[ aquarius records catalogue

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Showing results 401 through 450 of 4057.

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

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NOW ON VINYL!!!!!!!!!! We can't think of any album in recent history that was more set up to fail than this one. A "love her or hate her" actress with dubious musical abilities performing mostly Tom Waits covers (with the exception of one original, "Song for Jo"). Even in the highly capable hands of David Sitek from TV On The Radio manning the production (and providing a healthy dose of indie cred), they must have realized this was a high risk venture. Which means we think most people will never bother to give this a listen, which is too bad, because if you didn't know it was Scarlett Johansson and you didn't know these were Tom Waits covers, it's actually a pretty good ethereal pop album. One could easily mistake this for a record by Beach House or even Mazzy Star. There's been much worse music put out by actresses than this (ahem, She and Him), that got away with so much less scrutiny. Perhaps this is the problem, it's setup to be a vanity project when it really isn't (Johansson's vocals are just as much of an instrument in Sitek's production as the swirling music boxes and atmospheres), leaving the actress to bear much of the blame for its failure. Perhaps if it was released under a band name that just happened to have Johansson on vocals or whatever, under any other circumstances this would be a hit. Oddly, David Bowie makes a guest appearance.

MPEG stream: Town With No Cheer
MPEG stream: Song For Jo
MPEG stream: Green Grass

Working apart from the Geraldine Fibbers, Carla Bozulich and AQ-favourite guitarist Nels Cline team up as Scarnella. Slow building intense walls of droning guitar strum not unlike late period Swans and lilting ballads that wouldn't be out of place in a German cabaret.

This very interestingly, artfully packaged disc is stickered with the information that the debut from Scatter includes a member of Scottish NYC-wavers Franz Ferdinand. And while at least of few of us here at Aquarius really like Franz Ferdinand, that fact is much less relevant to the sound of Scatter than that the nine member Scatter also includes percussionist Alexander Neilson in their ranks, who we only recently were introduced to via Neilson's excellent collaborative cd with AQ fave Richard Youngs, Ourselves. And Scatter indeed proves to be in line with the experimentation of Youngs and others in the UK free-folk underground. On Surprisin Sing, Stupendous Love, you'll find Scatter appropriately enough scattering their music with elements drawn from such diverse traditions as folk music and free jazz. There's some sweet female vocals, softly melodic *and* plenty of abstract, jazz oriented group blowing. Both Appalachia and Sun Ra are referenced. Less dense than delicate, but definitely lively and lovely. We think this is on roughly the same wavelength as the likes of A Silver Mount Zion, Vibracathedral Orchestra, and Black Forest / Black Sea, though sounding mostly unlike any of those.

MPEG stream: Nationa Magic
MPEG stream: Alternations Of Pasture And Urban Conurban

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

SORRY. We can't really think of anything from Australia that sounds like the post-punk / art-rock collective Scattered Order. Maybe bits of the Swell Maps or the very first SPK recordings, but Scattered Order were way weirder. The band formed in 1979 around a couple of blokes from Sydney bored with the prospects of pub rock riffs, taking any number of signal altering gizmos and throwing them into a jagged post-punk context. The band purposefully deconstructed what they came up with into a myriad of dubbed-out rhythms, hazy melodies struggling through the trebly din, angular stabs from guitars, junked metal, and electronics, and a go-fuck-yourself sense of humor. Prat Culture was the first album from Scattered Order, having been self-released through their own M Squared imprint back in 1981. This was a record that teetered on the edge between control and chaos, with a jagged minimalist fug-rock, with spluttering table saw noises coalescing around jackbooted rhythms that looked forward to what Swans were doing just a year later on their eponymous debut. "Swiss Like Knives And Forks" was something of a 'hit' for Scattered Order, as it was much more a legitimate song with a driving rhythm section, a swaggering Buzzcocks-inspired guitar riff, and appropriately barked vocals. This was actually the track that made us jump at the chance to get a whole Scattered Order album, with a version of this song being included on the Can't Stop It 2 compilation of Aussie post-punk from a few years back. As thoroughly awesome as this one song is, it does stand out against the more amorphous excursions into monochrome riffs, druggist rhythms, atonal drones, and indifferent attitudes. "Slot Car Synth" recreates the accelerating roar from drag-racing through cheap machines and hammered rhythms, "Koo Koo Kamus" is an anti-groove dub track whose chicken scratch guitar rhythms are on par with the oddball post-punk expressionism of Sprung Aus Den Wolken, and other tracks have the feel of This Heat trying to work out how to play Mars songs. This cd version of Prat Culture features all of the tracks from the "Screaming Tree" 7" - an equally impressive and equally obtuse recording, alongside a couple of live tracks that actually serve to complement the studio recordings without sounding tacked on at all. A weird and wonderful find!

MPEG stream: Swiss Like Knives And Forks
MPEG stream: Koo Koo Kamus
MPEG stream: Boys In Coal Trucks
MPEG stream: World's Longest Intro (2JJ Mix)

... but lazy are not the Scattered Pages! The new full length from these three troubadours from Houston, TX comes swiftly on the heels of their fine cdep This Is Where The Story Ends, and even in that short time the band has evolved and fleshed out their sound tenfold. Their not so secret weapon is the combined songwriting force of Kurt Coburn and Brandon Hancock, both have proven themselves to be quite the richly imaginative storytelling lyricists and crafty songsmiths. Many of the songs here reminded us quite a bit of The Hidden Cameras or Belle And Sebastian, but more rootsy folk inclined. An engaging listen.

