, as well as a dizzying double kick, but the double kick only comes in here and there, so a keening riff will buzz in the upper register for ages, almost like the band is being broadcast through a transistor radio, when all of a sudden a flurry of double kick will bring in a fucking wall of low end that is like a demonic black bulldozer grinding your bones to dust. And just as quick as they swooped in, they fade out, leaving more keening tinny black metal high end. But don't get the wrong idea, this is not a tinny lo-fi black metal, no not at all, L'Hymne de la Ghilde is a total blur of warm thick buzz, it just gets even heavier and thicker when the wall of double kicks drops in. But it's not just the drums, the guitars are insane and lightning fast as well, with the band occasionally dropping out to let a little riff or lick twist and squirm in space before the band drops back in with a pummelling wave of blasting blackness. And finally the vocals, a inhuman tortured shrieking VERY reminiscent of Weakling, sprawled above the spiked bed of prickly fuzz, the anguished wailing another thick sonic layer in the Malcuidant's bubbling black brew. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES. ALREADY OUT OF PRINT AT THE LABEL. WE HAVE ABOUT 20 COPIES...

MPEG stream: Tristesse
MPEG stream: Invasions Impies

The self-titled debut release from Malditos is a minimal and dark synthesizer driven ep filled peppered with some unlikely but super awesome electric tablas! Because most of the songs are sung in French you might be tempted to think this is a slab of obscure European '80s gothic vinyl reissued by Dark Entries; but no, this Oakland, CA band is comprised of current or former members of Swann Danger, The Phantom Limbs, and Black Ice. The aforementioned tablas and Eastern scales recall more than a few of the moodier aspects of Dead Can Dance, but there's also echoes of Rowland S. Howard's angular phased guitar work. The record is quite heavy, the two synths proving a driving and repetitive low end while occasionally swirling around the upper registers. As previously mentioned, three out of the four vocal tracks are in French. Pretty much the only French word you need to know, however, is "Noir". When listening to lyrics in a foreign (to this reviewer) language, what is said is less important than how it's sung and Cyn M. does an excellent job of setting a brooding and dark mood with her powerful vibrato. The last track is an almost industrialized cover of Serge Gainsbourg's "Requiem Por Un C..." (sung in French, of course). Limited to 259 hand numbered copies, this record is sure to go fast.

MPEG stream: La Nuit Noir
MPEG stream: Burning Eyes
MPEG stream: Requiem Por Un C...

A collaboration between Mike Patton (Mr. Bungle, Faith No More, Fantomas) and Masami Akita (Merzbow). This is actually quite listenable, considering their combined propensity for annoyance. Playful and downright giddy Noise!

Newest release from these mysterious Italian black metallers, who recently have evolved into a more sort of avant industrial experimental outfit, albeit with black tendencies. Much in the way Ulver transformed from grim buzz to moody cinematic ambience, Thee Maldoror Kollective have almost entirely shed their black metal skin, revealing a strange metallic skeleton and a circulatory system of buzz and glitch, beats and samples.� Only�the most adventurous black metallers will dare tread here, four tracks from the soundtrack to a Spanish movie called Proxima, sounding a bit like Skinny Puppy crossed with Muslimgauze, crunchy grinding beats, glitched out electronics, snippets of Eastern melodies and female vocals, little chunks of skittery breakbeats, haunting stereo ambience, record crackle, and creepy synth melodies, and that's just the first song. Epic and cinematic, haunting and mysterious.� The other three tracks are just as leftfield, a symphony of beeps and buzzes, snippets of voices, crunchy guitar way down in the mix, processed into sort of industrial grooves, more Skinny beats, shuffling Boards Of Canada style electronica, new wavey synths, moaning mournful strings, tablas, operatic vocals, skipping skittering chopped up loops, exotic tribal percussion... Quite dizzying, an intense immersive listen that definitely leaves us wanting to see whatever crazy film these sounds could possibly be designed to accompany.� Included at the end are two older tracks, remixed and revamped, not sure what they sounded like before, but they've been modernized and minimalized, the first one sounds like some sort of Chain Reaction heroin house, that builds into some synth Euro Kompakt groove, with swooning synths, and all manner of robotic glitches and bleeps, while the second is super creepy and ambient, all high end shimmer and ominous drones, sort of Hitchcockian and John Carpenterian, with a distant heartbeat like pulse, and disembodied minor key melodies. Definitely a weird one, no metal to be found here, but still pretty awesome. Fans of later Ulver will definitely dig, as will folks into abstract electronica, weird mood music and creepy soundtracks...

The debut from these UK noise poppers had to be one of the biggest surprises of last year, a killer collection of grungy, fuzzy pop, equal parts indie jangle, blown out heaviness and fuzzy garage rock, loads of hooks, plenty of oooh's and aaah's, it most definitely gets loads of play STILL, and "All Things This Way", the 'hit' of that record, is definitely still on heavy rotation with most of the pop kids we know. So we were super excited about a new record, a new batch of perfect pop, of noisy garage pop gems, and heck, whattayaknow, that's just what we got. There have been some grumbles about the group's new softer sound, and yeah, some of the rough edges have been smoothed out, the vocals too, much more crooned, sorta what you might expect from a band with their second go 'round'. And actually, we think it definitely suits them. Just give opener "Tame The Sun" a listen, and odds are you'll be smitten, sweetly melodic jangle, dreamy vocals a killer hook, some rad guitar, not to mention a super strange but weirdly subtle stuttery tempo change that pops up now and again, it's pretty goddamn great. As is the rest of the record. No huge reinventions, no dramatic shifts in songwriting, but then that's not really what we were after anyway. The sound is different enough that it's not a total rehash, but similar enough that our hankering for a Nothing Hurts part 2 is more then fulfilled, and really all we were hoping for is another great indie rock noise pop record which is precisely what this is, and like the first, the more we listen, the better it gets, and the more obsessed we get with all of these songs. A new pop fave for sure! Like the first record, fans of the Lemonheads and Weezer and Guided By Voices will be just as psyched on this as fans of Thee Oh Sees, Ty Segall, Royal Baths and all the rest...

