[ aquarius records catalogue

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

Showing results 451 through 500 of 1354.

Southern California trio's BEST, most cohesive album yet, full of tender, shuffling, exceedingly lo-fi pop. Allen Callaci's voice and delivery are heartbreakingly poignant. Plus special guest, Franklin Bruno!

Upland's sweet lo-fi stars Refrigerator take a stylistic step in the right direction (as usual) with this new ep of more fuzzed-out material than you're used to. Very nice.

Newest album from Upland, CA, trio.

Originally released back in 1996, the remastered reissue of The Refused's definitive album Songs To Fan The Flames Of Discontent (easily as good as their breakthrough / final release The Shape Of Punk To Come) confirms this Swedish band's music to be just as vital and potent today as it was eight years ago, and so much more so than the majority of bands calling themselves 'punk' and 'hardcore' these days. Theirs is far more concentrated, cerebral and challenging than flaccid fist-pumpin' 3-chord punk rawkTM. The Refused was a truly compelling, caustic force levelling all in its path. Ready to get your ass kicked?

MPEG stream: Return To The Closet
MPEG stream: Life Support Addiction

The reissue of this great singles collection from the sadly defunct Swedish band The Refused reminds us: a) just how fierce and awesome this band really was, b) just how varied and wide a musical scope they had, c) they just don't make 'em like they used to! Blazing and heavy, weird and wild, catchy as fuck but so intense and supercharged. Their classic final release The Shape Of Punk To Come will soon be re-issued, but until then this singles comp and the also-just-just-rereleased Songs To Fan The Flames Of Discontent should be plenty to keep your blood boiling, fists pumping and head banging until then!

Latest analog blast of abstract hypno skree from this French one man band and it's a beaut. Looped high end shimmer, distant industrial grind and creak and a creepy whispered mantra are smeared into a gorgeously woozy blur, eventually joined by some random woodpecker percussion. Strange but really quite beautiful and mesmerizing. The flipside is another mantra-like loop based drone, lots of tape hiss, and lo fi rumble, tape warble and stuttering fragments of hiss all drifting on a swirling sea of crumbling low end, and peppered with bits of crackle and crunch. Weird and wonderful. Amazingly packaged, a green and yellow hand painted tape, in a full color sleeve, inside a full color insert and a folded up short story printed on super nice textured paper. LIMITED TO 68 COPIES!!!

A super limited and insanely packaged triple cd-r, highlighting, well, just like the title says, the Birth Of A New Rural Europe, a sonic world of free noise, free folk and abstract ambience. Three full length discs, one from each band, the Reggaee, Sawaadyja and Valerio Cosi. French free rock outfit The Reggaee offer up 52 minutes of clattery, rambling, drift, harmonicas wheeze, nestled in a soundscape of field recordings and distant percussion like the chirping of crickets, doomy folk with detuned guitars and ghostly vocals, reverb drenched tribal freakouts, dreamy dreary mumbly ambience, buzzing steel string serenades and every stop in between. Sawaadyja, aka Danish sound maker Mikkel Andersen, contributes a similarly varied disc, starting off with huge thick washes of distorted guitars and buried psychedelic melodies, like a more lo-fi Sunroof!, and quickly drifting into gentle forest folk, with simple childlike melodies over spare tribal drumming, dreamy Appalachian style steel string fingerpicking, a bit of raga like buzz with snake charmer melodies and some spacious abstract shimmer. The final installment comes from Italian sound artist Valerio Cosi, whose disc is maybe the droniest and dreamiest of the bunch. The opening and closing tracks are lengthy slow moving near static shimmers, bookending track two, a nearly half hour long festive percussive free form sonic ritual. Fluttering flutes, clattering pots and pans percussion, buzzing kazoo melodies, thick reverb, like being lost in some bazaar in the center of some foreign city. Cool. LIMITED TO 35 COPIES!!! WE GOT 12 OF THOSE!!! Each copy is super elaborately packaged, each disc, hand painted, in its own sleeve with a printed insert, all three discs held shut with wire and affixed to the inside of an oversized, wire and bamboo sleeve, like someone dismantled a tiki hut and cut the walls into squares to make cd sleeves. Also inside is an insert that is hand numbered! Weird but cool.

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MPEG stream: Baalerinaa
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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.

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Depending on how you look at it, this record is either the best, or the funniest record we've heard in a while. A pretty successful pastiche of the highly illogical musical tastes of adolescence; post-Hardcore grind, shiny-faced emo pop, and gangsta rap (brilliantly exploited, with a Ween-like irreverance; the opening 'skit' makes Reggie the victim of a driveby shooting). Plus bizarre but totally appealing '80s new wave love songs, faux-Crass faux-Euro polito-punk songs (the hilarious 'Dwarf Invasion'), and pure disco grooves MC'ed by a hillbilly calling for some weird linedance that could only have origins in Fresno. Totally absurd but, man, it works. I'm the first one around here to immediately dismiss a joke record, but this is no joke. The pop songs are first rate, hooks and kick ass melodies. The metal is metal! Grinding and pounding, thanks in no small part to members of Coalesce being the core of Reggie. But some of the disc's best moments come with the effortless mix of the two, crunching brutality mixed up with Weezer-worthy radio fare. God knows how it works but it does. Humor + honest to gosh pop hooks + crazy surprises may be the formula. Yup, a unanimous AQ staff favourite.

