[ aquarius records catalogue

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Showing results 51 through 100 of 118.

Era Vulgaris is Josh Homme and co's fifth album. At this point he's got quite the well oiled stoner rock cruise mobile. Willfully poppy amid his more testosteroned hard rock brethren, Homme ably brews up some big beef and grit from the guitars and drums while his unmistakable multilayered vocals satiate any sugar fix with those candy-coated choruses. He definitely doesn't shy away from the tasty hooks. It's a full course stick-to-yer-ribs meal. Always great late night driving music. Distinctly west coast-y, and almost sun baked as his old outfit Kyuss. Features a guest appearance by The Strokes' Julian Casablanca.

MPEG stream: Turnin' On The Screw
MPEG stream: I'm Designer

Ok, c'mon. Do we really need to tell you about Queens Of The Stone Age? Seems to us that pretty much everyone we knows loves 'em. Whether you're an MTV teenybopper, a stoner rock dude clinging to some sort of misplaced Kyuss loyalty, a metalhead who likes the occasional melodic rock record, or a total music nerd who finds QOTSA a perfect guilty pleasure. But what's there to be guilty about? This stuff totally rocks and absolutely rules! Warm fuzzy guitars wrapped around perfect pop hooks and Josh Homme's velvety croon. There seems to be a lot less all out rocking this time around, and a lot more almost-ballady crooning which is fine, those songs are still killer, but it's when Homme's semi-secret stoner desert rock past peaks through that things get good. Rollicking and riff heavy, head banging and fist pumping. Crashing drums and that umistakable fuzz guitar. How can you feel guilty about that?

MPEG stream: Medication
MPEG stream: Tangled Up In Plaid
MPEG stream: In My Head

The post-Kyuss band formed by guitarist (and now vocalist) Josh Homme follows up their great self-titled debut (a sleeper hit here at Aquarius, and elsewhere), with this new album for Interscope. Not nearly as all-over laid back and catchy as the debut, this disc is more eclectic (with a variety of guests and instrumentation -- everything from lap steel to piano to a horn section). Mark Lanegan shows up to sing on a couple of songs, and they've even pursuaded Rob Halford to do some backing vocals on one track (tho why you'd want him to do backing vocals rather than the lead puzzles me, especially when your own lead vocals are passable but certainly not up to the "Metal God"'s standards!). "R" veers from raucous drug-fueled grunge to the more mellow "desert rock" Homme & Co. coined in Kyuss, to some avant-garde pseudo-jazz shennanigans. Will this get played on the radio? Hard to say.

Now, WITHOUT the limited bonus dvd disc! Here's what we said about this last time for those that somehow overlooked it... This one scarcely needs a review. By now you've been hearing this record on the radio and MTV and in malls. Odds are you already own this if you like the Queens Of The Stone Age previous albums, or you bought it for the single. Or you loved Kyuss and think the Queens suck. But setting all that aside, and taking this record just on its musical merits, 'Songs For The Deaf' is a kick ass hard rock/pop rock record. Great sound, great songs! What's not to like? This is easily their best record since their super heavy debut. 'Songs For The Deaf' has it's heavy moments, and the warm fuzzy Kyuss guitars are still in effect, but it's way more of a pop record. And while they do stretch out occasionally, with headbanging stoned desert jams, things always return to the hook. Which is not a bad thing. Just the opposite. And the addition of Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters, Nirvana) and Mark Lanegan (Screaming Trees and solo) have added a lot in terms of sonic breadth and songwriting complexity. Way more dynamic and WAY MORE CATCHY. Listen to the sound samples and you'll be sold. The last "hidden" track is a piano driven, string laden psychedelic pop epic. It -sounds- great, but just wish it was a better song (although our friend Drew is convinced it is a 'masterpiece'). But so what? This record is full of great songs!! Plus lots of weird guests: Dean Ween, Twiggy Ramirez, Casey Chaos, Blag Dahlia! The only downside, which has been an annoying QOTSA quirk from the beginning, is their relentless in-joking. This record is rife with said in-jokes, a bunch of stupid fake radio DJ's, occasional joke songs and the like. Easy to skip by but they tend to kill the flow of an otherwise solid record.

RealAudio clip: No One Knows
RealAudio clip: God Is In The Radio
RealAudio clip: Hangin' Tree
RealAudio clip: Go With The Flow
RealAudio clip: Song For The Deaf

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SORRY. Intercontinental stoner rock summit between Queen of the Stone Age (the reincarnation of Kyuss, although they freshen up the Kyuss sound with seeming nods to Foo Fighters and Black Flag) and Beaver, sludge rock from Holland, where you'd think there'd be lots of competition in the stoner rock field, and yep, they're good.

We first heard Queens Of The Stone Age on a split with late great stoner rock legends Kyuss way back in 1997, and at the time, QOTSA, a side project of Kyuss axeman Josh Homme, didn't sound all that different than Kyuss, in fact in some ways it sounded even better, a little bit stranger, slightly more poppy, whatever it was we dug it, A LOT. Then came the first full length in 1998, and holy shit, an ass kicking, catchy as fuck, post stoner rock metallic pop wallop, every song a killer, heavy and hooky like few bands before or after. It's easy to forget how good that first QOTSA record really was, in the decade plus since, QOTSA have become a sort of mainstream/MTV/jock band, there have been multiple grammy nominations, there has also been the Eagles Of Death Metal, but if you can forget about all that, this reissue of that record will totally blow you away. Reissued on Homme's own label, all of these songs sound as good as they did the first time around. The Kyuss vibe was still huge here, especially in Homme's blown out guitar tone, but Homme's vocals definitely suited these poppier songs, which while poppier, were still plenty heavy, just rife with groove and hooks killer chorus, and even more killer verses, the drums powerful and catchy in their own way (a bit like Dave Grohl's drumming in Nirvana, where you find your self humming drum fills!), and the songs, unbeatable. "Regular John" melds thick distorto riffage with some sweet vocalizing, and some cool mathy arrangements, and some crazy catchy melodies, while "Avon" is a dirgey doomy slice of chugging heaviness, but it too is impossibly poppy, a sound so distinctly QOTSA at this point, but when we first heard this stuff, we were so smitten, and we're realizing we sort of still are. This is one of those records where we could go track by track, and talk about every one and how rad it is, and the thing is, a record that's both heavy and poppy, metallic and sorta weird, those records are rare, few and far between, and odds are like us, it's probably been a while since you've heard this, so might be time to revisit, and odds are you'll kick yourself for not listening to this all the time, cuz it RULES. One complaint, the new version comes in a slipcover with a huge CENSORED over the original artwork, a black light style painting of a scantily clad woman, hardly censor worthy, makes us wondering if it was a plot to titillate, or simply a requirement to get into Walmart and other conservative spots, either way, kinda silly...