MPEG stream: Tame The Sun
MPEG stream: Carrying
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If we had to describe these guys in as few words as possible, we could probably do it in three: Dum Dum Boys. Or maybe even two: Vivian Boys. Yep, that's basically what Male Bonding are all about, yet another group carving out their own little chunk of sound in the ever dwindling sonic territory that makes up the current explosion of hazy lo-fi fuzz drenched reverby garage pop, but like the Vivian Girls (who guest on a track here) and the Dum Dum Girls, Male Bonding too manage to rise above, using lots of the same elements, but crafting a sound all their own. Sure they borrow from everybody, few modern bands don't, but their mix of Weezer and Guided By Voices, the Lemonheads, classic pop punk and nineties indie rock, all filtered through a the now sound of retro leaning warped garage rock, makes Nothing Hurts a serious contender for pop record of the year. And it's all about the songs, the band deftly slip from crunchy feral punky garage rock, to totally infectious heavily hooky, power chord power, pop and back again, before exploding into another post punky workout that sounds like some obscure Polvo B-side. And when they team up with the Vivian Girls, one might expect a woozy, gauzy, reverb drenched sixties style Spector-ized wall of sound chunk of garage pop, but instead, it's an almost entirely acoustic jam, just guitar and vocals, with the Vivian Girls' contributing occasional "oooohs" and "ahhhhs", and then there's an unexpected bit of hazy washed out shoe gazey distorted guitar fuzz, before they slip right back into some dreamy druggy strum. And that's sort of what's so great about the record, on the surface, it's fuzzy and punky and poppy, and all the folks into Ty Segall and Thee Oh Sees and Gary War and of course Dum Dum Girls, will dig it right out of the gate, but spend some time with it, and it ends up revealing itself as so much more, a super smart, surprisingly complex, crazy catchy chunk of classic sounding indie pop / post rock crunch.

MPEG stream: Year's Not Long
MPEG stream: All Things This Way
MPEG stream: Your Contract
MPEG stream: Worse To Come (Featuring Vivian Girls)

Metal Archives, the go to site for metal info, a sort of metal Wikipedia, lists 348 metal bands from Turkey, none of which we'd heard, or even really heard of, until now. Malefic Order, who besides being from Turkey, have one of the coolest metal logos ever, their name rendered in the shape of a helmeted horned demon, with a pentagram on its forehead and an impaled skull atop its helmet. Recorded to praise Euronymous and Dead of Mayhem, Raging Evil Desekration could not be more appropriately titled, everything about these songs is raging and evil, raw and buzzy, obviously heavily indebted to the Nordic elite, these songs merge epic and majestic with raw and primitive, the result a relentless buzz drenched thrash flecked slab of frosty black mayhem, nothing overtly weird or fucked up, although there are some cool arrangements and weird creepy melodies here and there, this is more about the sound and the vibe and the spirit, every single note and drum beat, every blasting buzz oozes evil, the vokills some of the rawest and most intense we've heard, the riffing frenetic often slipping into dangerously catchy territory before exploding again into a blazing blur, the drums super heavy and powerful, the whole sound just ultra raw, super intense, pitch black and very very evil.

An excellent bit of black noise and somber ambience found here! Maleficia is the East Bay duo of A.C. Way and Ilysea Simpson, who craft spectral noises from a small arsenal of junked electronics accompanying voice and violin. The band's name is defined as the curse that witches were thought to inflict upon people or farm animals as acts of revenge through their pacts with the dark forces, and the album's title alludes to the mid-summer Celtic festival whose ancillary is the more well-known Samhain. As one might imagine, a rather ghostly veil of shadow and Iron Age mysticism abound in the work of this Maleficia. Out of an initial fug of gravel-throated noise which decays into an overarching atmosphere of nocturnal desolation, the two interlace a series of loops from those aforementioned instruments which come together as an arc which moves from the misanthropic electronics of early Maurizio Bianchi toward the hallowed collages of Current 93 by way of Phillip Jeck. Easily the best material that Maleficia have set to recorded media to date, but alas this clocks in at a brief 16 minutes.

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Maleficia is the work of Bay Area noise artist Andy Way (French Radio, NF Orchest) and avant-vocalist Ilysea Simpson. Their debut cd-r begins with an evocative wordless vocalization from Simpson conjuring the likes of Christina Carter and Jarboe in decontextualizing Southern hymns away from their spiritual intent and toward the raw emotional expression of just voice. After about five or six minutes of a capella delivery, Simpson's duet with Way begins as he gradually unleashes a torrent of tactile noise, all bathed in reverb, which somewhat mutes the sharpness of the distortion, static, and turbulant noise. As her voice becomes more processed and takes on more shrill characterists alongside Way's caustic noise, Maleficia begin to resemble the volatile noise and voice couplings of Fe-Mail to remarkable results. Stitched paper artwork completes this limited edition production of which we only have a handful.

