Lalo Schrifin's second most famous soundtrack after Mission Impossible (he also scored Dirty Harry, Cincinnati Kid and Cool Hand Luke among others) is this monster score for Enter The Dragon. The hit film is a perennial cult favorite that not only launched the Kung Fu Martial Arts Film craze in America but made its star Bruce Lee a legend due to his untimely death six months before the movie was released. But for avid readers of Wax Poetics, this score resonates amongst hip hop aficionados and sample heads alike for its thrilling combinations of jazz tension, funk breaks, wah guitars and far eastern musical motifs, not to mention Bruce Lee's battle cries peppered throughout. Hip hop and martial arts have often kept close quarters from Dolemite to the Wu Tang Klan, and this score just may be ground zero for the marriage of both those worlds.
HaiyaHHHHHHHH!!!!!
A bit of a Schimpfluch kick going on at aQuarius lately, and that's hardly an infliction that's for the faint of heart. We recently got in the impeccable, existential blank stare of an album in G*Park's Sub, and now we have this super limited cassette from the overarching Schimpfluch-Gruppe. The loose knit Swiss collective of aktionists, noise tacticians, and performance artists mines the psychologically violent territories of the id, including the aforementioned G*Park, Dave Phillips (aka Dead Peni), Sudden Infant, and Rudolf Eb.Er (aka Runzelstirn & Gurglestock), amongst other malcontents. Here, the Schimpfluch-Gruppe is represented by Rudolf Eb.Er and Dave Phillips, neither of whom are artists known for their subtlety. Surprisingly though, this cassette is a rather slow burning affair based on manipulated field recordings. But lest you think this a droll exercise in phonography, Phillips and Eb.Er guide their composition into something very carcinogenic. Unsettled frequencies from dripping water and early morning bird twitter are extracted and molded into piercing drones, atonal billowing masses, and lurching loops of jittery white noise with horrific exasperated vocalizations from one of those two. Phillips in particular has a facet in his body of work that favors the hellish chorals of Southeast Asian insect noise that can be equally hallucinatory and terrifying; and that's not too far from what he and Phillips are doing here. Something around 100 copies in existence.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Schizoid was responsible for our favorite tracks on the massive (and massively good) 'Don't Fuck With Us' 3 cd compilation of North American digital hardcore compiled by the 'expert' on such things, Mr. Alec Empire. We described Schizoid as "Burzum goes DHR" and that's still pretty right on. But now we have a whole disc, so there's much more variation and much more mayhem! Super distorted, heavily effected, totally evil vocals over dense electronic soundscapes, with chopped up metal guitars, pounding hardcore/gabber/drill'n'bass rhythms. Way more intense and aggressive than almost anything on DHR, and certainly more fucked up and pummelling than almost any electronic music we've heard lately, without falling into the boring, repetitive sameness of most gabber/digital hardcore. Super varied, with full on speed metal gabber, lots of spaced out ambient breaks, electronic drones, and some seriously damaged mid tempo primitive-black-metal-electronica. This is definitely some of the best (and most brutal) electronica to come our way since we first heard 'The Destroyer'. For fans of DHR, The Berserker, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Pig Destroyer, Venetian Snares, Atomsmasher, Burzum, Darkthrone and all that evil stuff.
With a name and title that are quite a mouthful (nay, alphabetful!), what might you expect musically from this gent? (more clues: he's a German fella also in Holosud etc., and this is on A-Musik). Well on this, his fourth full-length, you'll be treated to a hefty dose of the arpeggiator button on his Casio for one thing. A playful multi-tiered electronic pop arcade of PacMan-esque melodies.
As you may have heard, Allan here just had a baby! And thus, our last in-between list's special theme was "baby music" - a bunch of suggestions by friends who are parents, of music that they liked to play for their newborns and infants. But, what has Allan really been playing for his little girl? Well, um, actually she's been hearing a lot of the things Allan has been working on reviewing for aQuarius. Fortunately for her, one of 'em was this disc, by German electronic experimentalist Gunter Schlienz, his first full-length cd after quite a few obscure cassette and cd-r releases over the past four or five years.
And it's totally baby-approved and appropriate, these delicate, otherworldly ambient instrumentals full of light and shade and (occasionally eerie) blissfulness, with titles like "Immaculate", "Numb", "Lament", "Shimmer", and, oddly enough, "Janitor".