MPEG stream: Regular John
MPEG stream: Avon
MPEG stream: If Only

Just who the heck is Israel Quellet? Somebody who sent a really cool home-recorded cd-r in to the Sub Rosa label that's who. The back cover of this digipack contains text all about finding Quellet's demo in their office slush pile, giving it a listen, and realizing, hey, here's something that really doesn't sound like anything else! And thus, it's now a Sub Rosa release. Quellet's intimate and unique sound-world is built from simple sounds, generated by ordinary means like striking a metal oil tank, dragging a bucket across the ground, tapping a telephone keypad, or playing with a noise-making toy. Quellet's French-speaking voice, laughter and "throat sounds" also are heard to much mysterious and evocative effect. But actual musical instruments? Who needs 'em? About the only "real" instrument appearing here is his Swiss town's church organ, and even that still fits into his "field recording" aesthetic. (Oh, and there's also several percussion instruments here too: a bass drum, gong, timbales etc.) As depicted on the cover, which features a photo of a stereo-mic'd electric sander, Quellet's REAL instrument is the microphone and with it he zones in on a level of a level of blown-up, microscopic detail that makes "saturation" (or distortion) another common and crucial element to his "music". He then mixes and edits these recordings of his various sound-ingredients, musique-concrete style, never adding too much, keeping it simple, focussing on just a few specific sounds and employing them to their fullest. Some tracks are percussively rhythmic, others distorted and droning, some simply bursting with joyous cacophony. All these pieces are carefully constructed, though, never randomly noisy. It's about method, not madness. Something this abstract needs verve and vision to be a good listen, and this has all that to a fascinating degree. Always bold and surprising and alive. Recommended.

MPEG stream: 01 (For tank strokes, percussion & voice)
MPEG stream: 04 (For percussion and sound toys)
MPEG stream: 08 (For percussion, sander & telephone keyboard strokes)

We're so happy to have been introduced to the idiosyncratic experimental sound-worlds of Swiss artist Israel Quellet, via his several releases thus far on Sub Rosa. This is his third disc for the label and is as fantastic as the first two. When the first one, Oppressum, came out in 2007, we were like, Israel who? But upon hearing it, we quickly became fans of his home/field recorded, non-academic "musique concrete", microphone-as-instrument compositional technique, Quellet's mysterious, percussive music being both intriguing and original. 2009's Soni Sclavus was also great, and now at last here's Rhythmes d'Etain, to which we say, yay! And yep, Rhythmes is rhythmic all right, in fact some of the tracks here, like "L'Ere des Anches a Sonne" ("The Age Of Reeds Is Upon Us"), bordering on a sort of DIY, accidental techno. One of the few conventional instruments, as opposed to non-instrumental sound-producing objects, heard on Quellet's debut was his town's local church organ. A church organ plays a much bigger role here, along with human voices singing in Latin, giving this something of a liturgical feel - but not as much as you'd expect, perhaps, because the organ is used more as a source of sampled sounds, for its majestic drones and tones, rather than being played as an organ normally would; and the voices, while suggestive of monkish murmer, are almost always manipulated or processed in some way, "sped-up, slowed-down, doubled-up, played backward" as he explains. The use of Latin is meant to create an abstract wordless-ness to the vocals, deliberately without meaning, the singers not affected by any understanding of what was nonsense Latin text to begin with. Along with the organ and the voices, Quellet has restricted himself to just one more significant sonic element on this disc's compositions - that being, of course, percussion. Listed inside the digipack are a host of symphonic and improvised percussion instruments, including tympanies and bell-like tubular idiophones; the toms, cymbals, and hi-hat from a "deconstructed" drum kit; a bass drum and large skin drum; as well as "brutally shut drawers, slammed doors" and other ad hoc percussive devices. So you can be sure it doesn't sound like you're in a church, when the beautiful, glorious pipe organ is accompanied by the rhythms of slamming doors, etc.! Or at least it would be a very unusual sort of church, filled with screwed-and-chopped choirs. 'Tis true too, the clink-clonk of the percussion sometimes takes on a carillion-like character, as if ringing from the church tower. Often lovely, quite dreamlike and mesmeric, all these sounds layered and looping, Quellet comes up with tracks here sometimes dominated by the playfully active rhythmic elements, at others by the ominous drones of the pulsating organ sub-bass frequencies (Quellet recommends listening on appropriate headphones), or both at once. Despite the varied character of Quellet's carefully constructed tracks, the focus on organ, voice, percussion gives this a definite cohesiveness, often calming into head-noddingness amidst eerie atmospheres.

MPEG stream: L'Ere Des Tuyaux (The Age Of Pipes)
MPEG stream: Les Orgues De La (Organs From Over There)
MPEG stream: La Revanche Des Anches (The Revenge Of The Reeds)

Israel Quellet's 2nd album for Sub Rosa is not the unexpected surprise from an unknown artist that this Swiss sound-maker's debut disc was (for both us, and the label, read our review of it to see what we mean, we started off by saying "who the heck is Israel Quellet?"). But, that's because THIS time 'round, when we saw Quellet's had a new recording coming out, we were already eager to hear it. Much like its excellent predecessor, it's about compositions (improvisations? explorations?) limited to specific sound sources, each track featuring the use/abuse of a certain instrument or two, or perhaps a non-instrument, and to Quellet, his methods are his music, this is the focus, to the extent that the tracks are identified thusly... For example, track 1 is "for organ and percussion". Track 3 is "for fitness rower". Track 7 is "for footsteps and knocks on stairs, and vented carbon dioxide". He makes use of organ on here quite a bit, as well as percussion and less frequently voice, electronically treated (and in French). Actually much of this seems electronically treated, or in some way distorted, with "saturation" factoring into several of his pieces, occasionally achieving Merzbowian levels of noise (on track 6, "for percussions and saturation" especially!). All in all, this disc can be heard as one man's playful but moody, quasi-industrial homebrewed take on 20th (now 21st) century classical music. With so much somber organ and repetitive thunderous percussion, many of these tracks seem quite ominous, you can start imagining DIY Nitsch-style "aktions" happening in Quellet's backyard. As with Quellet's prior album, this is varied and fascinating throughout, and surprisingly listenable. Truly experimental (and successfully so) music for curious ears made by someone with curious ears too. Recommended!! Oh, and by the way, on our list this week there IS a cool Sub Rosa disc from a hitherto unknown (to us) artist, look for Pierre Berthet's Extended Loudspeakers, it's also AQ recommended.

