[ 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 2651 through 2700 of 4057.

It goes without saying that Phil Spector really stands (or stood) at the pinnacle of pop music and what it means to be a producer. His 'wall of sound' has influenced generations of amazing bands from the Beach Boys to Jesus & Mary Chain to Spiritualized to the Vivian Girls and beyond. It was actually hard to get so many of his great recordings on cd, unless you snagged the box set that came out years ago, so we're so psyched for this new release of some of his most memorable moments. Working with groups like The Crystals, The Ronettes, Darlene Love, Ike & Tina, and more, this collection shows off Spector's uncanny ability to create pop nuggets that have proven to be timeless and so endlessly addictive. While many of us who like to hang out in the fringes and more obscure realms of the music world, Phil Spector is a reminder of how amazing more mainstream pop music can be when in the hands of a musical genius. While much of his personal life is depressing and distressing, he seems to be a part of a long tradition of deeply troubled music producers who were able to use music to channel the beauty inside of them that they had such a hard time doing in all other aspects of their life. With so many bands of the moment like Dum Dum Girls, The Raveonettes, Shannon & The Clams, and The Sandwitches taking so much from Spector's sound, it's perfect timing for these songs to be made available again.�

MPEG stream: Then He Kissed Me
MPEG stream: River Deep, Mountain High
MPEG stream: Walkiing In The Rain
MPEG stream: A Fine, Fine Boy

Talk about simultaneously awesome and obscure. Delving deep into '80s metal buried treasure, Stormspell's Days Of Yore division has come up with this double cd, rollercoaster ride of a reissue, that anyone into technical thrashing prog metal ought to utterly enjoy. It's from a Massachusetts band, Spectral Incursion, who never even released an album, just a bunch of demos and one ep. Way underground, mathy metallic music-making mania on display here, jawdropping and headbanging. Unrestrained, raw and ripping stuff from young guys more concerned with coming up with cool new parts for their twisting, turning songs than in being popular. We're lovin' it. The jagged, splintered riffs and tricky time signatures multiply throughout these heavy, hectic compositions, with leads spiraling up alongside vocals that scream, soar, and roar. Each over the top track seems designed by/for the ADD afflicted, shooting off in a new direction every few seconds, yet not neglecting melody and a rock n' roll vibe. Intricate, eccentric, exhilarating - and we really like how the DIY-ness of this mitigates against any potential pretentiousness a la big time prog metal like Dream Theater. This really is some kids tossing their faves like Rush, Priest, Sabbath, Maiden, Slayer, and Fates Warning into a sharp-bladed blender on high. If you're a fan of such bands as Confessor, Atheist, Watchtower, Coroner, or Hellwitch, you should definitely check this out! Disc one consists of demo tapes from 1988 and 1991, their four song ep from '88, and four tracks recorded in 2010 by the reunited band, doing old songs by pre-Spectral Incursion incarnation Graven Image, whose demos circa 1986-'87 occupy disc two, which also contains some video clips for your computer. Super cool, constantly surprising, what this lacks in production polish they make up for in precision - and sheer insanity. As always, great to see a forgotten band this good (and gonzo) get their due. Complete with thick, slick cd booklet full of liner notes, lyrics, etc.

MPEG stream: The Other Side
MPEG stream: Constant Velocity
MPEG stream: Surgery

REJOICE! New discs from I, Voidhanger have arrived! It's been a while since we've stocked material from our FAVORITE current metal label going, and when we did, it was gone almost immediately! So, while it's here, we have the newest release from Spectral Lore, a follow up to the double cd entitled III which we had a while back but never reviewed (and we have back in stock for those looking). On Gnosis, the lone Greek artist that writes and records all the music has really embraced the mystical, the spiritual, and the psychedelic elements of the powerful and EPIC black metal he's made up to this point. Unlike III, however, there are no vocals on Gnosis (or, if they are, they are buried in the mix), but it more than makes up for that with constantly shifting, hypnotic instrumentals that are far an above his best work to date. A definitely must for anyone into the recent spectacular release by Oranssi Pazuzu, or the sun-drenched black metal of early Alcest. Like everything else on I, Voidhanger, totally unique, simply spectacular and not to be missed!

MPEG stream: Dualism
MPEG stream: Gnosis' Journey Through The Ages
MPEG stream: A God Made Of Flesh And Consciousness

The first we heard from Greek one man ambient black metal horde was on a split with Swedish psychedelic black metallers Underjordiska, then offering a washed out black ambient counterpoint to Underjordiska's furious spaced out black buzz, so when we finally got this cd in, a digital reissue of a long out of print cassette, we were expecting another disc of washed out ambient blackness, and while there is a bit of that present, Spectral Lore knocked our blocks off with this collection of totally intense, outsider avant black metal buzz. After a two minute intro of delicate acoustic guitar, SL explode into a 24 minute epic, all stumbling crunch and grind in the beginning, before slipping seamlessly into soaring majestic epic buzzing black metal. The drums and vocals mostly buried beneath the frenzied riffage, weirdly minor key, haunting and space-y but thrashing and black and grim, until the sound shifts, getting muddy and murky, a loping midtempo pound that quickly shifts again, and stretches out into some woozy psychedelic folkiness, all warm buzzing guitars and crystalline melody, soaring strings, totally tranquil and dreamlike, before exploding in another frenzy of tangled and gnarled blackness, and so it goes, slipping back and forth, until finally the guitars coalesce into some classic metal sounding melody, then a weirdly Viking sounding blow out, before fading out completely, leaving a long stretch of hushed gauzey ambience. Heck that track alone would be worth $13, there's more packed into that 24 minutes than most bands manage in records twice that long, but there's so much more. The rest of the record is a balance between woozy melodic drift, and warped black heaviness, often the line between the two heavily blurred. Black buzz grows more and more indistinct until it sounds more like Nadja, a sort of shoegazey black drift, guitars unfurl, chords unfolding slowly one at a time, moody synthesizer strings drift over hushed minimal swirls of soft focus sound, guitars rumble and bombinate, building to soaring lysergic ur-drones, long stretches of muddy murk give way to crystalline sonic whispers, black metal roils and churns and explodes in streaks of near white noise, the sound and production constantly shifting, blistering and in-the-red one second, mumbled and washed out the next, the sound as much a part of the music as the music itself. Far out and epic, psychedelic and spaced out, ambient and black, and so goddamn good...

MPEG stream: The Thorns That Guide My Warpath
MPEG stream: Towards The Great Crossroad
MPEG stream: Recoiling Beneath The Waves

Slumberland looks to the UK once again to snag another awesome indie pop peddler. Spectrals excel in laid back, lazy day bittersweet pop. With a dazed and washed out guitar sound, and Louis Jones' swaying melodic vocals that sound so at ease while but also so assured. That voice is in an awesome place somewhere between Jens Leckman and Julian Casablanca, and the woozy instrumentation underneath serves as the perfect breezy driving force that propels the songs along at such a perfect pace. It makes sense that Spectrals were taken on the road by Girls, as this is pop that's as smart as it is passionate.

