[ 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 1451 through 1500 of 1910.

Very few record labels attain the sort of iconic status usually reserved for artists, and those that do, often spend YEARS cultivating a roster, and developing a fanbase, made up of the sort of fans that will buy ANYTHING and everything on the label. In the past, Sub Pop, Touch And Go, Homestead, tUMULt (sez Andee!), but lately a couple labels have managed to make that leap in a matter of months rather than years. Mississippi of course. Reissuing all manner or blues, gospel and punk rock rarities on vinyl, and now Plus Tapes, who are doing the same, albeit with international sounds instead, and focusing on the cassette tape as the format of choice. Always limited, and always guaranteed to sell out in a heartbeat. And this latest reissue from Plus Tapes will most likely be no different, aside from those folks who will buy ANYTHING, regardless of what it is, before they hear it or even know anything about it, this collection from Travellers, will be of great interest to fans of all the Sublime Frequencies releases for sure. From Singapore, Travellers, traffic in a sort of groovy jazzy surf pop, rife with Morricone-isms, plenty of twang, groovy Mariachi horns, fluttering flutes, simple shuffling drums, spidery guitar melodies, cheesy synthesizers and lots of reverby surf rock , occasional wild rock saxophone, all with a distinctly Eastern vibe. Lots of this sounds like the soundtrack from some long lost Western or kung fu epic, surfy, jazzy, funky, folky, playful, slipping from minor key moodiness to fun sunshine-y poppiness, always dramatic and evocative and most definitely always groovy. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!! Already sold out at the label, we have the last copies, more than a third of the pressing came to aQ, but these still probably won't last long. Full color covers, hand numbered, green tapes, correspondingly numbered!

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A bunch of new tapes this list from (now) local label Moon Glyph. Including this one from Texas psychedelic sonic collagist Treasure Hunt, aka Myles Byrne-Dunhill, who like on the last Treasure Hunt tape, Toys Unatic, continues to craft stunning, layered, soundscapes of found sound, mysterious jazz ambience, out psychedelia, it's almost dizzying how much is going on in these tracks, but somehow, the multiple sounds are assembled so deftly and meticulously, that it sounds like these could in fact be proper songs, albeit, dense and insanely layered songs, but it makes for perfect deep listening, with headphones, these tracks reveal a sonic depth that is constantly blossoming and revealing some new detail, melodies drift in and out, sound are locked and looped, layered into weird harmonies, pulled apart into fragments that drift and form new melodies entirely, rhythms are sliced and diced and reassembled beneath shimmering clouds of chimes and vibes. acoustic guitars are blurred into melodic streaks and lashed to strange metallic percussion, surrounded by mysterious electronic squelches and alien voices, honking horns, and wild drumming, the sounds collapsing into near chaos, before somehow falling perfectly into place, and once again settling into something more songlike. Imagine an ADD DJ Shadow, obsessed with creating a psychedelic jazz masterpiece, and constantly adding parts, and pieces, and layers, until it becomes something even more than a psych jazz collage, it becomes a wildly abstract soundworld all its own, at times, tranquil and mysterious, lush and lovely, and at others, chaotic and twisted, confusing and bordering on total collapse. But even then, there's definitely a method, the sonic madness on display here not as mad as one might think, instead, it feels like a musical thinking well beyond the realms of mere music, a sort of kosmische kollag-ery that ends up sounding like some twisted, and until now as yet undiscovered, strain of avant psych-kraut, dream-drone, space-jazz! LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!!!

MPEG stream: Entry / Faerie Dust
MPEG stream: Smooth Eureka
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Another batch of new tapes from now-local label Moon Glyph, brings us new sonic treasures, quite literally in this case, the latest from Treasure Hunt, a one man band from Texas, who offers up a blissed out serious of psychedelic collages, tinkling chimes, jazzy horns, all sorts of strange loops and field recordings, fractured melodies, a plunderphonic freakout, that almost sounds like a proper band, albeit one with maybe a hundred members. The vibe is most definitely free form and abstract, the opener delves into a sort of avant new age, while the follow up, unfurls a sort of heavily panned but of woozy droney murk, the panning downright dizzying, with the sounds swooping continuously from ear to ear and speaker to speaker. But that effect, along with the, looped melody, and the strange disembodied vocals, make for a heady bit of psychedelia. The rest of the tape continues to explore a sort of avant free-jazz collage, plucked strings, what sounds like harp melodies, subtle shuffling rhythms, strange robotic clockwork creaks and groans, mournful strings, heavily effected acoustic guitars, birdsong, percussion, wheezing organs, buried voices, a sort of spectral chorale, strange bits of electronic glitchery, sampled voices, layers of hum and crackle, sliced and diced Christmas carols, wild squiggles of primitive electronics, the tracks occasionally bursting in top near chaos, but otherwise settling into something dark and dreamy. A super nice surprise, and one of our favorite Moon Glyph tapes yet!

