Yay! Ptolemaic Terrascope is back! The newest incarnation of this venerable fanzine (or "illustrated occasional") devoted to the underground folk, psych, and otherwise acid-laced, pagan, pastoral musics of the past and present is published right here in the Bay Area, and thus there's a bit more of a San Fran bent to this issue, with a cover pic featuring quite a few faces we recognize both as musicians and as customers here at Aquarius.
Taking over the reigns from the UK crew (Phil McMullen et. al.) who originated the Ptolemaic Terrascope institution back in the '80s (more than a 'zine, PT has spawned a series of "Terrastock" festivals and helped nurture a whole scene of Terrastockian bands and fans, y'know), is new editor/publisher Pat Thomas, a longtime PT writer, reissue record label guy, and musician himself.
Yes, we'd say Pat's off to a good start with this issue, just look at it: it's got a glossy, full-color cover and perfect binding, a first for the PT. More importantly, what's inside lives up to the PT tradition: interviews with the likes of Shirley Collins, Davey Graham, Vashti Bunyan, Colleen, Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance), and Ron Ashton (The Stooges), amongst much else. Also Devendra Banhart is subjected to a blindfold test on British Folk Rock, a la The Wire's "Invisible Jukebox" feature. And there's lots of reviews of course too. Former editor Phil McMullen also makes an appearance, with a column offering his blessings to Pat and talking about what he's up to now himself (including preparing for the upcoming Terrastock 7, to be held in Louisville, KY in 2008).
Oh, and that's not all, you also get a free 20 song cd compilation with rare and/or unreleased material from the likes of Six Organs, Barbara Manning, Shirley Collins, Davey Graham, Kendra Smith, Doug Yule, Fern Knight, Steve Wynn, Ruthann Friedmann, Sean Smith, Colossal Yes, Pat Thomas, and more!
The *other* classic PE album, from 1990.
We wish we could say that this soundtrack album to the new Spike Lee film is the PE comeback we've all been waiting for--but maybe the Stephen Stills collaboration on the title track wasn't the best idea ever for reestablishing what was formerly one of rap's best acts... Nonetheless, this is radio-ready and very catchy.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THE classic PE album. Best album of 1988? Probably.
This is a no frills dvd with a simple offering. P.E. LIVE. In LONDON. 1987. Their first European tour! Extras are very spare here, mostly just an available voice over by Dr. Dre. This definitely makes a case for Flavor Flav. Without him, there's no way they would have had the mass appeal they enjoyed. Regardless, it's an awesome document of P.E.'s raw energy at this time, just about to release their classic, It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back.
The Bass (Chuck D). The Treble (Flavor Flav). The Bomb Squad bringin' the Noise. The Big Clocks. And, of course, the ground-breaking, revolutionary social-political message. If you're not thinking Public Enemy, where were you in the late '80s/early '90s?? Where are you now? PE were definitely one of the most radical, innovative, and entertaining hip hop groups EVER. Musically *and* politically. But if we have to tell you that...well, you should probably get this album immediately. It's disc of greatest hits (not to be confused with an album the already did called Greatest Misses). There's 18 tracks here and you absolutely can't go wrong with almost all of 'em. You get two cuts from Yo! Bum Rush The Show (1987), five from It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back (1988), five from Fear Of A Black Planet (1990), and three from Apocalpyse 91...The Enemy Strikes Black (1991). Plus one from Greatest Misses (1992), one from Muse Sick-N-Hour Mess Age (1994), and one from the He Got Game soundtrack (1998). So it's mostly classic-era PE, with nothing to worry about from later albums like There's A Poison Going On or Revolverlution. Definitely a nice mix, and a good introduction to these rap masters, complete with Liner notes from Harry Allen and Adam Yauch. Though, honestly, you really should have all their first three or four albums in your collection in their entirety!!
Rick Rubin-produced 1987 debut from everyone's favorite rappers Public Enemy.
This is a limited edition reissue of the epochal 2nd album by Public Image Limited, with the CD housed in a small metal film cannister, replicating the original 3LP set which earned the album's name.
Here's what we wrote about this earlier:
It's a piece of history that none of the current staff were old enough to remember, yet nostalgic fragments about the initial arrival of Nevermind The Bollocks at Aquarius Records back in 1977 occasionally emerge from conversations with our old school customers. By now it's probably as factual as any urban mythology; but as it makes for such a great story, I'm much more inclined to believe it than what may have really happened. With record distribution back in 1977 even less streamlined than it is today, Aquarius resorted to using an importer to ship copies of Nevermind The Bollocks from England. The import company in question did not have a direct route into San Francisco from London, and thus had to drive the boxes up from Los Angeles. This shipping detour gave Aquarius the opportunity to throw a big party in anticipation of the album's arrival, with attendants rumored to include Crime and the Residents (in full Eyeball costumes squeezing within the confines of Aquarius' then Castro Street location). To heighten the suspense, Aquarius had arranged with the driver of the truck to call up the store every 30 minutes or so to let everybody know his progress up the I-5: "Just passed Bakersfield." "Made it through Coalinga." "Yup, I'm in Tracy."
