[ aquarius records catalogue

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Showing results 1401 through 1450 of 1919.

A brilliant, compelling album.

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

SORRY.

A lush and breathtaking live document of Portishead's amazing live performances. Gorgeous versions of all of the favourites backed by a full string section with oboes, flugel horns, trumpets, saxophones, flutes, trombones, Geoff Barrows' economic turntablism, and Beth Gibbons' spirited vocals.

It seems a bit strange to spend very much time writing about the new Portishead. Since by now, odds are you're probably sick to death of hearing about it. Sure we all loved Portishead back in the day, they were one of those rare 'electronic' bands whose appeal knew no boundaries, metalheads, moms, indie kids, the sound of Portishead was dark and sexy and mysterious, sinister and ominous, dark and rife with crackle and buzz. Perfect drugged out late night bliss out music, their strange way of creating sound and composing music, recording their own samples on to vinyl and then spinning and scratching those samples to create new textures, made for a totally unique sound. So what does a band do after taking almost a decade off? Do they return with a record that sounds just like the last one, which is probably what most folks want, or do they return radically altered? With a sound bold and brash, reinventing the sound they themselves invented in the first place. On first listen, Third definitely sounds like the latter, but with repeated listening, the record slowly and subtly begins to slip toward the former. Which most definitely speaks to the magic of Portishead, and the new record, which at once embraces the old sound, while turning it into something new. More than past outings, Third is dirty, out of tune, atonal, noisy, chaotic, urgent, sure past records had all that crackle and buzz and fuzz, but those elements were carefully placed, and kept well within line. Third sounds much more, well, loose for lack of a better word, like actual musicians, feeling each other out, maybe even improvising. Less like a studio concoction and more like a real live band. And the sound suits them. And makes for a record at once warm and familiar, but also alien, sort of 'rocking' and rife with WTF? moments. Take the opener, "Silence", which begins with some sort of radio broadcast, which gives way to a killer loping breakbeat, immediately the fastest tempo Portishead have ever explored, strings swoop in, the sound raw and urgent, almost like the chase scene from some spy movie, gorgeous distorted chiming guitar harmonics ring out, until finally the track slows down, and slithers sexily, the vocals a sexy sultry croon, but it's not long before the track kicks back into the haunting and tense, string laden cinematic jam that opened the track. Then there's "Hunter", which begins like classic Portishead, all smokey and late night sounding, soft muted reverbed guitars, a lush gauzy production, the vocals ethereal and ghostly, but even here, a few seconds in, the song is interrupted by a super distorted crumbling guitar chord that halts things in their tracks, before fading out, and allowing the song to resume. The a few minutes later, a strange noodly synth freakoutsurfaces, again derailing the song's slow motion groove, but It just sounds perfect. It doesn't at all sound like random weirdness for random weirdness' sake. The first time is jarring, the second time, you find yourself waiting for those parts, even humming along as if they were as crucial to the song as the main melody or the vocals, and the thing is, they are. Near the end lurks the single, "Machine Gun", with its very machine gun like rhythm, herky jerky, stuttery and not at all fluid, reminiscent of Art Of Noise, the vocals sweetly soaring over this jagged rhythmscape below, which only really varies part way through when the original machine gun drums are replaced by BIGGER, more distorted drums, and wrapped in strange moaning horns (or maybe synths), only to shift once again moments later becoming more electronic, the beats awash in strange FX and metallic buzz. It's so unlikely, that it makes perfect sense as the first single. If you can embrace that strange rhythm, that relentless and very un-Portishead like sound, then the rest of the record will make perfect sense, unfolding in front of you, revealing both the warm familiar sounds missed, and the new, bizarre sonic elements never even imagined All over the record, the band confounds and confuses, gloriously, the brooding whispery "Small" shifts gears partway through and transforms into a fuzzy organ drenched krautjam, "Deep Water" is a straight up old timey folk song, the vocals and strings soaked in fuzzy ambience (and reminding us a bit of vocalist Gibbons' post Portishead project Rustin Man), "We Carry On" is a sort of atonal Stereolab style jam, relentless percussion, thick swaths of synth, very repetitive and hypnotic, "The Rip" is part whispery folky flutter, part synthy electro buzz, every track here offers some sort of surprise, whether it's the song itself, or some little sonic strangeness lurking within, but never is the song or the sound sacrificed, each track is perfect in its own beautifully twisted way, catchy but never obviously so, groovy, but often convoluted and fractured, it's a difficult record to explain for sure, which is perhaps why so much ink has been spilled, and while we may be sick of reading about it, we sure are finding it nearly impossible to imagine ever getting sick of listening to it, which is precisely why it's one of our Records Of The Week.

MPEG stream: Silence
MPEG stream: Hunter
MPEG stream: Machine Gun

Killer live record from this Northwestern trio who play bicycles. Not play ON bicycles mind you. But actually play bikes, as musical instruments. Plucking spokes, bowing rims, striking frames, scraping seat posts, every part is played, the result a gloriously cacophonous symphony of clatter and clang. Imagine a stage, with punk rockers seated on stools behind upturned bikes, positioned like harps or cellos, the players poised with sticks and bows, or bare handed, ready to coax all manner of sounds from those bicycles. It's a pretty amazing sight, and the sound is pretty kick ass as well. Captured live in Japan, this set features all sort of re-CYCLE-d sounds, buzzes, clicks, scrapes, whirs, hisses, grinding crunches, singing steel, bits of rhythm, sometimes it sounds like a pipefight, other times like some super abstract music concrete, and still other times, something magical happens and the metal seems to sing, high clear bell like tones, growling groaning low end, woven into the otherwise clattery clangy softly abrasive soundscapes. Pretty fantastic, like a reimagining of old school industrial music, transformed into something more akin to clattery free folk or weird free noise. Super cool stuff. Beautiful paste on sleeves, LIMITED TO 200 COPIES, each one hand numbered.