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Oud Vibrations is a killer compilation collecting two rare records from the late fifties, which found two different groups incorporating the oud into their more standard instrumentation, in a quest for new, strange and exotic sounds. Most folks have seen an oud, even if they weren't sure what it was called - the body is pear shaped, with a short neck, and a strange bent head stock, the liner notes describe it as looking like a 'sawn off psychedelic guitar', which is pretty spot on. The instrument was prominent in lots of Middle Eastern music, as well as some Greek, Armenian and African music, it has a very distinctive sound, one that like the sitar, many Western musicians found super appealing, as much for its sound, as its exotic and spiritual connotations. Both the records included here are pretty great, but Ahmed Abdul Malik's East Meets West is the main reason to pick this up, the sound a fantastic spiritual/modal jazz, hypnotic and pulsing, the playing incredible, the arrangements lush, and the sound truly exotic and original, with a serious band backing him up, including Lee Morgan on trumpet, among others. There are a few more standard jazz numbers, but the majority of the record is heavily Eastern influenced, driven by dense percussion, and another equally exotic instrument, the Darabeka. Fans of the Spiritual Jazz series, as well as reissues from Lloyd McNeill, Lloyd Miller, P.E. Hewitt and the rest will find Malik's record absolutely essential. Charles 'Chick' Ganimian's Come With Me To The Casbah, has a bit more of a novelty vibe to it, but still has much to offer, the opener "Oriental Jam" lives up to its title, groovy, and soulful, exotic and spiritual, but then the cover of "Over The Rainbow", played on the oud of course, is a little bit kitschy. As is much of the record, but delightfully so. "Daddy Lolo" was the big hit, and is a vocal driven groover, with the cringeworthy line "This is Oriental rock and roll" delivered in a weird, heavily accented croon. Novelty hit for sure. But then there's the title track, which is a killer East/West hybrid, groovy and soulful, and very exotic sounding, so much so that it was apparently used as background music for an episode of the sixties TV show The Man From UNCLE. There's also the closer "Nine Eight" which is another fantastic blast of Eastern jazz that is as wild and wonderful on Malik's East Meets West. Both albums are pretty fantastic, each in its own way, there's extensive liner notes included as well, that give a brief overview of the history of the oud in jazz, as well as some info on both of the records.

MPEG stream: E-Lali (The Night)
MPEG stream: La Ilbky (Don't Cry)
MPEG stream: Takseem (Solo)
MPEG stream: Oriental Jam
MPEG stream: Over The Rainbow
MPEG stream: Come With Me To The Casbah

If you find yourself feelin' the need to skip past the first song on Stephen Malkmus' latest solo effort, you're not alone. There was an audible "uh oh" in the store when we put this on for a first listen. There's something to be said for keeping things fresh and current, but the first song on Stephen Malkmus' third solo album just seems like he leapt aboard the hipster dance-rock bandwagon as it swung through his town. The somewhat awkward song's very un-Malkmus tempo, rhythm, synth details and overall feel are surprisingly ripe for a remix treatment, tho'. We wouldn't be at all surprised if this surfaces on a DJ deck sometime soon. That said, fortunately he doesn't linger too long in the vicinity of the dancefloor, venturing out into other musical zones, but always returns to the comfy indie rock stylings that his fans know and love. It actually seems like Malkmus got pooped out trying new things 'cause as the album draws to a close he reverts back to more of that familiar Pavement brand of slouchy slacker indie rock.

MPEG stream: Pencil Rot
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The second EP from Mr. Malkmus. The title track can be found on his recent solo debut album, but the other three tracks were recorded live in Germany. And what are they? Well, they're three covers of songs by Black Oak Arkansas, Coloured Balls and Greg Sage.

Pavement is no more, yet Stephen Malkmus is making another go at it, as a solo artist (as if everybody didn't know that Pavement was basically his project anyway). His debut album is a marked improvement from the last couple of Pavement records, but this still doesn't break Indie-Rock Rule #326: 'the only good Pavement is early Pavement'. By the way Indie-Rock Rule #325 is '500,000 Slint fans can't be wrong', and Indie-Rock Rule #327 is 'Thrift store slacks will never go out of style.'

Actually very nice new indierock album from former Pavement frontman. His half spoken / half sung delivery is, for some reason, not nearly as annoyingly eccentric as on later Pavement records (hey it's just my opinion!). This is an album strong on songwriting and hooks, immediately accessible and inoffensive. Cool in a happy-go-lucky sort of way. I know this review sounds like I was totally expecting the worst, and ok I *was*, but then, how nice that it turns out to be so good. Recommended. Limited edition first pressing comes in digipak with extra disc containing five bonus tracks. If you want this extra edition, don't wait! MPEG Download: "(Do Not Feed the) Oyster" [/audio/malkmusoyster.mp3] MPEG Stream: "(Do Not Feed the) Oyster" [/audio/malkmusoyster.m3u]

MPEG stream: (Do Not Feed the) Oyster
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When it's all said and done hundreds of years into the future when some kid goes online to whatever search engine is in vogue then and types in 'indie-rock' the first thing that will pop up is a picture of Stephen Malkmus. His legacy with Pavement has spawned countless wannabe's trying their best to get to that clever and effortless zenith that Malkmus perfected, which most or all of his imitators will never get close to. Make no mistake, he might always make it seem easy but Malkmus is one incredible guitar player and he's flexing his chops big time on this, his latest outing, with expanded jams, dabbles into prog and who would have thought that the indie rockers and hippies would one day merge as you can also tell that Malkmus has been digging on some Dead as of late. Real Emotional Trash is the first Jicks album with Janet Weiss of Sleater Kinney fame a full fledged member on the drums and there is no denying the proficiency of the playing on Real Emotional Trash. While his guitar and vocal stylings are instantly recognizable, we almost get the feeling that Malkmus didn't have much to say with words on this record and even though he is so known for his clever word play we found ourselves much more on board during the instrumental moments of these songs and a little less concerned with what he was singing about. But all in all another solid outing from the reluctant king of indie-rock.

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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.