RealAudio clip: From Me 2 U
RealAudio clip: Gloves
RealAudio clip: Dwarf Invasion

Every time we start a review with a phrase like "we don't really like techno all that much" or "we've never been huge fans of pop punk" we end up getting people writing in defending the genre in question. But truth be told, we -do- like techno and we -do- like pop punk, and we do like all kinds of music, it's sort of the point of this store. It's just that we generally tend to dig the weirder, more far out, more creative risk-taking fringes of all those genres, which is -also- the point of this store. But that said, we don't actually like pop punk all that much, at least not the strain of cookie cutter made-for-MTV dreck that one typically thinks of as pop punk. But we do love pop. Do we ever!!! And we do love punk! And unlike the bad math that results from adding metal and hip hop (oh how we desperately wish someone could make that work!), pop and punk fit pretty comfortably together, add some good songs, and maybe even some metal riffage, and we're in business. Thus we have Reggie And The Full Effect, originally a joke side project for a handful of emo / pop punk luminaries (Coalesce anyone?), now a band that's as good as if not better than all of the serious bands that spawned it. They are the ultimate emo band. Of course you have the huge kick ass production, great catchy songs, sensitive whiny boy vocals and big distorted guitars. BUT THEN, you've got some chugging metal guitars and howling throat shredding vocals, fuzzy synths, goofy lyrics, and an ultra dumb / totally brilliant sense of humour. And as if that weren't enough, every third or fourth song is a total eighties synthpop workout, straight up New Order mockery / worship (one of which is a dead ringer for track two on the recent Killers record! Now who's laughing?!). Goofy and silly, but actually really good and fun and catchy. And finally, you've got RATFE's hardcore alter ego, the fictitious Finnish electro punk outfit Common Denominator, who have contributed one track to each Reggie record, always with Common Denominator's lead vocalist introducing the band, in a thick inexplicably German accent: "HELLO AMERICANS, THIS IS KLAUS FROM COMMON DENOMINATOR. WE ARE THE BAND YOU THAT YOU ARE LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW WE ARE FROM FINLAND AND THIS IS THE THIRD SONG OFF OUR DEBUT ALBUM IN AMERICA, THIS SONG IS CALLED DEATHNOTRONIC AND IT GOES LIKE THIS!!! And what follow is what can only be described as Ministry meets Rammstein meets that song that ALWAYS seems to play during cheerleader competitions (Y'all Ready For This!) as well as some awesome noodly guitar leads. Even with the presence of Common Denominator, and the occasional synthpop workout, this is Reggie's least 'jokey' record to date, which is probably what makes it their best. Even the lyrics aren't as straight up goofy, in fact if anything, unless this is all a REALLY subtle joke, the lyrics tend toward straight up emo territory, love and loss and boys and girls and all that stuff. Pretty heartfelt stuff actually, and if there's one thing we're a sucker for it's emo! In fact the final song, a brooding piano driven emo ballad to end all emo ballads, is SO sincere, it seems like it MUST be a joke coming from these guys. But it's not. At least we don't think so. At first we were a little disappointed by the lack of skits and random stupidity, but as much as we love those old Reggie records, this one definitely has the potential for most repeated listens. There's just something about Reggie's combination of crunchy metallic guitars, weird Cars / Tupac synth melodies, perfect pop and goofy eighties high school ballads that we can't seem to get enough of!

MPEG stream: What The Hell Is Contempt
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Yeah! A new Reggie And The Full Effect! Everybody here at AQ *loved* their last album "Promotional Copy" for its tongue-in-cheek emocore silliness, rampant absurdity, and seriously melodic and metallic might. One of the best joke bands ever, 'cause they kinda make you ask, is this a joke? And the music is awesome, no joke. "Under The Tray..." doesn't top "Promotional Copy" but it's pretty great too, even featuring another appearance by their parodic Euro political punk persona, Common Denominator. By the way, there's a reason why this is called "Under The Tray..." but we'll leave that for you to discover when you get a copy. Now let's turn this review over to our Professor Jim for his weighty thoughts on Reggie's latest opus: While most emo bands render heartbreak with fervor and intensity, Reggie & The Full Effect is the only one to map out a broad cross section of the hormonally dysfunctional emotions that emerge as the illogical displays of teen angst, giddiness, impossible desires, and raw mania. Pretty much the solo project of James DeWees (keyboardist for the emo-punk band The Get Up Kids and drummer for metalcore legends Coalesce), Reggie & The Full Effect previously succeeded on the "Promotional Copy" album by applying a metalcore chug to emo's earnest sentiment and bracketing this in silly (but strikingly accurate) renditions of new wave theatricality. "Under The Tray..." picks up exactly where "Promotional Copy" left off, with the wholesale appropriation of musical signifiers geared to console teen angst including the current run of earnest power pop bands tinged with pop (i.e. Get Up Kids, Weezer, etc.), morose, black-lipstick staples (i.e. Depeche Mode and the "Pretty In Pink" soundtrack), and adolescent male aggression (i.e. Andrew W.K. and crusty skate-punk). Instead of mocking these stereotypes, Reggie adopts them as a legitimate language; and I don't even think Reggie's albums can be qualified as irony, considering how 'authentic' most of this sounds. But "Under The Tray..." doesn't concern itself with any of art school crap about irony, mimesis, or post-modernity; after all, this band knows its audience very well, and succeeds as a great, corn-ball pop record.