Most of us here at AQ are avid cyclists, in fact Andee's ladyfriend even owns her own bike shop. San Francisco is a great place to ride bikes. But apparently Portland is even better. And not only do they ride bikes, but they play them as well. The Portland Bike Ensemble, flip their bikes upside down, attach contact mics, plug into amps and go to town! A strange and wonderful world of clicks and scrapes, moans and creaks, a percussive wonderland, metal bits are struck and rubbed, bowed and plucked, spokes are played like a metal harp, frames are rung like bells, a gorgeously abstract junkyard percussion cyclescape. This lp collects the Ensemble's first two performances, as well as a side long track originally released on a super limited Jyrk cd-r (so limited in fact that we never got any). LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Each one is hand painted and includes a photocopied insert with liner notes and stuff.

This Swedish band's self-titled 2008 debut was hailed by us as one of the best - and blackest, in the Satanic sense - efforts of the New Wave Of Old School Heavy Metal (bands like Enforcer, Cauldron, In Solitude, and RAM). Now back for their second strike, on new, bigger label Metal Blade, Portrait have produced another excellent, occult album of Mercyful Fate/King Diamond influenced metal mania. The 8 evil, and mostly epic tracks on Crimen Laesae Majestatis Divinae (we'll expect to see a posting about this title on that "Heavy Latin" blog sometime soon, eh) are once again raging, ripping, riffy speedsters replete with paint-peeling vocals, Satanic subject matter, shredding solos, and sinister melodies... Glorious! Intricate, energetic, and proudly retro, down to the silver cd face and old school Metal Blade bloody axe logo, Portrait aren't just for killing happy power metal poseurs, but are just the thing to put on (instead of most modern black metal) when you're burning the black candles for a night of devil worship, and would like to get some air guitar practice in at the same time. By the way, if you liked the rightfully hyped Ghost's Opus Eponymous, but want something a bit more METAL, the much less poppy Portrait is the answer, cranking up the KD falsetto screams whilst dialing down the BOC to zero.

MPEG stream: Infinite Descension
MPEG stream: Darkness Forever
MPEG stream: Der Todesking

Recently we've been chuffed to review some great new releases by what we might call New Wave Of Old School Heavy Metal bands, such as Cauldron and Enforcer. And there was that Heavy Metal Killers comp on Earache recently too, which included those two bands, and these guys, Portrait from Sweden. All young bands doing metal like it was meant to be, back in the day. Portrait certainly deliver tons of speedy energy, galloping riffage, evil atmospheres. Melody too. And of course, no cookie monster vocals! Although singer Philip Svennefelt sometimes switches to gruff rasps, he really loves to break into a wailing witchy falsetto a la King Diamond... so Mercyful Fate seems to be a BIG influence here. Mercyful Fate were, along with Venom, one of the '80s originators of black metal, before the church burning Norwegian types took over, and Portrait's fixation on occultic, Satanic themes (song titles include "Hell", "Bow Unto The Devil", and "Beware The Demons") fits the bill. Totally black metal, that is if the '90s never happened. Not to mention that the picture of guitarist Christian Lindell makes him look positively demon-possessed himself, despite his first name. Eyes wide, and mouth a rictus grin, his expression really sums up why Portrait is so appealing, nay, compelling. It's not just the songs and the sound, it's the spirit. The sinister spirit of their influences - Mercyful Fate, and Satan! So while this is fannishly '80s, it's more than that. Not simplistic - their compositions are often quite long (over nine minutes in the case of "The Adversary") with lots of interesting, dynamically intertwined parts, well paced and put together - and not shallow. They channel the ancient spirit with ripping reverence. Now reissued domestically, this album originally came out last year in a limited die hard edition on Germany's Iron Kodex label, who also just brought us the new vinyl from AQ faves Slough Feg, who could be considered charter members of the NWOOSHM (nuh-whoosh-um), since they've been at it for a while! One final note: don't you think Portrait is an odd name for a metal band? But actually, according to the Encyclopedia Metallum, they're not the only Portrait around. Hmm. They've just got to find a metal band named Landscape to tour with! (Another search of the Encyclopedia Metallum DID turn up one Landscape, and they're from Sweden, but defunct... oh well.)

MPEG stream: Consecration
MPEG stream: Hell

Deeeeeeep spiritually-charged drones from this supergroup of Bay Area heavy experimentalists. You are going to want to just hammer the "Add To Cart" button when we list all the members involved: folks from Barn Owl, Date Palms, Tarentel, En, Higuma and The Alps! The Root Strata All-Stars, basically, though this is on Important. Three tracks, the first, "D" is a side long affair, delving into the most harmonically aligned keys of the western scale utilizing both electric and acoustic instruments including violin, harmonium, tamboura, koto, sine wave oscillator, bass clarinet, tapes, shruti box and electric guitar in rich layered tones and frequencies. Side 2 begins with the all vocal meditation, "Sa" reminding us of David Hykes and The Harmonic Choir's cathedral amplified minimalist hymns before unleashing the deepest and heaviest track here, "Gong", which focuses on the shifting and shimmering metallic reverberations of the titular instrument. A beautifully honed study of harmony and frequency within a wonderfully attuned collective and collaborative spirit. Housed in a hand screened heavy stock foldover jacket. LIMITED TO 500 copies, so act fast!

Absolutely gorgeous! For those already familiar with the wonderful timeless Cuban sounds of the Buena Vista Social Club, a new album by BVSC's grande dame Omara Portuondo is certainly a welcome sight. She possesses an incredibly potent, elegant voice that elevates any song to soaring new heights, and all of the fourteen songs here more than prove this point. Each note and phrase -- both vocal and instrumental-- is alive with smoky vitality. Okay, 'nuf gushin'! 'Nuf said! Recommended!

MPEG stream: Tabu
MPEG stream: Flor De Amor

First comedy record from our favorite Mr. Show Sideman and self professed metal nerd Brian Posehn. Embarassing tales of sex (or lack of), life as a teenage metalhead as well as lots of swearing and silliness. PLUS, two songs featuring Posehn on vocals, one with Titannica from Mr. Show, the other, with the obviously named Posehn, both featuring members of Anthrax, Armored Saint and White Zombie.