MPEG stream: Alice To Wonderland
MPEG stream: I Was Never Someone In Love

Bay Area label Three Ring Records expand their roster by a third with four impressive new releases by Rykarda Parasol, Frankel, Tom Thumb & The Latter Day Saints and these three Texans who call themselves Scattered Pages. Three Ring has already got fine releases by the indie rock/pop likes of Elephone, Soltero, Ebb & Flow and D.W. Holiday and Scrabbel, but with this recent outpouring they bolster their country and folk branches. Scattered Pages' male vocals exude the sort of mellowness that you'd imagine was the result of the golden warmth of whisky. These are earthy country tunes that sway in the breeze while the burnished amber light of dusk fades. Nice. Despite the band's name, the band itself seems to be in anything but disarray. And despite the album's title, it seems that their story's only just beginning... and in a very promising, self-assured fashion.

MPEG stream: This Is Where The Story Ends
MPEG stream: Stately Man

These recordings date from the 50's and are unlike a lot of Scelsi's other compositions, which tend to be dark and bombastic (we at AQ are huge fans). These are all solos or duets composed for woodwinds and come from a period during which Scelsi abandoned all

RealAudio clip: Ixor
RealAudio clip: Suite
RealAudio clip: Suite 2

MPEG Stream: "Quattro Pezzi (Su Una Nota Sola) 2nd Movement" [/audio/scelsiOW2quat.m3u]

MPEG stream: Quattro Pezzi (Su Una Nota Sola) 2nd Movement
MPEG stream: La Nascita Del Verbo 1st Movement

"Giacinto Scelsi is unique among composers in this (or any) century. Trained in the New Vienna School, he grew into a totally personal style in which he focused completely on tone and sound. Scelsi was highly influenced by Oriental philosophies and the deep meditative aspects underlie his stark, expressive music. This disc presents five works that document this growth. 'Yamaon' has the voice (a booming operatic baritone) using no words -- only syllables and sounds, with instruments gradually taking over. 'I Presagi' is about the visionary precognition of the downfall of a Mayan city. In three movements, each focused on a single pitch, it is scored for 2 trombones, 2 tubas, saxophone, percussion and wind machines. 'Anahit' is a work for 18 instruments with violin solo. It is a very difficult work, creating a brilliant sound-world which defies any conventional description. 'Tre Pezzi' for solo saxophone contemplates a unique approach to sound, and 'Okanagon' is, according to the composer, 'to be understood as a rite, or if you choose, as the heartbeat of the earth'."

Yet another incarnation of the Ian Svenonius / Michelle Mae thing (the Make Up!), and perhaps our favorite to date, that's for sure -- though that's not necessarily saying too much 'cause there's really no big Make Up fans at AQ. However, Ian & company have progressed from sounding like a watered down version of a James Brown backup band or a bad Prince cover band to this actually kinda fun fucked up fuzzed out 70's funk/trippy/soul thing. It sounds like it would indeed be exciting to see them perform live -- we figure they'd be fun, dancey and crazy in a good way. Actually Allan can confirm this, he happened to see 'em play (rather by accident, he was there to see another band) not long ago and though he's never been a Make Up fan, he had to admit that the Scene Creamers put on a good show -- Mr. Svenonius is a geniune showman indeed and you can't argue with some good ol' fashioned rock n' soul entertainment with a sense of humor. Does that come through on record? Well, while some of this reminded us of what we didn't like about the Make Up -- the line between funny & kitsch and pretentious & dumb being crossed in the wrong direction too often -- all in all we're into it. It's true that all the posturing and styling and preaching that Ian and Michelle do can cause people who don't immediately dig that sort of thing to hate them before they've heard 'em, but really their whole propaganda thing about how "making sexy music and dressing well will uplift the oppressed proletariat" can be fucking hilarious. So give 'em a chance, we did and ended up thinking this was surprisingly rad.

RealAudio clip: Better All The Time
RealAudio clip: Session Man

*** COLLECTIBLE USED VINYL *** Art Rock / No Wave record from 1985. Media: VG+ (looks very clean) Sleeve: NM

These Death Valley instrumentalists haven't put out a record in four years, so here at last is...a three-song ep. One track is exclusive to this, the others are alternate versions of songs from that as-yet-unreleased new album. Scenic sounds like their name -- they're aiming to bowl you over with epic, stretched out instrumentals. Gorgeous and labor-intensive Independent Projects "discfolio" packaging, letterpressed, of course.

Assuaging any fears I may have had that this was about Scenic doing some kind of new diva house or something, "The Acid Gospel Experience" consists of languorous, lovely instrumental space rock washes to lull you to sleep. Nestled in new-age haven Sedona, Arizona amidst energy vortexes, galleries full of bad Georgia O'Keefe knock-offs, and very picturesque big red rocks, former Savage Republic guitarist Bruce Licher expresses his appreciation for the harsh beauty of the desert landscape through the kind of slow, gently droning psych rock more conducive to weed than acid, methinks. Very pretty.