Schlienz's modular synth and field recordings create Cluster-y swells of sound, moving in gentle waves adorned with simple sweet melodies and darker drones. A few of his friends, including Norm Chambers (aka Panabrite, also the guy who actually made the Science Of The Sea album by "Jurgen Muller" we liked so much) appear as guests on here as well, adding strings, piano, etc.
We're not really sure if Allan's baby likes this a lot or not (hard to tell, as yet), but HE sure does. Consider Contemplation to be a lovely, peaceful set of abstract electronic lullabies for adults, and possibly their children too! Limited to 300 copies, btw.
Oranur III is a classic postindustrial album from Schloss Tegal, a cryptic American duo who traded in death-shroud ambience and paranoiac aesthetics - both of which feature prominently here. Originally, released back in 1995, the album drew inspiration from the latter day ideas of Wilhelm Reich. This Austrian psychoanalyst from the early 20th Century had attempted to reconcile Marxism and psychoanalysis, causing the beginning of a rift with some of the more conservative elements within his field. Over time, his ideas about human sexuality and the energies of the human body became more radical and more bizarre, including such notions of orgone energy and its convoluted mythological system that included extraterrestrial beings, UFO manifestations, deadly forms of radiation, and his tool to fight such nefarious entities - Reich's cloudbuster.
It's these more metaphysically loaded ideas that Schloss Tegal are employing as allegory for the demise / deterioriorization of society, paralleling much of the critiques mapped out by Genesis P-Orridge, SPK, and Monte Cazzaza in the heyday of industrial culture. Schloss Tegal settles all of their tracks with a heavy, foggy atmosphere that gives the sense of being anesthetized whilst various engineers and technicians probe, prod, and invade the body. Murky repetitive samples, some of which speak directly to experiences with extraterrestrial beings, cycle throughout Schloss Tegal's mercury poisoned dronings and irradiated windstorms of blurred noise. The work is not quite as oppressively dark as Brighter Death Now, but embraces a similar existential horror. Great to have this one back in print, now with two bonus tracks not found on the originals.
Better known for his post-Kraut rock electronica as Pluramon, Marcus Schmickler has also been tinkering with the ideas of academic composition. He claims that his interest is a "confrontation with modern classical composers," and that "innovations are only
Marcus Schmickler (aka Pluramon and Wabi Sabi) expands his electronica experimentations creating a surreal open-ended album of painterly textural sounds. Certainly for fans of Jan St. Werner's more experimental outings (Microstoria and Lithops).
Drone. DRONE. DRRRRROOOOOONNNNNNNE. That's what you get on this recent Hapna release by Pluramon's Marcus Schmickler. He's teamed up here with someone less well-known to us, New Zealander Hayden Chisholm, who is apparently a quite successful saxophonist and new-music composer. But Chisholm's not playing saxophone here, instead he's playing bagpipes and sho (a Japanese mouth-organ), whilst Schmickler adds electronics to the mix and processes the sound through his computer, to extend and abstract, to amplify and multiply, and further modulate the drones blown by Chisholm. The results are, well, exquisitely droney. Now we all know that bagpipes can be droney, but pleasantly so? Schmickler's manipulations keep this sounding like there's a real breathing human being behind the instrument, but also sands off some of the shrill grinding abrasiveness characteristic of the bagpipes... yet the threat lurks.
There's two pieces here, the 23:36 title track (dedicated to the venerable dronologist Phill Niblock, and it sounds like it) and the 21:06 "Infinity In The Shape Of A Poodle" (which is dedicated, oddly enough, to Bjork, but still sounds like a Niblock homage). Where track one displays a calm yet powerful, all-encompassing beehive grind, track two starts off rather whispy, more of a gentle drone, and then eventually soars to higher, heavenly realms of (to our ears, and hopefully Bjork's too) glittering beauty, that at the same time also suggests suspense-movie sinisterness.
As noted, both tracks are lengthy, but those many minutes are put to good use. During each there is constant movement, these aren't static drones at all. Basically if you want drone, this here's a good drone disc!!
PS. for some reason, Hapna have switched from their thin plastic sleeve cd packaging to the more ordinary (but no less nice-lookin') digipak.
