[ 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 201 through 250 of 380.

Fans of UOA, The Great Unravelling, Fifth Column, The Helikopters, and/or The Thumbs (whew!), take note. Members of all of those bands are present in the ranks of The Uniform (and they're only a trio!). They've already got a couple 7"'s and a few full lengths out, and here's another! They've been described as no-waveish, angular, and agitated, but to be honest my first impression was...

RealAudio clip: Oh Be Joyful
RealAudio clip: All Were Offensive

First/best from these Swedish Stooges worshippers, reissued. Features members-to-be of Soundtrack Of Our Lives.

For their second cd and first full length, The Union Trade's previous post-rock leanings are embraced by their fuzzy indie rock selves. Definitely brings to mind the slouchy, slightly dour charm of '90s college rock kingpins Sebadoh and Seam... for sure a good thing in our books! They've stripped back quite a bit of the guitar effects which dominated their previous release 2007's Now The Swell ep (or perhaps have more thoroughly integrated them), and have retained a nice warm blanket of reverb and gentler squalls of distortion. They're much more vocal heavy too. Eleven terrific songs for these overcast drizzly days!

MPEG stream: Self Possession
MPEG stream: For The Resilient

The Union Trade are a young Bay Area foursome who craft mostly instrumental atmospheric post-rock a la Codeine, Mogwai and Slint. Yes, the 'quiet-loud-quiet' dynamics live on in this band! Occasionally a bit mathy and a bit trippy with lots of effected, distorted electric guitar textures. When vocals come into the picture, they're hushed and quite resemble those of Lou Barlow. A promising debut.

MPEG stream: Strings Break
MPEG stream: Violent And Beautiful

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

SORRY. Super heavy metalcore, heavier on the 'core. New York via Japan style crossover.

A gorgeous reissue of this long out of print cd-r, the debut release from myesterious folk ensemble United Bible Studies, reissued again on cd-r, this time limited to only 100 copies (we got 30) and packaged in a gorgeous, hand screened textured paper sleeve. UBS explore a gorgeous mix of modern post-Fahey Appalachia (a la Jack Rose, James Blackshaw) and pagan seventies Brit folk (Incredible String Band, Shirley Collins, etc.) as well as incorporating a dash of the apocalyptic folk of groups like Current 93 and Sol Invictus. A dizzying expanse of pastoral serenity, blissy folk dirges, dreamy drone and dark lilting ballads, simple reverby piano, lots of string buzz, wheezing harmonium, warm whirls of gorgeous strum and shuffle. You can almost imagine some shadowy troupe, huddled in the corner of an old tavern, fire crackling in the hearth, rain pouring down outside, serenading a room full of weary travellers, heads hung low, letting their minds drift and their souls be warmed by the dark beauty of the music. ALREADY OUT OF PRINT AT THE LABEL, ONCE THESE ARE GONE THEY ARE GONE FOR GOOD.

MPEG stream: Holly And Frost
MPEG stream: Backwards Across The Burren
MPEG stream: Venus Aloft, I Spy'd A Single Crow

United States Of America is quite a politically charged monicker these days, what with the whole country / world divided over the war in Iraq and our President and gay marriage and everything else under the sun. Probably wasn't a whole lot less volatile 36 years ago, in the midst of the Vietnam War, when this record was first released. Which was precisely the point. USoA mastermind Joseph Byrd was a long time devotee of twentieth century composition and minimalism, studying and/or studying with LaMonte Young, John Cage, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Charles Ives and the rest. While at UCLA, Byrd helped organise the New Music Workshop and eventually arranged an elaborate set of concerts which culminated in a Lamonte Young piece that involved the inflation of a giant hot air balloon. Fearful that the less sophisticated members of the audience would get bored and leave, Byrd formed a blues band to play during that part of the performance and convinced his pal Linda Rondstadt to sing. Thus came the realisation that a rock band would give Byrd access to a much bigger audience, and so began his quest to start a psychedelic rock band, which would eventually be realized as United States Of America. Made up of Byrd's friends from academia and ethnomusicology and his ex-girlfriend, and born from his frustration with the war and his leaving UCLA, USoA became a politically charged experimental psychedelic rock combo unlike any that had come before. Utilising a not exactly standard bass /drums /guitar /violin lineup, their sound was further augmented by ring modulators, organ, harpsichord, and calliope. The end result was a sixties rock band, drenched in psychedelic filligree, swooping electronic trippiness, all sorts of circus-y weirdness, bizarre editing and song structures, but never losing sight of great songs. And a lot of these songs are indeed great. Probably the best track on the record is "The Garden Of Earthly Delights", a super rocking Stereolab meets Jefferson Airplane number, that would not sound at all out of place on Emperor Tomato Ketchup, if it weren't for the gritty sixties rock chorus (with a hook to die for) and the storm of buzzing and bleeping, overloaded affects and tripped out swooping and soaring bleeps and bloops. And then there's the final track, a three part experimental montage / coda, all ambient jangle and ethereal ambience, with snippets and samples from the rest of the tracks on the record, resulting in a super damaged art-rock musical acid trip. And the rest of the record veers from countryish campfire stomps, to smoke-y sultry ballads, to freaked out psych jams and everything in between. All blessed by the absolutely gorgeous vocals of Dorothy Moskowitz.This record may be a psychedelic country pop rock record, but boy is it more than that. Reminds us quite a bit of recent AQ record of the week Euphoria, with it's complicated and bizarre arrangements and its unlikely melding of country rock, lush baroque pop and acid fried guitar leads. Imagine a Frankensteinian sonic monster constructed from Euphoria, Stereolab, Fifty Foot Hose, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Byrds...then make said monster do some coursework in twentieth century compostion and experimental minimalism, and let it experiment with a suitcase full of homemade sound generators and you'd still have trouble imagining how great this record is. As always Sundazed does the reissue right, with extensive liner notes from Joseph Byrd, and interview with Dorothy Moskowitz and TEN bonus tracks, almost all of them unreleased, and most of them as good as anything on the album proper!