RealAudio clip: Happy V-Day
RealAudio clip: Image Is Nothing, Lobsters Are Everything
RealAudio clip: Congratulations Smack & Katy

Two late sixties records collected from the beloved Brazilian singer, Elis Regina. Elis Como e Porque (1968) and Elis Regina in London (1969), display the full range of her stellar vocal abilities singing many of Antonio Carlos Jobim's best known songs such as "Wave" and "How Insensitive". Not as well known in the states, probably due to Astrud Gilberto's fluke hit "Girl From Ipanema" which jump started the soft-samba wave abroad, an antithesis to Regina's tempestuous moodiness and dynamic vocal delivery (She was nicknamed "little pepper"). Although these records are not quite as exquisitely breathtaking as the 1974 lp she recorded with Antonio Carlos Jobim, they nicely showcase this vital musical figure whose untimely death at the age of 36 has made her a near saint in Brazil. No soft samba here, she's as bright as the sunniest day in Rio!

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While the name Regis might not be familiar to you, anyone into twisted electronic music should definitely know Karl O'Connor, the man who is Regis. He was a member of the late great Sandwell District, as well as one half of the British Murder Boys (the other half was Surgeon!), not to mention a ton of solo projects and one off releases. His vision of techno is skewed and geniusly warped, which is further evidenced by some of the folks he's remixed: Ike Yard, Dalhous, Tropic Of Cancer, Raime, Vatican Shadow. In fact anyone who's been digging any of those, all featured on the aQ list sometime in the recent past, while dig the shit out of Regis as well. Manbait collects some of O'Connor's best productions and remixes from the last 5 years, which hold together remarkably well, playing like an album as much as a collection. His Ike Yard remix is spare and gothic, cold and clinical, stiff robotic rhythms and pulsing synths underpin deep vocals and a lurching, almost uncomfortable sounding groove. The Dalhous track is essentially ambient, all smeared sounds, disembodied voices, field recordings drifting in and out, a sort of kosmiche new age fused to cinematic seventies ambience. Vatican Shadow gets some added gristle, as well as some squalls of soft noise, all wound around very Kompakt sounding rhythms. The Tropic Of Cancer track also drifts into some reverb drenched new age shimmer, plucked notes hover and dissipate, vocals are slowed down and blurred into haunting melodies, again, the vibe very gothic and maudlin. Regis works within Raime's already minimal framework, sculpting glitch and gristle, transforming the original into a sweepingly dramatic digidub, minimal and skeletal one second, swoonsome and prismatic the next. In between those remixes and productions (along with a few others: a reworking of a track by Regis' synth punk outfit Family Sex, and a remix for a group called Cub), are a handful of original Regis productions, all of which sound right at home amongst their remixed company, although they tend a bit more toward the bombastic, rife with rumbling low end bass washes, sizzling sheets of distorto drones, driving and urgent, but dialed back just enough to be more mesmerizing than anything. Fantastic!! Compact disc housed in a digipak, lp includes a digital download!

MPEG stream: Loss (Regis Version)
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MPEG stream: Church Of All Images (Regis Version)

