[ 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 901 through 950 of 1354.

Island records reissues the soundtrack to this classic Jamaican comedy / musical. Features tracks by Inner Circle, Junior Murvin (Police & Thieves of course), The Heptones, Peter Tosh, Junior Byles, Bunny Wailer, Gregory Isaacs, The Upsetters, Burning Spear, Justin Hinds & The Dominoes, and more. Originally released in 1979.

RealAudio clip: Book of Rules
RealAudio clip: Rockers

Collection numero dos of singles, compilation tracks, b-sides and other rarities from everyone's favorite sparkley-shirted, pompadoured, horn-section-havin', kick-ass San Diego party rock band!!

Those of us who were huge RFTC fans (and there's quite of few of us at aQ) know that the band's output can be divided into two categories. There was the totally catchy, horn filled, hand clappers that should have really been all over the radio and MTV if there were any justice in the rock 'n' roll world. And then there was the way more raw, dirty, sleazy scorching garage punk side to the band that they usually reserved for their non-major label releases like Hot Charity and The State Of Art Is On Fire. It's this side of the band that always cuts right to our guts! No one could mix melody with blazing, sweat inducing soul inspired garage punk better then RFTC. This collection is that raw and undeniably charming side of RFTC. Pulled from demos they recorded on 8-track in their San Diego practice space from 1997-2000. Most of these songs have never been released before, and the few that were took a totally different more slick shape on the Interscope releases they appeared on, so it's so rad to get to hear those songs in a much more dirty and rocking form. And so many of these songs that were never released before blow away just about everything else rock bands of the time were putting out. A few years after these songs were recorded, bands like The Strokes and White Stripes would be hailed as "the return of rock" by the mainstream press and get all sorts of fame and fortune, but we always thought it was Rocket From The Crypt that really deserved to be the biggest rock band on the planet!

MPEG stream: Falling Down Stairs
MPEG stream: When In Rome (Do The Jerk)
MPEG stream: Summer Survivor

The latest from San Diego's kings of shiny shirted, pomade haired, horn flecked, kick ass punk rock. Plus there's a big snake on the cover!

I'd be surprised if any of you didn't know who Rocket From The Crypt was, but just in case, here's a quick synopsis. San Diego party rock band hits the big time with rollicking, super kick ass horn flecked power-pop-punk. Become the next big thing, but never actually become THE big thing. Soundwise, Andee thinks Andrew W.K. owes it ALL to Rocket, but whatever. This here cd is a cd reissue of two super out of print vinyl RFTC rarities, the doomed 'Hot Charity' lp and the 'Cut And Play 12". Both are not ordinary RFTC records as the liner notes describe in great detail, but the long and short of it is, 'Hot Charity' was recorded twice, with lots of major label moolah, and the 'Cut and Play' 12" was released after all of that disappointing major label bullshit and recorded punk rock style with Hot Snakes bassist and hot shit San Diego engineer Gar Wood. The 'Cut And Play' 12" was originally a 12" with the record stuck to the sleeve with a sticker so you had to...duh... cut it out to play it! These are two of my favorite RFTC records, but are not necessarily the -best- rocket records. But if you don't want to buy the lps for $70 on EBAY then this cd is the way to go!

RealAudio clip: Pushed
RealAudio clip: Guilt Free
RealAudio clip: If The Bird Could Fly
RealAudio clip: Blood Robots

Don't be fooled by the title, this is no live record. In fact, this is their first full length studio album in almost a year and half. Nothing super new, but everything people love about Rocket: super tight, kinda slick, rowdy and high energy pop/punk rock with Rocket's signature dual guitars, layers of horns and percussion, the snarly mean voice, tight songwriting and dynamic intros, it's all here! While I was listening to this record, song #3 "I cant feel my head" kept reminding me of something, driving me crazy to the point of keeping me up at nights, and I just finally figured it out! Yess!! The chorus sounds just like Blondie's "Hangin on the Telephone". Anyway, another great Rocket From The Crypt record. Check it out.

RealAudio clip: Im Not Invisible
RealAudio clip: Get Down
RealAudio clip: I Can't Feel My Head

There's no doubt about it, Rocket From The Crypt were one of the most exciting and entertaining rock bands to come out of the '90s PERIOD. In the pre-Strokes and pre-White Stripes landscape they were the only ones really championing the eternal power of rock n' roll's spirit to indie, punk, garage, and pop kids across the nation. John Reis was born to be a lead man, with his fiery guitar playing, witty mind and Elvis meets Johnny Thunders stage presence. R.I.P. is a recording of their last ever live show which went down in San Diego on Halloween of '05. Anyone who saw RFTC live knows that they always brought the goods full throttle. Their shows were meant to make your body move, and we can remember the great feeling of so much sweat pouring out of our bodies at so many of the amazing Rocket shows we got to see. Not many other bands could inspire so many people to get tattoos of their logo (which if you had one you could get into any show they played for free). The band called it quits before they got stale or tired, as even 15 years after their birth they still could tap into the fires of rock n' roll like magic when onstage. As with all the RFTC records, there are some super funny liner notes by Mr. Reis himself. Long live RFTC!

MPEG stream: A+ In Arson Class
MPEG stream: Born In '69
MPEG stream: Sturdy Wrists

Rocket From The Tombs was borne of the same urban decay that coughed up the Electric Eels, the Consumers and Pere Ubu. While not as well known as the any of those bands or the other bands like the Stooges or the MC5 that shared their sound/ideals (although fairly well known as the band that Rocket From The Crypt stole their name from) RFTT kicked serious ass, spitting out trashy, classic seventies anthemic punk. I LOVE this shit! 'Day The Earth Met' is a collection of rare and live tracks (great recording quality considering). Perhaps "The best record never recorded". Two Stooges covers and some songs that would later became Pere Ubu songs (RFTT's Peter Laughner's next band) The lyrics are desolate and depressing, hopeless and punk and stupidly brilliant (or brilliantly stupid). To quote their song "Ain't it Fun": "Ain't it fun when you're always on the run / Ain't it fun when your friends despise what you've become / Ain't it fun when you get so high you can't cum / Ain't it fun when you know your gonna die young / Such fun / Such fun / Ain't it fun when you feel you just gotta buy a gun / Ain't it fun cuz your takin care of #1 / Ain't it fun when you just can't find yer tongue / Cuz you stuck it way to deep in something that really stung / Ain't it fun / Somebody came to me and they spit right in my face and I didn't even feel that / It was such a disgrace I broke the window / smashed my fist right through the glass / But I couldn't even feel it, it just happened to fast. / It was fun / Such fun / Such fun" Definitely for fans of the aformentioned bands as well as anyone into dirty, scuzzy, nasty, snotty catchy garage/punk/rock!

RealAudio clip: Ain't It Fun
RealAudio clip: Life Stinks
RealAudio clip: Sonic Reducer

Everyone's favorite Ohio proto-punks return all grown up, reform and re-record a handful of their old classics! Featuring the star studded lineup of David Thomas (Pere Ubu), Richard Lloyd (Television) Cheetah Chrome (Dead Boys), Steve Mehlman (Pere Ubu), and Craig Bell (Saucers). Maybe not as fierce and urgent as the original versions, but pretty cool nonetheless.