MPEG stream: The Garden Of Earthly Delights
MPEG stream: Hard Coming Love
MPEG stream: The American Metaphysical Circus
MPEG stream: Cloud Song

Now available on lp! 180 gram vinyl! United States Of America is quite a politically charged monicker these days, what with the whole country / world divided over the war in Iraq and our President and gay marriage and everything else under the sun. Probably wasn't a whole lot less volatile 36 years ago, in the midst of the Vietnam War, when this record was first released. Which was precisely the point. USoA mastermind Joseph Byrd was a long time devotee of twentieth century composition and minimalism, studying and/or studying with LaMonte Young, John Cage, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Charles Ives and the rest. While at UCLA, Byrd helped organise the New Music Workshop and eventually arranged an elaborate set of concerts which culminated in a Lamonte Young piece that involved the inflation of a giant hot air balloon. Fearful that the less sophisticated members of the audience would get bored and leave, Byrd formed a blues band to play during that part of the performance and convinced his pal Linda Rondstadt to sing. Thus came the realisation that a rock band would give Byrd access to a much bigger audience, and so began his quest to start a psychedelic rock band, which would eventually be realized as United States Of America. Made up of Byrd's friends from academia and ethnomusicology and his ex-girlfriend, and born from his frustration with the war and his leaving UCLA, USoA became a politically charged experimental psychedelic rock combo unlike any that had come before. Utilising a not exactly standard bass /drums /guitar /violin lineup, their sound was further augmented by ring modulators, organ, harpsichord, and calliope. The end result was a sixties rock band, drenched in psychedelic filigree, swooping electronic trippiness, all sorts of circus-y weirdness, bizarre editing and song structures, but never losing sight of great songs. And a lot of these songs are indeed great. Probably the best track on the record is "The Garden Of Earthly Delights", a super rocking Stereolab meets Jefferson Airplane number, that would not sound at all out of place on Emperor Tomato Ketchup, if it weren't for the gritty sixties rock chorus (with a hook to die for) and the storm of buzzing and bleeping, overloaded affects and tripped out swooping and soaring bleeps and bloops. And then there's the final track, a three part experimental montage / coda, all ambient jangle and ethereal ambience, with snippets and samples from the rest of the tracks on the record, resulting in a super damaged art-rock musical acid trip. And the rest of the record veers from countryish campfire stomps, to smoke-y sultry ballads, to freaked out psych jams and everything in between. All blessed by the absolutely gorgeous vocals of Dorothy Moskowitz. This record may be a psychedelic country pop rock record, but boy is it more than that. Reminds us quite a bit of recent AQ record of the week Euphoria, with it's complicated and bizarre arrangements and its unlikely melding of country rock, lush baroque pop and acid fried guitar leads. Imagine a Frankensteinian sonic monster constructed from Euphoria, Stereolab, Fifty Foot Hose, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Byrds...then make said monster do some coursework in twentieth century composition and experimental minimalism, and let it experiment with a suitcase full of homemade sound generators and you'd still have trouble imagining how great this record is.

MPEG stream: The Garden Of Earthly Delights
MPEG stream: Hard Coming Love
MPEG stream: The American Metaphysical Circus
MPEG stream: Cloud Song

This is a drone rock super group of sorts, featuring members of Pelt and Rake, joining forces to trance out in a ritualistic 2+ hour performance (40+ minutes presented here). The sound is definitely Pelt, but a little more rough and ragged, less dreamy. The

Moog-enabled synth punk subversion straight outta San Francisco in the late '70s/early '80s, entertaining n' agitating electronic New Wave action excavated and reissued! And it's totally timely considering how many bands in today's scene would so love to sound like this. We won't pretend we were familiar with The Units before this fantastic anthology album showed up. Perhaps we'd heard the name before (or maybe we were confusing 'em with ol' Jandek's 1978 debut album, also under the name The Units), but we knew nothing about this band 'til we heard this disc a few weeks ago. And as soon as we did, it went into heavy rotation here at the store. These Units were definitely a important piece of San Francisco punk/new wave history, but just a bit before our time. Well, not Aquarius's time, just us folks who work here now! Actually, a close reading of the thanks list in the cd booklet will find a shout out to Aquarius, 'cause (if you didn't know) Aquarius was THEE punk/new wave record store in San Francisco in the '70s... (Which reminds us, we've got to get more of our history up on the AQ website.) And, in fact, The Units' debut lp Digital Stimulation was the very first release on seminal SF indie 415 Records (who had their biggest hit with Romeo Void), a label run in part by Aquarius' owners at the time. So this most certainly isn't the first time that The Units music has been blasting regularly in the Aquarius shop, it's just been a few years, is all. Putting things in proper place/time/scene perspective, this archival disc starts off with an audio snippet of the late SF punk "godfather" Dirk Dirksen on stage at Mabuhay Gardens, good-naturedly mocking both The Units (accidentally referring to them by the name of another band, the Zeros) and their cheering fans (with the sardonic comment "obviously, people with as little taste as yourself would become ecstatic over such average talent"). Then, making us ecstatic, twenty tracks of prime Units music follows, The History Of The Units containing most all of the tracks from their 1980 415 Records album Digital Stimulation as well as a handful of stuff taken from early 7"s and demo tapes, as well as more experimental pieces recorded for film soundtracks and art happenings and other ephemera. Not unlike Devo, The Units had a concept thing going, all about a critique of alienated modern industrial society, dehumanizing conformity, and corporate culture, with songs like "Cannibals" and "Work". Perhaps perversely choosing to use machines to make their point, The Units tried to take the human element out of the rock band equation, preferring for instance to project their own propaganda films rather than allow the audience to focus on a frontperson. And yes, they do also sound quite bit like Devo at times, which is way okay by us! Their synth-obsession was also in part an anti-guitar thing, a reaction to the mainstream. In fact, they took their anti-guitar philosophy to the extreme of not only having a "stamp out guitars" logo, but also making fake guitars out of plywood to smash on stage, while letting their synths play on "cruise control". So definitely The Units were highly conceptual, art schoolish, but not academic - the liner notes are clear that the idea was to be an all-synth band that "kicks ass" (the full quote being: ""I wanted an all synthesizer band... and not some fucking polite, socially acceptable electronic experiment in academia. I didn't want a doctorate in electronic doodling. No, I'm talking about a synth band that kicks ass!") and according to what we're hearing here, they succeeded. And they were not without contemporaries. There were The Screamers, Nervous Gender, and of course Devo; all of whom wanted to take the synthesizer into punk. For many of the Units tracks, it would very easy to replace the lead synth lines with guitars and have an equally kick ass rock song, but the fact is that these are Moog-powered cuts which do oscillate between a quirky sensibility with angular chops and a full-throttle punk car-crash. If you would think the former finds the Units sounding like Devo and the latter like the Screamers, you'd be right! Yes indeed, the songs on this disc range from urgent Devo-esque pop punk and Screamers-y rants to moody proto-'80s dance tracks to more abstract, instrumental, rhythmic/textural electronic pieces like "Tight Fit" and "East West". There's loads of electric energy, some goofy humor, and certainly serious intent. So many gems here, incorporating buzzing droning distorted synths, propulsively skittering drum beats, and monotone vocals (both male and female). Their incredible singles "Cannibals" (a tempestuous, driving song that was pure '70s punk), "High Pressure Days", and "Warm Moving Bodies," are prominently featured here, all of which were impressively catchy. Their ability to write these hooks earned them a deal with Epic, who released two seminal 12" singles (which couldn't be licensed for this compilation) and has been sitting on another collection of recordings since 1983. But beyond the hook, the Units were plenty weird, as seen in their peculiar lullaby melodies on "Red" which almost comes across like a Rodd Keith song-poem with a very sparse arrangement. Despite the band's curses toward academic music, a few choice intertwining moments of the Units minimalist grooves come awfully close to sounding like a punked out Terry Riley! Hardly polite music! Other selections here include the cold wave weird science of "Digital Stimulation", the gloriously grinding downer melody of "Contemporary Emotion" (apparently a cover, a song by some contemporaneous hard rock band we've never heard of called Trakstod Station), and there's even an ode to our very neighborhood, "The Mission Is Bitchin", with lyrics about burritos and marijuana! Of course it's all a bit dated, of its era, and that's part of the charm... but like we said, a lot of this also sounds like it could be put out by a band today, since everything old is new again and the '80s New Wave / synth thing is a current retro craze. Definitely this is a good time for The Units to be reissued! And Community Library have done a really nice job of it, the gatefold cd sleeve containing a thick 32 page cd booklet with elaborate colorful collage style liner notes by bandleader Scott "Dr. Tex Nology" Ryser, a Units manifesto of sorts, he also talks about the wild and crazy San Francisco of the '70s/early '80s era, and also there's several pages of old fliers for Units gigs at the Fab Mab and other SF punk venues... we noticed one for the Warfield too, with The Units opening for OMD and Gary Numan. Also shows with Romeo Void, Dead Boys, Soft Cell, Psychedelic Furs, Dead Kennedys, Crime, Screamers, Iggy Pop, the Police, Tuxedomoon... Definitely makes us young 'uns wish we'd been around in SF back then. (Another note about the packaging, it says copyright 2007 on the back but that that's a mistake, it's when the artwork was initially prepared, this is indeed a brand new 2009 release, with also a vinyl version upcoming as well, not sure when, though.)