"What is indie rock?" Perhaps one day that question will win a contestant on Jeopardy a ton of money. And chances are the answer would be, a style and approach to music perfected and exemplified by Stephen Malkmus and his '90s band Pavement. Yes the words 'indie-rock' and 'Malkmus' pretty much go hand in hand, and we've got to say that all these years later the old Pavement records are still sounding so great, and his solo releases have been not half bad either. This time out, Malkmus teams up with Beck, who was called on to produce Mirror Traffic. After working with Thurston Moore on his latest, Demolished Thoughts, this time around Beck got the opportunity to work with another one of his heroes. We wonder if Matador has Beck on their payroll now, but damn we've been pretty impressed with Beck, the producer. Though, this record is still very much the sound and vision of Stephen Malkmus. While there's no doubt both Beck and Malkmus, have strong, confident egos, we would never expect Malkmus to let go of control of his patented sound. The album is for sure the most peppy and poppy post-Pavement outing yet. While some of his more recent albums have found him striving for a bombastic psych approach, Mirror Traffic finds Malkmus remembering hooks, clever word play and catchy melodies better then almost any other songwriter around. We can imagine this record was a lot of fun to make, as he seems to have let go of any grandiose musical pretension, and got to the core of what he does best. In fact the last few songs on here, had us thinking we were hearing some rad unreleased Pavement tracks. Indie rock is still alive and well in 2011!

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As if those guys in No Neck Blues Band weren't prolific enough, we've now got the mighty Malkuth to contend with, a killer grim black metal combo featuring a couple of No Necks in their ranks. And this is not a case of NY hipsters slumming, this is the real deal, grim and buzzing, classic sounding old school blackness. Think Moonblood, Beherit, that sort of thing... Dense slabs of primitive buzz, simple and mostly midtempo, guitars murky and muddy, the drums buried in the mix, but peppered with soaring epic classic metal melodies. Occasionally the band will burst into full on blackness, but even at their fastest, it's still more of a lurching punk rock sort of blast, thrashy and on the verge of collapse. The vocals are super distorted and buried way down in the mix. Everything super lo-fi, a definite demo-tape style production that just adds to the grim / kvlt vibe, this really sounds like it could be some Norwegian or Finnish basement recording from the nineties. From pounding punky blasts, to loping midtempo buzz to epic minor key doom, everything dripping in blackness, distorted and buzzing and fucking awesome. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES! Packaged in super thick black on grey heavy cardstock sleeves, with cool cryptic artwork.

It might be a bit misleading to begin this review with "Featuring members of the No Neck Blues Band..." Or maybe not, if anyone is aware of that band's connections to the metal world. Either way, there is no denying that Malkuth is pure metal - evil, overwhelmingly negative sounding black metal at that. Hailing from New York, Malkuth whip up a frenzied hurricane of hateful unrelenting rage that continues without pause for the whole trip. Considering the band's pedigree, we were surprised at how NOT weird this turned out to be, and quite honestly, it's awesome to have a band that bypasses all the trappings of "experimental" black metal and just fucking goes for the throat, old school style. This is not to say that there aren't any surprises, and Malkuth display a winding melodic (but still super evil) sense that has the metalheads here losing their shit. Maybe it's just that these guys take some of the outside influences that supposedly differentiate many of today's black metal bands - moments of plodding post-rock spaciousness, lumbering doomscapes, etc. - and make them unapologetically black metal. The grating vocals are right out of the book of Darkthrone, while the furious, punkish riffs and straightforward but powerful drumming are surprisingly "true". Keeping with traditions, Malkuth expertly emphasize awesome, pukey sounding guitars, each one contributing perfectly complementary parts to the potent riffage, making it so you don't even give a shit that there is no bass - this IS black metal, remember? It's always great to have a band seemingly appear out of thin air and pummel you with their world ending fury, especially when they conjure those fundamental elements which made you become obsessed with a certain type of music in the first place. Keeping an eye on the past but no doubt in a world of their own creation, Malkuth take a tried and true approach and make it completely worthwhile and refreshing... if "refreshing" is the word you want to use to describe Sefirah Gevurah. We are just going to go ahead and assume you are like us. In that respect, you may have just stumbled upon one of your new favorite albums.

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With feet firmly set in the fevered footsteps of the late great VSS, as well as perhaps later Man Or Astro-Man, and The Fall, SF post-post-punkers The Mall have been raising a party ruckus around town for the last couple years. Following up their well received First, Before And Never Again vinyl 12" from earlier this year, this is their riotous debut full length. The cd version is self-released and the vinyl was released by a friend of theirs, but this album would be right at home on the current Gold Standard Laboratories label roster. On Emergency At The Everyday, The Mall keep their teeth sharp and a fire in their hearts. They tear through the thirteen churning spewsome tracks like there's no tomorrow. All except one is under two minutes long, and the exception is the final track which is -gasp!- downright pretty! Raw, splattery and a bit crusty.

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Phew, this is one furious fuzzed out blast or RAWK! Local rockers The Mall offer up 4 short sharp tracks of trashy garagey new wave artrock fuzz and splatter. Taking an arsenal of sounds formerly employed by the rosters of GSL and Gravity records and giving them a 21st century makeover, The Mall, take jangly angular guitars fuzzy warbly casio keyboards, yelped distorted vocals and BIG bloopy Gang Of Four bass. In fact the thick throbbing bass is what hold this all together. And gives it a sort of dancepunk vibe. But this isn't shiny and well coiffed, no this is dirty and noisy, scummy and crusty, Like Interpol if they were taken into an alley, roughed up a bit, hair mussed, suits ripped, soiled and dirtied, and forced to play through broken old amps and hand me down guitars and keyboards held together with duct tape. Super chaotic, wild and aggro, but subtly funky. So if the current wave of artpunk, dancepunk, electro whatever is just a little too smart and smooth, crisp and clean for you... The Mall would be more than happy to take you out back and show you a thing or two. Packaged in a cool hand silkscreened blue, white and maroon sleeve, with an equally cool matching insert.

