[ aquarius records catalogue

IMPORTANT (Please read to avoid confusion): Some items below may be tagged with a bold, red, all-caps OUT OF PRINT/UNAVAILABLE notice. This does NOT mean that all other items not so tagged are, in fact, in stock — or for that matter, in print and available, though there's a good chance they are. Some folks get confused on this point, and we can see why, so please read this for further clarification and other important before-you-order information. Unlike some mailorder websites, we don't have an electronic inventory system linked to our site, so you can't be sure of what we actually have or don't have in stock at any given moment without asking us — please email our mailorder department for availability status — or better yet, just go ahead and place your order using our shopping cart function and we'll get back to you with the status of each item. If you have general non-mailorder questions, email the store.

Showing results 1651 through 1700 of 1919.

Super catchy emo-pop. Close your eyes and it's Sunny Day Real Estate (for anyone still broken up about their breaking up.) Sprung from the same source as Joan of Arc and Cap'n Jazz, the newest post-hc sensations...very handsome packaging to boot.

This new Promise Ring is nothing like their previous releases. They have catapulted themselves beyond plain old emo rock. I suppose it's nice that they are using different instrumentation (strings, a choir, vocal soloists, and keyboards) and they do have

RealAudio clip: Say Goodbye Good
RealAudio clip: Stop Playing Guitar
RealAudio clip: Wake Up April

A while back we made the record World, by Aussie noise rock / shoegaze outfit The Bunyip Moon, our Record Of the Week, a gloriously blown out, chaotic sonic gem, that even now we have trouble keeping in stock. So were were psyched to discover that one of the guys from The Bunyip Moon had a new solo record, a tape in fact, under the name Pronoun, and like World, it's weird and wonderful. But UN-like World, Faux is not all bombastic noisiness and buried blown out melodies, instead, it's a darkly moody, lush, almost cinematic creep, right from the get-go, we're sucked into some mysterious soundworld, that to our eras exists right between the epic with house of Salem, and the soundtracky synth bombast of M83. So if that sounds good to you (and why the heck wouldn't it?!), then there's much to dig here. The opener unfurls as a brooding plod, all primitive drum machine, over processed strum and thrum, before majestic synths swoop in, faux strings, the whole thing epic and stirring, but with just the right amount of distortion and noise, gristly, and staticky, and distorted and psychedelic, but even at it's most explosive, it's still lilting and lovely, it's a tough one to describe for sure, but it's pretty stirring stuff. The whole record expands from that sound, with some of the tracks a bit more garbled and chaotic, darkly noisy and murky, sounding a bit like a way more abrasive Caretaker (which is most definitely a good thing), while others, slip into a more kosmische haze, all swirling chordal thrum and deep, lustrous sonic swells, and on at least one track, the sound slips into some strange, tripped out avant shoegaze new wave, although the best moments of course are when those disparate sides collide, which they do often, resulting in blissful noisiness, and noisy dreaminess in equal measure, culminating in the strangely gristly garble of crunched static and crumbling decaying distortion of the closer, which ditches pretty much all poppiness in favor of a strange sprawling field of grinding textures, and the sporadic sputter of alien transmissions from the ether. Fantastic, and so so so recommended. The packaging is pretty ace too, totally over the top. The tape housed in a sleeve, housed in a second embossed outer sleeve, then housed in yet ANOTHER sleeve, hand silkscreened and ink splattered, a weighty arts/sound object, LIMITED TO 50 COPIES!!! Each one hand numbered. Includes a download code too...

MPEG stream: Drowning Under A Fetherolf Sky
MPEG stream: Ignoring The Lovely Photos Of Your Putrid Life
MPEG stream: Lost In The Stars, Lost In The Fog

A new issue -- the second ever -- of one of our favorite local magazines, the eclectic and unusual Proof, published and edited by dapper AQ-customer Neil Martinson. Proof #1 came out a few years ago, and we've been waiting patiently since then, never faltering in our belief that one day we'd be seeing more proof of Proof's unique perspective in the world of 'zinedom. Proof is a journal of arts and culture -- sometimes quite obscure, but always interesting. I'd pretty much guarantee you'll learn something from reading an issue. You get your $5.95 worth, this sure isn't a throw-away zine. Yes, there's "pop-culture" content, stuff about movies and music. But even that's got quite an obscure slant -- a Caroliner interview, a piece on Plastikville Records, an autobiographical piece by editor Martinson deaing with Disney movies made by Patrick "The Prisoner" MacGoohan in the masked avenger role of Dr. Syn, the Scarecrow of Romney Marsh -- but also some deep philosophical discussions with the likes of Goethean scholar Dennis Klocek, deep thoughts about sheep and goats, an essay about the dadists' girlfriends, and much much more (including additional info about scarecrows as a sidebar to the Disney movie piece). Plus cartoons by Archer Prewitt and Bradley Johnson. It's a lot to take in, requiring a bit of an intellectual curiosity or at least a poetic spirit -- certainly qualities present in most, if not all Aquarius customers!

Certainly the best band on Fat Wreck Chords (unless of course you're in a fraternity, or you're a snowboarder, or a skater, or a high school student). It may be pop punk, but it manages to transcend what has become a frightfully dull and amazingly asinine genre. Propagandhi craft super complex songs that stop and start and are heavy and are arranged so bizarrely it's amazing that they can sing along at all. And then there's the lyrics (queer positive, animal rights, anti-moron), funny and insightful, scathing and clever and so right on. Really cool.

The latest "big beat" (read: guitars and repetitive predictable beats) sensations, combining Chemical Bros.-style dance music with James Bondian martinis & car chase spy music...

Private Press femme-folk record from Colorado recently included on Numero Group's Wayfaring strangers: Ladies From The Canyon.

When we first put this on, the aQ death metal experts were convinced this was some old DM classic reissued. We were hearing Deicide, Slayer, Darkthrone, but a bit more on the grind side, hints of Circle Of Dead Children and Phobia, but the more we listened, the more it sounded too dense and heavy, too furious and frantic, and even though it definitely borrowed from the classics BIG TIME, it sounded too modern. This is in fact the latest record from a band called Prosanctus Inferi who hail from Columbus, Ohio, and who recorded this festering chunk of buzzing black sickness just last year! These guys definitely know their shit. Spewing a relentless stream of furious snarling blackened buzz, relentless and filthy, the production incredibly dense and suffocating, the guitars massive, no tinny insect like buzzing, the riffs here ROAR, the drums blast and pound, the sound is definitely rooted in black metal, but is definitely on the blackened side, and most of the songs veer into short stretches of tangled grind, shades of early Carcass, but whoever they're borrowing from, PI whip their various influences into a total head spinning black death workout, shifting gears every few seconds, riffs splintering apart, brutal blasts slowing down into doomy grooves, then exploding back into some static death metal pound. Another online review described this record as "virgin hammering goat blasting black death metal" and who are we to argue? LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, already nearly sold out at the label. Swank two sided silkscreened sleeves, the back side just a half sleeve revealing the lp inside.