RealAudio clip: The Acid Gospel
RealAudio clip: Skylight

Lanterna and Scenic would make for an excellent live billing, as both ensembles accent their guitar driven narratives with details of the open road from their respective homes (Lanterna from the Midwest, and Scenic from the Southwest); hence, this 4 song ep of live recordings from the two bands works quite well together. Although both bands preceded Godspeed You Black Emperor and Tarentel by several years, they've managed to carve a similar niche as their younger contemporaries with expansive soundtrack-ish instrumentals with majestic crescendos and introspective atmospheres. This split EP has also been beautifully packaged within a letterpress 'discofolio' by Scenic's Bruce Licher through his beloved Independent Project Press.

RealAudio clip: End Of The Tunnel
RealAudio clip: Angelica

Janek Schaeffer worked extensively as an architect before shifting his aesthetic focus to sound design -- specifically, vinyl manipulation with modified turntables. On this recording, Schaefer incorporates field recordings into his signature magnification of slow turntablist actions, and utilises much more digital production than in his previous work, creating an exceptional album of drones, but full of eccentric details that remind us of Stilluppsteyppa. "Above Buildings" invokes Schaeffer's architectural fascination not only through the title, but with his compositional strategies as well, musically defining the space of a claustrophobic closet or a majestic open hall. Attention to detail keeps this record interesting, with surface noise being processed to sound like sizzling bacon fat and sawtooth distortion waves cajolled to release subtle melodies. Janek's digitized grey drones ebb and flow as if they were the somatic rhythm of some living architectural entity. Nice.

RealAudio clip: forglen

Before his commissioned performance at the Casa de Serralves in Porto, Portugal in 2002, Janek Schaefer spent several days accruing sounds from the surrounding areas. While collecting his usual armload of antiquated vinyl for his avant turntablist collages, Schaefer also made recordings of a Steinway piano as well as a series of gestural actions that made use of the building's natural reverb. The manipulation of that natural reverb -- both in the electronic manipulation of the pre-recorded sounds and in physical actions made during the performance -- were the crux of Shaefer's performance. The electronic aspect of "Black Immure" follows a similar path as his last couple of records "Pulled Under" and "Le Petit Theatre De Mercelis," with divergent currents of mysterious sounds abstracted into innumerably bleak surfaces. Schaefer punctuates his atmospheres with looped samples from those old records and the piano recordings, using a technique similar to Philip Jeck's, crafting those sonatas into oblique fragments of memory that have been faded beyond all recognition. Within these portions of the performance, the natural reverb of the space does blur the edges of each sound ; however, when Schaefer creates dense metallic clattering from slamming all of the windows shut in the space and dragging chains throughout the space, the reverb takes on an Industrial din. Altogether, "Black Immure" is an impressive piece of work. MPEG Download: "Excerpt 03" [/audio/schaeferblack3.mp3] MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 03" [/audio/schaeferblack3.m3u]

MPEG stream: Excerpt 03
MPEG stream: Excerpt 05

MPEG stream: In The Last Hour
MPEG stream: Between The Two

The third in this series of beautifully but annoyingly (according to several AQ-ers) packaged cds features AQ fave Janek Schaefer (the first two volumes featured Philip Jeck / Otomo Yoshihide / Martin Tetreault and Mika Vainio / Christian Fennesz). Recorded live in Brussels in April, 'Le Petit Theatre...' finds Schaefer in a mellow mood. And sounding not a little bit like Philip Jeck. Less looped sounding than Jeck, but still painting similarly sepia toned, fuzzy and murky soundscapes, with fluttering record crackle, low end thrum, warbly distant melodies, and dreamy gauzy atmospheres created out of layers and layers of rumble and hiss and whir and hum. This fifty minute track veers lazily from ominous dark ambient to free-drone to noisy clatter but always returns to the tranquil turntablescapes that we all find so damn irresistible. Probably one of my favorite Schaefer records so far!

RealAudio clip: "le petit theatre de mercelis
RealAudio clip: "le petit theatre de mercelis
RealAudio clip: "le petit theatre de mercelis

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

SORRY. Janek Schaefer - an architect turned sound sculptor - presents two 30 minute turntable collages that build slow moving paranoid drones, rich with amplified blasts of surface noise, vertigo inducing swells of RPM dynamics, and stochatic tones usually associated with musique concrete. Fans of Christian Marclay and Otomo Yoshihide's turntable work should certainly take note.

A while ago Janek Schaefer himself described a record by my band Coelacanth as "soulless" so I am happy to return the favor in my review of Schaefer's latest album "Pulled Under," but of course for an album that is admittedly based upon a novel by JG Ballard, soullessness, vacancy, and desolation is just what he's going for. Janek Schaeffer works primarily within the scope of experimental turntablism, building his own twin and triple armed varispeed turntables. That said, it's rare to actually hear anything within his compositions that really reflect his tricked out gear, with no scratching at all and very little recognizable appropriations of pre-existing recordings. Instead, Schaefer runs this source material through a considerable amount of digital filters, often maximizing the sounds latent bass reflex and smoothing out the high end. Augmented with equally manipulated field recordings, Schaeffer's "Pulled Under" transforms itself into a cold piece of sonic abstraction, rippling with desolate sonar blips, washes of unknown textures, and refractions of deep, dark drones. Sure, it's soulless, but it's a great soulless.