MPEG stream: Get A Grip
MPEG stream: Luck Is There To Be Pushed
MPEG stream: Many Happy Returns

Record number two from this UK outfit, and like their debut, Bad Penny, Sob Story is another collection of crazy catchy, psychedelic fuzz pop jangle, mainman Louis Jones' vocals even more Elvis Costello than ever, and while in our review of Bad Penny we mentioned Julian Casablancas as a comparison to Jones vocally, that Strokes comparison applies here too, but more in terms of the music, which has a similarly Strokes style minimalism, check out the opener "Let Me Cave In", which begins with some murky minor key guitar strum, all muddy and washed out, before the band kick in proper, immediately locking into a killer two part jangle jam that's peppered with cool blasts of distorto guitar crunch, but for the most part, cycles through a single progression, Jones crooning over the tranced out the jangle pop mesmer. Not all of Sob Story is that minimal, with tracks like "A Heartbeat Behind", getting all classic rock / new wave, adding some chiming shimmer and a little guitar twang, not to mention some handclap rhythms, or the title track, which adds even more twang, unfurling what is essentially a No Depression style country pop ballad, Jones crooning alongside warm slippery lap steel, which pops up again on the woozy softly psychedelic twang flecked dream pop ballad "Friend Zone", or the woozy warble lullaby-like "In A Bad Way". Our favorite track though might just be "Karaoke" a two plus minute groover, with a weirdly funky bassline, what sounds like bongos, and some amazing guitars, psychedelic and a little bit tangly, with a super catchy chorus, some super effected guitar licks that sound almost like organs, a cool bridge and some weird percussion, all woven into some practically perfect twangy jangle pop. The crazy thing is, we don't remember Spectrals sound so twangy, but lots of Sob Story is downright country, and with Jones' super distinctive vocals, we're actually reminded of Robbie Fulks, which is not a bad thing AT ALL.

MPEG stream: Let Me Cave In
MPEG stream: A Heartbeat Behind
MPEG stream: Karaoke
MPEG stream: Sob Story

Dark, grim, dubbed out Spectre is letting some light into his music. Dominated by murky loops and funky samples, Psychic Wars is not nearly as extreme nor darkly monolithic (and thus possible less impressive) as previous efforts. The samples are culled from french cinema, noir clips, japanese film, indian female vocalists, and are altogether more varied and interesting than Spectre has ever allowed himself before, reminding me of Funki Porcini or other Ninjatune artists, right on down to the generic girl diva vocals -- why do so many artists feel the need to use this element, much less use women whose voices always sound the same, like Sinead O'Connor. Sigh. Your mileage may vary. Guests include Honeychild, Sensational, Black Chameleon, Space Poet. MPEG Download: "Love" [/audio/spectrelove.mp3] MPEG Stream: "Love" [/audio/spectrelove.m3u]

MPEG stream: Love
MPEG stream: Secrets (featuring Honeychild)

We Aquarians have long been into Spectre, the undisputed master of, grim, dark, dubbed out instrumental hip hop. And we can never seem to get enough. So here's a comp that serves two purposes, a primer for those of you who are new to the sounds of Spectre, and a compilation of some of the best and loads of the rarest stuff for those of us who just need more. Including a handful of previously unreleased tracks. All remastered and even more BASS HEAVY than ever. Lots of murky loops, slowed down vocals, throbbing basslines, bizarre film music samples slowed down and twisted up, big phat beats, all cobbled together like some mad scientist, into some of the most potent druggy, late night hip hop EVER. Guests on the comp include Sensational, whose lazy, stoned flow perfectly suits Spectre's sound, Torture, M. Sayyid, Guess, Mr. Dead and of course God Albino from the Hawd Gankstuh Rappuhs MC's Wid Ghatz!

MPEG stream: Pillars Of Smoke
MPEG stream: Backstab

Way back when we were totally obsessed with the Wordsound label, and their various purveyors of a sound they called illbient, broken beats, dubbed out grooves, twisted rapping, the sound a murky midnight melange of damaged outsider hip hop and bleary eared dub. Some of us never stopped digging that stuff, including it seems the fine folks at Pan, who've reissued this rarity, from Wordsound mainman Skiz Fernando (now a chef!) aka Spectre. It was originally released as a super limited mixtape in 1998, and is overflowing with unreleased jams and super rare tracks, featuring pretty much the whole Wordsound crew at the time, Sensational, Kevin Martin, Mr. Dead, Sensational, Scotty Hard, the Jungle Brothers, Bill Laswell, Doc Israel, Slotek and more. And goddamn if this stuff doesn't sound just as good as back in the day. A sprawling collection of zoned out beats, heavily laced with all sorts of samples, news clips, orchestral fanfares, old school P-Funk jams, all wreathed in the particle bongsmoke production Spectre pretty much perfected. The Spectre joints are fucked up even for someone who pretty much traffics in fucked up exclusively, and he's pretty much surrounded on all sides by like minded outsider dope-dub weirdos, the whole thing a head spinning collection of lo-fi, experimental, avant garde, drugged out, dub heavy, hip hop illbient genius. Mastered from the original DAT tapes, mastered and cut at D&M, and pressed on heavyweight 140 gram vinyl. And yeah, we're guessing it's pretty goddamn limited too.

MPEG stream: Side A (Extract)

2nd album (duh) of dark dub hiphop, an AQ-fave. Mostly "instrumental", though one highlight is the guest spot by rapper God Albino. Pretty much everytime we play this in the store, someone buys a copy--it's that good.

The Ill Saint's third album is easily his best, as the subterranean production on the first two albums has been fleshed out a bit in this hip hop elegy for demented thoughts and sounds. Spectre's carnivalesque horror hip-hop tracks (that on "Ne Cede Malis" sounds like the Mickey Mouse theme song played in a minor key) are loaded with brash noir strings, dubby passages of schizophonic reverb, and slow motion beats. Damaged lyrical content provided by Sensational, Mr. Dead, and the white-boy-on-crack rants of God Albino. This is underground hip-hop at its best.

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

SORRY.