MPEG stream: Fratricide In The Holy House Of God
MPEG stream: Sacreligious Desecration In Excelsis

The first thing you notice about 726, the newest record from Proscriptor, drummer for Texan black metal alchemists Absu, is the cover. An homage to the classic Aphrodite's Child record 666, the numbers in a black square set on a field of red, the text in yellow. Aphrodite's Child for those who don't know was a Greek prog act, featuring a young Vangelis long before he would go on to become famous for his many film scores (Chariots Of Fire, Bladerunner, etc). So what is a black metal drummer doing paying tribute to a strange, apocalyptic prog-psych record from the seventies? Well, loyal readers of the aQ list, will no doubt already know that Proscriptor is no normal drummer, and Absu was no normal black metal band. All of Proscriptor's solo recordings are far from black metal, more like some strange soundtrack music, fusing electronic music, New Age, dark ambience, but twisted and warped, either Proscriptor is just a really strange guy, or he has an insane sense of humor, or both. On past records he's covered The Flock Of Seagulls "I Ran", he's covered "Devil Woman", the Tubes "White Punks On Dope, and, wait a minute, an Aphrodite's Child song. It all starts to make sense now. Well, as much as anything having to do with Proscriptor can make sense. So what exactly does 726 sound like? Past records have dabbled in crunchy Southern Rock with black metal vocals, strange female vocal-ed rock jams, haunting dronescapes, damaged new wave, but this is none of those. In fact we're a bit hard pressed to explain exactly what this is. The homage cover art is �the first hint. The record starts off with a sort of cheesy, New Age, eighties style jam, all processed drums, big reverby production, strange electronics, tangled distorted guitars, and washed out Steely Dan style keyboards. It sounds a bit like the end credit music for some eighties straight to video movie. The next track finds Proscriptor channeling Tangerine Dream, offering up a warm whirring dronescape, thick with effects and soft synths, and mysterious percussion, glistening shimmering chimes, very serene and meditative and New Age-y, until about halfway through when the synths get all rhythmic, and the sound again drifts back to some eighties sci-fi thriller, all propulsive synth grooves, and haunting minor key melodies. And so it goes, the rest of the record dabbles in both drawn out drone-y abstract new age, and creepy soundtracky new WAVE, falling somewhere between John Carpenter, Goblin, and yep, Vangelis. Dark and mysterious, creepy and drone-y, New Age-y AND new wave-y. Only the most adventurous Absu fans will dare tread, but folks into any of the above mentioned creatures of the night, or into more modern practitioners of the art a la Zombi, just might dig this a whole lot.

MPEG stream: The Germinian Ultimatum
MPEG stream: Liquid Twilight
MPEG stream: Venus Entrapment
MPEG stream: Surfaces

We've had this disc before, in a home-brewed version released by Sir Proscriptor McGovern himself (he's the drummer for the amazing Texas occult metal band Absu). That version was cheap (packaged in a paper sleeve, no jewel case), and is now gone. But now "The Serpentine Has Risen" rises again, getting a 'proper' release via the Dragon Flight label. So if you didn't pick up the original, now you can get this one for only a few bucks more -- likewise, you could get it again if you have the old version but would prefer a jewel case and more 'pro' packaging (but, the tracks are the same). Here's some more info for those who aren't 100 percent Proscriptor-savvy: this is the follow-up to Proscriptor's first bizarre solo record "The Venus Bellona". As we said when listing the earlier version, those who have heard "The Venus Bellona" know that Proscriptor's solo stuff is hardly black metal, it's more like an experimental soundtrack to his personal magickal / historickal mythology. This disc follows suit. As the liner notes put it, in such a way as to give a sense of his aesthetick that our own description never could: "Not only has Proscriptor composed euphonic concoctions of oscillation experimentations, pre-to-post wave art musicology, and folklore prestige, but also has expressed his ancestral customs from Glenorchy District to the Prioma Materia of Thoth once again." And we challenge any music critics to dispute that! As with his main band, Proscriptor never steps out of character, everything is always mysterious and arcane (even his emails to us appeared to be translated from Latin!). Just a glance at this album's credits will confirm his dedication to such weirdness: guitars and basses are always referred to as "six-fold bows" and "four-fold bows", and we find Proscriptor and his conspirators credited with the likes of "blaze illuminations" and "infrequent voices that are unseen" as well as "unicursal hexagrams" and "symmetrical tartan designs". Of course, none of this would matter if the music wasn't equally odd and evocative, and it is. Apart from the very rock n' roll "Devil Woman" cover, that is (which is the one brief moment, as with the Flock of Seagulls cover on his previous disc, that tells you that perhaps this guy isn't ENTIRELY serious...but then again, maybe he IS and that's even scarier!!)...

RealAudio clip: Tin Formulae

Incredible, Magickal, Historickal ritual soundscape new-wave solo concept album, created by the drummer for the Texas occult metal band Absu. A beautiful digipak with music unlike anything else. It tells a story set in Medieval Scotland but is influenced less by Black Metal than by the Art Bears (so Proscriptor claims) and Flock of Seagulls (the album closes with a cover of their hit "I Ran", paradoxically the most metal moment on the disc...) Highly recommended! Listen to this alone at night with candles burning.