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

SORRY. With some of the most atrocious cover art ever (think: promotional giveaway at a kitchen cleaner convention with too many fonts and an unhealthy obsession with photoshop) and woeful lack of publicity we've seen in a while, the long awaited Posies box manages to shine and surprise. Four cds worth of outtakes and live tracks by most bands would be...um...unneccesary to say the least, but almost all the tracks in this box are great. From unreleased gems, to alternate versions, to different demos (ken's vs. jon's) of some of your favorite songs, it's amazing to trace the development of the Posies super polished super complex pop, as well as kind of shocking to hear how mature and almost 'finished' some of the early demos were. While, i'm sure only Posies completists will buy this, most fans of pop music (indie and otherwise) might discover a new favorite band.

We've been sitting on this one for a while, not sure why really 'cause we're some of the biggest Posies fans around! Well, co-Posie Jon Auer's solo album reminded us of just how much we love them, and gave a us a kick in the pants to show it. Apologies for our tardiness, fellas. Every Kind Of Light is a total return to stellar form for this Seattle pop duo. The combined forces of Auer and Ken Stringfellow are pretty damn hard to beat. Heart-melting vocal harmonies? You betcha. Sweetheart sentimental lyrics? Uh huh. Utterly infectious hooks? Hell yeah. So damn deliriously good! We could gush on, but why? Just get these songs into your ears, and hear for yourself. We command you... please. Psst, there's an even newer album on the horizon slated for the end of June. Can't wait!

MPEG stream: It's Great To Be Here Again!
MPEG stream: Conversations
MPEG stream: All In A Day's Work

When the familiar wonderful chiming vocal harmonies of Ken Stringfellow and Jonathan Auer fell silent a few years back, the pop world fell a quite a few shades paler, but now the Posies are back! Their return comes as quite a surprise to many, but a very, very pleasing one nonetheless. I, Cup, am quite giddy about the whole matter. The first we heard of this rejoining of two brilliant pop forces was when the AQ phone rang a couple of months ago with an offering of a Posies in-store performance in August. Still, we were a bit unsure and puzzled. But now we're happy to know it is definitely true. On this cd, they approach their songs (newer and older) live at the Showbox in Seattle, seated and armed with acoustic guitars. And the oldies sound wonderful --- included among them one of my all-time favourites "I May Hate You Sometimes" from their first full-length. As this is a live recording all the expected crowd noise is intact (though not too intrusive on the music), but it is clear that the Posies are among old friends and fans with moments of singing along and loving cheers.

So very glad they're back! And while it's pretty obvious these boys like to rock out live (often at the expense of their glorious vocal harmonies), it is a welcome toning and paring down of the Posies sound that greets us on this EP. Showing the magic pop chemistry Jon and Ken conjure up when they just sit down with their guitars and play. Four new Posie gems and one David Crosby cover. Recorded in Barcelona and Seattle.

There's something a little strange about Posies records. And we noticed the same thing about Sloan records weirdly enough. Two of our all time favorite bands for sure. But as excited as we always are for a new record by either, inevitably, when it does finally show up, we're always a bit disappointed, sometimes more than a bit, convinced that maybe that's it, the band is past their prime, done for. And we'll keep the record, just cuz we like the older records so much. It's that same loyalty that compels us to keep listening, and then, without fail, something mysterious happens, and the record, in both cases, Sloan and Posies, begins to grow on us, begins to sound better and better, blossoming, and revealing itself as another great pop record, one that does in fact fit with all the other releases. And then invariably we find ourselves listening to those records incessantly, which we're beginning to think is the magic of both Sloan and the Posies, the difference between spitting out some immediately catchy pop pap, and crafting something deeper and more complex, that does require multiple listens and does eventually end up being catchier in the long run, and certainly becomes the sort of record that we never tire of, unlike some of those hook filled sweet pop jams that we listen to over and over but tire of quickly. So yeah, we were SO excited for a new Posies record, and experienced the exact same phenomenon described above. In the case of Blood/Candy though, there might be more to it, the fact that the first three tracks feature guests, none of which we'd heard of, but apparently each notable enough to merit mention in parenthesis after the song title. It's not that those songs were bad, they just didn't grab us, could it be that it was the Posies watered down by guest vocalists? Although to be fair, their vocal contributions are not all the noticeable. But if you skip those three tracks, and start the record on the third track, "So Caroline", suddenly, it works, and from there to the end, it's total classic Posies, it still took a few listens, but we can't stop now, from soft focus dreamy soft pop, to crunchy big guitar power pop, the songs split as always between the group's two distinctive vocalists/songwriters, Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer, hooks galore, lush arrangements, incredible harmonies, another great Posies record! And once you've played tracks three to eleven to death, then head back to those first three tracks, and guess what? Yep, they start to sound great too. So yeah, Posies fans, you're obviously already gonna want this, and for newbies, while we might recommend Frosting On The Beater or Dear 23 or Amazing Disgrace first, this would not be a bad place to start either (although we'd still recommend starting with track three!). Classic power pop for sure, folks into Jellyfish, The Rollo Treadway, Sloan, Silver Sun, The Stereo and the like should already be WAY into the Posies, but if not, you should probably just get this, and the rest of their records too!

MPEG stream: So Caroline
MPEG stream: Take Care Of Yourself
MPEG stream: Cleopatra Street
MPEG stream: Notion 99

Oluyemi Thomas: Bass clarinet, C-melody, soprano saxophones, bamboo flute & percussion. Ijeoma Thomas: Poetic vocals and percussion. Roberto de Haven: Percussion.

