[ aquarius records catalogue

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Another awesome new release from UK vinyl horror movie soundtrack reissue label Death Waltz, the soundtrack to 2011's The Devil's Business, which we have yet to see, but the trailer looks pretty incredible. While Death Waltz does generally tend to focus on vintage horror soundtracks, this is not their first foray into modern soundtracks, having recently also released the Let The Right One In. The man behind the music for the The Devil's Business is Justin Greaves, who many aQ-ers should know as a member ofof sludgelords Iron Monkey, as well as the mainman in atmospheric post rock brooders Crippled Black Phoenix, which makes sense, as the music here is not that far removed from Crippled Black Phoenix. The excellently titled opener "My Enemies I Fear Not, But Protect Me From My Friends", perfectly lays out the sonic template sounding like a haunting, brooding, slow burn post rock, loping and doomy, soaring and darkly majestic, the vocals though a deep croon, the sort of voice to imagine singing old hymns in Latin, which perfectly fits the vibe. There's some Morricone-ish twang too, and swirling strings, tense and moody, building to a seriously intense climax, before slipping back into a droney brood. And the thing is, unlike a lot of scores and soundtracks, only a handful of these tracks are cues, most are proper songs, hard to say if the whole songs are used in the movie or just parts, but those tracks are pretty great, droney, and dark, psychedelic and smoldering, super atmospheric and cinematic (obviously), laced with synths and strings, buzzing guitars, plodding rhythms, a few tracks have a gypsy vibe to them, sounding almost circusy, others are slow, creepy doom folk drifts, occasionally laced with operatic vocals, or field recordings, but just as often, allowed to creep ominously, and some songs full on rock sounding like Godspeed or Explosions In The Sky or yeah, Crippled Black Phoenix. A few tracks get reprised at the end of the record, one song is revisited, only spookier (the 'spooky version'), another is an alternate version that recasts the original as sounding more like Goblin or John Carpenter, and one of the shorter jams gets fleshed out as a huge, majestic post rock blow out. The shorter cues are pretty great too, from ghostly high end ambient shimmer, to woozy, sinister synthscapery. As with all Death Waltz, the packaging is super swank, the lp has a killer spot varnished cover, with new art, that makes the movie seem like it could be from the seventies, a huge poster inside as well as liner notes from Greaves. So cool!!

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Damon Albarn has quietly emerged from the shadows of 90's MTV fame with Blur's hit (No. 2 Song) to become one of the more interesting musical figures in the more mainstream realms of modern rock. From his travels to Africa that resulted in the great Mali Music album, his collaborative efforts in The Gorillaz, and even the last Blur record, Think Tank which was pretty much a solo endeavor and contained some really smart and somewhat somber pop songs. He's also been running a great record label Honest Jons who have released some amazing records old and new from the likes of Moondog, Candi Staton, Tony Allen, Las Malas Amistades, etc. The Good The Bad & The Queen is his latest project and he's assembled quite the all-star cast including Clash bassist Paul Simonon and legendary drummer (of Fela Kuti fame), Tony Allen, with production duties handled by Danger Mouse. Together they've created a really nice album of subdued pop songs with layers of warmth and an expansive and moody disposition. At times it even made us think of a more polished version of Three Mile Pilot's Another Desert Another Sea, and this for sure should appeal to fans of Pinback and Radiohead. This keeps growing on us listen after listen, revealing something more each time. For sure one of our favorite major label records in quite a while.

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Another blast of insane black metal chaos, this time from an entity known simply as...THE ONE. And chaos it is. Sure it has all the hallmarks of grim fucking black metal, but this is so weird and sloppy and punishing and weird weird weird. Everything (drums, vocals, guitars) is drenched in reverb, so that when things get going, I mean really going, it turns into one intensely hellish blur, that sounds almost like Merzbow with only the occasional cymbal crash to help you keep your bearings. The drumming, when not lost in a dense cloud of impenatratable bllllleeaarrgghhh, is a weirdly stumbling beast, stuttering through arrhythmic fills and continually fluctuating blast beats. And then there's the vocals. Some of the most insane ridiculous vocals ever, heavily distorted and reverbed monster growls that threaten to overtake everything they're so high in the mix! And tempo changes and new parts are occasionally demarcated by a very loud grunt that is reverbed through the roof or some maniacal sinister laughter also drenched in effects. There are also all sorts of bizarre sounds underneath the frosty onslaught: what sounds like jaw harps on track four and the hoofbeats of horses elsewhere. But at it's core, like Graveland or Nargaroth, The One takes black metal into the almost static realm, creating totally buzzing blurry drones, assembled from super distorted riffs and rumbling basslines smeared into endless washes of hypnotic sound. So totally mesmerising but completely insane and absurd at the same time. Highly recommended for fans of black metal weirdness/insanity a la Necrofrost, Abruptum, Vondur as well as the grim black metal blur of Nargaroth and Graveland.