MPEG stream: Cannibals
MPEG stream: Warm Moving Bodies
MPEG stream: i Night
MPEG stream: East West

This past Record Of The Week NOW AVAILABLE ON VINYL!!! There's fewer tracks than on the cd version, but at least the lp includes a download code to get mp3s of ALL of the tracks from the cd reissue. No booklet unfortunately (although it seems some of the booklet is reprinted on the cover), but there is an insert, with some liner notes, as well as an explanation for the song choice on both the cd and lp, the lack of the Units' major label material and the reasoning behind less songs on the lp. Regardless, totally essential, especially now that it's on vinyl. Here's what we said about it before: Moog-enabled synth punk subversion straight outta San Francisco in the late '70s/early '80s, entertaining n' agitating electronic New Wave action excavated and reissued! And it's totally timely considering how many bands in today's scene would so love to sound like this. We won't pretend we were familiar with The Units before this fantastic anthology album showed up. Perhaps we'd heard the name before (or maybe we were confusing 'em with ol' Jandek's 1978 debut album, also under the name The Units), but we knew nothing about this band 'til we heard this disc a few weeks ago. And as soon as we did, it went into heavy rotation here at the store. These Units were definitely a important piece of San Francisco punk/new wave history, but just a bit before our time. Well, not Aquarius's time, just us folks who work here now! Actually, a close reading of the thanks list in the cd booklet will find a shout out to Aquarius, 'cause (if you didn't know) Aquarius was THEE punk/new wave record store in San Francisco in the '70s... (Which reminds us, we've got to get more of our history up on the AQ website.) And, in fact, The Units' debut lp Digital Stimulation was the very first release on seminal SF indie 415 Records (who had their biggest hit with Romeo Void), a label run in part by Aquarius' owners at the time. So this most certainly isn't the first time that The Units music has been blasting regularly in the Aquarius shop, it's just been a few years, is all. Putting things in proper place/time/scene perspective, this archival disc starts off with an audio snippet of the late SF punk "godfather" Dirk Dirksen on stage at Mabuhay Gardens, good-naturedly mocking both The Units (accidentally referring to them by the name of another band, the Zeros) and their cheering fans (with the sardonic comment "obviously, people with as little taste as yourself would become ecstatic over such average talent"). Then, making us ecstatic, twenty tracks of prime Units music follows, The History Of The Units containing most all of the tracks from their 1980 415 Records album Digital Stimulation as well as a handful of stuff taken from early 7"s and demo tapes, as well as more experimental pieces recorded for film soundtracks and art happenings and other ephemera. Not unlike Devo, The Units had a concept thing going, all about a critique of alienated modern industrial society, dehumanizing conformity, and corporate culture, with songs like "Cannibals" and "Work". Perhaps perversely choosing to use machines to make their point, The Units tried to take the human element out of the rock band equation, preferring for instance to project their own propaganda films rather than allow the audience to focus on a frontperson. And yes, they do also sound quite bit like Devo at times, which is way okay by us! Their synth-obsession was also in part an anti-guitar thing, a reaction to the mainstream. In fact, they took their anti-guitar philosophy to the extreme of not only having a "stamp out guitars" logo, but also making fake guitars out of plywood to smash on stage, while letting their synths play on "cruise control". So definitely The Units were highly conceptual, art schoolish, but not academic - the liner notes are clear that the idea was to be an all-synth band that "kicks ass" (the full quote being: ""I wanted an all synthesizer band... and not some fucking polite, socially acceptable electronic experiment in academia. I didn't want a doctorate in electronic doodling. No, I'm talking about a synth band that kicks ass!") and according to what we're hearing here, they succeeded. And they were not without contemporaries. There were The Screamers, Nervous Gender, and of course Devo; all of whom wanted to take the synthesizer into punk. For many of the Units tracks, it would very easy to replace the lead synth lines with guitars and have an equally kick ass rock song, but the fact is that these are Moog-powered cuts which do oscillate between a quirky sensibility with angular chops and a full-throttle punk car-crash. If you would think the former finds the Units sounding like Devo and the latter like the Screamers, you'd be right! Yes indeed, the songs on this disc range from urgent Devo-esque pop punk and Screamers-y rants to moody proto-'80s dance tracks to more abstract, instrumental, rhythmic/textural electronic pieces like "Tight Fit" and "East West". There's loads of electric energy, some goofy humor, and certainly serious intent. So many gems here, incorporating buzzing droning distorted synths, propulsively skittering drum beats, and monotone vocals (both male and female). Their incredible singles "Cannibals" (a tempestuous, driving song that was pure '70s punk), "High Pressure Days", and "Warm Moving Bodies," are prominently featured here, all of which were impressively catchy. Their ability to write these hooks earned them a deal with Epic, who released two seminal 12" singles (which couldn't be licensed for this compilation) and has been sitting on another collection of recordings since 1983. But beyond the hook, the Units were plenty weird, as seen in their peculiar lullaby melodies on "Red" which almost comes across like a Rodd Keith song-poem with a very sparse arrangement. Despite the band's curses toward academic music, a few choice intertwining moments of the Units minimalist grooves come awfully close to sounding like a punked out Terry Riley! Hardly polite music! Other selections here include the cold wave weird science of "Digital Stimulation", the gloriously grinding downer melody of "Contemporary Emotion" (apparently a cover, a song by some contemporaneous hard rock band we've never heard of called Trakstod Station), and there's even an ode to our very neighborhood, "The Mission Is Bitchin", with lyrics about burritos and marijuana! Of course it's all a bit dated, of its era, and that's part of the charm... but like we said, a lot of this also sounds like it could be put out by a band today, since everything old is new again and the '80s New Wave / synth thing is a current retro craze. Definitely this is a good time for The Units to be reissued!