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Not to be confused with Doug Martsch's amazing nineties outfit, the Treepeople, -these- Tree People are equally amazing, but are a whole different proposition. This disc was originally released as a super limited lp way back in 1979 and managed to quietly disappear. Now, here we are nearly three decades later, and whattaya know? There's a whole movement of modern free folk, 'freak' folk and the like, and if you didn't know better, pretty sure we could pass this off as some strange super limited cd-r by some modern folk revivalists. But keen ears would certainly be able to tell. This is so entirely original (especially for the time) and genuine sounding. Mostly acoustic guitars, flute and vocals, the Tree People had two distinct sounds, the first, a lilting melancholy moonlit folk, like Cat Stevens or Van Morrison, a gorgeous lazy drawl, rich and lustrous, over simple folk and fluttering flutes, dreamy and gorgeous, sounding like some lost folk classic one minute, a strange "Girl From Ipanema" style shuffle the next. But even at it's sweetest and softest, the record seems to always have a hint of melancholy, sometimes even a trace of ominous foreboding. Which definitely gives the songs a subtly dark undercurrent. The majority of the record however is spent in full on hippy jam mode. Very Comus-like at times (especially on track two, "Sliding"), wild steel string excursions, dense tangles of fingerpicked melodies and aggressive strummed riffs, with a definite raga like vibe, all over a smattering of hand drums and tablas, a glorious drifting buzzing steel string dronefolk, that just sounds so incredibly timeless. Elsewhere, the same jams evolve into more tranquil acoustic dreaminess, with the flutes floating over sweet lilting melodies, but even then, the songs will be peppered with sudden bursts of buzzing slide guitar, or brief squalls of atonal fingerpicking. SO cool. And considering the current love of all things freaky and folky, it's sort of amazing that stuff like this was already being made 27 years ago! Obviously, fans of the current crop of modern folk troubadours will find this absolutely essential, Devandra, Vetiver, Espers, Newsom, whatever your particular poison, the Tree People will fit in frighteningly well. Hard to say whether it speaks to the prescience of the Tree People, or just to how much these modern bands have actually been 'borrowing'. Either way, this is absolutely essential. Packaged in a super deluxe Japanese miniature gatefold style cd sleeve, with a printed obi, and extensive liner notes in English and Japanese!

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

SORRY. From hidden in some dusty vault (we imagine) for lo these past thirty years, Quakebasket -- the label reponsible for that great ongoing series of archival Angus Maclise vinyl-only documents -- has exhumed this beautiful recording by another sixties era musical mystic, the mysterious multi-instrumentalist Christopher Tree. Unfamiliar with Tree until now, we're quite grateful this has finally been released. Recorded live back in 1970 at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, "Spontaneous Sound" features the long-haired, bearded Tree as a one-man improvising orchestra, utilizing gongs, cymbals, chant, chimes, bells, tympanis, horns, and some other rather more unusual instruments designed for him by none other than the legendary Harry Bertoia. Apparently, Tree played for children, although this is hardly kids stuff (unfortunately there's no liner notes, but there is a charming children's drawing of Tree and his instruments in action). Tree's music evokes a higher-mind, darkly cosmic spirituality of sound similar to that of AQ-fave '70s Japanese psychedelic experimentalists the Taj Mahal Travellers. We're also reminded of the excellent recent "Solaris" disc by contemporary sonic drone artists Mirror, and of other work from the Andrew Chalk/Christoph Heemann/Jonathan Coleclough/Colin Potter/etc. axis. The cd (or lp) package's rather wonderful photos of Tree surrounded by his battery of instruments -- which fill the stage -- might lead you to expect some sort of percussion frenzy, but that's far from the case. No, this is calm and contemplative, yet powerful. Almost magically, Tree conjures an ancient, droning soundworld of gently melodic, drifting woodwinds, oceanic cymbal washes, and deep gong reverberations...really fantastic. Imagine a more intimate, softer side to Hermann Nitsch's droneworks, equally medieval but not so malevolent. And, to top it off, the guy's name is Tree! We're in love.

RealAudio clip: Spontaneous Sound excerpt 1
RealAudio clip: Spontaneous Sound excerpt 2

