[ aquarius records catalogue

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Showing results 1701 through 1750 of 3547.

A pretty great collection of "party funk and get down jazz", as the record is subtitled, People Get Ready collects just addictively grooving singles here, including a Lee Dorsey track that never made it onto any of his albums. Another fine collection

RealAudio clip: Four Corners (Part 1)
RealAudio clip: I Know Who You Been Socking It To

Sometimes it seems there's so much old music to be rediscovered, what's the point in even making more? Well, maybe so folks 100 years from now can put out an amazing archival boxset of black metal, or doom, or freak folk. But we digress. Murder ballads, true life tales of sorrow and sadness, tragedy and death, loss and misery, set to music, songs designed to help mourn, to pass on tales of lives lived and lost, a way to celebrate life, and fight off our fear of death. For over a hundred years, these songs have existed, probably longer, the music and lyrics like tabloid newspapers, sensationalistic, bold and explicit, never designed to be popular, or mainstream, instead they existed for the people, who were hungry to hear about disaster and mayhem, just like slowing down to look at a car wreck, these songs would hold the listeners in thrall, not only designed to tell a tale, but maybe teach a lesson as well. This collection is massive, gorgeously presented, extensively researched, and beyond all that, just an amazing collection of fantastic songs, most culled from old 78's, dusty and scratchy, hissy, pops and crackle, adding an appropriately old timey patina, country, rhythm and blues, the subject matter appropriately dark, and sinister, as if those musics weren't already primarily focused on death and dying, broken hearts and murdered sweethearts. The sounds range from campfire country to stripped down blues, to bouncy rhythm and blues, to mournful ballads, to twangy honky tonk and every variation in between. Men, women, young, and old, all recorded between 1913 and 1938, spinning their tales, around the campfire, behind a bottle of whiskey, on a street corner, anyway there were folks in need of a good, and tragic story. The packaging is amazing, a clothbound hardcover book the cds in little pockets on the inside of both the front and back covers, a huge book, a introduction by Tom Waits, a brief history of the genre, and then super in depth notes on each artist and each track, tons of photos, and not just the performers, but the various accidents, wrecks, mishaps and tragedies that inspired these songs (not least among them, the sinking of the Titanic!).

MPEG stream: Titanic Blues
MPEG stream: Wreck Of The Old 97
MPEG stream: El Mole Rachmim (Fur Titanik)
MPEG stream: Kassie Jones Part 1

Quite simply, this is a collection of bands from around the globe circa 1969, who have done their best to emulate "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" with very pleasing results. Quirky psychedelic pop from We All Together (Peru), Prudy (Czechoslovakia), Quentin E. Klopjaeger (South Africa), The Twilights (Australia), and more. From the same label who produced the "Peace, Love, and Poetry" compilations!

ATTENTION JESU OBSESSIVES!!! If you're -really- and -truly- obsessed with Jesu, and maybe money is no object, then you just might want to pick this up. A pretty cool version of "The Funeral Party" all done up Jesu style, a little bit blissed out and eighties sounding, definitely a good match, Jesu and the Cure. And as far as we know, this is the only place to find that track. 7 minutes = $21.00, you do the math. "But what about the rest of the tracks" you ask? Well, it's all Cure covers which could be cool, and the money made goes to charity, but quite frankly, the rest of the compilation is pretty bad. Some of it, just so-so to middling, but some of it GODAWFUL. Totally cringeworthy. Only a few bands we'd heard of: Dandy Warhols, The Muslims, Kaki King, Bat For Lashes, Indian Jewelry, Ex-Reveries. And sure there are a couple ok tracks tucked away in there, but for the most part, minus the Jesu song, you'd be much better off not wasting any of your valuable listening time here. But back to you Jesu freaks, if you'd pay $20 for some rare 7" on eBay, this might just be the same difference...