Y'know how there's been a lot of folks doin' the "American Primitive" solo acoustic guitar thing lately, all of them inspired to one degree or another by the late great John Fahey and the other denizens of Fahey's Takoma Records label? Folks like Jack Rose, Glenn Jones, Ben "Six Organs Of Admittance" Chasny, Patrick "Langtry" McKinney, Sir Richard Bishop... the list goes on and on and we're happy to add another name: Charlie Schmidt. But Charlie Schmidt has greater claim than most to the "fake Fahey" tag: not only was he was a friend of Fahey's (or maybe even, we should say, a protege), but some of his own recorded compositions meant for a collaborative album with Fahey wound up being mistaken for actual Fahey performances and were included as previously unreleased tracks on the Best Of John Fahey Vol. 2 album released after Fahey's death! Whoops. When the producers of such an anthology can be unintentionally fooled like that, you've gotta belive that this Schmidt fella sounds a heckuva lot like genuine Fahey. And that's no bad thing, is it? Not at all. So for fans of Fahey and Fahey-like steel string guitar explorations, Schmidt's debut cd Xanthe Terra is quite recommended. Not surprisingly, this disc is dedicated to John Fahey, but it's also dedicated to the scientists and engineers of the Mars Exploration Rover Project, as Mars exploration is a big interest of, and influence on, Mr. Schmidt. Xanthe Terra is the name of an area on Mars, in fact. And this record is Schmidt's idea of a soundtrack to accompany a mind's-eye hike on the surface of Mars! Includes one Fahey cover tune ("Dance Of The Inhabitants Of The Palace Of King Philip XIV Of Spain") and a dozen Faheyesque originals, technically graceful and sweetly melancholic. A relaxingly familiar sound with intricacies that ultimately belong to Charlie Schmidt, as watched over by the benevolent ghost of JF.
A fantasy opera, based on Mervyn Peake's gothic novels, written by keyboardist Irmin Schmidt of krautrock legends Can. He utilizes everything from traditional operatic vocals to synthisized breakbeats to tell the story inspired by the great castle Gormenghast and its inhabitants.
Wow, it's definitely Christmas around here and how can we tell? Well, for one thing we got this amazing new soundtrack reissue that we never realized until now we have been looking for most of our adult life. It's on Crippled Dick Hot Wax, one of our fave reissue labels that we haven't heard from in years and had feared they disappeared for good. And it's another lost gem from the proto-Can universe of The Inner Space, the same early group incarnation that gave us the soundtrack to the unreleased surreal-politico film, Agilok and Blubbo!
One of our favorite Krautrock obscurities compilations from years and years ago was called Kraut Demons Kraut and two of the tracks were credited to The Can, but didn't sound like Can at all. These were pastoral and pretty with flutes and guitar, one featured very folky female vocals by Margareta Juvan called, "I'm Hiding My Nightingale", the other track was called "Kama Sutra" (billed here as "Indisches Panorama I"). We had always wondered where those recordings had come from, and how they related to Can. It wasn't until someone put this on in the store after we just got it in that it all came rushing back. Those songs were from a rare 1968 German erotic film by Kobi Jaegar called Kamasutra: Consumation Of Love and were arranged and performed by Irmin Schmidt & The Inner Space, whose then lineup of Jaki Leibeziet, Malcolm Mooney and Michael Karoli was essentially the same line-up of Can's debut full length, Monster Movie.
But much of this is different from the Can we know (though the Malcolm Mooney-sung "There Was A Man" points at what Can was to become, and Michael Karoli's simmering electric guitar lines are as signature as ever), it even sounds very different from the other Inner Space release, Agilok and Blubbo. That soundtrack was more exploratory, improvisational and experimental, while Kamasutra is much more focused and musically gorgeous. Lots of sitars, flutes, acoustic and electric guitars playing slow-burning compositions with loping repetitive rhythms. Occasionally rocking out a groove, but more often wandering through many pastoral raga-tinged extrapolations. This is the most psychedelically kosmiche recording we've ever heard from this outfit, which of course gives it our highest recommendation!