First things first, this Possessed has nothing to do with the '80s Bay Area metal band of the same name. No, this Possessed hails from even further back in time, the early '70s to be precise. And that leads us to say this: oh man, if we only had a time machine! Sure we'd go back and kill Hitler's parents and buy Google stock and all that... but our time machine day dream today is dominated by a flyer reproduced in the cd booklet to this release, advertising a month's worth of "progressive concerts" upcoming at a venue, somewhere in England, featuring performances by T2, Judus [sic] Priest, Israel's Jericho Jones, Thin Lizzy and this very band, Possessed. Good grief. We'd have been very very broke blokes back then, spending our last dime, I mean, farthing, on going out to such shows! What a time for hairy, heavy proto-metal awesomeness! Thinking along those lines, Cathedral vocalist Lee Dorrian *has* built a time machine of sorts, though -- his label Rise Above now has an archival/reissue imprint called Rise Above Relics, dedicated to unearthing the heavy sounds of the past for them to be heard again today. This Possessed album (along with Luv Machine, also reviewed) is one of the first releases and we've gotta say they've dug up a gem, hitherto unknown to us. Possessed, who you'd think might be some sort of occultic, Comusy folk band from the name and the Art Nouveau, Aubrey Beardsley style cover art, actually play a kinda proggy, kinda glammy hard rock that definitely bears some resemblance to aspects of Led Zeppelin. Just coincidence that Possessed's singer and guitarist, the India-born Vernon Pereira, had been in the original lineup of an outfit called The Band Of Joy, which also included Zeps-to-be Robert Plant and John Bonham? In any case, Possessed's most notable attributes would have to be the sinuous, crunchy riffing of guitarist Pereira, and also his Plant-like lead vocals. Furthermore, the band's spiralingly complex and bombastic songwriting ventures into the variety of "funk" displayed by Led Zeppelin on such songs as "Trampled Underfoot". Then there's the acoustic break of "Exploration Pt. II", also very Zeppish to be sure, though besides Zep, we'd compare this to Thin Lizzy and also to obscurities like Hard Stuff and even AQ faves Zolar X! Despite being so worthy, Possessed never released an album, though they did record one in 1971 that, due to label disinterest, was shelved (until now, this is it). Sadly, three key band members, including Pereira, died in a motorway accident in 1976 ("Driver of Pop Group Death Van Dozed Off" reads the headline to one of the vintage newspaper clippings reproduced in the cd booklet), bringing a tragic end to the hopes and history of Possessed. The '70s rock star glory experienced by their chums in Led Zeppelin was never to be for this ill-fated band, though things could have, should have, turned out much differently, as at the time of the accident, they were on the verge at last of a major record deal. And they were supposedly slated to play shows in the USA with the Sex Pistols, bizarrely enough. Of course, that never happened. So we're left with Exploration, while not the best unreleased album of the era ever (Jacula? Bedemon? Sproton Layer?), definitely a pretty darn cool one. It's a bit raw sounding, maybe a still a work in progress with some of the riffing rather similar in a couple of the songs, but it's definitely something that fans of both Led Zep and all the early '70s hard rock rarities we love should investigate! Nicely packaged with a fat, 20 page booklet full of notes and photos, slipcased to boot.

MPEG stream: The Love That You Gave
MPEG stream: Darkness, Darkness

Indie darlings Dntel's Jimmy Tamborello and Benjamin Gibbard of Death Cab For Cutie join forces in The Postal Service. Apparently these collaborations did indeed take shape via tapes mailed back and forth between the two. Each track is subtle variation of the following: bashfully boyish vocals, chiming music box melodies and soft jangly guitars that play off one another over a simple thumping or clicking programmed beat. Gibbard sings oh so sweetly in his melted ice cream voice while Tamborello delivers the delightfully pretty electronics and bounding rhythms. Just what you might expect from a project starring these two fellows. Plus there's an added aural delight here and there in the form of lovely vocals by Jen Wood and Rilo Kiley's Jenny Lewis. It's easy to draw comparisons to Kings Of Convenience vocalist Erlend Oye's new solo album which also sets a gentle male voice -- more familiarly heard with soft guitars and drums - singing atop light electronic dancey tracks. However unlike Oye's Unrest on which music and voice sound somewhat detached from each other, Postal Service's Give Up has a wonderful chemistry that swirls everything together perfectly. Recommended!

RealAudio clip: The District Sleeps Alone Tonight
RealAudio clip: Nothing Better

This four song introductory ep offers barely a peep of Postal Service's effervescent crushworthy tunes. Ah, such a sweet peep it is! A perfect accessory to their full length that's out now too. Definitely see the full album review for all the PS nitty gritty, but in particular regards to this ep (a current Cup fave by the way), the title track is an instantly catchy gem that's sure to find its way onto friends' mixtapes everywhere. The second half is actually PS songs performed by two other bands - fellow Sub Poppers The Shins and Iron And Wine. The brief encounter ends with Iron And Wine's drowsy acoustic rendition of "Such Great Heights". And y'know what? This lil' cd is worth picking up for that track alone. Beautiful! Each version is strong on its own and great in contract to one another. Recommended!

RealAudio clip: Such Great Heights 1
RealAudio clip: Such Great Heights 4

Arguably the second best song on Jimmy Tamborello and Benjamin Gibbard's Postal Service Give Up album, "The District Sleeps Tonight" is featured on this new cdep along with an alternate, much more percolated'n'squidgy mix by DJ Downfall, as well as a much more languid yet still thumpin' John Tejada remix of the aforementioned album's *best* track "Such Great Heights" (at least according to Cup!), plus... this cd version includes a very mellow cover of the Flaming Lips' "Suddenly Everything Has Changed"!

MPEG stream: The District Sleeps Tonight
MPEG stream: Suddenly Everything Has Changed

Sub Pop continue their recent string of cd and 12" singles that's threatening to become sort of the unofficial descendent of their old Sub Pop Singles Club. Okay, maybe we're jumpin' the gun, but this is already the third one for Postal Service. The title track is once again drawn from their full length Give Up, and is accompanied by a suitably dreamy new song "Be Still My Heart" as well as two remixes (by Styrofoam and Matthew Dear). Oh such sweetness just in time for Valentine's Day!