What do you get when you cross weirdo Spanish noiseniks Billy Bao with filthy Swedish garage sludge punks the Brainbombs (and by extension, weirdo noise rock minimalists No Balls)?? Apparently you get Regler, a twisted, extremely noisy, high concept, SUPER group, who deliver some seriously difficult listening. Two distinctly different stripes of difficult listening, in fact. The A side, as is further evidenced by the graphical representation on the jacket, is straight up D-Beat blasting, for the entire side. That's right, furious noise drenched riffing, and frantic, relentless drumming, locked in a continuous frenzy for the entire A side, the result is by turns mesmerizing and infuriating. Folks looking for 'songs' or 'music' (why would you be looking for those on a record like this in the first place?) will definitely be disappointed, but if you're after some dense, heavily layered, modern minimalist metal, this might just push those buttons, cuz really, after a minute or two, it's easy to get lost in sound, much like the trance inducing properties of black metal, the sound here is relentless and totally hypnotic, with the sound changing subtly throughout, the sonic shifts much more dramatic once you're locked in and listening close, the drumming too, seems to phase weirdly, producing still more off kilter weirdness. Needless to say, not for everybody, but for us, we're pretty into it. and that's at 45rpm, slow it down, and suddenly it's a bit more Brainbombsy, still tranced out and repetitive, but sludgier and murkier filthier. The flipside might even be more frustrating for most folks, the sort of thing that might have been right at home on the recent Sounds Of Silence compilation we made Record of The Week a while back, what we're assuming, is an edit of all the NON-musical elements in the recording of the A side, lots of silence, some blurts of drum freakouts, some weird chordal fadeouts, it's literally like someone grabbed the bits of tape before and after every take and edited them into a single weird near silent it of conceptual sound art. Some breathing, little bits of music here and there, lots of tape buzz and hiss, super weird, but actually very cool. Headphones are required, and then cranking the volume too (although the occasional blast of sound, might freak you out), but then if this wasn't meant to freak you out in the first place, we'd be pretty surprised. So yeah, while we endeavor to get sufficient copies of the new Brainbombs 2lp, maybe this will tide you over. But really, it probably won't. Recommended for anyone into arty noise, modern minimalism, warped metal experimentation, field recordings, and willful sonic provocateurs of all stripes. Cool cover art, no download, and LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!!

Peter "Pita" Rehberg and Ramon Bauer betray all of Mego's artsy mythologies of being a completely serious project, by opening this album with a lame speedfreak MC introducing Rehberg and Bauer at some festival in Australia, with the nonsensical outburst: "Oh Considering that Rehberg and Bauer follow this act of puerile behaviour with a stoicly quiet piece for muffled cable hums and pops, this introduction, at best, is irony through contradiction; at worst, is self-congratulatory arrogance. The rest of the album picks up considerably with their trademarked dense layers of digital grit, harsh noise, and occasional motorcyclical melodies. Brilliantly packaged by Jon Wozencroft, after all it's on Touch.

RealAudio clip: Passt 5
RealAudio clip: Passt 12
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A customer recommended we check out Rehtaf Ruo (Our Father backwards, how very evil!) describing them as more insane and out there sounding than Benighted Leams. Well, we could hardly resist after that! Happy to report that Boiled In Goat Blood is indeed quite possibly (one of) the weirdest, most fucked up black metal records we have ever heard. And that's assuming you could even classify this as black metal. It's so bizarre it's a bit hard to describe. We were a little cautious throwing this on, the first track was a haunting and creepy slow motion drone, obviously an introduction, but black and ominous enough. Then the record proper started and we were floored, blown away by the sheer musical perversity on display, so damaged and abstract, and so goddamn scary sounding, it really couldn't be more black. The riffs are so lo-fi and so murky, they don't even sound like guitars, more like fuzzy drones, not like Burzum fuzzy, but completely indistinct smears of sound, and the drums are right down there with the guitars, barely audible, except for the occasional REALLY LOUD burst of impossibly fast double kick drum that sounds like a jackhammer or a woodpecker, very static and industrial. But it's the vocals that define Rehtaf Ruo, from a harsh hoarse growl, to a super affected hellish gargle, to a burping grunt, the vocals are SO FUCKING FRIGHTENING. Way more evil than most BM frontmen, it helps that the vocals are WAY louder than the music, their only competition those bursts of spastic double kick, or the occasional very evil Rigor Sardonicous style trash can lid cymbal crash. There are some intensely bizarre moments of abstraction, a track that sounds like a more black metal Jacula, some murky martial percusssion beneath raspy invocations, super sudden fade outs, chiming church bells, some creepy ambient soundscapes made from guitars so distorted they crumble into what sounds like radio static, strange looped freakouts that sound like a more fucked up Jeck or Basinski, or even recent AQ faves WOLD, grizzled guitar clang and the sounds of chains against stone, and of course some ridiculously anguished vocal torture. The final track is a massive ten plus minute horrorscape, of super processed drums, wild hysterical vocalizing, clattery dungeon percussion, moaning minor key melodies, but to get there, you'll have to crawl on your hands and knees, bloodied and blackened, through a field of fire and broken glass, corpses and barbed wire and some of the weirdest black metal EVER.

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It was a happy day at AQ when we saw that two of our favorite Steve Reich pieces of all time were now finally available again. Both recorded in 1970, one at the Guggenheim in NY and the other at the University Museum in Berkeley. This is electric organ overdrive! Four Organs not surprisingly is a piece played on four electric organs (with Reich playing one as well as his good friend Philip Glass... we hope that someday we can get a cd issue of Glass' "Music in 12 Parts" which is maybe his best ever and has a very similar feel to these two great Reich pieces), while beneath the organs is the repetitious shaking of maracas. The short pulsations of the organ gradually stretch out, lasting longer and longer, creating a totally dynamic tension that evokes standing in a massive and grand church that's empty except for the mesmerizing sounds of the organs lulling you into some sort of a trance. Phase Patterns manages to increase the tension with the four players using identical organs and playing to a precise strategy that Reich has calculated. These pieces predate and predict so much of the minimalist electronic and experimental music to come over the next three decades, and are well worth checking out again!