MPEG stream: Pour orgue et percussions
MPEG stream: Pour orgue, voix
MPEG stream: Pour caisse claire, balais et saturation

**SALE **SALE* *SALE**

It may be difficult to believe at this point, but we don't actually love everything from Finland. Nor do we love everything from Japan. And what might be equally hard to believe, is that we don't love every band with a crazy name, a monicker equal parts ridiculousness and ultraviolence, Lord Of The Rings and Star Wars, medieval and futuristic. Nor does the presence of flute supersede all other sonic considerations. And being chaotic and damaged and heavy and downright baffling is not, on its own, enough (although it's very very close). But, and this is the very big BUT we must concern ourselves with here, we do love EVERY SINGLE band we've heard who hail from Japan, via Finland, with an awesomely over the top super metal name, who are heavy and noisy and mathy and fucked up and sort of black metal, and have tons and tons of FLUTE. But then again, there's only one band that fits that description. Japan's Quest For Blood. Released on Jussi from Circle's Ektro label, championed by Reverend Bizarre's Albert Witchfinder (who also did the artwork and wrote the band's bio on the Ektro website), who create a dizzying complex bombast of proggy heaviness, of complex arrangements, of blackened metallic majesty, all gnarled riffing, furious drumming, riffy and groovy and buzzy, and flute everywhere, and it's the flute that defines the sound of Quest For Blood, whose sound is both metal and some sort of jazz, equally composed and abstract, black and buzzy, epic and deliriously dense, heavy yet folky and free. Quest For Blood began life as a slightly more traditional black metal band called Magane, but after a chance meeting with Yukihiro Isso, who had in the past played with Tatsuya Yoshida and Keiji Haino, the band changed direction, and blossomed into something else entirely, creating a sound never really heard before, and a sound that we now realize is one we had been fantasizing about for ages, black metal, Japanese folk, wild free flute, blast beats, weird chanted vocals, well, okay, we -would- have fantasized about it, had we ever imagined a band like that could actually exist. Well... If you're anything like us, you'll be hooked after the first track, which begins with what sounds like Jew's harp and marimba, before launching into some blackened post metal riffing, over which a flute flutters and soars over the top, at once intense and melodic, but also airy and ethereal, it's like super dense metallic math rock meets black metal meets jazzprog, until suddenly the band drops out, leaving just solo flute, for 2 plus minutes, wild free jazz fluttery, folky, freaky, the melodies chaotic and complex one second, gentle and lilting the next, squeaks, skronks, wheezes, whistles, the sound falling somewhere between traditional Shakuhachi folk music and manic free jazz. Until finally, the band return, with some Japanese chanting, and epic Viking style riffery, the flute flitting right along, in its own way as aggressive and intense as the riffing beneath it. The second song follows suit, a roiling churning melee of riffs and blast beats, of serpentine riffing, of buzz and crunch, the flute again weaving dense tangled webs of melody draped over everything, a constant fluttering flitting sonic presence, relentless and breathless and truly dizzying. The whole record is truly relentless, the flute in full on wild solo jam mode continuously, as the band wind and weave various metallic frameworks underneath. And while the sound is dynamic in its own way, it's also utterly ferocious and unrelenting, occasionally allowed some space, when the song unwinds and the flute is left to drift in long stretches of abstract shimmer, or the band slips into something slightly less manic, but for the most part, this is a gloriously mind blowing progjazzmathmetal onslaught. As if the record wasn't already weird enough, it gets even weirder, and more varied, near the end, as the songs become more dynamic, the arrangements more stop / start, the various woodwinds offering up underwater gurgles and squiggly manic melodies, than more traditional flute sounds. "Yayema" sounds almost gospel-y, very melodic and dramatic, a little over the top, the melodies major key and majestic, but of course peppered with bursts of furious blasts and wild squall of flute freakout. "Uchina" begins like many of the other tracks, a jazz metal blow out, this time with raspy creature-like vocals, and some pounding piano, until the band drops out, leaving just drums and flute and vocals, reminding us a bit of a more freaked out version of that Dave Lombardo plays Vivaldi record, but with far out chanting, distant raspy vocalizations, all very tribal and weird, with a definite Ruins vibe, before launching back into full on metal mode, now with wailing guitar leads all tangled up with the wild flute. The final track begins with solo flute, before the band joins in, all rough and raw and lo-fi, pounding out a simple mesmerizing riff, almost Circle style, the drums a murky thud, the flute ethereal and transcendent, eventually, the drums sputtering into some wide open space, before getting all wound up with streaks of scrabbly off kilter guitar in some sort of Ginn-ish guitar drum duel, laced with atonal piano pound, fiery flute and crumbling noisy chaos, finally finishing off in a blaze of metallic murk and abstract black jazz whatthefuck. So awesome. And confusionally genius. Some seemingly impossible mix of black metal, free jazz, Italian prog, traditional Japanese folk, math rock and noise rock; a mind bending, ear melting mash up of Osanna, the Ruins, Absu, Solar Anus, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Comus, Cromagnon, Ghost, Finntroll, Jethro Tull, Circle, Xynfonica, and who the fuck knows what else. Needless to say, or perhaps worth saying over and over and over. WAY RECOMMENDED. And another contender for metal (or whatever) record of the year.