MPEG stream: Sonic Reducer
MPEG stream: Never Gonna Kill Myself Again

Blast off! Have a close encounter here with some spaced out, switched-on analog synthesizer overload from the early '80s, total DIY Moog madness for fans of Bruce Haack, Gershon Kingsley and Dick Hyman. Amazing how there ALWAYS seem to be totally, totally obscure records out there still to be reissued, Rocket Robert's eponymous 1982 album (142 copies pressed, originally, on his own label) being the latest discovery we think you'll flip over, if you're into swooshing, whooshing, throbulating electronics and hyperkinetic video game soundtracks! It lives up to the sci-fi name and sleeve artwork for sure, and ranges in mood from totally playful to darkly sinister. First time reissue from master tapes, includes liner notes and 2 previously unreleased bonus tracks of quirky, new wave synthpop w/ vocals.

MPEG stream: Star Flight
MPEG stream: Dance Of The Droids
MPEG stream: I've Got My Helmet On

Pretty provocative name huh? These problematically monikered nineties Bay Area improvised noise makers, in fact, boasted a pretty surprising and stellar pedigree, the duo included Kelvin Pittman now of Portland Bike Ensemble, and Kyp Malone, of fellow SF noiseniks Iran and now of... TV On The Radio!!? Huh? Yep, long before Malone was playing huge festivals and helping send Pitchfork into conniptions, and releasing solo records, and impressing the indie rock throngs with his impossible and impressive facial hair, he was in fact one half of Rocket Science, a raucous, blasting, psychedelic combo, who spit out a wild fusion of free jazz and free noise, and this was their only record, released on Vulgar Tango way back when, along with the debut Iran lp reviewed elsewhere on this week's list. The Vulgar Tango dude discovered a stash of records (both Iran and Rocket Science) that had been hidden away for close to a decade, and decided to let us have them! So yeah, we always sort of wondered why in all the articles about TV On The Radio, they never ONCE mentioned Kyp's time in RSATNLF, although we can sort of guess. Which is too bad, cuz these guys ruled. Nothing at all like TV On The Radio of course, or Iran really (except for some of the noisiness), Rocket Science took guitars and bells and drums and some 'singing' and wound 'em all up into a super charged take on that SST jazz sound, filtered through a warped SF noiserock filter. Sometimes surprisingly melodic and tranquil, but more often than not, fierce and free and heavy and loud, skittery percussion, tangled grinding guitar gnarl, some serious psychedelic crunch, lots of feedback, all woozy and warped, chaotic and off kilter, brief squalls of splattery atonal skronk, give way to warbly drone psych squiggles, which gives way to drum-kit-down-the-stairs cacophony, which then gives way to some almost metal chug and thud, which always seems to blossom into a crumbling mass of swirling sound and amp damaging free-rock delirium. Gloriously ramshackle and seriously challenging, an extremely noisy and loud look back at one of our favorite unsung outfits that helped define the SF underground in the early 2000s...

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

SORRY. New recording propels Rocketship away from twee pop and into the realm of murmury, quiet electronica soundscapes... Very, very good (and we hear a lotta stuff of this ilk, believe me)!

We knew nothing at all about this disc when it arrived. Not even sure how we ended up listening to it, but we're so so glad we did. The thing is, we get tons of stuff to listen to. Some all time AQ favorites began life as a random record that showed up in the mail, so we try to listen to everything, or as close to everything as we can. But there's so much, that just listening to random stuff that gets mailed in could be its own full time job (and before you all email wanting that job, trust us, it's not all it's cracked up to be). Inevitably stuff slips through the cracks, or we finally manage to listen to a cd months, sometimes years after it shows up. But this one caught our eye straight away, with a super creepy cover depicting a dead woman, covered in blood, in a wide expanse of blackness, above her a head, with a hole in the forehead, and a rainbow shooting through the head onto the dead woman, all done sort of oil painting style. Immediately we thought, "Wow, that sort of looks like some Argento movie". Then we saw the title, 31 Invalid Movie Themes � Italian Music. Hmm. By a group called Orchestra Di Rockford Kabine. Okay, so maybe, we thought, a soundtrack to some giallo we'd never heard of. The first track seemed to confirm that, a snippet of dialogue from some Italian movie, dialogue, some buzzing creepy sci-fi synth, a panicked woman, screaming, some sort of struggle... Then suddenly, we're in some sort of groovy sixties funk jam, all shuffling percussion, wah wah guitar, throbbing bass grooves, and then out of nowhere, a strangely convoluted interlude, very brief, but sort of stuttery, and then back to the groove. So now we're dying to know what movie this is from. Then the next track is some sort of stripped down electro groove, a jazzy piano vamp, lots and lots of record crackle, this couldn't be from the sixties... And it isn't. It ends up it's a German duo called Rockford Kabine, not a person at all, not a composer, an electronic/sampling outfit who describe their sound as "acid smurf" (huh?) and whose modus operandi is crafting little cinematic pop nuggets. Like DJ Shadow doing Morricone. The various tracks are super brief, but super groovy and catchy, some are dark and ominous and ultra creepy, some are playful and exotic. Some sound like they belong in a spaghetti Western, others like they belong in a classic Italian horror film, one track even uses the sound of a pinball machine as the rhythm. Plus the whole disc is peppered with bits of dialogue from movies making it seem even more possible that these could all be little fragments from lost movie scores. The sounds are all over the place, but manage to sound like they all belong, if not in the same film, at least in the same collection. From the aforementioned opening groover, to the smoky synth flecked mood music of "Al Signor Lorenzo N." complete with a creepy children's choir, to the exploitation cop show funk jam of "Di-Stanza", to the super distorted buzzy sixties psychedelia of "IX", to the Tom Waits via Amon Tobin stuttery junkyard percussion of "Insensato", to the muted meandering twangy western sizzle of "Italo Calvino", to the stripped down, but somehow still spooky rhythmic workout of "Zombi 3000", to the very DJ Shadow-ish creepy crawl of "Profondo Rosso" and it goes on and on. Every track is a strange little gem. Mysterious and cinematic. Each could easily be the theme from some lost film, or just a kick ass little segment from some DJ's set. 31 tracks, averaging a little more than a minute each, these tracks may not actually be from real movies, but repeated listening will have you wishing they were, or just creating the movies in your head as you listen. Fucking awesome.

MPEG stream: La Caccia
MPEG stream: Al Signor Lorenzo N.
MPEG stream: IX
MPEG stream: Insensato
MPEG stream: Italo Calvino
MPEG stream: Zombi 3000
MPEG stream: Profondo Rosso

