[ aquarius records catalogue

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Showing results 301 through 350 of 1919.

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SORRY. British improv legends in a live duo, Evan Parker's sax meeting up with Keith Rowe's guitar and electronics. There's two long tracks (both around forty minutes), that feature both delicate interplay and cacophonous outbursts. Mainly Parker takes the foreground, with Rowe providing a textural background.

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Despite the fact that veteran British free jazzer Evan Parker is one saxophone player whose own practically super-human skills on his instrument (we're talking intense sessions of circular breathing here) would seemingly make any additional electronic gimmickery unnecessary, that doesn't mean it's not still cool to hear his sax playing morphed and manipulated electronically -- we've really enjoyed his past experiments along those lines, starting with (for us) his Solar Wind album on Touch, wherein he collaborated with Lawrence Casserley on live electronics. He's done a few other such sessions, with larger ensembles (his own, and also including participation in those like-minded Spring Heel Jack projects), and this here new ECM release is one of 'em. Subtitled "Staring Into The Time Cone" this work is (we're told) inspired by the thoughts of one Charles Arthur Muses, an obscure American philosopher and hyperdimensional mathematician. More concretely, Memory/Vision brings together Parker (sax, tapes, and samples) with an impressive host of fellow electro-acoustic improvisors and their instruments: the violin and electronics of Philipp Wachsmann, the (prepared and otherwise) piano of Agusti Fernandez, Barry Guy's double bass, Paul Lytton's percussion and electronics, Lawrence Casserley's "signal processing instrument", the computer and sound pressing of Joel Ryan, and Walter Prati and Marco Vecchi both on electronics and sound processing. Wow, a lot of processing goin' on! And as up might expect, the results are both gorgeous and abstract, dramatic and droning... Fragments of melody surface amid rumble, hiss and haze. The ensemble's sombre shards of sound sometimes collect into bursts of energetic disassembly. Rattling like rain, glitchy fx and sibilant tones create a mood of "music as weather". Recorded live in Oslo in 2002, these seven tracks, over 70 minutes, constitute a "continuous performance...indices are provided for cd listeners only".

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SORRY. The wailings of Evan Parker, free improv saxophone titan, as processed through the live electronics of Lawrence Casserley, making for some gorgeous glacial drone and wild flutter!

Bloodshot Records -- normally the haven for new upstart Americana folk/country/roots rock artists -- has been giving a respectful nod to its (both world reknown and lesser known) forefathers. Here's the newest album from noneother that Mr. Graham Parker, and actually it's much less 'country' than most of his newfound label brethren. Younger indie/college radio kids might liken his weathered, sharp tongued voice to Vic Chesnutt, but Parker's been Mr. Grumpy Embitterment much longer than Chesnutt. Now nearing three decades of recorded work, Your Country proves that he's back with plenty of spit and spark to show the kids a thing or two. For one thing, there's plenty of great wry storytellin' lyrics, the true distinguishing mark of Parker-penned songs. A highlight of the album is certainly the 'duet' with likeminded, world-weary singer/songwriter Lucinda Williams, although it would've been nice to hear Williams in a more prominent role than what it actually is, that of backing vocalist. No frills here, none needed This is solidly a straightforward quality Parker album.

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This gent might be most familiar to folks as being the guitarist in many of the most prominent bands in the Chicago postrock scene. Yup, he's played in Isotope 217, Chicago Underground Duo (and Trio and Quartet and Orchestra... you get the picture) and of course Tortoise. That said his musical leanings frequently delve into considerably more avant garde and free jazz territory. He has participated in numerous collaborations, but he's also plenty prolific on his own. The Relatives marks his second full length on which he's the captain steering the ship (his first was 2003's Like-Coping on Delmark Records). And well, to put it kindly, this is perhaps his most accessible work to date... verging on easy-listening soft jazz. Dinner jazz even. Very skillfully executed tapioca.