Yet, I feel the story could end with the truck crashing somewhere near Pleasanton, as I've never felt that The Sex Pistols' music lived up to their massive cultural cache and spectacular publicity stunts. John Lydon's uncomfortable fixed stare, sneered cultural heresies, and theatrical madness (which, in fact, was lifted from Richard Burton's performances as King Lear) always appeared to be destined for greater things than the Pistol's musically thuggish simplicity. Within The Sex Pistols, John Lydon had control over the Pistol's syntax, spewing threats against royalty and decent society at large; but there was little room (and even less ability) to explore the far more challenging proposition of igniting the sound of Lee Perry and Can with the powderkeg of punk. Internal politics and Malcolm McLaren aside, Rotten needed to form Public Image Limited.
Flanked by Keith Levene on guitar and Jah Wobble on bass, Lydon began PiL with two perfectly complementary musicians to pursue his aesthetic goals, as Levene's spindly shards of metallic guitar splatter acted as the textural counterpoint to the rhythmic centrality of Wobble's low-slung dub basslines. While this line-up inevitably imploded (and with it the success of Public Image Limited), the Lydon / Levene / Wobble core for PiL reached its creative apex during their second album, originally released back in 1979 as a 3LP housed in a metal film container. PiL's second, more economical pressing of the self-evidently titled Metal Box garnered an equally self-evident title Second Edition. As a whole, this album hasn't easily been upstaged in its synthesis of dub production techniques, stealthy disco grooves, and punk antagonism bathed in Situationist critique. Second Edition opens with Wobble's huge rolling bass in Albatross which finds Lydon straining to sing with a swooping baritone to match the song's unwavering plod. Yet Lydon's viperous snarl returns for the rest of the album, which picks up the pace considerably in building their signature 'death disco' sound. All around Second Edition is an unnerving, complex album that was never the cultural force Nevermind The Bollocks was but is clearly the artistic masterpiece in Lydon's career and one of the quintessential post-punk albums.
It's a piece of history that none of the current staff were old enough to remember, yet nostalgic fragments about the initial arrival of "Nevermind The Bollocks" at Aquarius Records back in 1977 occasionally emerge from conversations with our old school customers. By now it's probably as factual as any urban mythology; but as it makes for such a great story, I'm much more inclined to believe it than what may have really happened. With record distribution back in 1977 even less streamlined than it is today, Aquarius resorted to using an importer to ship copies of "Nevermind The Bollocks" from England. The import company in question did not have a direct route into San Francisco from London, and thus had to drive the boxes up from Los Angeles. This shipping detour gave Aquarius the opportunity to throw a big party in anticipation of the album's arrival, with attendants rumored to include Crime and the Residents (in full Eyeball costumes squeezing within the confines of Aquarius' then Castro Street location). To heighten the suspense, Aquarius had arranged with the driver of the truck to call up the store every 30 minutes or so to let everybody know his progress up the I-5: "Just passed Bakersfield." "Made it through Coalinga." "Yup, I'm in Tracy."
Yet, I feel the story could end with the truck crashing somewhere near Pleasanton, as I've never felt that The Sex Pistols' music lived up to their massive cultural cache and spectacular publicity stunts. John Lydon's uncomfortable fixed stare, sneered cultural heresies, and theatrical madness (which, in fact, was lifted from Richard Burton's performances as King Lear) always appeared to be destined for greater things than the Pistol's musically thuggish simplicity. Within The Sex Pistols, John Lydon had control over the Pistol's syntax, spewing threats against royalty and decent society at large; but there was little room (and even less ability) to explore the far more challenging proposition of igniting the sound of Lee Perry and Can with the powderkeg of punk. Internal politics and Malcolm McLaren aside, Rotten needed to form Public Image Limited.
Flanked by Keith Levene on guitar and Jah Wobble on bass, Lydon began PiL with two perfectly complementary musicians to pursue his aesthetic goals, as Levene's spindly shards of metallic guitar splatter acted as the textural counterpoint to the rhythmic centrality of Wobble's low-slung dub basslines. While this line-up inevitably imploded (and with it the success of Public Image Limited), the Lydon / Levene / Wobble core for PiL reached its creative apex during their second album, originally released back in 1979 as a 3LP housed in a metal film container. PiL's second, more economical pressing of the self-evidently titled "Metal Box" garnered an equally self-evident title "Second Edition." As a whole, this album hasn't easily been upstaged in its synthesis of dub production techniques, stealthy disco grooves, and punk antagonism bathed in Situationist critique. "Second Edition" opens with Wobble's huge rolling bass in "Albatross" which finds Lydon straining to sing with a swooping baritone to match the song's unwavering plod. Yet Lydon's viperous snarl returns for the rest of the album, which picks up the pace considerably in building their signature 'death disco' sound. All around "Second Edition" is an unnerving, complex album that was never the cultural force "Nevermind The Bollocks" was but is clearly the artistic masterpiece in Lydon's career and one of the quintessential post-punk albums.
As an aside, it was a huge curatorial mistake for Soul Jazz to leave Public Image Limited off of their "In The Beginning There Was Rhythm" compilation, as PiL fits into Soul Jazz's ideology for the project better than anybody else on the record. Thus, "Second Edition" is highly recommended (if not required) for anyone who was into that compilation.
NOW AVAILABLE AGAIN AS A REPRODUCTION OF THE ORIGINAL DELUXE 3LP METAL FILM CANISTER SET WHICH EARNED THE ALBUM'S NAME!!!