MPEG stream: Be Still My Heart
MPEG stream: Nothing Better (Styrofoam Remix)

For those that didn't want to pay $34 for the 2013 deluxe triple lp reissue of this 'indie electronica' fave, Sub Pop has also now done a regular, no frills vinyl reissue too! Here's some of what we said 'bout the last reissue, sans stuff about the extras (eps and rarities) included on the triple: It's hard to believe it's now been more than a decade since the original release of this fantastic little slice of indie electronica, a collaboration between Dntel's Jimmy Tamborello (the electronics and production) and Benjamin Gibbard of Death Cab For Cutie (the bitter sweet indie jangle and that voice!) a project they called at the time The Postal Service (with a little bit of protest from the actual USPS!). Since then, their sound has served as a template for a million other bands, mining much of the same territory, sad boy, mix tape break up indie jangle pop, but all wound up in percolating beats, and warm lustrous electronic shimmer, not indie club music by any stretch, it still had that sort of homebrewed 4-track bedroom vibe that made (and makes) music like this so relatable, but it expanded the typical indie pop sonic palette, and resulted in a serious of glistening, dreamily propulsive, nearly anthemic electronic pop, that does indeed sound just as good now as it did when everyone was freaking out about it the first time around. The Give Up record originally took shape via tapes mailed back and forth between Tamborello and Gibbard. Each track is subtle variation of the following: bashfully boyish vocals, chiming music box melodies and soft jangly guitars that play off one another over a simple thumping or clicking programmed beat. Gibbard sings oh so sweetly in his melted ice cream voice while Tamborello delivers the delightfully pretty electronics and bounding rhythms. Pretty much exactly what you might expect from a project starring these two fellows. Plus there's an added aural delight here and there in the form of occasional lovely vocals by Jen Wood and Rilo Kiley's Jenny Lewis. The Postal Service's Give Up has a wonderful chemistry that swirls everything together perfectly.

MPEG stream: The District Sleeps Alone Tonight
MPEG stream: Nothing Better

It's hard to believe it's now been more than a decade since the original release of this fantastic little slice of indie electronica, a collaboration between Dntel's Jimmy Tamborello (the electronics and production) and Benjamin Gibbard of Death Cab For Cutie (the bitter sweet indie jangle and that voice!) a project they called at the time The Postal Service (with a little bit of protest from the actual USPS!). Since then, their sound has served as a template for a million other bands, mining much of the same territory, sad boy, mix tape break up indie jangle pop, but all wound up in percolating beats, and warm lustrous electronic shimmer, not indie club music by any stretch, it still had that sort of homebrewed 4-track bedroom vibe that made (and makes) music like this so relatable, but it expanded the typical indie pop sonic palette, and resulted in a serious of glistening, dreamily propulsive, nearly anthemic electronic pop, that does indeed sound just as good now as it did when everyone was freaking out about it the first time around. This tenth anniversary collection, gathers up the Give Up album in its entirety, along with two of the eps from around the same time, as well as some unreleased gems and rarities, and houses it all it a big fancy package, that incorporates the various iconic album art as well as lyrics, liner notes etc. Here's our slightly updated/revised review of these records from the first time around. The Give Up record originally took shape via tapes mailed back and forth between Tamborello and Gibbard. Each track is subtle variation of the following: bashfully boyish vocals, chiming music box melodies and soft jangly guitars that play off one another over a simple thumping or clicking programmed beat. Gibbard sings oh so sweetly in his melted ice cream voice while Tamborello delivers the delightfully pretty electronics and bounding rhythms. Pretty much exactly what you might expect from a project starring these two fellows. Plus there's an added aural delight here and there in the form of occasional lovely vocals by Jen Wood and Rilo Kiley's Jenny Lewis. The Postal Service's Give Up has a wonderful chemistry that swirls everything together perfectly. The first single from that record, also included in this anniversary collection, is another gorgeous display of the Postal Service's effortlessly effervescent crushworthy tunes. And ah, such a sweet peep it is! A perfect accessory to the full length. The title track "Such Great Heights" is an instantly catchy gem that's sure to find its way onto friends' mixtapes everywhere (even still) and is most definitely the best song on Give Up. The rest of the ep is filled out actually by PS songs performed by two other bands - fellow Sub Poppers The Shins and Iron And Wine. The brief cover love ends with Iron And Wine's drowsy acoustic rendition of "Such Great Heights". And y'know what? It's definitely different, but in its own way just as good as the original. Beautiful! Each version is strong on its own and great in concert with one another. Also included is the second ep, The District Sleeps Alone Tonight, the title track, arguably the SECOND best song on Tamborello and Gibbard's Give Up album, "The District Sleeps Tonight" is accompanied by an alternate, much more percolated'n'squidgy mix by DJ Downfall, as well as a much more languid yet still thumpin' John Tejada remix of the aforementioned album's *best* track, the previously mentioned "Such Great Heights", plus... there's also a very mellow cover of the Flaming Lips' "Suddenly Everything Has Changed"! Single number three is here as well, which in addition to the album track, includes two dreamy mixes from Styrofoam and Matthew Dear. And in addition to all that this new version tacks on a bunch of unreleased and rare tracks as well, including more collaborations with vocalist Jenny Lewis, their awesome Phil Collins cover, which was originally released on the soundtrack to the movie Wicker Park, there's also a John Lennon cover, originally from an Amnesty International benefit compilation, a Nobody remix, originally an iTunes only exclusive, and finally a live on the radio track from 2003. And as mentioned above, the cd is gorgeous packaged in an oversized booklike package, 8 full color panels, multiple pockets, two booklets, tons of rare photos and more!! The vinyl too, in a similarly over the top multi paneled / pocketed jacket, and while they last we have the Loser Edition (i.e. colored vinyl!)

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Sounding like Lesser circa "Welcome To The American Experience", but with a slightly more commercial bent, Posthuman take AQ favorites Lesser, Dark Noerd and the Tigerbeat 6 stable of noiseniks, add a little Boards Of Canada and mix in a heaping spoonful of mainstream techtronica ala Prodigy or KMFDM and come up with some cool, slightly dated, too weird for the dance floor, too dance-y for the weirdos. Out-there electronica.