M.C. Schmidt, for those who may not know, is Martin from conceptual electronic duo Matmos. And while Martin's other half in music and life, Drew Daniel, has been more high profile over the years with his side project, Soft Pink Truth (especially with last year's polarizing yet funny take on gay subtext and black metal, Why Do The Heathen's Rage?), this is Martin's very first solo record! Quite different from what we have come to expect from Matmos, Batu Malablab is a suite for prepared piano, flute and electronics that is nonetheless a beautifully captivating and transcendent listen.
Joined By Jon "Wobbly" Leidecker and Thomas Dimuzio, Batu Malablab explores the same Western fascination with Eastern music that has intrigued both populist and avant-garde artists for years from Martin Denny to John Cage. Using piano prepared in such a way to sound like gamelans, with passages of flute and occasional female voices and field recordings that extend over two side-long pieces ("Lowland Side" and "Mountain Side"), framed and nuanced after the geographical locations they reference. Toying with the once prevalent ideas of retro-academic musical explorations of exoticism while actually delivering a convincing record that exceeds the trappings of those said ideas is an amazing feat in itself, and Batu Malablab delivers both an exploration of imaginary global sounds and an incredibly deft composition in texture and feel that goes far beyond its referential touchstones.
A 2-cd re-issue of Ulrich Schnauss's debut album, Far Away Trains Passing By, plus some lovely unreleased material. Shimmery, earnest electronic shoegaze cloaked in wonder with a touch of sadness. Sweetly pretty without tumbling into saccharine excess. Actually, as much as we love Mr. Schnauss, this also really made us yearn for our old Slowdive albums! No surprise that he was a contributer to Morr Music's compilation of Slowdive covers, "Blue Skied an' Clear."
Schnauss' work here can also be considered the opposite side of the coin from a band like M83. If M83 were a horror movie soundtrack, this could be for a fantasy film by the same director illustrating a tale of a boy riding dragons in outer space, a whimsical video game, or a rainy day dream. Recommended for fans of the above as well as of Boards of Canada and B. Fleischmann.
Swooooon!! He made us wait years, but finally Mr. Schnauss's follow-up to 2003's A Strangely Isolated Place has arrived! Are you ready for some epic shoegazer splendor? Well, sink your ears into this swirling blown-out shimmering dreaminess. The heavily processed and effected vocals, guitars and synthesizers are all melded together into one envelopingly dense yet somehow airy procession. Absolutely gorgeous and absolutely recommended!
New record from shoegaze electronic maestro Schnauss, here joined by Mark Peters from the band Engineers. While we wait near impatiently for Schnauss's next proper full length in a couple of months, we're happy to spend time in the moody atmospheres of this latest collaborative effort. Underrated Silence takes the familiar synth washes we've come to expect with Schnauss, and tempers them with Peters' Robyn Guthrie-style guitar treatments. The mood is frosty, but beautifully dreamy, taking in the crisp vibrancy of a clear winter's day (which sadly we didn't have much of this year). While not necessarily typical of Schnauss's more pop-oriented recordings, Underrated Silence plays out as more cinematic and mysterious with more experimental edges in sound, and is a welcome addition to his too short discography. Recommended!
Once a member of Tangerine Dream and Kluster, Conrad Schnitzler evolved into one of the most distinctive artists within the Krautrock scene. Through such seminal albums as Ballet Statique and Con, Schnitzler developed an uncompromising aesthetic that blossomed beyond the cosmic expansiveness of his fellow psychedelic journeymen and into oblique experiments whose bleak results were the templates that inspired post-industrial expressionists such as MB, Giancarlo Toniutti, Arcane Device, and Cranioclast, not to forget about his impact on the works of Emeralds, Omit, and Oneohtrix Point Never.
10.10.84 is a document of one of Schnitzler's 'kassetten konzert', during which he played back a number of pre-recorded cassettes through upwards of six decks that he would sometimes suspend from a belt around his waste and broadcast through a megaphone wired to a metal helmet that he wore on his head. Given his studies with Joseph Beuys in the '60s, one could postulate that these performances might also warrant some theatrical gestures given the mobility of this set-up. For this konzert recorded in Berlin, Schnitzler overlays sweeping oscillations, clouds of static, and nervous electronic percolations, all of which hold a metallic sheen as if each of these sounds could sharpen knives intent on scraping out the collective inner ear canal of the audience. While the step sequencing of his more accessible works isn't all that present, scattershot firings of horror-laden synth notes burst throughout Schnitzler's signature use of heavily filtered electrical tones. Limited to 250 copies, of which we probably have the last ones.