This is not a normal Record Of The Week. It's not new. It's not even a newly released reissue. But what it is, is one of our favorite records EVER. And it just so happened Andee was in Olympia this last weekend, and got to visit K Records, where they discovered a little box of these stashed away in the warehouse. And since most of the records by this band predate the current version of the list, we were psyched to suddenly be presented with the opportunity to gush like crazy over the debut album from the late great Treepeople. And really, as far as we're concerned, if any band deserved a comprehensive reissue campaign, it's the Treepeople, but until then, dig this... For those unfamiliar with the Treepeople, it's essentially pre Built To Spill, with BTS mastermind Doug Martsch honing his chops in a much wilder, more punky, noisy, but no less catchy context. In fact, if you've heard the first Built To Spill record, Ultimate Alternative Wavers, that record essentially sounds like a slightly more polished Treepeople Record. Imagine the glorious hooks and super catchy melodies of BTS, but wrapped in spidery intertwined guitars, swirls of feedback, wild chaotic drumming, the whole vibe more noisy, and loose, definitely more punk, aggressive and heavy, but still impossibly poppy. With every track here, on the group's 1991 debut, a stone cold killer, the opener "No Doubt" lays out the template, multiple guitar lines in constant motion, as if there were multiple solos being played at once, a dizzying backdrop of distort melodies, wound around sinewy basslines, and frenetic drumming, all beneath Martsch's distinctive vocals, oh and feedback, EVERYwhere, but somehow these guys make it sound as much a part of the sound/song as any other instrument. When people talk about noise pop, this is the sort of thing we imagine, equal parts jangle pop and urgent post punk, with some hints of proginess and psychedelia. And since we're all friends here, we'll fess up to the fact, that one of us here (ahem, Andee) had no idea that track two, "Andy Warhol" was a Bowie cover. Which also helps to give you an idea of the sound happening here. The opener bleeds right into the Bowie cover, almost as if they were conceived and composed together, with the Treepeople's version extra fierce and fuzzy (they'd do something similar to the Smiths' "Big Mouth Strikes Again" a year later). "Gre" comes next, and might be one of our favorite Treepeople songs ever, frantic and fuzzy, noisy and punky, but again, super catchy, with drums and guitars in a seemingly constant squall, and yet molded into something most proper pop bands would kill for, if they could even figure out what to do with it. And from there on out, it just keeps getting better, some songs jangly and woozy, others straight up punk pound, more often than not a little of both, and almost as often, with even more sonic weirdness swirled into the equation. The Treepeople are one of those rare groups whose sound is actually totally and truly unique, there are definitely moments and parts and sounds and hooks that touch on other strains of indie rock, but much like Polvo, they seem to have taken the parts of a proper sound, pulled them apart and then reassembled them with no regard for the instruction manual, the resulting musical monstrosity emerging far more twistedly beautiful than it was ever meant to be, and the sort of sound that has stood the test of time like little else, this record (along with the group's entire catalog) on constant heavy rotation pretty much nonstop for that past 20+ years. And as much as we love Built To Spill, we find ourselves, almost without thinking, replying to almost every BTS related query with something like "yeah, but have you heard Treepeople?!?", cuz really, they're like a much crazier, noisier, heavier, more experimental version, which obviously for us, means even BETTER. A gloriously noisy concoction that should be essential listening for all indie rockers, young and old, and which should eventually, hopefully one day, get these guys, and all their records, the sort of love and accolades they so totally deserve. For now, we'll just do our part. And you should do yours, you won't be sorry, you might just have a new (old) favorite band! Non musical note: this was the record that first introduced us to the stunning and horrifyingly beautiful pencil art of Mike Scheer!

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Another grim, blackened, abject slab of crushing ultramega doom from these Northwest doomlords, and like their last one, Lights Bane, Freed Of The Flesh is another gloriously miserable exercise in slow motion pummel and grinding glacial creep. Moss, Monarch, Bunkur, Khanate, Habsyll, The Body, Salome, Fleshpress, Atavist, Marzuraan, if any or all of those names sound familiar to you, then you'll no doubt understand what's in store for the listener here. Two extended doomscapes, a black cacophony of downtuned pound, the drums a barely there skeletal support to a heaving crumbling beastly buzz, riffs ring out and slowly decay, the vocals an inhuman shriek, shards of feedback shoot through the smoldering rumble of slowly decaying chords, note pulled apart, riffs blurred into near drones, a sprawling tarpit crawl, hypnotic and mesmerizing, and so so so heavy. The second track begins all stately and melodic and majestic, a glorious doom epic, surprisingly melodic, like a more metal Harvey Milk almost, you can practically imagine those strange bellowed HM vocals coming in at any minute, but instead, the track creeps along, and finally the actual vocals do come in, more hellish screeches, the perfect foil for the minor key funereal dirge beneath them, the guitars again layered and stretched into black blurs, the track growing subtly more chaotic, near the end, but never moving beyond a creep or crawl, slowly, very slowly, unwinding into pitch black emptiness. Fucking awesome. Essential ultra doom, grim listening for the slow and low legions...

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Every single time we play this, someone either asks us if we're listening to Monarch. Or Khanate. Every time. That should give you enough to go on right off the bat. And indeed, Trees are a dead ringer for both. Maybe a perfect mix of the two. They don't write songs so much, as put together slow moving arrangements of buzz and howl, throb and skree, crush and chunk, much of the two loooooong tracks here are spent in long drawn out slowly decaying drones, huge chords almost melting before our very ears, feedback and downtuned buzz crumbling to pieces, tones beating against each other, slipping into shrieking streaks of feedback. The long stretches are of course peppered with huge jagged shards of drum pound and demonic vocals, these spaced out blasts somehow arranged to form some sort of skeletal song structure, but it's much more of an exercise in tension and atmosphere, dynamics and drone, and ultra slow motion heaviness. They do introduce some of their own flavor into the mix, little flurries of double kick, skittering snare drums, some strange strangled mewlings, haunting complex chords, some monklike chants, and some intense abstract soundscapery, so almost-pretty it threatens to slip into some serious black ambience, and at some points, they even -almost- rock, slipping into Eyehategod territory, but it's in the swirling black morass these guys feel most at home, and thankfully, for the dronedirgedoom obsessed, that's precisely where they spend most of Lights Bane. Needless to say, you dig Monarch, Khanate, Moss, Bunkur, etc., you will dig Trees. Fancy mini-lp style gatefold sleeve with super striking, dense tangled red ink cover art.