MPEG stream: Takasago
MPEG stream: Noise
MPEG stream: Rakuseki Kakugo

Not sure why we never listed the first record from these guys, but we figured record number two was the perfect opportunity to right that wrong. Quest For Fire are a band of psychedelic space rockers from Canada, who craft gorgeously brooding and occasionally explosive psychrock epics, slow burning string laden drifts that gradually build into explosive psychedelic squalls, or swirling shoegazey folk pop blowouts, equal parts Godspeed You Black Emperor, Spacemen 3, and Kyuss, or maybe Queens Of The Stoneage, since there is definitely a distinct pop element here. Unlike some of our other favorite psychedelic jammers, Quest For Fire seem first and foremost concerned with songs, sure the songs do often unfurl into extended spaced out megajams, but most of the tracks here barely crack the 5 minute mark, and a few hover around the 3 minute pop song mark. Those are definitely the most succinct and hookiest. "Set Out Alone" is a fuzz drenched stomper, the vocals weary and laid back, but the guitars crunchy and crumbly, the drums wild and propulsive, the song peppered with killer psych leads. "Strange Vacation" is strummy washed out psychedelic pop drift, sounding very sixties, while "In The Place Of A Storm" sounds a bit like some Monster Magnet / Spacemen 3 hybrid. We also hear plenty of Wooden Shjips, Sleepy Sun and other modern psychedelic sonic explorers throughout. Then there are the longer songs, that manage to be the perfect mix of QfF's folky psych pop, and seriously in-the-red space rock psychedelia, like on the 9+ minute close "Sessions Of Light", which spends most of its time brooding and drifting and smoldering, driven by a stripped down loping rhythm, and gorgeous world weary Pink Floyd-ish vocals, but when the band finally let loose, it's epic, and heavy and intense and explosive! Definitely one of those times you wish the song went on for another 10 minutes, just so you these guys could go wild, and we could luxuriate in the epic spaced out shredding. Seriously great stuff. Definitely recommended for fans of Wooden Shjips, Sleepy Sun, Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound, Comets On Fire and any of the current crop of like minded sonic explorers...

MPEG stream: The Greatest Hits By God
MPEG stream: Set Out Alone
MPEG stream: Strange Vacation

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

SORRY. Hardcore intensity that veers into math-y territory at times. Seriously shredded vocal chords. The harsh and raw side of California emo-core. Recorded by Ryan Massey of American Steel.

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

SORRY. "Yo quiero DJ Quest!" Space Travelers DJ breaks out with a very cool new tape. Wild scratching and imaginative samples make this perfect for the car (it's been in Windy's car deck since we got it last week and shows no sign of being usurped except when I get in a Kid Koala mood). Recommended.

SF's own DJ Quest has been winning solo scratching competitions worldwide since the early '90s, while also making music with first the Bulletproof Scratch Hamsters (later to become the Space Travellers) and then with the groundbreaking jazz/scratch outfit Live

RealAudio clip: Bulletproof Traveller (Treble Lord)
RealAudio clip: Moments (Part II)
RealAudio clip: Shout (Hip Hop Mix)

Question Mark are indeed obscure... but when you hear 'em it'll be no mystery why we think they're awesome! And, despite some similar garagey allegiances, they're not to be confused with Detroit's ? & The Mysterians from the '60s. This Question Mark is a band from Africa, circa 1974. That's right, yet another one to add to the grand stash of international psych reissue riches being industriously dug up by labels like Shadoks, Soundway, and Now-Again. Yep, we've all been lucky lately, getting reissues of '70s groovy garage fuzz groove monsters from Zambia's "Zam Rock" scene (Rikki Ililonga, Witch, Amanaz, Chrissy Zebby Tembo, Ngozi Family), also from Nigeria (Blo, Ofege, Tirogo) and Ghana too (The Psychedelic Aliens)... Now here's Question Mark, a Nigerian band who recorded this, their sole album, in Kenya. And they totally fit right in with those mentioned. Really, all we should need to say is that, if you like the same label's earlier reissues of Witch and Tirogo and the rest, you'll want Question Mark. Fuzz guitar, pulsating organ, driving beats, it's irresistible stuff, with that definite African "feel" to the rhythms, though the pleasant vocals are all in English (most of the lyrics are about girls: "Oh My Girl", "Hey Hey Girl", "Mary Anne") and clearly Question Mark's music is indebted to Western influences, especially the softer songs like the sunshiney "Oh My Girl" sounding like they could be off an American Nuggets comp. But don't worry, they never get too "ordinary", there's also plenty of off-kilter psychedelic jamming and warbling organ, indeed they they follow that melodic number with the manic "Freaking Out", which by the way is the song here we realized we'd heard before, maybe you have too, it appeared on Soundway's compilation Nigeria Rock Special: Psychedelic Afro-Rock & Fuzz. And they really couldn't have selected anything more appropriate for a comp of that title! Well, unless they'd picked some of the other tracks from this album... First time reissued on cd, complete with fat cd booklet packed with informative liner notes - there's an extensive interview about the history of the band with lead vocalist/organist Frank Izuorah and percussionist Uzo Agulefo, both of whom now reside in Texas (one's a family therapist, the other a Professor of Economics), who also offer their commentary on each of the disc's 8 tracks. Wherein we learn that the title track was their attempt at copying Ofege's style...

MPEG stream: Have You?
MPEG stream: Be Nice To The People
MPEG stream: Freaking Out

Quickly becoming our go to guy for late night dreamy drones, Tim Hurley, aka Quetzolcoatl, offers up another gorgeous collection of slow burning drifters. Based in Ireland, and also doing time in modern day Taj Mahal Travellers Bonecloud, Hurley's Quetzolcoatl is one of the most consistently satisfying crafters of ethereal dronemusic going these days. Which is definitely saying a whole lot. This latest suite of untitled songs are all drawn from bits of piano, both short and long recorded over the span of several years, although except for a few places here and there you'd be hard pressed to pick out actual piano, instead the sounds have been blurred and smeared, twisted and layered, mixed with other sounds, vocals, field recordings, everything a gorgeously whirling collage of sonic ideas, that Hurley is somehow able to alchemically mold into utterly moving soundscapes, looped and hypnotic, long drawn out stretches of melodic whir, tinkling harmonics, slow smoldering chords pulled apart into long looping notes, stretched out over wide expanses of dark shimmer. Not sure what else to say other than this is absolutely lovely. And thus obviously totally recommended. And you probably couldn't get a better endorsement than the fact that the writer of this review has fallen asleep to this disc the last three nights in a row... SUPER LIMITED as always. Packaged in an oversized sleeve with a printed insert, and the disc face is hand painted in swirly water colors.