An album that launched thousands of better known records, Ballet Statique is Conrad Schniztler's masterpiece. Schnitzler, of course, was a maverick in the Krautrock community, having been an original member of both Tangerine Dream and Kluster, and later developing an expressive language of tape collage and electronic synthesis which expanded upon his early studies with Joseph Beuys. His most influential works, however, came out in the late '70s following an almost serialist body of work based on the poetics of various colors through electronic sound, eventually leading to Ballet Statique. It was originally released with the title 'Con' back in 1978 through the Barclay funded Egg Records, Ballet Statique is a skeletal distillation of progressive electronics into a bleak hypnosis of rotating melodies, atonal slashes of synthetic noise, and proto-techno rhythmic propulsion. While this album has been reissued a few times since it's original release, the current infatuation with late '70s electronics - especially through the psychedelic and minimal-wave sensibilities - make this reissue especially timely. "Electric Garden" is one of those elegantly simple pieces of electronica with an abstracted, almost random melody guiding Schnitzler's rigid step sequence cast in a cosmic shower of delay ripples with bent electro-shock noises sliding up and down against his motorik drum machine. From a track like this, one can see where Aphex Twin would have been able to make such a profound break from rave culture with these head-spinning sequences. "Metall 1" is all space-dust and comet debris hung weightlessly through Schnitzler's ominous undulations of bright synthetic shimmers and lurching rumbles of metallic low-end, clearly the inspiration for pretty much everything that John Elliott of Emeralds has ever touched. The deep-space sonor pulses of "Black Nails" reprise the tone-bent noises Schnitzler produced on "Electric Garden," looking forward to the robotic bleakness of Monoton, Dome, and Omit. It's pretty shocking how good this record is, and how timeless it sounds, even with the current strain of '70s revivalism. So highly recommended, it's actually embarrassing that we've not written about this record sooner.
This rare album (only 500 copies of the LP were originally issued in 1974) is now finally reissued on cd! "Blau" (Blue) is the second solo effort from legendary krautrock electronics pioneer Conrad Schnitzler, following his amazing debut "Rot" (Red) and his
"Gelb" is an unreleased 1974 album produced by the iconoclastic electronic musician Conrad Schnitzler, who sought to demystify the academic strangle hold on electronic music in reducing all of the avant garde techniques and ideas into a simple interplay of tonal color. Often realized as overlapping electronic patterns, cyclical rhythms, and synthetic swooshes, Schnitzler's early '70s compositions appear now as the prototypes of a lot of modern day electronica, especially IDM, ambient, and techno. "Gelb" does sound a little dated, due to the less than perfect recording conditions and the limited palette of electronic sounds, but the sweeping, space-age surfaces of Schnitzler's electronic tones and jittery drum machine arpeggiations are as good as anything he released during that time. Vinyl only.
The last of the five 'color' releases is the Green one. The original LP consisted of two very long, elegantly minimal environmental pieces. "Der Reise Und Seine Frau" from 1976 features an endlessly wandering synth solo, meandering over a very distorted & churning drum machine loop without much development for 32 minutes. The synth patch is a very modest one, but pretty enough: Schnitzler for Mother. There's a lot more going on in 1980's "Bis Die Blaue Blume Bluht": interlocking, circular melodies looping endlessly over a percolating Wurlitzer rhythm for 20 minutes. A very tropical mood: imagine Kraftwerk's "Ananas Symphonie" without the Hawaiian slide guitar left looping for the night and you're halfway there. The original vinyl encouraged playback at both 33 and 45 rpm, so unsurprisingly the 14 minute bonus track is "Bis Die Blaue Blume Bluht / 45" -- although, surprisingly, the piece isn't simply pitched up, it's digitally time compressed to a faster tempo without actually changing its pitch, so you basically get a 35 minute version of the piece that picks up the pace about halfway through. Grun might seem a bit modest compared to the untamed worlds of Schwartz and Rot, but I have to admit that this pleasantly relentless album won me over by the end. (guest review by AQ pal Jon "Wobbly" Leidecker)
First, before we get into the review, we should mention that this double lp is housed in an oversized French paper hand silk-screened jacket. While it's a beautiful package, the combination of its oversized shape and the delicacy of the material means it's prone to damage in shipping, and of course all the copies we have received arrived a bit bent up. The label has no replacement covers so this is all we're going to get. We've taken a couple dollars off the price to compensate a bit, but those who are more fastidious about the shape of their vinyl sleeves, might want to steer clear of this, as we won't be able to replace them. Sorry about that!