RealAudio clip: SuperChannel
RealAudio clip: Penumbral Rover
RealAudio clip: Parallel Spoor

So, we were playing this in the store, when a homeless guy, after bugging us incessantly for 'water' music, you know, like gamelan or Indian music (huh?), to combat the current water shortage and counteract the rampant petroleum consumption, asked if this Schaeffer record was broken: "Why does this sound like broken 78s? Is this on purpose?" "Is this to make money? The Beatles used music to make money, but I don't think this will make money." "Does this make people happy?" I'm sure it will make some AQ customers happy, as this is the sort of weird, high concept experimental stuff we dig so much. The first disc of this set is a one-sided lp entitled 'Skate' and refers to the skating of the needle across a record, not rollerskates. And appropriately enough, the record is cut wildly with brief bursts of static and grit, that will send your needle skating to middle of the record. Schaefer suggests this lp as a soundmaking tool, utilising your hands, or a 7" placed on top of the lp, to build clicking popping loops. It is accompanied by a 99 track, 20 minute three inch cd entitled 'Rink', designed for random play (of course), that incorporates a composition using sounds taken from the 'Skate' lp and live recordings from a skating rink installation in Ireland, extending the metaphor/pun even further. Glitchy and clicky and scratchy and staticky, perfectly pushing all those Jeck/Oval/Yoshihide buttons, that at least around here, can't be pushed often enough!

MPEG stream: Rink (Excerpt)

Janek Schaefer's Weather Report is a noticable contrast to the polished surfaces that twist through his previous albums of desolate isolationism, Black Immure and Le Petit Theatre De Mercelis. During his Residency in Minneapolis as part of the American Composers Forum, Schaefer was astounded by the hostility of the storms, tornados, snow, and cold; thus, set out to make a sound portrait of a Minnesotan winter. Schaefer didn't just focus on field recordings of weather, but of media sounds associated with weather. He offers the cryptic taxonomy of his sounds as "underwater ice skaters; flapping; old meteorological kit; leaf blowers; repairing weather damage; various 60's archive audio; melting ice, ski across snow, Minnesota forecasts on radio, in the car and on TV; Tornado chasing & test equipment; snow flakes landing on mic; squeaky tree; National Weather Service balloon launch." Using very rough splices to join his material together, Schaefer looks back towards the pioneers of musique concrete to aid him through this psychogeographic piece of sound poetry. A brief 21 minutes long.

MPEG stream: Excerpt 1
MPEG stream: Excerpt 2

The Austrian noise artist Helmut Schafer died in 2007, leaving behind only a handful of recordings despite his constant travels to music / art festival around the world, including appearances at ARS Electronica and Documenta back in 1997. His work dealt mostly with psychoacoustic principles of intense frequencies at intense volumes, as such he found a sympathetic ear in Zbigniew Karkowski - who became a longtime friend and often collaborator. Yet, beginning around 2003 he came across some dismantled church organ pipes and began experimenting with alternative ways of activating the tones and timbres of those pipes, including a contraption of hairdryers that pushed small currents through the pipes to generate hushed, muffled tones. In building compositions through this system of organ pipes, he radically shifted away from the searing noise and towards a very quiet, contemplative electro-acoustic sound, involving violin, electronics, percussion, and ample pockets of empty space. Thought Provoking III is Schafer's final recording dating back to 2006 when he employed percussionist Will Guthrie and violinist Elisabeth Gmeiner to perform the piece in a Vienna church. In fact, Guthrie stitched this recording together from the rehearsal sessions and the performance itself, attempting to keep true to Schafer's wishes. The proceedings are solemn excursions in electro-acoustic mark-making built around those bellowing hums from Schafer's organ pipes amidst intermittent percussive flourishes, subtle gong overtones, sustained violin trills, and fizzling electronics. The non-repetitive clustered events sound akin to anyone from the Miasmah roster taking up the task of remaking late period Morton Feldman. For the final track of the album, Zbigniew Karkowksi took up remixing elements of Thought Provoking III into a piece reflective of Schafer's more volatile compositions. While full of the frigid vibration and electric toxicity, Karkowski shows considerable restraint in his remix, and constructing a poignant tribute to his lost friend.

MPEG stream: Thought Provoking III
MPEG stream: Averaging Down 20xx By Zbigniew Karkowski

A strange one for sure. This brief declaration of pagan invocation channeled through Dada collage and power electronics is delivered by the frontman from Kinit Her. In the extensive liner notes, Schafer explains this 21 minute expedition to be "an aestheticized recounting of the daily relationship between a lone recordist and a damned urban soundscape." This is hardly the phonographers / field recordists' take but a more infernal, internalized portrait, laced with searing, mechanized blasts of electronics & drum machines with Schafer's deep, detuned black metal mantra vokills looming throughout. He jump cuts between that modus operandi and collages of DIY electronic gibberish, ambient synth drone, appropriated teledrama orchestrations, scabrous violin screeches, and the deep reverberant thrum of abandoned ammunition bunkers that dot the agricultural landscape to the south of Chicago. If KTL were to remix and recontextualize all of those HNAS or P16.D4 albums...