Here's what we wrote about this earlier:
It's a piece of history that none of the current staff were old enough to remember, yet nostalgic fragments about the initial arrival of Nevermind The Bollocks at Aquarius Records back in 1977 occasionally emerge from conversations with our old school customers. By now it's probably as factual as any urban mythology; but as it makes for such a great story, I'm much more inclined to believe it than what may have really happened. With record distribution back in 1977 even less streamlined than it is today, Aquarius resorted to using an importer to ship copies of Nevermind The Bollocks from England. The import company in question did not have a direct route into San Francisco from London, and thus had to drive the boxes up from Los Angeles. This shipping detour gave Aquarius the opportunity to throw a big party in anticipation of the album's arrival, with attendants rumored to include Crime and the Residents (in full Eyeball costumes squeezing within the confines of Aquarius' then Castro Street location). To heighten the suspense, Aquarius had arranged with the driver of the truck to call up the store every 30 minutes or so to let everybody know his progress up the I-5: "Just passed Bakersfield." "Made it through Coalinga." "Yup, I'm in Tracy."
Yet, I feel the story could end with the truck crashing somewhere near Pleasanton, as I've never felt that The Sex Pistols' music lived up to their massive cultural cache and spectacular publicity stunts. John Lydon's uncomfortable fixed stare, sneered cultural heresies, and theatrical madness (which, in fact, was lifted from Richard Burton's performances as King Lear) always appeared to be destined for greater things than the Pistol's musically thuggish simplicity. Within The Sex Pistols, John Lydon had control over the Pistol's syntax, spewing threats against royalty and decent society at large; but there was little room (and even less ability) to explore the far more challenging proposition of igniting the sound of Lee Perry and Can with the powderkeg of punk. Internal politics and Malcolm McLaren aside, Rotten needed to form Public Image Limited.
Flanked by Keith Levene on guitar and Jah Wobble on bass, Lydon began PiL with two perfectly complementary musicians to pursue his aesthetic goals, as Levene's spindly shards of metallic guitar splatter acted as the textural counterpoint to the rhythmic centrality of Wobble's low-slung dub basslines. While this line-up inevitably imploded (and with it the success of Public Image Limited), the Lydon / Levene / Wobble core for PiL reached its creative apex during their second album, originally released back in 1979 as a 3LP housed in a metal film container. PiL's second, more economical pressing of the self-evidently titled Metal Box garnered an equally self-evident title Second Edition. As a whole, this album hasn't easily been upstaged in its synthesis of dub production techniques, stealthy disco grooves, and punk antagonism bathed in Situationist critique. Second Edition opens with Wobble's huge rolling bass in Albatross which finds Lydon straining to sing with a swooping baritone to match the song's unwavering plod. Yet Lydon's viperous snarl returns for the rest of the album, which picks up the pace considerably in building their signature 'death disco' sound. All around Second Edition is an unnerving, complex album that was never the cultural force Nevermind The Bollocks was but is clearly the artistic masterpiece in Lydon's career and one of the quintessential post-punk albums.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
"Hello! Hello? HELLO!" Bellows one John Lydon as if tapping on a microphone to check if it's on. Here, the former Sex Pistol began his career as the frontman and only constant in Public Image Limited, whose first two (and arguably, three) albums remain some of the most adventurous post-punk records ever produced. The reasons for the Sex Pistols demise were numerous and often contradictory depending on who's misremembered history you might want to consider, but Lydon (no longer Johnny Rotten) cited Sid Vicious' musical ineptitude on the bass as one such reason. That said, he pinned his hope for Public Image Limited's success on recruiting his old friend John Wardle to learn how to play the bass as they went. This gambit actually proved quite successful, as Wardle was a quick study, easily adapting basslines from dub and krautrock and christening himself with the stage name Jah Wobble. His deep and dubby basslines overlaid with Lydon's caterwauling vocals and squalid rants laid the foundation for the quintessential PiL sound, fleshed out by the spidery guitar of Keith Levene, whom Lydon nicked from The Clash. The first of countless PiL drummers was Jim Walker, who only appeared on this first album. PiL slowly introduces the more adventurous sounds over the course of the album, launching first into the incendiary bass-driven punk single "Public Image" which was a song that Lydon penned back with the Pistols. But through the uber-Spartan tracks in "Fodderstompf" and "Religion," PiL's trajectory towards death-disco and dub-punk was set. The full scope of Public Image Limited wouldn't be evident until the second album Metal Box, but so many of those ideas of dub techniques, atonal vocals, studio tricknology, and cross-pollination of styles are found on First Issue, which makes this an essential purchase.
Light In The Attic states that this edition is actually the first American version of this album, with all of the other editions hailing from overseas. The first disc is the proper album in its entirety, with the second disc sporting the rare b-side "Cowboy Song" and an hour-long BBC interview.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Here's the record that was never released on account of the Manson murders! (More on that in a second.) This double cd contains all the recordings of Public Nuisance, an obscure (but pretty great) teenage garage/psych band that got together in Sacramento circa 1964. As befits their punky name, they looked like a bunch of hoods, decked out in all-black outfits, with two of 'em sporting proto-Ramones style long hair. That, plus the fact that we read they were like an American version of the wild and crazy English freakbeat bands, piqued our curiosity big time. Supposedly, also, they were as "heavy as the Stooges". The truth is, that's a bit of a stretch. Some of this *is* at least heavier than, if not the Stooges, the Stones, but they do a lot of lighter, Beatles-y stuff too. They perform a nice cover of the Beatles' "I'm Only Sleeping" in fact. So they were as much a pop-psych band as they were a down and dirty garage combo. On the other hand, their song "Love Is A Feeling" sounds EXACTLY like the White Stripes! The 28 tracks here actually cover quite a wide spectrum of sounds from sweet, harpsichord and theremin laced pop to raw, primal R&B stomp w/ plenty o' fuzz. This collection mainly consists of 1969 sessions recorded for an LP that never came out 'cause their label was owned by Terry Melcher, the guy who also owned the house where the Manson Family killed Sharon Tate! After the murders, Melcher, afraid for his life, went into hiding and his label folded... But now, decades later, here are those unreleased sessions plus some rare singles tracks recorded under the band's earlier moniker Moss & The Rocks. Maybe a single-disc "best of" would have been more uniformly killer, and cheaper, but we can't really argue with getting to hear it all. The super thick, colorful, photo-filled cd booklet is full of essays written by Mike "Ugly Things" Stax, Clark Faville, and others -- including notes about each and every song!