As much as it hurts us to say, it might just be time to give up on hoping for a new Absu record. That bizarre Texan horde is responsible for some of our favorite weirdo black metal ever. But it's been years since we've heard from them, collectively that is. We recently reviewed an electro record from Absu guitarist Equitant. Not metal electro, but real, squelchy, house-y electro. Cool stuff, but nothing we ever imagined hearing from any of the Absu guys, no matter how weird they were. So here we have the latest recording from Absu drummer Proscriptor, who in the past has dabbled in some serious weirdness outside of Absu, with a handful of strange ambient recordings, but this, this is so far out we thought at first we must have put on the wrong record. But as with most things Absu it didn't take long for us to become completely and utterly smitten. Packaged in a mysterious silver sleeve, with bits of strange numerology and symbology, including an appropriately black metal Proscriptor logo with bat wings and candles and flames. So side one begins with tinkling new age chimes, very tranquil and serene, when suddenly very intense male female vocals, harmonizing, singing of the 4 Horseman, very haunting, almost cheesy, when the band kicks into a fill on rock jam, BIG drums, crunchy guitars, throbbing bass, heavy riffing, wild guitar solos... and then back to the weird dramatic vocals. It doesn't sound so much like metal as it does some sort of bombastic musical. Over the top with a through-the-roof WTF factor. But after a few listens, we sort of WANTED it to actually be a musical, we could imagine some sort of Bat Out Of Hell super stage show, with Proscriptor and his lady battling the Four Horsemen. So it was on to side 2 and if we thought it couldn't get any weirder, well, we were WRONG! Groovy almost Southern rock, but with harsh black metal vocals and bizarre female back up vocals, the whole thing sounding like a metallized Rocky Horror Picture Show. Some impossible mix of Venom and ZZ Top and... wait a minute, we suddenly recognize the song, the cover says it's called "Epod No Sknup Etihw", but it sounds, suspiciously like... THE TUBES. Holy shit! It's a cover of the Tubes "White Punks On Dope"! Again, WHAT THE FUCK?!? Sure, it's amazing, demented, tweaked, bizarre, but this is the drummer from Absu!!! Who would have thought?!?! Only makes us love him more. And for some reason we can't stop listening to either of these tracks... Cool packaging, metallic silver jacket, printed inner sleeve, and pressed on the THICKEST white vinyl ever!!!

Sometimes it's funny when everything in the whole world is so nasty and extreme that people have to go to unbelievable lengths to gross us out. And then end up being more silly than gross or scary. Such is the case with Prosthetic Cunt (whom we'll call,

RealAudio clip: Deadly Cottage
RealAudio clip: Mortal Cock Bat
RealAudio clip: A Lack Of Wires Is Turning Me Into A Troll
RealAudio clip: Choking On Human Cinder Shit
RealAudio clip: Automatic Doody Stick Dispenser

Prosthetic Guitars is the latest offering from Dial Records, the label run by Church Steps mainman Mike Donovan. "RU-486" is a collection of guitar-based sketches that have have been roughly stitched together through basic edits that strive to form connectivity through the repetition of various leitmotifs (one a maniacal guitar strum over free-jazz drum noodle, another being a stilted Arabic melodic flourish, another a pleasantly fingerpicked guitar chord, etc.). As none of these individual elements ever really go anywhere, and as the album as a whole sounds basically 'unfinished', it's hard to say what the Prosthetic Guitars are trying to do simply because there is never a fully realized idea. Giving them a huge benefit of the doubt that "never fully realizing an idea" is their raison d'etre, Prosthetic Guitars are another entry into the realm of 'post-irony' or fake outsider art ("it's so mysterious and alluring how I can't spell or draw or actually play...), in which they are actively trying to sound like they just learned how to play guitar.

RealAudio clip: Ghostwriter 's Jihad
RealAudio clip: Artzoid Interests Me

We threw this on initially thinking it would be another chunk of that new fangled screamo-prog we like so much, Coheed, Chiodos and the like, and it sort of was, but it was so much MORE METAL! Seriously. When the record kicked in, first track, first 30 seconds, we thought maybe we had thrown on the wrong record, ultra tight, blazing Swedish style deathmetal, with tons of stop / start intricacies, crushing downtuned chug and every nook and cranny stuffed with blazing, shredding, squiggly leads, licks and little woodleewoos. Almost like an emo Necrophagist! Imagine some of the tightest catchiest screamo / emo / metalcore drenched in crushing blazing fast deathmetal and gussied up with plenty of Yes-y progisms, strummy acoustic breakdowns, and soaring almost eighties metal style vocals. And it's mostly the vocalist that pushes the band over the edge. If Protest The Hero had a screamer or a growler, they would be just another killer tech-prog deathmetal band, but with the crazy vocals and lush harmonies they turn into something completely different. The singer alternately sounds like Joey Belladonna from Anthrax, Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden and aQ mailorder Jason thinks the singer sounds like a screamo-metal Lou Gramm from Foreigner, which we can definitely hear. But imagine just that sort of soaring epic eighties vibe but tangled up in huge sticky webs of dense ultracomplex new wave of Swedish death metal (In Flames, At The Gates, etc.), and with crazy staccato Meshuggah / Poison The Well breakdowns all over the place. So fucking great. We listen to this NONSTOP. But it's definitely all about the guitars, heavy and epic and slippery and complex and squiggly and wanky but totally mind blowing. And the songs are catchy as hell too. It's like our eighties-self musical fantasy dream come true, a totally eighties hook filled pop record, turned inside out and massively progged up, the whole thing transformed into a crushing metal beast. If we had heard this when we were in our early teens, our fragile musical minds would have been so thoroughly blown we'd have been musically ruined for life. But hearing it now, we can definitely handle it, but just barely.

MPEG stream: No Stars Over Bethlehem
MPEG stream: Heretics & Killers
MPEG stream: Divinity Within

NOW ON LP TOO! The latest collection (after two previous) chronicling the work of Australian outsider artist / primitive folk songsmith Pip Proud, comes courtesy of Japanese label EM, who gather up some of his best tracks from the late sixties and early seventies, selected by Proud's biographer David Nichols, who also provides the booklet's extensive liner notes. Fans of early Flying Nun, Xpressway and Homestead Records, will be immediately smitten. Proud, whose primitive folksmithery falls somewhere between the Tall Dwarfs, the Frogs and Sebadoh, was like a proto Syd Barrett, with a voice that's a dead ringer for Jimmy Flemion of the Frogs (R.I.P.), and his music for all its amateur primitivism, was geniusly crafted, perfect little introspective folk pop gems, the sound, the lyrics, the guitar playing, even the recordings themselves... We're also reminded of Bill Direen, the sung/spoken vocals, the raw guitar style, the lo-fi recordings, almost every track here impossibly catchy, with the oddest bits getting stuck in your head like crazy. Some tracks are haunting and otherworldly, with truly unique and bizarre guitar parts (or are those synths), the guitar playing sometimes folk, but other times percussive and more rhythmic, and still other times, weirdly psychedelic. There's one track with a full band, that is killer, all Velvets-y murky, tense kraut-psych garage pop, with truly twisted vox, and some weirdly atonal melodies, but the rest of the record is made up entirely of home recorded bedroom jams, with only the most minimal and primitively achieved overdubs, sometimes it's strange gamelan like percussion, sometimes noisy fuzz distortion, sometimes weird tangles of multiple guitar lines, all deftly woven into some of the most endearing, and mysteriously mesmerizing music you might never have heard. There are a handful of bonus tracks, as well as a huge booklet, with liner notes, rare photos and lyrics.