MPEG stream: Living I
MPEG stream: Living II

Over the last few months we've been systematically going through our warehouse (read: not very big back room) and unearthing all manner of gems, limited cd-r's misplaced box sets, long out of print lps, and getting them back in the store, or if there are enough, getting them reviewed and onto the list. That way, even though we'd normally try to have 30 or 40 of something, at least a handful of you can get your hands on something instead of it sitting neglected on some shelf. So here's another recent discovery, a cd-r from a long time aQ fave, Quetzolcoatl, aka Timothy Hurley, who also does time in Taj Mahal Travellers worshipping outfit Bonecloud, both hailing from Ireland. Released on Phantom Limb a while back, and limited, to, oof, 90 COPIES! Which of course means WAY out of print, and these are the very last copies. The sound of Quetzolcoatl is dreamy delicate stuff, Warm washed out landscapes of high end tones, blurred into cloudy streaks, spread out over angelic voices and tinkling chimes, gritty buzz over distant percussion, and haunting ghostlike melodies, gentle swells of fuzz and hiss, sun dappled and ethereal, murky stretches of low end crawl, and majestic lo-fi chorales, smeared into long indistinct stretches of stained glass sound, glimmering and prismatic and so gorgeous. Amazing packaging, a full color insert, with printed vellum sheets on either side, a small printed vellum insert, each one hand numbered, limited to only 90 copies. Again, already out of print, last copies ever�

MPEG stream: Sleeping Within The Sun

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

SORRY. Another mysterious disc of murky drone from the label run by the Ghosting guys. Elsewhere on this list we review a split record between Ghosting and an Irish group called Bonecloud released on the Yarn Lazer label. Bonecloud sound a bit like a more fucked up lo-fi Taj Mahal Travellers, well, Quetzocoatl happens to be one of the guys from Bonecloud and thus Sunlight Blossom Confusion travels a similarly murky and droney path. And we love it. How could we not really. Can you really imagine anything that sounds more appealing than a more fucked up Taj Mahal Travellers. We sure can't! An hour long swirl of processed vocals, violin, organ, electronics, and found objects. Seven tracks, each a haunting excursion to the bottom of some brackish sea, or a trek through some desolate wasteland, murky and muddy, a thick fog of muted cacophony transformed into a gauzy dreamlike soundworld. Clatter and crunch are smoothed over and stretched out, melodies and pulled apart and mixed into the mesmerizing whirl, like watching sunlight sparkle through a window covered in a thick layer of ice, or like listening to the world around you through a thick concrete wall. So awesome! Packaged in hand printed covers with a full color photo affixed to each, photocopied insert and all housed in a heavy vinyl sleeve. LIMITED TO 90 COPIES, WE GOT ABOUT 20. ONCE THEY'RE GONE THEY ARE GONE FOR GOOD.

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We have been going a bit nuts for this drone murk ensemble, an offshoot of another group we're pretty gaga about, Irish drone collective Bonecloud, so we grabbed as many of this super limited release as we could get. These guys travel a similar sonic path as legendary Japanese drone improv outfit Taj Mahal Travellers, as well as sharing sonic similarities with some of their modern noiserock brethren like the Skaters, Birchville Cat Motel and the like. Each track is some super obfuscated smear of sound, as if inside the tangle of fuzz and grit and whir and tape hiss and reverb and distortion was a little perfect pop song, or some dreamy vocal snippet, but we're peering at these sparkling gems through layer after layer of sonic murk, colors are muted and dull, like looking at a night time cityscape through an old broken and dirty window, a cracked prismatic swirl of constantly shifting sounds. Melodies or fragments of melodies surface and disappear, drift briefly into earshot then fade away. There seem to be vocals all over Triumphant, but they are so wreathed in fuzzy FX they become nothing more than disembodied melodic streaks, brief flitting blurs of sound. Reminds us a bit of Grouper, but less lush and organic and more raw and lo-fi and buzzy. Dreamy, fuzzy and lovely. Packaged in cool hand watercolored sleeves and of course LIMITED TO 74 COPIES!!! Don't blink or they'll be gone...

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Now here's a tape label that knows how to do it right. Each tape, even though they're limited to only 100 copies, comes with super deluxe full color artwork, printed labels on the tape, each hand numbered, AND each tape is a different color to match the artwork. Nice! The first release from Abandon Ship is the latest from one of our new dronedrift faves, Ireland's Quetzolcoatl, an offshoot of the equally cool Bonecloud, Quetzolcoatl are channeling the spirit of the legendary improvisers, especially Taj Mahal Travellers, with their slowly evolving sonic landscapes, abstract and epic, pure and organic, sounds drift and shimmer, layers upon layers of whir and warble, always moving and glistening. Dense but somehow super spacious and abstract. The sounds seem to float, weightless, like fog and smoke, although occasionally storm clouds gather and the sounds become more jagged and harsh, more dense and thick and corrosive, but always strangely soothing, with a minimal melodic undercurrent. Not sure what it is about these guys, but they seem to be able to just sit down, close their eyes, plug in, and suddenly we're transported to some mountain top, some ancient temple, some deserted beach, some dense forest, some mysterious other-place, where the world is music, and the sounds are pictures and we can see the music with our ears and hear it with our eyes. So good. Limited to 100 copies! Each tape hand numbered, we got about a quarter of the pressing but those will go fast so be quick...

We recently discovered a group from Ireland called Bonecloud, we raved about them on a past list and promptly sold out of their cd-r's, which are now unfortunately out of print. The same thing happened with Bonecloud offshoot Quetzolcoatl, so when we discovered a brand new full length cd-r we jumped on it and ordered a whole bunch, but of course this too is super limited, so don't expect these to be around for long. Quetzolcoatl, much like mothership Bonecloud, traffic in thick druggy soundscapes, various stringed instruments sending buzzing shimmering missives into a black and cloudy sky, roiling stormclouds raining down thick sheets of murky sonic mist, expansive stretches of murky melody obfuscated almost entirely by layer after layer of primitive buzz and fuzzy indistinct warble, all distorted and doused in damaged FX. Quetzolcoatl drift unmoored through a barren psychedelic landscape lit by a total eclipse, a strangely greyed sound world populated by vibrating strings, haunting disembodied reverberations, and all manner of psych rock shimmer, all tangled up into deep dreamy washes of warm chordal whir. Like spinning some unreleased My Bloody Valentine 45 with your finger as slow as possible, recording it on a microcassette recorder, dubbing it to an old VHS tape, playing that in some old broken VCR, recording that through a contact mic affixed to the speaker cone, dubbing it to a thrift store tape, and then playing it back on your shitty car stereo, so loud it makes you see stars and cloaks the world in a thick grey sonic mist. Nice!