MPEG stream: Cannibals
MPEG stream: Warm Moving Bodies
MPEG stream: i Night
MPEG stream: East West

We discovered the D-Trash label (and consequently Unitus) via the amazing DHR 'Don't Fuck With Us' compilation from a few lists ago. Unitus is definitely very beat heavy ala DHR, but lays the beats down in a thick, dark miasma of digital crunch and ambient drones and rumbles. Making for an almost dreamy, definitely droney, hypnotic drum and bass workout with stretches of ambient whir, reminding us quite a bit of the seminal Third Eye Foundation 12" 'Semtex' from a few years back. Nice thick analog sounding dirgescapes, with simple, skittery beats woven throughout . Really fucking great! Myabe electronic music isn't dead after all. You just have to know where to look.

RealAudio clip: Obmutecre
RealAudio clip: Recombinant
RealAudio clip: 23

This starts off in a deceptively "happy" manner, before delving into the darkness that we generally expect from what's always been a superbly creepy chamber-prog band. "Crawling Wind" is this Belgian group's super-rare Japanese only 12" ep from 1983, now for

RealAudio clip: Before The Heat
RealAudio clip: Influences

Universal Indians are a long lost noise rock behemoth, from way back in the nineties, featuring Mr. John Olson of the Wolf Eyes on the drums, these guys whipped up a serious blast of blown out super distorted garagey psychedelic noise rock. The opening track is heavy and thick, pulverizingly aggressive, drums totally in the red, guitars crumbling and white hot, the whole recording doing much damage to the speakers, vocals that are sort of sung/spoken, the whole thing sounds very Brainbombs actually, which is a VERY good thing. Come track two though, and the production drops about a hundred notches and suddenly we're in old school noise rock, tin can and twine blow out territory, which is still good, just different, and a surprise after the ultra hot opener. But the rest of the record proceeds along with some serious Dead C worship, mumbled vocals, angular guitars, barely audible drums, recorded in an airplane hangar or a cave somewhere, with some damaged Dylan-y strum and warble mixed in, everything wreathed in lo-fi hiss and tape recorded warble. Gloriously ramshackle... Side two is a single sidelong epic, a sparse, outrock jam, simple strummed guitars, spacious stumbling drums, almost sounds like some long lost old Sebadoh practice tape, albeit run through with some extra noisy ambience and fucked up weirdness. Cool stuff, almost like some sort of super poppy Wolf Eyes... a stumbling, damaged, noise drenched spaced out psych pop...

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

SORRY. Michigan's Universal Indians (who you may remember from their handsome split lp with Gravitar) and Scotland's Ashtray Navigations (known for their tapes) combine on this split cd, both bands being purveyors of murky psych/noise guitar improv splurge. Pretty cool, the packaging is crap though...

We've been listening to this nearly non-stop since we got our hands on a promo late last year. We didn't really know much about the backstory, just were totally floored by the consistently infectious hybrid grooves of funk, new wave, rare groove and jazz fusion recorded between 1979-1982 that it seemed impossible that this group was virtually undiscovered all this time by anyone outside of Chicago. Their sound fits somewhere between the edgy rhythm of Funkadelic, the rare groove of Roy Ayers, and the direct lyrical realness of Heatwave, but at the same time carries an unexpectedly sharp radio-ready pop sense, boosted by a laser-like focus on studio production and topnotch less-is-more musicianship. Learning their backstory after listening to this so much makes the whole thing that much more impressive and explains somewhat how a little known party band who amassed such an amazing back-log of never before released recordings. Taken from tapes recorded in Columbia College's audio department recorded by college audio students at the time, The Universal Togetherness Band, somehow artfully finagled to get FIVE semesters of recording time to put to tape the band's entire repertoire, likely on the school's dime. For some reason a planned album release fell through and the tapes were shelved. Numero has done a great service with the help of mixing by Sean Marquand of Phenomenal Handclap Band to cull down eight solid tracks from the archive that spread themselves out genre-wise yet still stay tethered to the whole. Seriously, not a dud song in the bunch. Highly Recommended!

MPEG stream: Ain't Gonna Cry
MPEG stream: Real Thrill
MPEG stream: Try Try Try

MPEG stream: Ain't Gonna Cry
MPEG stream: Real Thrill
MPEG stream: Try Try Try

Sigh. This is not as good as those salivating music critics would have you believe. The sizable and impressive line-up of cameos does not save this disaster of an album, and shouldn't even be listed for fear of embarassing the artists associated--oh hell, UNKLE '98 is James Lavelle of Mo'Wax (what happened to the other guy?) who has roped in DJ Shadow as his new partner, with appearances by Thom Yorke of Radiohead, Mike D. of Beastie Boys, and Jason Newsted of Metallica along with a bunch of others... Psyence Fiction is like the aftermath of the collision of a Lexus and a BMW, as both drivers of the vehicles were too busy making record deals on their cell phones to pay attention to the road. You just get pissed-off waiting for it to end while the tow-trucks come to drag the sad wreckage out of your way. Mo' money, mo' problems--this is like when someone gets too rich, too fast and buys a really big ugly house. There's no accounting for taste, but somehow this ostentatious display is aesthetically offensive. It's supposed to be THE end-of-the-millenium hybrid-genre watershed record that crosses boundaries and all that crap. But we all know what's *really* gonna be playing when 1999 rolls over to 2000--"Wonderwall".