MPEG stream: Untitled No. 2

Hard to believe, but this is indeed a RAP record from one of the drummers of BURMESE! But Burmese fans aren't necessarily Schaffer's demographic, as there are no hellish howls, or gut ripping low end, of head crushing percussive onslaught, just some bumping bass, casio-ish drum beats, and a whine-y white boy flow. But it's the lyrics that keep the Burmese flame burning. Metal, Satan, mayhem, rock and roll and assorted other punk rock debauchery spit in a sing songy, un-funky flow. Fans of Steven Schultz's I Forgot To Get A Rap Name record should definitely check this out!

MPEG stream: Your Band
MPEG stream: Attack Of The CLonefucker

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

SORRY.

Following up on the hilarious and successful "Rock, Rot, Rule" (see AQL #73) comedy cd comes a new collection of radio tomfoolery. On New Jersey's unique and prestigious radio station WFMU, Tom Scharpling hosts an unlikely talk radio show which features We tried to play this for our favorite "music scholar" (we'll call him "JW") but his response was, "Oh yeah, I've already got that". Of course. Worth it for this piece alone, although the rest of this double disc set contains lots of laughs too.

RealAudio clip: The Music Scholar (excerpt 1)
RealAudio clip: The Music Scholar (excerpt 2)
RealAudio clip: The Music Scholar (excerpt 3)

The first thing we thought when we heard this was, how the hell do these guys do this without cracking up?? Here's the setup: Tom Scharpling is a DJ on WFMU and takes calls from listeners. Ocassionally one of those callers will be Jon Wurster (Superchunk drummer!), portraying any one of a number of annoying characters and the comedy genius that ensues is, well, GENIUS! The first track is Hippy Johnny, where Wurster calls up as Hippy Johnny and proceeds to discuss his commune where the men make art and the women make dinner, dressed in fur bikinis, and the children manufacture drain cleaner and other not-so-natural products. It's kind of a twisted Tom's of Maine idea. The funny part is how disgusted Scharpling becomes over the course of the 20 minute call, eventually giving up, exasperated and disgusted. The second call is a Wuster again as a guy who apparently used to be in the little kid punk rock band Old Skull, concerning their REUNION tour. An idea that's ridiculous enough to begin with. As the call progresses, we learn that he was only in the band briefly, none of the main members are involved, and a quick sample of their new music displays a drastic new shift in musical direction. Which of course has Scharpling hysterical. Hard to explain how funny this stuff if, you should definitely listen to the sound samples and know that when we play this in the store, everyone freezes, stops what they're doing and listens intently until everyone in the store seems to be laughing uproariously. The rest of the calls involve a cowoker and his nefarious plans for Tom, a phone call from a two inch tall racist, Gene Simmons' rock and roll car dealership and an epic, brutally funny and painful to listen to call from a guy known simply as Kid eBay. From the same guys who brought us the brilliant Rock, Rot And Rule, Chain Fights, Beer Busts, and Service with a Grin, and New Hope For The Ape-Eared. So highly recommended!!!!!

MPEG stream: Hippy Johnny
MPEG stream: Darren From Work

Third installment of audio hilarity from WMFU DJ Tom Scharpling's radio show. For those of you unfamiliar with the show or the previous releases "Chain Fights, Beer Busts, and Service with a Grin" and "Rock, Rot, and Rule", Scharpling & Wurster is a spoof talk radio show in which our host, Tom Scharpling is hounded each week by a supposed different phone-in guest -- aka Jon Wurster. Highlights from this two cd set include "Todd the Audio Guru", a sadistic prankster who decides to make a living by ripping off audiophiles after a lark at the local CD boutique; "Chocolageddon", in which Tom is poisoned by a weight loss dessert; a would-be five foot tall, nasal voiced rock star (see album cover for likeness) soliciting band members on the air; an interview with a young man promoting his band while on a Clear Channel sponsored music tour and more! We've got no idea how both Scharpling and Wurster manage to keep themselves from cracking up when conducting these 'interviews'. Very funny stuff, especially for us music geeks.

MPEG stream: Mother 13
MPEG stream: Todd And The Audio Guru Pt. 1

Finally this old AQ favorite gets reissued! A new cover, but the same side splitting contents. The story goes something like this: "Rock, Rot, & Rule: The Ultimate Argument Settler" is supposedly a 98-page book which simply lists band names and states whether these groups ROCK, RULE, or ROT. Published with a cover price of $25.00, it is the genius of one Ronald Thomas Clontle. This cd documentation is a live radio interview between WFMU DJ Tom Scharpling and Mr. Clontle, in which beleaguered callers attempt to argue the inaccuracies of Mr. Clontle's analysis that Madness RULE ("because they invented ska"), while the Beatles ROCK ("because they wrote some bad songs like 'Strawberry Fields Forever'"), and Stereolab ROTS ("because they don't use guitars"). Needless to say, if there is anybody who is baffled by the aesthetics of Aquarius, we insist that you buy this, as we agree with ALL of Mr. Clontle's tautological sputterings. As Mr. Clontle predicts, time will vindicate us. (by the way, Mr. Clontle is a pseudonym for Jon -- the drummer of Superchunk.)