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It's been almost 5 years since we last heard from Greek duo THE ONE, who back then, were maybe not a duo, and who were most definitely in our pantheon of weirdo black metal, along with Necrofrost, Abruptum and Vondur, vying for the top spot with their heavily reverbed blackness and insane vocals. But here we are years later, and The One are not nearly as weird as they once were. Like Necrofrost, who have also resurfaced and whose new record is reviewed elsewhere on this list, it might not be that they are less weird, but that the weirdness is better integrated into their sound. Before, the music was a stumbling chaotic blur, everything tangled up with everything else, the mix super erratic, with various elements exploding out of the mix, the drumming wild and off kilter, lots of grunts and some of the growliest monster vocals ever, and we'd be lying if we didn't say we weren't initially disappointed that this record was so GOOD. And tight. And solid. Cuz it is. Good. Really good. Heavy and black, the guitars intense and thick and full, some awesome riffing, the drums hard hitting and audible in the mix, the mix itself lush and LOUD, plenty of groove and hooks hidden here and there, but not damaged or demented or fucked up. At least at first. No one can make music that weird and then suddenly ditch all the various elements that made that music so strange. So here, on I, Master, the weird shit is subtle, and generally tucked away amidst thrashing blasting blackness and chugging riffage, whether it's an impossibly long and harsh hissy howl, or some weird dubbed out cymbal shimmer, or even a creepy circusy interlude with a looped music box groove and whispered vocals, the weird stuff is definitely there, but that's no longer why we're here, this is some heavy Ravenstormy Blizzard Beastly blown out buzz drenched heaviness, with just the right amount of crooning chanted vocals and midtempo doominess to keep it interesting, but they have definitely ditched their fucked up fractured past in favor of something ultimately way more pleasing, a super epic, ultra heavy, dense and destructive, blasting and buzzing black metal, and so far today, we've listened to the whole record all the way through THREE times, and the night is still young...

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We first heard from Canadian harsh noiseniks The Rita, when they teamed up with local primitive lo-fi black metallers Bone Awl on a cassette a few months ago. Not so much a split as a weird collaboration, the two bands switching back and forth, Bone Awl's black buzz perfectly complimenting The Rita's brutal noise squall crunch, so much so that it was kind of tough sometimes to tell who was who. No such problem here, Thousands Of Dead Gods is nothing but The Rita and their huge caustic cloud of churning, roiling psychedelic white hot white noise! This is definitely one for noise freaks only. One hour long track of relentlessly brutal N.O.I.S.E. Nothing subtle, no buried melodies, no shimmery atmospherics. Just a grinding, grit drenched, buzzy, prickly, poisonous Merzbowian blast of pure noise. The coolest part is that all of the sounds are sourced from a Great White Shark diving cage, recorded underwater and from the deck of the boat. Hence the dead shark on the cover. But there is a turbulent underwater feel to this noise, like dunking your head in super violent rapids, or the churning wake of a boat, or in the ocean amidst wildly thrashing sharks going in for the kill. Brutal.

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We like Skull Defekts, but this collab isn't the one to start with.

We were watching this show on MTV, something like 'The Top 21 Under 21' that was a countdown of all the MTV stars who have hit the big time before they're even old enough to drink. Which was pretty depressing (the authors of this review are well into their

RealAudio clip: There Are Great Monsters Going Past
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Billy Childish has had quite a prolific career, and one that shows no signs of slowing. He is a writer and an artist, but perhaps he is most known for his music. Much of his musical output was written and recorded with his main band Thee Headcoats (although he also fronted such garage wonders as Thee Milkshakes). This is an impressive double disk collection of fifty (!) singles released by Thee Headcoats and friends between 1990 and 1999. Never bowing to trends or technology, the garage rockin' rawness of Billy, Johnny and Bruce's music continues to shine and inspire their fans and other bands. Comes with a very very thorough discography. All hail Thee Headcoats!

Your basic great rockin' record that merges garage rock with sampling collage. Already a staple of hipster jukeboxes nationwide.

Japanese garage rawk in suits and shades. Pretty good, but not totally goin' crazy like you really want 'em to.

Local duo that play a very very pleasant, quiet sort of midtempo indie rock, with lots of delicate details if you're patient enough to listen closely. They remind me a lot of another beloved local band -- Fuck -- not only because the groups share similarly whispered boy vocals, but also in the way the melancholy songs start off quietly and serenely, then build the tension as the songs progress, culminating in restrained yet intense explosions of emotion. They also recall the lyrical wistfulness of Lambchop, and the scratchy vocalising of Wilco's Jeff Tweedy. At 56 minutes the album is unnecessarily long; take off a third of it and the album would sound sweeter, more poignant in its brevity. Nonetheless a fine rainy day record for indierockers.