MPEG stream: When Did You Stop Loving Me, When Did I Stop Loving You
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These three amazing long compositions taken from live performances at the twelfth annual Vision Festival in New York in 2007 will be difficult to convey in a one minute sound clip. Their sweeping scope performed by a tight 16-piece unit of horns, woodwinds, and strings (including an oud and electric guitar), journey through a broad modal push and pull of ethnic, improvisational and modern compositional forms, veiled by an almost cosmic exotica. That aspect comes courtesy of the East Indian singer Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay, whose sometimes wordless, sometimes poetic vocals interweave throughout the piece's dynamic colorful tones and earthy textures, yet they never overly predominate. This one requires attentive listening to the deep and wide unfolding of these compositions for its full rewards, but it's well worth it!

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There's something about William Parker that for some reason makes us end up not paying too much attention to what he's up to. Sure a lot of what he does is indeed mindblowing. But a lot isn't. And the problem is there is just so much William Parker, that we'd sort of just given up on caring too much. The pay off for keeping up was just not enough. It seems like maybe a record a week although it muse be less than that. But hell if this new record doesn't have us kicking ourselves. We were struck immediately by the instantly recognizable artwork and weird bubbly letters, the work of John Fell Ryan, a member of the mysterious Excepter. Strange match up that's for sure. It had us assuming that this was William Parker WITH Excepter, which would indeed be something else! But the actual reality is even stranger, Parker and a twenty something merengue band, weird but it works. Wonderfully. The first track is a blissful and tranquil meditation for solo bass, so spacy and lovely. Then a brief spin on the 8-string doson ngoni, which produces a lovely buzzing drone, and then Parker is joined by the Olmec Group, bass, sax, timbale, bongos, conga, percussion and accordion, and the sound is festive, joyous, jazzy but funky and mysterious. Horns wheeze and drone over bopping bass and clattery percussion, like some wild avant block party. These tracks are the heart of the record, a wild, breathless fluttering heart. Fiery and fun, lively and so alive. Those tracks are separated by solo Parker joints, one on which he makes the bass squeak and squeal like a feeding back guitar mixed with a glass harp, all shimmering harmonics and squealing string scrapes, another with Parker turning his 8-string doson ngoni into some gorgeously alien Appalachia. The record winds down with another solo bass exploration, warm and muted and almost folky sounding. The final track, a bonus track which was recorded in 1993 and originally appeared on a super limited cassette is Parker solo on electric bass, sawing away, coaxing all kinds of buzzing and droning from his bass, harsh and aggressive but also totally mesmerizing and beautiful.

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MPEG stream: There Is A Balm In Gilead
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So how many electric harp / electric guitar / electric guitar trio albums do you own? None? Well you should pick this one up then, 'cause it's good, and also sales of this cd benefit the Flywheel Community Arts Space in Easthampton, Mass., which seems like a

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SORRY. Still another in the Table Of The Elements' series of super limited, silkscreened one sided 12"s. This latest 12" features harpist and NY downtown mainstay Zeena Parkins along with Raz Mesinai and Jim Pugilese. While the instrumentaion is listed as electric harp, wasp (!), percussion, mallet instruments and bells, the sound is a lot less rhythmic and percussive than that list would lead you to believe. Instead, it's a deep, rich, swirling wash of gentle melodies, droning chords, and shimmering tones with subtle low-in-the-mix rhythms that occasionally sound a bit like a more ambient Muslimgauze. The final piece on the record is a beautiful hypnotic melodic drone constructed out of Pugilese's rapid mallet strikes, Steve Reich-like, slowly-shifting rhythm stretched into a sweet undulating melody. A flowery trellis is silkscreened in white ink on the non-playing side of this record. And in response to the complaints of folks who bought any of the first eight 12"s in this series and experienced the brittle / easy-cracking plastic sleeves, these new 12"s come in an improved sleeve, much softer, and way less fragile.