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1970, England. Imagine a rock band that's equally into the sort of psychedelic electric guitar excursions you'd have heard back then wafting from London's hippy ballrooms, as well as ballads and jigs derived from British folk song tradition. With lovely, pure, delicately bird-like female vocals a la Anne Briggs and Sandy Denny... Yes, Trees were quite a bit like Fairport Convention, but rather more obscure. And now, at long last, we've managed to get a hold of these UK import-only cd reissues of their two albums. Gorgeous stuff indeed, utterly magical, definitely for fans of early Fairport, Shirley Collins, Pentangle, and the whole Brit-folk-rock thing. Both of Trees' records ("The Garden of Jane Delawney" and "On The Shore") are from 1970 and come equally recommended (they may as well be two volumes of the same album). Both of 'em feature the vocals of Celia Humphris, along with both traditional acoustic instruments (dulcimer, mandolin) and electric guitars, and blend original songs and adaptations of traditional folk material. "The Garden..." boasts a rather strange cover painting, and Windy's favorite Tree's track, "Nothing Special", whose sublimely pretty guitar strumming prefigured a whole movement of jangle pop bands (e.g. REM). Of their two albums perhaps *slightly* the more rock-based and produced, "On The Shore" features the song "Sally Free And Easy" which in recent years, you may recall, was covered by Flying Saucer Attack on a Drag City ep of that title, and also comes with lengthy liner notes telling the story of the band.

RealAudio clip: Murdoch
RealAudio clip: Streets Of Derry

Another missive from these Northwestern musical miscreants, and another sprawling black-doom ultra-sludge, grim-dirge epic, two tracks, nearly 30 minutes, opening with a haunting expanse of creepy droned out ambience, like the score that might play over the credits to some super arty horror film, all ominous ritualistic percussion, black sonic swirls and heaving low end rumbles, all of which are soon subsumed by dense squalls of keening feedback, building to a furious frenzy, before the hammer falls, and the song proper lurches into aktion, a monstrous, lumbering, slo-mo tarpit creep, all spaced out drum crashes, 10 seconds a part, avalanches of chordal crush, that ring out endlessly, wreathed in shards of feedback, the vokills a sick demonic rasp, the tempo glacial, total abject blackened ultra-dooooooooooom heaviness of the highest order. Well within the sonic realms of fellow doomlords like Moss, Monarch, Bunkur, Corrupted, Khanate, The Body, Fleshpress and the like. Trees don't necessarily add anything brand new to the equation, but they do craft a pretty gorgeous sprawl of droning doomic miserablism, which toward the end of the first track, begins to blur and smear into something much more psychedelic and abstract. Which perfectly leads into the second track, which begins all feedbacky and freeform, all swirling keening feedback, chanted vox buried in the mix, and abstract drum splatter, before, like the first track, the sounds coalesce into another grim doooooom creep, this one even more spaced out, the notes further apart, the chords left to ring out and fade even more gradually, the timbre of their crumbling decay as much a part of the sound as the notes themselves, maybe even moreso, a slow, trudging, downtuned tranced out chunk of mesmerizing hypno-doom mesmer, that ends way too soon, even at close to 15 minutes...

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RealAudio clip: Nothing Special
RealAudio clip: Glasgerion

It's no secret that we have a soft spot for uncommon Christian music especially when it dwells on the fringe such as the "white metal" of the E.E.E. recordings label or the earnest out-pop of groups like The Shaggs and New Creation. Another fringe arena is in liturgical hippie folk with bands like Simaril, Parchment, and this beautiful reissue of the Trees Community first album, The Christ Tree. We had this previously only as a box set, which grouped their first album with 3 other cds of later live material. Not the most ideal way to ease yourself into their uniquely arcane and highly reverential sound. So it's nice to have this single disc reissue that adds several bonus tracks to the original album. If you are fans of wyrd minstrely acid-folk groups like Comus, Ougenwiede, Springuns, and Extradition, you will definitely dig this, a collective of male and female musical performers from New York who played traditional acoustic and eastern instruments such as sitar, folk harp, pump organ, flute, koto, tamboura and Chinese gong in long raga-like hymns with pretty male and female vocal harmonies and strangely mystical and spacious passages. Christ Tree was the their first album and it's a live recording of a performance at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in 1975. Oddly beautiful!

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Simply lovely! Warm and strummy. Positively dreamy. Trembling Blue Stars make splendid Brit-space-pop. At times, reminded me of Ride or mid-to-late period Cure. Very laid-back boy lead vocals, sparklingly sweet female backing vocals, swirling chorus-y

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Aaah, could it be... the return of the shoegazer? Definite shades of early Stone Roses. A little twee and precious, but pretty, mellow, and easy-going with some lovely lush cello and a little bit of simultaneous English-French male-female vocalising to subtly spice things up. The first track absolutely destroys me, which may be due to me missing all this sort of stuff as a high school hessian.

Trembling Blue Stars take on the shoegazer aesthetics of the early 90s Creation sound (Ride, Blind Mr. Jones, The Telescopes) and the reverb soaked revivalism of 60s UK beat jangle. The title track of this EP was on their "Broken By Whispers" album on Sub Pop.