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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. Another way too limited missive from mysterious Irish drone outfit Quetzolcoatl, this time in the form of a split cassette, with the until now unknown to us outfit Changeling. This ridiculously limited hand painted tape begins with AQ faves Quetzolcoatl, featuring member(s) of another AQ fave Bonecloud, who explore a gorgeously muddy and murky soundworld, long drawn out drifts of grimy gritty sound. Warm and muted, dark sonic swirls, plenty of hiss and fuzz and delay and reverb, with bits of percussion, vocals, keening feedback, all drifting and swirling way below the surface, a roiling miasma of thick sound. Dark and ominous and tribal, dense squalls of distorted guitar drift overhead like storm clouds. It almost sounds like that weird ambient opening to Kiss' "God Of Thunder" but slowed way down and dubbed on to some old thrift store tape. Taj Mahal Travellers is a name that always comes up when we're talking about these guys, and with good reason, while that legendary Japanese ensemble employed a wildly different approach to sound making, the actual sounds themselves are quite similar. The expansiveness, the epic quality, but Quetzolcoatl get a bit more aggressive, the guitars and drums buried beneath thick layers of buzz and grit. The flipside features Changeling, and if anything, they sound like they could well feature some of the same members, cuz the sound is slightly similar, but where Quetzolcoatl are dark and aggressive, intense and murky, Changeling are blisssful and dreamy, dark layers of sound, hiss and fuzz, rumble and whir, but here sculpted into delicate waves, and subtle swells, a little bit dark, but glowing with some sort of mysterious warmth, glistening sounds rich and resplendent woven into soft focus drifts of moody murk. Like rays of the sun through a dirty window. So nice. Dronemusic is always tough to describe, especially trying to explain or even understand what exactly it is that makes one group so much more compelling than another. Maybe that something isn't meant to be described, some ineffable quality that is in the music, and can't be pulled out and examined, or understood. That's sort of the vibe we get from both these groups. There is a magical mystical quality to the music they make, a sound, or even something outside of the sound (or inside) that connects on some primal level. Something to let wash over you, to fill up your ears, to carry you off, something almost physical, something organic and pure, not something that can be understood or explained. So good. Hand painted cassette tape housed in a hand painted cloth bag, with a printed insert. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, we got a bunch, but they'll be gone in no time...

Debut from new David Yow (Jesus Lizard) fronted band.

Qui. Who? A francophone band now featuring the vocal stylings of the inimitable David Yow? Well, no, they're not really French, but Qui sounds just as foreign and incongruous to the man who wreaked havoc with his former bands Jesus Lizard and Scratch Acid! Many might not realize that this band existed prior to Yow's involvement (they have one pre-Yow album), and adding such a distinct and potent individual can undoubtedly raise a few eyebrows and issues. The main one: how to integrate the two entities without it becoming the Yow Show. Fortunately both Yow and Qui's original members Matt Cronk and Paul Christensen are up for the challenge. He's still unquestionably untethered and unhinged, but it manifests itself in different ways and sounds. They're trippy and strange and as defiant and fucked up as pretty much everything else on Mike Patton's Ipecac label. Qui's sound cherry picks the ripest fruit of Jesus Lizard and Melvins and Frank Zappa and Pere Ubu. For those who like their music loose slung, high strung, tightly wound and dampened with mysterious body fluid. Yow. What's up with that cover though?

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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.

Hot dang! Two discs of vintage Frisco ballroom '60s psych from the influential QMS. Disc one comes live from '68, showcasing Quicksilver's advanced abilities at both playing and arranging. The lineup is the same as on their first two classic albums, the self-titled debut and "Happy Trails" (meaning, the acid guitar sound of John Cipollina is in full-effect). Excellent live audio quality too. The material ranges from blues to folk to hardrock, including versions of "Back Door Man," "Codine," "Smokestack Lightning," "Who Do You Love," etc. The second disc features rare demos and alternate, early versions of QMS classics, as well as stuff from a film soundtrack and a single release.

Quickspace's third album is firmly planted in 1994 when Too Pure was a consistently good label with Moonshake, Stereolab, and th' Faith Healers (some of whose members consitute Quickspace, not surprisingly). Bracingly melodic yet dissonant indie-pop heralds a shoegazing revival. Oh yeah, there's a singing saw to prove that they've heard an Elephant 6 band or two.

Another gorgeous piece of kosmische electronica from the Quiet Evenings duo of Grant & Rachel Evans! For many years now, these two have embarked on an introspective take on the transcendent psychedelic electronics pioneered by Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, and Cluster. For the most part, these two tend toward channeling those sounds through their solo projects - Motion Sickness Of Time Travel for Rachel and Nova Scotia Arms (amongst others) for Grant - but when they find themselves working together as Quiet Evenings, it can be magical. Impressions is one of the best things we've heard from them in any context, sporting two sprawling pieces for electronics, voice, and guitar. The first side "Blue Dream" settles upon a hypnotic bed of synthetic tones, out of which the pair broadcast fizzling arcs of warm static and revolving beacons of melodic phrases. As Rachel's ghostly voice settles into a narcotized sustained melody about halfway through the track, Grant picks up the guitar picking up the bittersweet, sodden vibe that Mark McGuire would occasionally create in the darker Emeralds tracks. Telepathic Heart is much more of a sci-fi excursion with its slow revolution through the sweeping ambient oscillation and twinking arpeggiations, as if they were creating the imaginary soundtrack to a documentary film about travelling through the heart of deep space nebulae. There's a considerable amount of hand-wrought melancholy that comes through Quiet Evenings productions, and this has always separated the Evans' from many of their contemporaries who are just aping a crystal dangled New Age wishy-washiness. Yeah, there's some teeth to these sounds, and we're much better off for it. Limited to 200 copies.