Cd reissue of the 1975 second album from obscure French prog-fusion act Potemkine, a "Zeuhl" band in the mold of Magma. Not as heavy or dark as we were hoping for, but still it's cool, complex stuff. Includes tracks some from their debut lp and single as

Iceland's third most popular band after Bjork and Sigur Ros! But they don't sound a whole lot like either of those artists, as Potentiam aren't pop or electronic, but a black metal band! Now, this isn't a new release, but it's a favorite of ours and we've

RealAudio clip: Latum Oss Bidja
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Maybe they were sick of being told that they sounded a bit like Sigur Ros or something, 'cause this new disc from Iceland's Potentiam dispenses with the cinematic soundscapey stuff in favor of fist-in-yer face metallic mayhem. Their previous album from a few years back, the now-out of print Balsyn, was a weird mixture of Viking black metal and ambient atmospheres, full of things like recordings of crackling fires and a melodic almost-pop trumpet dirge. But Balsyn's long-awaited follow-up Orka I Myrkri strikes us a somewhat different beast, way more riffy and technical than what we remember. They've been woodshedding perhaps. Ripping, powerful, even kinda hooky black metal a la Satyricon, Opeth, latter Emperor... It's not Balsyn Pt. 2, but with Orka I Myrkri we definitely remain Potentiam fans!

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If you love the warm female vocals of Call And Response or in fact those of '70s singers Helen Reddy or Maureen McGovern (remember the theme from "Poseidon Adventure"?), then hop to it! The SF duo known as Potion embrace many genres but most often find their way back to a smooth, lounge-y sound. A low and lilting, calming debut.

The debut album by The Potomac Accord from St Louis, MO bears more than a striking resemblance to Godspeed You Black Emperor's "F#A#oo" - heck, the cover is an absolute deadringer with the exact same slant of the horizon in the grey blurry cover photo,

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Been dying to review this slab of bleak brutal blackened doom drenched power violence for a while now. We were first exposed to these guys when they shared a split lp with the equally downtuned and devastating Burmese. Very few bands are up to the task of sharing a record with the mighty Burmese, but these Macedonian (not Russian as we mistakenly thought) slow motion grindcrushers definitely held their own, enough that we were super psyched to discover there was indeed a full length. Channels takes up right where those split tracks left off. Heaving, massive, lurching, doomy, crusty crush, but this isn't ultra doom, or even classic power violence, Potop fall right in between, the tempos are slow to midtempo, the guitars crunch and buzz, but just as often ring out, there's tons of space, long stretches dotted with spaced out chords, left hanging, slowly decaying, wrapped in Eyehategod-like sheets of feedback. The vocals are tortured and anguished, a feral yowl, way down in the mix and doused in reverb, those two elements, all tangled up and sprawling, create these epic drifting slabs of angular buzz and monstrous pound, weirdly melodic, and dramatic, sometimes mathy, other times seemingly structureless, but the best moments are when the band lock into a woozy groove, crushing and punishing and massive and so weirdly catchy. The record finishes off with a 40 second blast of twisted pummeling ultraviolence, a blurred blowout of howling grinding pounding fury. And then it's over. And if you're like us, you go right back to the beginning and listen to the whole thing again...

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For the first Acid record on the obtuse electronica label Phthalo, Jason Potratz admits that this record was made by a trainspotter for a trainspotter. This is a seemless mix of 29 very short tracks of Acid loops - with hammering four-on-the-floor

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When I (Jim) last ran into Colin Potter it was at the Brainwaves Festival in the fall of 2006. Colin drearily apologized that his next album would be a collection of his earliest work released by the German label Vinyl On Demand. While the handful of cassettes I had of his mid-'80s work had been made up mostly of gritty postindustrial ambience and raw experiments with analogue synths, I would have never expected that Colin Potter -- nowadays the engineer extraordinaire for Nurse With Wound and collaborator with the best of British drone artists -- had a new wave bone in his body; but here it is. Not surprisingly for someone as talented as Mr. Potter, he managed to successfully work within the grim and angular synth-based structures that also resonated with Fad Gadget and Normal. A Skeleton / Cupboard Situation has been culled from a bunch of self-released cassettes made at IC Studios (yup, the same masthead he uses today!) that date from 1979 to 1983 and lovingly remastered by the fine people at Vinyl On Demand. Potter's synth-punk ethos centers upon tinny drum machine marches, plenty of grim synth repetitions, and short-fused guitars. While Potter occasionally gets a little spry and cheeky in his exuberance with the possibilities of electricity, the bulk of the album is coldly robotic and surprisingly catchy at times. In the liner notes, Potter again apologizes "unreservedly for 'singing' and promise it will never happen again, unless someone gives me a very good reason and / or a very large sum of money." Well, that's a bit self-deprecating, as his vocal style certainly fits the music with a staccato delivery and emotional detachment to match the cold synthetic tunes. I won't say that I'll be the guy who'll throw down a ton of money to hear Colin Potter sing again, but I sure as hell will be wearing out the grooves on this vinyl.

We discovered Colin Potter many years ago, through his heady production and sound design in Nurse With Wound, Ora, and Monos; yet like so many pioneering electronic musicians in the '80s, he released a slew of cassettes overflowing with various sonic experiments and audio excursions. Ancient History collects four of Potter's tapes charting his output from 1979 to 1989, including A Gain, Two Nights, and Recent History Volumes 1 & 2. Back in this time period, Potter was working in a post-kosmische aesthetic with a small arsenal of synths, step sequencers, drum machines, guitars, and effects. He had yet to incorporate the heavy-lidded drone and field recording component which he's been associated with as of late; but those tapes positioned his sound not too far from the Moebius / Schnitzler / Schulze axis of progressive electronics with a healthy dose of Chris Carter's DIY aesthetic tossed in for good measure. A Gain was released in 1982 through his ICR imprint and is a culmination of work dating back to 1979. The opening number to this album is a bright hypnotic piece for glockenspiel and synthesizer, which builds upon elliptical phrases on those instruments with greater and greater density and kaleidoscopic fervor, snugly situated between Terry Riley's A Rainbow In Curved Air and Cluster's percolating motorik electron-pop. Elsewhere on A Gain, Potter pulls out the guitar to augment the synth blorp and drive with some fine Manuel Gottsching-esque explorations. Two Nights from 1981 is probably the cream of the crop here, not to belittle anything else on the set; but this is a great piece of futuristic electronics that is a must have for anyone keen on John Carpenter and Goblin soundtracks! The two original side long pieces both extend from the cosmic swoosh into dynamic kraut-disco jams with incremental sequences accelerating through drum machine, neon-lit synth cascades, and more heavily phased guitar solos. Potter adds a third lengthy bonus track of similar material to round out this fantastic disc. The Recent History discs compile various Potter projects from 1986-1989, and find him in more of a darker, somber mood with ritualized ambience drifting about his more earthen sounding sequences and sodden acoustic guitar melodies. While there's much of the same instrumentation, Potter's production also becomes far more complex with more of the shadowy, occluded techniques that he would later master during his tenure in Nurse With Wound. As such, these tracks tend to parallel some of the work of Coil and O Yuki Conjugate, and even predates some of the melodic aspects of the ambient side of IDM that would emerge five or six years later. This is quite different from the song-based minimal wave album of early Colin Potter material released on Vinyl On Demand; but certainly showcases just how great all of those early tapes of his were and how well they hold up today!