Definitely something for fans of the Seeds, Stones, Creation, and "Nuggets" stuff in general to check out. Even if they're not quite the "unknown Stooges" we'd hoped for, Public Nuisance are pretty cool.
For every one who has been digging Zombi and Majeure, and the various other soundmakers mining eighties sci-fi VHS tapes to create retro futuristic synthgroove funk jams for smokey chrome and neon danceclubs, the sort of sounds you might have heard cyborgs shaking their mechanical thangs to in Logan's Run or Blade Runner, well, then prepare yourself for the oddly monickered Publicist, aka Sebastian Thomson, drummer for electronic post rockers Trans Am, whose latest, Keep It Off The Record, is a killer assemblage of fuzzy sci-fi synths, vocodered vocals, live drums and programmed beats, all woven into some seriously propulsive robotic cyber synthfunk grooviness.
"Hand To Mouth" is the party jam of the year, assuming that year is 1985, super hooky, and fuzzy, and groovy, the synths fuzzy and buzzy, the vocals totally alien and psychedelic, and the live drums/drum machine combo super intense and propulsive and yeah, funky. Some crazy catchy retro futurefunk for sure. "Miscalculation" is no slouch either, another disco flecked, dizzying synth funk workout, that sounds like the soundtrack to a chase scene (through a futuristic club of course) on Buck Rogers, laced with huge spaced out swath of cosmic synth shimmer, draped over that relentlessly percolating futurefunk pulse.
"Schnell Und Sauber" is the most krautrock of the bunch, a driving Kraftwerkian Autobahn worthy krautsynth workout, with driving rhythms and lush layered synths that throb and pulse, the real drums here in full effect.
The flipside starts out with the title track, total eighties electro pop, sort of Zapp via Daft Punk via Zombi if that makes any sense, groovy and funky, but also slightly ominous and cinematic, and still infused with that sort of krautrock core. And finally, the record finishes off with the epic "Self Similar", a soaring pulsing synthdrone workout, that is a total Goblin sci-fi dancefloor destroyer, another one of those jams that sounds like the music behind the credits of some lost Euro sc-fi B move VHS, moody and slightly minor key, the synths swirling and pulsing, propulsive and motorik, the sound groovy, but equally haunting and hypnotic.
Fuck. Puce Mary. Her real name is Frederikke Hoffmeier, she's a striking Dane who hails from the post-punk / art collective Posh Isolation, which may be known best outside of Copenhagen through the retro charms of Lust For Youth and the punk snarl of Iceage. There are charms to the noise of Puce Mary, with those charms being nekromantically violent, libidinally impure, and just fucking sick. The historical thread of Puce Mary's work traces all the way back to the true crime litanies of Throbbing Gristle's "Very Friendly" and "Hamburger Lady" cast upon bleak arrangements of nauseating electronics. There's plenty of nods to the equally seminal works of SPK, Brighter Death Now, Whitehouse, Premature Ejaculation, and Wolf Eyes; but it has to be said that most every major figure and visionary author of power electronics is a dude. Puce Mary / Hoffmeier represents one of the few great female artists wholly operating within this insular aesthetic. As we noted before in earlier discussions on the work of Puce Mary, Pharmakon is an obvious contemporary with considerable presence; but Puce Mary's overall catalogue exhibits greater breadth and better ideas.
So here stands the epic album Persona, which counts as her second solo lp (alongside a wealth of hard to find cassette releases and a couple of collaborations). The militant, mono-rhythmic pound on "Courses" is raked with squalls of distant pierced tone and a sickening electronic blurt that sounds more like Cosey's coronet than anything electronic. The vocals are buried in demonoid distortion, tremolo, and flange - a conflation of effects that run through the death industrial ethos dating back to the early '80s. The recurrent vomiting and retching (presumably from Hoffmeier) on "The Viewer" dots the horror-synth sound design of sustained atonal church organ drones, Hellraiser squiggliness, and disembodied bone-saw whirr. The slow crawl of doomy timpani on "Pigs" looms with empty spaces by what could be poltergeist activity and the commanding voice of hers again buried in throat-ripping FX. There is a refinement to Puce Mary's work that's rare within the sewage-work of the id produced through industrial culture; but that refinement doesn't eschew the raw, existential negativity that boils through Persona. Death-industrial at its finest.