A while back we reviewed a compilation of early Finnish experimental music called Arktinen Hysteria, that documented the lively scene there in the sixties and seventies, from playful goofy sound manipulation, to austere soundscapes, hand built instruments, vocal experimentations, freaked out avant rock and more. A pretty amazing document, that unfortunately seems to be unavailable lately. Not long after we reviewed it, a Finnish label contacted us with an entire album from one of the artists on the comp, by the name of J.O. Mallander. To be totally honest, at the time we couldn't remember who was who and which tracks were Mallander's, since by that time the comp had been gone for a while, but we figured that folks loved that comp so much that a whole record by Mallander, regardless of which tracks were his would be amazing. So we got the discs in and they looked amazing, gorgeous eight panel silkscreened sleeve, with totally confusing but eminently readable liner notes form Leif Elggren, and two front covers depending on which way you held it, since it compiled two different sets of pieces. We decided to listen to Extended Play first, two pieces, one from 1962, one from 1968. The first track begins with Mallander repeating a single word over and over. And over. And over. Well, weird. Skip to the end of the first track, still repeating that same word, over and over and over. Okay, we'll go to the second track. Hmmm. Same word. Over and over. Obviously being 'performed' live as you can hear throat clearing and seat shifting and foot shuffling. Wow. 13 minutes of the same word, repeated over and over in a deadpan monotone. Slowly shifting in pitch and inflection, but very, um. similar. But stick with us, after those tracks, which have now grown on us quite a bit, this becomes a super cool, super weird, and totally primitive turntablist / plunderphonic / mashup record. The majority of Decompositions, the pieces that make up the second half of the disc, is manipulated vinyl lps, 78's, 7"s, all tweaked and affected and fucked with. A series of smokey jazz records are slowed way down, pitch shifted up and down, up and down, warbling and wobbling, woozy and dizzyingly soothing, like listening to old jazz 78's through a funhouse mirror, melodies stumble clumsily into each other and pile one on top of another, jostling to return to some normal speed, some semblance of regular jazz, but continue to weave drunkenly, seasick and sleepy, drunken and druggy. Not all that different than stuff we've heard Kid Koala and other modern turntablists do which is pretty amazing. Then: a looped snippet of piano and a weary vocal singing "I'm Alabama bound" over and over, a seemingly endless loop, until the words stop making any sense and become nothing but strange melodic concepts, and then the voice riffs its way out of the loop, the effect similar to when a massive drone finally ends, there's that moment where the tension is finally relieved. Later: a record of thirties boogie woogie is scratched and skipped and looped and becomes a skittering, hypnotic, jumble of female vocals and jaunty horns, all sort of bouncing and hiccuping and skipping, creating strange rhythms and melodic fragments. Probably the most compelling and amazing piece is "In Reality", where multiple versions of "I've Got You Under My Skin" are played simultaneously,piled atop one another, seemingly at random, performed at different tempos, in different keys, sounding a bit like a random round, until all of the singers sing the word 'reality' at the same moment, and which point the song starts to loop and repeat and blur, becoming a confusing collage of multiple 'reality's. Literally.

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Is it right to call The Mallard's final album a swan song? Wouldn't a duck call be a better metaphor? Even for the charmingly weirdo, garage-pop label empire Castle Face, The Mallard were an odd bird in a flock that includes Thee Oh Sees, Warm Soda, and Blasted Canyons. Finding Meaning In Deference is only the band's second album and its release is a posthumous one, after the band's somewhat public demise in the spring of 2013. The minor-chord jangliness that The Mallard churns out is a weird amalgamation of a whole lot of Flying Nun bands, all of whom are wholly misremembered in a drunken / drugged-out / art-damaged haze. One can pick out bits of The 3Ds, The Pin Group, and Straightjacket Fits, but it's always deranged into a woozy, yet totally groovy swarm of psychedelically tainted gloom pop, or gloom filled psyche-pop if you wanna approach from the other direction. Frontwoman Greer McGettrick finds herself half-asleep and half-awake in monotone melodies she croons between the swaths of spring reverb and analogue delay, while the band behind her jangles and lurches through the slithery, narcotic reinventions of garage-pop tropes. On "Out The Door," McGettrick wakes up enough to climb up and down a sublimely simple lo-fi vibrato that grates against the creepily skeletal guitar chords and zombie-stutter rhythms. The playfully elliptical basslines of "The Communist" with its fucked-up, lo-fi low-pass filter sweeping makes for a particularly woozy number. It's almost fitting that they end the album with the extended drone-rock epic "Iceberg" where The Mallard cruises in a holding pattern of Parson Sound hypno-rhythms, only to plummet back from the sky in an extended tumble of gasping vocal mantras, thrumming basslines, and Velvety minimalist jangle. A perfectly aQuarius record of imperfect pop perfection.

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You may have seen the oddly named SF garage psych trio The Mallard opening for folks like Ty Segall, Thee Oh Sees, Blasted Canyons, thus it makes sense that they would end up on John Dwyer of the Oh Sees' Castle Face label, and once you get an earful off their twisted lo-fi FX drenched garage pop wooze, we imagine you'll be pretty smitten. Unlike many of the other female fronted garage rock combos, The Mallard don't get all warm and shimmery sixties girl group, instead they traffic in something much more off kilter and tweaked, sorta like Syd Barrett if he were a woman, fronting some twisted drug addled art rock combo, but here filtered through the occasional classic garage rock trope, although for every bit of poppy jangle or sweet harmony, there's a cracked bit of detuned stumble, or a bizarre stretch with droned out chords and strange alien vocal yips, and did we mention effects, at times it's like they stomped on a pedal and forgot all about it, until eventually and usually unexpectedly, the sound will shift and suddenly it's all low slug slithery groove, or dirgey gloom pop bounce, and the production too, just as fucked up, with various instruments and vocal parts exploding into shards of buzzing crunch, stretched out into blurry drones, pushed so loud it sounds like the speakers might blow, but somehow, even at its most demented and deliriously twisted, the songs, especially on repeated listens, blossom into some of the most imperfectly perfect pop we've heard in ages. And weirdly enough (or maybe not), fans of Thee Oh Sees with find that of all the groups out there doing this sort of thing, The Mallard's sound / style / songs might just come closest to the OCS mothership, which is absolutely not a bad thing. Killer bear-barfing-blood cover art. Includes a download coupon so you can listen to these jamz on your computer.