RealAudio clip: The 8th ring of hell
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Thee More Shallows have a new unexpected home on the usually hip hop-centric Bay Area label Anticon, but we shouldn't really be all that surprised now, should we? Heck, music genre boundaries have been dissolving left right and center over the past few years. The SF band's sound on their new full length is a little unexpected too. Since their last release 2006's Monkey Vs. Shark, the formerly more rootsy rock band's already broadening scope seems to have expanded in all directions with impressive results. Book Of Bad Breaks journeys through many moods -- alternately romping, rocking and reclining -- but always with a shadowed, subtle druggy headiness.

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Not sure about the significance of this 7-song EP's title, but we are sure that Thee More Shallows can deliver the dreaminess. 'Tis all soft pop grandeur like a not so distant cousin of Mercury Rev and Flaming Lips. The third song "Phineas Bogg" is particularly gorgeous, whisking you off into the heavens. The EP includes a remix of their song "Freshman" by Odd Nosdam and Why? which takes them into the neighborhood of the Postal Service (the band not the, um... service). Ultra pretty!

MPEG stream: Phineas Bogg
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More? Yes, please! This fine album has received a very welcome reissuing, offering this Bay Area band's fans and newcomers another opportunity to have their hearts melted. On More Deep Cuts, Thee More Shallows are seemingly inspired by the over-the-top trippy grandeur of bands such as Sparklehorse, Flaming Lips and Radiohead, but adeptly avoid falling prey to idol worship, crafting a dark, achingly beautiful world of their own. 'Nuff said!

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It's like Christmas around here (we know, it is ACTUALLY like Christmas around here right now), whenever we get a new batch of tapes from Auris Apothecary, not only is it bound to sonically all over the map, without fail the packaging is totally stellar, often high (or low) concept, meticulously hand assembled, often involving organic matter, or broken glass, or sponges, or scrolls, or who knows what else. Needless to say, every AA release is special, and is often as much a work of sonic art, as it is a piece of music. Thee Open Sex is apparently, according to the label, "a psychedelic supergroup of mammoth proportions" from the label's hometown of Bloomington, Indiana. We sense a bit of tongue in cheekiness there, but this is most definitely a primo slab of droned out mysterious psychedelia, with long tones layered into thick undulating drones, buzzing synths, plenty of buzz and hum, some bowed metal, a slow ominous build, buried melodies drifting in viscous swells of rumble and whir, laced with saxophone blurts, and eventually driven by pounding tribal percussion, the sound super druggy and gauzy and abstract, but with a strange internal propulsion, that adds tension and intensity, this is the sort of stuff that would most definitely appeal to fans of Avarus and No Neck Blues Band and Sunburned Hand Of The Man, the same sort of abstract sonic ritualism, totally mesmerizing, and per the above description, the sort of thing most aQ-ers, especially the psych-kraut-space-drone inclined, will flip over. Includes members of aQ faves Dylan Ettinger, Circuit De Yeux along with a bunch of other Indiana psych rockers. LIMITED TO 150 HAND STAMPED COPIES. The tapes are housed in anti-static ziplock bags stamped on the front with some strange pink symbol, and stickered on the back, inside a thick printed cardstock insert, the tapes featuring hand-printed paper labels, each stickered bag numbered/stamped in red.

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

SORRY. First chance for us to check out this band of Belgian brutes and we're pretty impressed. Huge slabs of slowly shifting downtuned slow motion riffing, massive and pummelling, a perfect fit on Southern Lord. But it's the vocals that really make Thee Plague stand out. A bellowing, growling caterwaul not all that dissimilar to the mighty Killdozer. In fact, a thumbnail review could simply read: SUNNO))) meets Killdozer. Good stuff. On yellow vinyl.

A couple of years ago some of us here at Aquarius befriended a visiting Belgian guy, a big fellow with a waxed handlebar mustache named Steve. That is, the guy was named Steve, actually, not his mustache. But if his mustache had a name we wouldn't have been surprised -- it was quite a striking 'stache. ANYWAY, we knew that in addition to being a record collecting fiend, Steve was a musician and that he played in a band, but somehow we didn't discover until much later that his band was called Thee Plague Of Gentlemen (is that some sort of punning reference to the BBC comedy?) and they were proponents of something that we love so much: sheer HEAVINESS! We learned this when they did a now out-of-print 7" single for Southern Lord, that we decided sounded like an unholy union of SUNNO))) and Killdozer! While we haven't really kept in very close touch with our Belgian friend (if you're reading this, hi Steve, how've you been?!), we have definitely been on the look-out for more from his band. Well, here it is! A full-length cd of downtuned sludge and gargling vocal wail. Total doom. Something along the lines of Cathedral (circa Endtyme), Electric Wizard, Unholy Trance, Celtic Frost, and Winter. Slow and grinding and a little bit psychedelic, with occasional bursts of speedier brutality. Riff-heavy, feedbacking doom extremity that means business. This disc is enhanced with two Quicktime videos of the band performing live. That's the aforementioned Steve singing and playing guitar, the bald guy with more beard now than moustache. And he's wearing a Magma t-shirt!