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Georgia's answer to Emeralds? That's probably not too far off the mark. Quiet Evenings are the psychedelically laced ambient duo of Rachel and Grant Evans; the former is known for her beloved Motion Sickness In Time Travel project which recently unleashed several epic albums for Digitalis that match monochromatic electronica to the humid surroundings of rural Georgia and plenty of stoned gazes up at the satellites orbiting the earth. Grant has his own moniker, Nova Scotia Arms, which up until now has released a bunch of cassettes of impressively washed-out psychedelic drone-song. Their Quiet Evenings project is suitably blissed-out in their slow-moving ambient constructs. "Manna From The New Age" is about as perfect as title as Quiet Evenings could give to one of their side-long tracks on Intrepid Trips. Splashes of guitar plucked with spectral effects and sodden delay ripple through the brightly toned ambient swoosh coupled with Rachel's voice extended into a sustained chorale. "Radiant Endless" interjects all of the smeared paisley ambience of classic Tangerine Dream and Popul Vuh with subtle sequenced percolations, oceanic currents of glowing synth-tone, and delicately crackles of what might as well be rain on a contact microphone. It easily harkens to John Elliott's work over the years in Emeralds, Outer Space, Imaginary Softwoods, etc. This beautifully trance-enducing album is pretty damn limited, just a little over 300 copies were made. All on purple vinyl and certainly not long for this world.

Perhaps the most prolific couple in music today, Rachel and Grant Evans have been sprinting ever since 2014 began. Rachel, with her Motion Sickness Of Time Travel project, has recently completed the Ballade For A Moon monthly series; and Grant has kicked out a couple of fantastically guttural, scourge-noise albums (along with his curation of the occult-informed Vaald imprint); and here they've patched the cables from one side of their rural farmhouse to another to begin their pastoral dreamtime sessions for their Quiet Evenings duet. Other Windows is a beautifully bleary proposition layered from beds of kosmische ambient tones that suspend time at the crepuscular moment right after the sun fades in the evening while the sky traces with blazing colors and shadows pock the entire landscape. Layers of washed-out guitar from Grant (we're assuming) spills upon these electric drones, offering an eerie, Aeolian drift to the first side of the cassette. By the second side, Rachel (again, we're assuming) dials in a hypnotic synth-pattern of dark burbling tones through which the allusions to a stoned sunset collapse into comparatively tense, nocturnal coda with all of the right sci-fi filmscore references (e.g. Forbidden Planet, Solaris, The Fog, etc.). Super limited pressing on the Evans' impeccable Hooker Vision imprint.

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Here's a really great split cassette between Quiet Evenings and Former Selves released by the hitherto unknown Constellation Tatsu label. Quiet Evenings is, of course, the husband / wife duo of Rachel and Grant Evans - the former better known as Motion Sickness Of Time Travel, the latter as Nova Scotian Arms, Crippling, etc. and both run the exemplary cottage industry micro-label Hooker Vision. Here, the Evans produce a gorgeous, blissout, lo-fi ambience with freefloating wordless vocals, natural sounds of twittering birds (Bush Tits, if you must know), fuzzed guitar drones that brainmelt in and out of languid synth melodies, all sprialing together into more of an end-of-an-era vibe - that the dawning of the new age of the '70s was not all that it was cracked up to be. It's nice to hear Quiet Evenings engaged in a more bittersweet / darker sensibility as those are the moments that work best for both Motion Sickness Of Time Travel and all of Grant Evans various projects. As good as the Quiet Evenings side is, Former Selves may have upped the ante with this magically, twinkling piece of lo-fi electronica. The spacious synth pads gradually lock into subtle techno rhythmic underbelly with accumulated melodic patterns that arrives at a really fantastic amalgam of Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Vol II, Suzanne Ciani's crystal powered tonecolors, and even the early tape loop experiments from Terry Riley.

Great English prog group's only album, circa 1975, featuring Charles Hayward on drums (pre-This Heat). Also Phil Manzanera (Roxy Music) on guitar. Includes one of the best song titles ever: "Mummy Was An Asteroid, Daddy Was A Small Non-Stick Kitchen Utensil" (which is also one of the best tracks here, too).

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So fresh, so lush, and so totally breezy that we've been glowing in summer's warmth with this as our soundtrack, on constant repeat. Quiet Village are a DJ Shadow style sampling duo who take full advantage of their crate digging expertise and a great ear for the softer sounds in life, to create a really rewarding record that effortlessly skips through all sorts of musical landscapes. With nods to everything from the grandiose orchestration of David Axelrod, the smooth and soulful vibrations of Stevie Wonder, the exotica charm of Martin Denny, the new-age lightness of Andreas Vollenweider, the dreaminess of Air, and the more wistful and melancholic side of Ennio Morricone. In lesser hands what Quiet Village do would and has ended up being likable yet pretty innocuous 'chill-out' music, but with Silent Movie QV have created an album that has soul and a core and the perfect musical ingredients for a blissed out afternoon.

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Reissue of this Swedish stoner/grunge band's debut. More Soundgarden than Kyuss, but should appeal to fans of both. Includes their cover of Trouble's "A Sinner's Fame".

Full length number two from this Boston indie psych folk combo, whose first record got a lot of love around aQ, and this one might be even better. The sound could have been transported straight from the sixties or seventies, the only thing giving away the fact that this is NOT an old record, is the lush modern production, and the occasional burst of tripped out FX, but for the most part this is a perfect mix of jangly power pop, witchy psychedelic folk, and good old classic rock. The vocals are incredible, the harmonies lush and lovely. Vocalist Anna Fox Rochinski has one of those rare voices, that slips easily from wispy and ethereal to throaty and powerful, the oddly titled opener "Arctic Shark" is the perfect introduction, with Rochinski's vocals soaring into a fantastic falsetto, surrounded by clouds of sitar like buzz, rife with killer hooks and memorable melodies, a sweet little perfect pop gem, infused with some serious sixties psych shimmer. That track bleeds right into "Saturday Bride", which is much more rocking, still rife with that psychedelic buzz, the vibe here though Fleetwood Mac via Incredible String Band? Or something, sounds weird, but it's a pretty perfect pairing, and the whole record traffics in variations of that hybrid, some tracks sound a little Kinks-y, others sound like the early orchestral pop of the Bee Gees, some get all fuzzy and garage-y, and still others drift into Stereolab / New Lines / Rollo Treadway retro pop territory, but really, all the tracks here are gorgeous, and have been getting played like crazy lately. Just a fantastic collection of retro pop psychedelic folk dreaminess, that should definitely appeal to fans of classic popsmithery, but also new labels who dabble in modern strains of psych folks, neo-Appalachia and retro pop, like Woodsist, Sacred Bones, Captured Tracks, etc.