We first discovered amazing German duo Rockford Kabine via their debut full length, Italian Music: 31 Invalid Movie Themes, which on the surface played like a series of micro snippets of actual Italian soundtrack music, interspersed with snippets of dialogue, brief excerpts from what we can only assume are in fact real films, the music the perfect compliment, wah wah guitars, Morricone-ish twang, smoky synths, spooky rhythmic dronescapes. It was an incredible collection of music that very well could have been soundtrack music, but was in fact an original creation, imagined music for imaginary Italian films. And we were blown away. Not soon after, the band contacted us to let us know that they were already working on a follow up, this one an ACTUAL soundtrack, to some sort of arty XXX adult film, yep, a porno, which in some weird way made sense, what with RK's ability to conjure up super sultry and sexy sounds, that draw from all sorts of different sources, their music already cinematic on its own, seemingly perfect to be wedded to visuals, and heck, when the visuals turn out to consist of sexy women, some wielding daggers, wearing World War 2 style gasmasks and leather bodysuits and well, it's tough to argue with that. But since the soundtrack was to be available ONLY as a bonus disc with the movie itself, it required some wrangling, and contacting an actual adult film distributor down in SoCal to get our hands on copies. But we're so glad we did. Even removed from the visuals, like all great soundtrack music, Rockford Kabine's score for XERO is incredible, haunting, mysterious, groovy, funky, abstract, cinematic for sure, but also lush and experimental and moody and mysterious. The strange thing too is that the film seems quite European, almost like some Inglorious Basterds style Tarantino war pic (or maybe that's just the aforementioned gas mask get up getting to us), but the music is very Eastern, in fact all the titles seem to be in Japanese, which only adds to the mystique of Rockford Kabine's fantastic soundworld. So we'll discuss the film in a bit, but as aQ is a record store, and this is in fact our Record Of The Week, it's probably best to discuss the soundtrack/score all on its own first. Like Italian Music before it, XERO is a series of shortish tracks, between 1 and 2 minutes, each super distinctive, with the duo conjuring up incredible mysterious moods in a manner of seconds, leaving the listener in most cases wanting more more more. And like their Italian Music, this does play out like some sort of DJ Shadow style sonic collage, still drawing from Morricone, and the Italian giallo tradition, but also from classic '70s porno music, with some funk and groove, but instead of the oft ridiculed wah wah guitar style porn kitsch, this is much more evocative, and dark, guitars are slithery, basslines low slung, undulating, bells chimes, notes drift through fields of reverb, riffs chug and churn only to dissipate in a field of chimes, spaced out drones collide with almost Tangerine Dream like synths, flutes flit and flutter, the rhythms are minimal and motorik, some tracks playing out like some krautrock groove (reminding us that Can made softcore soundtracks too, way back when), others like some lost cosmic disco. It's actually quite hard to describe XERO, there are so many different sounds and styles, and it's hard to imagine them working as a soundtrack, especially to an super stylized XXX art film, but removed from the film, the music, as varied and constantly shifting as it is, somehow plays out cohesively, like an album proper, guitar twang is laced over a minimal footstep like rhythm, organs wheeze, everything sounds softly woozy and lysergic, exotic percussion collides with gamelan like melodies, minimal hip hop beats are wrapped around stuttering loops, occasionally coalescing into some seriously fuzzy hairy funk, other times drifting into Goblin style almost new wave sounding synthscapes, acoustic guitars unfurl some Western strum, but woven in are some haunting synth melodies, even some mysterious voices, soaring strings and sorrowful piano, tense droned out ambience, skittery almost Portishead style downtempo beats, bells and chimes, all sorts of strange production, the sound sometimes crystal clear and lush and lovely, other times hazy and druggy and gorgeously washed out, a kaleidoscopic sonic journey through some imaginary world of naked women, gasmasks and daggers, weird Asian masks, furry shag rugs, a world that would have stayed imaginary had these sounds not been used to edit the film of the same name. The film is indeed pornographic, and XXX. It's all female-on-female, there's very little actual hardcore sex though. And while it IS a porno, with no plot to speak of, it's almost more like it's about the music. Indeed, the movie was edited to the music, much like Sergio Leone used to blast Morricone's scores on the set and have the actors move to the music, so the film here is a series of impressionistic tableaus, the colors acid drenched and super saturated, long slow stripteases, even the actual sex is strangely arty and not traditionally sexy, but the strange constantly shifting images, the cool, always changing music, work together, creating something much more than a porno, in fact, the film seemed more like something the band would project behind them when they performed live, strange masks, the aforementioned rubberclad gasmasked mystery woman, another woman who looks a bit like a sexier female version of Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name, long duster, big hat, face obscured by hair, and as the back cover proclaims, "See the shocking ending the censors didn't want you to witness", and we can definitely attest to the fact that the ending is really weird, depressing and violent, and not at all sexy, but in some way, that makes this whole project more interesting, and bizarre, and pretty much perfect for Rockford Kabine's incredible soundtrack. Though of course you don't HAVE to watch it, the prudish can enjoy the soundtrack fully without reference to the visuals. Needless to say, this is TOTALLY RECOMMENDED, but, since the soundtrack cd does in fact come with an XXX rated adult dvd, thus is required some unaccustomed legalese on our part, as follows... This is only to be purchased by adults, and by purchasing this, and/or adding it to your online shopping cart, you are hereby agreeing to these stipulations: that you are an in fact an adult, being of legal age, 18 or 21, in your legal jurisdiction to view adult oriented material that may be sexual or graphical in nature. (Local laws vary throughout the United States, so if you are not 100 percent sure of the laws applicable to you, you are advised to check before purchasing.) Further, you agree that you will not redistribute this material to anyone for which it is illegal for them to view or possess such material, nor will you permit any minor, or any person who would find this personally offensive, to view this material, and finally that you will hold harmless aQuarius recOrds, its officers, ISP, and employees, from and against any claims, liability, losses, costs, damages, or expenses (including attorney's fees) arising from you use of the images contained on the dvd. Furthermore, you will defend aQuarius recOrds against all claims of impropriety regarding your purchase of this item. Phew. We'd have put all that in small print if we could.

MPEG stream: Dangai
MPEG stream: Hana Gin
MPEG stream: Pantsu Etchi Na
MPEG stream: Saigo No Kisu Wa
MPEG stream: Hotto Ni Naru
MPEG stream: Rorikon
MPEG stream: Xero Vs.The Black Angel

Classical music doesn't get more "goth" than this. Elevating the Theremin from the realms of sci-fi and horror movie sound effects, Lithuanian-born child musical prodigy, Clara Rockmore is considered to be the most accomplished classical performer of this early electronic instrument and greatly assisted in its further development. With the stern temperament of a classical diva and the rigid eastern European beauty of a vampire, Clara Rockmore was an other-wordly virtuosa that completely hypnotized her audience with a ruthless dedication to her craft. Originally trained as a classical violinist, malnutrition made her unable to play past her teen years, eventually leading to her discovery of this newborn electronic device. Blessed with absolute pitch, and the ability to have extremely precise and rapid control of her movements enabled her to play the Theremin better than most other performers. Working with Leon Theremin in the early days of its commercial development in the United States, Rockmore made improvements on the original design to make it better suited as a performing instrument and also developed a sophisticated fingering system, which allowed her to accurately perform fast passages, and large note leaps. This is a previously unreleased album of classical pieces recorded in 1973 accompanied by her sister, Nadia Reisenberg on piano. While Rockmore elevated this unique instrument into the classical music world, the haunting pieces on this album never stray far from the gothic feel of those early romantic horror films. Spooky!