MPEG stream: "Rock, Rot & Rule
MPEG stream: "Rock, Rot & Rule

Hilarious. Bizarre. Amazing. As always. Can you tell we're fans? The humor of Tom Scharpling and Jon Wurster is one of the reasons that New Jersey's WFMU is one of the best radio stations anywhere. Every time a new cd from these two comes out (there's been four previous releases) we drop everything to put it on in the store and listen and laugh our asses off. And every time, customers previously unfamiliar with Scharping & Wurster start laughing too, ask what the heck we're playing, and instantly buy copies. Basically, the S&W formula is that easily-bemused regular-guy DJ Tom Scharpling is taking calls on this show, when some weirdo and/or jerk (not always obvious as such at first) calls in to talk and the two of them get into some ridiculous verbal battle. Said caller always being played by Jon Wurster. It's a theatre of the absurd, with Scharpling & Wurster spinning some really strange and incredibly funny scenarios which they somehow make almost believable -- in part 'cause they have an uncanny ability not to crack each other up, dunno how they do it, especially since a lot of these calls/tracks go on for upwards of 20 minutes! Originally we got into S&W 'cause of the indie-rock connection, they love to make fun of rock snobbery (like Wurster's character Ronald Thomas Clontle on the classic Rock, Rot, & Rule). But they don't limit themselves to music-related humor at all -- though the bonus third disc here is devoted entirely to the efforts of the would-be rock star guy originally introduced on New Hope For The Ape-Eared to have his band Mother 13 play on Mount Everest. Meanwhile, disc one features "Jock Squad" (think Geek Squad but different), "The Auteur" (a self-important slasher film director), and "Philly Boy Roy" (a lampooning of such supposed Philadelphia pastimes as the "running of the cheesesteaks" and "Laser Allin"). Disc two has "Andy From Lake Newbridge" (who turns out to live in, not on the lake, and in fact is a carp), "Tornado Todd" (a guy whose life-changing escape from death doesn't stop him from being a total sleazeball), and "Postal Slap Fight" (wherein Tom gets threatened by a guy whose uncle is the Postmaster General). You've got to hear these to understand why they're hilarious, but trust us, they are. Recommended to anyone with a funny bone.

MPEG stream: Jock Squad
MPEG stream: The Auteur
MPEG stream: Postal Slap Fight

Of all of this year's crop of Record Store Day releases, this is one of 'em that we were probably most excited to hear about - in fact, did you see our blurb in (of all places) Entertainment Weekly, for their Record Store Day feature? They asked Andee for his two RSD picks, he chose this and (naturally) the A Minor Forest reissues. So, Rock, Rot & Rule, if you don't know, was originally a cd released years and years ago. It's an old aQ favorite. The cd's out of print, but someone got the great idea to do (red colored) vinyl for Record Store Day, yay. The story goes something like this: "Rock, Rot, & Rule: The Ultimate Argument Settler" is supposedly a 98 page book which simply lists band names and states whether these groups ROCK, RULE, or ROT. Published with a cover price of $25.00, it is the brainchild of one Ronald Thomas Clontle. This record documents a live radio interview between WFMU DJ Tom Scharpling and Mr. Clontle, in which irate, exasperated callers attempt to argue the inaccuracies of Mr. Clontle's analysis - challenging such Clontle proclamations that Madness RULE ("because they invented ska"), while the Beatles only ROCK ("because they wrote some bad songs like 'Strawberry Fields Forever'"), and Stereolab ROTS ("because they don't use guitars"). All the while, the bemused host prods the painfully unhip yet obnoxiously opinionated Clontle to more and more absurd critical appraisals. It is frickin' HILARIOUS. Needless to say, if there is anybody who is baffled by aQuarius' aesthetics, we insist that you buy this, as we agree with ALL of Mr. Clontle's tautological sputterings. As Mr. Clontle predicts, time will vindicate us! By the way, Mr. Clontle is a pseudonym for Jon Wurster - the drummer of Superchunk. He and Tom Scharpling's show on WFMU was always super funny, Wurster playing different weirdos being interviewed by straight man Scharpling. Ronald Thomas Clontle is one of Wurster's best characters, and this recording (originally broadcast live, November 9th, 1997) is our favorite Scharpling & Wurster thing EVER. Especially funny for people like us who have our own 'Rock, Rot & Rule' style conversations all the time. How they didn't crack up doing this, we don't know. We endeavored to get a lot of these 'cause we knew we'd want to list it, but we don't have a ton left, it was limited to 1000 copies and may well be sold out at the source.

MPEG stream: "Rock, Rot & Rule
MPEG stream: "Rock, Rot & Rule

UT Publishing being the book arm of Ugly Things magazine, just the folks to publish the story of Dutch sixties beat-psych greats Q65! 205 b&w illustrated pages, full of drama, drugs, and of course the making of some amazing music. Fans know that Q65 were, like, Holland's answer to the Stones, or maybe the Pretty Things, so you can imagine that they have some stories to tell! Definitely lots of rock n' roll craziness, at least as much as the surviving members can remember...

Solo album from Yob frontman, a lot less heavy than Yob that's for sure!