Wow, does this one push all our shoegaze buttons, a sound we've been craving like crazy lately. There was a time when shoegaze was everywhere, but as of late there's been a serious paucity of classic sounding music in that inimitable style. Luckily there's a brand new one from AQ faves Trembling Blue Stars, who while not always necessarily shoegaze-y, manage to fill that void so perfectly with The Last Holy Writer. Less jangly then their last outing, The Last Holy Writer has everything we've loved about this band on display and in full affect. With a guitar sound that echoes the sound of Curve, introspective lyrics and wry delivery of vocalist Bob Wratten and the bittersweet voice of other vocalist Beth Arzy. It's the perfect combination of breezy and moody, reflective and heartbreaking. So nice to see a group so far into a long career make such a challenging and envelope pushing record. In fact this might even be our favorite Trembling Blue Stars outing yet. The perfect laying around on your bed, holed up in your room, window open, cool breeze soundtrack for heartfelt longing and bittersweet ache. So lovely!

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This is the fifth wistfully wonderful album from Trembling Blue Stars. If you're a fan you'll perhaps find it comforting to know that there's no vast departures from that which has come before. Their songs continue to be the musical equivalent of a big down-filled duvet. Each one is ever so soft and warm and very much in the swirlingly dreamy, melancholic shoegazer tradition. The rounded bass guitar lines provides the slowly weaving bed on which mainman Bobby Wratton and Beth Arzy's hushed vocals as well as the gently effected guitars, delicate percussion and occasional strings rest their drowsy heads. This cd includes four bonus tracks bringing the song count to a generous total of sixteen. Psst, if you dig these poignant, pretty Brit sounds you might also wanna check out the recent reissues of three Field Mice albums, Wratten's pre-Trembling Blue Stars band, not quite as mellowly blissed out, a tad harder, weirder and more rocking, but TBS fans will still most likely dig 'em quite a bit!

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Tren Brothers are Mick and James are the guitar/drums team from Australian instrumental trio Dirty Three. STOP! If your first impression is that you'd miss Warren's violin, you'd be wrong. This is a lovely, quiet but intense record; the violin isn't missed at all. Pretty, not light, but lovely. Mick in particular adds delicate guitar flourishes that on a D3 record would have been subsumed and absorbed by the violin's overwhelming painful emotiveness. A worthwhile listen.

Perhaps you've been boggled by the appearance of the name Jim White all over the place lately (as we have). Who is this guy? He's everywhere! But it makes a little more sense when you discover that there's two particular, prolific musical fellows with that name who currently have fine releases. The Jim White of the south (Florida to be exact) is the man responsible for the stellar soundtrack to Searching For The Wrong-Eyed Jesus film. The Jim White of further south (way down in Australia) is the man playing some of the drums on the New Buffalo album as well as the last couple of Smog albums, and yes lest we forget his card carrying membership in Dirty Three. Here he teams up with his Dirty Three bandmate (and no musical slouch himself) Mick Turner as the non-blood related instrumental duo the Tren Brothers. Their latest release The Swimmer (as far as we know, no relation to our favorite Burt Lancaster movie) features a scant four songs, but their evocative wash of pastoral sounds suggest that this is just a mere glimpse of a moody expansiveness that extends far beyond the ep's fifteen minutes. This is their contribution to the Western Vinyl label's portrait series.

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Those "Brothers" Tren whom you may be more familiar with as two parts of the moody, melancholic Dirty Three (yup, Mick Turner and James White on guitar, harmonica and drums) are joined on this record by their "sister" violinist Jessica Billey. These two

They had us at "Trench Hell". (Could do without the rape-themed cover art though.) Anyway as you might guess from the band name, album title, and record label, this is raw thrashing metal from Down Under, old school in the early '80s style of Venom and Hellhammer. And boy howdy, do these youngsters do it well. Trench Hell ROCKS. We gotta describe 'em the same way we'd have done for Venom back in the day - they take the speed demon, white line fever rock n' roll of Motorhead and jack it up, making it extra evil and filthy sounding in the process. Buzzsaw guitar riffage, echoey blown out production, violent battery, throat ripped vox (with lots of Tom G. Warrior style ugghs), backing screams of utter damnation... what's not to like? If you're into the old school extreme, that is. You'll be spinning this six song ep again and again in a frenzy of headbanging lust. Even if you don't spin it again, at least you were briefly a cool, badass metal dude (or dudette) for the 22 minutes you had it on.

MPEG stream: Southern Cross Ripper
MPEG stream: Last Rites

What we've got here might just be the first-ever rock n' roll band. The Treniers, a black R&B combo led by twins Claude and Clifford, got their start in the 1940s with their music soon evolving from jump blues to an equally jumpin' new fangled sound they liked to call rock n' roll. By the early '50s when the tracks on this cd anthology were recorded for the OKeh label, they could certainly say (and sing) "Rockin' Is Our Business". And check out their other subject matter: drugs and sex! Sure, they couldn't indulge in the explict language of today's rock and rap acts. But you could get away with a lot nonetheless, as their classic side "Poon-tang!" suggests. With such risque lyrics and a hard-rockin' stage act, they inspired more than the bland Bill Haley that's for sure. Any history-minded rock fan oughta have room in their collection for the real old school. This is actually a reissue of a cd issued on Epic/Legacy in '95. Sadly this Collectables version has got crappier, colorized cover graphics, and inexplicably does away with the original disc's liner notes, but it does tack nine bonus tracks onto the twenty found on the earlier disc. Wild stuff from over fifty years ago!