MPEG stream: Liebeslied
MPEG stream: Nocturne in C# Minor

MISSISSIPPI ALERT!!!!MISSISSIPPI ALERT!!!MISSISSIPPI ALERT!!!!! Ok, that no doubt got your attention. However, unlike Mississippi's forays into blues, world music, and, uh, Dutch punk rock, this record (an alternately titled reissue of Rockmore's The Art Of The Theremin album) takes a surprising turn into the realm of classical music. But not just *any* classical music, no, this here record will no doubt be familiar to many aQ customers, as Lithuanian born Clara Rockmore (1911-1998) is legendary for her mastery of one of the first and strangest electronic musical instruments ever - the theremin. Even if you think you are unaware of what this unique instrument sounds like, you've definitely heard it SOMEWHERE, most likely in some cheesy sci-fi movie from the 1950s. But rather than retread the story of the theremin in general and Clara Rockmore specifically (for that you're advised to check out the amazing documentary Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey), we will just let you know that this record is completely amazing, absolutely beautiful, and probably unlike anything else you've heard before. Covering selected works from composers such as Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, and Tchaikovsky, among others, Rockmore is capable of creating some of the saddest, most mournful sounds ever committed to tape. With literally every song, the theremin sounds like it is weeping out its melodies alongside its piano accompaniment, provided by Rockmore's sister Nadia Reisenberg. Soundwise, many of you will be reminded of a singing saw, or perhaps some heavily sustained bowed string instrument, but the buzzing electronic warmth of the theremin is really beyond classification. The sounds are at once familiar but also totally alien, and anyone who has actually played a theremin should be well aware of how unbelievably difficult they are to control (you don't even touch the thing!). But Rockmore was clearly cut from a different cloth altogether, and to this day she remains undisputed master of the instrument. Mississippi really outdid themselves with the packaging on this one, the heavy duty lp comes housed in a beautiful thick gatefold jacket with all kinds of detailed information. And we should hardly have to warn you of this record's limited availability, so don't miss out.

Everyone's favorite midnight movie soundtrack, beautifully packaged and re-released.

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

SORRY. So lovely! British guitarist (living in LA) Poole, who has done two great, trance inducing solo albums of his "just-intonation" improvisations, here has his acoustic guitar accompanied by the droning, bowed guitars of Douglas Williford and Joseph Hammer, for 18 minutes of bliss. Our only complaint is that this is not a full-length.

For folks who musically came of age in the nineties, there are a handful of bands that defined out tastes, bands we obsessed over, bands that even to this day, are spoken of in hushed tones, a musical pantheon who not only created some of our favorite records EVER, but also seemed to spawn a legion of later/future bands, started by those self same fans. We're talking Slint of course, Codeine, Bitch Magnet, but then there's Rodan, another Louisville band (same as Slint) that seemed poised for greatness, but who left us with only one record, just six songs, but holy shit, those six songs, that one record is a fucking mind blower, a heavy, noisy, melodic math rock stunner that to this day few bands have come close to matching, in terms of intensity, originality, and pure math/post/noise rock radness. And while the various members would go on to play in other great bands, June Of 44, the Rachel's, Shipping News, Sonora Pine, none of those bands captured the same sonic magic as Rodan. Readers of the aQ list who don't have Rodan's record Rusty, do yourself a favor, and drop everything, and track it down NOW. You will not be sorry. For those of you like us, who have played that record to death for the last 20 years, well, this record is for you. There were rumblings a while back of a new Rodan record, or perhaps an unearthed second album, which had most of us FREAKING OUT. Ends up what it was, was a collection of singles and compilation tracks, and Rodan's Peel Sessions, so not a new record, or a lost record, but hell, we're not complaining one bit. This collection opens with what might actually be one of our favorite Rodan song ever, their track from, the Simple Machines way way split with Tsunami, Unrest and Superchunk, and it's the perfect Rodan song, with it's super mathy, tense and dense, opening, all stop start heaviness, crazy shifting time signatures, continually morphing arrangement, then BAM, the song explodes into an impossibly catchy almost jangly pop, that sounds a bit like a noisier mathier Sebadoh, albeit all instrumental, finally returning to that churning mathy intro. Worth it JUST for that track. But there's so much more. Their How The Winter Was Passed 7" from 1993, which was released right before Rusty, and is a bit more aggressive, howled vox, wild mathy tangles, some VERY Slinty spoken word broodery, then there's their track from the Half Cocked soundtrack, their track from another killer split with Rocket From The Crypt, Pitchblende and Walleye, another one of our Rodan faves, churning and proggy, heavy and noisy, crunchy guitars, spidery melodies, wild intricate drumming, more Slinty spoken word, and some cool trippy psychedelic vocal harmonies, and there's a killer track from some comp even us obsessive Rodan fans never managed to track down, which finds Tara Jane O'Neil handling the vocals, over another Rodan classic, lurching from mathy tangle, to lilting lope and back again. And if that weren't enough, the real reason for fans to snag this is the Peel Sessions, three tracks, never before released as far as we can tell, from the same era as Rusty, and sonically, it's more Rodan radness, darkly melodic, heavy and mathy and super melodic."Sangre" is all aching minor key moodiness, wrapped in prickly mathy crunch, "Big Things, Small Things", is quirky and tangly, a slow build, super dense/tense math workout that's like prog for the indie post rock set, the sound dizzying and intricate, but never losing site of the song, never ditching the melody, the sort of impossible hookiness that Rodan seemed to conjure up effortlessly. And finally, there's the almost 11 minute long "Before The Train", which needless to say, RULES, tons of parts, all woven together into an incredible, epic sonic sprawl, some ridiculous drumming, some stuttery start stop mathiness, some dreamy driftiness, a practically perfect collection of everything we loved, and still love about Rodan! On top of tall that, both the cd AND the lp also include a bonus download of ten unreleased live tracks!!! So absolutely and utterly recommended!!! RIP Jason Noble.

MPEG stream: Darjeeling
MPEG stream: Milk And Melancholy
MPEG stream: Shiner
MPEG stream: Before The Train

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

SORRY.

We've long been fans of sound artist Steve Roden, and his 'lowercase' sound explorations. His music is minimal and often flickering on the very edge of audibility. Beautiful and occasionally dangerously delicate. On a recent visit, he passed us a cd from Jeffrey Roden, who just so happens to be Steve's uncle, and who is also a musician, a bass player by trade, but just like his nephew, Roden is not content to work within the traditional confines of an instrument's sound, or a particular genre. Roden composes for and records solo bass, but unlike many solo instrumental records, Seeds Of Happiness is all about melody and texture, this is not noisy, or skronky, or 'difficult', the strings are not scraped, or bowed, the sound is not processed, the bass is played like a bass, the notes rich and reverberant, the melodies fluid and lovely, the arrangements languid and lush. Some tracks are super simple, almost like a bass line just plucked from some lost pop song, allowed to hover and drift out in the open, loosed from its traditional rock moorings. Other songs are dense and subtly complex, little flurries of notes, tangled melodies, all woven into a shimmering static backdrop, for a simple swooping melody to drape over the top. The mood is minor key and melancholy, but most of the songs here are infused with a rich warmth, the melodies not so much sad as they are wistful.� A simply gorgeous, gorgeous lazy afternoon, rainy day assortment of dreamy drifting loveliness. So recommended.