It's inevitable that Frederikke Hoffmeier (aka Puce Mary) is gonna get compared to Pharmakon, as the number of women producing the sour and sick tones of high caliber, industrial malaise is paltry at best. Pharmakon's mini-album Abandon was certainly a highlight for 2013 through her blighted electronics, bloodcurdling vocalizations, and the abject imagery of larvae crawling across her bare legs; but we did have to wonder if Pharmakon had more to offer than those four scalding tracks, wondering if she was just a flash in the pan, creating a visage that adopted the violence and terror of industrial culture as a marketing ploy of shock in order to rattle / titillate the nerves of the fainthearted.
Enter Puce Mary, whose output of noise-culture vulgarities easily outpaces that of Pharmakon, with an impressive slew of sadly impossible to find cassettes and lps (including a handful of releases on the Iceage related Danish imprint Posh Isolation). Her voice is at the center of The Great Panic, uttering desolate screams, longing sexualized moans, glossolalic ululations, and barked declarations that may or may not be understandable to her fellow Danes; and she buries all of this amids carpet-bombed detonations of crusty noise, mutant bass-synth pulsations, and atonal flurries, pushing her work as a distillation to the necrotic pall of Brighter Death Now, the hyperbolic tautologies of Whitehouse's delerium, and the scabrous distortion of Mauthausen Orchestra. Bad vibes guaranteed.
Ultimate Hypocrisy is another cassette only release from Denmark's reigning queen of noise -- Puce Mary (aka Frederikke Hoffmeier). The tape is a bold statement of power electronics and noise tactics that eschew much of the overtly troubling imagery found throughout the genres, in favor of a more poetic adaptation of existential nihilism. It begins with an uneasy, marching churn of chirping electronics latched onto a grinding locomotive plod, all processed through crude machines and effects recalling the classic industrial murk of SPK, Anenzephalia, and Factrix. She follows this with a horrifying piece of sound poetry that would make the demented aktionist Otto Muehl proud, through an extended passage of psychosexual sobbings and moanings adjoined to a gloomy, creepy thrum of blackened emptiness. The unsettled spaciousness of this track emphasizes her vocal gasps and deep throated utterances that might have been lost had she taken a wall-of-noise approach. Elsewhere, Hoffmeier does belt it out in a staccato, militant delivery although the content is thoroughly obscured through heavily flanged effects and the complement of juggernaut metal-on-metal bashed rhythms. Razor-slashes of caustic noise, coarsely rendered oscillations, paranoid-as-fuck tension, and sick-sick-sick tones foul the air throughout the remainder of the tape. Of course, it's recommended!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The found photos of the dead racoon, the family posing with the dead lion and the beer-swilling truck driver provide little clues into the mysteries of Puddle Theory (although I like to think that the beer-swilling trucker made this record in the extensive 'home studio' in the cab of his 18 wheeler). Dark and gritty washes of processed feedback with ominous sweeps of electronic isolationism, Puddle Theory's self-released cdr is a worthty entry into the realm of black energy drone, inhabitted by Xenakis and Arcane Device and others.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
New York born timbalist and band leader Tito Puente hardly needs an introduction. Like Machito, he sought to integrate jazz and mambo together - tight Latin percussion sections, with extended instrumental solos. These recordings were made in New York City between 1949 and 1951 and feature: Tito Puente (vibes, timbales); Gil Lopez & Luis Verona (piano); Mongo Santamaria or Frankie Colon (conga); Manny Oquendo (bongos); Amado Visoso (bass); Frank LoPinto, Jimmy Frisaura & Gene Pappetti (trumpets); Joseph Herde, Irving Butler, Edward Grimm & Sol Rabinowitz (saxes); Vincento Valdes & Bobby Escoto (vocals & maracas.)
They sure do make some of the oddest, fluffiest confectionary treats in Japan, and PuffyAmiYumi is no exception. Although Allan has shown an immense aversion to these J-pop gals, we've got their "Illustrated History" album just released domestically on Hoboken's Bar/None Records (originally on Epic Japan). Sounding not unlike a Hello Kitty pinball and pachinko game arcade at the height of sugar-rush hour with super-slick, huge production that puts Britney, Christina and company (not to mention their record exec. handlers) to shame. As flawless, sweet and crisp as a strawberry Pocky stick. This is not deep. This is not complex. This is not difficult. What it is though is unfathomably cute, sparkling, exuberant fun. And unlike their American pop star counterparts, Puffy jumbles together their sackful of music styles with complete reckless abandon. From song to song, they hop about delving into the vaults of 60s girl groups, surf rock, ABBA ("True Asia"), samba ("Sigh Of Love"), The Who circa-Tommy ("Jet Police"), rumba, Beach Boys summer pop, disco ("Electric Beach Fever"), straight up rock'n'roll... you name it! With bountiful horns, hand claps, tambourine, and a troop of backing singers to boot. Love 'em? Hate 'em? Place your votes! Also includes a bonus video of "Boogie Woogie No. 5" that eerily resembles a Gap khakis ad with its crowd of dancing boys on a stark white backdrop.
An avalanche of Japanese sticky sweets. These two gals have been at it for a while now - since '96 to be exact. Yumi and Ami are definite J-pop sensations with their own toys, clothing and tv show, but have relatively only recently drawn attention on this side of the Pacific. And although they've had to change their name over here - adding Ami Yumi - because of another artist who doesn't even go by that name anymore, they've made quite a splash at that. This is their fifth album bursting at the seams with their buoyant, bizarre mish-mash of musical styles - slick'n'dance-y, sunny surf-y, pop-a-billy, Chipmunks-y... you name it. Malcolm McLaren, Pizzicato Five and Fantastic Plastic Machine have all joined the Puffy parade. Will you be next? Perhaps more cute than should ever be allowed? Decide for yourself... avoid like the plague? Or embrace with ultra glee?