MPEG stream: Adreneline And Richard
MPEG stream: De Da De Dum
MPEG stream: A Fraying Space
MPEG stream: Purple Boy Gang

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

SORRY. Older Australian (the album is subtitled "Songs from the 60s and the 90s") who writes lonely, lovely songs in the vein of mellow Lou Reed... Store favorite Alastair Galbraith loves Pip Proud so much that he convinced Trance to release this collection!

Australian outsider folk singer/guitarist Pip Proud has a kind of gentleness and seeming naivete that play with or against his exceedingly honest, emotional and sometimes darkly bizarre lyrics. Sloppily tuned guitars, breathily spoken stories over blues-tinged psychedelic washes and halting, personal interpretations of the notions of rythm and time-- I find his unique musical style to be incredibly charming, but also just disturbing and weird enough to prevent a descent into syrupy sweet childishness, making him somewhat more kin to Jandek than Jad Fair. "Catch a Cherub" is a collaboration with Charlambides guitarist Tom Carter.

RealAudio clip: Lotus on the Water
RealAudio clip: Pig Song

One of our favorite iconoclastic New Zealanders accompanies his idol Pipp Proud, an older Aussie who writes quiet, heartfelt songs.

From the same label that released the two lps from Mist, Mist being the John Elliot fronted Emeralds side project, comes this, the debut from noisy droney duo Providen, featuring members of Swords Of Heaven and American Jobs, whose sound is well removed from the spacey sci-fi of Mist, and instead is a fantastically confusional jumble of processed vox, malfunctioning synths, deep rumbling drones, heavy sludgey trudge, psychedelic zoner folk, woozy melodic warpage and home brewed psychedelic whatthefuck, all woven into some sort of fractured no-fi abstract minimal psychdronedirge weirdness. After a stretch of chanted electronic ambience, a sort of ominous buzz drenched into, the duo launch into a lurching Dead C like noise rock death march, all crumbling distortion, simple drums, and dramatic, almost gothic sounding crooned vocals, resulting in some sort of noisy coldwave dirge pop, way to short at less than 90 seconds, before leading directly into the chaotic and crunchy title track. All skittery distorto beats, howled vox, and malfunctioning electronics, another hypno noise rock dirge, a pulsing meditative trudge, wreathed in streaks and shards of electronic crunch and fractured melodic flutter. And so it goes, the tracks alternatingly exploding into sheets of white hot, blown out supernova buzz, or collapsing into super minimal, detuned dronepsych bedroom folk, Jandekian and abject, or building into super dense lumbering electronoiserock dirges, like some sort of SUNNO))) / Six Finger Satellite mashup, in-the-red, crunchy and corrosive, but still weirdly trancelike and mesmerizing. This is definitely the sort of thing that might be a bit too much for the spaced out sci-fi new agers into all that Expo 70 and Emeralds stuff, instead, this is something altogether more tense and intense, noisy and distorted, for fans of slow low blown out rhythmic heaviness like Mammal, Geronimo, Psychic Paramount, SUNNO))), Rusted Shut, etc... who also dig tripped out lysergic exotic doom folk like Amen Dunes, Amps For Christ, Steven R. Smith, Suarasama, Six Organs, Jandek, Daniel Higgs and the like. LIMITED TO 200 COPIES, housed in nice thick cardstock sleeves with paste on front cover artwork, and a printed insert (on either cardstock or transparency).

MPEG stream: Red Man's Vietnam
MPEG stream: No Other
MPEG stream: Keep Searching

Attention: Fans of the sadly defunct SF band Fuck, you don't want to miss this new solo effort from the former vocalist of said band, Mr. Timothy Prudhomme (and also featuring fellow Fuck bandmate Geoff Soule on drums, piano and vocals). So lovely, warm and dark, this is an album of intimate evening stroll music. The rich, deep vocals that he delivers at a drowsy lullaby's pace are carefully embraced by a gathering of soft twang guitar, haunting organ, piano, theremin, minimal percussion and wistful backing vocals - all of which beautifully showcase his lyrics so steeped in heartache.

RealAudio clip: Lost Love
RealAudio clip: Pachelbel Blues

We've said it before, we'll say it again. If there was anyone capable of dragging us kicking and screaming over to the darkside, it would be Dom Fernow, aka Prurient. And by the dark side, we mean umm... well, loving noise music. We already do sort of dig noise, most of the music we love is in some way noisy, and we do love some 'noise' artists, but most specifically defined noise music, well that stuff can leave us cold. Wait a second, hold on. As we write this, we realize that pretty soon, the more reviews of 'noise' records we write, noise records that we LOVE, we're just gonna have to do away with these apologetic intros entirely, since it's becoming more and more apparent that maybe we do indeed just simply love noise. And this record is indeed NOISE music. Heavy on the noise. Heavy noise. Gnarled, crumbling, buzzing, hissing clouds of white noise, of dense static, of blown out grinding chaotic sound. The root sound is in fact, pure noise, almost white noise, sounds you've heard on a million Merzbow records, but as with other Prurient discs, it's what you do with it, how you shape it, the subtle textures underneath and within. The shapes, the dynamics, the melodies (when you can find them), the musicality, while some groups will conjure up the noise, and leave it at that, Fernow uses noise the way a rock band uses the guitar, he plays it, he uses it to compose SONGS. It's hard to explain, and sometimes it's difficult to hear, but once your ears understand how to listen to Prurient's noise, it's like someone colorblind seeing colors for the first time, everything explodes, a prismatic burst of thick textured sound. One interesting aspect of Prurient, is how big a role vocals play, some spoken, some howled, often distorted or processed, it expands the boundaries of noise, by not only introducing lyrics, but also by creating another layer of sound, something to play against the crumbling distortion and the white hot rrrroooar. Beyond that, Fernow also manages to introduce all sorts of strange soundscapes beneath the noise on the surface, sometimes it's warm whirring ambience, which makes those track sound like some supercharged Tim Hecker record, or Fennesz remixed by Merzbow. Other tracks chop up the noise into stuttering rhythms, the throbbing crunch creating almost-grooves, others are more dense and impenetrable, but even those tracks offer up fragments of melodies, bits of blurred drone, hints of some sort of song buried in the mire. This whole disc, while being fierce and fucked up, heavy and thick and noisy and brutal, manages also to be haunting and creepy and beautifully damaged. Fans of all that blissed out drone music we champion, who are looking for something a little more intense, who perhaps now realize that having to dig for beauty might just be more rewarding than having it handed to you, might do well to check this out. Another divine disc of brutal bliss and harsh beauty, and these days no one does it better than Prurient. Killer packaging. Super fancy thick gatefold sleeve, two pockets, on one, the cd, and a booklet of photos, all of roiling water and crashing waterfalls, in the other pocket, a 5" vinyl single with two extra tracks!