MPEG stream: The Funeral Party

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SORRY. This compendium of 'New York Electro Hip Hop + Underground Dance Classics 1980 - 1985' has so many great tracks from Afrika Bambaataa, Kraftwerk, New Order, Cybotron, Liquid Liquid, ESG, Shannon, etc... it is baffling that Marc insists on only playing 'The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight' by Dominatrix not just once, but three or four times in a row. I'll admit that there is something charming about this song, but I have gotten sick of it. Nevertheless, the tracks on these compilations qualify the roots of techno, electronica, and gangsta rap. Vol 1. features Afrika Bambaataa, Yaz, Yello, Kraftwerk, Peech Boys, Planet Patrol, T.W. Funkmasters, and more. Vol 2. (perhaps the best of the 4) features Dominatrix, New Order, ESG, Liquid Liquid, Shannon, Freeze, Slack, and more. Vol 3. Shannon, Xena, Carol Lynn Townes, Heaven 17, Hashim, Tina B, Seidah Garrett, and more. Vol 4. (the most electro of the bunch) features Cybotron, Jonzun Crew, Quadrant Six, Newcleus, C-Bank, Afrika Bambaataa, and more.

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Perhaps you have to be of a certain, somewhat advanced age to have the same nostalgic memories of huddling up next to your radio late at night, the record button on your tape deck ready to fire, listening for that one perfect song that perfectly captures every semi-embarassing angst-ridden teenage emotion you've felt that day. You might not even know the name of the band, or maybe you misheard the name of the song, and you're pretty sure that you're never going to be able to find the 7", but there is no doubt that the song will inhabit every mix tape you make for the next couple of months. You'll listen to that song over and over until the tape wears out or the radio brings you the next in a hopefully endless series of best-songs-ever. If there's one thing that the radio will always have over MySpace or YouTube or any other latter day source of musical instant gratification, it's that feeling of being secure in the knowledge that no matter how shitty your day was, or how much you hated your school, there are dozens or hundreds or thousands of other kids just like you, listening to those same songs at the same moment. Perfect Unpop harkens back to a golden era for DIY pop deliverance, when John Peel was the high priest of impeccable taste, bringing together the unwashed, spotty-faced masses every night through the power of BBC Radio. Much of the music on this collection falls neatly into the spectrum of spiky-haired, skinny tied, frenetic, punched up power pop, perfected by better known acts like The Jam, The Who, Elvis Costello, The Undertones, and Joe Jackson. However, a few tracks do veer more towards the brash, bratty sneer of the Sex Pistols (Eater's "Thinking of the USA" for one), while others opt for a darker, more austere, occasionally drum-machine backed groove that recalls Joy Division, Wire or some of the French cold wave bands that were undoubtedly starting to trickle across the channel. If you have even a passing interest in late-'70s DIY power-pop/punk, then there will be some familiar treats (The Vibrators, Swell Maps, Young Marble Giants, Kleenex, The Monochrome Set, Au Pairs, Vic Godard and the Subway Sect), but there are enough rarities here to keep all but the most obsessive reaching for the lovingly assembled liner notes from time-to-time. The music compiled on Perfect Unpop is awkward, fumbling, scrappy, (check out the unintentionally Coleman-channeling sax 'solos' on The Outcasts' "Self-Conscious Over You" or The Prefects "Going Through The Motions" to get a sense of bands definitely working at the outer limits of their technical abilities) but all the better for it - the roughness and lack of polish make the songs engaging and evocative in a way that more perfectly polished pop gems could never be. This is a compilation packed with perfectly fleeting moments of lo-fi perfection that will make you long for those late nights when a song on the radio could make you feel invincible. Essential!