Recent Wire cover stars Zeena Parkins and Ikue Mori team up, not for the first time, for this new disc for Austrian experimental electronics label Mego. Both fixtures of the downtown NYC scene, Parkins is the fashionably dressed avant-harpist best known lately for playing with Bjork (alongside Matmos), and Mori is the former drummer for no wave legends DNA who has made a career since then doing really interesting things with drum machines, though now she's using laptop computers. Together, Parkins and Mori create an enjoyable example of electro-acoustic improv, the abstract soundworld of their Phantom Orchard mixing harp, piano, and synth with squiggly electronics and samples, some tracks mesmerizingly mild and pretty, others on the somewhat skronkier side...

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Perhaps best known as the arranger of a forty-five year old masterpiece that's famous for having never been released (the Beach Boys' Smile), Van Dyke Parks may be finally getting his due. Of course we've been huge fans of the eccentric wonderland of his 1968 solo debut Song Cycle, which got a beautiful sampling nod from Madlib on his Beat Konducta series (check out the "Left On Silverlake" sound clip from our review of the Beat Konducta Vol 1 & 2 to see what we mean). And his orchestral arrangements on Joanna Newsom's 2006 release Ys were some of his most inspired work we had heard in a long while. Yet he has remained an elusive cult figure, a master of subtlety and nuance in his craft that has championed the sounds of American folk ingenuity from earlier eras in dizzyingly bright kaleidoscopic arrangements that can be a bit of an acquired taste for those unfamiliar with them. Channeling industrious American composers, such as Charles Ives, and Scott Joplin, the bygone popular song structures of Tin Pan Alley, Honky Tonk and Ragtime and eccentric instrumentation of zithers, mandolins and singing saws, Parks arrangements don't just capture an old-fashioned sound but the feel of a forgotten age that adds a patinaed sheen of passing time to his work. His music and arrangements could easily be a score for any number of Richard Brautigan novels. Parks himself curated and released this first volume of his arrangements on his own Bananastan imprint, and in typical Parks fashion, it's a varied and eccentric affair. Featuring songs by Bonnie Raitt, Arlo Guthrie, Little Feat, Lowell George, Ry Cooder, Sal Valentino, Dino Martin, The Mojo Men, and a few songs by Parks as well, including the first track, an adaptation of Donovan's "Colours" called "Donovan's Colours" credited to George Washington Brown (a pseudonym of Parks) from the Song Cycle album. While most of the tracks enjoyably engage us, there are a few rabbitholes such as the calypso-inflected Bonnie Raitt track that may have you reaching for the skip ahead button. But wiggly twists and turns have always been a feature and ultimately a joy of the Van Dyke Parks experience persuading us to unexpected places we might not venture on our own.

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Decades before Sufjan Stevens was singing about the landscape of the the states, or Jim O'rourke was deconstructing pop, Van Dyke Parks was giving us all a crash course on orchestral avant-pop. Best known as Brian Wilson's collaborator on Smile, and decades later the producer and arranger of Rufus Wainwright's debut, Parks has made several challenging pop records of his own. Along with Discover America, this is for sure his landmark recording. A warped and thrilling affair exploring the southern California landscape. One moment he takes us to palm desert then laurel canyon blvd. and one moment you feel like you're in a musical on acid and then a psychedelic pop opus and then a folk song spiked with flowery colors and warped sensibilities. When Brian Wilson began hanging out with Van Dyke Parks, it's rumored they spent their nights doing amphetamines and Parks would read Wilson literature that he felt would touch his heart. Of course the more square side of the Beach Boys camp considered Parks an enemy, Mike Love in particular was totally intimidated by the intellectual and avant-minded nature of Parks. And well, any enemy of Mike Love is probably a friend of ours! But back to this record, it's for sure one of the most adventurous, ambitious, deranged, delightful albums of pop created in the last quarter century. And wow, how dapper a young Van Dyke Parks looks on the cover of this record. Eat your heart out Sufjan! Just thought we should get this on our site, at last...