Latest blast of blown out heavy psych guitar grime from this oddly named Ohio outfit, and like the records before it, this is some gloriously filthy in the red noise rock crush, equal parts Stooges-y sludge, droned out heart-of-the-sun Hawkwind heaviness, and slithery leather pants-ed, bong smoke-y swagger, a bass driven dirgery that erupts into wild squalls of wah guitar blowout and feedback fried freakout. For fans of the current crop of psych/space rock, these guys are like a dirtier, scarier, grimier, noisier version of all those other bands, which some might argue also makes them BETTER. And while they sound right at home on Hozac, it's easy to understand why they sometimes also call Siltbreeze home, that aesthetic is definitely all over 1982, a continuous barrage of crumbling in-the-red riffage, avalanches of chaotic drum damage, wild shredding leads, buried feral vox, a million tangled melodies woven into walls of blown out psych, and buried underneath all that there seems to be a whole mess of hooks, and heck, maybe even some 'choruses', but instead of hunting for them, it's way better to just crank this as loud as you can, and let PA's psychedelic skree wash over you, wallow in their wild wooly psychedelic noise rock, and eventually, all of that other stuff will seep into your pores, like some glorious sonic poison.
Another blast of Stooges-via-AmRep noise rock snarl and swagger from these Ohio heavies, and like their Siltbreeze full length, they kick up a seriously dense noisepop din, the vox slathered in distortion, the riffs blown the fuck out, the drums a buried barely there pound, tons of effects, lo-fi, but still in the red and LOUD, the A side has a killer dubbed out / tripped out chorus, that sends the vocals careening through clouds of buzz and crunch, and there are even some wildly skronk horns in the mix.
The flipside takes the same sound, and slows it down, turning it into a serious slab of noisy sludgey pummel, chugging and churning, a blurred, buzzy, druggy dirge that hides a pretty kick ass hook, which leads right into the brief instrumental closer, a short sharp chunk of fuzzy garage punk jangle, all wrapped up in squiggly psychedelic leads, atonal and angular, noisy and chaotic, but still jangly and poppy and weirdly catchy. Super rad!
What's in a name? Well, with Puffy Areolas, pretty much everything. Or nothing. All we know is a google search offers up many interesting results, very few of them related to the band. Regardless, it's definitely an attention grabber. We missed them at South By Southwest, but listening to this now, we are kicking ourselves big time. These noiseniks from Ohio sound right at home on Siltbreeze, a sort of fiery feral punk infused with just the right amount of in-the-red noise, and chaotic about to collapse heavy rock, maybe if the Stooges existed now, and were signed to Amphetamine Reptile, the PA's offer up a crowd baiting explosion of noise punk, wild riffing buried in a sea of reverb and distortion, the drums a barely there chaotic crash and crunch, the vocals a wild yowl, frantic and frenetic, pounding and propulsive, this is the sort of record that just oozes sweat and blood and stale beer and cigarette butts, and invokes the sort of next day bruised and battered hangover that there shows must produce in spades. Not sure what else to say, if you like it heavy and noisy and chaotic, you probably can't do much better than the Puffy Areolas.
Comes with a download code so the damage can be digital as well. Fuck yeah.
Originally a special Record Store Day release, now sold out and out of print, we managed to get an extra little handful of these (we're talking 5 or 6) so if you were kicking yourself for missing out, grab one of these quick before they are really gone for good.
Puffy Areolas unfurl a slow burning sprawl of flanged psychedelic guitar riffage, and growled distant vox, into a strange bit of droned out strum and jangle, buried drums, fractured electronics and warped effects, wild wah guitars, all wound into a spaced out drift that ruptures a few minutes in and becomes a frantic space drone drugrock pound, the guitars swirling and whirling, the drums pounding, all tangled into a glorious and explosive bit of psychedelic space rock freakout, that wouldn't sound all that out of place on a record by White Hills or The Heads, endless wild riffing and soloing, over loose chaotic drumming, and clouds of constantly shifting effects, seriously druggy and damaged and divine.
Purling Hiss counter with some swaggery Stooges-y garage rock stomp, snarly vox over some sludgey fuzzy riffing, and some awesomely tweaked leads, infusing that Stooges-y swagger with the classic rock/power pop vibe that made us dig these guys so much in the first place, the result something much more dirgey and noisy, the track laced with falsetto vox, and layer after layer of noodly guitars, until the track shifts gears, and the band slip into an almost Aerosmithy style groove, which swaggers and slithers and unwinds woozily through clouds of psych guitar swirl as the track gradually fades out...
And as we mentioned above, crazy limited, as in THESE ARE THE VERY LAST COPIES WE'LL EVER BE ABLE TO GET!!