MPEG stream: On Awakening
MPEG stream: Stillness
MPEG stream: Certainty
MPEG stream: Clouds Like Choirs

With the first track on this anthology being a recording of wind from a 1935 sound effects record, AQ beloved sound artist Steve Roden makes a very literal introduction to I Listen To The Wind That Obliterates My Traces. Released by Dust-To-Digital, this beautifully constructed hardback book filled with images both from and ephemeral to Roden's collection of 78s, as well as two discs worth of sounds from that antique vinyl. Yeah, the idea is pretty much the same as what the Climax Golden Twins presented via Dust-To-Digital on their also-awesome Victrola Favorites anthology a few years back; but Roden's collection trends more to the mid-part of the 20th Century and is focused on Americana (including a couple of Hawaiian tracks made before the islands were granted statehood). Following that crackled recording of the wailing wind from that sound effects record, is the unmistakable voice of John Jacob Niles, the 'mountain tenor' whose spooky falsetto and maudlin melodic wanderings predated Devendra Banhart by a good 60 years... Afterwards, there's plenty of bluesmen, blueswomen, gospel belters, Appalachian balladeers, and barbershop crooners, many of which seem quite world-weary in singing their tales of lust, money, and liquor (or the lack thereof). Some of the names are familiar to us (e.g. Clara Smith, Roy Smeck, Sol Hoopii), but there are plenty of anonymous recordings from home-cut discs as well. The arrangements for many of the songs tend to be very sparse, just voice and guitar is pretty much all you get on every track; and the album is dotted with tracks from antique sound effects records of birds, ice, and even "night noises!" For those of you aware of Roden's own compositions of understated field recordings, quiet ruminations on found objects, and soft looping techniques, this shouldn't be a big surprise. The vintage photos inside this 184 page book are completely lovely, with all of their rumpled edges, ruddy patinas, and cracked surfaces, with some far more poignant - such as the shot of a bunch of violas suspended outside in the sun perhaps to allow a coat of shellac to dry. There's the silhouette of G.J. Jessup decked out in his one-man drum and bugle corps regalia, and the glum looking fellow with the unkempt mustache leaning against his Funnygraph contraption (sadly, there's no corresponding recording for either photograph). Pages and pages of interesting images to provoke curiosity and evoke reverie. Altogether, Roden has compiled over 150 photos and 51 tracks for this stunning document of sonic obsession from Dust-To-Digital! Hard to imagine NOT wanting this.

MPEG stream: Wind
MPEG stream: John Henry
MPEG stream: Mandolin
MPEG stream: Rainfall And Thunder
MPEG stream: My Good Fur Nuthin' Man

Here's a new lil' 3" treat from the always-interesting LA-based experimentalist Steve Roden. It offers a view of land through a ship's dirty window... three black marks on the glass evoke the 'noise' of worn film as Roden's voice falls below the waterline. This song, "A Slow Moving Boat", has come to life through several poetic transformations described in a short text on the cd sleeve. Taking field recordings he made of a ship's hull in Norway, Roden has used them as guide for his voice as he hummed along to the drone, then replaced the original field with a recording of bowed banjo. As with all of the 'concepts' that drive Roden's work, this one is absolutely gentle... a subjective way of framing and eliciting a creative gesture that, in this case, deftly makes its way back to a ship as a commissioned soundtrack for an FM Staten Island ferry broadcast. The voice on this 15 minute piece ebbs in and out of itself, Roden intoning beautifully at both a high and a low register while the banjo buzzes and flutters. Strangely, as hand-made and human as this music is, it seems to leave its maker behind as it blows out of reach of land...

MPEG stream: A Slow Moving Boat

Steve Roden is the man who coined the term 'lowercase sound' to describe his own strategies in constructing a delicate minimalism out of very quiet sounds, subtle melodic phrases, and subtle looping structures. While many sound artists operate under the lowercase banner, Roden alongside Bernhard Gunter have long remained at the vangarde of this aesthetic and conceptual art form. With Gunter moving further and further down the path of improvisation, Roden's intuitive constructions of gossamer electrons are still as modest as ever, but have clearly developed into one of the strongest artistic statements in modern electronics. Airforms was commissioned for an installation at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in 2004. Inspired by the spray concrete architectural forms of Wallace Neff who in turn drew inspiration from nautilus shells, Roden designed an installtion of concrete sprayed balloons as an homage to the Neff houses. While these objects -- which sort of looked like a Dr. Seuss variation on Eva Hess sculptures -- were not used to construct the accompanying musical score, they succeeded in communicating an empathic delicacy and sadness along with the music. For the CD release of Airforms, Roden reconstructed the sound elements for stereo listening. As beautiful as it is modest, the Airforms CD ripples with a slow procession of of abstracted pipe organ loops periodically scratched with distant crackle.

MPEG stream: Airforms

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

SORRY. Steve Roden has self-released several 20 minute 3"cds on which he plucked, bowed, and rubbed a singular object with sporadic use of electronic manipulation. The chair that Steve uses on this recording was designed by Harry Bertoia (who made metal furniture as well as his sound sculptures). While the chair itself wasn't intended to make the gossamer tonalities that can be coaxed from Bertoia's sculptures, Roden intentionally mimics Bertoia's sounds and adds his own penchant for discreet melodic passages. Excellent stuff!

In Steve Roden's own words regarding this album which accompanied a Mark Rothko exhibition at the LA MOCA in 2006, "My intentions in placing a quiet 4 channel audio work in an alcove adjacent to Rothko's paintings, was not to create a soundtrack for his work; but to allow a viewer, or listener, to sense that the sound was connected to the paintings. Dark Over Light Earth exists as a separate artwork; but a connection to Rothko's 8 paintings remains, for it never could have been born without them. I initially made a list of every color in each of the 8 paintings, to generate a score. I recorded myself playing the score on harmonium and glockenspiel - the notes and their order pre-determined by my color notations; and the tempo, durations, and overall feel, improvised. Some of these recordings were then processed electronically with filters. I asked Jacob Danziger to listen to a recording of Morton Feldman's Rothko Chapel on headphones and attempt to play along on violin. He then sent me the recordings of his performance. The composition was created by cutting up, layering, and re-organizing the recordings." Jacob Danziger's languid violin feature prominently in Roden's composition, coming across very much like a scratchier variation of Feldman with some antiquated twinges of those fictional funerary violin pieces. Roden's additional chromatic swells and hypnotic patterns work very well against the violin; and all of this gets spun within Roden's wonderful revolving loops by the end of the record. A fitting and well-execute homage not only to Rothko but also to Feldman.

MPEG stream: Excerpt 1
MPEG stream: Excerpt 2

Yes, that does in fact say "Shorewed" in the title, a mistake that escaped all of the parties involved in proofing the artwork for this delicate and beautiful composition by LA's sound artist Steve Roden. Alas, these things they happen. For a few years now, the French label has been commissioning shortened compositions for what has turned out to be an exceptional series of 3" singles. There's an immediate parallel one could make to Metamkine's long out of print Cinema Pour L'Oreille series from many years back, although Ferns has less of a theoretical strain coming from musique concrete and more of a haunted impressionism relying on the smoke and mirror strategies of the drone. Roden's work is an excellent compliment to those contributions from Giancarlo Toniutti, Joe Colley, and Matt Shoemaker. Ecstasy Shorewed Its Petals uses only a small hand bell as the source material, which is more than enough for Roden to cull a wide range of sounds. With ample uses of pitch shifting and his excellent use of two delay pedals (anyone with a Loop Station should take note of Roden's work to learn a thing or twelve), Roden lays down a hypnotic and slightly eerie set of phasing loops with golden hued tones. On top of this foundation, he gradually builds up softly rasping textures, the gentle tinkling of the bell unprocessed, reversed tape gasps of drone snippets, and a distant tapping which sounds more like water tumbling out of a pipe rather than a bell. Roden keeps the composition simple, revealing the wealth of his sounds and then quietly retreating to a silent conclusion. Very lovely stuff!