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"Getxo" is the second full album from New Zealand transplant Rosy Parlane, who had previously worked in the avant-noise-rock ensemble Thela with Dean Roberts and Dion Workman. Like the solo work of Roberts and Workman, Parlane has been exploring the

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While perhaps not as prolific as his former partner Dean Roberts (they played together in the Sonic Youth inspired avant-rock trio Thela), Rosy Parlane has quietly constructed a quite impressive career himself. Iris is Parlane's third solo album, after a couple of releases on his own Sigma Editions imprint and a collaboration with Christian Fennesz. In many ways, Iris echoes the recent Fennesz masterpiece Venice, as DSP filters perpetually spiral samples into immersive drone constructions. Parlane's Iris is less focused on the suggestions of melody and more concerned with textural abstractions which softly shower upon the composition's minimal foundation. Spread across three extended pieces, Iris is a bleary low key album, supposedly crafted from organ, piano, and guitar, but you might not necessarily guess so. Parlane's digital treatment of those source materials renders almost all of the references to the original instruments unrecognizable: a series of monochromatic blurs of ambient sound quietly activated by distant mechanical whirrings and icy fragments that are just as fragile as they are cold. Certainly on par with the laptop intellect of Stephan Mathieu and Akira Rabelais.

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New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark should really have a word with one of her country's citizens about the paucity of material he's been producing over the years. When so many other New Zealand sound artists release dozens of albums every year (you know, Birchville Cat Motel, Peter Wright, Anthony Milton, etc.), how can almost three years go by between albums for Rosy Parlane? Fortunately, Parlane's delinquency in keeping up with his fellow New Zealanders is made up by the quality of Jessamine. While Parlane's work harbors a glassine drone sensibility found in the similarly minded aforementioned NZ artists, his work has a considerable density and an appreciation for digital processing rarely heard in the feral drone underground. Parlane's ephemeral atmospheres strive for an activated minimalism, occasionally harboring similarities to the sparkling electronica of the Kompakt Pop Ambient sensibility; but he often pushes the work into teethgrinding electro-acoustic studies paralleling the Hafler Trio and even Hitoshi Kojo's vastly under appreciated collaboration with Maurizio Bianchi. The closest thing that Parlane gets to the tempestuousness of a Campbell Kneale outing is on Jessamine's finale which culminates in a steadily building track of monochromatic psychedelic distortion.

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SORRY. This is another in the Tonschacht series of 7"s that has previously featured Gate, Ashtray Navigations, Hrvatski, and Vote Robot. Rosy Parlane is a New Zealand transplant now living in London, having spent a good portion of the last decade in such NZ guitar noise projects as Thela (with Dean Roberts and Dion Workman), Emperical, and Pit Viper. As can be heard on his recent solo disc, Parlane's recent work is much less Sonic Youth and much more Fennesz in taking the powerbook approach to sound manipulation. These two short tracks are warm constructions of digitized surges and morse code bleeps. Nicely done.

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SORRY. Shimmering gossamer drones that are constructed with appears to be looping hypnotic layers of violin. Quite similar to what Robin Storey did for Zoviet France and Rapoon. A very nice debut from this New Zealander.

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Early Parliament tracks (mostly from their debut "Osmium") circa '70 - '72. Some, like "Red Hot Mama" later were reworked for later Funkadelic output. Essential funk.

This is it, the mothership has landed! If you wants to get funked up, start here.

Got some of these in, thought we ought to get it up on our website. After all, in my (Windy's) opinion the best Parliament album is this, their first, released in 1970. Removing the "s" from their name heralded George Clinton's change from the Parliaments' doo-wop sound to a truly original mix of gospel / country / funk / rock / even classical. That they hooked up with a white woman from England, Ruth Copeland, who wrote several of their most devotional tracks is even more weird, but then you've got hear this album to believe just how weird, yet totally accessible and great, it is. Especially if you're only familiar with Parliament / Funkadelic's more shiny dancefloor-oriented later material, then this will be a full-on revelation to you, so be *sure* to give the soundclips a try. While some folks choose to take sides over liking either Funkadelic *or* Parliament, Clinton's bands existed simultaneously and there is so much crossover in personnel and style that they may as well be considered the same band. So I tend to divide their sounds into early and later, myself much preferring the early work of both Parliament and Funkadelic -- 1971's Maggot Brain is my fave Funkadelic masterpiece. Osmium comes with seven bonus tracks to round out the album's original 10. Essential essential essential! P.S. This has been reissued several times, including as a Brit import some years back called Rhenium, so note that if you've got that one you already have all the stuff here except the bonus tracks.