"Illbient" aQ-fave producer Spectre brings us (literally, he brought these in himself, on a visit to SF) another album of dark, bass-heavy, mostly instrumental hip hop, smoke-hazed & paranoid; this latest one, his ninth, being a vinyl-only release on his own label WordSound. The True & Living begins positively yet ominously, with "inspirational" spoken word samples taken from the movies Waking Life and The Matrix, eventually joined by echoing maniacal laughter that segues into track two, the aptly titled "Impending Doom", which is a dizzying collage of end-is-nigh soundbites, of all varieties (some scarily plausible, others not as much) over loops of strident strings and horns, layered with beats and scratches. That sets the mood for the whole record, an apocalyptic, suspenseful hip hop soundscape. For example, the track "Destroyer", which is built around someone (a concerned citizen-scientist? demented doomsayer?) explaining one "nightmare scenario" in particular. One quote from that panicked fella sums it up, and made us chuckle: "We're about to have a solar system come though the middle of OUR solar system; this can't be good." Of course, we won't we laughing if/when that guy is proven right. Again, this inconvenient information is suitably set to music sourced from the climax of some old sci-fi thriller or something. All that apocalyptic shit sets the stage for the title track, on which Wu Tang's Killah Priest drops science in grandiose, mystical fashion. We're primed to believe his hype after all that we've been through on the record already. The album's other rapper cameo comes on the track "Triumph", featuring the unique flow of frequent Spectre associate, and another aQ fave, Sensational. So those are a few of the highlights, but we're digging the whole damned doomed and dubbed-out thing. Oh, and regardless of whether the world is ending soon or not, this record IS limited - to just 250 copies!

MPEG stream: Impending Doom
MPEG stream: The True & Living
MPEG stream: The Omega Point

Perennial AQ-staff fave Spectre (otherwise known as WordSound label honcho Skiz Fernando) has wisely left his tried and true formula alone, and thus come up with a fourth full length of scary, incredibly dark and heavy dub. I can't think of anyone this good that is this, well, apocalyptic about it. Scary scary stuff. Where's my mommy? Mostly instrumental, although four awesome tracks include guest rapper Sensational. Pling plong random piano, noir film brass samples, grunts, alarms, arpeggiated strings. Must be heard to be believed.

RealAudio clip: Four Hoursemen (w/Teledubgnosis)
RealAudio clip: Bassick
RealAudio clip: Skrippin'
RealAudio clip: Heist

Now here's a tape label that knows how to do it right. Each tape, even though they're limited to only 100 copies, comes with super deluxe full color artwork, printed labels on the tape, each hand numbered, AND each tape is a different color to match the artwork. Nice! Release number two from Abandon Ship comes from Spectre Folk, aka Pete Nolan of the Magik Markers, GHQ, Wooden Wand & The Vanishing Voice, Shackamaxon and loads more, in the form of the strangely (stupidly?) named Papa Smurf Smiles Down On Us From Heaven, a surprisingly straight ahead psychfolk jam that is actually pretty kick ass. Aggressively strummed acoustic guitars, wailing leads, all sort of lo-fi, but still pretty heavy and rocking, with mumbled chant-like vocals, this sounds nothing like SF, then we check out the tape case and realize it's a Don Cherry cover from some Italian TV show!! Fuck yeah!! And a pretty bad ass one too (even though we didn't recognize it). A sprawling, lazy, laid back, dreamy and mellow, folky psych jam. Awesome. The flip side begins with "I Hate This Shit" which seems to be live from the No Fun Fest, and sounds like it, a corrosive squall of guitar grrrrr and amp buzz and squealing feedback that goes on forever. Massive and epic and brutal and noisy but somehow a little bit trancey and pretty listenable. It took a few minutes, but once we sunk in, it was kind of blissy. The final track is a Byrds cover, shimmery and strummy, stripped down and really pretty. Limited to 100 copies! Each tape hand numbered, already OUT OF PRINT at the label so once these are gone, that's it!

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

SORRY. The sonic solar system surrounding Sunroof!, Double Leopards, Hototogisu and those who sail with them has been expanding like some free rock supernova lately. Not just multiple releases from the core members but new groups, new configurations of old groups and multiple releases by both. Hard to figure out how Bassett (Double Leopards, Hototogisu, GHQ, etc...), Bower (Sunroof!, Hototogisu, etc.) and friends manage. And manage with such a consistent level of quality. Now we have this, what seems to be the first proper full length from Spectre Folk, aka Pete Nolan of the Magik Markers, GHQ, Wooden Wand & The Vanishing Voice and Shackamaxon among others. As Spectre Folk, Nolan divides his energies between a drifty glimmering drone not unlike his sweetly noisy brethren (and sistren) in Hototogisu and Sunroof! with muted guitars that sway and swell, muted melodies that drift and swoon like barely visible ghosts and woodwinds that whir and drone dreamily, and a more 'traditional' folk, fingerpicked steel string guitar, sweet crooning vocals,a lilting otherworldly melancholia, wrapped in layer after layer of tape hiss, and instrument buzz and warm windlike whir. It's almost like listening to some sixties folk 7" on a broken old turntable that barely plays, lovely and so mysterious sounding. Features Spencer Yeh from Burning Star Core on one track and Marcia Bassett, Nolan's bandmate in GHQ, drew the cover. Nice!

MPEG stream: Tendrils Floating Fastly
MPEG stream: Indianana

We'd long been a fan of Aaron Spectre, a DJ who specialized in heavy ragga jungle, and in particular, mixing in all sorts of metal and grind into his jungle DJ sets. A bunch of his 12"s featured killer mashups, like a wicked junglized Bad Brains tune among others. The 12"s all disappeared before we managed to get our hands on any of them, but a while back we did manage to get the cd by his 'band' Drumcorps, a mind blowing, speaker shredding blow out of metal guitars, grindcore blasts, and insane hyper kinetic drill and bass. Pretty much the ultimate AQ record... We have been listening to that disc NON-STOP since we first got it in, so we were super psyched to get a bunch of these, a collection of less, 'abrasive' work from the man responsible for one of the most gloriously abrasive dance-metal releases in forever. And from the first track, it's not hard to tell this is a whole 'nother beast entirely. "Dulcimer" seems to in fact be the sounds of a dulcimer, spread out amidst wide open expanses of space and reverb, allowed to drift and shimmer, while in the background, soft swells swirl delicately, it would be easy to think this was some modern nu-folk combo blissing out in a druggy haze... The whole record is not quite so tranquil, the follow up "Half Silver" is a loping midtempo skitter, with the tonal color provided by bits of crackle and hum and whispery bursts of static, and beneath it all, a gentle lilting minor key melody. Somewhere right between Autechre and Pole, a dubbed out slow moving glitchy groove... The rest of the record is pretty much all over the map sonically, but still hovering within the genre confines that might perhaps be classified as IDM, held together by the thread that is Spectre's deft programming, clever arranging, and knack for slipping in dreamy catchy hooks amidst all the stuttering beats and chopped loops. From soft-grinding ambient trip hop, to a super stripped down, 8bit sounding jungle workout, to a gorgeously languid acoustic guitar and glitched beat drift that would be right at home on Morr music, too warm thick washes of rumbling ambience and crunchy muted beats, to sun dappled dreamy soft focus glitchpop (with sweet sweet soft boy vocals)... Not necessarily for you Drumcorps fanatics, although man can't live on grindcorejunglemetal alone, but definitely for folks who love them some Boards Of Canada, Autechre, Chris Clark, Aphex Twin, Funkstorung and the like...

