[ aquarius records catalogue

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Showing results 901 through 950 of 1150.

New album from the "word jazz" guy, famous for his LP "Colors" and weekly syndicated radio show. Though his voice is still quite nice to listen to, the album is a big disappointment. The musical accompaniment consists primarily of cheesy synth factory presets -- so sad to waste such a nice voice on such drivel.

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

SORRY. Word-jazz classic from a voice you've heard on the Incredibly Strange Music compilations and countless TV commercials. Every piece is about a color, from olive to ecru, plus 10 never "heard" (seen?) on the original, including fuchsia, cerise, nutria.

Finally, after several releases of noise drenched metallic blackness, the Lord Nordvargr returns to the foul black sonic pit from which he was born. Evolution in some ways could be read devolution, as Nordvargr seems to have shed the buzz and the riff and the noize, and indeed returned to a sound much more minimal and abstract, the master of the black drone thus easily reclaims the throne that had sat empty during his grim blacknoize crusades. The sound here is so sweet, if something this noxious and abject and menacing could be considered sweet, but it is most definitely a return to his Swedish industrial ambient roots, with long stretches of whirring low end rumbles, haunting cinematic ambience, disembodied voices drift like spirits lost in the abyss, the sound is cavernous, the mood is mournful, a few tracks feature the clang and crunch of some beastly industrial machinery, pounding out an infernal rhythm, behind it a demonic voice intones some blasphemous vitriolic filth, but just as quickly, the tone shifts to something dark and whispered, harrowing and hushed. The tones deep and dense and thick, the sound of black holes, of bottomless pits, of empty space, of the unholy nether regions, rendered in bleak blackened sound. The second disc is mostly made up of a 9 part song suite, similar in tone and timbre to the first disc, but even more minimal and mysterious, more organic sounds interspersed with the darker sonic emanations. The last segment is even stranger, with some skittery electronic elements infused into the buzz and glitch, some Ryoji Ikeda style clinical clikery, and a final track that's like some weird sort of sinister minimal housemusick. Recommended of course, as are all of Lord Nordvargr's unholy sonic gospels. Packaged in a super striking 8 panel double digipak.

MPEG stream: Into The Vast Terrain
MPEG stream: Steriliserad
MPEG stream: Avenging Corridors

The return of black ambient darklord Nordvargr. A quick look at the aQ website reveals a long love and appreciation for the dark art of Henrik Nordvargr Bjorkk, from his early days in black ambient terrorists MZ412, to more recent guitar based dronemusik, to his collaborations with MZ412 Drakh, heck, Andee even released the last Nordvargr / Drakh disc on tUMULt. Needless to say, for folks into dark drones and ambient blackness, sinister soundscapes and bleak and abject sounds, it's hard to do any better than Nordvargr.� While the last few discs have displayed a renewed interest in the guitar, with a much more song oriented approach, Helvete finds Nordvargr returning to the miserablist blackdrone world of his past, offering up some seriously intense and caustic brutality, a collection of grim, utterly hellish soundscapes, all crumbling low end, cavernous black rumbles, haunting mysterious blackness, a definite old school industrial vibe. This disc has been anxiously anticipated due to the fact that Leviathan's Wrest contributes vocals to one track, and his demonic croak is totally unmistakable. He growls and gurgles ominously over deep black drones and all manner of distorted crash and crunch, some seriously frightening stuff for sure. If you think stuff like Lustmord is way too lightweight, then this is definitely for you. "Dronevessel Part II" is a harrowing expanse of dense metallic low end buzz, sprawling like the roots of some gnarled black tree, impossibly heavy and suffocatingly black. "Part III" begins with a series of strange grinding metal klaxons, before slithering back into the pitch black from whence it came. Drakh offers up vocals on "Exit Cult, Enter Hell", a super distorted snakelike hiss, draped over a crumbling churning black sonic sea. The final track begins with almost a minute of near silence, before a raw metal buzz surfaces, stumbling blast beats, buzzing riffage, harsh demonic vocals, some full on lo-fi grim black metal for a brief moment, but it quickly blackens and slips back into sinister grimnity. But beyond that brief dalliance with the black blast, this is indeed a soul consuming black hole of sound. This is easily one of the darkest, heaviest, scariest black drone discs EVER. And we don't make that proclamation lightly. WAY recommended.

MPEG stream: I Helvetet I
MPEG stream: Conjugation To Him

Not one, but TWO new Nordvargr discs this time around, the other being the latest from Nordvargr and his former partner in black metal ambient alchemists MZ412, Drakh, the crushing and beautiful disc, The Betrayal Of Light on Andee's tUMULt label, and this, being his latest solo effort, released� on Brazilian label Essence, who in the past has brought us discs from Boris, Acid Mothers Temple, Merzbow, Rapoon and Wolfskin as well as Nordvargr's earlier Vitagen record.� It seems that lately, Nordvargr has a renewed interest in the guitar, as well as a blossoming love of black metal (he has a BM disc coming out in the near future), and this is definitely reflected �in both of his new releases. Where as past efforts have tended to lurk and creep, hovering in a much more distinctly dark ambient realm, both of these new releases embrace the guitar, the riff, distortion and buzz. On The Betrayal Of Light, the riffing is merely a part� of that records larger sonic picture, but here, the guitar is everything. A sprawling black behemoth, a crushing black hole of sound, oozing out in all directions, subsuming everything in its path. This is the sound of massive, heavily distorted, downtuned riffage, crumbled into pieces, and melted down into some viscous black fluid, that pours from your speakers like tar, dripping onto the floor, filling up every available space until the listener is sucked under and buried alive. Slow motion grinding guitar grrrrowl that would give SUNNO))) a run for their money, but here, those roiling virulent riffs are dropped into a sea of swirling ambience, a chaotic whorl of low end shimmer and mysterious drones. This glacial riffing is peppered with brief stretches of soft focus flutter, moments of shimmering tranquility, brief bursts of distorted hiss and jagged shards of buzzing whir, but these are just momentary respites, from In Oceans' relentless doom drone trudge, a pulverizing monstrous lurch, through a field of black sonic sludge and blown out low end grind.