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Ah, unless our ears deceive, it's another delightful Hammond organ fantasia from Sweden's dreamy Sagor & Swing...yay! Well actually it's not quite a new Sagor & Swing album, as this is the product of just one half of S&S, but it contains the crucial element, as Eric Malmberg was the organist is that now defunct duo. So this sounds like a lot more than just fifty percent of Sagor & Swing for sure. Not to slight the contribution of Malmberg's former partner, drummer Ulf Moeller, but it's the so very Bo Hansson inspired Hammond organ playing of Malmberg that really makes the magic (Bo Hannson being the jazz-psych-prog genius whose 1970 Lord Of The Rings album is an all time AQ fave). Without the drumming of Moeller, this is definitely less jazzy, all the more airy and ambient, spacey and even a little droney. And, as always, so very very lovely, full of the pretty melodies that Malberg seems to conjure as effortlessly as does his equally ear-soothing countryman Bjorn Olsson (also a big Bo Hansson fan). This is entirely a solo, instrumental affair, though presumably recorded with the aid of overdubbing. And it's *only* Hammond organ. No other synths at all. The Hammond was indeed the sole sound source, a point of pride for Malmberg, making him a bit of hero to all Hammond-lovers! Some tracks employ the tick-tock beats of the Hammond's built-in rhythm box (harking back a bit to early krautrock Kraftwerkian electronics) whilst others simply drift memerizingly without. Meanwhile his keyboard arpeggios and gentle seagull sonics lull the the listener, so sweetly. To our ears, this is quite possibly better than the final Sagor & Swing album Orgelplaneten, or at any rate is certainly quite different, tending more towards vibe of mellow forest folkiness of the earlier S&S and not the brasher, uptempo stuff on the jazzed-up Orgelplaneten. Recommended!

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Who has Swedish prog-organ legend Bo Hansson guesting on their new solo album?? Why Eric Malmberg, formerly the organist of Sagor & Swing of course! Imagine how chuffed he was to jam with his hero. Hansson doesn't play the organ here, though, he's on synth (funny, 'cause apparently Malmberg owns the actual Hammond organ Hansson used on his famous Lord Of The Rings album). As you might expect if you've heard Malmberg and/or S&S (or for that matter, Bo Hansson) before, this is all about the magic of the Hammond organ, its gentle, groovy bombast, Malmberg weaving an instrumental prog-jazz delight of both bright and mellow moods! Gorgeous stuff as usual. It's got a much bigger sound than what the Sagor & Swing duo could crank out, as this is a bigger band, Malmberg joined here by many other folks besides Hansson. It's a dense but fluffy bed of sound, with shuffling drums and folky melodies, jamming synths and glorious horns. Some songs, like track one "Finalen", are propelled by martial beats, still joyous though... Like his countryman Bjorn Olsson, Malmberg has a knack for cinematic-sounding melodies that'll put a smile on your face. Recommended.

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We love us our twisted, serpentine, ultra complex black metal, the weirder and more demented the better, truly wacked stuff. We love it epic and majestic, sludgy and creepy, but sometimes you just want it simple. Stripped down and furious. A single riff played over and over. A blasting drum beat that just bores full speed ahead. Thus we have France's Malveillance, who manage to take what could be boring and generic and turns it into something fierce and fucked up and kind of frightening. We're beginning to think France is to black metal, what Japan is to pretty much all other music. Whatever it is, twee pop, space rock, take a Japanese band and they can do it better and weirder. Same with France and black metal. Grim buzzing blackness? Find some weird French guy and he can make it sound like a black metal My Bloody Valentine or a blast of barbed white noise. Give them some simple punky black metal and they can turn it into a black spiked juggernaut foaming at the mouth, furiously trampling everything in its path. Malveillance are just that, simple, punky, D-beat black metal, but infused with such fury that it becomes a droning black beast. It helps that every song is in the same key and played at the same tempo. It's like one hour long song split into 22 parts, or the exact same song played 22 times in a row. Totally repetitive and hypnotic and so mesmerizing. Ultimate black bliss achieved through pummel and repetition!! Plus how can you resist a record called Just Fuck Off, with a record cover of some guy in the shadows giving us the bird, with a note inside to the listener that says: "Just Fuck Off... yeah yeah of course but keep one thing in mind; this "fuck off" is for all misanthropic losers holding this cd."