Do you like some acid sprinkled into your sun soaked psychedelic G-rated children's television shows, well, what if we added even MORE acid it and made it into a movie... well, then Sid & Marty Krofft were for sure your pushers. The big screen spinoff of HR Pufnstuf, these songs were a crucial part of creating the overall over-the-top fantastical and colorful world of the characters of Pufnstuf. A couple lists back we revelled in there finally being a domestic release of The Bugaloos cd and we gotta say we're rejoicing in just the same drink the crazy kool-aid way for these sounds from Sid & Marty Kroft's other druggy, deliriously metaphor filled, bizarre and bright colored daydream for kids with some winking nods to their parents watching along. With a great weird cast of characters including Mama Cass as Witch Hazel, we wish all family entertainment was this bizarre and jam packed with imagination and pleasure. We're still waiting for folks like The Polyphonic Spree or some Elephant 6 tinged groups like Olivia Tremor Control or Of Montreal to fully embrace our television childhoods and carry the torch of Pufnstuff, the Bugaloos and all of our druggy friends for a new generation of kids to trip out too. So fun and dazzling!
Bundy K. Brown (Directions in Music, ex-Tortoise), Curtis Harvey (Come), Chris Brokaw (Rex), and Doug McCombs (Tortoise) follow Jim O'Rourke's lead of mimicking John Fahey's avant twang but none of the playfulness of either O'Rourke or Fahey.
Pullman is an acoustic quartet into "rustic soundscapes" that features members of such great bands as Tortoise, Rex, Brokeback, Directions in Music, and Come. Ok, we said they were an acoustic quartet, but actually on this new disc (their 2nd) they've gone
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The irrepressible Jarvis Cocker and co. have returned, but you just might wanna think about holding your celebratory cheers. Yes, Pulp has certainly gone through its share of ups and downs, starts and stops, and stylistic shifts since its inception in 1978,
What more can we say about Pulse Emitter that we haven't already? We can't seem to get enough of his gorgeous and epic, sweeping, soaring, krautdrone new age synthscapes, but unlike the relative tranquility of the last few PE releases (the 4 volume Meditative Music series), Cosmic Images is a much more spaced out and kosmische affair, channeling Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze as well as modern synthspace explorers like Zombi, Oneohtrix Point Never (who supplied the album artwork), Infinite Body, Innercity, and the like.
A five part song suite, each focusing on different planets and star systems and galaxies, each one a sweeping expanse of modular synth swirls and mesmerizing keyboard melodies, warm and lush and layered, slipping from propulsive and psychedelic and almost blown out, to hushed and shimmery and minimal. A series of perfect solar system soundtracks, much of the record sounding like the background music for some seventies documentary about the universe, with long droning tones, and soft shifting ambience, hazy melodies over soft muted buzz, but with a couple tracks sounding way more aggressive and distorted and tapping into a love of Carpenter and Goblin, the opener, "Eagle Nebula" is a pulsing, throbbing buzzscape, the tones sharp and distorted, lots of crunch and thrum, still spacey and dreamy, but much more intense. And the final track, "Jupiter", offers a sonically similar bookend, taking the ambient cosmic drift of the in between songs, and adding a serious dose of rumbling low end bass buzz, turning the otherwise blissy sound into something much more sinister, adding various other melodies, swirling sonic squiggles, and thick swells of distorted thrum, the perfect brooding, buzzing coda, to a fantastically epic collection of kosmische drift.
That's right. Another killer collection of sci-fi space drone synth bliss from big time aQ fave Pulse Emitter. And yeah, this one is again, crazy limited. Only 100 copies made, we got the very last 20. Which means once these are gone, we will NOT be able to get more. And since we're fairly sure there are more than 20 people out there in aQ land who wand, nay NEED, all things Pulse Emitter, we'll keep this brief.
Grass, while not as 'oppressive' as the recent Oppressive Nature release on Digitalis, and not as meditative as the three part Meditative Music series, manages to fall somewhere in between, probably a little closer to the meditative side of things, we'd say. Slow burning dreamdrones drifting through space would sum it up in a sentence, but why leave it at that. The sound on Grass is epic and expansive and space-y, definitely a Pulse Emitter disc that would hit the spot for all you Expo 70 obsessives, the same sort of space kraut vibe. Loooooong tones undulate and shift, melodies surface and dissipate, laced with some strange Morricone like faux flute melodies. The foundation is a dense throbbing low end, layered and gorgeously textured, shifting overtones and barely restrained feedback, but above and all around that main drone, various layers and melodic fragments drift and shimmer and float weightless as if in orbit around a brilliant black star. So gorgeous.
Definitely recommended, as is grabbing one of these quick before they disappear. Already out of print, these are again, the LAST 20 copies. Packaged in super nice full color sleeves.
Daryl Groetsch - the one-man synth symphony better known as Pulse Emitter - has just answered one of the more commonly asked questions by passersby, but strangely on of the more difficult questions for us to answer: Do you have any music for massage? That question gets addressed here at Aquarius more often than you might think; and the answers that *we* would like have as the soundtracks to our massages (i.e. SUNNO))), Corrupted, Lustmord, Hazard, Thomas Koner, hell, even Merzbow might work for us!), well they just don't seem to cut it for most folks. So with this series of contemplative and un-cheesy ambient recordings, Pulse Emitter has that perfect record that we can recommend for that particular purpose; and it certainly works for us in terms of drifting to sleep music as well.
The first installment of Meditative Music unfurls a stream of undulating synth lines, whose phase pattern shifts and oscillating tones are hypnotizing in their own right; then a set of crystalline tones calmly rise and fall at a pace that seems to always be getting just a little bit slower. That's pretty much all that happens with Meditative Music, but it works very well. This is great inner-cosmos exploration music using the simplest of techniques that probably the ambient pioneers of Cluster, Eno, and Schulze would not have shied away from. As Groetsch put it, here's an excellent album for "sleep, massage, or any activity where a peaceful and balanced sound environment is desired."