MPEG stream: It Rocks! It Rolls! It Swings!
MPEG stream: Hadacole (That's All)

The ORIGINAL rock n' roll band.

The second of two new tapes from Black Horizons this week, this one a split with another rad local tape label Merz Tapes, a kick ass cassette reissue of a long out of print 10" originally released on the now defunct Release The Bats label, a soul searingly menacing, ultra grim black industrial ritual from this Swedish outfit, all slow motion churning blackness, creeping bleak ambience, and demonic processed vox. This demonik invokation was inspired by the late '40s Babalon Working conducted by rocket scientist and occultist Jack Parsons (along with none other than L. Ron Hubbard!!), a series of magic ceremonies designed to conjure up the physical manifestation of the divine feminine archetype. Needless to say, this is some haunting, atmospheric, gorgeously pitch black stuff. Deep rumblings, ominous scrapings, all blurred into a heaving, roiling expanse of sonic malevolence, and all underpinning some intense vocalizations, a harrowing speaking in tongues, wreathed in effects, heavily processed, drifting from bestial gurgle to anguished almost black metal shriek, but smeared into something way less focused, and more impressionistic, the whole thing simultaneously tranced out and mesmerizing, chilling and downright disturbing. Like all Black Horizons tapes, fantastically and elaborately packaged, this time the J-card, transformed into a deluxe mini-booklet, aping the package of the original 10" screen printed on thick cardstock and printed in metallic silver ink. LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!

The latest missive from this sinister spectre, broadcast from whatever shadowy corner of the netherworld this guy calls home. Like the previous two tapes we reviewed, Prefection & Permanence is an exercise in blackened ritualism, extreme minimal dronemusic fused to grim black ambience, an unholy hybrid spawned from the deep, a sound that is both malevolently mesmerizing and deeply sonically terrifying. This Swedish sonic shaman who we most recently observed collaborating with local blacknoise terrorists Sutekh Hexen in the woods at Stella, conjuring up one of the most intense performances of that entire festival, delivers here an equally intense experience, one that along with the usual tropes of black ambient music, delivers a lots of sonic surprises, like on "Black Egg", wherein the grim black noise is sculpted into a pulsating, murky rhythmic throb, an avalanche of rumbling, whirring synths, accompanied by hellish vokills, the end result surprisingly musical, and in its own unlikely way, strangely catchy. And that's actually a template that many of the other songs hew to, rhythmic, hypnotic, a sort of hypno-grimnity, with some of THEE sickest vocals we've ever heard, gargling, demonic, monstrous bellows, alien murmurs, all over beds of grinding noise, clouds of static, of swirling black shimmers, and all manner of muted/mutated rhythms, a strangely mesmeric black industrial that sans vocals, could very well be are new favorite minimal blackened techno record, but with all the noise and vokills mixed in, it's transformed into something else entirely. But seriously, check out a track like "Alone/A/Cross/Abyss", it's like an impossible collaboration between some obscure grim black metal band, and some minimal techno producer, fans of some recent aQ faves like Record Of The Weekers Akkord, might find much to love here, and might find themselves lured to the (even) dark(er) side. That said, let's not downplay how dark and sick the sounds are here, this is suffocating, abject, miserable and bleak, harrowing and hellish, the vocals alone are the stuff of nightmares, but approached as some weird black industrial techno record, or at least understanding there's a strange, and to a degree out of place rhythmic element, which is how we've decided to, it becomes something even more avant / experimental / unique / bizarre, and is most definitely one of the coolest records we've heard in ages.

MPEG stream: Black Egg
MPEG stream: Castrate Christ
MPEG stream: Alone / A Cross / Abyss
MPEG stream: 39 Lashes

Latest chunk of blackened cinematic industrial ambience from this Swedish one man band, whose sound continues to explore the darkest recesses of some hellish subterranean underworld, like the last tape of his we reviewed Deathward To The Womb, the sound here is equally uplifting (read: sarcasm), a creeping militaristic pound, over wheezing synth shimmer, wreathed in a mysterious crackle, in the distance what sounds like anguished voices blurred into smears of softly undulating texture, and over the top, a demonic voice, oozing malevolence, delivers some sort of arcane incantation, chilling and harrowing, the voice dripping with menace, the background sounds appropriately ominous, but strangely, for all it's grim intensity, it's also quite melodic, sans the voice, it could be a more dreamy bit of dark ambience, but the vocals manage to transform it into something downright chilling. The rest of the tape is not so melodic, instead slipping into an ultra abject minimalism, that almost sounds like some hellish set of field recordings, all creaks and groans, distant thumps, faraway pulses, industrial clatter muter and blurred, as if heard through a wall, or from below ground, the sounds coalescing into deep dense swells, washing over the listeners like some fetid black tide, the sounds building to intense washed of black sound, peppered with garbled voices and buried barely there rhythms, and just as often slipping into near silence, a creeping hushed drift, that in it's minimalism, exudes just as much malevolence as the heaving swells of black noise. Housed in a printed vellum tray card with several small inserts. And yeah, VERY VERY LIMITED.