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

SORRY. You may know that U.N.K.L.E. is the breakbeat project of Mo'Wax label-head James Lavelle. They've remixed Tortoise and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, and this is definitely one of the better EPs on Mo'Wax, boasting 4 delightful & very distinct versions of one source track. Highly recommended.

Anyone wanna play 'Name That Film" with your ol' Unkle James Lavelle? His latest release is somewhat vaguely titled Edit Music For A Film, and a little bit more helpfully subtitled Original Motion Picture Soundtrack Reconstruction. Maybe it should more appropriately be titled Edited Music From A Bunch Of Films 'cause what it featured is snippits of music and dialogue that Lavelle has nabbed from a lengthy list of movies and pieced together atop his deep bass and breakbeat meltdowns. The first disc has one single 54-minute track named "Widescreen Edit - A New Hope", while the second one is slightly longer at 58 minutes (but is also a single track) and is called "Bonus Material Edit - Strikes Back". Some clips are so fleeting that their origins barely register with the casual listener, while others are more complete and recognizable -- such as the seemingly unadulterated Sid Vicious rendition of "My Way" and the excerpts from George Lucas' early film THX-1138. He even uses two images from the latter film for one of the inner sleeves. The inclusion of the former is a bit distracting as it rudely jolts the listener out of the grooving Unkle-zone, and makes for more of a film music compilation feel. Not for everyone, but it might make a novel gift for your movie'n'breakbeat lovin' buddy.

MPEG stream: excerpt 1
MPEG stream: excerpt 2

add to cart [/images/addtocart.gif]/af4105.html Finally back in stock. We listed this way back in 1999, and due to this disc's ineffable nature, we were unable to find more. UNTIL NOW! A monumental extension of John Cage's "4'33" into the realms of marketing. Absolutely inaudible field recording of empty space, walls of noise digitally obliterated into the void of utter silence, and intricate sampling masterfully worked into nothing at all. Austere and basically impossible to see packaging. An audio and visual allegory of pure nothing. Silence made even more silent. Emptiness completely and utterly emptied. Absolutely nothing. No sound. No art. No disc. Recommended!

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Once upon a time, there was a band called the Mint Chicks, whose sound was a total Pixies style blast of psych-fuzz jangle pop bombast, lush and super melodic, crunchy and crazy catchy, and while the pop kids around here were huge fans, for whatever reason, we were never able to get their records, at least not at a reasonable price. Hopefully someday those record will get (re)issued domestically, especially considering that one of the Mint Chicks has a new band, that's getting a lot of hype, and no undeservedly so. And while the music may not be super similar to the Mint Chicks, Unknown Mortal Orchestra do have a super distinctive sound, one that manages to fuse classic pop tradition and old school power pop songsmithery with warped home brewed DIY experimentation that most definitely manages to skew the sonic proceedings here into a more gloriously off kilter lo-fi indie rock direction. On the first listen, the sound is immediately poppy and breezy, subtly psychedelic, very Beatles-esque for sure. If Tame Impala are the modern equivalent of Beatles-ish psychedelic bombast, UMO borrow more from the darker, dreamier, songier side of the Fab Four, taking swoonsome falsetto vox, shimmery jangle, woozy basslines, and irresistible melodies, and wrapping them in hazy swirls of sonic fug, a little bit lo-fi and a lot bit murky, but still propulsive and weirdly rocking at times, the songs most definitely possessed of a warbly AM radio sound, reminding us of Ariel Pink or John Maus, and at times Ween, but Ween at their perfectly poppiest, as well as recent Record Of The Weekers, Donnie & Joe Emerson. The songs tend toward the woozy, and lysergic, dreamy and drifty but often blossom into stretches both rhythmic and propulsive, groovy and a little bit krautrocky, but ultimately, the core sound is an old school sixties sounding jangle pop, hooky and heavenly, dark and dreamy, and just that little bit tweaked and twisted enough to make this more of a subtly out-pop record, which should appeal to fans of more mainstream sounds, as well as the usual aQ suspects into more underground murk-pop weirdness...

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The name Ryan Unks might not be immediately familiar to you, but anyone into dark and heavy drones out sounds, who are long time readers of the aQ list are no doubt familiar with Unks's work, even if they don't realize it. Long ago Unks was a member of political grindlords Creation Is Crucifixion, but more recently, he was the man behind the black sonic malevolence that was the Human Quena Orchestra, but for this, his most recent solo record, Unks offers up something completely different, a gorgeous collection of home brewed new age drift, crystalline electronics, and mesmerizingly hypnotic loops, droned out and cyclical. A series of chiming melodies, of pulsating and percolating textures, spare and skeletal in places, lush and densely layered in others, with a few of the tracks rife with warm whirs and muted sine wave tones, smeared into soft swells of blissed out soft-noise dream-psych ambience. The sort of thing that fans of Root Strata and Type and Spectrum Spools might dig!! LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!! Gorgeously packaged in an oversized plastic clamshell case, with a printed transparent cover and printed six panel insert, all overlapping and layered and quite striking!

The sweet sound of mandolin charts the course for Unlucky Atlas. Sorry, couldn't resist the pun, but yes, that stringed instrument is integral to this new Chicago acoustic foursome's sound. Said instrument along with guitar, fiddle, cello, autoharp, and male and female vocals are entwined gracefully making for a harmony filled, somberly atmospheric, earthen seven song debut. Comes packaged in a lovely letter pressed cardboard jacket. Very very nice.

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Whoa, some of the most unwashed, ragged, loose, ass-slappin' garage rawk we've heard in a long time has just landed in our unexpecting laps with a sweaty how-do-you-do! Seattle's Unnatural Helpers are at your service for those times when you just wanna get down to the not so serious business of rawkin'. And if you dig the low slung, kick in the pants goodness of bands like Tight Bros From Way Back When and Hot Snakes, you'll do yourself and them a favor and take 'em for a spin. A rowdy, beer-goggled shot in the arm.