MPEG stream: This Is Your Life
MPEG stream: Thinking Of The USA
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What a great comp! Rare but amazing examples of "Black music" (that's the European term) from the '70s, done with a heavy helping of at-the-time cutting edge electronics. Spaced out soul, in other words. Well, obviously it wasn't just cosmic krautrockers and spacey prog bands in the '70s messing around with the latest in synthesizers and other electronic music-making devices. Why wouldn't soul, funk, gospel, and RnB artists also make use of all that newfangled machinery? Of course they would, with folks like Herbie Hancock and Sun Ra leading the way. And they did. Especially those making music at home, without access to big studio budgets. That's the "Personal" part of the title, the songs here pretty much all being solo DIY home-brewed recordings, enabled by the technology... Which, along with the futuristic/sci-fi vibes that go along with the tech, give a lot of this a bit of an additional eccentric "outsider" feel, just check out the artist known as Starship Commander Woo Woo, for instance! So, the compilers of this collection have dug deep, to find all these fantastic selections of what you could call "electronic soul", that in the mainstream we'd really only previously heard from Shuggie Otis... so if you can imagine Shuggie Otis really way out in spaaaace, you've got an idea of what's happening here. Fat, buzzing synths. The mechanical tick-tock of primitive drum machines. Spacey FX galore. Mega multitracked masterpieces. Yeah, it'd all be novelty, if these songs weren't good. But, they ARE good. Obscure but definitely grade-A stuff in our book. The sci-fi sounds (which make a lot of this seem simultaneously '70s retro but also very up-to-date electronica-ish) are put to use by artists who come across like mutant Stevie Wonders and Sly Stones. There's 17 tracks here, from names we doubt you've ever heard of before: Jeff Phelps, Guitar Red, Johnnie Walker, U.S. Aries, The Makers, Cotillion, Spontaneous Overthrow, Jerry Green, Johnson, Key & Cleary, The New Year, T. Dyson & Company, Steve Elliot, Deborah Washington, and the aforementioned Starship Commander Woo Woo. Kinda hard to pick faves, some are simply groovy, some super bizarre, many both at once... The only omission we can think of, is that even though this gets into the '80s, there's nothing from Wicked Witch on here (see our review of EM's reissue of that if you aren't familiar). But what's here is plenty weird & wonderful, from the twangy zipzap of bluesman Guitar Red's "Disco From A Space Show" to the heavily echo-effected "My Bleeding Wound" by The New Year... Nicely presented, the cd in deluxe hardbound booklike slipcased packaging, complete with liner notes including thumbnail images of each original release. And the vinyl version is a 180 gram double lp, also nicely packaged.

MPEG stream: Disco From A Space Show
MPEG stream: I Finally Found The Love I Need
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A very strange and obscure tribute to the Fall featuring a handful of folks we know: Chris Knox, Chris Brokaw, the Black Eyed Snakes, Preston School Of Industry, Chris Cacavas and Barbara Manning as well as loads of bands we no nothing about: Egoexpress, S.Y.P.H., the Creeping Nobodies, Locust Fudge, Boy Division, Like A Stuntman and tons more. Super in-depth liner notes letting you know who all those bands are and why the heck they're so into the Fall.

MPEG stream: Paintwork
MPEG stream: Mere Pseud Mag. Ed.

Giddy up! Let's rumble! It's a plethora of twangorama on Phantom Guitars, the new disc from the fab Psychic Circle label, who have brought us a ton of cool comps of '60s and '70s prog and psych grooviness (some recent highlights including White Lace & Strange, Blow Your Cool, and Return Of The Instro-Hipsters). This one, like several of those, was compiled by Nick "Bevis Frond" Saloman, who we're beginning to think must have the most amazing record collection ever. This disc wanders back a few years earlier than usual for these comps, to delve into the way out world of British instrumental guitar combos circa 1961-'64. Well it's mostly instrumental, but for some non sequitur exhortations of excitement that might lend a song its title... Basically, before the Beatles, one of the biggest pop sensations of the era in the UK were The Shadows (sorta analogous to The Ventures over here in the USA, with a dose of Duane Eddy and a lick of Link Wray). The 25 tracks here are from some of the groups that followed in their wake, with monikers like The Falcons, The Champions, The Executives, The Cougars, The Players, Group X, The Gladiators, The Vengers, The Planets, The Hunters, The Violents, and The Phantoms, just to name a few of 'em. Generally awash in reverb, these cooler-than-thou guitar twangers specialized in surfy, cinematic Spaghetti Western suspensefulness and galloping grooves. Nick's picked a bunch of winners, not a duff track in the bunch if you're into these sort of vintage sounds. Zounds! If these bands were from Indonesia or Cambodia or someplace more exotic than the British Isles (or Sweden, he's included one Swedish band actually) we're sure we'd sell a ton of this disc, so c'mon why not give it a go anyway? FYI, one of the tracks was written by John Barry, another one produced by Joe Meek. How do we know? Well the cd booklet includes notes on each track, for which we are always grateful, though learning that for instance Group X was actually The Martin Jay Five and that they made only two singles but did manage an appearance on a TV show called Thank Your Lucky Stars isn't really as interesting as just groovin' to their catchy beat (in their case, boasting some jazzy sax along with the six string bendin'). Darn cool.

MPEG stream: Stampede
MPEG stream: Jack's Good
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SORRY.