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SORRY. The 2nd Parliament album, from '74. Old Parliaments soul is updated to mid-'70s psychedelic funk specifications. A classic.

Tear the roof off the mother...

Before Parliament & Funkadelic, George Clinton and co. were known as The Parliaments...presented here are their mid-sixties Detroit sessions, 18 soulful tracks worth--including the 1967 hit "I Wanna Testify" and several others later reworked by P-Funk in the seventies. "Good Ole Music" indeed. And plus it's neat to see the cover pic of a smooth-lookin' Mr. Clinton and the gang from before they adopted their LSD/Sun Ra-inspired dresscode (i.e. sans multicolored hair extensions, outlandish costuming, etc.)...

Much like the cloud of plastic googly eyes that festoon the cover of this cd, Parlour's music has the tendency to drift off in all directions. From track to track and moment to moment, they're ever-morphing stylistically and tempo-wise. That's not to say that this album is scattered or haphazard. Not at all, there is a unifying slow, meandering flow to the proceedings, and it's all definitely rooted in the postrock camp. Perhaps the diversity is due to the fact that these tracks were done over a five year period in a number of different locales? Or perhaps it's still the lingering traces of the members past projects (The For Carnation, Aerial M, Crain)? Yes, the latter is particularly apparent. Nevertheless, Googler is an intriguing journey through melodic guitar and bass cycles, driving rhythms, warm drones and prickly textures. At times propulsive and sharp-edged while at others smooth and delicate. Six lengthy songs in all.

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New 20 minute four song ep from Louisville post rockers Parlour. While there's no escaping their deep connection to Tortoise -- we're talking circa Millions Now Living... -- they also have a broad arsenal of musical weapons at their disposal which make them stand out. Most significantly is the inclusion of both bass clarinet and tenor saxophone as prominant leaders in their sonic pallette, but also richly endowed with the sounds of tasteful analogy synths, jangling guitars and the requisite bass and drums. To be fair to Parlour, and maybe give a little more credit where credit is due, their sound is probably even closer to that of Pell Mell (who were squeezing out their own surfy brand of instrumental post rock long before Tortoise ever played a single note).

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Led by Tim Furnish (Crain, Aerial M, For Carnation), this Louisville group is quite beautiful. It's a post rock instrumental record... and yeah, there's a lot of those out right now! However, this is totally at the higher end of the quality spectrum. The

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We've long been fans of this Louisville post rock supergroup, featuring members of Crain, Ariel M, The For Carnation, and Rodan. Simulacrenfield might just be their best yet. Mesmerizing and hypnotic, equal parts melodic meander and rhythmic churn, they often sound like a heavier Tortoise, locking into hypnotic, almost jazzy grooves, but without being afraid to infuse those jams with thick distorted guitar crunch, tangled complex woodwind interplay or buzzing sci-fi synth shimmer. With an arsenal that includes clarinet, bass clarinet, tenor saxophone and synthesizer, augmenting the classic rock guitar / bass / drums (not to mention some banjo here and there), these guys craft gorgeous, timeless instrumental post rock, the sort few bands play anymore, and even fewer can pull off. The opener, "Destruction Paper" perfectly displays everything that's so good about these guys, a dizzying blend of post/math/kraut rock, the horns and synths adding so much breadth to the group's sound, standing in for vocals in a way that keeps the sound from getting boring, while simultaneously elevating the sound, adding a sort of prog/art rock element. "Camus" is more of the same, the band locked tight, the core instruments laying out an irresistible groove, while the horns wind and whirl and intertwine. The banjo on "Jalepenooptics" totally transforms the song into some sort of strange twang flecked post/kraut workout, the horns giving it a sort of chamber ensemble vibe, and definitely reminding us of Tortoise again. Over the next few songs, the sound swings from dark Slinty brood, to almost Decemberists sounding Victorian jangle, to Godspeed like slow build and finally to the nearly 11 minute closer "Sea Of Bubbly Goo", which also has some serious Slint going on, the guitar parts creepy and skeletal, drifting amongst clouds of cymbal shimmer, gradually growing more and more propulsive, the sound fantastically tense and hypnotic, the tempo building, effects whirling, the horns adding plenty of melody, finally exploding in a skronky, crunchy, epic denouement, before fading out into a cloud of rumbling slow fading distorted low end. AWESOME. Definitely for fans of Tortoise, Chevreuil, Trans Am, Circle, Fridge, Maserati, Explosions In The Sky, Resonator, Salvatore, Woodsman and various other practitioners of the lost art of post/math rock...