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Two of our favorite pieces of all time from minimalist composer Reich, available again! Both pieces were recorded in 1970, one at the Guggenheim in NY and the other at the University Museum in Berkeley. This is electric organ overdrive! Four Organs not surprisingly is a piece played on four electric organs (with Reich playing one as well as his good friend Philip Glass...), while beneath the organs is the repetitious shaking of maracas. The short pulsations of the organ gradually stretch out, lasting longer and longer, creating a totally dynamic tension that evokes standing in a massive and grand church that's empty except for the mesmerizing sounds of the organs lulling you into some sort of a trance. Phase Patterns manages to increase the tension with the four players using identical organs and playing to a precise strategy that Reich has calculated. These pieces predate and predict so much of the minimalist electronic and experimental music to come over the next three decades. The original Shandar lp of Four Organs / Phase Patterns has been reissued on cd before, but it's nice of Superior Viaduct to bring it back on that format, AND they're planning a first ever vinyl reissue of this classic in March, fyi!

MPEG stream: Four Organs
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Without a doubt Steve Reich is one of the most important composers and music makers of the last quarter century. "Music For 18 Musicians" still stands as one of the most hypnotizing and well exectuted pieces of music we've ever heard. After being credited with being at the forfront of Minimilist composition with the likes of Terry Riley and Philip Glass he has spent the last decades continually composing and collaborating with the likes of Kronos Quartet, exploring textures and sub-texts of Jewish music, scoring for theatre, and working with chamber ensembles. There is no mistaking that you are listneing to Reich here as the record begins and his signature sound of building tension with repitition begins. Using four pianos, mallet instruments and exploring the use of voice as a textural and harmonic focal point for the four part suite that makes up You Are (Variations). The vocals push and sometimes take the already chilling climate of Reich's recent work over the top but for the most part you still give into the polyrhythmic pulses that he so carefully constructs. For us the shining moment of the record comes after the four part suite, on the last track, the latest in his ongoing counterpoint series. "Cello Counterpoint" is Reich at his pinpointed best, stripped away of all elements except the solo cello of Maya Beiser, and its 11 minutes are so stunning.

MPEG stream: You Are Wherever Your Thoughts Are
MPEG stream: Cello Counterpoint

How is it that these long overdue A.R. & Machines reissues just keep making us fall in love with Ol' Achim Reichel over and over again? 'Cause it's some of the best krautrock EVER that's how. Die Grune Reise is a re-release of the first official A.R. & Machines LP from 1970 and, while slightly less epic and grand than the blissful Echo (part of the double disc reissue we raved about a few months ago), it's no less mesmerizing, exploratory and exciting. Reichel's trademark meandering, repetitive guitar and percussion are in full effect -- spacey and grooving, but instead of totally transporting the listener into the realm of ether, there's something more rockin' and also sometimes ridiculous that keeps it in the realm of the studio. Well it had to be since EVERYTHING on here was performed and recorded by Achim Reichel himself, a total one-man-jam! Sounds like a whole hairy freak-troupe though. Die Grune Reise is like watching a preview of the even more awesome journey that Reichel eventually takes you on with Echo (which, by the way, is finally back in stock!). It's entirely possible that all the weird, sometimes goofy-hippy vocals on this album maybe make us a little self-conscious... Yes, there's a lot of the madhouse 'digga-digga-aahh-waaahhh!??" type vocals on here that at turns challenge and delight us, but they're tempered with a more than generous helping of signature chug-jams to keep us totally boogeying (dig the ZZ Top guitar riffery on track 2!) and lilting interludes to help us come down gently. When absorbing this album, it's hard to shake the very specific image of a naked, twirling free-spirited German longhair in the desert at night alone with his arms wide open holding a hand rolled cigarette/joint in one hand and doing graceful hand maneuvers with the other...and that's fine by us. We grok that dude and these albums. There's actually two of them (albums) here, as this disc also includes A.R. VI, Echolung, originally released by Brain in 1975. Compared to Die Grune Reise it's a bit more mellowed out, if anything more cosmic and spacey... real nice! Total krautrock essentials, both of these. Fans of both Can and Circle need to hear 'em...