Where were you from 1965 to 1973? Well, if you weren't born yet or for some reason were otherwise occupied, check out the hot sounds that were coming out of Philadelphia back then. This 17 track soul, funk and early disco compilation on the excellent Soul Jazz label (who also brought us the wonderful Studio One Rockers as well as the 100%, 200% and 300% Dynamite Jamaican

After near-obsessive listening to this comp, the first song, "Collage", by The Three Degrees is absolutely my favorite. So much blazing soul I can barely handle it. The rest of this Soul Jazz comp (a second volume of their Philadelphia Roots series) is so totally amazing as well. Funk, soul and the roots of disco from 1965-73 are featured here and lay down some serious soulful grooves. Philly-style! And I don't mean with cheesesteaks mother fucker!!! Every single track is a glistening sun-beam of soul from the era. Aside from my afore-mentioned fave, other hi-lites include an instrumental version of The Family's "Family Affair", Nat Turner's little bit funky "You Are My Sun Sign", The Ethics' "I Want My Baby Back", the legendary Delphonics with "Ready Or Not Here I Come", and Norma & The Heartaches' "Hot Pants". Yeeeow! Soo gooooood!!!!!

MPEG stream: Collage
MPEG stream: You Are My Sun Sign

MPEG stream: Collage
MPEG stream: You Are My Sun Sign

From Mindanao in the South Philippines comes this great collection of recordings of instrumental lute recordings. Two women, Fingguy Flang and Luming Tuan, nationally recognized for their talents on the hegelung perform six tracks each. The hegelung is a long and slender two string lute. The performer using one string to produce a drone while working out a melody on the other. Alternately simple and virtuosic, the melodies of the hegelung are peppered with ornamental hammer-ons and pull-offs like the best heavy metal lead guitarists or 5-string banjo players out there. Awesome.

MPEG stream: Nadal
MPEG stream: Hekowing Tuko Dol

Before we get going with this review, we figured we oughta just get your attention with the words NEW 30 MINUTE DANIEL HIGGS TRACK!!! That's right, we'll get to that in a minute though... Phoning It In is a radio show in Boston, where musicians call in and perform songs over the phone, which makes for super intimate performances, but which also give the recordings a cool, alien, lo-fi vibe (remember the vocals-recorded-from-jail on Bad Brains' I Against I record?!). This disc collects three recent guests on Phoning It In, The Caribbean, Don Zientara and Mr. Daniel Higgs. The first three tracks are solo acoustic numbers from the frontman of The Caribbean, and are quite nice, falling somewhere between the Mountain Goats and some more traditionally indie. The vocals lilting and sadboy, the guitar minor key, the tracks simple but quite lovely. Don Zientara, a legendary producer (whose name has graced almost every DC punk record you've ever owned) as well as performer, and here offers up two haunting acoustic numbers, long drawn out steel string tangles, simple strumming and angular fingerpicking, a sort of Appalachia / indie jangle hybrid, with a high croon that is actually quite reminiscent of Charles Manson or Captain Beefheart. The whole thing sounding like some unearthed demo tape from Laurel Canyon in the late sixties / early seventies.� Most folks are probably gonna buy this for the Higgs track, and it's well worth it, a massive sprawling buzzing distorted raga epic, 25 minutes, total blown out super distorted lo-fi trance inducing beauty. It sounds like a pump organ (and at times like a guitar, and at others a Jew's harp...), wheezing out thick dense chords, with notes overlapping and beating against each other, pulsing and buzzing, some ancient primitive ritual, timeless and divine, completely mesmerizing, like alien bagpipe music, a keening high end drone that twists and changes shape, various notes peeling off in little curlicues of feedback, or flurries of jagged scrape, but always being reabsorbed into this surprisingly lush organic rumbling buzzing divine drone. Absolutely amazing of course.� Packaged in a cool hand printed cardstock sleeve, with a mini printed insert.