MPEG stream: Your Love Is King (Of The Dead)
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Once a tour-only piece of merch, now available in stores...like ours. Four new tracks (two about 5 minutes, two around 10) from this Montreal based, Godspeed You Black Emperor! related ensemble. From the intimate to the epic, some of this is garagey and "ghettoblastered" while other parts are ethereal and grandiose with violins sawing away, massed voices and birdcalls.

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Somebody here thought this was possibly the worst . record . ever. But really, how can it be?

**SALE **SALE* *SALE** Found two (2) of these hidden in a box in the back of the store, haven't listed 'em since 2003, great album, grab one if you can, first come first served, sale price... AQ pal Drucifer (and the guy who runs Dielectric Records, who released those amazing 12" a while back: Sote, Karen Stackpole, etc...) had been threatening to play this record for us for a while, and he's got pretty darn good taste so we were looking forward to finally checking it out. We always just sort of assumed from the title and from talking to Drucifer that it was going to be some sort of jazz, but boy were we surprised when we threw this on. The quartet in question is actually a trio, and while the music these three play does have certain qualities one might find in jazz, this is GRINDMETAL through and through. Five tracks of furious, chaotic, brutal and pummeling hyper complex metallic grind a la Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Pig Destoyer, Discordance Axis and the like. But unlike most grinders, TGWMQ stretch their songs way out (none of the songs is shorter than 3 minutes, most significantly more), allowing them to explore and develop and stretch out a bit. The final track is nine minutes long ferchrissakes, with lots of splattery free noise, rumbling ambient passages, found sounds and ethereal female vocals, almost-groovy riff rock parts, and buzzing droning weirdness. But don't be frightened off by all that, 'cause the core of this record is dense and grinding, ultra complicated, dizzyingly agile, and crushingly savage heaviness. So good. All you folks who freak out over Agoraphobic Nosebleed and their similarly sonic minded ilk definitely need this!

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Live hip hop has always been a dodgy proposition. Bad sound, rapping over boring backing tracks, lots of "Hey! Ho! Put your hands in the air!!" kind of stuff. So a live record seems like a pretty bad idea. Especially when you're talking about a group that thrives on production, weird sounds, and studio fuckery. Thankfully and surprisingly, this is a pretty great set, and a testimony to the skillz of Dose One and Jel. Jel weaves a crazy musical backdrop of rumbling creepy soundtracks, bouncing boppy funky jazz, stuttering breakbeats, Phantom Of The Opera organs, beeping blooping electronica and monor key hip hop shuffles while Dose One spits an amazing, tongue twisting, never-ending flow in that distinctive and impossible whine of his.

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Themselves is the renamed Them, a project of Doseone and Jel who also do time in the more well known cLOUDEAD. Them put out a record a couple of years back that we didn't list for some reason, but was one of the best post-hip-hop excursions into blissed out beat-oriented hip-hop flecked space rock. Or something. Hard to accurately describe what these cats do. Use cLOUDEAD and Anticon and Mush as a starting point, but then head way out. No, I mean WAAAAAY OUT! This is no longer hip-hop. It's gone beyond that. Kind of like the way the Boredoms are not 'rock'. This is epic and expansive; soundscapes of thick stuttery beats, washes of rumbling groove, creepy snatches of ghostly piano, disembodied voices and weird, WEIRD loops. And then there's the vocals. While it -is- rapping, it's gone beyond that too. A relentless, never ending, ultra nimble flow of whiny invective. Doseone's vocals are like a mix of whiny indie rock boy and Cypress Hill's B-Real. But they are all over the place, going from actual SINGING to ridiculously tongue twisting , head spinning rapping/scatting. Definitely for fans of Anticon and Shadow, but hip-hop-heads that aren't afraid to try some WEIRD stuff should definitely give this a listen.