MPEG stream: Memory Repeating
MPEG stream: Lust End
MPEG stream: Total Terrorism

Dominick Fernow who runs Hospital Productions, a record store AND label, has had to keep his main, mostly noise project, that would be Prurient, on the back burner for a while now, as he is now also a full fledged member of electro cold wave pop troupe Cold Cave, and what with touring and recording, it's seems like it's been quite a while since we've heard anything new. In the past, Prurient records could go one of two ways, blistering noise and caustic crunch, or dark thick brooding blackened dronemusic, often some mix of the two. But after all this Cold Caving, we weren't sure what to expect, but it definitely wasn't this. We did expect some of the CC sound to rub off on him, how could it not, but orthodox noise freeks will be very confused and disappointed, cuz this is essential a blackened synth heavy coldwave noise rock blowout, and it actually kind of rules! The liner notes instruct the listener to "Listen on headphones at night while driving through tunnels in Europe", and that is sort of what it sounds like, a few of the tracks like supercharged noise drenched versions of Kraftwerk's "Autobahn", while others like meaner more brutal takes on Cold Cave. Fear not, there's still plenty of noise, and howling hateful vox, but those elements are doled out judiciously this time around, and its the juxtaposition between those harsher elements, and the more synthy/krautrocky/propulsive bits that make this so goddamn good. Opener "Many Jewels Surround The Crown" begins with a wild distorted shriek, and a wall of distorted crumbling blackness, but then in swoop synths, swirling strings, it almost sounds like it could be the soundtrack for some Tron like film, all sleek and reflective, but a bit decayed and decrepit, a futuristic post apocalyptic soundscape, a voice intones beneath pulsing kosmische synths, barraged by blasts of distorted crunch, and thick swaths of blackened bass. This is quickly followed by some pounding electro-punk, the vocals a gruff bellow, over thick driving synths and blasting programmed drums, all laced with warm whirling melodies, total new wave for sure, but sounding like Majeure or Zombi remixed by Alec Empire. The rest of the record plays out like some beautiful and bizarre soundtrack, slipping easily from sprawls of crunchy droned out noise, to lush, swirling string laden shimmer, to lumbering bass heavy synthbuzz thrum, to total Depeche Mode-is electro pop, but again, that pop flecked with shrieked almost black metal vocals, which totally changes the tenor, while other tracks drift along blissfully, layering distant muted throbs beneath ethereal streaks of washed out synth and sweetly melancholy melodies, and finally finishing off with the epic "Sugar Can Chapel", a sort of noise drenched M83 slow build shoegaze psychedelic synth blowout, that manages to be darkly atmospheric and blackly blissed out. Easily the most accessible Prurient record yet, and anyone who wishes that new wave of retro synth stuff had a lot more blackened bit to it, well, this might just be what you were looking for. NB we got this on vinyl too, but not as many as we'd hoped, we might still have just a couple so ask if you're interested...

MPEG stream: Many Jewels Surround The Crown
MPEG stream: A Meal Can Be Made
MPEG stream: Bermuda Drain
MPEG stream: Sugar Cane Chapel

Noise is indeed truly a lost art form. Okay, well it's not really lost. Actually there are more noise bands and noise labels than ever. Maybe it's the sheer joy of hearing noise as music that seems lost. Not sure if it was the 345th Merzbow release (we're rounding down) or the millionth shitty show, with a bunch of guys sitting on the floor pounding contact mic'ed pieces of metal. But noise began to just sound like noise again. Annoying, irritating, well, ya know, NOISE. There are always exceptions, and Prurient just might be one of them. Maybe. This is indeed noise. Serious noise. The first track is a 16 minute experiment in high end feedback, a squirming squeal that seems intended to test the endurance of your fragile inner ear. The rest of the record is no easier on the constitution. Muted percussion, some Whitehouse style synth sputter and some maniacal howled vocalizations. Sort of Z'ev meets Hanatarash. Squelching industrial grind over pounding drums. Pummeling abstract vocal / noise / percussion free for alls. It must be the drums that do it. That make Black Vase more, um, listenable. What would have been just a series of circuit frying, amp destroying walls of malfunctioning sound, take on some sort of songlike form, almost a groove at times, although the sort of groove produced by throwing a drum kit down the stairs and then pushing a battery of synths and plugged in toasters into a swimming pool. Imagine a sludge-noise Abruptum, or a lobotomized Boredoms, weird percussion frames anguished screams, the result of some unspeakable self torture, while a million amps feedback in the distance. In the foreground the ultimate pipe fight, clanging metal and clattery skree, evertyhing barraged by dog whistle sine waves and impossibly high end shrieks, all over simple pounding tribal drum figures or muted industrial clink and rattle. The sound of a thousand rusty iron gates, grinding open on squealing hinges, while a caveman pounds drums made from hollow skulls near by. Harsh for sure, -noise- is meant to be harsh, but there's some internal, almost musical logic behind the utter brutality, that allows Prurient to restore our faith in NOISE!

MPEG stream: Silent Mary
MPEG stream: Silver Flashlight

Prurient has always been the project for Dominick Fernow to do whatever the fuck he is doing at the time. Here, Dom shifts gears back to power electronics on Despiritualized after all of those notable explorations into electric rhythm. This was of course the place where Fernow began, with filthy feedback and distortion bracing scabbed noise-pulse frequencies and his pitch-shifted, commanding voice; and it's a place he will continue to investigate probably right up to the day he dies. The symbols of stalker creepiness, vaguely political overtones of political corruption, and socially maladjusted rage all haunt Despiritualized. The trenchcoat / true-crime aesthetics to this vein of Fernow's work come from the long tradition of underground transgression that sensationalizes the heightened states of sexuality and violence as the grand existential scream into the void. Fernow, like William Bennett and Genesis P-Orridge before him, have shrugged off the accusations of glorifying the ills of society for the use as shock-value. It is a questionable argument that work such as Despiritualized is done as an exercise of clinical detachment. In all of the coded aesthetics of schizoid rage and hypersexualization, Fernow does find pleasure as the sadist; and he's not particularly shy in expressing his thought. The four tracks of Despiritualized land in the mental minefield of some poor fucked on the verge of snapping over a jilted lover or even just a misheard word. The poetics of this dot the tortured grind of a classic power electronics context - gnashed feedback, morose Italian-styled looping noise, and deliberately obfuscated vocal bellowing. This super limited 10" pressing is a re-issue of a 2011 double cassette (each tape just 10 minutes long, mind you), in a numbed edition of 250 copies. Restocks are doubtful on this one.