MPEG stream: In Oceans Abandoned By Life I Drown...
MPEG stream: ...To Live Again As A Servant Of Darkness

We had complained a while back about how hard it had been for us to get records by the mysterious Nordvargr (aka Toroidh, Folkstorm, Henrik Nordvargr Bjorkk, half of black noise outfit MZ412) which was a shame as some of us were downright OBSESSED with everything he had done musically. It seems like now, for whatever reason, we've finally been able to locate some of our favorites, for example, 2001's Cold Void Of Nothing, the first collaboration between Nordvargr and Drakh after the dissolution of their legendary black ambient group MZ412. While MZ412 were steeped in the imagery and mythology of Nordic black metal, later sonic explorations found more in common with the industrial subculture and the world of dark ambient music. The sound itself had not changed dramatically, on Cold Void, theirs was still a world of bleak abstract ambience, slowly shifting sound fields, haunting glimpses into a dark and dreary otherworld, shortwave radio interference, mysterious broadcasts from the other side, ghosts and chants and the sound of time and space. Drone music perhaps, but not static or still, instead rich and multi layered, minimal but still active, a huge sonic world broken down into tiny subtle movements, a musical universe of lost spirits and disembodied souls, haunting and harrrowing and so good!

MPEG stream: Void Ad Infernum
MPEG stream: Serenadem Nocturnes

For now, the AQ list / site may not reflect it, but we have been MASSIVE, almost obsessive fans of the work of one Nordvargr, who we first discovered as the driving force behind the mysterious black metal dark ambient outift MZ412. He would later go on to record some of the most gorgeously bleak, martial ambient / drone musick as Folkstorm, Toroidh, and under his given name Henrik N Bjorkk. He is a modern master of dark ambient death drone. Most of his records have been really tough to track down, so we were super excited to be able to get enough of these to list. The name Drakh may be even less familiar to you than Nordvargr, but some of you may immediately recognize him as Nordvargr's partner in MZ412! So the hopes were quite high for what basically amounts to a new MZ412 record. And thankfully, you dark ambient death drone doom fanatics will not be disappointed. This is a crushing black souled threnody. Massive sheets of dark sound, shift and shimmer, disembodied voices crumble into sonic shards, oppressive walls of suffocating rumble, roll endlessly into the dark oblivion. But what sets this apart from other dark ambient / drone records is the guitars. Yep, guitars. About halfway in, bookended on either side by bleak shimmering lowend ambience, sirens wail, and drones creep slowly onward, as huge downtuned guitars unfurl slow motion riffs, lugubrious and lumbering, so distorted, and tuned so low you can hear the chords crumbling into pieces, while the whole thing lurches forward, through a cloud of black tar mist. It's like a Sunn 0))) track stuck in the middle of a Lustmord record. Like endless blackness being painted even more black. Like dropping a black hole into another even blacker hole...

MPEG stream: Black Emitting Oven
MPEG stream: Scotopic Vision

By now we shouldn't have to go into too much detail regarding or massive love of all things Nordvargr, from the militaristic folk of Folkstorm, the martial industrial sounds of Toroidh, the bleak black ambience of BM legends MZ412, to the various recordings and sounds perpetrated under his own name, pretty much everything he's touched as turned to black gold.� But no matter how much we love everything Nordvargr, our hearts will always belong to MZ412. When we first discovered that band we were totally thrown for a loop, we were loving the sounds of black metal by then, and here was a band with a cryptic monicker, amazing album design, burning churches on their record covers and the band members in full corpse paint. We were ready to be totally blown away, and we were, just not in the way we expected. Their sound was not metal, no buzzing guitars, no shrieking vocals, no blast beats, instead, theirs was a dark world of mysterious blackness, bleak and barren, frosty and and grim, and impossible JUST AS HEAVY as any of the other black metal we had been listening to. This was ambient music, but it was intense, and brutal, and scary. The band ceased to exist and Nordvargr moved on to the above mentioned projects as well as numerous collaborations and projects under his own name. Then a few years back, a strange thing happened, a record surfaced credited to Nordvargr and Drakh, who just so happened to be Nordvargr's partner in MZ412, and as far as we were concerned, it was the rebirth of MZ412 in everything but name. Several more releases followed, all delicately balanced between dark ambience and buzzing blackness, culminating in this, the brand new record from the duo that once was MZ412.� The two have some dark chemistry together, weaving elaborate worlds of black sound, not just ambience, not just drone music, but songs, with parts, and riffs and melodies, lots of guitars, occasionally trudging glacially like some slow motion doom behemoth, other times buzzing like some disembodied ghost� of black metal, and at others, glistening and drifting in vast expanses of shimmer and whir.� The Betrayal Of Light was originally meant to be releases on several well known dark ambient labels, who all rejected the record for being too heavy, and that's all we needed to hear. Nordvargr, Drakh, too heavy, too much guitar.... Thus it ended up on tUMULt (run by our very own Andee), quite possibly where it belonged all along, fitting quite comfortably amidst a roster of black metal and drone music, embodying at least a handful of descriptors that seem to apply to most tUMULt releases, dark, droney, and fucked... The Betrayal Of Light is one massive sonic event, a black cloud of sound, separated into movements, the first, begins as a slow beautiful crawl, a murky soundfield supporting a delicate web of softly plucked guitar strings, until a wall of downtuned buzz swallows it whole, a massive mournful dirge,�stately and majestic, classic old school funereal doom, but�super dramatic, and strangely melodic, sounding a bit like Earth or SUNNO))) playing the procession at a funeral or the royal march for some ancient court. Minor key and so gorgeous, a lonely lament rendered in amp buzz and smeared riffage, but completely nestled amidst a sea of churning low end, and that ever present minor key guitar line... Not long after, the duo explode in a frenzy of buzzguitar, moving�as close to black metal as they've ever gotten, after a slow building� shimmer, the track coalesces into a furious buzzing riff, with what sounds like some buried demonic vocals,�no drums, so it's a sort of unmoored black metal drift, the riff cycling hypnotically while all around low end roils and whirls and in the distance the landscape is peppered with�reverberant subsonic booms, and low level rumbles... The album's centerpiece is the nearly eleven minute long "Vessel", a lengthy, meditative guitarscape, delicate minor key melodies unfurled over a web of strange whirs and buzzes, the melodies occasionally being overwhelmed by waves of oscillating industrial detritus, before drifting back to the surface where they are joined by rumbling guttural throat singing, or heavily reverbed monklike chants, all the while, a constant ominous drone, grinds and crumbles just below the surface, culminating in a bizarre symphony of processed guitars and grinding insectoid vocals, simultaneously epic and intense, and weird and disturbing. The rest of the record is a harrowing journey through the dark woods, through a warren of underground passages, through a vast wasteland of barren frost and black sun, thick coruscating guitars buzz and howl, sheets of thick riffs one after another, create an ever shifting wall of crumbling distorted sound, voices drift ghostlike beneath a murky swirl of distant feedback and warbling whir, tones and notes and bits of muted melody are stretched out and blurred into gorgeous hazy smears, pulses and barely audible throbs shift and shimmer just below the surface... everything creeping and slithering through a constant cloud of drifting damaged drones.� Finally, the journey comes to an end, a gorgeous low end lurch, a thick serpentine shamble with gorgeous bits of backwards guitar, and shards of minor key melody. The low end is lopped and pulses like some mysterious machine, the low end growing in intensity, like some black star about to implode, dreamy backwards vocals drift in, like some reverse angelic chorus, until a deep voice, drenched in reverb and distortion, intones a mysterious apocalyptic warning, and then suddenly... it's done.� An intense and overwhelming sonic journey, as heavy and brutal as it is delicate and beautiful. Doomy and blackened, drifty and drone-y, soft focus and hazy, dense and devastating... and of course, so so recommended.�

MPEG stream: The Betrayal Of Light
MPEG stream: Enclosed Inclusion
MPEG stream: Vessel

First release from this local band of psychedelic noise makers, featuring former aQ-er Andrew Brush, who was the mastermind behind blackened shoegaze noise pop weirdos the Mausoleums (the first Mausoleums cd-r has now been reissued on cassette, and can be found elsewhere on this week's list) and runs the Chaos Of The Stars cassette label. Bread Money / Blood Money is a sprawling double album of murky distorted psychedelic jammage that sounds a bit like a twisted, extremely low fidelity mix of the Velvet Underground and Japanese psych legends Les Rallizes Denudes, the tracks are extended sprawls of minimal psych, minimal in arrangement and structure at least, but maximal in volume and intensity, the sound as much about the super distorted, blown out, in-the-red recording as the music itself, the group locking into almost bvnkvrfvnk style grooves (and yeah, at times it sounds a bit like a wilder, woolier German Oak), each track essentially a single part, looped and layered and repeated, a hard psych sonic mantra, stretched out into infinity, and like some of our favorite psych records, we can only assume that these tracks are just edits of much longer jams, as they often cut out abruptly, and start the same way, as if someone just remembered mid jam that they should push record on the tape machine. There also seems to be sax in there too, but buried in the mix, and essentially playing the part of another buzzy, droning layer. It's heady, heavy stuff, psych obsessives will be in heaven, and while the sound here is much more raw and lo-fi, anyone into the current crop of spaced out psych combos, The Heads, Carlton Melton, White Hills, Burnt Hills, 3 Leafs, Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound, etc. will likely dig big time as well!

MPEG stream: Notes To The Text
MPEG stream: Pictograph
MPEG stream: Religion Set Me Straight

It's hard to believe that at one time The North Sea, the solo guitar project of Digitalis head honcho Brad Rose, was more of a shimmery minimal folk thing, cuz at some point, the sound changed, and the North Sea became more about blackened heaviness, dense drones, thick layered wall of sound, still evocative and atmospheric, but way darker, and way more intense. Based on the opening track of Bloodlines, things seem to have remained dark, and we're digging it, this time around especially as there seems to be more of a focus on electronics and synths, the opening track features a motorik pulse, a tolling bell, all beneath a squelchy synth drone, and little streaks of spaced out effects, ominous and creepy and a little bit alien, eventually exploding into a gristly crush of crumbling buzz and processed synth. Which leads directly into a sprawling dronescape, that begins where the first track left off, a cloud of synthdrone psychedelia, only to unwind into something much more minimal and dark, a creeping sort of bassline drifting along beneath a cloud of hiss and static, which smoothes out into a grinding stretch of muted heaviness, a bit like SUNNO))) but not distorted and downtuned as much as thick and dense and dark. It's not until a few more tracks in, that the clouds finally part, and let a little melody shine through, and even then, those melodies are still being pelted with synth buzz, and wreathed in blackened whirrs. "Save Yourselves" might be our favorite track here, with its deep sinewy swells, that blossom into lush chordal drifts, the vibe growing ever more menacing, the soft sounds soon surrounded on all sides by intense, not-so-soft sounds, a swirling soft cacophony, the whole track seems to moan and groan, exploding into a frenzied climax, a soaring sonic ritual, where drums come in for the first time, abstract and spaced out, but it gives the track a really intense, propulsive feel. The final two tracks continue on, the whirling roiling buzz, the sporadic drumming, the wild squalls of psychedelic noise, it's like a sort of free jazz / free noise / free drone hybrid, finally collapsing into the final track, a sea of soft tones, ominous synth pulses, distorted bass buzz, and clouds of cymbal shimmer, what began as tranquil and dreamlike becomes a sort of Carpenter style synth dirge, before transforming into a psych drone blowout and finally grinding to a halt. Epic. And awesome.

MPEG stream: Bloodlines
MPEG stream: Missed Court Dates
MPEG stream: Reunion

An archival slab of blackened buzzing textural dronemusic from Digitalis main man Brad Rose, his incarnation as The North Sea definitely in transition from dark shimmery folk, to intense crumbling glacial heaviness. Maybe this darkness was always lurking just below the surface, but we never saw it coming. the 'new' North Sea is all about sprawling dirgescapes, more dronedirgedrone than freakfolk, it might be guitars, synths, oscillators, who knows for sure, all we know is it's a glorious din, long tones held forever, wreathed in caustic buzz, and machinelike whir, blurred and buzzy and thick, a sort of lo-fi noise drenched Niblock to a certain degree, slathered with fractured effects, swirls of glimmering metallic shimmer. The B-side is a little bit more sedate, but only a little. The crunch is dialed back a bit, but there's still some seriously roiling low end going on, tones tangling and overlapping, overtones, beating the throbbing, a glorious stretch of mesmerizing minimal buzz. Needless to say, more essential listening for the drone-doom-dirge set, but equally appealing wethinks to folks into the latest wave of kraut-drone, Expo '70, Rahdunes, etc. LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES. We have 20. That's it. Gorgeous packaging too, red ink on silver paper, simple bold design, super thick multi panel fold out sleeve...