But WOW!, this is a beautiful double lp live set from 1972 by the late experimental kosmiche composer, Conrad Schnitzler. Salvaged from decaying tapes of a performance for an art exhibition, the sounds on this are like a multifaceted sci-fi ballet. The coordination of individual electronic sounds operating in harmonic tandem of each other showcases a brilliant array of synthesis and restraint, while at the same time emanating a warm centrally vibrant core. For some reason in some of our minds we always have this impression that Conrad Schnitzler was the most abstract and cold of the German musicians of this period, but lately with each new reissue that becomes available, that impression is proven wrong time and time again. This is a gorgeous set, as essential as any of his key recordings from this era. And as usual, crazy limited, ONLY 1000 COPIES and at this point almost gone so act fast!
Here's an unexpected set of reissues: vinyl versions of two classic krautrock albums by electronica pioneer Conrad Schnitzler. They're legit, done from master tapes we're told.
"Rot" (Red) was Con's amazing 1973 solo debut. Intense science-fictional bleep-drone, with ironic titles like (side one) "Meditation" and even "Krautrock" (side two). It's totally dark (but a little silly too). The Plate Lunch cd reissue of this we used to stock is now out of print, so that makes this new LP version even more essential. Of course, this vinyl reissue is pressed on red wax, in a red sleeve.
Ten thousand cheers to Captain Trip Records for reissuing all five of Conrad Schnitzler's Color Albums. Originally available only in private pressings, and only sporadically available since then, this cycle included his first solo albums and his first forays into purely electronic music. Before these, Schnitzler had already been a founding member of Tangerine Dream and Kluster (who renamed themselves Cluster after Schnitzler's departure).
His first 'solo' album, Schwartz, is technically the third Kluster album, a trio improvisation by Schnitzler, Moebius and Roedelius -- and was actually reissued as such on cd in the '90s as Eruption. Similar in sound to the first two albums, we hear a variety of traditional instruments (cellos, drums, guitars, organs) played in the most rudimentary manner possible, treating them as raw sources that are then filtered, delayed, and otherwise processed into a bizarre and barely recognizable cavern of pure sound. There actually aren't any synthesizers on this record -- the sounds are all vaguely acoustic in nature, though transformed into something very alien. Whereas their first two albums were commissioned by a Church on the condition that the records also contain strangely religious spoken word texts, this album is purely instrumental -- but more than that, they just get much further out this time -- this is the best of their three records. Though not as compositionally refined as the astonishing Cluster '71 that Moebius and Roedelius would go on to create with Conny Plank, this gains points for audibly being a live performance. A very ahead of its time one at that -- bands are beginning to sound like these records again now, 35 years later -- if you've been spending quality time with Yellow Swans and Skaters cdr-rs recently, you will definitely dig this record from out of their mind Germans playing in a basement 35 years ago, and hitting the source.
This new edition adds a four minute soundcheck from a different trio -- Schnitzler, Freudigmann & Seidel. Otherwise it's identical to the 1997 CD reissue. (guest review by AQ pal Jon "Wobbly" Leidecker)
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Not really new, but I don't think we listed it before. Krautrock/electronica pioneer Schnitzler (original member of Kluster, with a long solo career) sets aside the synths and investigates actual piano sounds on this release. Of course, these compositions are not humanly playable--a computer has assisted with the process. Kind of an update on Conlon Nancarrow's player piano pieces, or doing for piano playing what drum and bass programming does for human drumming... Insane stuff, but not utterly chaotic--this is really melodic and quite musical. Schnitzler, indeed, remains a genius.
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.