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Had Fractal not dusted off this gem of French electronic composition, there's a good chance this disc might have found its way back into circulation through elusive Icelandic cd-r label Creel Pone. Bernard Parmegiani was one of the many composers who cut their teeth at the highly influential INA-GRM studio / label / laboratory of sound, alongside the likes of Pierre Henry, Luc Ferrari, and Xenakis. Favoring an acousmatic strategy that reveals sound in a manner that sublimates its origins, Parmegiani is best known for his grandiose La Creation Du Monde whereby the composer attempts to address the sound that predates the Big Bang, as well as its polyphonous explosion through a constantly spiralling thrum of electronic vibration. Chants Magnetiques (which translates as Magnetic Fields, and Fractal is quick to point out that this album precedes the Jean Michel Jarre album of the same name by several years) is easily the darkest album in Parmegiani's body of work; and perhaps, the paranoiac qualities of Chants Magnetiques were the reason for its obscure status for so long. The opening round of erratic electric squiggles slides into a languid drone of sustained strings, whilst a robotic hammering strikes against what sounds like springloaded doors. Occasionally chipper but usually damaged electronic percolations and atonal blasts of prog organs intermingle with sheet metal cacophony and convulsive buzzings, only to sulk into subterranean layers of sound haunted by mad scientist chords on the organ and spooky atmospherics that never sound cheesy in spite of the references. The entire composition is executed with an incredible precision and complexity, easily positioning itself as a clear influence upon the later work of Autechre. One not to miss.

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Listening to "Da Natura Sonorum" it's easy to understand where Autechre borrowed their mutable rhythms from. Often cited as a huge influence upon those figureheads of current abstract electronica, Bernard Parmegiani emphasized the "instantaneousness of the ephemeral and the mobility of the repetitive" within his fusionist compositions between musique concrete and live instrumentation.

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We've been a fan of French musique concrete composer, Bernard Parmegiani for awhile now. His sound engineer's background brings forth a stunningly unique view of music-making through which he combines improvisational intuition with an excellent sense of compositional form. JazzEx is a collection of four of his earliest works: "JazzEx" (1966), a composition for electronic tape and Jazz Quartet from the 1966 Festival de Royan; "Pop Eclectic" (1969), an electro-acoustique divertimento that mixes natural and synthetic sounds and was composed for the Peter Foldes movie; "Du Pop a l'Ane" (1969), a plunderphonics sound collage using pop and symphonic sounds; "Et Apres" (1973), an amazing electronic tango composition featuring Michel Portal on bandoneon. This is an important period of Parmegiani's work, noting his first major steps in this eclectic sound language. Highly recommended!

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Bernard Parmegiani is a French musique concrete / electronic music composer who has worked extensively with the influential INA GRM recording studio / label. While a number of 20th Century composers avidly footnote their work with dense historical references and conceptual overviews, Parmegiani favors the acousmatic approach (currently espoused by Francisco Lopez) of creating a hallucinatory sound without revealing what caused it. Such a philosophy favoring mystery over intention is perfectly suited to the cosmologically tinged composition "Le Creation Du Monde" (1982-1984). Parmegiani expresses the cosmic beginning through gradual introductions and transformations of dense, yet ephemeral fragments of sound which mutate and coalesce into warm, buzzing timbres and aqueous percolations. While the tonalities to "Le Creation Du Monde" are comparable to Xenakis's "Persepolis" or Stockhausen's "Mikrophonie," Parmegiani's volatile collage aesthetic falls much closer to the non-academic forms of early Nurse With Wound. Good work.