MPEG stream: The Other World
MPEG stream: Closing Agruments
MPEG stream: When Different Worlds Collide

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

SORRY.

Prurient are turning out to be one of our favorite modern noise artists. At some point early on, Prurient, aka New Yorker Dom Fernow, realized 'noise music' wasn't all about volume or power or abrasion or violence or brutality, it was as much about texture and timbre and mood and dynamics and hell, even melody. The magic happens when you figure out a way to combine all of those into one single complex sound. And Prurient has been doing that since we fist discovered his Black Kite record. This is one of four new 8" square lathe cuts released by alt.vinyl in the UK, run by the Jazzfinger guys, and finds Fernow moving into even more ambient and drift like territory. One side is all washed out buzz drenched crumble, a barren landscape of time lapse decay, cities falling to ruin, fauna withering, wildlife dying, the sky turning an ashen grey, the soundtrack to a gradual return to dust, the various sounds wreathed in a hissy swirl of tape drop outs and creaking mechanical whir. The other side is even more pretty, tranquil, ambient, like the first sighting of the sun after the dust clouds clear, and signs of life begin to stir, still bleak and haunting, but pretty and subtly hopeful. Wide open expanses of distant fragmented melody, mumbled barely there drones, with the surface noise of the record as much an element as the music itself. And like all the releases in the series, this is a custom hand cut, Peter King lathe cut, 8", and it's SQUARE!!! Packaged in gorgeous square and triangular die cut sleeves, super fancy textured paper, with a paste on front cover and a printed insert, each insert hand numbered, each release LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!

We should say right up front, that Rose Pillar is probably the most beautiful Prurient record yet. Only tangentially 'noise', instead the sounds here are dark and brooding and evocative, haunting and heavy, thick and textured, drone-y and dense and so lovely. This limited release comes from the amazing Heartworm Press, and is a 10" housed in a massive, thick hardcover book. It's ULTRA limited, and very expensive, almost half of the pressing / press run is gone and it's only been out for a week or two, we can get as many as we want, but since it's so expensive, this is a PRE-order. If you want one of these let us know, we're happy to order one, but by ordering one you are definitely committed to buying one, and we'll be charging you a deposit for half of the cost, and because it's so heavy, it will have to ship and the higher multi item rate. But trust us, it's well worth it, believe it! Based on the death of Prurient mainman and Hospital Records proprietor Dominick Fernow's uncle, the book is stunning, page after page of simple stark photographs, silver on black, with the facing page featuring a brief bit of text, more like lyrics, or poetry, a wandering narrative that seems to be focused on death, or loss, or loneliness. The book on its own is quite breathtaking, but then the record just pushes it over the top. Beginning with a bit of warm warbly whir, all minimal and mysterious, the record slips into something a bit more familiar for fans of Prurient, some caustic vox, wreathed in distortion and drifting on bursts of hiss, but that noise element hovers amidst soaring majestic tones, almost martial sounding, strange muted industrial rhythms, delicate and dark, a cool and harrowing contrast, sounding a bit like a prettier dark ambient post industrial Whitehouse. After that track, the noise component becomes secondary, with Fernow exploring all manner of dark low end mysteries, from thick blown out buzzscapes, all rubbery synths and thick layers of crumbling distortion, to thick warm, viscous flows of pulsing guitar melodies and pounding blackened rhythms. Super distorted and in-the-red, caustic and chaotic, all wrapped around muted minor key melodies, and at one point a gorgeous, almost new wavey loop, whispered vocals and off kilter, almost tribal sounding programmed drums. The record winds down with some slow burning downtuned guitars, draped over soft muted tones and stretched out into a loping sprawl, the only sign of the Prurient of old, is a smattering of crunch and clatter, sprinkled here and there, until finally, things finish with a brief bit of warped looped old timey melody, buried beneath sea of soft shimmer and long washed out drones. So gorgeous. And so haunting and melancholy. Perfectly matching the tone of the accompanying book. Speaking of the book, besides the photos and Fernow's text, it also features a super intense and moving piece written by Fernow's Father, about the death of his brother, heartbreakingly beautiful. Again, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Half are gone already. We are only ordering as many of these as we get orders for, and this list will be your only chance to order them. We'll require a deposit, so only order one of these if you really want it and intend to buy it. And needless to say, HIGHLY recommended!

MPEG stream: Specter Of A Child
MPEG stream: Forever Hate
MPEG stream: Domina Milking

Prurient does techno? Oh, yeah. And we have to wonder just how much input / influence recent aQ fave Silent Servant had on these recordings, as Through The Window sure does sound like a pretty solid response to Silent Servant's fantastic dark-techno album Negative Fascination which was released on Dominic 'Prurient' Fernow's Hospital Productions in 2012. That said, Through The Window did begin as out takes from the divisive Prurient album Bermuda Drain, noise-purists scoffed, but most everybody else was pretty taken by the EBM-rhythms and blackened synth propulsions on that record (us included). While the dark synth lines, horror-house melodies, and monstrous pitch-shifted vocals of Bermuda Drain are held over on Through The Window, the rhythms are pure minimalist techno with the production values polished for the dancefloor. Even in comparison to the grim gothicisms and industrial strategies of Sandwell District (the broader operation to which Silent Servant belongs), the atmosphere on Through The Window is utterly claustrophobic and ominous. Monophunk basslines lifted from any number of Autobahn techno bangers (e.g. Model 500's "No UFO's" or Konigsforst by Gas or anything from that aforementioned Silent Servant album) laced with metallic, flanging synths headed for a total death-trance trip. A four-minute crusted drone interlude breaks up the two lengthy techno workouts, which are essentially variations on the same theme. A damn fine album.

MPEG stream: Through The Window
MPEG stream: You Show Great Spirit

MPEG stream: Time's Arrow
MPEG stream: Slavery In The Bahamas (Instrumental)

Two new tracks from Dom Fernow, Hospital Records head honcho, and the man behind a multitude of projects these days including Vatican Shadow, Christian Cosmos, Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement, among others. Prurient is Fernow's original project, but the sound of Prurient has come a long way since the harsh noise of his earlier releases. In fact, these two new tracks, like much of the recent Prurient output, most definitely falls more in line with Fernow's more recent electronic releases. Not that we're complaining, the A side is a fantastically grim slice of dark ambient drift, with distant vocal drones, and buried keening sine wave tones, draped over subtle murky pulsations, building gradually to a more driving rhythmic pulse, wreathed in static, the whole thing eventually engulfed in squalls of gritty noise and blown out crunch. The flipside though is whole 'nother thing, tranquil and almost new age-y, swaths of swirling synth, the whole thing hazy and ethereal, and hauntingly meditative. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!! All on colored vinyl!