The history behind this particular Conrad Schnitzler track is a little vague. Supposedly, Zug is also known as the "Red Cassette" which the German electronic pioneer self-released in 1973 (some say 1974). M=Minimal reissued one of the two 20 minute cuts from that tape as Zug, and fleshing out the rest of the vinyl with two remixes - one from glitched-dub expert Pole and another from Borngraber & Struver. Both of those remixes are reprised on this cd, but Ricardo Villalobos & Max Loderbauer are the artists who get the marquee treatment by having their names affixed to the title. A little strange, yes, but don't let the lack of parity dissuade you from this fine remix collection of one of the most influential electronic artists of the post-Krautrok era. Schnitzler's history has been well mapped here at aQuarius, so we'll merely mention his inspired involvement in Tangerine Dream and Kluster. Villalobos & Loderbauer recently wowed us with their abstract recontextualization of ECM chamber jazz. On the first remix here they adopt more of a motorik / minimalist techno vibe that fits with the taut rhythms that Schniztler embedded into that old tape; and the second spins Schnitzler's dystopian synth drones into a clattering decentered piece more reminiscent of the New Zealand outsider Omit (who really would make for a stellar artist for M=Minimal to reissue!). Pole's remix shifts the rhythm to the offbeat, plenty of percolating metallic tones and ghostly filigrees of digital debris; but the clear winner of all of these remixes is from the previously unknown duo of Borngraber & Struver, who snap the darkest, nastiest swells of Schnitzler's synth patches onto a techno-noir grid that reconnects the Detroit / Berlin axis of techno all over again through the mid-tempo 909 thump and locomotive samples. As good as the other three remixes are, Borngraber & Struver tap a vein most in keeping with Schnitzler's grim futurism. Totally worth the price of admission just for that one track!
NOW ALSO ON VINYL!
The history behind this particular Conrad Schnitzler track is a little vague. Supposedly, Zug is also known as the "Red Cassette" which the German electronic pioneer self-released in 1973 (some say 1974). M=Minimal recently reissued a collection of Zug remixes, a couple of which had already appeared on vinyl before; but now the excellent remixes from Ricardo Villalobos and Max Loderbauer get now appear on vinyl. Schnitzler's history has been well mapped here at aQuarius, so we'll merely mention his inspired involvement in Tangerine Dream and Kluster. Villalobos & Loderbauer recently wowed us with their abstract recontextualization of ECM chamber jazz. On the first remix here they adopt more of a motorik / minimalist techno vibe that fits with the taut rhythms that Schniztler embedded into that old tape; and the second spins Schnitzler's dystopian synth drones into a clattering decentered piece more reminiscent of the New Zealand outsider Omit (who really would make for a stellar artist for M=Minimal to reissue!). Download card included!
So often you might read about an album we carry here at Aquarius that sounds as if it were recorded in a bunker, a tomb, a sewer, a cave, a warehouse, or some other nasty, gritty space whose nastiness and grittiness seeps into the recording itself. As much as we would like for each of those times we make such allusions to be true, it's actually quite rare that musicians would record an album in such a location. Conrad Schnitzler and Wolfgang Seidel have done just that, as they brought a bunch of synthesizers down to an abandoned cellar at the Tempelhof Airport in Berlin to record this excellent set of Kosmische electronic blorp. Schnitzler, of course, is a Krautrock legend having worked with the earliest incarnations of Tangerine Dream and the first sessions in Kluster (before the K became a C), and moving on to producing some of the finest examples of claustrophobic proto-electronica from the Krautrock era (e.g. Con and Ballet Statique). Seidel had worked with Schnitzler in the aforementioned Kluster as well as Eruption way back in the day, with sporadic collaborations throughout the past couple of decades. It's impossible to tell who's doing what on this recording of oblique electronic mashings that are equally psychedelic and claustrophobic. Warbling structures of algorithmically complex patterns get torn apart with thrumming electronic noises, weird semi-melodic clunkery, and mad-scientist erratic behaviors. Consequenz 010B is a full 65 minutes in length, but it's limited to 250 copies of which we have limited stock.
We were so saddened by the recent passing of krautrock legend Conrad Schnitzler, a one-time member of both Tangerine Dream and Kluster, who then went on to create one of THEE most incredible bodies of solo work of perhaps any of the krautrockers. This record is not so much a proper Schnitzler record, as it is a strange sort of collaboration. It seems that Schnitzler was forever recording sounds from his many electronic synthesizers, creating an expansive music library, from which all of these sounds were taken. Borngraber and Struver, who run the M=Minimal label, were afforded the opportunity to go through Schnitzler's library, and create a series of new compositions, and Con-Struct is the result.