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Colin Potter is the proprietor of IC Studios -- a recording facility often frequented by Nurse With Wound and Andrew Chalk, both of whom Potter has collaborated with. While he has been moving in the more esoteric circles of UK music for quite some time now, And Then may in fact be his first solo recording. Certainly informed by the aforementioned collaborators, Potter generates oblique shadowy dronescapes through eerie post-concréte techniques and the manipulation of field recordings, which keep this from being a purely studio driven exercise. Potter breaks up the dark shimmering refractions of this album with a lengthy and comparatively aggressive rhythmic workout of flanging electronic pings that he charms with arabic flares. I may be in the critical minority by not unquestioningly gobbling up all of the recent Coil albums; but if any of Coil's recordings sounded as good as this one by Colin Potter, then I might have to start listening to them again.

There are times when lengthy reviews are warranted, necessary to make the correlative argument that the record really must be that good for us to slave away at such a monumentally long review; but then there are times when we really can't go on too much, because the available stock of the album in question is so small as to make a long review overkill for a release that will be gone in no time. For better or for worse, this Colin Potter double cd-r falls in the latter category as It Was Like This... was originally available for sale at the June 2006 Nurse With Wound shows in a tiny pressing of 100 copies. Of course, the bulk of the stock was sold during the feeding frenzy at the merch table at those two performances; but a few copies remained, and Colin didn't have any desire to lug 'em back to England, so Aquarius had the good fortune of being in the right place at the right time... Of those 100, we've only got a dozen or so. But what you'll get are two discs of exceptional live sets from the Nurse With Wound engineer par-excellence focusing upon his mutant electronics, rhythm box experiments, and glacial drones. As good as it is limited.

MPEG stream: Windmill London 11/99
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A welcome reissue of an early tape by legendary composer, engineer, musician, dronologist Colin Potter (who in the past has worked with Nurse With Wound, Current 93, Skullflower, etc). Originally released as a two track cassette in 1990, this cd reissue sees the addition of an extra, massive 24 minute track that fits in surprisingly well with the other tracks almost 15 years its senior. Self described as 'music for hibernation', these three extended tracks are gorgeously serene, seemingly unshifting, barely pulsing rivers of static low end. No rumble or rough edges here though, this is smooth and crystalline, soothing late night new age for the avant set. Music for hibernation indeed. Been lulled to sleep by this for the last couple weeks!

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The latest from this long time aQ fave, comes in the form of a super limited tapes from the UK cassette label The Tapeworm, and features two sidelong tracks displaying two sides of Potter's sonic personality. The A side is a dizzying field of mathematically complex loopage, rendered in a seemingly perpetual state of decay and gradual disarray, beginning with fields of looped cascading electronic bleeps over distant pounded piano, and bleary smears of background shimmer, the piano becoming more insistent and jagged, almost maddeningly mesmerizing, all underpinned by a throbbing murky pulse, over which shifting rhythms collide and careen, sounds glitch and crunch, layers undulate, drones drift and swirl, the sound lurches and hiccups, lopes and churns, locking into weird sprawls of robotic hypno-groove, laced with what sound like cartoon bite sounds, and heaving black clouds of ominous rumble, a dizzying collision of black cinematic ambience, and kinetic, rhythmic skitter. The twisted backgrounds and the delirious dada-ist surrounding soundscapery, definitely point to Potter's longstanding collaboration with Nurse With Wound, but here those sounds are wound up tight, and let loose in a noisy, chaotic, carnivalesque funhouse, that at it's most intense sounds like a robot orchestra come to life, and running rampant, a barrage of buzz and hum, torrents of tangled rhythms, all bleeding and oozing into one thick viscous wall of pulsing pulsating sound, the eventually melts down to a cool droned out field of staticky skitter, and softly percolating grey noise drift, The B side is a live recording of a rehearsal for a performance, and in some ways sounds like a more minimal, deconstructed, and sort of underwater version of the A side, softly noisy cascade pour down over beeps and bloops, splattery percussion is wreathed in warm swirls of echo and hum, the vibe murky and washed out, but building to occasional white noise squalls, the sounds a slow undulation, prickly and caustic in places, warm and shimmery in others, a field of slow moving drones, that splinter into shard of jagged sound, before sinking to the bottom, replaced by another thick layer of syrupy swirl. Dense and tense, but darkly dreamy, the sound eventually settling into something akin to old Oval, but replacing the muted shadowy swirl, with something a bit more abrasive, heavin swaths of industrial crunch, and jagged spears of high end skree, all wound up into slithery, prickly tangles, that eventually begin to unwind, the edges wearing off, the harsh surfaces burnished and glowing, the sound melting into a softly shimmering sprawl of hushed haunting thrum. As with all Tapeworm tapes, extremely limited, this one featuring original cover art by noneother than Savage Pencil.

The first couple of minutes of this live recording seemed to have been designed to get the blood boiling and the heart pumping. Colin Potter (the technical foil to Steve Stapleton's macabre psychedelia in Nurse With Wound) opens with an agitated set of electro-bleep rhythms which double upon each other into a squiggling dervish. After these few minutes though, the sidereal ambience and barren dronescapes which Potter has brought to the recent NWW productions slip into focus. Ghostly fragments of echo and reverberation glide around chiming drones from harmonium, gongs, field recordings, and bowed strings, all displaying Potter's polychromatic, oil-slick production which has such a peculiar, funhouse warble modulating each and every sound, ever so slightly. Some 15 minutes into the piece, there are a series of metallic bangs and ominous metallic clicks, puncturing a bed of low-end frequencies. One of these repeating bangs is quite similar to the ones used on John Duncan's River In Flames. Along with the signposts of Duncan and the NWW Shipwrecked Radio series, Potter's live set from the 2007 Resonator Festival in Preston, England also resembles the late period Zoviet France albums InVersion and Digilogue. Limited to just 100 copies, and certainly will not last for very long!