MPEG stream: Dulcimer
MPEG stream: Half Silver
MPEG stream: The Wrong Fuel

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

SORRY. Kick ass 12" of distorto breakbeat junglism from one of our favorites. Two slabs of blown out beats, in-the-red amen breaks, thick crusty buzz drenched basslines all wound into some seriously fierce, dancefloor destroying destruction. Awesome.

Spectrum always makes me realize that if music stopped being made today, we would never fail to keep on finding gems and hidden treasures from the past. There's just so much gorgeous music that has already been made that you could only listen to stuff from the past and still always be listening to greatness. I mean, that's what I'm feeling -- my top ten list from last year has four records in it made in '74 or earlier, and this Spectrum record is from 1971. (This band is also not related to the Sonic Boom / Spacemen 3 project of the same name just so you know.) Second of all I have to say that for the entirety of 2003 so far I (Windy) have listened to this record more than any other. It rewards repeated listening. Next I have to say that this Spectrum album comes the closest, yes, even among Gal Costa, Caetano Velosos, Gilbert Gil, to conjuring up the sweet 'n gutsy psychedelic pop that Os Mutantes did so well. Yes, the soundtrack to Geracao Bendita is that good. Spectrum's got melodies as bittersweet, compulsively hummable and pure 'n simple as the Beatles (whose catalog the boys in Spectrum reputedly could replicate perfectly), jangly 12-string as flowery and metallic as the Byrds, singing dressed with long drawn out vowels and harmonies worthy of the Mamas and the Papas, acid guitar riffing strongly reminiscent of their faves Steppenwolf. The stellar arrangements just take it over the top, just like with Os Mutantes, where the emphasis is less on verse chorus verse and more on sections. You never know where it's going but with the first notes of the record, which sound so good, you just sorta trust 'em. All this from a band whose average age was 21, from the city of Nova Friburgo in the state of Rio, Brazil. A band who never performed this soundtrack live even! The film, a celebration of peace & love taking place in a hippie wonderland was banned upon its release in 1970 and the soundtrack died a similar death. MPEG Download: "Concerto do Pantano" [/audio/spectrumconcerto.mp3] MPEG Stream: "Concerto do Pantano" [/audio/spectrumconcerto.m3u] MPEG Download: "Mother Nature" [/audio/spectrummothernature.mp3]

MPEG stream: Concerto do Pantano
MPEG stream: Mother Nature
MPEG stream: Quiabo's

War Sucks is a four song ep from Sonic Boom's Spectrum, reliving more of the heyday of the hallowed Spacemen 3 project many moons ago, whose occasionally awesome hypno-space-rock psychedelia was equal parts druggy and punky. The title track is a cover of a Red Krayola tune, penned back in the day about Vietnam, although the sentiment rings as true today. The lyrical content of the song is a bit of an anomaly for Sonic Boom, who had previously pretty much sung of drugs if he weren't rehashing some old blues number; but this doesn't detract from the fuzzed-out buzz that harkens to that occasionally awesome period of Spacemen 3 (e.g. Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs To and Playing With Fire) in which the Stooges and 13th Floor Elevators were the godheads of the Spacemen 3 pantheon. And rightly so. Spectrum marches on with a Neu! inspired motorik tune in "Razzle Dazzle Mind" before offering another cover, Laurie Anderson's "Walking & Falling." The final track "Over and Over" is one of those Spectrum / Spacemen 3 tracks that could go on for 25 minutes, and it probably should given the brevity of this ep. Even so, this is pretty darn good, in fact.

MPEG stream: War Sucks
MPEG stream: Razzle-Dazzle Mind

The last time we heard from Mike Haley, it was in the guise of Wether on Monorail Trespassing, offering up a headsplitting noise cassette of powerdrone synths and sawtooth aggression. Here, recording under the moniker Spectrum Tickets for Hooker Vision, Haley dials those electronics into a glimmering pop ambient type of ethereal drift that certainly does muster favorable parallels to Hooker Visionary Rachel Evans' solo project Motion Sickness Of Time Travel. The stabbing John Carpenter arpeggiations are central to his science fiction electronica built out of swooshing fundamental drones with Radiophonic / Oneohtrix melodic flourishes, peppered with burbling electronics and strange fuzzing static. There's just enough paranoid android in Haley's electronics to keep things interesting, making this tape recommended for anybody whose enchanted by the like of Rene Hell, Oneohtrix Point Never, and much of the oddities found on NNA Tapes. As with all Hooker Vision titles, this one is super limited.

MPEG stream: Anyajegy

The re-reissue-ance of a lot of crucial '70s Japanese psych rock documents continues apace, with this seminal stoner rock release now on cd (and lp) again via the Phoenix label. Originally released in the musically bountiful year of 1971, Eve was the debut from a psychedelic power trio that made no secret of their predilection for recreational pharmaceuticals, and preferences therefor. "Glue" was bassist Masayoshi Kabe's nickname, "Speed" that of singing drummer Joey Smith. Guitarist Shinki Chen (formerly of Food Brain, as was Kabe) lacks a nickname, so we dunno his drug of choice, but it's obvious he's really into Jimi Hendrix... Obligatory citation of Julian Cope's Japrocksampler ranking: tied (with Flower Travellin' Band's Satori) for number ONE out of fifty!!! So, yeah, this is considered by some (including us) to be an essential - though we wouldn't personally rate on par with Satori, or for that matter ahead of Speed Glue & Shinki's own self-titled sophomore album, or some others on Cope's list, but it would be up there, nonetheless. 'Specially perfect when you're in the mood for some druggily spaced out, heavy cowbell knockin' acid blooze rawk splurge, laced with loping riffs and lackadaisical vocals, with titles that (of course) couldn't be any more overtly oriented towards the subject of gettin' high, such as "Mr. Walking Drugstore Man" and "Stoned Out Of My Mind"! But you, the listener, needn't be stoned, this music is head noddingly hypnotic all by itself, just turn it up and let yourself veg out to it, all the way through to the relaxing coda of the album's final track, "Someday We'll All Fall Down", a quietly lovely, folky acoustic number with a doubtlessly prophetic title. Along the way, enjoy garagey rave-ups like "Ode To The Bad People" and lumbering blues blasters like "Big Headed Woman". The seven tracks here are primal "proto-metal" (VERY proto) for fans of Blue Cheer, Blues Addicts, Moses, Modulo 1000, Human Instinct, Juan De La Cruz (the Filipino band with whom SG&S's drummer Joey Smith later played), Flied Egg (also reissued and reviewed this list), and others of that wasted, rock n' roll ilk from around the world. Nicely packaged in a mini-LP style gatefold sleeve for the compact disc. Gatefold sleeve for the vinyl version too.