MPEG stream: Daniel Higgs

Contour Editions is a new label curated by New York based sound artist Richard Garet, whose tense grey drones had marked his very impressive Four Malleable 2cd set on And/OAR as well as an exceptional collaboration with Brendan Murray released back in 2009. The same technical rigor that Garet employs in his own compositions extends to this compilation of various artists working around the globe, including i8u (Canada), Christopher DeLaurenti (Seattle), Gil Sanson (Venezuela), and Brian Mackern & Gabriel Galli (Uruguay). Aside from DeLaurenti, whose phonography collection of orchestral intermissions has long been a favorite of ours, this compilation is an introduction to all of the artists present. Not a bad thing at all, considering how strong each contribution is. Garet had charged these sound artists to consider the "evocation of the in-between immaterial spaces" - not quite the existential pursuit into nothingness, silence, or the void; but rather, the faintest of sounds brought close to the event horizon, the ghosts that tickle at the edge of perception, etc. Fortunately, none of the artists employ the clicks and cuts techniques which emerged from the Max/MSP crowd from the nascent days of the millennium. Sure, things are quiet and undoubtedly processed and/or produced by digital means. i8u is the work of Canadian composer France Jobim, who's actually been around quite a while, producing all sorts of electronica-laced computer-driven compositions. Her track eschews all of the mid-range frequencies, instead splitting her attention between a deep rumbling low-end of a slightest pierced tones at the high-end. Despite the extremes of tonality, there's something rather lulling and enveloping about this piece almost achieving the same generative stasis that Thomas Koner produces. Christopher DeLaurenti presents two tracks of stone-faced slabs of grey noises looped and snapped into a darkened ambience. Gil Sanson's eight vignettes are open ended by design, with the composer encouraging the listener to hit shuffle on the cd player. These buzzes, drones, and smeared field recordings connect through a muted aesthetic of dreamy discomfort. The Mackern & Galli piece bristles with electrical static cracked upon a shortwave radio with Morse code blips streaming into the foreground and peculiar gestures of feedback sneaking throughout. Bits of radio transmission break through these disembodied elements, giving the piece the detached aesthetic which was endemic to The Conet Project and The Ghost Orchid, despite the very-hands on approach to this piece. All together, the album seamlessly flows from one track to the other, almost making it difficult to discern where one composition begins and another ends. Hopefully, one of many good things to come from Mr. Garet's label. Oh yes, it's limited to 150 copies, too!

MPEG stream: Rarefaction
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MPEG stream: La Montana Se Ha Ido 4
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YEEEEAAY. What a wonderful service Load provides, bringing awesome musicians/artists from the dregs of Providence (and elsewhere) to all of us. Those guys live there so we don't have to. Well, Load's Pick A Winner compilation cd features some of our favorite artynoisebands from Prov: La Machine (ex-Six Finger Satellite and Landed), Lightning Bolt, Forcefield, Pixeltan, Pleasurehorse and even a tiny little glistening nugget of a song from (sadly, now defunct) Thee Hydrogen Terrors. The Load artists are not your typical noise bands, mind you. They are 100 percent a pertinent cataclysm of talent and ideas. And then there's the dvd. Holy shit! It's so great to see these videos. Most of the featured artists typically use whatever they have or can use around to make totally genuine two-dimensional magic with, and to see their work transcend into pure video conjury is truly inspiring. The package even comes with a deck of cards, each specially designed by Load artists, just to show they care about you, the consumer. So buy this cd/dvd now! In fact, buy three!! (Not advised for people with heart problems.) Oh, but unfortunately Load doesn't care as much about their artists, as there is no tracklisting to tell you who is what, etc. So our mp3 samples are listed as track numbers only.

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A super awesome compendium of the bountiful music released by Cherry Red Records circa 1981 through 1984. 'Twas such a crazy flurry of wonderful UK music in such a short period of time. The box set brings back such warm fuzzy memories of the distinct slightly eccentric and brainy sounds of those years! It comes with the 2cd compilation Pillows & Prayers, a rarities disc and a dvd of music videos! Artists include many longtime aQ faves: Marine Girls and Everything But The Girl as well as Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn individually, The Monochrome Set, Eyeless In Gaza, The Misunderstood, Robert Wyatt, Kevin Coyne, Felt, and many many more!

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

SORRY. Celebrating five years of battery powered radio waves and uncensored low-wattage, "Pirate Fucking Radio 100" is a scratchtastic collection of mostly Bay Area turntablists from the same label that released the Shiggar Fraggar pirate radio sessions with tracks from Invisibl Skratch Piklz, Eddie Def, Peanut Butter Wolf, Kool Keith & Kut Masta Kurt, Chuck D (well just seven seconds of Chuck D), The Space Travellers, and more!

Eeurgh! This compilation's subject matter might fill you with terror, but the music is mighty easy on the ears. You get ten songs from the 4AD label's odd bedfellows Stephin Merritt, Laurie Anderson, Rufus Wainwright, Brian Eno with Robert Wyatt, Imogen Heap, The Tiger Lilies, King Creosote, Cody Chesnutt, Klashnekoff, and Scott Walker, all addressing plague-related unpleasantries such as boils, lice, locusts, flies, frogs, blood, death of livestock, hail, death of firstborn and darkness. Thematically perhaps not for those with delicate constitutions, but musically there's a little (predominantly adult contemporary leaning) something for almost everyone.