Latest noisy missive from one of our favorite 'noise' artists going. Prurient, aka Dom Fernow, has managed to rekindle our waning love of noisemusic, by incorporating all sorts of typically un-noise elements, the least of which is black metal, but also, melody, dynamics, mood, mystery, all without losing any harsh energy, and without resorting to any of the tired hackneyed devices used by noise musicians as far back as there has been noise music. The sound of Prurient may have begun life as a blast of face peeling white noise, but has blossomed into a dark art, a creepy, sinister, fucked up and black as pitch exploration of negative sonics, and we can't seem to get enough. Every release seems to stretch the boundaries of noise music into some new shape, challenging and weird enough to appeal to the not strictly noisists, but brutal and intense enough to keep the faithful's ears bleeding. This limited 7" offers up two new blasts, both employing a similar sonic approach, but to different effect. The A side is an explosion of beautiful noise, a dense tonal wall of sound, but beneath the caustic hiss, is a hypnotic minor key melody played on what sounds like a marimba, looped and repeated, building tension and creating a truly creepy atmosphere beneath and within the could of blacknoise surrounding it. Wild unhinged vocals howl, bathed in distortion, all in a downpour of hiss, but that strange haunting Carpenter / Goblin style melody repeated below the surface imbues the track with a cinematic menace that only sounds that much better wrapped in prickly noise. The flipside is another wave of intense crunch and crumble, this time the melody beneath the skree is some sort of tangled guitar melody, but the effect is the same, repeated and looped mantra like, the crushing grinding lurching noise is transformed into something beautiful and beautifully ominous. White sleeve, white vinyl, white labels, black and white insert. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES.

As most of you well know by now, we're not that into straight up NOISE music. Thus we never really got into Prurient, until the Black Vase record. There was just something about that disc that spun our heads around, and had us yearning for more noise. Other than a few splits we haven't heard too much from Prurient (aka Dominick Fernow, who runs Hospital Productions as well as playing in Ash Pool and the Vegas Martyrs) since then, but this here brand new 7" ep just showed up and it's seriously damaged and brilliant, but maybe not in the way you might think. The A side begins just how you'd expect, a caustic vitriolic wall of sound, mostly vocals, which immediately sounds like just another dense slab of speaker shredding ultranoise, that is until the vocals drop out, and reveal what is lurking underneath. The vocals are so in the red and blown out that they swallow everything within earshot, so when they pull back, they reveal a crumbling soundscape of smeared melodies and blurred ambience, still noisy for sure, but also haunting and abstract, with fucked samples a bits of dialogue, and the occasional brief blast of white noise fury. The flipside is even weirder. Some sort of distorted synthpop, like Depeche Mode through a set of blown speakers, then some super creepy processed vocals come in, and the track devolves into another hazy and distorted stretch of obscured beauty, with a fucked up lopped low end outro. Maybe the 'nicest' thing we've heard from Prurient. Probably not noisy enough for the noise crowd, but definitely weird enough that it might just appeal to the Hecker / Fennesz blurred sound crowd, if they can handle a bit of brutality with their beauty...

Not sure what it is exactly, but the days of Prurient being a full bore noise band are long gone. We're guessing it has a lot to do with Prurient aka Dom Fernow joining Cold Cave, the shift seemed to coincide, and not that we're complaining, we've never been all that into harsh noise ourselves, and we much prefer the more melodic, less harsh side of Prurient, but even we weren't prepared for this new double 7", which is most definitely the most mellow, and melodic, and subtly striking Prurient record yet. It makes sense when you discover that these were essentially conceived as sketches for the record that would become Bermuda Drain, another Prurient record that had us marveling at how much the group had changed, but these tracks, even as sketches, are pretty lush and lovely, surprisingly mellow certainly, but still dark and brooding. The first single layers sample voices, children talking and laughing, over drifting dreamlike swells, over which a weird muffled vocal rumbles wordlessly, the sound shimmery and washed out, laced with bits of glitch here and there, the feel layered and collaged, and quite lovely. The flipside is even more ambient, all glistening and crystalline high end drift, distant vox buried in the mix. The second single begins with a hazy whir, and soon introduces a murky buried almost house-y percussive pulse that runs throughout the A side, slowly blossoming into deep lush melodic drones. The B side is the strangest of the bunch, the main chunk of the track, a warped bit of abstract guitar strum, weirdly tuned (or perhaps it's a harpsichord), a disembodied alien folk of sorts, bookended on both sides by more hushed minimal drifting drones. Super swank packaging too, full color jacket, with artwork by Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, both records pressed on different colored vinyl, with sensationalist tabloid record labels, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, each one hand numbered.

You might think that the results of a collaboration between Prurient and Kevin Drumm would be nothing but a seriously noisy and speaker destroying affair, but then you'd be underestimating these guys, and the extent to which they've pushed the noise music envelope. The last few Prurient records have been less about caustic abrasion and more about dark soundscaping, more about drones and darkness less about shrieks and blinding fury, and well, Drumm has always been capable of a soft touch, and often tempers his brutality with gorgeous melodicism. With that said, both of these guys are perfectly capable of whipping up serious squalls of crumbling chaos, and do so here and there on All Are Guests, but the key in noise music, at least for us, is dynamics, and these bursts and blasts of sonic fury that pepper the landscape are perfectly balanced by long stretches of subtle drones, field recordings, whirring atmospheric buzzscapes and creepy vocals. The opening track sets the stage and is a strange one, a dark, lugubrious crawl, with slowed down ominous vocals, reminds us quite a bit of AQ faves Burial in fact! But with a bit more Whitehouse mixed in. A lurching low end slither underpinning haunting disembodied vocals, you can't help but expect some stuttery dubstep beat to drop, although it never does of course. "On This Slab" is more a proper noise track, with howled distorted vocals, crunchy blown out electronics and glitched out malfunctioning buzz, but all chopped up and arranged into a strangely melodic noisescape, laced with little bits of melody, and dense grinding chunks of almost-melodic buzz, not to mention some spare tranquil stretches. The there's "There Died Venus", a washed out super distorted slab of crumbling blissdrone, gorgeous melodies buried beneath a roiling sea of ultra blown out crunch and buzz, strange rhythms surfacing amidst the constantly shifting layers of whirring sound, in the background a near constant upper register shimmer, wouldn't be all that out of place on a Tim Hecker disc. "Though The Apple Is Rotten" sounds almost like a straight field recording, the sounds of children playing, footsteps, wind random clatter, but in the background there's a lot of other sonic stuff going on, hard to tell if it's just tape hiss, or if the band has woven a delicate backdrop, either way, it's quite cool. "In Long Rows" is a 10+ minute chunk of minimal dark ambience, think Lustmord, Coleclough, Chalk, but with a bit more grit, a bit more hiss, maybe slightly more lo-fi, and with a brief resurgence of those murky pitchshifted vocals from the first track. Finally, the last track finishes things off with, well, not a bang, but a burst of grinding whirring, mechanical chaos, like several Wolf Eyes jamming at once, a rumbling rusty metal beast, busted gears and blown speakers, a giant unholy machine designed to do nothing but make this glorious noise, a deep resonant distorted voice, speaking beneath the din, buried below ground in some ancient hellish oratory, the sound seeping up through black cracks in the ancient soil. And even then, as the duo expel a cloud of noxious drone and buzz, they still manage to make it sound almost dreamlike and dangerously close to pretty.