MPEG stream: Eternal Birds
MPEG stream: Guiwenneth Of The Green Grass

Digitalis label boss Brad Rose returns with yet another release as The North Sea. If you've heard any previous releases, well, it may not matter. For this release, Rose crafts an almost entirely different experience. In the past, tracks were more of the field recording meets post-Fahey variety. Here, there are two long form drone tracks, much darker and more bleak than before. Hardly an instrument can be discerned within this gorgeous, blackened trancescape. This might be what it would sound like if Throbbing Gristle teamed up with Windy & Carl. We love coming up with ridiculous genre titles, so let's just call this post-industrial folk drone. And to be honest, there's even a good amount of ambient blackness here. As the effects pull the listener to and fro, you can never tell if you're somewhere in space or lost in an isolated peyote forest. Tense, heavy, paranoid, recommended. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!!!

MPEG stream: Glowering

Latest chunk of crunch from The North Sea, one of many musical projects perpetrated by Brad Rose, the man behind the mighty Digitalis label. Longtime readers of the list probably remember when The North Sea was more of a folk thing, Rose then a sort of modern day folk drone troubadour, creating lush twang flecked soundscapes, but somewhere in the recent past, The North Sea encountered a bit of a... well, sea change, and shifted direction dramatically, drifting toward a sound much more in keeping with the drone-doom-dirge tradition, where once was shimmer, now was rumble, where once was delicate, now was crushing, but, the cool thing about the new North Sea, is that the folky past has not been discarded, merely absorbed. This latest jam is the perfect example, a massive corrosive sprawl of post industrial buzz and throb, layers of crumbling distortion and keening feedback, howling heaviness, blurred and smeared into thick tarpit swells, layered and shaded and lush, but for the most part intense and HEAVY. But throughout, Rose has laced his buzz with delicate steel string melodies, what sounds like a bouzouki, or even a sitar, is plucked gently, its notes reverbed and delayed, but left clean and clear and simple, the perfect counterpoint to the blackened squall that is constantly threatening to swallow it whole. Probably too much for the New Weird America types, and the free folkies, but for the rest of you, into heavy guitar drone, and post industrial black ambience, this folk flecked beast will be much to your liking. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES! Each in deluxe printed metallic vellum sleeves, with a single panel hand marbled piece of art, and every one with a printed marbled metallic obi INSIDE the case held together with rivets!

Recorded way back in 2004, in and around Tulsa, Oklahoma, this is the latest from Digitalis mainman Brad Rose's solo psych folk project The North Sea. Utilizing a free folk arsenal of acoustic guitar, glockenspiel, melodica, kalimba, bouzouki, field recordings and a bunch of other stuff, Rose crafts glistening folkscapes of twang and drift. Less free and abstract than many of his sonic brethren, Rose often writes actual songs, with riffs and parts and lyrics, lovely lilting forest folk, that just seems to glow and shimmer. His soft falsetto drifting above lush steel string guitars and random sounds of nature, birds and wind and running water. But he can get loose and free with the best of them, offering up primal forest drones, rife with percussive clatter and steel string buzz, abstract ragas, plenty of soft shimmer and warm warble, but even those tracks are infused with a certain lyricism that ties them to his more song oriented side. So lovely. Definitely another essential addition to your already bursting at the seams modern free folk collection. LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!! Packaged in a swank white digipak, with full color insert and pasted-on front cover artwork by George Parsons of Dream Magazine.

MPEG stream: Asleep Underneath The Jesus Tree
MPEG stream: Marigold Perfume

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

SORRY. Oh boy, is this one absolutely beautiful record. The UK's Rameses III, who we've raved about in the past (and whose previous releases are now all sadly unavailable) team up with Digitalis head honcho Brad Rose aka The North Sea, for a total dream drenched blissout. There's nothing really ominous or dark or creepy about this at all. Instead this is warm and thick and so so pretty. Long lazy drifts of muted melody float weightless beneath soft cotton candy clouds of gauzy ambience, fingerpicked guitars surface here and there, just long enough to release a few notes, melodic fragments that just hover in the air before gently settling and drifting away, floating lazily like leaves in a mountain stream. Elsewhere, slow swells of chordal shimmer are woven into fuzzy soundscapes, while strings swoon over the top of everything, just another subtly sweet layer in a truly divine sonic tapestry. So totally gorgeous. Packaged in a beautiful Touch-like digipak, a single flowered field on one side, a lone dandelion clock, most of it's puffy white seeds lost to the wind.

MPEG stream: Death Of The Ankou
MPEG stream: Return Of The Ankou (Xela Remix)

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

SORRY. This here little cd-r is so limited it almost seems silly to bother, but we have 15 copies, that's basically 50 percent of the pressing, so this will definitely be gone in a matter of minutes. The North Sea is Brad Rose who runs the Digitalis label, and sounds like you might imagine, post-Fahey steel string dreaminess, strummy and lilting, lots of reverb, warm and glistening and quite lovely. Not sure who the heck the Rome Chell is, but they are a perfect match for the North Sea, exploring a similar sound, although their take on the post Appalachian free folk is much more subdued and murky, steel strings are strummed, but the result is a muted pulsing melody, warm waves of sound that sort of drift and hover. Also quite lovely. Would love to hear more from both outfits. However, only about 15 of you are ever gonna hear this particular disc. So act fast. LIMITED TO 32 COPIES! We have about half. Guaranteed to be gone in minutes! Packaged in a plastic sleeve, with a black wallpaper insert, sealed with a twig and a piece of twine!

MPEG stream: Seabirds
MPEG stream: Misere-Passio-Arbos

The peripatetic sound artist Michael Northam built these psychedelically tinged compositions for liquid drone, field recordings, and hypnotic instrumentation via his longstanding affinity for the work of Rene Daumal. A mystic who ventured in and out of the Surrealist circles in the early 20th centuries, Daumal had done much in the way of metaphysical introspection, with only a few written works published. Mount Analogue would have been his second novel, had he not died before it was finished; this allegorical travel narrative, even in its unfinished state, became the template for Jodorowsky's film The Holy Mountain. Northam in his investigations of found sounds, activated spaces, crackled minimalism, and recent studies in Indian raga has put forward an earth-bound transcendence, not far removed from Daumal's mystical visions. Out of masses of bowed metals and small flutes, Northam constructs haunting elongations of harmonic tones that flicker throughout streams of textural noises, which sound like leaves rustling through through a wind-swept house perched somewhere up in the Himalayas. Northam's work is far from static, as tones subtly shift and burblings of those textural abrasions slip between a variety of monochromatic variations. Here, Northam offers something not too far from the classic sounds of Zoviet France mingled with those of Small Cruel Party and one-time collaborator Loren Chasse. More gritty, tape machinations speak throughout Northam's work, providing a post-industrial touch to all of the floating flute loops and bell tones suspended in meditation and harkening back to one of his early masterpieces The Absurd Evidence (with John Grzinich). This is an excellent recording, and limited to 250 copies through the Malaysian label Mirror Tapes.