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"Le Memoire Des Sons" collects three pieces from the French musique concrete composer Bernard Parmegiani, including "Capture Ephemere" (1967), "Sons-Jeu" (1987), and "La Memoire des Sons" (2001). As with his previous works including his masterpiece "La Creation Du Monde," Parmegiani follows an acousmatic approach to contextualizing how his heavily processed sounds are to be perceived. Despite the span of 34 years in between all of these recordings, there is a remarkable similarity in how Parmegian fractures the source material into generative particles tumbling, exploding, flanging, dissolving, sparkling, and timestretching into very plastic sound constructions, that clearly follow the strict rules of what musique concrete should be according to the precepts of the French state sponsored institution INA-GRM.

RealAudio clip: Capture Ephemere

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SORRY. Odd-ball music conrete from this legendary French composer. This disc presents archival material from 1966-1973, thereby predating the pop cut-ups of Christian Marclay by a good bit. The four pieces here feature a patchwork of styles, at times fused with symphonic elements, or having free jazz musicians play over prerecorded tapes of electro-acoustic music. Important, influential, and a fun listen, too!

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

SORRY. Parmentier is a collaboration between New Zealand's Rosy Parlene and Dion Workman (ex-Thela) who combine to create scratchy drawn out soundscapes with bleak, claustrophobic drones and rhythms approximating at time the Chain Reaction pulse, by building loops out of skipping records. The end result is similar to Boyd Rice's infamous Black Album, but far more beautiful.

We had been hearing about these guys for ages, the saviors of indie rock, the darlings of Pitchfork and pretty much every other taste making blog out there, and the first time we heard them, all we could think was, "holy cow, these guys sound so much like Pavement". Which is definitely true, these guys have that slacker jangle thing down pat, and by now, longtime readers of the aQ list know we have nothing against derivative sounds, as long as those sounds are done really well and creatively, and are derivative of something we love, which Parquet Courts definitely deliver. We find ourselves writing stuff like 'they don't make music like that anymore' in lots of reviews, and as far as Pavementy jangle pop goes, that's definitely true, so in keeping with our endless obsession with that nineties sound, we're digging this new Parquet Courts a lot. And even though we never managed to review their debut, that one got a lot of play too. So yeah, this is essentially a modern strain of nineties style indie/college rock, and these guys do it really well. The songs aren't quite as catchy as vintage Pavement, the vocals take some getting used to, a sort of deadpan Lou Reed meets Stephen Malkmus, but with each listen these jams grow on us more and more, and we find ourselves getting these tracks lodged pretty solidly in our heads. Which is always a good sign. Hard to pick out a favorite, although a quick listener to opener "Bodies Made Of" should tell you all you need to know. Definitely a thumbs up from us, way recommended if you dig that sound, and if for some crazy reason you're thinking to yourself right now "Who's Pavement?", stop what you're doing and get yourself a copy of Slanted And Enchanted, and then we can talk Parquet Courts...

MPEG stream: Bodies Made Of
MPEG stream: Black And White
MPEG stream: What Color Is Blood

Haunting and lovely avant-folk recording from French multi-instrumentalist Emmanuelle Parrenin. Recorded in 1977, Parrenin's fascination and adeptness with ancient traditional stringed instruments such as the harp, hurdy-gurdy, spinet, and dulcimer, gives a unique spin on her more forward thinking compositions. Often compared to Vashti Bunyan and Linda Perhacs due to her sweet multi-tracked vocals which accompany about half of the songs, we think the later recording date puts her more in line with Kay Hoffman's Floret Silva (another progressive folk masterpiece recorded the same year) or the kosmiche pastoral vibe of Popol Vuh due to the layered Celtic-inflected droning harmonies she evokes from her instruments. Beautiful and so recommended!

MPEG stream: Chibault et L'Arbre D'Or
MPEG stream: Apres L'Ondee

[ aquarius records catalogue — P ]