Sniffin & Snortin (parts 1 and 2!), Run & Hide, Bad Woman, Don't Say No, Wanna Take You Home...sound good? Those are some of the song titles on this classic women-and-drugs obsessed dumbo-rock Japanese psych album. It stars guitar whiz and massive stoner Shinki Chen (also of Foodbrain and oodles of other obscure Japanese psych outfits), bassist Masayoshi Kabe (from Foodbrain too), and singing drummer Joey 'Pepe' Smith -- a Vietnam vet whom you might know from the Filipino band Juan De La Cruz, whose album "Shake Your Brains" is one of the few that tops this for sheer truly stoned rock retardation (a good thing). Too bad we can't get those in anymore. But you'll hear at least one of their tunes on this, the second SG&S album, originally released as a double LP in 1972, which we happen to like even better than their 1971 LP "Eve" though Mr. Julian Cope made that one a "record of the month" on his website Head Heritage. Anyway we have this one, not that one. Speed, Glue & Shinki, as you might imagine from their name, were a goddamn weird, messed up, completely wacked heavy psych/blues/prog band. So messed up that this time out, guest musicans wrote (and performed?) most of it! But it doesn't matter. And even when Joey plugs in a Moog synth to do a whole LP side devoted to the Sun, Planets, Life, Moon, and Angels, this never ever remotely gets pretentious and proggy (not that we don't like proggy). It just can't. Speed Glue & Shinki are primal, so primal, too primal. At least one track hints at the Stooges, some others Zeppelin, while the rest approximates a brain-damaged James Gang. Record collector types might recall the fancy, expensive Shadoks LP reissue that was available a couple years ago for about two seconds. We were enthralled with the lovely tiger cover art and the ridiculous rock and have been hoping ever since to bring in a cd version, and at last we tracked down a few copies that we had to order from Sweden, so act fast for your Speed, Glue & Shinki fix if you think you want it. MPEG Download: "Red Doll" [/audio/speedgluered.mp3] MPEG Stream: "Red Doll" [/audio/speedgluered.m3u] MPEG Download: "Song For An Angel" [/audio/speedgluesong.mp3]

MPEG stream: Red Doll
MPEG stream: Song For An Angel
MPEG stream: Search For Love

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

SORRY. After the incredible "Welcome to Execrate" cd by this maverick electronica duo, Speedranch & Janksi Noise manifest themselves in a live recording, presenting a full volume Merzbow-esque noise assault that disintegrates into piercing horror house collages of slasher screams, laughing clowns, and creepy proclamations from mad scientists.

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

SORRY. This is probably a compilation rather than a proper Speedranch & Jansky Noise EP, although the contributors of Somatic Responses, Marco Passarani, Jega, and Hrvatski all facture a rather brutalist assualt of very noisy beats, breaks, screams, and basslines quite similar to V/VM (Jansky Noise's other project). While this is not the vinyl version of the mixed CD also entitled "Execrate", these tracks did make their way onto the disc. Highly recommended.

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

SORRY. A mixed CD of sorts from Manchester's DJ Speedranch and Jansky Noise (who were prominently displayed on the cover of the Wire a couple months back). Screaming Scotsmen, the Halloween score, and marching bands are the few recognizeable points in this dizzying blur of heavily distorted breakbeats and belligerent usage of noise. It's almost a moot point to mention that Mixmaster Mike, DJ Olive (of We), Stock, Hausen, & Walkman, V/VM (which is Jansky Noise's other project), and Hrvatski all make contributions... as you can hardly decipher where their noises and beats begin in relation to Speedranch & Jansky Noise's. Fucking intense and highly recommended.

After several records of beat heavy brutality, Speedranch and JanskyNoise, now apparently a single entity, return with their 'ambient' album. But be warned, the term 'ambient' here is definitely relative. This is the sort of ambient record Merzbow would make, or the sort of relaxation record that would come out on RRR. The bulk of the record is a thick, chaotic, face melting Masonna-ish skree. The noise is broken up occasionally by...well...er...other noises. Dark clouds of rumbling murmur, swirling sonic whirlpools of distorted voices, random snippets from movies and television, and industrial clatter, all run through a bank of effects until it sounds like the whole record is crumbling into digital bits. Not so many beats here (when they do show up they are crushed into a sonic paste), but when almost rhythms surface, the 'beats' are mostly produced by the random pulses and chopped samples. This one is a pretty difficult listen, as most Speedranch records are, but there is so much going on here, repeated listens reveal all sorts of bizarre, noisy, and funny gems hidden throughout the deafening GRZZZBBBSSSHHTTTTT!!!!!!!!!

MPEG stream: Stringfellow Hawke A56-7W (Classified)
MPEG stream: Every Man Is At Least Somewhat More Complicated Than He Appears

They're called Speedwolf. Their demo tape is called Bark At The Poon. They have song titles like "Time To Annihilate", "DeathRipper" and "I Am The Demon". The inside cover features a pants down drummer, wearing a wolf headdress, on the can, rocking out. They're obsessed with football, their hometown the Denver Broncos (they not only thank John Elway, but they named one side John, the other Elway). The cover features a rad high school binder drawing of a crouched wolf in front of the full moon. Sounds goofy, and maybe it is a bit, but fuck do these guys slay. Or shred. Slay AND shred. Full on thrashing metallic madness, with a vocalist who sounds a bit like Lemmy, and with super catchy classic sounding thrash jams, the first of which sounds a little like aQ favorite Young Ones faux metal heroes Bad News fronted by Lemmy, but way heavier. The guitars chug and churn, the drums blast relentlessly, flurries of double kick laid beneath , the songs shift from full bore neck snapping frenzy, to loping hooky groove, to pounding almost doom, laced with some creepy samples, some killer riffs, and plenty of rad licks. Definitely on the punker side of thrash, with the vocals and some of the hooks reminding us of a way more metal Danzig, which is definitely not a bad thing. "I Am The Demon" is THE jam here, with its killer Danziggy chorus, its super catchy guitar harmonies and insane drum breakdown (complete with wolf howl at the end), these guys kick so much ass, heavy and hooky is a pretty unbeatable combo. If you're hip to the whole modern retro thrash revival, these guys will definitely hit the spot, and if there's any justice, they'll end up on some huge label rocking stadiums with dressing rooms overflowing with coke and booze and groupies, cuz this shit is so much better than 90 percent of the new thrash we've heard... Way recommended. LIMITED TO 200, each one hand numbered.