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A couple of years ago, we championed a cd boxset of the early cassettes and unreleased material from the British sound alchemist Colin Potter. Nowadays, Potter is a constant foil within Nurse With Wound and Monos; but he has quite a history of his own recordings that ran the gamut from abstracted electro-pop to elegant, hallowed minimalism to kosmische electronica. During the heyday of the DIY cassette underground, Potter released a considerable amount of tapes through his ICR imprint, which continues to this day albeit transitioning to the compact disc. Two Nights was originally pressed up on ICR back in 1981, and made its way on that aforementioned Ancient History boxset (which is currently out of print). This set was easily the best material from the Ancient Material box, and on its own stands as a great piece of futuristic electronics that is a must have for anyone keen on John Carpenter and Goblin soundtracks! The two original side long pieces both extend from the cosmic swoosh into dynamic kraut-disco jams with incremental sequences accelerating through drum machine, neon-lit synth cascades, and more heavily phased guitar solos. Limited red & green translucent vinyl whose colors are exposed through the die cuts in the artwork. Not long for this world!

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A super limited edition CD-R of live drone material from Colin Potter (Nurse With Wound, Monos, Ora, etc.) and Paul Bradley (Monos). Dark ringing drones, breathy gasps for air, cathedral reverberations, and haunting scrabbings set against a monolith of subtly shifting tones. There's only 200 of these things, and we just got a few of 'em; so when they're gone, they are gone!

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Colin Potter - the sound conjurer par excellance for Nurse With Wound, Monos, Ora, etc. - teams up once again with the academically inclined multi-disciplinarian Phil Mouldycliff. They had worked together on the APM project with Chris Atkins and produced a couple of a collaborative projects on Potter's ICR imprint. Mouldycliff has long been partial to field recordings, and he brings plenty to Potter's studio to get worked over. The album begins with an urban soundscape of banal conversations in an outdoor marketplace broken up with the chime of church bells, whose chorus gets trapped in a series of loops that Potter and Mouldycliff slowly pull apart into sinewy, vibrating digital fields of time stretched artifacts and serpentine drones. As this digital ambience collapses into a softened grey mass, tactile abrasions that sound almost like pieces of styrofoam being scraped against each other pop to the foreground, gradually overrun by the unsettling noise of dental drills squealing the distance. Even some 40 years after the fact, Marathon Man is still the dominant reference for such sounds. The subterranean dank which Potter and Mouldycliff surround these high-powered motors also serves that reference well. The drones and shadows continue throughout the album, only to find Mouldycliff and Potter returning to the same set of field recordings from the marketplace which opened the album.

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Fucking brilliant. Yeah, you should expect that these two high calibre sound sculptors would manage something great; and they do not disappoint. As for the obligatory introductions, Colin Potter may be best known from his ongoing contributions to Nurse With Wound over the past two decades, but has been privy to some of the finest in British dronescaping thanks to his work in Ora and Monos. The Hafler Trio is the creation of Andrew McKenzie, a sound research project which has been investigating the impact of sound upon the body, mind, and spirit through the lens of a byzantine gnosticism. A couple years back, Potter had the good fortune of witnessing the Hafler Trio's "How To Slice A Loaf Of Bread" performance in Preston, England; after the show, Potter and McKenzie struck up a conversation, whence McKenzie suggested that the two collaborate. Shortly thereafter, McKenzie sent Potter a collection of the source material from that very performance as the foundation for their collaboration. Potter stated his intentions clearly, that he wanted to preserve the shape of the material while pushing it into another space. It's an understatement to say that Potter merely achieved his intention; as A Pressed On Sandwich ranks as one of the best things that he's worked on, on par with his work with Steven Stapleton on the existential void of Nurse With Wound's Salt Marie Celeste. Yeah, it's that good! Of course, McKenzie ultimately stretched out his own material of monumental dronings over a whopping six discs on the twin set of triple cds also entitled "How To Slice A Loaf Of Bread;" so Potter's redux is a bit easier to digest, but certainly no less an album! You'll encounter the drone supreme here on A Pressed On Sandwich with electrified tonal vibrations, undulating phase patterns, and oceanic gasps of sublime expanses. The album starts off with a very cold, shivering feel but eventually transitions into a dynamic interplay of tones that simultaneously capturing the solemness of church organ droning (with all of the overtones of holy symbolism) and the unnerving purity of feedback (with all of the allusions of technology on the brink of collapse). We mentioned it before, and we'll mentioned it again: fucking brilliant. As with all Hafler Trio releases, sorry no sound samples...

Final documentation of Potter's synth drone experiments, done before he sold his Moogs to concentrate on his real love, the sitar.

Taking an electronic work first realized in 1972 by Belgian avant-garde composer Henri Pousseur, Sub Rosa have arranged for new mixes to be done by three of today's most talented electronic experimentalists: Robert Hampson (of Main fame), AQ-fave turntable specialist Philip Jeck, and Markus Popp of glitchsters Oval. It's not technically a *re*mix project, it seems, as Pousseur's original piece allowed for multiple, equally valid mixes (or studies). He did eight of 'em himself back in the day (released as a four cd set, now unavailable, on Sub Rosa two years ago) and contributes a new one, done digitally this time, as the first track on disc one here. Hampson, Jeck, and Popp follow with their varying takes on the same material/composition, Popp's maybe being the prettiest, all of 'em very blippy and bloopy -- the original piece(s) having a kind of sci-fi spaceship/upset stomach sound. But of course, Jeck's mix is our favorite, as it brings in some of his trademark warm and crackly, antiqued vinyl-y sounds (adding such is apparently in accordance with Pousseur's open-ended concept for this piece).

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[ aquarius records catalogue — P ]