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Fuck, we love this band. We've only heard one tape from these Canadian electronic black ambient weirdos, but we immediately fell under their spell, and have been dying for new music ever since. This is the latest tape of their damaged outsider alchemical sonic rituals, and if the first one was mysterious and strange, this one, is fucking baffling. All over the map, and completely wacked. Opening with some fucked up creepy circusy synths, a buzzy tangle of haunting minor key video game forest drone. Then all of a sudden, they launch into a reverb drenched stumble, the drums blown out and spluttering, the guitar sawing away and emitting a cloud of noxious buzzing riffage, dual vocals, one a black metal rasp, the other a moaning whale call off in the distance. Freaky and super awesome. Those muted percussive thumps get more and more chaotic as the musical tension grows and grows, a lurching dirgey lo-fi doom damage workout. And it keeps getting better. And weirder. The next track is all folky, a strummed acoustic guitar, moaned vocals, all sorts of strange drifting FX, followed up by another acoustic crawl, creeping and slithery, the vocals growled beneath minor key piano plinking. Sheets of electric guitar buzz, insectoid electronic grizzle, huge echoey rumbling baritone moans, more mournful acoustic guitar... Dense and washed out and fuzzy and murky and muddy and fucking genius. Fans of Dead Reptile Shrine, Circle Of Ouroborus, and other outsider metal outfits should be on all fours, cowering at the feet of Uno Actu, and offering up blood sacrifices as homage. We sure as hell are. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Each tape hand numbered.

We love us some black ambience, whether it's the self flagellating soundscaping of Abruptum, the strange piano based minimalism of Tomb Of..., the cinematic creeepiness of the Vomit Orchestra, it's bracing to discover a world of ambient music, of spare and sparse soundscapes, that are as ominous and dark, as brutal and as black as any of the more riff based musicks. Thus we have this tape from the very mysterious Uno Actu, so mysterious in fact we haven't really been able to find out much about them other than the fact that they are Canadian. Uno Actu offer up a dense and varied occult alchemical ambient ritual. Bits of black metal surface here and there, with growled guttural vocals, and downtuned rumble, but the core of Inexistence is a drifting shimmer, slightly metallic, a deep resonant reverberation, that slowly slithers through some dark sonic underworld, disrupted by bursts of speaker shredding low end buzz, creaking industrial percussion, thick swaths of crumbling low end drone, strange looped rhythms, it's ominous, and dark, and creepy, but also strangely pretty, even at its most abrasive, the sound is very dreamlike and abstract, muted and murky, mysterious melodies drift amidst thick peals of feedback, disembodied voices float and flutter before sinking into the morass, tribal drums beat out a pattern over a fuzzy cinematic backdrop, huge moaning foghorns spin thick murky webs of sound over the muted crash of some imaginary surf... Very intense and lovely, dark and dreamlike, black and blissful. A new black ambient favorite for sure... LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!!!

Killer black metal / black ambient match up, featuring one of our favorite mysterious ritualistic drone combos, Uno Actu. But let's start with Maledicere, a duo from Minnesota of all places, and whose sound is a sort of raw pounding black metal, with a bit of a post rock vibe. After an intro of tinkling tones and dreamy ambience, the band launch into a loping Burzumic pound, but with strange howled vocals, very melodic, but still plenty buzz drenched. Mostly midtempo, but the band do explode into bursts of frenzied buzz with soaring majestic melodies, before slipping back into something more pounding and primitive. Definitely be psyched to hear more from these guys. But no matter how good Maledicere is, Uno Actu are the reason we're so excited about this record. With only a handful of demos over the last few years (a couple of which we've raved about on past lists), a new record from these guys (or this guy), is like an (un)holy message sent from another realm, a rare occurrence that produces much rejoicing, and much huddling around the stereo late and night by candlelight. A cloud of muted feedback and textured buzz, swirls and pulses, over delicate acoustic guitar, some sort of dreamy blackened noisefolk, slipping from corrosive and caustic to washed out and meditative. Demonic vocals gurgle over smears of fracture melody, and distant guitar strum, eventually spiraling into a looped bit of minor key droneguitar mesmer. So fantastic. Someone needs to collect all the demos and release them on cd, or vinyl, or something, but until then, we'll just have to make do with these little offerings, everyone a black joy to behold.

Ahhhh, Unrest. There was a time when Unrest were IT. They could do no wrong. Mark Robinson (Unrest / Teenbeat Records mainman) was king of the indie scene. And listening to this record there is no doubt in our minds as to why. While the records before Imperial were sloppy and chaotic (in a good way!) and sort of punk rock, they were also dark and dreamy and sweetly melancholy, all hinting at some doleful sensitive underside, lurking like a shy boy, beneath Unrest's spikey exterior. So along comes Imperial (originally released in 1992), and it was sort of like that shy boy finally got up the guts to talk to that girl he had been longing for all year, and while she still ignored him, something about reaching that point made him realize he didn't need loud noisy punk rock, or smashing chaos, he could just be himself, and the sound of being himself, finally unveiled on Imperial, managed to suddenly illuminate the pop treasure map Unrest had been following since day one. All that sweet sweet pop was now the focal point, the foundation, no longer hiding bashfully behind the crash and clang. Gone were the willful snottiness, the distorted guitars, the ramshcakle drumming and in their place, a languid, lustrous jangle pop shimmer, bathed in reverb, and laced with dreamy soulful crooning, lilting guitar melodies, and sweet sweet hooks, with the ultimate mixtape lyrics. "I Do Believe You Are Blushing". I mean, c'mon!! How sweetly romantic is that?! I for one must fess up to at least several tracks on Imperial making their way on to many a mix tape. And while a few tracks do 'rock' ("Suki" has to be one of the best rocking pop songs EVER!), it's in that sort of liquidly propulsive Neu! meets Beat Happening sort of way, a droney jangle with repetitive guitars and shuffling rhythms, mesmerizing but a little bouncy too. However, on Imperial, it's all about the blissed out shimmer pop, lazy electric guitars, and distant throbbing bass floating delicately atop a slowly unfurling popscape, simple and absolutely beautiful, with Mark Robinson's gorgeous hearfelt croon as well as the occasional delicate angelic female vocal. So so so so beautiful! This re-issue also tacks on 8 bonus tracks that while not included on the original, definitely sound like they could have just been placed anywhere throughout the record proper and would have seemed right at home. A massive 13 minute reworking of the title track, stretched out into a druggy, dreamy ambient janglescape, swoonsome and sweet, slowly shifting from a tripped out acapella blur to endless instrumental bliss-out. A trip hoppy version of "Isabel" that sounds just as good as the original, a couple ambient experiments that add more mystery to Imperial's moodiness, the dirgey , pretty slowcore crawl "Wednesday And Proud" and a few others. Inexplicably, they left off the infamous Unrest classic "Yes She Is My Skinhead Girl" which was only on a 7" and was once included as a bonus track on the import version of this. But that's hardly a complaint when faced with such a stunning slice of pop perfection. Listen to the sound samples and you will understand just what we mean.