MPEG stream: The Meaning Of Lice
MPEG stream: The Fifth Plague
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On first look, and even first listen, Plantation Gold will probably seem quite familiar to a lot of folks, the faded cover image, the list of performers beneath the album title in big gold letters, inside, lots of twanging guitars, foot stompin' rhythms, slippery lap steel, booming stentorian male crooners, rich dulcet female vocalists, tales of love and loss, heartbreak and tragedy, all the sort of stuff you would expect from country music in the sixties and seventies. But look, or listen, even a tiny bit closer, and Plantation Gold reveals itself as just about the furthest thing from traditional country you can imagine. The Plantation label (later SSS) was the brainchild of a man named Shelby Singleton, who over close to a decade, gathered up some of the most idiosyncratic, unique, and plain crazy country music artists EVER. The closest to gold that Shelby and Plantation got, and probably the only name / song here that will be truly familiar, is the country classic "Harper Valley P.T.A." written by Tom T. Hall and performed by Ms. Jeannie C. Riley, which was in fact a bona fide hit record, the single went on to sell hundreds of thousands, the album millions, and even convinced Singleton to put together a singing group actually called the Harper Valley P.T.A. to cash in on the hype, as well as inspiring a handful of homages, the weirdest one included here, more on that shortly. The rest of the tracks on these two discs range from full on over the top whatthefuck, to slightly skewed, sometimes incorporating strange sound effects, bizarre instrumentation, but sometimes playing it straight, letting the song subject and the lyrics take what on the surface sounds like regular old country music, turning it into something way more freaked out and gleefully goofy (and on occasion borderline offensive to today's more PC sensiblities). Dee Mullins' "I Am The Grass" seems pretty straight ahead, minus the lyrics about Bigfoot and the freaky metallic effects laden hissy psychedelic refrain in the chorus. Neil Ray's "Big Fanny" is one of those Johnny Cash style talking country songs, the subject of the song a metaphorical 300 pound ugly woman in Vietnam. Weird. "Sold To The Highest Bidder" by Johnny Moore And Col. Tex Herring, is the story of all the happy memories and the family home being sold at auction, featuring an actual auctioneer reeling off the list of everything that must go. Becki Bluefield offers up the surprisingly saucy "Somebody's Gonna Plow Your Field". And then there's "Happy Valley C.I.A.", the aforementioned problematic version of Plantation's big hit, here laced with groovy sixties sitar, the vocals delivered in a very politically incorrect faux Chinese accent. Johnny Credit offers up his theme song, featuring the clever refrain "I ain't never had no cash", and sounding, as you might guess, just like the Man In Black himself. Best country song title award would have to go to "I'm The Mail She's Waiting For" a innuendo laced love song by Chuck Wood. Then there's The Harper Valley P.T.A.'s "I Dig Dangling Participles", a clever bit of country wordplay. The other star attraction here is Tokyo Matsu, who sounds like an Asian Patsy Cline, all woozy reverb soaked twang, barrelhouse piano, slippery slide guitar, and Matsu's thickly accented croon. And that's barely getting into the FIRST disc. There's LOTS more on disc one, and 30 MORE weird and wonderful twangy jams on disc two. Every song is a gem, whether it's laugh out loud funny, clever or subtly racy, or heartfelt and dramatic. We could pretty much go track by track, "Four On The Floor (And A Fifth Under The Seat)" is a dark brooding morality play sung by an actual police trooper, "Groovy Grubworm" is a countrified funky hoedown by Harlow Wilcox & The Oakies, and then there's Rod Hart's "C.B. Savage", the tale of a gay trucker, and his suggestive transmissions, another politically incorrect gem, the kind of song that makes you laugh, but also makes you a bit uncomfortable, and is most definitely the sort of song no one could get away with anymore. Every time we play this in the store, people stop what they're doing to listen, to laugh, most of the time they come up to see what the heck it is we're listening to, and more often than not, leave with their own copy. The booklet is massive, with a history of Singleton, Plantation and SSS, and a fairly in depth description of each artist and all the songs, as well as tons of photos and reproductions of some of the jackets and record labels. Some seriously twisted outsider country genius, WAY recommended, even if you're not necessarily that into country music, and all you folks into 'incredibly strange music' kind of stuff and those song-poem compilations we love so much, should definitely check this out!