The members of spacerock outfit Hovercraft team up with, surprisingly, Mary Hansen of Stereolab, for lighter duty than Hovercraft's normal heavy psychness. Comparisons to Stereolab are unavoidable since Mary provides the pretty murmured vocals and bloopy synth effects. Swooping meteorite guitar and rumbling drums keep you tethered to your space capsule. A successful collaboration indeed. Released on 5RC, Kill Rock Stars subsidiary label.

MPEG stream: Armed And Ready
MPEG stream: Cry For The Nations

This is the third reissue of a recording by German guitarist/soundscaper Gunter Schickert that we've listed - and also the third that we've made a Record Of The Week. That ought to tell you a little something about just how much we like the music of Herr Schickert! Up until fairly recently, Schickert's work has been shrouded in obscurity, the original albums being super rare and hard to find, reissues equally scarce. But thankfully, just in the last couple of years, several legit, long-deserved reissues, appearing on the Bureau B and Important labels, have helped to make Schickert's mesmerizing music more widely known - and has hopefully established him where he belongs, as one of the crucial names in the classic krautrock pantheon, up there with contemporaries like Klaus Schulze, Manuel Gottsching, Achim Reichel, and Michael Rother. Certainly as far as we're concerned, he is! If you dig any of the aforementioned gentlemen, you should definitely get to know Gunter Schickert as well. The previous two albums of his we've Record Of The Week-ed, 1974's Samtvogel and 1979's Uberfallig, are both all-time aQ faves. There's not much more to Schickert's small discography - but there is this, and it's another fave for sure. Originally released as a cassette tape in 1983, then reissued again on cassette in the '90s and on cd-r in the early 2000's by the Freeman brothers (of Auricle Magazine / Crack In The Cosmic Egg fame), the material on Kinder In Der Wildnis consists of disparate DIY recordings drawn from Schickert's archives, so it's a bit more varied than either of his earlier albums, though if you've heard those, you'll recognize right away that you're back in Schickert's sonic realm, one of organic field recording atmospheres and trance-inducing minimalist pulsations... but something about this is so much more nervy and dark. More "rocked out" too at times. Maybe it's the influence of the NDW, aka Neue Deutsche Welle (punk new wave music of Germany), but we're still talking krautrock. Even though Schickert does EVERYTHING himself (guitar, tape, vocals, percussion, trumpet) it somehow sounds like a whole band, and that band sounds like Amon Duul II and Faust trapped together in a bunker, jamming endlessly in the middle of the night, the music dark and claustrophobic despite the environmental nature sounds that (as always) Schickert likes to weave into his recordings. There's the children's voices on here too (his daughter sings on the jittery title track) but that's in stark contrast to the druggy darkness of so much of this. Tracks like "Rabe In Der Nacht" and "Hollentanz" are a dense lo-fi mesh of percolating beats, wailing psych guitar, and sound FX. Bird twitter-y field recordings (and crazy crow-like cawing from Schickert himself, we assume) meet overdubbed layers of chanting vocal parts, including more animal-like cries, in the hallucinatory mix. Swirling drones of synth coalesce into hypnotic throbbing rhythms, over which lilting keyboard motifs hint at the likes of Goblin. Also significant is Schickert's sad, electronically-treated trumpet, heard ferinstance on "07.Mai", alongside pleasingly placid repetitive guitar, phasing effects, and field recordings of fireworks exploding (heard elsewhere on the record as well) that sound like sferic squiggles of electronic sound, buried in the mix along with disembodied unknown voices. The trumpet here foreshadows the future sounds of Supersilent, while the pulsating patterns of proto-glitch music also remind us of This Heat's Repeat. Yep, it's a freakin' great record all right. Trippy and weird and psychically round the bend. In other words, super satisfying. How it stayed so far under the radar for so long is crazy. Big props to Bureau B for giving it a proper reissue now on both compact disc and vinyl for the very first time, with excellent artwork, liner notes, and even two bonus tracks (on the cd only). The bonus tracks, fyi, are feeling a lot more NDW, Schickert employing a drum machine it sounds like, a bit dancey, still dark and damaged, looping layers of vocals coming and going amidst the beats. Could easily be something Dark Entries of Medical Records would be expected to reissue. Very cool, fans of Pyrolator / Der Plan will enjoy these as well as the rest of the album. But with or without the bonus tracks, Kinder In Der Wildnis is super recommended, in heavy rotation in the store right now, a record that with Schickert's other two solo albums makes for an impressive trifecta of unsung krautrock genius.