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This is the first we've heard from these Boston indie rockers, who find themselves on uber hip taste-making label Mexican Summer, which is definitely a good fit, although the more we listen, the more it almost sounds like something that could/should have been on Sacred Bones or Woodsist, it's a sort of jangly, dreamy, folky, psychedelic pop, the sound stripped down but still lovely and lush, the female vox wreathed in reverb and doused in some subtly but strange effects, and while on the surface, these songs sound pretty straight ahead, there's lots of weird stuff going on just below the surface, twisted melodies, all manner of swirling tripped out FX, the opening track starts off all simple and sunshiney jangle, but as it progresses, it seems to get dubbier and trippier and way more spaced out. Which is basically a good description of Quilt's sound, a classic pop sound, equal parts psychedelic folk and seventies folk, we hear hints of Pentangle and Incredible String band, not to mention sixties SF style psych rock woven into the band's dreamy jangle and fuzzy blissed out shuffle. A few of the tracks do get downright rocking, reminding us of the current crop of garage rockers, like Thee Oh Sees, Ty Segall, Mikal Cronin, etc (albeit with a subtle sort of hippie / Godspell vibe) but most of the record is spent somewhere else much more jangly and folky and fuzzy, washed out and sun dappled. Be sure and stick around for the closer, a killer chunk of freak folk Appalachian stomp.

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Finally managed to get more copies of this perennial AQ favorite, but unfortunately, the only distributor we've ever been able to get them from recently went out of business so we may not be able to get them again. So don't miss out! Here's our review from way back: If you liked "Sounds of North American Frogs" or "Insect Noise In Stored Foodstuffs", or Chris Watson's exotic animal recordings, here's another discovery we recently made in the AQ-beloved field-recordings genre. In a blind test, it would be impossible to tell these Antarctic animal sounds from the most cutting edge experimental electronica that we sell at Aquarius! And according to the liner notes, the recordings found on this disk received no processing aside from being recorded using a "multi-headed array of hydrophones [underwater microphones]" and then mixed down (for great stereo sound). But some of the recordings, most notably the underwater recordings of Weddell seals, really seem like they could be the first installment of some new modern minimal electronic series, as they would fit in nicely next to the likes of Noto and Pan sonic. The underwater seals track features sweeping squeals like a whale song being sped up and slowed down and mixed with Stephen McGreevy's recordings of electro-magnetic atmospheric phenomena. It's as if the seals are secret knob-twiddlers in an electronic music studio. In other words, you could have a field day getting your "clicks & cuts" lovin' friends to guess who this "new avant-electronica artist" is! Also included on this cd are several recordings from the surface of the Antarctic continent as well: seal mothers and pups, Emperor & Adele penguins, a six minute track of a shattering & creaking glacier, and the brief but beautiful "Wind Harps From The Taylor Valley". This disc became a "AQ-fave recommendation" practically the minute we first heard it!! Maybe we're jaded, and have to listen to penguins frolicking to get our musical kicks, but it just seems so amazing. Wait until you hear it! Incredible and so essential.

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Another amazing audio document from Douglas Quin, who brought us the bizarre and captivating 'Antarctica' (remember, the record that sounded like electronica, but was all actually produced by seals!). While this isn't quite so unique, it's still a pretty

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This was probably one of the last things we thought we would ever see - a Douglas Quin recording on vinyl! Back in 1998, Quin released one of our all-time favorite field recordings, a cd entitled Antarctica. You guessed it, that now-out-of-print disc featured recordings from various ecosystems around the South Pole and its outlying oceans. Typically armed with his hydrophones planted beneath the surface of the water, Quin picked up all of the clanks and creaks of ice floes, as well as the amazing sounds from Weddell seals whose glissando calls have all of the signatures of early electronic music. Since then, Quin has made numerous trips to both polar regions, including a prolonged stint alongside Werner Hertzog when he collected field recordings of those seals for use on Hertzog's Encounters At The End Of The World. Fathom is a continuation of Quin's ongoing recordings from Antarctica, with some complementary recordings from the Arctic region as well. Because of those Weddell seals, the Antarctic side of this piece of vinyl is the better of the two. The intertwining chorales of zipping tones from the pinnipeds swimming amidst various chunks of ice are totally engrossing. Quin also manages to capture what sounds like a melting wall of ice, while it drops chunks of ice into the ocean below. Unfortunately, Quin doesn't tell us exactly what we are listening to, and given the unfamiliarity of many of these sounds, conjecture and imagination will serve the listener well. The Arctic side seems to be all ice recordings, although some of those squeaks and squiggles could be from fur seals, squealing beneath the surface of the water. Absolutely gorgeous packaging with a two-pass letterpress job with one pass with inked plates and another pass providing a tactile emboss to the paper. Very highly recommended. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES!

Field recording guru Douglas Quin heads off to Madagascar to record the endemic fauna of this unique island. Two half hour tracks capture the island's polar opposites: the Ranomafana, Mountain Rainforest and Berenty, The Spiny Desert. Produced by the king of nature recordings himself: Bernie Krause.

Some of you may not recognize the name Donovan Quinn, but long time readers of the AQ list and fans of all things Jewelled Antler, most certainly will. He's one half of psych folk combo the Skygreen Leopards, and this here disc, October Lanterns was recorded way back in 2003, but was thought to be lost until now. Released by Soft Abuse as an ultra limited cd-r, we only got a handful so we won't go into too much detail. You probably already know if you need this, especially if the words psych folk, Skygreen Leopards and Jewelled Antler set your psychedelic folks senses a tinglin'... There's a definite Dylan thing going on here, Quinn's lazy drawl and insistent strumming is at times a dead ringer, but it's Dylan filtered through seventies British folk, with plenty of fluttering flutes, jaw harp, melodica, mandolin, shimmering high harmony vocals, the sounds are sometimes off kilter and lo-fi, like Avarus or other Finnish folkies, the sounds wreathed in a haze of druggy FX, but just as often, simple, naked and stripped down. Just the guitar and the vocals, and that's most definitely enough. Dark and personal, subtly trippy, and quite lovely. LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES!!! Each one hand numbered, hand screened, with a paste on cover photo, and paste on liner notes inside. We only got 20 copies, and will NOT be able to get more...

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[ aquarius records catalogue — Q ]