MPEG stream: First Memory Of Pain
MPEG stream: On This Slab

Do we have to tell you that Richard Pryor is one of the greatest comedians alive? Taking inspiration from Bill Cosby, mentoring from Woody Allen, etc. Pryor quickly became one of the single most strikingly inspirational comedians of all time. This retrospective gives us two discs of mostly never-before-released stuff that nicely documents his early performances (1966-1974). Disc one features amazing reel-to-reel sound recordings which render for us his earliest explorations in comedy (thus the "Evolution"). For the most part, they're pg-13-ish storytelling explorations that catch him building the structures of his own comedic form. Disc two gives us performances that feature the more famously known Pryor style: hyperkinetic, free-form, millions upon millions upon millions of expletives, the sort of delivery Pryor's probably best known for. He talks about real-life situations with which we can all identify. You know, cocaine addiction, tumultuous marriages, killing ones car, heart attacks, setting oneself on fire... This disc also features one of the best parts of Wattstax, his 7 bit monologue! The performances here pre-date his decision to remove the word "nigger" from his monologues (a decision made following a 1979 trip to Kenya). Now, where, motherfucker, would we be without God damn Richard Pryor? Dare I say, there would be no Eddie Murphy!? No Blazing Saddles (which he co-wrote with Mel Brooks)!! No Sanford and Son!!! And on and on... Overall, this is a great compilation of his early work. And "[He] Ain't Dead Yet Motherfucker!"

MPEG stream: Peoria
MPEG stream: Wattstax Monologue

When the Richard Pryor box set came out over a year ago I was so excited, I wanted to buy it for everyone I knew. But alas I was broke and didn't even get to hear it myself. Now a second, more affordable chance has presented itself in this two cd anthology. Richard Pryor is so fucking funny, and smart . His comedy style is flowing and personal, about life and politics. He was one of the first high profile comedians to reclaim the word nigger, defiantly and as a political statement. (He later publicly decided to not use the word.) He talks dirty and crass, offending people left and right, does painfully hilarious impressions of fuck ups and drunks. Oh, and the best thing is when he makes fun of lame ass white folks! Funny and essential.

RealAudio clip: Exorcist
RealAudio clip: Have Your Ass Home by 11:00

A very strong debut release from Los Angeles' PS001 (starring Ron Russell, Gabie Strong, and David Patton). These spacious instrumental tracks fit quite comfortably between a pair of headphones, and meld into an arid minimalism for guitars and cymbols somewhere between Gastr Del Sol, Labradford, and Nurse With Wound's "A Missing Sense". Recommended!

Yet another DIY electronic-industrial album from the wacked archives of Alain Neffe. This Belgian was a mover and shaker in the cassette culture of all things industrial, post-punk, minimal wave, and otherwise zonked musics in the '80s. His Insane Music imprint released something close to 60 cassettes, most of which were compilations of his own constellation of projects including Bene Gesserit, Cortex, Human Flesh, and Pseudo Code. His work garnered one of the early Vinyl On Demand boxset; but that only covered a small sliver of Neffe's output and a number of labels have embarked on the daunting task of sifting through all of that material. Pinkity Plonk has now published three such Neffe / Insane reissues, first being that wistful Cortex collection of sci-fi tone poems (which we lauded as a Record Of The Week back in early 2012), the second being a Human Flesh album (albeit with that project 'pretending' to be Pseudo Code), and now a proper collection of Pseudo Code material. Pseudo Code was ostensibly a trio of Neffe, Xavier S., and Guy-Marc Hinant (who later went on to found Sub Rosa Records), and With Helpful Hands finds that trio augmented by some of Neffe's other cohorts. Pseudo Code operates well within Neffe's visionary pursuits of snaking drum machine rhythms, ominous synth chords, and scatterings of judiciously extemporaneous sci-fi guitars. These four lengthy tracks including one drugged-out, 34-minute voyage of inner/outerspace explorations simultaneously recalling Conrad Schnitzler, the Legendary Pink Dots, and Cabaret Voltaire. Limited to just 300 copies, we might add!

MPEG stream: From Land to Land
MPEG stream: Report to Authorities
MPEG stream: Let's Get It

Ripping jazzed-up proggery here from this new SoCal band, featuring members of Radio Moscow and Astra. As big fans of Astra's already impressive authentic '70s style spacerock we were intrigued, and Psicomagia are right on the money, with their early '70s sounding blend of organ/synth wig outs, heavy bass grooves, propulsive prog drumming (which never lets up!), and energetic saxophone eruptions - with plenty of psychedelic, esoteric atmosphere as well, thanks to ritual bells and gongs and occasional dramatically chanted lyrics in Spanish (though this is, appropriately, mostly instrumental). The four long tracks find the band constantly hurtling forward, the rhythm section in particular always on the boil. Imagine Acid Mothers Temple, with horns, on speed! Or, likewise, a prog version of Earthless, with sax and keys instead of guitar. Definitely AMT and/or Earthless aficionados open to the endless jams of another band, and who like a little bit of free jazz freakout, should give this a whirl (or let it give you one). Obviously influenced by such vintage '70s jazz meets prog and acid rock greats as Magma, Soft Machine, Out Of Focus, Tony Williams Lifetime, and electric Miles Davis, Psicomagia successfully bring all that together in a compellingly badass yet quasi-mystical way. Bravo! NB. There's a vinyl version too, we should be listing next time.

MPEG stream: El Memorioso
MPEG stream: El Congreso Pt. 2
MPEG stream: Simplon

[ aquarius records catalogue — P ]