MPEG stream: Rabe In Der Nacht
MPEG stream: Suleika
MPEG stream: 07. Mai

Years ago we fell in love with Gunter Schickert's Uberfalling, a 1980 late-krautrock guitarscape epic. The cd reissue of that is now sadly out of print, but we've recently been turned onto Schickert's first lp from 1974, Samtvogel, which at last has been reissued on vinyl courtesy of the Spanish Import label Wah Wah, who have also recently reissued Heldon, Vainica Doble, Inner Space and other international psych gems. Sure, they're a bit expensive, but everything we've heard from the label has been amazing, so they're pretty much worth it. Especially this one, a three track epic of cavernous space guitar extrapolations and buried lysergic vocal incantations that sounds like an alternate soundtrack to Fantastic Planet. The first track, "Apricot Brandy" gently introduce us into Schickert's sound world, a spacy lyrical repetitive commune riff with murmured vocals and spindly multi-layered guitar percolations that gently float in an echo-y atmospheric chamber. The second track, "Kriegmaschinen, Fahrt Zur Holle" is nearly 17 minutes of space-echo, belltones and strange echo effects that slowly build into more intense repetitive and multi-layered motifs, sometimes urgent and cinematic, and other moments more billowy and sinuous, reminding us of Achim Reichel and Manuel Gottsching, and even obscure krautrock band Temple. The final twenty-one minute track, "Wald", brings the intensity to the fore, with a buzzing guitarscape that sounds like John Carpenter, but soon gives way to a more lilting spacey bubbling and exploratory improvisation before the intense riffs return and interject and subside in strange surges, finally dissipating in little clouds of helium. A beautiful piece of outsider kosmiche! Highly Recommended!

MPEG stream: Kriegmaschinen, Fahrt Zur Holle
MPEG stream: Wald

YES! We're big fans of lesser-known krautrock guitarist Gunter Schickert (who also did production work with Klaus Schulze, like, for Japan's Far East Family Band). As soon as we heard that his Uberfallig album was getting a new reissue, we knew it was going to have to be a Record Of The Week. We've been in love with this record forever, referencing it and Schickert plenty of times in other reviews when we want to cite something incredibly atmospheric and minimalistically trance inducing from deep in the krautrock zone. There was a previous cd edition of this we stocked years ago, but that's been out of print for ages. Now Germany's industrious Bureau B label have stepped in and added this rare late-krautrock masterpiece to their ongoing, essential series of reissues of essential kraut / kosmishe albums. And it's on both digipak cd *and* vinyl now as well! Uberfallig was Schickert's second album, originally issued in 1979 on the Sky label, the follow up to his 1975 Brain debut Samtvogel. It's hard to believe somebody this good didn't record more, or with other people, but we're only aware of a couple later recordings that have ever surfaced. Here on Uberfallig, Schickert's exceptionally hypnotic space-echo guitar work, similar to Manuel Gottsching of Ashra, is matched by fascinating rhythmic pulsations, at times recalling prime Can-like velocities or the circular bubbliness of aQ faves AR & Machines, and some Pink Floyd Meddle era pastoral psych vibes as well. And it's mostly just Schickert (guitar, voice) and a few friends (drums and vocals) plus nature sounds, deftly deployed. Opener "Puls" is worth the price of admission alone. It does indeed pulse, for nearly 16 epic minutes, building from calmly rhythmic beginnings to pure hypno-guitar bliss, mixed with subtle, splashy, sploshy field recordings - evoking the idea of Schickert and his drummer colleague Charles M. Heuer wading upstream in the wilds somewhere as their music plays. That begins the recurrent watery theme found on this album, an ever present liquid watery ambience, the sounds of wind and rain and surf and babbling brooks woven in among the "actual" instruments. The cover image of an intense looking Schickert suggests this too, his visage overlaid with what looks like the play of light on the surface of water. The second cut, "In Der Zeit", is a shorter, folkier number, with more surf-sounds and bird calls and a gentle, hushed female vocal, accompanying Schickert's pleasant, repeating acoustic guitar motif. So nice. Track three, "Apricot Brandy II", as some may guess from the name, is a sequel to the first track on Schickert's debut Samtvogel (wish we still had a reissue of that - maybe Bureau B will do something about that, too). Again with a watery intro, then the nervous ticking of drumsticks, heralding a quietly unfurling, slightly sinister and suspenseful 12 and a half minute, gently percolating proto-post-rock trip. We're hearing some Can circa Tago Mago, and Tortoise and Circle, too, especially with the murmuring vocals chanting "Apricot Brandy" amidst other drones and moans. It's all druggy and delicate, moody and mesmeric. Quite the tour de force, coming to a close with strange samples and lovely crackling. If that wasn't enough, the album ends with even more haunting mesmer, the aptly titled, the 8+ minute long "Wanderer", slow and spooky at first, with more of that tick-tock drumming and watery splashes. It's got a twilight sound to it, so beautiful and mysterious and mesmeric, like this whole amazing, organic, echo-laden album. Includes, along with credits and lyrics, new 2012 liner notes from Schickert's contemporary Asmus Tietchens, in both English and German, and also an interesting note from Schickert, explaining that some of this music was used on the soundtrack to a film about the gay community in New York called Brooklyn 11238, which we'd never have guessed... While we'll state that this is reissue definitely something crucial for fans of Agitation Free, AR & Machines, Moebius & Rodelius, Michael Rother, You, Ashra, and latter-day krautrockers Village Of Savoonga, we should also make clear that this is NOT just for krautrock collector nerds - even if you've NEVER heard a krautrock record before, we'd still recommend this one, obscure as it is. It's that good.

MPEG stream: Puls
MPEG stream: In Der Zeit
MPEG stream: Apricot Brandy II

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. Haiy-AHHHHHHHH!!!!!

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

SORRY. Limited edition hard-to-get cd release of the fantastic Lalo S. soundtrack to the classic Bruce Lee kung fu movie. Newly restored and remastered. Sorry it's so expensive, but it is damn great.

[ aquarius records catalogue — S ]