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Hip hop remix records have huge potential for disappointment. Actually remix records in general have pretty much become pointless and boring, albeit with a few exceptions. Thankfully Them(selves) first foray into handing over their raw tracks for other folks to fuck with has yielded some surprisingly good results. Most of these remixes of tracks from their most recent No Music album don't sound all that remixed, especially if you're not too familiar with the original tracks, since those original tracks are so dense and multi layered to begin with. Part of the reason this record sounds so good, and still retains all its Anticon-ness, is the fact that most of the remixes are handled by Themselves...er...themselves, as well as the usual Anticon suspects: Controller 7, Why?, Alias, and Odd Nosdam. The guest remixers though do their best to add their own stamp while keeping things flowing nicely. AQ fave Hrvatski adds some additional skitter, dreamy ambience and rumbling low end...before seriously junglizing the proceedings with murky throb, digital crunch and spastic beats. Hood smear some healthy portions of Jesus And Mary Chain fuzz and My Bloody Valentine guitar skree over everything turning their track into a pulsing drone. Grapedope (Tortoise's John Herndon) fiddles with the speed and pitch, giving the original loping hip hop ditty a stuttery, jumpy, playful bounce, and Notwist give Themselves (not themselves) a sweet indie techno pop makeover. Really great.

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Quietly gently Theodore And Hamblin's debut album creeps out of our speakers and tiptoe into our ears. Their name might recall Hollywood musical maestros Rodgers And Hammerstein or Las Vegas magic men Ziegfied And Roy (at least to us it did!), but this pair's electronics based music is far more low key and intimate than either of those duos' works. Rain droplet chimes ring out amid the deeper tones that undulate and flutter. Rounded 4/4 beats pulse softly as if they're being broadcast through many layers of blankets. Yes, this is music best suited for nestlin'.

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Another nod to Hellraiser is found in the title to this vinyl only release from the larger than life project Theologian. Lee M. Bartow, the author and creator of Theologian's death-synth epics, has stated that Clive Barker's horror stories are fundamental to his work, even referencing the Hellraiser books as his bible in various interviews. In this quote, we are introduced to the puzzle box that when solved opens a portal into another plane of existence, with any number of demonic characters to be found on the other side, Pinhead included. The roar of big machines endlessly churning, boiling, and grinding with an infernal purpose is heard throughout this album, with the side long B-side "Truthseeker's Pick" emerging as some sort of hellish field recording of sulfuric vents, locomotive clatter, and metal-on-metal clank with nothing but misery and pain to be experienced in such a realm. The album's introductory track "God Comes As A Wall" finds Theologian screaming into the void of a collapsed black hole, crushing rock, building, planets into a singular thrum of cataclysmic white noise. "The Sun Failed To Rise Today" is a continuation of the plodding industrial dirges that Theologian crafted on the mighty Some Things Have To Be Endured, spiralling with spectral noise, megalithic rhythms, and soaring mechanized screams. The shortest number makes for one of the more intriguing pieces in "Surface Of The Real" with its subaquatic techno pulsations bracing the clarion melodies for guitar and / or voice. Limited to 500 copies.

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Latest from black ambient soundscaper Theologian, aka Leech, he previously of long running power electronics / synthdrone outfit Navicon Torture Technologies, and like the recently reviewed (and awesomely titled) The Further I Get From Your Star, The Less Light I Feel On My Face, this new one Finding Comfort In Overwhelming Negativity is another collection of abject industrial blackness, of heaving, shadowy blackness, of harrowing cinematic ambience, four sprawling tracks that ooze and creep, blurring rumbling drones into stuttering mechanical rhythms, buried voices and smeared chordal swells, the opening track here, the most overtly rhythmic thing we've heard on a Theologian record, a hypnotic rhythmic loop, creaking and scraping, metallic and mesmerizing, churns away, while all around it, shades of black slither and shimmer, wreathed in streaks of black FX and shards of glitch and gristle and thrum. The rest of the record ditched the rhythms, and returns to a more rumbling droned out black ambience, shimmery and atmospheric for the bulk of one track, corrosive and caustic for much of the other, the second sounding near metallic, roiling slo-mo riffage, draped over disembodied vocals and a swirling morass of mysterious sounds. The crunch and buzz, gradually smooth out and becomes a mesmerizing sprawl of staticky pulsations, and while rhythmless technically, are pretty tranced out and rhythmic. The final track might be the noisiest of the bunch, a post industrial sprawl of chaotic noise, overlapping rhythms, streaks of keening high end, lots of hiss and hum, everything brittle and upper register, sounds almost like some strange field recording of a post apocalyptic wasteland, all rusted out robotics and grinding machinery, like some of the moments earlier, weirdly rhythmic, gristly and staticky, but also noisy, washed out and sort of of bleached out, as if at some point the sound was full and rich and simply decayed into the wasted skeletal sprawl that unwinds gradually, and ends the record with a slowly fading sky full of static and hiss... Gorgeously packaged in an oversized book-style digipak.