These two tracks of hypnotizing dronemusik from the wandering sound artist Michael Northam originated from a night camping in the Finnish hinterlands, where he became fascinated with the sound of wind whipping through the trees. Field recordings have long been central to Northam's work dating back to his tactile compositions of corroded ambience and titanic drone arcing; and even the aspects of wind had featured heavily in work through the Aeolian harps he built in a bunker on a desolate Finnish island. Where those recordings were attempting to harness to power of wind as something of an intersection between technology and the landscape, these two beautiful recordings of brightly shimmering ambience are more of a poetic response to the dynamics of wind. So those whispings and scatterings of summertime arctic winds introduce the first side of this 10" and quickly subside amidst Northam's billowing drones from his Indonesian flute and an overblown Casio keyboard. The resulting waving tones flicker with the lingering glow of the sun arching toward the horizon at twilight, with golds, oranges, and reds radiating through each timbre. So striking are the colors that Northam gets through these tones, it can almost distract from his conceptual anchor. No matter, as he's creating one of his finest pieces in a long time. Nice!

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

SORRY.

MPEG stream: Until Dawn Do Us Part
MPEG stream: Night Came To Us

So this is one of those records where the cover totally gives away what's hiding inside. These Philadelphia drift-heads sent us this disc a few weeks ago, and we were totally blown away. The music so nicely reflects the cover photograph: beautiful, expansive oceanic horizons, almost glowing with a looming grayness. With keyboards, violin, three electric guitars and a bass, this five piece really hone in on a super liquidity, an organic, fluid type of drone composition. Their third album out of four, The Distance Brings Us Closer resonates with long, lush tones and delicate melodies that seem to blend and form chords in mid air. Always moving and turning like fog creeping along the forest floor, Northern Valentine has a distinct sound that kinda reminds us of a more darkened and coastal Windy and Carl playing with Rameses III in some giant cathedral. Very dark and mysterious, the record travels through blissed out walls of trance inducing drones and into more textural noisy Fennesz-like atmospheres. Though they call themselves a post-rock band, the guitars and instruments used are so dripping with reverb and delay that it might be more accurate to describe Northern Valentine as a dark and drifting ambient group. At least that's how they sound on this particular record, as word on the street is their other albums have drums and are more propulsive and less drifty. Either way we dig what they're doing A LOT, and couldn't wait to share it with all of you! If you like anything Type records related or that recently reviewed Elegi, you'll love this too! Completely and utterly recommended!!

MPEG stream: Born Yesterday
MPEG stream: Escaping Light

**SALE **SALE* *SALE** Did some cleaning in the back of the store, found a stash of these that we reviewed back on list #187. So, last ever copies, marked down, get 'em while you can... Once again, another soul chilling blast of frosty grimness from Sweden's Total Holocaust Records (who were responsible for recent AQ black metal faves Blodulv and The One!). Northstream are from Russia and are just about as raw and primitive as it gets. Guitars buzz and hiss sounding alternately like a vacuum cleaner or a blender, only occasionally like an actual guitar, but those six shrieking strings wrapped in white noise evoke ambience of the darkest and grimmest sort. The buzzing blazing black metal is balanced by stretches of mid tempo 'doom', where you can almost hear the sounds of the frozen wastelands from whence Northstream come. But it's not your typical doom, it's 'doom' only in comparison to the Merzbowian blacknoise surrounding it, a blackened doom that's all brittle ear piercing guitars, primitively programmed beats and skull piercing shrieks. Interesting album title, by the way, did they just take a particularly refreshing shower?

MPEG stream: When The Forest Crying
MPEG stream: Rise Of Your War

Lastest from these psychedelic French doomster weirdos.

Back in stock! Doom/psych fans: a few of you might remember this eccentric, underground French band from their second album entitled Masters of Magic that we reviewed a few years back. And anyone intrigued by the rather weird and melodic psychedelic-doom-metal-folk hybrid crafted by 'em on that disc ought to be interested in hearing their out-of-print first album Great God Pan from 1998, which we intimated was the superior record. Well, maybe it got repressed or someone found a stash of 'em in a closet or crypt or somewhere, but lo and behold, we've managed to get our hands on, like, ten copies of Northwinds' debut! So, if you're both a fan of Sabbathy doom metal and '60s/'70s styled heavy progressive psychedelia, you might want to grab this now. Assuredly not to everyone's taste, as Allan (who loves 'em) will freely admit and Andee (who can't deal with the French accented vocals) will attest...as we've said previously, Northwinds might be one of the most "twee" heavy bands ever what with the folky flutes, acoustic guitars, and those French vocals...yet the unique blend of proggy Paganism, soft '60s sike-pop balladry, and of course massive Iommi-worthy doom metal guitar riffage that intermix in these looong songs could also really make this a favorite find for a freaky few of you out there! With so much feeling, solid songwriting, and unexpected elements (wiggy studio effects and tape manipulations) they truly capture the spirit of pre-metal, pro-prog Black Sabbath (in fact, they cover the Sabs "A National Acrobat" on here) and others in that vein, not far from a warped version of early Cathedral, obsessed with Sabbath *and* Comus... If you dug the two other Sabbathy bands we reviewed recently, Witchcraft and Dragonauta, there's definitely a chance you could be a Northwinds fan too!

MPEG stream: Great God Pan
MPEG stream: The Pain

Northwinds did a record a few years ago called "Great God Pan" that came out of nowhere (well, France, actually!) to become one of Allan's all-time favorite heavy-psych-doom-metal discs. It's out of print now but the band is back with a new, not quite as good For some reason, cult Italian metallers Death SS provide the intro and outro tracks.