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What's more evil and metal and "I don't give a fuck about humanity" that slapping on some corpse paint and lurking in the forest for a perfectly grimm band photo? What's more cult than strapping on a bunch of spikes and spitting fire, while a photographer expertly captures the 'ritual' on film? What's more anti-social and BROOTAL than dousing yourself in blood, leering evilly at the camera, and holding as still as possible until the timer clicks and the camera catches your pure evil for eternity? Well how about just waking up, stepping in front of the mirror on your closet door, and snapping a picture of yourself in all your first thing in the morning, PINK tightie whiteies (pinkies?), socks, baseball jersey and bedhead, frowning grumpily and holding the digital camera in front of you in the mirror? ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOTHING. Fuck posing and preening and make up and all that, nothing is more grim than the antisocial miscreant captured in his home, where he makes his sick sounds, and where he hides from all the filthy scum outside his front door. The colorful bedspread, the wood paneling, the vinyl tile flooring, the framed pictures above the bed, that stuff is all more intimate and personal and ultimately EVIL than any amount of forests and spiked armbands and bullet belts. Sorry for the rant, we're just a bit obsessed with the band photo on this Malveillance collection, which does in fact feature Mr. Malveillance in a t-shirt and pink undies, scowling at the mirror in his bedroom. Fucking awesome. And somehow, that sort of symbolizes the music of Malveillance pretty perfectly as well. Simple, stripped down, raw. Think Akitsa, Ildjarn, Bone Awl, that sort of super primitive blasting crusty brutality. But with Malveillance that sound is even more punk, more pummelingly straight ahead. ONE riff over and over and over, repeated to death, the vocals a raspy howl, the drums a D-beat pound, the production raw and lo-fi but still heavy and filthy and grimy and totally BAD ASS. In some ways, it reminds us a bit of a more punk, more blackened Brainbombs. This is actually a collection gathering up two previous releases from 2005 and 2006, as well as a handful of bonus tracks from a little earlier. The crazy thing is, there are 7 or 8 RAMONES COVERS! And what's even weirder is they sound perfect, like they could be actual Malveillance jams, all filthied up, sped up, doused in buzz and grit, they sound pretty evil and grim, even the "hey ho" parts manage to sound a bit menacing. What more to say. We love this shit, and Malveillance does it as good, if not better than the rest, plus any metalhead with the balls to pose in pink undies and short hair on their record, deserves to have the grim corpse painted hordes bowing at their feet for sure!

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We went a little crazy for the first Mamaleek record, a way too limited cd-r, packed with blown out blissed out shoegazey black metal, head spinning ultra technical metallic grind, and gorgeous blurred black ambience. That record was so intense, so gloriously fucked up, so complex and confusional, it really seemed like an impossible record to top, but this latest record, the first Mamaleek vinyl release, definitely does its best, and in some cases succeeds big time. Like the record opener, "I Can't Stay Behind", which begins with some creepy sample, a mysterious voices, the sound of horses, then suddenly, speaker shredding blasts of start stop black grind, a haunting lull between each, before finally launching into full on hyper speed black buzz, but with weird interludes, moaning clean vocals, stuttering drum machines, a strangely almost indie rock arrangement, but shredded and shattered, cool loping arpeggiated breakdowns, the guitars impossibly distorted, the sound WAY in-the-red, the creepy intro sample resurfacing throughout. That indie rock sensibility runs through the whole record, but is deftly twisted into much blacker shapes. The second track, is an almost looped single part song, very hypnotic, partway through keyboards surface, all sunbaked and swoonsome, and while the track remains buzzy and abrasive, those keyboards help transform the sound into something more akin to a black metal M83. And that side of the band seems to be the most prevalent this time around, trading in much of the brutal grind and twisted blast of the first record for something a bit more melodic and sort of pretty. Gnarled fragmented and fractured angular crunch is butted up against almost loungey piano, and random Japanese vocal snippets, murky industrial rhythms underpin groovy acoustic guitars, grim buzz gets warped and twisted and draped over swinging jazz, and it almost works, but is all the better for not quite working, the result a seriously twisted mash up. And the jazz element runs through to varying degrees, so much so that there's even a Charlie Parker cover, done pretty straight, only the guitars are a bit distorted and a little off, and there are some harsh black vokills that were most likely not in the original, seriously twisted and tweaked. Elsewhere, Mamaleek unfurls drone drenched near static black metalscapes, weaves loping drum machine grooves beneath coruscating super distorted guitar melodies, incorporates what sounds like seventies FM radio rock into otherwise grim blasting blackness, The closer is more M83 style washed out woozy drift, skittering drum machines, wheezing accordions, shimmering strings, warm and sun dappled, wreathed in crackle and hiss, until the song shatters into a full bore freakout, a squealing fractured nearly white noise free jazz blurred metal outro, that is as kick ass as it is utterly confounding. If anything this record is WAY more varied, more experimental, less cohesive, but not in a bad way, the sounds all manage to fit together in one epic, seriously demented whole, but this time it's a much wilder ride, not for the faint of heart, or the unadventurous. But much like the first record, fucking amazing and WAY recommended. Pressed on super thick vinyl, and housed in ultra deluxe sleeves, with striking and subtle, spot varnish inking.

MPEG stream: I Can't Stay Behind
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We sorta spilled the Mamaleek beans, mistakenly reviewing their forthcoming full length last time, when in fact, we were meant to be reviewing THIS, a four song 12", just out on local label The Flenser, the latest (not counting the NOT OUT YET full length) from this local black metal brotherly duo whose sound has mutated over the course of their previous records, touching on blessed out metal gaze, avant black jazz, and pretty much every warped stop in between, and nothing gets less twisted, or less difficult to describe this time around, but they do seem to continue to move ever further from the black metal that birthed them, although to be fair, they were pretty well removed already with record number one, but on He Never Said A Mumblin' Word, the sound once again exists in some nether region, fusing, lurching distort beats, crumbling atonal riffage, bizarre vocals, damaged production, twisted on-the-verge-of-collapse arrangements, the vocals this time around even STRANGER, sounding like a chorus of croaking frogs, but here fused to one of the prettiest things we've heard from these guys, a lilting noise-doom dirge, that constantly devolves into a sort of industrial lumber, a sort-of-chorus perhaps, with the sounds even more distorted and blown out and in-the-red, but somehow remaining weirdly lovely, which seems to be these guys' specialty, making beautiful ugliness or vice versa. Here's where we usually say, oh the rest of the record follows suit, but with these guys of course it doesn't, track two is all whispering winds, and acoustic guitars, a slow building swell of crumbling buzz, sampled operatic vocals, before exploding into some sort of blackened electro, with a programmed beat, more crumbling riffage, and some seriously harsh processed vocals, but again, some impossible poppiness swirled in, and eventually some almost black metal, but really, the sound is more like some sort of malfunctioning, avant, noise drenched electronica, with some madman growling and bellowingly demonically along, maybe black electro karaoke? Whatever it is, it's fucked up and fantastic. The third song manages to be even MORE distorted, which once having heard the other two songs seems impossible, but the weirdly processed, crumbling, peaking riffage, becomes something weirdly textural and droned out, hear drifting atop swells of synth swirl and more hellish vokills, another delicate balancing act between twisted beauty, and harsh ugly heaviness. Finally, the duo wrap things up with a loping crumble-pop black-gloom dirge, that plants drum machine skitter beneath cascades of ultra distortion, soaring female vox, bellowed demonic vokills, the whole thing managing to sound sun dappled and dreamy, even though it also sounds like the insides of your speakers must be melting...