MPEG stream: Fighting For Nothing
MPEG stream: Finding Comfort In Overwhelming Negativity

The profane and blasphemous agenda of Lee M. Barlow (the principle agent behind Theologian, working with a few willing supplicants) looks backwards at the dual histories of metal and industrial culture. Yup, it is commonplace to find vehement opposition to Christian doctrine in the reversal the symbols as sigils of a black magic. Yet, this opposition is rarely a full-frontal denial of God as the blank void of atheism has no place for the transcendent and the spiritual, both of which manifest proudly in this rich and diverse iconoclasm. Aesthetically speaking, we suppose this could be trace even further back to Carl Orff, whose work has become the de facto audio signifier for all things Satanic; and probably further before Nietzsche, Lautremonte, and Baudelaire to the charisma of heretics, ignoble witches, and self-designated messiahs. So in a polemic for the will to power and the deification of the self, it's not all that much about what's said, but how it's said. And the aesthetics of Theologian speak mightily through blunt force, wielded as a relentless production of blackened synths and grim industrial drone. Pain Of The Saints conjures a sonic turbulence that is almost wholly drumless, which stands as a departure from much of the other Theologian albums which rely on heavy Teutonic beats to propel the vitriol and wailing. It's nonetheless an exhausting and exasperating journey, blasting through one miasma after another of aggressive amalgams of guitars, synths, and voice, two whole discs worth!

MPEG stream: Without Trust, Your Love Is Meaningless
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"Some things have to be endured, and that makes the pleasures so much sweeter!" So spoke the villainous Frank Cotton in Clive Barker's first Hellraiser movie. It is interesting to think back, and realize that Coil had their proposed soundtrack to that same movie rejected with some citing that Coil's themes were 'too frightening' or (more likely) 'not commercial enough' for a major studio motion picture. Anyone with ears who has listened to Coil's unreleased themes to Hellraiser will not find anything frightening or scary at all. In fact, Coil was quite reverential to somebody like David Shire, especially with his minimalist and maudlin score for The Conversation, with Coil composing everything on the Fairlight synthesizer, which itself had a distinct sound but one that didn't fall in line with the Goblin / Carpenter axis. Had Coil turned in to the film studio something like what they produced on their grand statement to the apocalypse in Horse Rotovator, it might have sounded close to where Theologian ended up on this death-synth industrial opus. Here, Theologian - the project of a cold-hearted character simply given the name Leech - has employed the talents of a host of female vocalists from the darkwave and noise underground. The conceit has a similar feel to Lustmord's recent album The Word As Power; and thankfully, both albums transcend any notion of female tokenism. Furthermore, both albums do not suck. Far from it for Theologian; as this album triumphantly extends the M83-produces-Swans analogy that we posited regarding the 2012 epic The Chasms Of My Heart album. After a garbled, witchy cackle that introduces the album's first track "Black Cavern Myopia," Leech uncorks a dark-minded, power techno rhythm, crunched through distortion, echo and sinister atmospheres featuring the deep-in-the-catacomb vocalizations of Hecate's Rachael Kozak. A more familiar militantly bashed rhythm keeps with a Swans-styled corporal beatdown on "The Conjoined Deviant Procession" with the monotone chanting delivered by Kristen from Sewer Election. The vocals never really come to the foreground throughout the album, instead they swirl and commingle amidst the metalgaze hiss, powerdrone murk, and audio sickness from Leech's decomposing productions. Even when he employs the talents of opera singer Melissa Kelly (the only vocalist not hailing from noise culture), her voice is cacooned in billowing reverb as it flutters throughout the ghastly synth melodies and blackened industrially crushed doom plod on "Ectothermism." Aside from Sewer Election and Hecate, we've not encountered any of the other vocalists, but their legion is Rachel Maloney (Tonikom), Nikki Telladictorian (Prometheus Burning), Patricia Benitez (Fetish Drone), Gillian Leigh Bowling (Teloahqaal), Christiana Key (Delphic Oracle), Joan Hacker (Factoria), and Shari Vari (Void Vision). Leech has crafted monstrous, ghastly album of lurching rhythms and totally downer melodies - think the Cure's Pornography remixed by Vatican Shadow. So good!

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MPEG stream: Gore-Stained Ramparts
MPEG stream: Ectothermism