MPEG stream: Ecstasy Shorewed Its Petals With The Full Peal Of The Bells

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

SORRY.

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

SORRY. Steve Roden's "Four Possible Landscapes" was initially presented as a conceptual challenge to Bernhard Gunter. Roden sent this piece to Gunter for consideration to be released on Gunter's Trente Oiseaux without explaining that this record was composed only using transformed elements from Gunter's delicate whisper of an album "Details Agrandis." While listening to "Four Possible Landscapes," I really can't hear any concrete references to Gunter's recordings, which certainly puts these two records into the now oddly anachronistic theoretical space of the simulacrum -- defined as 1. a network of semiological reflections and refractions which only point to references and never state meaning; 2. a buzz word that art theorists liberally slung around in the '80s, and more than a decade later may possibly be used to actually define something. The mirroring that Roden applies to Gunter's work could be viewed as a brilliant haiku that gets the words rearranged into a sparse yet metaphorically loaded lullaby. The emphasis is thus placed on the major differences between these two 'lowercase' artists: Gunter with his Morton Feldman-esque approach to the decontextualized domestic sound, Roden with his beautifully delicate application of melody and rhythm. Roden composes "Four Possible Landscape" with repeating motifs of digital bell tones (which may have origins in a tiny moment of Gunter's sine-wave feedback) and distant tidal washes of static (which could be from anything). Where Roden succeeds is, of course not due to the conceptual endgame but rather because of compositional prowess.

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

SORRY. Each sound from this series of 3"cds is the result of manipulation of a singular object with occasional electronic trickery. Steve Roden has taken a metal ribbed bubble lamp built in 1952 to fashion 20 action packed minutes of stethoscopic deep rumbles, polyrhythmic plucks, and subtle drone exploration. [/cat/experimental153.html]

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

SORRY.

Steve Roden's Speak No more About The Leaves has been Allan's favorite going-to-sleep record of the past little while, its whispery drones reminding him distantly of everything from a deconstructed Richard Youngs to a dessicated Bohren & Der Club of Gore. There's a bunch of academic concepts and references that went into the making of this record (discussed below) but that's less important than the fact that it sounds so nice. This lovely record deserved a lovely review, so we asked our pal Loren Chasse, friend and fan of LA experimentalist Steve Roden, to take a stab at it, as follows: Steve Roden has been given shit by the soundart world for being "experimentally incorrect". Perhaps this is because the concepts behind Roden's work are never so "conceptual"Ì or self-important that they become the reason why the music is supposed to be interesting, good or enjoyable. Roden's conceptual practice seems to be more of a private strategy for going about his creative work -- for providing the compositional process with specific possibilities and limitiations -- than it is a purposeful means for earning validation from the experimental art/music world. Take Speak No More About The Leaves...a sort of threeway meta-collaboration with composer Arnold Schoenberg and poet Stefan George in which Roden happens upon Schoenberg's use of George's verse for some lyrics to a piece of music titled "The book of the Hanging Gardens", transplants a cutting from this and cultivates a whole new life from it in his own work. The life of this record, indeed, comes so much from Roden's own mouth as he sings syllables taken from the original text and creates not so much a work of high fallutin' conceptual art as he does a beautiful song that might leave us wondering if Mr. Roden hasn't also been listening to Eyeless in Gaza somewhere along the way? If you like the title of the record and appreciate the poetic impulses at its origins you're already on your way to liking the music. Roden's voice is extremely intimate as it sits in the edge of the speakers (seeming as if it might be coming out of the phone you forgot to hang up), chanting into the room as shining slivers of sound effervesce, chime and fall around it. It's a world you can't quite place, probably because you haven't been so small that you could ever fit inside the terrarium that contains it, yet you will intuit something comforting and familiar as you use this record as a sort of stethoscope for listening in on the processes of tiny lives taking root as old ones decay and all but disappear.

MPEG stream: Airria (Hanging Garden) second version
MPEG stream: Speak No More About The Leaves

Here's a 2003 release that we've never stocked before, from one of our favorite sound artists. Steve Roden built this album originally as the sound design for an installation back in 2000, with all of the sounds sourced from three musical instruments found in a Chinatown giftshop, including a toy wooden flute, an aluminum wind chime, and a paper accordion. Where so many musicians would take these instruments and render their sounds cute, cheeky, or ironic, Roden has always been an artist with a profound sensitivity for his source material; and he deftly extracts harmonically rich and emotionally resonant hues and tones from all of those instruments. The first piece, sourced from the wooden flute, elegantly weaves sustained wisping tones out of a deep, almost sinewave-sounding thrum of down-pitched low-end rumbling. The looping hypnosis of this track harkens to the pre-digital smears of flutes that Zoviet France created on such albums as Shouting At The Ground or Shadow Thief Of The Sun - in other words, haunting, sublime, and gorgeous. The second track is adopted from the aluminum wind chimes, collects an aggregate of variably pitched sounds of those chimes, with deep resonance, metallic textural scrapes, and chittery clicks coming into the mix. The pacing of this track is quintessentially Roden, deliberate and hypnotic, becoming all the more engrossing the further one engages with the track. The final composition is for the paper accordion, whose spare notes evolve into a beautiful elegy of lilting tones that overlap and loop with each other, upon sets of miniature abrasions and a thick set of low-drones, which must have been designed to simulate those on the first track. Like much of Roden's work, this is a lovely piece of introspective minimalism, slowly germinating into a beautiful ambience.

MPEG stream: 8 Breaths Of Different Lengths
MPEG stream: Hands Moving, Slowly
MPEG stream: Air Chamber With 4 Holes

Scores for sound installations often have a way of not really translating when heard outside of the installation. Steve Roden is one of the few sound artists who has perfected the balancing act of creating a sublime sonic experience through his installation work which also translates equally as well on disc. Transmissions (Voices Of Objects And Skies) was originally commissioned by the Fresno Art Museum, and found Roden creating a metonymic environment that bridged childhood wonder with the rough technologies of tin-can telephones and daydreams of space travel and NASA. The installation itself was an 8 channel sound piece spread over 64 speakers which were all mounted within tin cans and suspended from the ceiling alongside countless other tin cans that housed low wattage colored light bulbs, creating a fantastic chandelier of muted light that was perfect for the delicate compositions. Roden states in the liner notes that the source material for the album was recordings of satellites by amateur astronomers from the 1960s through the 1980s; and through Roden's impeccable reductivist filtering and manipulation, he arrives at a slow-motion collage of electronic bleeps which might have more in common with a distantly flickering flute than anything electric in origin. Nevertheless, Roden turns these sounds into looping lullabies and subtle declinations of sound. It's one of the best pieces we've heard from Roden and is certainly recommended!

MPEG stream: Transmissions (excerpt 1)
MPEG stream: Transmissions (excerpt 2)

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

SORRY. Steve Roden's "View" consists of four 'possible landscapes' as drone studies into the resonant frequencies of glass. He collected a handful of samples from a window (sometimes closed, sometimes open - thus allowing the thick haze of city ambience to rush through) and revealed that the glass held beautiful tones distantly resembling slow moving flute passages or chimming bells rising out of miasmic washes. "View" ends up being similar in execution to the audible work of Francisco Lopez or more minimal Andrew Chalk pieces. This was initially presented as a sound installation at the jennjoygallery here in San Francisco, with the samples culled from the window overlooking Market Street.