MPEG stream: I Am The Demon
MPEG stream: Speedwolf

There are different kinds of heavy for sure. There's the grim black corpsepainted buzzing heaviness, there's the lurching lumbering knuckle dragging doom sort of heaviness, there's also the face melting noise rock sort of chaotic heaviness, and of course there's the conceptual heaviness, like "ooooh, that's really heavy, maaaan", and there's about a million different sorts of heaviness in between, all strains, some heavier than others, but then there's the mightiest heavy of them all, just a classic, pure, heavy metal heaviness. Few bands can achieve that sort of heavy purity, a rare confluence of killer riffing, howling throat shredding (but still melodic) vox, blasting pounding drums, shredding guitar leads, hooks galore, catchy choruses, all woven into a metal blowout that causes immediate headbanging, that could start a pit in a stuffy office, the power of the riff, the power of real metal. This is a power Denver's Speedwolf wield like a bloodied mace. Before we even get to the music, all the signs are there. They're called Speedwolf to begin with. Their record cover is a badass binder art / side of a seventies van black and white drawing of a huge scythe and hourglass wielding cloak-ed skull headed death, hovering in the sky above a gang of Speedwolves, wolf headed toughs on motorcylces, cruising down the highway, there's also a naked woman wearing the skin of a wolf, looking sexy and howling at the moon, their logo is a wolf pentagram, and they have song titles like "Up All Night", "Out On Bail", "I Can't Die", "Death Ripper", "Ride With Death", "The Reaper" and of course "Speedwolf" cuz any heavy metal band worth it's salt has a namesake 'theme' song. So yeah, all the signs point to pure heavy metal heaviness, and the sounds inside do not disappoint. We've raved about past Speedwolf records, they even played our South By Southwest showcase last time, and blew EVERYbody away, we have been dying for a proper full length ever since, and finally here it is, with a handful of our old favorites re-recorded, as well as a clutch of new jams, with a massive production, the sound is crushing, and the songs of course kill. Like a supercharged Motorhead, or a tighter heavier Venom, or like a cranked and kick ass version of our faux metal heroes Bad News, these guys kick out the jams, relentless and punishing, furious and frantic, but at the same time with that weird sort of positive heavy metal party energy that few bands can conjure without diluting their heaviness. We were most excited to see two of our favorite Speedwolf jams revisited, "I Am The Demon", which still sounds like a more metal Danzig, and includes a drum solo, complete with cowbell (which shows up here and there elsewhere on the record, and is another signifier of pure heaviness!), and of course "Speedwolf" which after a creeping ominous almost Maiden-y intro, really does sounds like a Motorhead 45 at 78rpm, and the rest of the tracks too, everyone sounding like some lost early heavy metal classic, but delivered with a ferocity that is undeniable. These guys have been toiling away in relative obscurity, it's about time the rest of the metal world took notice, and bowed down before these masters of metal. And while the vibe is definitely speed/thrash metal, this totally destroys all those other retro thrash revivalists, and transcends any mere metal classifications, and ascends to some sort of true metal pantheon on high. Where they belong.

MPEG stream: I Am The Demon
MPEG stream: Speedwolf
MPEG stream: Death Ripper
MPEG stream: Denver 666

One more track from our new favorite retro thrashers, Denver's Speedwolf, whose killer demo tape is reviewed elsewhere on this list, which you should grab immediately before they're gone. Think classic thrash, but with some Danzig mixed in, as well as some Bad News (really!), hooky and heavy and pounding and frantic, and so fucking killer. Bad ass riffs, crushing drumming, throat shredding vox, and hooks all over the place. These guys should be HUGE. Speedwolf share this single with long running rockers The Hookers, who we'd only heard once or twice before, but who prove to be a pretty epic match for the 'Wolf. We remembered them being more punk rock, and while this is till plenty punky, it's got a serious NWOBHM vibe. A little Iron Maiden, a little Venom, wild feral vocals, killer riffs, rad harmony guitars, and hooks that slay. Definitely gonna have to give these guys another chance and track down some of their full lengths. Both sides rock AND rule, anyone into classic sounding heaviness NEEDS this (and the Speedwolf tape) BAD! Super cool cover art, and limited of course, ONLY 500 COPIES, each one hand numbered...

Latest in the LAMC series of split 7"s from the Famous Class label, each single featuring a known entity on the A side, and then a more obscure band on the flip, chosen by the A side band. This marks the first appearance on the aQ list of Speedy Ortiz, which is CRAZY, cuz some of us here have been fans for ages, not sure how that happened, but needless to say, their track here is a gem, heavily beholden to nineties indie rock, in particular the Pixies and the Breeders and Veruca Salt, fuzzy bass beneath crooned female vox, kinda swaggery, and dirgey, but hook heavy and poppy, the chorus super Beatles-esque, soaring and majestic, lilting and melodic, and catchy as all get out. One of our favorite modern day outfits mining our favorite era of indie rock for sure. We had never heard of Chris Weisman before, and while we were maybe expecting something more indie rocking, instead, it's just acoustic guitar and vocals, the vibe sort of Big Star-ish, maybe a little bit like the Posies, dreamy vox, lush steel string strum, super dreamy and classic pop sounding, at points even reminding us of Emmit Rhodes, which is most definitely a good thing. Will for sure be tracking down more from Weisman... Like all the LAMC singles, as you probably already guessed, this is VERY LIMITED!

MPEG stream: Doomsday
MPEG stream: I Took It Off A Record

You'd never know it from listening, but this gorgeous slab of sprawling Americana and Appalachia, features mostly members of Sunburned Hand and the No Neck Blues Band as Mr. Speer's back up band. No ramshackle percussion, spaced out drum jams, or noisy free rock, just twangy folky old timey country, strummed and picked mountain folk, and some old fashioned truck drivin' ballads. The music is pitch perfect, for a minute we were convinced this was some unearthed classic, some lost folk find, but nope, this man and his band are a going concern, gigging and recording present day! The songs vary, running the gamut of traditional country tropes, classic Fahey-esque Appalachia, stretched out country ballads, sixties surf rock, SF style psych, it all sounds amazing, the vocals too, which only appear occasionally, a earthy baritone drawl, crooned in a sort of Townes Van Zandt style. Really good stuff, and a surprise coming from these NY freenoise vets. And if you like this, be sure and check out the Coachfingers, another weirdly twangy NNCK offshoot (and conversely, all you folks who bought the Coachfingers would probably dig this too!).