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MPEG stream: Station 1: In The Same Boat
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An old fave, in fact a former Record Of The Week, at last reissued and available again, previously it was part of a 2-on-1 cd with another A.R. album, Echolung, but here it's by itself (with bonus dvd, more on that later). Nice packaging, great sound, so glad to have this back in the store! Here's more or less what we said before: How is it that these long overdue A.R. & Machines reissues just keep making us fall in love with Ol' Achim Reichel over and over again? 'Cause it's some of the best krautrock EVER that's how. Die Grune Reise is a re-release of the first official A.R. & Machines LP from 1970 and, while slightly less epic and grand than the blissful Echo (one we raved about a few months ago), it's no less mesmerizing, exploratory and exciting. Reichel's trademark meandering, repetitive guitar and percussion are in full effect - spacey and grooving, but instead of totally transporting the listener into the realm of ether, there's something more rockin' and also sometimes ridiculous that keeps it in the realm of the studio. Well it had to be since EVERYTHING on here was performed and recorded by Achim Reichel himself, a total one-man-jam! Sounds like a whole hairy freak-troupe though. Die Grune Reise is like watching a preview of the even more awesome journey that Reichel eventually takes you on with Echo (which, by the way, is finally back in stock!). It's entirely possible that all the weird, sometimes goofy-hippy vocals on this album maybe make us a little self-conscious... Yes, there's a lot of the madhouse 'digga-digga-aahh-waaahhh!??" type vocals on here that at turns challenge and delight us, but they're tempered with a more than generous helping of signature chug-jams to keep us totally boogeying (dig the ZZ Top guitar riffery on track 2!) and lilting interludes to help us come down gently. When absorbing this album, it's hard to shake the very specific image of a naked, twirling free-spirited German longhair in the desert at night alone with his arms wide open holding a hand rolled cigarette/joint in one hand and doing graceful hand maneuvers with the other...and that's fine by us. A total krautrock essentials. Fans of both Can and Circle need to hear it. This new, artist approved "Achim Reichel Edition" of Die Grune Reise is digitally remastered, and comes packaged with an extra, dvd disc (PAL, region 0, so it'll work in your computer but maybe not your dvd player) that contains an album length 42 minute video interpretation of the whole record ("Grune Reise - Der Film") that looks to be made fairly recently, with lots of trippy computer graphics going on, it's maybe better than the watching the "visualizer" on your iTunes but not much. Chances are, the pictures A.R.'s music will make in your mind are better than this, so use your imagination instead. The dvd also includes a 10 minute "Making Of" feature, but we don't know if that's a making of the album or a making of the video, 'cause the dvd menu/interface is just about the most confusing thing ever and we weren't able to figure out how to access that segment. So, the dvd is a bit of a bust, though again we didn't actually watch everything... and maybe the surround sound feature is a cool. Regardless, the album itself is highly, highly recommended!

MPEG stream: Globus
MPEG stream: In The Same Boat

Oh boy. A red-letter day at AQ when we got this in. You see, several years ago, we'd stocked an amazing "best of" collection called Echoes Aus Zeiten Der Grunen Reise by this krautrock artist, A.R. & Machines (turns out the A.R. stands for Achim Reichel) that in itself was a far out minimalist psychedelic electronic masterpiece years ahead of its time -- and it was just a "best of"! Everybody here loved it. It's been out of print for years, though, and we'd never come across any other reissues, until now! Hence our excitement about this, a double cd containing TWO of Reichel's albums in their entirety, Echo and A.R. IV. If you're familiar with that "best of" cd, you'll recognize a few of the songs, but transformed, extended and built upon -- like you're finally experiencing the entire complex film, not just the titillating preview. If you're not familiar with that "best of," then expect a hypnotic, meandering cream dream that any lover of Eno, Cluster, Can, Neu, Bo Hansson, Kraftwerk, and even Wendy Carlos Williams shouldn't miss. Completely groovy. 1972's Echo, which takes up the largest portion of the two cds, is the highlight here. Long before the re-issue, Julian Cope made it a record of the month on his website and it's not hard to see why. It's a meandering four part -- well, we wouldn't even say "piece," it's more like a realized world -- made up of journeying guitars and plodding percussion with the occasional wailing vocals in English that take it well into the stratosphere. At times low-key, at other times frenzied, but always with an intensity that moves it along steadily. By the time you get to the freakout vocal jam of that acts as the come down of Echo, you've been led through so many emotions and states of mind, that you're spent. Take a break between the two albums since A.R. IV (1973) is another, separate adventure -- still groovy and rhythmic, but a little funkier, a little louder and more focused -- like he's revisiting the territory he covered in Echo but he's more familiar with the place & can take you directly to all the cool places. Actually, this re-issue would have been a shoo-in for Record Of The Week if only we thought we could get more. But according to our supplier, the forty or so copies we have now might be the last we'll get, as this is apparently an all-too-limited reissue. Ah well. Get it while you can!

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While people are wandering around with freak folk stars in their eyes, soaking up the hippie good vibes of Joanna Newsom, Brightblack Morning Light, Vetiver, Devendra, and other fringed folkies, they run the risk of overlooking some lesser knowns, that are making music equally as compelling and beautiful, if not more so. Enter one James Reid, whose first (as far as we know) record has found its home on the always reliable Barl Fire label, who in the past have focused more on drone music and sort of avant free rock, but for their first foray into folk this is most definitely a winner. Reid will undoubtedly get compared to Nick Drake, which is obviously not a bad thing, and in Reid's case is pretty spot on. His dark melancholic steel string guitar and warm honey vocals deftly woven into lush tapestries of dreamy moonlit folk. But there are bits of modern (and not so modern) production fuckery that make Like A Buzzard Chased By Crows more than just a straight up folk record. Reid employs a strange technique where he seemingly records vocals or flute and then plays them back live into the microphone during the recording. So on one track, the background is a lush garden of swirling steel string guitar, while the vocals are played back on a crappy old tape player, the vocals stopping and starting with the kachunk of the play/stop button. Another track has a flute that sounds all weird and warbly as it is played back at various tempos, so at the beginning and end of each phrase you can hear the tape speed up or slow down. Really weird but it somehow sounds perfect. Those moments though are utilized with restraint, surfacing here and there, but overall, this is just a really beautiful, dark and lovely, moody and slightly ominous folk record that all you Devendra / Newsom / New Weird America obsessives should not miss out on....