Lichtung is sort of a collaboration between two beloved sound artists - Steve Roden and Machinefabriek (aka Rutger Zuydervelt), as the two only share sound files on one of the tracks found on this disc. The project began as part of a group exhibition / installation between Roden, Zuydervelt, and German visual artist Sabine Burger for a gallery in Germany. Burger created the video component, Roden and Zuydervelt produced the sound aspects, visual elements from all three artists populated the walls, and the floors were covered in leaves. Got it? There was obviously some discussion as to the scope of the audio work, as both Roden and Zuydervelt created work that shared sonorous sympathies while maintaining their own individual sensibilities. Roden brings field recordings to the foreground with phasing loops gathered from contact microphone studies with found objects. These are delicate constructions of tenuously held textures, quietly burbling at the edge of perception. While Zuydervelt, on the other hand, brings elegiac drones through violin and guitar for a quiet but comparably more dramatic set of recordings than Roden. With Zuydervelt's field recordings of crumbled leaves and broken twigs, his work fluidly moves in and out of Roden's haptic inventions, making the album feel quite seamless. The one track on which the two exchanged files is an extract of a live Machinefabriek show in which Zuydervelt used Roden's field recordings and the scrabbling of metal objects as the source materials to accompany his cinematic dronescaping. A beautiful, subtle album; but really can this be called a proper collaboration? It hardly matters really, lovely stuff regardless...

MPEG stream: Ice Bow
MPEG stream: Snow Bellsnow
MPEG stream: Vayhinger

Wow! Yet another amazing re-issue from this exciting new reissue label Sunbeam. We haven't been this excited about a rediscovered psych-folk classic since Red Hash by Gary Higgins. Nobody knew what to expect from the cover photo of Rodier, (looking a lot like Geddy Lee) staring out at us from a hazy meadow with the strange enigmatic title: Upon Velveatur. But by the second song, we had immediately snatched up the only two copies. So we knew we had to get more and share this with the rest of you. Upon Velveatur is a dreamy French-Canadian psych-folk pop suite that varies from hushed mystical songs lushly orchestrated with strings and theremin to more rock-oriented numbers featuring stinging electric guitar. Lazy comparisons to Nick Drake are inevitable, and if we must go there, Upon Velveatur is closest to Bryter Later in terms of feel and production value. But Rodier can also sound like John Lennon with Cream as the band, Fleetwood Mac on backing vocals,and produced by Roger Nichols and his Small Circle of Friends all on one song! We get the feeling that maybe some folks like Neil Halstead were onto the sounds of Rodier as we were listening to some Mojave 3 and could totally hear Rodier's voice and stylings being transmitted by Mr. Halstead. Featuring bonus singles from an earlier psych folk project, Rodier-Gauthier, and liner notes from the man himself. Totally Recommended!

MPEG stream: My Spirit's Calling
MPEG stream: The Key
MPEG stream: While My Castle's Burning

As archival collections of "lost tapes" by hitherto unknown musical geniuses go, Strut's release last year of Rodion G.A.'s The Lost Tapes was the creme de la creme. The bomb. Top of the pops. We made it a Record Of The Week and it's still steady sellin'. Fuzzed out, Eastern Bloc electro-prog funk madness from the late '70s / early '80s that's super catchy, melodic and motorik; a lo-fi, synth-laden outsider kraut-groove delight all around. Then, this year, for Record Store Day, Strut was like, check it out, there's MORE! They released a limited edition 12" consisting of Rodion's previously unreleased (and apparently, unused) soundtrack music intended for an animated science fiction series on Romanian television, circa 1983, called Misuinea Spatiala Delta (Delta Space Mission). Wow. It was limited to just 1000 copies, we got as many as we could for Record Store Day (a whole bunch) and they sold out immediately. Never got to list it. BUT, yay, somehow some more copies were just made available to us by one of our suppliers. Don't know if it's a repress or what, pretty sure we can't get more in any case. So we brought in a bunch for all of you who missed it on RSD, grab 'em while you can. As with The Lost Tapes, this 12", which plays at 45rpm, is highly recommended! Featuring lots of swirling, spacey synth (of course!), all pew-pew-pew zip-zip-zap, this also of course includes some funky electro grooves with tick-tock electronic beats and nicely melodic synth-swoosh. Come to think of it, it's not unlike the music of T.R.A.S.E., another recent Record Of The Week. And of course if you liked The Lost Tapes, you'll like this. Let's hope they keep digging in Rodion's vaults, a Lost Tapes Vol.2 would be cool! LIMITED! Record Store Day leftovers (???) while they last!! (By the way, you can find some of the Delta Space Mission animation on YouTube, supposedly with the Rodion music. Looks pretty cool!!)

MPEG stream: Bau-Bau

Wow! Ok, this is pretty darn amazing. We ordered a copy of this based on a brief description we read, something along the lines of: "long lost futuristic funky proggy electronic music from behind the Iron Curtain". That was enough for us. And maybe for you too, though we're gonna go on and on about this anyway. But yeah, if that description piques your interest, let us just say that you will NOT be disappointed. However incredibly weird and cool you might imagine this could be from that short synopsis, it is probably even better! And we were listening to it, and loving it, before we delved into the detailed liner notes and found out what it was all about - or when exactly it was from. So that's another recommendation, the music stands on its own without prior awareness of its quite interesting historical aspects. What you get here are ten killer tracks drenched in echo effects, dense with percolating beats, uber-distorted analog synths, and eerily ear-catching melodies, a sound utterly full of "flanged, phased, and fuzzed electricity". They're previously unreleased reel-to-reel recordings, circa 1978-1984, from the vaults of this pioneering Romanian DIY electro-prog-pop groop who only released two tracks officially during their career, on a state-sanctioned compilation lp in 1981, before fading into obscurity. Rodion G.A. was founded in 1975 by a fellow named Rodion Ladislau Rosca, who had been collecting prog records and experimenting with homebuilt electronic gear since the dawn of the '70s. The G.A. comes from the names of the other two founding members of the band, but it's really composer Rodion Rosca's show, the material here recorded in Rodion's home studio in Cluj, most instruments played and programmed by Rodion himself, with occasional 'real' drumming contributed by one of the other guys. Despite the deprivations of living in an oppressive Communist dictatorship, Rodion's creativity flourished, and this music still sounds super fresh and ahead of its time, venturing even into full-on proto-techno with the likes of "Diagonala", though always in its own unique hybrid form, on that track ferinstance mixing in what sounds like Eastern European folk motifs and Goblin-y giallo soundtrack spookiness. Krautrock influences shine through too, Kraftwerk and Cluster for sure, plus we can't help but think of odd outsider aQ faves Bruce Haack and Wicked Witch - cool company to be in! Rodion's bombastic "hairy funk" prog grooves are melded to melodic pop hooks, always cloaked with a wonderfully miasmic layer of lo-fi grime. Everything here has its unique charms, ranging from the sinister, grittily distorted bunkurfunk of "Citadela", to the motorik delightfulness of "Salt 83", so strangely warped and sunshiney, to "In Linistea Noptii", wherein lovely piano playing mixes it up with the electronic elements. Some tracks are instrumentals, some have catchy vocal choruses - and some are visited by what sound like the echoing cries of a prehistoric pterodactyl, presumably another synth effect, sizzling stabs of which are always swooshing around. So THIS was the sound of underground Romania back in the day, who knew? We are so thankful this freaky music didn't stay a secret forever. Yep, these "lost tapes" are quite the discovery, minds have been blown for sure. Automatic Record Of The Week. Packaged with extensive liner notes by Andy Thomas, illustrated with vintage photos, telling the whole fascinating story of Rodion's stunted career, and recent reemergence as the "Godfather of Romanian electronic music". Oh, and the vinyl version also comes with a cd!