Latest from local label comes this reissue from the before now unknown to us Trepaneringsritualen, who hail from Sweden, and who most definitely sound Swedish, unfurling a sort of bleak black ambience, a drifting Cold Meat Industry style grim malevolence, underpinned by woozy snake charmer melodies, muted skeletal rhythmic pulses, croaked, FX heavy vokills, all over a washed out shimmery haze, this is the sort of ritualistic soundscapery that relies more on texture that sheer power, but in that respect, it manages to conjure up something more more harrowing, a haunting, hypnotic chunk of blackened tribal psychedelia, sounding a bit like No Neck or Sunburned Hand if they were on Cold Meat, but for every bit of tripped out, pulsing, abstract krautrock flecked black mesmer, there's a churning sprawl of low end thrum, or a dense layered stretch of blurred soft focus ambience. Those sounds more often than not mixed and matched, fused in strange, and fantastically disturbing combinations. LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!! Packaged in beautifully silkscreened gold inked three panel J-cards.

Math rock meets almost Blue Oyster Cult inspired metallic weirdness in this instrumental Baltimore outfit. Long, complex, heavy jams with lots of time changes, dashed with the occasional vocal sample. For fans of Mr. Bungle and Stinking Lizaveta.

Slayer meets Don Caballero? King Crimson meets the Melvins? Twisted prog-metal math-rock with wild metal percussion, shredding jazz infused crush with some warped Pussy Galore style crash and clank woven in, pulverizingly heavy and jaggedly intricate. Fucked up avant metal radness.

Bloom, Red & The Ordinary Girl is the second album by Tres Chicas, and we have to say, it sounds a lot like those gorgeous singalongs that take place when Neko Case, Kelly Hogan and Carolyn Mark get together. Of course, they by no means invented the old country female trio, but they've certainly brought it back into the spotlight in recent years. Anyways, no, that trio of chicas are not these Tres Chicas. These three chanteuses are themselves well-respected musical vets Caitlin Cary (formerly of Whiskeytown), Tonya Lamm (ex-Hazeldine) and Lynn Blakey (of Glory Fountain). This is a warm, earthy, passionate follow-up to their 2004 debut which was titled Sweetwater and it features a guest appearance by Nick Lowe! An absolute pleasure! Now, just imagine if these three ladies got together with the three abovementioned ladies... now that would be seis senoras fabulosas!

MPEG stream: Drop Me Down
MPEG stream: Shade Trees In Bloom

Maybe you've heard of this '70s Swedish prog rock band, maybe not. We did review a reissue of their 1974 self-titled album a while back. They were kind of a math-rock, jazzed-out version of Uriah Heep or something, kinda heavy and certainly complex. Pretty cool if you're a prog fiend like some of us here. This disc is a newly unearthed collection of early recordings by the band, dating from their high school days circa '70-'71, meant for LP release at the time but never picked up by a label. Probably 'cause it's a little on the free-form, far-out side, definitely not commercial at all. Seemingly influenced by everything from Swedish folk to classical music to Hendrix and 'Purple, these youthful but talented prog-rock experiments range from romantic sounding piano-based compositions to pastoral, jazzy psych-pop, with interludes of abrasive guitar improv. Not bad for some 17 year old kids just getting started in the prog biz. At the time they had two drummers, and some melancholic, longwinded songwriting habits. It's different from their later stuff, but good too. In a gorgeous digipack -- that cover pic of the band members posing in a sun drenched autumnal forest scene is enough to make someone like me buy a copy!

MPEG stream: Amassilations
MPEG stream: From Your Streets

'70s prog of the harder, mathier variety here. Mellow grooves too. We've already turned some of you on to this Swedish band's first, eponymous album (also now back in stock in a new, upgraded edition) but this is the first time we've reviewed Tettioariga Kriget's second album (well, third if you count Glorious War as their first, actually) from 1975. How to describe 'em? Uriah Heep meets Goblin??? No that's not it... but they are a band that mixes the bombast of Heep with the darkness and '70s synth kitschiness of Goblin, creating their own unique atmosphere. Krissang ("War Song" in English) may remind some customers of a progged-out version of Dungen, due to the Swedish language vocals and intellectual Genesis-like aspects. The tracks here go from extremes of gentle melodicism and jazzy grooves to bombastic, jagged progginess, across the album -and- often within a single track. Odd time signatures are abundant. And though initally we were attracted to this band due to their displays of frantic, hard rockin' proginess -- screaming guitars, barking fat bass, hard-hitting drums -- we now appreciate 'em as much or more for their gentle side. There's simply some gorgeous songs on here. This new edition comes packaged in a handsome digipack, with liner notes by lyricist Ollie Thornvall along with photos and lyrics and three bonus tracks in the same mold as Krigssang, including one ("Moln") that almost out-progs anything on the album proper!!

MPEG stream: Krissang
MPEG stream: Mitt Mirakel

When Byram heard this, his first reaction was: Allan, dude, this has you written all over it! And it's true, *both* of AQ's resident prog-heads (proudly, Allan and Andee) are way into this band and this album -- that's why we ordered a few from overseas to share with our likeminded customers. On this, their 1974 debut album, Trettioariga Kriget (aka Thirty Years War) dish out jazzed-up but also kinda heavy '70s prog rock from Sweden, boasting some over-the-top falsetto vocals worthy of Amon Duul II's Renate Knaup or the guy from Flower Travellin' Band. Mathy, King Crimson-esque hard rock, that's also (in context of this sort of thing) quite catchy, actually. Vocal hooks coexist with the math jazz rock instrumental display and noisy skronk. Recommended, especially if you're among the many (?) AQ customers happy with our prior obscure prog suggestions (Il Balletto di Bronzo, Osanna, etc.)