It's been five years since we last heard from these French outsider industrial black metal weirdos, with their last record Mescalyne, which was as freaky and as fucked as the two preceding albums, all three of which we consider to be pantheon-worthy examples of confusional twisted blackness. We weren't sure what to expect from this new one though, a lot can happen in five years, but we've certainly seen other bands change a lot, and sadly, there does seem to be a tendency for bands' sounds to grow less weird with time, which who knows might be an inevitable side effect of getting better at recording, or playing, or just wanting more from music than making seriously twisted sonic shit. Well, we should have know better than to worry about these guys, cuz it seems they're just as warped and damaged as before. In fact it took us a few minutes into the second track to truly be sure, the opener is all thick low end throbs, keening drones, tripped out effects, static and crumbling distortion, creepy samples, so we expected the second track to explode right out of the gate, but instead, it was more ambience, a creepy music box, lots of crackle and more static, and way down in the mix, what sounds like drums way off in the distance, shards of feedback, then the drums kick in, and it almost sounds like DJ Shadow or something, all distorted skitter over woozy samples, but then finally, BAM, the song splinters into twisted, inhuman industrial black buzz, lightning fast drumming that if it isn't a machine, the drummer is some sort of cyborg, the guitars warped and melty and psychedelic, the structure fractured and constantly shifting, not smoothly either, guitars cut out, stutter and burst back in, the sound swings wildly from lightning fast blast to stumbling doomy tangle, and back, the riffs, as in the past, are mangled and slippery, but here, the metal drops out again, and we're returned to that weird DJ Shadow music box thing, before again, bursting into more detuned black savagery, and so it goes, it's a ten minute track, and they cram a lot into it, lots of drones, and weird industrial breakdowns, there are hardly any vocals, but when there are, they seem to be just a wordless bellow, and that could be some weird guitar thing too, it's hard to tell, everything is chaotic and woozy, warbly and seemingly in constant collapse. And while there's SO much going on, that we could pick each and every track apart, and describe all the twisted fuckery these guys conjure up, that first track definitely sets the template, with the long tracks super progged out experiments in avant blackness, that once again, set these guys SOOO far apart from the pack, this stuff is SO fucking tripped out and bizarre, and gloriously and fantastically idiosyncratic, it's hard to believe a regular band of dudes could conjure up something this bafflingly brilliant. The whole record is super glitchy, almost like the player is malfunctioning, but really it's all part of their warped master plan, that creepy crackly music box effect employed throughout, often the main black buzz riff, rendered as some disembodied old time melody, often under some sort of disembodied chugging, but somehow, always seeming to lurch back into twisted black aktion. More than half of the record seems to be spent exploring specifically non black metal weirdness, in fact five of the nine tracks are more sort of ambient explorations, textural experiments, and the songs proper are constantly in flux, again spending much of the time drifting, droning or creeping, but when they do launch into their black buzz, it's an alien strain that is pretty difficult to parse, so it's probably best to just let yourself get lost in Spektr's confusional black soundworld. Black metal record of the year so far for SURE.

MPEG stream: Teratology
MPEG stream: The Singularity
MPEG stream: Cypher

In the AQ pantheon of fucked up freaked out damaged weirdo black metal, we're constantly having to re-assess which band or which record is truly the MOST fucked up, the most damaged. And it can change in the blink of an eye. Sometimes, deeper listening reveals some until now hidden reserve of completely what-the-fuck-ness in a record we already considered a classic, other times, a band who maybe was never all that weird, will unleash a new record that is utterly confounding, and the bands that tend to be our favorites, seem to keep pushing the limits of the genre, continually subverting the classic sound of black metal until it's all but recognizable. In many cases, we're surprised that some of those bands continue to be loved by metalheads. Necrofrost, Furze, Striborg, Blut Aus Nord, Dead Reptile Shrine, and of course Spektr, who with each new release, jumps right to the front of the pack. Mescalyne is no different. Were this not a 4 song ep, we'd probably already be trumpeting this as black metal record of the year, and heck, we might as well proclaim it black metal EP of the year. Even considering that black metal is only one small part of their overall, twisted and blackened sound. As always, very little information anywhere, just some cryptic photos, and the band introduced like this: "Thus, Speller are:". One member Hth, is credited with Infra B. Distrubance, lead and rhythm anomalies, programming, sampling and vox, while kl.K is credited with percussive manifest, sampling, programming, words of spell and vox. So with all that programming and sampling, you can safely assume, that the weirdness here has much to do with electronics and processing, but it's not as simple as all that. Spektr's vision is a gnarled chaotic tangle of impossible rhythms, backwards guitars, black ambience, and FURIOUS black buzz. It sounds a bit like someone computer was hooked up to the guys in Deathspell Omega, and was sucking various black bits from their bodies and electronically weaving them into some sort of blackened beast, hellbent on destroying the world. A mad scientist, working with black metal, in some hidden fortress, creating some Frankensteinian buzzing behemoth, a lurching, skittering blown out riffed monstrosity. The opener, "Hollow Contact", begins with dark ambient swirls, some industrial moan and creak, a bit of metallic drumming, giving way to an incredible fierce and in the red blast of black metal fury, the drums machine gun fast, the riffs so blurred and buzzy, they're almost a continuous drone, some weird dynamics, with the guitars flipped backwards, and then chunks of tangled arpeggiated woozy blackness sent drifting into the void. The second track is just as strange, beginning with an almost typical black metal drum beat, but beneath a layer of what sounds like record crackle, static, and hiss, and all sorts of whirring buzzing ambience off in the distance, separated by thick blasts of nearly impenetrable black buzz, until the song splinters into a stuttering hiccupping stop start breakdown, all tangled warped guitar parts, backwards drums, tons of space, and that weird blast of gnarled twisted riffage punctuating the slow crawl. The third track is all ambient, a dark confusional sprawl of black whirs, and disembodied sounds, mysterious voices, which leads perfectly into the final track, the mellowest of the bunch, still with that same sort of unhinged Deathspell sound, but more spread out, more sort of Ved Buens Ende-y, a sort of post rock groove overlaid with those woozy guitars, and some haunting industrial ambience, finally erupting into some hyperspeed buzzing blackthrash, even then, constantly pulled apart into the opening guitar vs. drums dizziness, finishing off with a haunting minute of high end drone, and hushed, panicked whispering. Words barely do this stuff justice. Listen to the sound samples. The sound of Mescalyne manages to be futuristic, and spaced out but still grim and black. Buzzy and brutal, but atmospheric and cinematic. This is the kind of fucked up forward thinking music, filmmakers should be using to score their films. Eyes closed, Mescalyne is a terrifying nightmare ride, through some hellish futuristic underworld, and needless to say another addition to the aQ fucked up black metal pantheon. And most probably, black metal ep of the year!