The second of two releases this year from black ambient alchemist Theologian, the other, Finding Comfort In Overwhelming Negativity, released on Handmade Birds and reviewed here recently, and now this one, The Chasms Of My Heart, released on Crucial Blast. Like Finding Comfort (and The Further I Get before that), Chasms is another stunning collection of grim, industrial wastescapes, all bleak drones and industrial percussive crunch, although Chasms does start out on a remarkably 'musical' note, opener "Abandon All Hope" weds actual singing to tense layered keening tones, and churning machinelike rhythms, the vocals mantra like, wreathed in static and crackle, drift atop a dense droned out thrum, driven by that relentless rhythm, eventually the vocals and drums drop out, leaving some seriously serene sonic shimmer and softly sweeping cinematic ambience. The second track makes up for the melody in the first, unleashing a heaving onslaught of power electronics and blacknoise skree, which eventually blurs, and is melted down into a thick morass of crumbling low end that gradually becomes a hushed blackened drift. But it does seem that melody will be a recurring theme on Chasms, as "My Body Is Made Of Ash, I Live As Ash" begins as a series of thick thick distorted synth swells, which rapidly blossom into something much more melodic, soaring and cinematic, like M83 via the Swans, but even slower and meaner, and then the beats come in, and you can add Muslimgauze to the mix. Weird combo, but it works, hypnotic and tranced out, until the hammer falls, and the song explodes into full on face melting noise, but if you listen close, within that caustic cloud of noise, the rhythm continues to churn, vocals wail, and melodies drift and shimmer, it's the sort of hard noise, that softens a bit the more you listen, and seems to transform before your ears into something weirdly, and impossibly catchy. The rest of the record reveals more of Theologian's bleeding black sonic heart, the stuttering, almost 'danceable' "We Can't All Be Victims", the processed vocal driven blackened power electronics skitter of "I Don't Exist", the blown out noisebliss of "Bed Of Maggots, the almost house music-y pulsating noisescape title track, and finally, the sprawling 13 minute, haunting, grinding cinematic ambient noisescape closer. Comes packaged in a super striking, full color, oversized dvd style, six panel digipak.

MPEG stream: Abandon All Hope
MPEG stream: Starvation Is A Legitimate Weapon Of War
MPEG stream: My Body Is Made Of Ash... I Live As Ash
MPEG stream: The Chasms Of My Heart

We had never actually heard much from NYC power electronics / black ambient / dark industrial / synthdrone outfit Navicon Torture Technologies, but we were definitely intrigued by this latest installment of blackened sound from NTT mainman Leech, under the name Theologian. Even before hearing it. It's on Crucial Blast, and if anyone knows their way around grim, bleak, black heaviness, it's CB. Then there's the gorgeous oversized cover, a long haired figure holding her head, underneath a strange sigil and surrounded by a decahedron and a field of pure black, and then the record title, The Further I Get From Your Star, The Less Light I Feel On My Face, and the accompanying song titles: "In Times Of Need, We All Go Against Our Natures", "The Fragility Of The Male Ego", "Bearing Bitter Fruit", and the packaging folding out to reveal more mysterious shapes and strange shadowy nudes, a pretty compelling chunk of art, even before we get to the sounds within. And if anything, the sounds inside more than live up to that promise, the opening track "Zero" begins the proceedings, and we expectantly wait for some serious harsh noise, or some grim black ambience, and while there is a little of both, it's molded into something much more, well, lovely for lack of a better word, 5 minutes of crumbling black beauty, gorgeous plaintive melodies buried in a thick morass of buzz and blur and swirling hiss and whir, like a way more ominous and blackened Philip Jeck or Tim Hecker, gorgeous, and gorgeously harrowing. "In Times Of Need, We All Go Against Our Natures" is 24 minutes long, the majority of which is spent drifting through some nightmarish landscape of hushed minimal rumbles and post industrial grit, again, far more 'pretty' than we might have expected, a smoldering chunk of subterranean blackness, a roiling murky surface than offers brief glimpses of melodies and voices below, unsettling but gloriously grim, and in case we find the proceedings too soothing, the last few minutes find those sounds expanding and exploding into thick crumbling swells of blown out synths and fractured black electronics, underpinning some seriously anguished super distorted vokills. The record continues in a similar fashion, creating blackened shades of beauty out of elements harsh and hateful, abject and bleak, the sound almost shoegazey at times, hints of Nadja for sure abound, but a Nadja stripped to its essence, the tracks creep, and crawl, and drift, thrumming and pulsing softly, wreathed in sheets of grit and grime, but always glowing from within, the melodies like buried black secrets. Occasionally, like on "The Fragility Of The Male Ego", the sound becomes super blown out and corrosive, an ultradistorted blacknoise, that for all it's corrosive clamor, remains somehow, if not lovely, at least haunting and mysterious, while other tracks, like "It's All Gone", take unlikely elements, and again, weave them into something strangely beautiful, but still undeniably pitch black. Dark and mysterious and troublingly lovely, some seriously intense power electronics flecked black ambience, most definitely recommended for fans of Lustmord, MZ412, Nordvargr, Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, Wicked King Wicker, Locrian, Wraiths, Wolf Eyes, etc... Incredible packaging, 6 panel dvd sized digipak, black and spare on the outside, full color on the inside.