Daryl Groetsch - the one-man synth symphony better known as Pulse Emitter - has just answered one of the more commonly asked questions by passersby, but strangely on of the more difficult questions for us to answer: Do you have any music for massage? That question gets addressed here at Aquarius more often than you might think; and the answers that *we* would like have as the soundtracks to our massages (i.e. SUNNO))), Corrupted, Lustmord, Hazard, Thomas Koner, hell, even Merzbow might work for us!), well they just don't seem to cut it for most folks. So with this series of contemplative and un-cheesy ambient recordings, Pulse Emitter has that perfect record that we can recommend for that particular purpose; and it certainly works for us in terms of drifting to sleep music as well.
The second installment in this series features a soft bit of white noise undulating in the distance, acting much like a field recording of wind, surf, rain, or any combination you would prefer. Above this, Groetsch gradually unfurls a revolving set of notes from one of his modular synthesizers that overlap in various combinations, occasionally creating nifty harmonics, but mostly gradual swells and blossoms of Doppler-effected tones. There's nothing ominous, nothing cheesy, nothing hackneyed about these drifting ambient passages - just great music for, as Groetsch puts it, "sleep, massage, or deep reflective thought." Nice.
Daryl Groetsch - the one-man synth symphony better known as Pulse Emitter - has just answered one of the more commonly asked questions by passersby, but strangely one of the more difficult questions for us to answer: "Do you have any music for massage?"
That question gets addressed to us here at aQuarius more often than you might think; and the as far as music *we* would want as soundtracks to our massages (i.e. SUNNO))), Corrupted, Lustmord, Hazard, Thomas Koner, hell, even Merzbow might work for us!), well they just don't seem to cut it for most folks. So with this series of contemplative and un-cheesy ambient recordings, Pulse Emitter has that perfect record that we can recommend for that particular purpose; and it certainly works for us in terms of drifting to sleep music as well.
The continuation in the Meditative Music series brings us to the brightest of the three released so far. A slow, shimmering oscillation of an interwoven set of synths from Pulse Emitter's patch-bay modules gird the entire album which is dotted by a series of chiming bell-tones placed above. This is more of a record for summertime daydreaming than of the introspective meditations found on the previous two. Still a potent opiate through sound despite the warmly rounded tones of the album. Groetsch offers a brief description of this one: "placid waves for reflective times."
The fourth in Pulse Emitter's series of Meditative Music cd-r's, and like the first three, another hour long expanse of warm liquid synthmusic, designed, according to Mr. Pulse Emitter himself, Daryl Groetsch, as the perfect music for "sleep, massage, or deep reflective thought" or as an album ideal for "sleep, massage, or any activity where a peaceful and balanced sound environment is desired." Which this most definitely is, minimal, spacious, spare, abstract and ambient, lush and hushed, softly pulsing synth swells drift in and fade out, leaving lots and lots of space, eventually, the various swells overlap and are layered into blurred stretches of barely there melody, the notes stretched out into long blurred streaks of chordal thrum, allowed to ring out and fade nearly to silence, before another note takes its place, a sort of space music, the soundtrack to the cosmos, or an ultra minimal Carpenter style soundtrack, dark and languorous and so mysterious, the perfect music for mediation or relaxation, but also perhaps to accompany gazing into the heavens, or wandering across moonlit vistas. Besides the usual synth suspects, Pulse Emitter's Meditative Music definitely reminds us of folks like Leyland Kirby/The Caretaker or Indignant Senility, their strange gauzy ambience definitely an analog for PE's hushed sonic dreamworld, if anything, PE taps into the same sort of wistful melancholy, it's definitely relaxing and serene, but it's also infused with a certain amount of pathos and mystery, that evokes thoughts and memories of other worlds, lost memories and forgotten pasts, a lovely chunk of electronic minimalism, that will definitely appeal to anyone into abstract sonic wonder and dreamlike kraudronedrift.
Oppressive Nature couldn't be a more apt title for this album from Portland's wizard of analogue synthesis Daryl Groestch (aka Pulse Emitter), or at least for the opening track of this album. Through and through, this is a far cry from the pastoral ambient sensibilities administered through his surprisingly great Meditative Music cd-r series. A grim curtain is cast from the onset, with squelching distortions, animalistic grunts, and wounded chirps propagated through electronic means. All of these blistered, cracked, and abused noises are strategically placed on a rumbling battlefield of crunched-low end rumblings, lending comparisons of today to Wolf Eyes and UW Owl and of yesterday to SPK and Factrix. Groestch lets off the distortion pedal for good chunks of Oppressive Nature, relying upon his filter-sweeping modulations and sinusoidal oscillations to craft isolating, deep space atmospheres. Weirdly majestic melodies counter the streams of noise generated throughout the untitled second track, eventually overtaking the noise amidst a series of tightly appregiated squiggles. The fourth cut hangs a sequence of revolving tones of phased dissonance upon a hyper minimal structure of tiny clicks and glitched pulses, which had they been generated digitally could easily fit within the Raster-Noton ethos. The album glides to a stop with windswept drones laced with distant clouds of feedback, white-noise, and one of Groetsch's melodic motifs.