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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. Along with the delicate beauty of "Imperial ffrrr", "Kustom Karnal Blaxploitation" is by far the best thing Mark Robinson has ever done. Finally available on cd, this is the perfect mix of sweet pop, noisey agit-rock, faux 60's-isms, and the great songwriting that would be the foundation for Teenbeat's early 90's pop indie-monopoly. Worth it alone for the achingly beautiful 'She Makes Me Shake Like A Soul Machine.' Totally essential.

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

SORRY. This is the first Unrest record, originally released in 1998, and is probably the best document of an 80's hardcore band embracing pop... thus alienating their entire audience. The hardcore is still there, but tempered by the sweet pop that would soon become the signature Unrest / Teenbeat sound. Essential.

Unrest's Imperial f.f.r.r. ranks near the top of our pantheon of all time greatest indie rock records EVER. We've raved about it on the aQ list before, but weirdly enough, we never reviewed the follow up Perfect Teeth, the band's final album, which is a shame, cuz as far as we're concerned, it's almost like Imperial part two, another clutch of perfect pop songs, some chiming and delicate, hushed and shimmering, others crunchy and frenetic, bouncy jangle heavy fuzz pop crunch. For this year's Record Store Day, Perfect Teeth was reissued as a deluxe 6x7" boxset, with some stunning packaging (more on that in a second), and we're a little shocked there are still any copies left, cuz Perfect teeth is brimming with some of the most perfect indie pop we've ever heard. Opener "Angel I'll Walk You Home" sounds like it could have been pulled right from the Imperial sessions, with it's chiming guitar figures, the hushed harmonized vocals, a slow drifting brooder, with lots of space, hazy and dreamy and softly reverby, then there's "Cath Carroll" which finds the band at their most rocking, the guitars crunchy and fuzzy, the drums frantic and busy, the vocals buried in the mix, but no amount of distortion of jangle can hide the oh so hummable hooks. "So Sick" splits the difference, a minor key jangle fest that sounds like the perfect rainy day soundtrack, and like pretty much every Unrest song, just begs to be the cornerstone of a makeout mixtape. And like Imperial, the band were not just about pop, they had an experimental streak a mile wide, already evident in the off kilter arrangements and the unique song structures, it becomes even more obvious on tracks like "Food & Drink Synthesizer", a gorgeous swirl of whirling high end shimmer and the sounds of breathing, blurred into a gorgeous bit of abstract minimal thrum, or "Breather X.O.X.O" which sounds poppy and jangly at first, but then reveals itself as a dense repetitive arrangement with looping guitar figures and layered vocals, sounding more like Reich or Riley gone indie pop. In between these moments of overt experimentation, are still more dark pop gems, the droned out strum and drift of "Stylized Ampersand", the punchy, crunchy jangle pop of "Make Out Club" which just might be one of the catchiest pop songs ever, or "West Coast Love Affair", all spidery minor key guitars, shuffling rhythms, and strangely sung/spoken vocals, or the warm washed out shoegazey dreampop of "Six Layer Cake". So great! And so great to have this gorgeous deluxe vinyl version, that finds the record spread out over six seven inches, each one pressed on a different colored vinyl, along with a big 7"x7" booklet of photos, two stickers, a fold out poster featuring all the Teen Beat releases, a download coupon, the whole thing housed in metallic gold silkscreened origami style sleeve, tied shut with red string, each one machine numbered. Get it while you can.

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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. N.U. Unruh -- the anarchic percussionist for Einsturzende Neubauten -- has released his first solo album after over twenty years in the seminal industrial outfit. Setting aside all of the jackhammers, concrete mixers, and giant springs in favor of a multi tracked sampler, Unruh layers looping samples culled from the noises made by means of communication: shortwave radio, fax machines, audio translations of the Cobol computer language, and a variety of digitally encoded sounds. In spite of the cacophonous din of these sound sources, Unruh attempts to create something whimsical, at times melodic, but nonetheless challenging - almost something like Mouse On Mars trying to remix John Duncan.

Unsane yet again! Yeah!! Never stop the bloodbath.

"'Lambhouse' is the nickname of the market in New York's meatpacking district where Unsane frontman Chris Spencer buys the blood for his album-cover shoots." Does that quote from the liner notes to this 'best of' collection give you some clue about what this band is like? Bloody album covers and heavy duty grooves, uncompromising rock action. Unsane have been around forever, on-and-off, surviving despite a tragic drummer O.D. back in 1992, and life-threating beating suffered by the aforementioned Mr. Spencer just a few years ago. Getting their start in the '80s NYC noise rock scene alongside Foetus, Swans, Sonic Youth and others of that ilk, Unsane's brand of heaviness got 'em signed first to Matador, then AmRep and latterly Relapse. This 'best of' cd features 24 tracks spanning their recording career 1989-1998, covering material released on all three of those labels. And there's a second disc, a DVD, that includes 4 music videos (including the painfully funny skater wipeout montage of "Scrape"), plus live footage from 3 different shows, the earliest 1992 in Cincinnati, the latest just last year in Brooklyn. So if you're a fan who wants the video (or can't find your old records) OR if you haven't yet delved into Unsane's punishing world but like stuff like Zeni Geva and old Helmet, definitely check out Lambhouse.

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It's hard to believe it's been more than 20 years since we first heard NYC noise rockers Unsane, but maybe even harder to believe that their sound, even after 25+ releases, remains relatively unchanged. Wreck offers up another collection of blood splattered, knuckle dragging heaviosity, that sounds just as good as the first time we heard them, via their crushing Sub Pop single, and their still tough to beat self titled debut full length. The math remains the same for the most part, the drums a muscled pummel, the guitars distorted and HEAVY, the bass holding it all together, and Chris Spencer's vox a feral wail. The songs mostly one or two parts, chugging and churning and pounding hypnotically. An exercise in metallic minimalism, a sort of hypno-noiserock. The one change we do notice, is a lot more melody going on, and Spencer's vox a bit softer, and also more melodic. While opener "Rat" is a dead ringer for the Unsane of old, the second track "Decay" ends up sounding almost like Mudhoney, Spencer's vox definitely drifting into Mark Arm territory, with the song offering up some surprisingly melodic broody moodiness. But it suits them. And it's been a while since we've listened to the last few records (we STILL listen to those first few) so those changes may have been creeping up gradually, but they definitely seem more prominent on Wreck. Fear not, Unsane has most definitely NOT gotten soft, the record for the most part is heavy on the headbanging noise rock crush, and any extra melody only makes it go down a little bit easier, but even so, there's plenty of jagged heaviness and head caving noisiness to get stuck in your craw, and do a lot of bloody damage in the process. And be sure and stick around for the closer "Ha Ha Ha", which features Spencer's demonic cackle as the chorus, mirroring Dan Higgs' much less malevolent laughing song, and beyond that, it might be the heaviest, and best of the bunch.