RealAudio clip: Kaledoniska Orogenesen
RealAudio clip: Fjarilsttityder

Originally released way back in 2007, and available only to attendees of the two Thrill Jockey 15th Anniversary shows in Chicago and London, we're listing this now 'cause one of our distributors got a handful of these killer mixes, a collaborative DJ mix from Girl Talk and Trey Told 'Em, constructed exclusively of tracks culled from the Thrill Jockey archives, and including a couple of mega mixes which make the whole thing kind of essential. The proper mix includes tracks from Bobby Conn, Gaunt, Pit Er Pat, Eleventh Dream Day, Giant Sand, Dolomite, Trapist, John Parish, Nobuzaku Tekemura, The Fiery Furnaces, Califone, Chicago Underground Duo, Mouse On Mars, Freakwater, Frequency, Sam Prekop, The National Trust, Extra Golden, Arbouretum, Radian, The Sea And Cake, Fred Anderson & Hamid Drake, Lithops, Directions In Music, Aki Tsuyuko, Howe Gelb, Tunng, Isotope 217, Archer Prewitt, The Zincs, Sue Garner & Rick Brown, Adult., Exploding Star Orchestra, Brokeback, Town And Country and Microstoria (what, no A Minor Forest?!). And it's not just the song selection, the way they're mixed, results in an awesome, ever shifting soundscape, that is so good, we found ourselves even digging the tracks that we didn't think we liked. Out of context, some of the songs here have us all fired up to revisit some of the groups we may have ignored or just missed. But if that wasn't enough, there are three megamixes, the record opens with a killer Trans Am mix that reminds us why we love those guys so much, and then finishes with a Tortoise megamix, and then an Oval megamix, that purports to contain EVERY single Oval song ever recorded. Pretty cool. And crazy limited. Only 4000 copies made way back in 2007, and we only got a tiny handful, so act fast if you want one.

MPEG stream: Trans Am Megamix
MPEG stream: Oval Megamix

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

SORRY.

Some early '70s French psych-rock here, not so much on the proto-metal side of things but still totally groovy, and from the get-go not failing to rock the cowbell (well, the opening track on this 22 song collection, "Peut-etre Demain", is the number one cowbell culprit, gotta love it). We first heard of Triangle some years ago thanks to the amazing, AQ-fave six-cd Igor Wakhevitch box on Fractal (now, sadly, out of print). Wakhevitch was an avant-garde, electronic composer whose first few albums enlisted the fuzzed guitars of Triangle as part of their surreal soundscapes. So we'd been always curious to hear Triangle's own music. Of course it's not as far out as the Wakhevitch stuff, they're basically a pop band, tres commercial, yet with a freaky side to 'em. This disc, as the title reveals, collects some of their crucial cuts from '69 through '74... a lot of upbeat numbers with DJ-friendly beats, symphonic prog moves, catchy choruses, and swingin' horns. Really, judging from this disc, Triangle were all over the place, from synth-laced proto-disco to placid piano ballads to bubblegum hard rock. If you like stuff of the "B-music" persuasion (like the Prog Is Not A Four Letter Word comp), or that Total Freakout collection on Mucho Gusto, or rad '70s "library music" and things like that, we figure you'll dig these Triangle tunes. This digipack includes pictures of all of Triangle's original 33 and 45 rpm record sleeves, which are nice to have -- the first album's got a piano engulfed in flames on it, the second has Triangle lined up for a firing squad, also comprised of the band members. But there's no liner notes to speak of, so we don't know a heck of a lot more about 'em, other than that they recorded three albums and a bunch of singles, had some hits, went on to back up pop singer Papillon on a solo LP of his (three tracks from that album, including their cover of Bowie's "Starman" en Francais, are to be found here).

MPEG stream: Peut-etre Demain
MPEG stream: Les Brumes De Chatou
MPEG stream: Mama, Tu Ne Sais Pas

There's very little that we can discern about who Triangles are. The purposefully crappy drawing on the cover (by Leif Elgrenn and Kevin Drumm!) could be portraits of God Albino from the Hawd Gankstuh Rappuhs and Phil Manley from Trans Am... but I wouldn't put

7"=2 songs, cd single=4 songs.

Tribes Of Neurot began as a means for Neurosis to explore ideas and musical forms that existed outside of the signature parameters of Neurosis: hammering tribal rhythms, thick slow motion grind/metal, and an apocalyptic urgency. Often referred to as Neurosis' ambient side project, Tribes of Neurot explores the more spiritual and ethereal concepts of a broader tribal atavism. "60�" is a collection of compilation tracks, rare vinyl-only pieces, and unreleased material that has been organized into an excellent album that doesn't sound like a crappy collection of throw-away pieces. Bleak isolationist washes, hypno-drone guitars & bass, creepy horror filmscore piano tinklings, female vocals in the throws of agony and/or ecstacy, and occult bells make for quite an exceptional record.

[ aquarius records catalogue — T ]