It's difficult to suss out how much of this is pure Schnitzler, and how much of it is Borngraber & Struver, but really it hardly matters, much of this definitely sounds like a Schnitzler record, the krautrock vibe is big, but there's also definitely a sort of minimal techno vibe, the record opens with a gorgeous stretch of deep buzzing pulses and percolating rhythms, the mood haunting and slightly sinister, all laced with swirls of electronics and thick swells of rumbling whir, before giving way to the following track, which has more of a Kompakt vibe to it. But even here, that minimal techno rhythm is wreathed in swirls of dark layered thrum, and mournful minor key melodies, the sound trancelike and cyclical, which is how most of the record plays out, each track essentially a simple looped arrangement, the core sound and rhythm repeated for the length of the track, while the various elements shift gradually, and all around it various sounds swirl and shimmer. Our only complaint really is that all of the tracks could have been stretched WAY out, and turned into epics even more trancey and hypnotic.
But overall, the mood is surprisingly dark and haunting, the occasional almost house-y rhythm or skittery groove, does little to take away from the record's darkly cast sonic shadows, the swirling low end, the rumbling drones, the thick bassy buzz, the melancholy melodies, it's pretty much the perfect slab of dark minimal rhythmic krautdrone mesmer.
Besides drumming for grind gods Spazz (as well as loads of other grind / fastcore band that found themselves in need of a kick ass drummer) and being one of the nicest guys ever, Mr. Max Ward somehow found time to go to school, run a record label (the awesome 625!) and front this band of well read uber-nerds! Scholastic Deth wasn't just a name for these punks, it was a way of life. All four members are or were or are about to be in grad school and don't hesitate to tackle serious subject matter in their lyrics and in between song banter. But it's not preachy or Fugazi-like. These guys are funny and dorky and engaging as well as being smart! And as you might then imagine, the HUGE book of liner notes is an awesome read, with the stories and anecdotes behind each song often stretching significantly farther than the three of four lines of lyrics. In fact, the record will be long over by the time you plow through the emminently readable liner notes. The Deth spit out brief, blinding explosions of pummelling punk rock fury, 50 tracks in 43 minutes of buzzing lightning fast riffing, chaotic, confusional drumming and Max's earnest shouted vocals. While there -are- metallic moments, this is more punk than metal, more grind than thrash, but heavy and noisy and fun as fuck. Also includes a video collection of various live performances playable on your computer. The whole package is nicely designed like punk rock Cliff's notes too!
This band offers a bouquet made of slide rules and roses ('cause they play technical, math-metal with gothic/romantic keyboard flourishes). They're maybe the heaviest, most intense band to make piano a major part of their sound (Alboth! excepted).
Another "Archive FMP Edition" from Atavistic's Unheard Music Series. This 1969 recording features a veritable who's who of '60s/'70s Euro improv folks: Peter Brotzmann, Evan Parker, Derek Bailey, Fred Van Hove, Alexander Von Schlippenbach, Irene Schweizer, Peter Kowald, Han Bennink, trumpter/bandleader Schoof himself of course, and quite a few others. The usual suspects, in other words -- assembled into a big band with three pianists, three sax players, three trumpeters, three bassists, and two drummers, plus guitar and trombone (maybe this tripling of most instruments is where the "echoes" in the title comes from, although echoes are rarely this intense). Yes, as you might expect from such a large grouping, this is loud, powerful stuff, with solos from everyone and much massed music-making -- a blast of freedom sounds that heralded the birth of the Free Music Productions label and the new jazz scene FMP would promote. Two tracks (two LP sides) of about 15 minutes duration each, historically significant and still sonically fearsome. Crank it up!
We're a bit late on the draw for this, but it's taken awhile for this record to fully sink in and work its mysterious magic. Like a hybrid of The Knife and M83, these electro-dream popsters make intriguing and dynamic shoe-gazey ear candy, that both baffles and delights. A fine self-assured debut!
Evan Parker et. al.
San Francisco guitarist Schott (Junk Genius, T.J. Kirk, etc.) with his first solo record, released by John Zorn's Tzadik label as part of their "Radical Jewish Culture" series. Features Trevor Dunn of Mr. Bungle by the way.