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Holy shit! Here's quite a find for the discerning aQuarius customer! The inaugural issue of Unsound - a zine published in San Francisco back in the '80s with an uncompromising vision peering into industrial culture, underground electronics, post-punk at its most volatile, and transgressive performance art. The editorial disclaimer states: "We view the irregular as important, adherence to convention trends as camouflage for ignorance and see the only viable material as that produced in an alternative mode to fashion." Issue 1 was published in September 1983, and the list of artists on the cover represent an amazing cross section of those amorphous genres at the time, with Whitehouse, The Birthday Party, Culturcide, Kommunity FK, Z'ev, and Public Image Limited! The interview with Nick Cave is particularly entertaining, as is Brad Laner (later of Medicine fame) writing about the experimental scene down in LA. Between the interviews and reviews, Unsound splatters its pages with antisocial texts from San Francisco denizens and malcontents as well as high-contrast collages extracted from medical textbooks. Of course, the punk-as-fuck advertisements are amazing even without the content. It goes without saying that these are WAY out of print and extremely rare, and are probably worth more than the $15 price tag. And we've got less than a dozen...

Yup, another amazing find, the second issue of Unsound - a zine published in San Francisco back in the '80s with an uncompromising vision peering into industrial culture, underground electronics, post-punk at its most volatile, and transgressive performance art. In keeping with their ethos of favoring the true alternatives to mainstream culture, the second issue (also published in late 1983) has more of a free jazz bent with in depth interviews with Rova Saxophone Quartet and Wes Robinson to go along with a typically confrontational interview with Blixa Bargeld and a wild interview from the notorious SF performance artist Johanna Welt. Plenty of fantastic reviews, grim artwork (including a naughty piece by John Duncan), and amazing ads from the underground San Francisco Bay Area scene at the time (and well worth the price of admission just for those incredible ads!). As with the first issue of Unsound, it goes without saying that these vintage zines are WAY out of print and extremely rare, and are probably worth more than the $15 price tag. And we've got less than a dozen...

Here the latest of the warehouse finds we've been able to dig up stock on Unsound - the seminal underground San Francisco magazine from the '80s focusing on the amorphous regions between punk, industrial culture, the performance-art world, and outsider shock tactics. Volume Three Number One begins Unsound's final year of publication in 1986, with a lead feature / interview with the devilishly funny German noise performance outfit Die Todliche Doris, the journalist / musician / tape-dealer Vittore Baroni, the psychically sexual / sexually psychic duo Audio Leter (sic) with a lengthy critique of their little known work as well as an interview. There's also a suitably bizarre 'interview' with members of the Church Of The SubGenius, the subversive collective of crackpots and giggling conceptual artists that developed into a quite a cultural sensation by the early '90s. Zine reviews, music reviews, and networking contacts galore! A vintage collectible, hence the price.

Over the past months, we've uncovered a handful of orginal issues of Unsound, San Francisco's seminal industrial / experimental / out-there / transgressive / what-the-fuck? zine from the '80s. This one though was the very final issue of Unsound, and they went out with a fucking bang with this one: the magazine itself is an oversized newsprint edition folded into a printed cardstock sleeve, which also includes two additional booklets of pertinent information at the time of all of the known mail order outlets, like-minded publications, and sympathetic art organizations. But the coup de grace is clearly the compilation tape with rare and exclusive tracks from Controlled Bleeding, Hunting Lodge, Die Todliche Doris, The Haters, P16.D4, Negativland, S.B.O.T.H.I., Psyclones, Smersh, Master/Save Relationship, Audio Leter, Torn Memory, Monochrome Bleu, Theme Park, Robert Bolman, Problemist, Blackhouse, Das Synthetische Mischgewebe, No Music, Glorious Din, The Eberly Brothers, Kristine Ambrosia, Poison Gas Research / PGR, and Mother Country. The articles also feature interviews with the Hafler Trio (then doing what they could to keep up the ruse of Edward Moolenbeek's participation in the group along with the fictional sound research of Robert Sprigeon), Nick Zedd & Richard Kern, Organum, Blackhouse, PGR, the SELEKTION collective including P16.D4 and S.B.O.T.H.I., and Karen Finley. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES!! Each one numbered, looooooooooong out of print.

Here's the third warehouse find we've been able to dig up of Unsound - the seminal underground San Francisco magazine from the '80s focusing on the amorphous regions between punk, industrial culture, the performance-art world, and outsider shock tactics. Volume two marks the beginning of 1985, with Number one being the first edition published that year. The lead article is on the nerd rock ridiculousness of Three Day Stubble, who have enthralled and annoyed audiences in San Francisco for two decades well after their inception. But the lengthy interviews with Christian Marclay and Borbetomagus are well worth the price of admission. Both Force Mental (the magazine run by Club Moral) and Sleep Chamber contribute lengthy statements of intent, with the former critiquing the work of Whitehouse in relation to their appropriation of fascistic imagery, and the latter mapping out their fascination with sex magick. And of course, there are articles on those we know nothing about (e.g. Psychodrama and the filmmaker Leslie Thornton). As always, an amazing time-capsule read into the deep-end of San Francisco underground counter culture.

Here the latest of the warehouse finds we've been able to dig up stock on Unsound - the seminal underground San Francisco magazine from the '80s focusing on the amorphous regions between punk, industrial culture, the performance-art world, and outsider shock tactics. This issue has some serious heavy hitters providing interviews: Nurse With Wound, Chris & Cosey, John Duncan, The Haters, Nocturnal Emissions, Club Moral, and Graeme Revelle. Plus, there's an interview with John Zorn, who by the late '90s had embraced a near complete media blackout... so here's some very rare insight into his work from the jazzman himself. This is an extra thick issue with 128 pages in total, chock full at the end with loads of zine and record reviews, and tons of cool old ads (including one for aQ!). A vintage collectible, hence the price.

[ aquarius records catalogue — U ]