MPEG stream: Cantec Fulger
MPEG stream: Citadela
MPEG stream: Disco Mania
MPEG stream: Imagini Din Vis

Attention Steel Pan Fans! Japan's EM Records at your service, with the latest (fourth already) in their unusual series of obscure reissues featuring that trademark Trinidadian tuned percussion instrument, the steel pan (drum). If you've been with the series thus far, you'll want this one too for sure. Or, if you've never checked out any steel pan music, this wouldn't be a bad place to start, either. As the first ever solo album by a steel pan player from Trinidad, one who'd been the musical director for calypso superstars Lord Kitchener and Mighty Sparrow, it had a duty to be groovy, and Earl Rodney's 1973 album Friends & Countrymen is nothing if not groovy, slinkily so on opening track "Juck Juck" ferinstance. Recorded in New York City by Rodney and group of fellow expatriates from the islands, this album is mostly instrumental, most definitely danceable, full of Afro-Caribbean rhythms, jazzy horns, funky '70s wah wah guitar, congas, whistles, and of course the lovely vibes-like sounds of the steel pans themselves. As always with EM releases, this reissue is top notch, the cardboard gatefold sleeve containing a fold-out 12"x12" poster of the album's wild and colorful cover painting. Man, by the time EM is done with this Steel Pan Series of theirs, we're ALL gonna be steel pan fans, dammit. They will not take no for an answer.

MPEG stream: Juck Juck
MPEG stream: Strife In The Village

Pop quiz! Quick: who's the "street poet" singer with no first name*, son of Mexican immigrants, born and raised in Detroit Michigan, whose debut album from 1970 sounded like a fuzz-soul-psych version of Bob Dylan and/or Donovan, and was an underground hit in South Africa of all places?? Duh, Rodriguez of course. It's about time his inexplicably obscure Cold Fact got the deluxe reissue treatment it deserves. Seriously, after listening to this for the first time, you'll feel like you just heard a bona fide '60s classic, and be amazed you had never heard these songs before. They ought to be all over "oldies" rock radio. It's ridiculous like that. Songs like "Sugar Man" and "I Wonder" seem like they should be fixtures of the baby boomer memory lane hit parade. It's so very of its era, "This Is Not A Song, It's An Outburst: Or, The Establishment Blues" is certainly a sixties song title, isn't it? Likewise "Rich Folks Hoax", "Hate Street Dialogue", and "Crucify Your Mind"... But, maybe he was just a little too freaky and right on, and (crucially) never got the right sort of record label support to become well known to the Woodstock Nation, though this album had some rather random, surprising success so far off in the Southern Hemisphere, in South Africa and Australia and New Zealand, which Rodriguez himself was unaware of for many years! If left to his own devices, perhaps Rodriguez would have come off sounding a bit too much like Dylan. But Cold Fact was a "Theo-Coff" production, from the badass Motor City team of Mike Theodore and funk guitarist Dennis Coffey, and they helped accentuate the more underground and urban aspects of Rodriguez's sound. With his hip, Dylanesque poetry set amidst lush orchestration and gritty grooves, Rodriguez's Cold Fact is a super catchy, tripped out slice of street-level, soulful psychedelia, full of drug references and radical political critique. We alluded to "fuzz" above, but on the track "Only Good For Conversation" we mean FUZZ. That track's a stone(d) cold classic when it comes to heavy duty fuzz guitar crunch. This reish comes in a nice digipack, with cover embossing and a big ol' cd booklet stuffed with text (liner notes, lyrics) and photos. One of the several cd booklet essays explains in part Rodriguez's unexpected appeal in South Africa - apparently, in that repressive society, it was due to the edgy, uncensored nature of his lyrics. "I Wonder", for instance, with its lines about "I wonder how many times you had sex / And I wonder do you know who'll be next" was considered so risque that if you were a teenager and wanted to be cool, you HAD to have this record. Apparently, many folks in South Africa thought of Rodriguez as being a star up there with the Beatles, and when they didn't hear more from him, all sorts of wild rumors spread that he'd died, been accidentally electrocuted, OD'd, or even committed suicide on stage! When, in fact, he simply had no idea how "big" he was in South Africa, and his recording career had stalled out elsewhere after his sophomore album, 1971's Coming From Reality (also soon to be reissued). Turns out he's still alive and well, today, and has actually gone to South African to pay arena (?!) shows in recent years. In fact, when we've had album in the store before, it was only available on cd as an expensive import - from South Africa! So we're, again, super stoked that Light In The Attic put the effort in to do this long overdue, definitive domestic reissue. *actually, his first name was Sixto, but he usually just went by Rodriguez.

MPEG stream: Sugar Man
MPEG stream: Only Good For Conversation
MPEG stream: Hate Street Dialogue

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

SORRY.

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

SORRY. Arsenio Rodriguez is one of the masters of the Tres Guitar - a guitar originating from a three string guitar of African Congolese origin. Completely blind since the age of six, Rodriguez started learning to play guitar in his teens. It was during a trip to New York in 1947 in an attempt to restore his sight that he had the opportunity to play with Machito's orchestra. He decided to return to New York in 1953 and while there, started his own group. These recordings were made that year and feature vocals by Rene Scull (who has a vibrato technique all his own) and Candido Antomattei. The size of the ensemble, though small, still has the energy and swing of a much bigger group.

Another great collection of recordings by Cuban tres guitarist Arsenio Rodriguez. "Dundunbanza", the title track of this collection is significant because it is a traditional Congolese song which Rodriguez - a Cuban of Congolese descent - adapted to his conjunto. Arsenio was the first Cuban musician to incorporate the conga into his group; a move that was quite controversial at

RealAudio clip: Dundunbanza

Another collection of recordings from Cuban tres guitarist Arsenio Rodriguez. These were made in Cuba between 1946-1950 and feature much the same line up as on "Como Se Goza En El Barrio" - most notably Rene Scull on vocals. More and more I am impressed with Arsenio Rodriguez and his output. Unlike so much of the newer Cuban releases of the Buena Vista Social Club ilk that are being released which are so clean as to be aseptic, these contain a beautiful rawness which is incomparable. The tres guitar itself, which has 3 pairs of unison tuned strings, has an odd always-semi-out-of-tune quality to it which makes my hair stand on end. Add to that beautifully melodic and rhythmically syncopated solo lines exchanged between tres, piano and trumpet, top it off with Rene Scull's ridiculous vibrato singing (which I must admit, took a while for me to warm up to, but is well worth the warmin) and you've got some kick ass Cuban music. No collection of Cuban music should be without a disk by Arsenio Rodriguez.

RealAudio clip: Dame un Cachito Pa'Huele

[ aquarius records catalogue — R ]