MPEG stream: Zero
MPEG stream: Unfamiliar Skies
MPEG stream: The Further I Get From Your Star, The Less Light I Feel On My Face

Theoretical Girls (Jeffrey Lohn, Wharton Tiers, Margaret Dewys & Glenn Branca), fixtures of the New York no-wave scene, only released one single back in the day. The tunes Branca penned can be found on his 1977-79 Static/Theoretical Girls compilation; Jeffery Lohn's contributions are collected on this new 19 track disc. Lohn wanted to combine punk rock with avant-garde classical composition. Less sharply jagged and jarring than Branca's compositions, these very lo-fi recordings have a definite element of straight-up, Dead Boys-style, dirty, stripped-down RAWK. Some tracks bring on the full on noise destruction, while others display a punk anthemic-ness almost on the level of Wire's first album. One of the most striking things on first hearing this disc is the blatancy with which Theoretical Girls provided a blueprint for Sonic Youth, especially in the spoken vs. sung vocal interplay; Lohn's voice is even a bit reminiscent of Thurston Moore's (or is it the other way around?). The degree of classical rigor isn't exactly clear, if it's even really there at all, but what does shine through is some immensely influential, kick-ass New York noise rock. Keyword: Raw.

RealAudio clip: Lovin in the Red
RealAudio clip: Computer Dating
RealAudio clip: Theoretical Girls (Studio Version)

Are you ready for a cd with more twists and turns and brutality than a Guy Ritchie movie? Then check out this, the third album by Swedish progressive death metal band Theory In Practice. Super tight, super technical, this is in math-rock for metalheads in the

RealAudio clip: Colonizing The Sun
RealAudio clip: The Clockwork That Counts Aeons
RealAudio clip: This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us

Super technical death metal. For fans of Meshuggah and late Death. No jazz fusionisms, tho, just mindboggling speed and changes and general all-around instrumental rippin'. Very very good.

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

SORRY. Theory of Ruin is the new project from Alex of Fudge Tunnel, and here are three songs to give you a taste of where he's at these days. Bass heavy and staccatic, very much in the Shellac/Big Black vein (almost uncannily so).

We've actually been sitting on these for a while now, another victim of the too many records to review and not enough time problem we seem to perpetually have. There Goes Neutro! is the project of aQ customer John Ira Thomas, and the minute we first heard about his Organelle record, we knew we had to hear it. One of those discs that we liked based on the description alone, having yet to hear a single note. C'mon, here's what it's all about (from the liner notes): "Thomas cut the advance frame noise from an old filmstrip record about the life of Jesus Christ, cut it into about 400 pieces, and with the magic of computers made something new out of it." Exactly. Jesus, chopped up records, noise, we knew it had to be good, or at the very least, interesting, lucky for us, it's both. Obvious references would be Jeck and Tetreault and Basinski, especially since the main component is record crackle, and damaged vinyl, and the arrangement is a looped assemblage of stuttering chopped up bits, like a rougher more raw Oval. But it's not just hiss and crackle, the first few seconds of music are also captured, sounding a bit circusy, even more so once they get looped up and tangled. Four long tracks, all movements in one epic and fractured soundscape. Woozy, trippy, warped and warbly and definitely a bit psychedelic. Super cool!

MPEG stream: Untitled 1
MPEG stream: Untitled 2

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

SORRY. Prior to the classic "Stream From The Heavens" disc on Avantgarde, this Finnish band of early '90s doom metal pioneers (along with Australian contemporaries Disembowlment, establishing the sound later taken up by bands like Skepticism, Ras Algethi, and Shape of Despair) released the appropriately Lovecraftian titled "Fhtagn-nagh Yog-Sothoth" demo tape, circa '91. Now it's available on cd, in a nice cardboard mini-lp style package. These are different songs from what's on the (also recently-reissued) "Stream" album. Moody doom / doomy mood music, slow, heavy, full of cosmic angst and horrific beauty.

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

SORRY. Lost dooooom metal classic, circa '92, finally reissued. Finland's Thergothon play super slow, morose, keyboard-abetted doom metal that must have been a big influence on fellow countrymen Skepticism. With cosmic, H.P. Lovecraft-inspired lyrics. Darkly beautiful melancholy. For fans of Skepticism, Ras Algethi, Disembowlment, Esoteric.

Ace Of Spades is a cd-r series of live recordings showcasing the intimate acoustic music of a variety of local indie artists. The series so far boasts consistently strong performances from all participants (well played and well recorded at Mama Buzz Cafe in Oakland). The Volume 6 edition was recorded on February 20th, 2005 and features a few songs each from Mike Therieau, Brian Glaze, Paul Panamarenko, James Moore and Monique Lacour.

MPEG stream: Tomorrow's Woman
MPEG stream: Don't Come Messin' Round

[ aquarius records catalogue — T ]