RealAudio clip: Lost Paradise
RealAudio clip: Entre Chien et Loup

Aside from its awesome cover photo (love the red leather gloves!), most folks are probably most excited about this reissue because of its status as a legendary collection of early '80s synthesizer / computer music, which of course we find exciting as well, but truth be told, we were even more intrigued by the fact that Doris Norton was a member of mysterious Italian prog-psych-proto-metal doomlords Jacula, whose In Cauda Semper Stat Venenum record from supposedly the late '60s, we once made a Record Of The Week, a disc that still confounds and fascinates. She also was apparently sponsored by Apple during the '80s! But regardless of the Jacula connection, or the Apple one too, Norton's 1983 Nortoncomputerforpeace lp is in fact a fantastic chunk of vintage new wavy electronic music, and it's easy to see why folks have been freaking out over it, cuz it's exactly what all the kids are trying to pull off these days, to varying degrees of success. Pulsing synths, cascading melodies, simple robotic programmed drums, vocoder-ed machine like vocals, but even amongst similar sounding records, Norton lets her psychedelic prog flag fly, peppering her compositions with occasional wild squalls of shredding synths solos, especially on the first few tracks, which really gives the sound a serious PROG vibe. Much of the record finds itself in that eighties VHS synthscape sci-fi soundtrack territory, all pulsing and motorik, minor key and hauntingly cinematic, seriously retro soundtracky, but again, Norton laces her compositions with dense melodic squiggles, or almost disco-y breakdowns, check out the end of "Don't Shoot The Animals", crazy funky! The rest of the record slips easily from 8 bit sounding video game music, to synthprog freakouts, to creepy droned out ambience, to full on Carpenter / Goblin style synth workouts, to rad cheesy lo-fi disco synth pop jams. Fans of Umberto, Zombi, Gatekeeper, Majeure, Innercity, Axxess, Roll The Dice, Dylan Ettinger and all the rest, grab one of these before they're gone!!

MPEG stream: Norton Computer For Peace
MPEG stream: The Hunger Problem In The World
MPEG stream: Don't Shoot The Animals

If we had to pick the ultimate doom outfit, the band that most embodies ultra depressive sonic misery, who is able to weave vast expanses of utter blackness, able to create vast soundscapes of both brutality and beauty, glacial waves of slow motion heaviness, it would be a tough call. There are the pure dronedoom outfits like SUNNO))) who create black energy with long stretches of static buzz, or the more sort of true doom combos, who wield riffs and write songs, and then there are the black metal bands, who play slooooooow and instead of buzzing maniacally instead crawl and slither, and then there are the ultra doom outfits, the ones we use many multiples of 'o's to describe, and somewhere in amongst all of those, but not quite fitting in any particular one, is the mighty Nortt. This one man band from Denmark, is a long time aQ fave, melding the black buzz of Burzum, with the regal abstract slow motion doom of Skepticism, the result, some otherworldy demonic trudge through barren landscape and moonlit skies. Nortt have always employed a deft hand in crafting their doomscapes, generously peppering record with as much tranquil blackened drift as lurching doomic pummel, but on this latest disc, Nortt have embraced the moodier more ambient side of their sound, with looooong stretches of drift and shimmer, sometimes almost whole songs, and while the heavy parts remain heavy, they seem to grind slowly to a halt, leaving just shadows and ghosts, soft traces and outlines of what came before, which are allowed to hover and float amongst black smears of sound, interrupted by rhythms spread out into occasional bursts of lugubrious slow motion. The disc begins with some dark delicate shimmer, that is downright dreamlike, deep resonant chimes, the washed out whir of softly struck bells, which quickly gives way to the disembodied doom of the second track, the riffs crumbling and stretched waaay out, the drums, an abstract plod, and in the background, warm streaks of high end, that drift throughout the entire record, even at it's heaviest, those keening tones, drift mournfully in the distance. Even the longest tracks here, spend most of their time in some blackened dronestate, rumbles and whirs, ghostly moans, flurries of low end piano, disembodied melodies, all blurred into grey sonic snowdrifts, occasionally, the guitars roar back in, but it's more like a passing storm, as it soon drifts off, leaving just the lilting black minimalism that came before. We joked in past reviews that Nortt played a minimal black doom that Bohren & Der Club Of Gore would like, but on Galgenfrist, it sounds more like a minimal black doom Bohren would PLAY! A similar sort of impossibly brooding blackness, a gorgeous lush creep, abstract and ambient, not as jazzy, but just as moody and minimal, murky and mysterious. As we mentioned in the past, this is the sort of black doom band that could totally appeal to non-metalheads, and might just be the gateway band so beware, but fear not, this is plenty grim and heavy and black for all the rest of you.

MPEG stream: Galgenfrist
MPEG stream: Til Gravens Vi
MPEG stream: Af Dode

Finally available again, one of our favorite slabs of doomy black buzz. Remastered, reissued and on a new label! Here's the review from when we first got this in: Our doomiest customer, "Rick from Thrasher", came in the other day to ask about an album he saw on www.doom-metal.com, some band called Nortt who were supposed to be amazing; so good in fact that according to that website, Nortt's label was almost justified in charging about thirty euros for their cd (an astronomical amount, like US$40)! We didn't of course have that absurdly-expensive opus, but we actually did have this, Nortt's previous album released for a much more reasonable price on a different label. And it is pretty darn good, if you're in the mood for some "Pure Depressive Black Funeral Doom Metal" as it says on the back cover. Nortt are a one-man band from Denmark in the black metal tradition (complete with corpse paint and everything), but their fuzzing, buzzing music is sloooowww and full of despairing piano intonations and distorted minor-key laments. The vocals and the guitars both sound like last breaths, dying gasps, exhalant spirits... It's a drone-hiss of massive, gothic proportions. Nortt definitely inhabit the same gloomy petrified forest as AQ-faves Skepticism!! Perhaps if you get this and it succeeds in bringing your most suicidal thoughts to the fore, you can make it through life a little longer by trying to search out that other incredibly expensive Nortt album... (By the way, that www.doom-metal.com website is pretty cool one, for doom-fans only of course, with info on hundreds of doom acts!)