MPEG stream: I Am The Grass
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MPEG stream: Four On The Floor (And A Fifth Under The Seat)
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LIMITED EDITION (2000 copies) vinyl-only box set containing ten 7" singles. Each side of each 7" features a Thrill Jockey recording artist covering a song by another Thrill Jockey recording artist, to celebrate the Chicago indie rock/electronica label's 15th anniversary. Thus: Califone cover Freakwater. Freakwater cover The Zincs. The Zincs cover Howe Gelb. Howe Gelb covers John Parish. John Parish covers Califone. Etc. 20 songs by 20 artists by 20 artists, all facets of the Thrill Jockey catalog old and new. Others appearing: Tortoise, Adult., Bobby Conn, Archer Prewitt, Mouse On Mars, The Sea And Cake, Directions In Music, David Byrne, Sue Garner & Rick Brown, Pit Er Pat, Thalia Zedek, Eleventh Dream Day, Pullman, Arbouretum, Angela Desveaux... hey what happened to A Minor Forest II (a la Amon Duul II)? Oh well...

Deluxe gatefold and 180 gram clear vinyl reissue of the definitive collection of sound poetry. Originally released back in 1975 by CBS Italy, features Henri Chopin, Brion Gysin, Paul de Vree, Ernst Jandl, Maurizio Nannucci, Franz Mon, Sten Hanson, Bob Cobbing and more.

Grind from the land of Poles, featuring Decapitated, Yattering, Lost Soul, and Dwole.

Wow, things were awesome in the seventies. Sure, there was Watergate and an oil crisis and Vietnam...but there were also high school bands rocking out versions of Hendrix and Led Zeppelin! You loved the Langley Schools Music Project, right? Maybe you also dug the (now out of print) "Schoolhouse Funk" disc of high school marching bands doing funk covers. Here's the next must-have in this burgeoning 'genre', a collection of recordings of high school bands circa 1970-1976 doing their favorite rock hits of the day. From Foghat's "Free Ride" to Santana's "Soul Sacrifice" to B.O.C.'s "Godzilla" this is pretty darn killer, a way to enjoy these 'oldies' without turning on classic rock radio -- the originals can't compare anyway. Check out the drum solo in "Moby Dick", or the way the kid's voice changes during "Purple Haze" (heck, he's probably 13 years old!). You'll hear from the Santa Monica Unified School District Music Dept., the Anaheim High School Original Rock and Popsannay, the Fairview High School "Excalibur" and Jazz Ensemble, the Baldwin Harbor Junior High Jazz/Rock Ensemble, among others. Was it square to be in band back then? 'Cause these kids sound pretty hip to us today. From crazy fuzz psych guitar leads that seem way beyond their years to sunny, Fifth Dimension style vocal choruses, these tracks are full of extra-curricular excellence. We were especially surprised and impressed by the Roswell New Mexico Goddard High School Stage Band's version of "Evil Woman" -- no, not the E.L.O. song, or even the one by Spooky Tooth, but the much more obscure composition by '60s garage band Crow that Black Sabbath covered on the UK version of their debut album! Cool, and weird.