MPEG stream: Hollow Contact
MPEG stream: Mescalyne

Finally back in print and available again, the debut release from one of our favorite far out and fucked black metal bands EVER!! We made their more recent release, The Near Death Experience, our record of the week a while back, and their debut is just as good. Hewre's what we had to say about it when we first laid ears on this demented black gem: Not a list goes by without a review declaring some record THE WEIRDEST EVER. So, okay, we can be a little hyperbolic at times, but it's just cuz we get so damned excited. But since we're always on the lookout for the weirdest records ever, it's not really all that strange that we might actually keep discovering some new weirdest record ever! They just get weirder and weirder. AND, as you probably could tell, it just so happens that we have a definite thing for bizarre black metal, the more fucked up and strange the better! And again, always being on the lookout for weirder and weirder metal records, we manage to stumble across quite a few. Recently we got a copy of a record by a band called Spektr, without a sleeve and a paucity of any useful information. But we were totally struck by its bizarre take on grim black metal, spending most of the record not blazing and thrashing, but instead, creeping through funhouse mirror ambiance, plodding mathrock doom, dreamy acoustic breakdowns, bizarre sound collages and lots of Jeck / Basinski style fuzzy smeary loops. Woah. Eventually we tracked it down, and learned that No Longer Human Senses had been released on the Appease Me label run by French black metal squad Blut Aus Nord! Not too long ago we reviewed the most recent release by Blut Aus Nord a bizarre and brutal, sprawlingly complex black metal record equal parts classic Norwegian style black metal, pummeling Industrial crunch a la Godflesh, creepy droning dark ambience and strange squiggly plain old weirdness. So when we discovered BaN had a label it made perfect sense that this Spektr record would end up there. No Longer Human Senses is definitely a black metal record, as is evidenced by the buzzing droning riffage and thrashing blast beats, some serious Darkthrone worship for sure, but that's really only a tiny piece of the whole picture. The bursts of black metal, marked by a particularly virulent strain of brutally brittle and harsh guitar sound, float through a twisting serpentine maze of random sound events, almost like a massive Christian Marclay installation. Haunting church organs, weirdly affected spoken word, all manner of creepy lilting melodies over lots of hiss and static and record crackle. Loops repeated over and over, but gradually decaying into stretches of fuzzed out shimmer, often erupting into bursts of super harsh black metal mayhem, only to fall apart moments later into a chaotic mess of buzzing, malfunctioning machinery, super distorted industrial sludge with more warbly minor key loops, all beneath thick waves of dense buzz and crumbling melodies, thick swaths of ambient blur and strange ghostly tinkles, peppered with brief snippets of classical music, found sounds, field recordings and random bits of sonic skree, the whole mess dropped into a swirly abyss of blackdrone and super creepy psychedelic ambience. This is one of those rare records that is so fractured and demented and wonderfully bizarre that is has you constantly checking to see what the hell it was you were listening to! Definitely one of our favorite new weird black metal records!

MPEG stream: II
MPEG stream: III
MPEG stream: IV

There's a certain strain of black metal, that concerns itself more with black than metal, more with texture than heaviness, more with mood than any sort of musical rules. Those are precisely the sorts of black metal bands that send us spinning. Bands that transcend their genre, or are seemingly oblivious to the fact that they might belong to any genre at all. Such is the case with mysterious black metal outift Spektr. We discovered their debut a couple years back and proudly proclaimed it THE WEIRDEST BLACK METAL RECORD EVER. Since then it's been practically raining bizarre black metal, Furze, Rehtaf Ruo, Dead Reptile Shrine, Hidden, Urfaust, Circle Of Ouroborus, all most definitely black, but each with their own take on what black metal means. And sounds like. This new Spektr record, however, takes up right where the last one left off, and effortlessly outweirds them all. But their mission is not to be weird. This is not calculated, purposeful, ironic, or in any way untrue to their vision. And it's not that sort of damaged inept weirdness. The music is too dense, and complex and varied and lush and just too impossibly and truly weird to be anything but the musical expression of someone's twisted vision. It's like how truly insane people are the ones who don't realize they're insane. And Spektr are most definitely insane. The cool thing about Spektr, is that they seem to be some sort of experimental ambient project, with occasional bursts of black metal, as opposed to the other way around. More than half the record seems to be made up of drones, and static and white noise and intercepted transmissions, short wave radio, found sounds, soft subtle rumbles and strange rhythmic interference. When the metal does kick in, it tends towards a seasick lurching midtempo buzz, a lumbering blackened beast, that sort of stumbles and careens wildly out of control, occasionally slipping into a galloping blast, but quickly settling back into a slow sort of lope. Their metal is just off kilter enough to balance their experimental tendencies, and Spektr don't shy away from busting out with a black blast for only a few second before getting back to the drone at hand. And oh the drones! The gloriously twisted ambience. So dense and multilayered. Creaking and crackling, swelling and slithering, often punctuated by industrial pounding, strange rhythms, glitchy hiccups and stutters, but just as often a smoldering warble, a low end dirge of glacial hum and creepy crawly gurgle and whir, voices drift up from the murk, as do strange song fragments and bits of malfunctioning electronics, it's like walking through some black skied wasteland, the ground strewn with all manner of debris, the air thick with smoke and ash, The view fuzzy and indistinct, distant tolling bells, cymbal sizzle that sounds like sprinklers in a moonlit field, all these bits of sound, these ambient fragments, woven together into a truly ominous world of dark sound, the background to a truly bleak and buzzy black metal framework. The more we listen to this, the less -weird- it seems, scary maybe, haunting, harrowing, dark, dreary, creepy, ominous, ghostly, unnerving, and mysterious most certainly, oh okay, and quite a little bit weird too. A definite contender for our favorite new black metal record! The disc also includes a video, playable on your computer, for a track not on the cd. And it's a strange one as you might expect. The music is all dark drones, with weirdly jazzy drums way up in the mix, shuffling over a fuzzed out Burzumic riff that sort of ebbs and flows, a fuzzy distorted wave. It never fully kicks in, but it never completely blisses out. It sort of teeters back and forth between dark jazz and glacial black fuzz. It's a little like a black metal post-bop Bohren, sort of. The track shifts partway through and becomes a strange sonic kaleidoscope of creepy orchestra music, garbled ambience and a haunting martial rhythm played on tympani's. The accompanying video is gorgeously grainy, all darkness and shadows, like some rare damaged print of a lost silent horror film, the film stock so degraded that various chunks of light and dark take on ominous shapes, the end result, the visual equivalent of an old crackly record. Totally mesmerizing.

MPEG stream: The Violent Stink Of Twitching Terror
MPEG stream: His Mind Ravaged, His Memory Shattered
MPEG stream: Whatever The Case May Be

Check this out! Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney and Mary Timony of Helium put their clever heads together to whirl up their collaborative effort known as Spells. Sounds just as you'd expect, Carrie's smart pop prettiness and Mary's much more wizardly fantasy pop leanings. Includes a Who cover.

[ aquarius records catalogue — S ]