MPEG stream: Gravfred
MPEG stream: Sorgesalmen

Fresh off their killer split release with Xasthur last year, Danish black metal funereal doom lords (or lord, really, since it's just one guy) Nortt offer up a full length for your pleasure...if you can deal with the depression!! If you haven't heard Nortt before, they're a bit like Skepticism meets Burzum. SOOOO doomy and atmospheric. Ligfaerd is a sinister expanse of spooky soundtrack ambience bombarded (at relaxed intervals) with boulders... No, not boulders -- fuzz-distortion depth charges, dropped deep and echoing in the abyss, wherein dwell the cave-blind creatures that make Nortt's music... or so it would seem from this disc's raspy, weary vocal exhalations and monstrous awakenings. The thudding percussion could be gigantic footfalls amidst the droning, morose melodies, that insinuate themselves slowly into your consciousness, as there are lots of quiet passages on this depressive, lethargic record. We bet Bohren and Der Club Of Gore would love this band! We sure do. Definitely one of the exclusive several doom and/or black metal acts that we think non-habitual listeners to such musics might appreciate, if such extremes of feeling and weirdness as described above are more than tolerated.

MPEG stream: Ligpraedike
MPEG stream: Tilforn Tid

This went out of print almost as soon as we got the original Total Holocaust import version in four or five months ago but has now been resurrected and re-pressed domestically thanks to the dark souls at Southern Lord, who apparently like this stuff as much as we do. Here's what we had to say about it first time around: We barely even have to review this. Just the names of the two artists should be enough. Nortt, whose "Pure Depressive Black Funeral Doom Metal" was a massive favorite around here, and of course Xasthur, who rivals Leviathan as perhaps the most brilliant and important of the modern USBM hordes. Nortt offer up four tracks of miserable drone dirge, with mournful piano over a swirling abyss of black riffs and simple drumming, each chord slowly dissipating into nothingness before the next chord hits. Depressingly gorgeous and wrist slittingly sorrowful. Reminiscent of Corrupted's Llenandose, albeit way more grim and dismal! Xasthur gives us three tracks, equally depressive, but here, instead of tarpit tempos and drone-like dirges, the depression and misery is communicated through creepy minor key riffing, mournful melodies and what sounds like clean chant-like singing, almost choral, but buried so low in the mix it almost sounds like just another instrument. Xasthur has totally perfected the swaying seasickly black metal waltz, with relentless double kicks, anguished vocals struggling to communicate from beyond, and warm and woozy, arpeggiated guitars. So good.

MPEG stream: Glemt
MPEG stream: A Curse For The Lifeless

You're probably getting as tired of hearing this as we are saying it, but it has to be done. THIS IS SUPER LIMITED!! IN FACT, IT'S ALREADY OUT OF PRINT!! (Arghhh. Why lablels just don't press more when they know they can sell them still makes no sense to us...) SO, ONCE THESE ARE GONE, THEY ARE GONE FOR GOOD!! SO ACT FAST! Here's what we had to say about the cd version a while back: We barely even have to review this. Just the names of the two artists should be enough. Nortt, whose "Pure Depressive Black Funeral Doom Metal" was a massive favorite around here, and of course Xasthur, who rivals Leviathan as perhaps the most brilliant and important of the modern USBM hordes. Nortt offer up four tracks of miserable drone dirge, with mournful piano over a swirling abyss of black riffs and simple drumming, each chord slowly dissipating into nothingness before the next chord hits. Depressingly gorgeous and wrist slittingly sorrowful. Reminiscent of Corrupted's Llenandose, albeit way more grim and dismal! Xasthur gives us three tracks, equally depressive, but here, instead of tarpit tempos and drone-like dirges, the depression and misery is communicated through creepy minor key riffing, mournful melodies and what sounds like clean chant-like singing, almost choral, but buried so low in the mix it almost sounds like just another instrument. Xasthur has totally perfected the swaying seasickly black metal waltz, with relentless double kicks, anguished vocals struggling to communicate from beyond, and warm and woozy, arpeggiated guitars. So good.

MPEG stream: Glemt
MPEG stream: A Curse For The Lifeless

Short and sweet. This 24 minute piece from London's obscurant drone duo Nos Phillipe (aka Jonathan Webb and Robert Hopps) is pretty damn good, having been culled from field recordings, guitar, turntable, and lots of electronics. Elongated tones brightly shine with the sheen of a chrome surface being struck by rakish streaks from the sun, countered by a fluctuating low-end rumble, locating the work somewhere near the early constructions of Jonathan Coleclough. Aerated rotations, which could be field recordings of wind billowing over a pipe or maybe that's the sound of the turntable heavily compressed, transitions these earlier drones into a bending chorus somewhere between Tibetan horn bleats, an Amazonian insect chorus, and the blurred distortion of Birchville Cat Motel. These sounds buzz, hum, swarm, and shift into a time-stretched growl of low-end drones which leads the piece to a gradual conclusion. Pretty damn good...

MPEG stream: Shh... Camille

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

SORRY. The twenty minute and change teaser that Nos Phillipe offered through Confront last year, definitely piqued our interest for another offering from their dark, organic drone experiments. This album opens with a hauntological set of ghostly piano melodies whispering behind an aerated hiss, broken with tactile events. A thick swarm of doom-guitar drones and square waves blackens the sky, and the horror-film mood is furthered with a delirious sequence of Bernard Hermann-esque screeching violins. Bowed gongs, reversed bell-tones, and quiet metal scrabblings follow, amassing into a tense drone alluding to shadowy esoteric ritualism with black clad minions lurking about subterranean spaces lit only by candles. Certainly creepy stuff that Nos Phillipe are exploring here. Coarse, gritty loops and deep swelling frequencies seem to come from the Philip Jeck school of turntable manipulation, although this London duo embraces much more of a Gothic sensibility than you'd find in Jeck's antiquated warblings. The album's finale cut is an extract from a live session captured at Cafe OTO in London. In this live performance, bowed metals and cymbals shimmer with an eternal glow of those Organum recordings from way back when. A really fine set of motorized vibration, psychoacoustic phase-shifting, and synthetic ambience envelopes the acoustic dronescraping, building upto an exceptionally dramatic crescendo. References abound to irr. app. (ext.), Nurse With Wound, and some of Christoph Heemann's dada expressionism. Recommended for sure!

MPEG stream: Deacons: Control Of The Candidate
MPEG stream: Deana
MPEG stream: Live At Cafe Oto

If we ever get a bigger store, perhaps we can have a resturant-friendly section that will have titles like this. Nostalgia 77 is a female-fronted nu-soul / jazz combo from England that has a progressive forward thinking lounge sound that avoids the cheesiness that befalls similar acts of the genre. It's quite nice actually!

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

SORRY.