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Soul Jazz has started to release the original albums from whence the tracks came for their excellent cosmic jazz/funk comp "Universal Sounds of America" from a few years back. The Art Ensemble's magnificent "Les Stances A Sophie" was the first, now

RealAudio clip: Lions of Judah
RealAudio clip: Sixth House

Steve Reid is a free jazz legend, his resume, musical and otherwise, is mindblowing, he played in Sun Ra's Arkestra, was a Motown session drummer, was in James Brown's band and played at the Apollo, he lived in Africa, was jailed for opposing the Vietnam War, was a Black Panther, lived in a loft with Meryl Streep and her brother, put on shows and performances there, and played with Fela Kuti, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, Lester Bowie, about a million others, including more recently Four Tet's Kieran Hebden, which resulted in three amazing albums, all big time aQ faves. Odyssey Of The Oblong Square is one of Reid's first records, released originally over 30 years ago, was extremely limited even at the time, and is some serious left field, out-funk free jazz genius. Reid was featured recently in Soul Jazz's Freedom Rhythm & Sound: Revolutionary Jazz & The Civil Rights Movement 1963-82 collection, and this record was definitely a musical cornerstone of the rapidly developing free jazz underground in the seventies. Listening to this now, it still sounds as powerful and radical and emotional as it must have nearly 4 decades ago. Wild horns, dense skittery rhythms, sprawling clouds of constantly shifting tempos and timbres, super melodic, but also wild and chaotic, and most importantly FUNKY. The bass is the standout, which is saying something when all the players are so incredible, but it's like a living thing, throbbing and undulating, flurries of rapid fire notes, long languorous tones, even one long stretch where the bass just seems to buzz and hum, transforming the sound into something much more dark and intense, a solid anchor to allow the drums and horns to explore and expand. The two longest tracks here are epic, the band so tight, but simultaneously so loose and expressive, the final track "Ginsamseng" at one point finds the horns playing super loooong tones, layered and shifting, almost sounding like free jazz composed by Phill Niblock. Wow. So intense, and definitely spiritual and utterly transcendent, more than music, this is musical expression, the soul made sound, and that sound lives on, and continues to inspire. Way recommended. The reissue features the original super striking yellow and black Masonic album artwork, as well as new liner notes, detailing Reid's life and musical exploits. Another fantastic reissue from Universal Sound / Soul Jazz.

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A while back we were quite pleased by Soul Jazz / Universal Sound's reissue of jazz drummer Steve Reid's kosmigroove classic Nova. Now comes another reish of more of Reid's "deep spiritual jazz" in the guise of Rhythmatism, an LP originally released in 1976 on Reid's own Mustevic label. Here Reid (who has played with such legends as Sun Ra, Miles Davis, and James Brown among many others) leads a five-piece band that includes Les Walker on piano and Arthur Blythe on saxophone, with saxophonist Charles Tyler also guesting one one cut. Pianist Walker actually wrote almost all the tunes on here, but it's Reid's energy -- his Rhythmatism -- that propels this tight, groovy, not-too-in, not-too-out set.

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In recent years there's been a plethora of attempts at merging free jazz with an updated often electronic sound. The results of this merging have often been quite lackluster and disappointing. There has always been something that seems so forced in those unions. So when we heard that legendary and way too underrated jazz percussionist Steve Reid had enlisted the electronic hands of Kieran Hebden of Fridge and Four Tet fame we were both interested yet cautious not to get our hopes to high because of how past collaborations like this have turned out. Luckily our fear was immediately squashed as we put this on. The sounds of vintage prime-time-soul-infused-forward-thinking-jazz a la Art Ensemble of Chicago were coming out our speakers and it was a sound that we know we could rejoice in. The electronics are very subtle and add a nice texture in the moments they appear. This is not some sloppy throw in some samples and clicks and cuts under sax kind of affair. Reid oozes with confidence and a presence that marches with groove and flare. This is for sure one of the best new jazz albums to grace AQ in quite a while. Highly recommended!