MPEG stream: He Never Said A Mumblin' Word
MPEG stream: Poor Mounrer's Got A Home

We complain a lot about the glut of cd-r releases. The whole, "even my Mom has a cd-r out" (and yes, her new limited 3" cd-r will be out soon, ahem)� The ease of recording and pressing up 50 copies, means that lots of stuff that maybe shouldn't get released does. Not everything recorded deserves to be released, and not everything played even deserves to be recorded. A serious lack of quality control for sure. But with the bad comes the good, and in this case, the good is often VERY good, and thus it's well worth slogging through all the shit, to get glimpses into some of the twisted creative musical minds, that otherwise might have toiled away in obscurity with no one but their housemate or mother (depending on the circumstances) hearing the amazing fucked up and far out sounds they've been creating. It sometimes boggles our minds to think about the various songs and recordings, that due to lack of resource or technology, or even initiative, were lost forever, or were just never even recorded at all. We don't have that problem so much anymore (see above), but what it does mean is that folks who might be too timid to start a band, or too isolated to find likeminded folks, still have ways to create, to attempt to realize the sounds they hear in their heads. And some of our favorite records of the last few years have been just that, random home recorded cd-r's produced not for cool points, or scene cred, but because the artists were driven to do so. The cd-r micro label is now a cottage industry, my Mom doesn't just have a new cd-r out, she also has her own label� but that is still where we find the most vibrant and ultra personal music being made. Mamaleek is a one man band from right here in SF, this is his long in the works debut and it's a killer, equal parts blissed out metalgaze, furious hyper grind, and buzzing ambient murk. In some ways, it's almost the perfect aQ record, bits and pieces of all the stuff we can't get enough of. But deftly assembled into something cohesive and pretty original. Nods to Jesu, Nadja, Xasthur, the Angelic Process, the usual suspects, but Mamaleek are definitely their own queer beast. The lo-fi recording adding to the murk and mystery, and of course the fuzzy blissy vibe. The record opens with reverb drenched piano, lazy and laid back, all sepia toned and warm summer porch-ed, which makes the second track sound even more epic and massive. A crushing roiling slow motion riff, superdistorted and almost crumbling, the melodies in the distance soaring, the track shifts briefly into a blast of processed grind, before returning to its majestic trudge, sounding like Jesu, if Jesu still sounded like Godflesh. The track flips back and forth, slipping into a tinny, black ambient interlude halfway through, only to transform into a spacious almost math rock drift. The rest of the record sort of slips easily between those two sounds, harsh washed out blackened bliss, often peppered with jagged sonic shards, and haunting drones, and murky ambience. The disc's centerpiece is the nearly 20 minute long "Shout On, Children", beginning with some straight up bluegrass guitar pickin', still muddy and lo-fi, some slippery slide and some fret buzz, but then, the programmed drums kick in, some gurgling demonic vocals, and then thick sheets of coruscating sunburnt guitar buzz, but that acoustic twang continues on right below the surface. But it never gets HEAVY, it just shifts between gradations of buzziness, murkiness and blur, some parts are wide open, a skeletal rhythm over smears of horn like synth and throbbing bass, other parts are gauzy, the guitar chopped into haunting pulses and layered over washed out whirs, and others incorporate operatic vocals and barely there shimmer, finally finishing off with a brief blast of ultra-lo-fi blackened metal. The last four tracks lean toward metallic bliss, and pounding buzzing heaviness, the guitars thick and buzzy, the vocals a fierce growl, the drums simple and mechanical, everything whipped into pulsing waves of sound, occasionally coalescing into blasting blackness, but just as often, becoming unmoored, and drifting skyward the various riffs and beats spreading out like a sky full of black wraiths shot through with sunbeams. Handmade packaging. Fold over cardstock sleeves, with paste on full color front and back images, and a printed insert on nice thick textured paper. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!

MPEG stream: I Wish I Was Dead
MPEG stream: Winter'll Soon Be Over

This has all the wunnerful markings of another Uwe Schmidt project (aka Senor Coconut, Los Samplers, Atom and Tea Time, Midisport, Geez 'n Gosh, Lisa Carbon, Datacide, Dandy Jack, LB, Bund Deutscher Programmierer, and more!), although we're supposed to think it's a couple of his compadres. Complete with an almost-believable bio that's just a little off [as in "he already set standards very high for the complete genre of Latinotronics" and "In search of t(r)opical sounds beyond power (Kraft) and plant (Werk) they have intuitively recognized and consolidated the affinity of both styles not only to each other"], the music is similarly just a little off. It's mambo and other Perez-Prado-inspired tunes, yes, but smoothly dance-ified with tinny sampled drums, Kraftwerky synth burbles, all of which are cut up, spiced with ping pong percussive thwacks 'n woozy horns, and reassembled into a most pleasant listen that's nicely accessible despite its blurpy loopiness. A strong listen all the way through, no filler. Recommended, especially for fans of Senor Coconut and Perez Prado!

RealAudio clip: El Planta
RealAudio clip: Al Trote
RealAudio clip: Richi

[ aquarius records catalogue — M ]