While we wish we could boast about having a large section of Greek '70s psychedelia, this one and only full length by Nostradamos, recorded in 1972, will now be the very high standard by which we will judge any other Greek acid-folk-psych-pop we are lucky enough to get our ears on. And that's kind of unfair for any of those records because this is truly an amazing and unique record. As intricate and eclectic as they were poppy and infectious, Nostradamos utilized the regular rock band instrumentation but added elements like violin, flute, horns and harp which gave their songs a rich and colorful luster. Hints of more traditional Greek folk are infused into their psychedelic pop, giving an incredible range to the album and even within the songs themselves, thus making for an incredibly exciting and pleasurable listening experience. We definitely hear a kinship between this and some of the more earthy Tropicalia happening at the same time in a totally different place on the globe. Nostradamos still sounds so alive and relevant today. So many moments on this record would be at home on something by an Elephant 6 band, and we could see lots of today's indie folk stars like Beirut, Coco Rosie, Rio En Medio and even Dungen totally digging on this, we sure are!

MPEG stream: Track 1
MPEG stream: Track 11

The looming electronic fragments on this new album from Not Breathing (aka Dave Wright) gave us twinges of nostalgia for the sounds of... oh, about six years ago! Really, as we listened to this disc, it struck us that this particular vein of shadowy jagged circuit bending sort of fell off the map for a few years. Actually it's been that long since the last Not Breathing release Itchy Tingles. Now he's 'back' so to speak with the finely crafted Carrion Sounds. A densely packed assemblage of manipulated rumblings and disfigured utterances wrested and coaxed from yesteryear's synths, drum machines and toys, Carrion Sounds aggressively immerses the listener in its dank, slippery, arachnid-infested atmospheres.

MPEG stream: Worlock Radar
MPEG stream: Garmonbozia

We are big fans of the Brazilian pastoral psych of Lula Cortes, whether it be the phenomenal Satwa record or his later legendary mid-'70s masterpiece with Ze Ramalho, Paebiru, So you can imagine how our hearts went all aflutter when we got this latest Time-Lag reissue of the sole release by Marconi Notaro, a revolutionary Brazilian poet who recorded this album with both Cortes and Ramalho in 1973, the same year the Satwa record was released. Almost reading like a second Satwa album while at the same time predicting the later ecstatic fuzz experimental rock of Paebiru, the sunbaked exuberance and joy of these recordings belie their political spirit. Miraculously recorded and independently released amongst the harsh authority of the 1970's Brazilian government, Notaro, Cortes and Ramalho and others in the small and previously little-known Recife music scene were somehow able to bypass restrictions on music that was viewed as vehemently anti-state. Using acidy tape loop effects, electric and acoustic guitars, trancy folk percussion and the tricordio, a sitar/dulcimer hybrid that Cortes built himself, the songs here are mind-meltingly beautiful. Sadly Notaro passed away in 2000 of Hepatitis C leaving behind this record and seven published books of poetry. But with the authorization of Notaro's daughter and Lula Cortes himself, this classic masterpiece of protest is finally unearthed for us all. Totally Recommended!!

MPEG stream: Ah Vida Avida
MPEG stream: Made in PB
MPEG stream: Simphonia em Re

Thank you, Thurston! This cd of material by an obscure late '70s no-wave instrumental punk ouftit from Philly called the Notekillers comes to us via Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace label, and it was Thurston's enthusiasm for the lone 1978 7" single by the band, specifically its A-side, "The Zipper", that eventually resulted in this compact disc release, and now that we've heard it too we can understand why he's such a fan! You'll find the "The Zipper" and its B-side "Clock Wise" and 13 more unreleased tracks from the band's reel-to-reel and cassette archives here, two of 'em studio tracks intended for their aborted second 7" release and the rest live/rehearsal/demo material. All of them have an aggro, alienated, avant-punk energy that reminds us of elements of a host of different bands from Pavement to Polvo to Stinking Lizaveta to Simply Saucer... The Notekillers were definitely forging their own sonic path and it's cool that finally the world gets to hear some of what they put down on tape. The liner notes from guitarist David First/Hirsch talk about how the band was all about pushing the limits -- *their* limits anyways -- and as difficult as that may have been for them back then, that struggle is what kept a bunch of musical weirdos in a Philadelphia basement going. Yet "only if we failed would we succeed" he thought. Well, now they've sort of done both and I hope they feel good about it, 'cause they should. This Notekillers record is one of those lost, buried "historical" releases that has been disinterred with a still-beating heart.

MPEG stream: The Zipper
MPEG stream: Ricochet

The shoegaze renaissance continues! This is the debut full length from this Philadelphia band after a string of singles and EPs, and alongside aQ faves True Widow, shows the typically metal-centric Relapse Records branching out further into the realms of atmospheric rock. Guilty Of Everything (a title that's leant an added weight by founder Dominic Polermo's two year jail stint prior to the band's formation) is an enormous monument of heavy shoegaze, loaded with bittersweet hooks and infectious melodies. What sets Nothing apart from most of their contemporaries, and even a lot of the first wave shoegaze bands, is how song oriented they are. Buried underneath an absolutely massive overwhelming production and what feels like a thousand layers of guitar, is an album full of genuinely moving nostalgic pop melodies and arena sized hooks that bring to mind the epic dreamy dirge of bands like Hum and Catherine Wheel. The contrast between these beautifully fragile yet addictive melodies and the wash of reverbed guitar, crunchy low end distortion and bombastic drumming is dramatic and totally perfect, and it plays a massive part in setting Nothing apart in a musical movement that's in constant danger of oversaturation. All the while the vocals hazily drift in and out, the lyrics just on the border of being indecipherable, fragments of sentences floating to the surface like half remembered afterthoughts. While the album is mostly pretty mid paced, there are also moments of driving groove and uptempo punk rock bop that help to momentarily break the hypnosis, but all the while the songs still drip with that same starry-eyed melancholic wonder. Catchy and immersive, rousing yet introspective and totally addictive. A no-brainer when it comes to your 2014 year end list. If you've lately found yourself smitten by the likes of Weekend, Alcest, Deafheaven and Whirr (with whom these guys will be releasing a split later this year) then this is absolutely essential.

MPEG stream: Hymn To The Pillory
MPEG stream: Dig
MPEG stream: Get Well

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

SORRY. Down south in LA, this band makes some of the most elegant, challenging, and pretty pop music we have ever heard. Franklin Bruno's got the cheek to rhyme "cherubic" with "seraphic;" he can turn a phrase like no other.

[ aquarius records catalogue — N ]