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Steve Reid's resume speaks for itself. Over the last four decades his drumming has pretty much done it all! Mentored by with John Coltrane, playing in ensembles with Sun Ra and Fela Kuti, laying down the beats for Motown hits from Martha Reeves & The Vandellas to his own avant outings and recent collaborations with Kieren Hebden of Four Tet fame. Daxaar was recorded in Senegal with a large ensemble including Hebden on electronics, Khadim Badji on percussion and Jimi Mbaye on guitar. This was by no means Reid's first time in Africa, as he made the pilgrimage there very early in his musical career inspired by the visits to Africa that had such a strong impact on many of his musical heroes like Don Cherry and Art Blakey. Daxaar opens with a welcoming track played by Isa Kouyate on korah and vocals and the rest of the record finds Reid leading his ensemble through some really nice cosmic afro-jazz. There are a few moments that sound a little more fusiony then we usually expect from Reid, whose taste is for the most part always spot on. Not quite as out as some of his recent offerings but just as skilled, flawlessly executed and another bit of proof as to why he's one of the greatest jazz musicians still going strong!

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Made infamous as the man responsible for Robert Plant's voice blasting on classic rock radio for years to never end, 'cause Reid turned down Jimmy Page's request in 1968 to be the singer for his new band The New Yardbirds which of course became Led Zeppelin (and Reid actually was the one to suggest in his place Plant and also John Bonham for Page's new outfit). A pretty good guitar player in his own right, he didn't want to be just the singer for a band so he stayed on his own. This collections compiles tracks from his first two albums (including covers of Dylan and Donovan) as well as some bonus material. The first two tracks are absolute killers, on par with his older more country tinged haunting sound (as heard also on the Devil's Rejects soundtrack!), while the rest of this collection leans more toward solid blues tinged rock, from a man who could have been...

MPEG stream: Superlungs My Supergirl
MPEG stream: Loving Time

Collection of recordings from the career of tenor sax-player, Robert Reigle, includes his "Marriage of Heaven and Earth" which, coincidently, contains the same tone cluster as the last movement of Scelsi's "Pfhat." Here, the two are paired in a continuous piece. "The Marriage of Heaven and Earth" reappears at the end of the disc where Reigle has edited the improv out of the cluster and placed them into the left and right channels so that the listener can adjust the relative volume of the constituent parts of the cluster. Reigle's ensemble's version of Albert Ayler's "Bells" features AQ fave Eyvind Kang on violin and electronics.

A few lists back we raved wildly about a long lost Sub Pop artifact, a record called Broc's Cabin, from a relatively unknown Floridian rock combo called Rein Sanction. A record that got lost in the grunge rock shuffle of the early nineties, being overshadowed by groups like Soundgarden and Mudhoney and of course Nirvana. Broc's Cabin was a gorgeously depressive dirge rock gem, a minor key swirl of fuzzy serpentine riffs and drawled Neil Young like vocals, the whole thing doused in cough syrup and dirty swamp water. One of our all time favorite Sub Pop records EVER. But several different things can happen to a band after they put their heart and soul and sweat and blood into a record, only to find it forgotten and ignored and totally misunderstood. They can hang it up, give up the ghost, move on to other things. They can change dramatically, caving into the desire to be popular, turning their unique idiosyncratic music into something new and shiny, the sound that 'regular' people want to hear. Or they can seethe and scowl and marinate in anger and bitterness, loneliness and sadness, and they can make another record, taking their already dark and depressive sound and plunging even further into the bleak blackened recesses of their musical soul. And that's precisely what Mariposa is. A gorgeously bleak and bitter, minor key missive, a sludgy and weirdly melodic, ultra personal final will and testament. Present still are the strangely slippery riffs, Hendrixian waves of fuzzed out distortion, slithering and churning into dense knots of warm warbly melancholia, pounding tribal drumming, and pulsing subterranean basslines, weaving in and out of the tangled riffscapes. But the vocals are much more of a focal point this time around, imbued with misery and sadness, somewhere between a mournful croon and a lonely moan, not quite melodic, a bit atonal, but with just the right measure of hopelessness that they fit perfectly into Mariposa's swooning saddened soundscapes of grungy jangle and fuzzy thud. The sounds on Mariposa are also a bit more varied, incorporating lots of acoustic guitar, swooping backwards melodies, even some horns. But as a whole, this is one of those rare records, that literally makes you sad, gives you chills, makes you want to turn off all the lights, drink yourself into a stupor and turn the stereo up as loud as it'll go, figuring you might not wake up in the morning anyway. You can feel the darkness coming out of the speakers like a fog, it's almost palpable, almost like the band were playing for their lives, a desperate attempt to keep the devil at bay, a music rife with broken dreams and broken hearts, towns boarded up and long abandoned, souls aimless and adrift. But that sort of darkness and misery is the only thing that is capable of spawning music this beautiful, music that is lovely on the inside, it's not shiny or sparkly, sitting ignored on the side of the road for ages, cracked and covered in dust, but every song is suffused with a warm, barely there glow, barely visible through each song's twisting squirming crown of thorns, every cobwebbed tendril and rusty joint humming with hope, trembling with a hidden lust for life, dreams of what still might be, a light that never burns out, even when the music finally does.

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[ aquarius records catalogue — R ]