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Those folks at Finders Keepers / B-Music never stop wowing us with the killer stuff they dig up. This list, we've made their reissue of the Aussie psychedelic biker flick soundtrack Stone one of our Records Of The Week, and we're constantly having to order more copies of recent discs like The BYG Deal (documenting rarities released by the radical French underground label BYG) and The Sound Of Wonder (an indeed wondrous collection of music from Pakistan's "Lollywood" cinema). Now, here's Pomegranates, an amazing compilation of "Persian pop, funk, and psych of the 60s and 70s" compiled by a pair of Iranian-American music lovers delving into the pop culture past of their parents' generation, prior to the fall of the Shah, an era of rapid Westernization, economic stratification, and eventual sociopolitical upheaval. Looking back with bittersweet nostalgia, enthusiasm, and curiosity, they've put together a dazzling array of music that's usually quite groovy, also often melancholic, and sometimes subversive. Several tracks are considered classics, some are total obscurities (same to us!), all are irresistible. It's a colorful hybrid of East and West, of Persian musical traditions (already a melting pot of international influences) and electric youth energy. You'll hear strains of Western psych-pop, James Brown funk, Indian raga, Gypsy flamenco, Turkish folk, another other 'exotic' Middle Eastern motifs... So many great tracks on here, the compilers almost making it impossible to select faves 'cause it's all so good, but if we had to pick just one highlight maybe it would be popular singer Googoosh's "Talagh", which sets her sweet voice soaring over one of the most insidiously slinky grooves EVER, pulsating with sinister fuzz-funk energy under flourishes of cinematic strings. She's got a couple more tracks on here, as befits her status as one of Iran's top pop stars of the day, a true sensation. If you like Turkey's Selda, you'll like what you'll hear here from Googoosh and this disc's other female vocalists. We also should note the zinging sitar funk of Abbass Mehrpouya's "Soul Raga", definitely another standout (it also appears on the full-length Mehrpouya reissue we raved about recently). But we haven't scratched the surface, the tracks by the other artists here, including Parva, Zia, Soli, Sima Bina, Ramesh, Noosh Afarin, Kourosh Yaghmaie, and others, are all awesome too, varying from groovy dancefloor workouts to aching love songs, sometimes both in one. Lots to enjoy, dive in!! Oh, and of course like all Finders Keepers releases, this is nicely appointed, in a slipcover, with a thick, illustrated cd booklet featuring extensive, informative liner notes from co-compiler Mahssa Taghinia. FYI we'll be getting a few copies of the import vinyl edition soon, they're not here yet though...

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Tribute to The Knitters, the country offshoot of L.A. punk greats X. Featuring tracks by: Whiskeytown, Robbie Fulks, The Old 97's (with John Doe), Handsome Family, The Rock*A*Teens, and even an unreleased track by The Knitters themselves. Me thinks it funny (much as I like the Knitters) that this could be considered to be a tribute to The Knitters when over half the songs on the album were not even written by The Knitters. Oh well, what'r ya gonna do?

Ohh La La! This is pretty undeniably AMAZING! A snapshot of 60's French-pop perfection. We dare you to put this on and not start feeling a little more stylish, a little more classy, a little more sassy, and a whole lot more happy! This is hands down one of the best collections of dance-party inducing French pop to grace our ears in ages. While we loved the Swinging Mademoiselles comp covering the same era, this collection almost makes that record pale in comparison. Pop A Paris is pretty much a who's who of French pop during this golden-era. Serge Gainsbourg, France Gall, Brigitte Bardot, Michel Polnareff, Delphine, Marie Laforet, etc etc! But what makes this comp so incredible are the songs! Not one snoozer in the bunch, every single one bursting with color, spunk and f-u-n-! Cover versions of "These Boots Are Made For Walking", "My Generation", "Paint it Black", and "Happy Together" all somehow manage to make us only want to hear these versions from now on and NEVER the originals. And the non-covers are just as spot-on-perfect. This has been out for a few years now and had been a kind of secret weapon in DJ sets by Irwin. Can't count the times that putting one of these songs on during a show has resulted in a dancefloor packed with wide smiles and shaking booties. So totally recommended!

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A fine introduction to the Kompakt family of artists and the signature Kompakt label sound typified by floaty, crystalline washes of spacious electronic beauty anchored by muted but insistent experimental techno rhythms (fans of Chain Reaction take note,

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Volume two in Kompakt's definitive guide to the tranquil aural haze of Köln. Like its predecessor, Pop Ambient 2002 covers the classic, very distinct Kompakt sound -- dense, gritty and repetitive, always simple and extremely melodic and beautiful. Featuring

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I was kind of surprised by the lukewarm reception this received from some of the AQ staffers, 'cause as far as I'm concerned this collection is as good if not better than the Gas titles we raved about in past lists as well as the last two Pop Ambient compilations. From gorgeous, shimmery, slowly shifting dreamscapes of heavily reverbed guitars and processed electronics, to warm fuzzy drones with skittery hiccupping beats to chiming ethereal washes of hummmmm and whhiiiiiiiirrrrr. So gorgeous. This has been my late night listening for the last week. Fans of Boards Of Canada, Gas, Troum, and the like will be in heaven.

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We were never all that into techno. Especially house music. But then along came the Chain Reaction label, and removed everything from the house music equation -except- for the beat and some leftover sonic detritus. And suddenly we found ourselves digging this new sort-of-house music. So now along comes Kompakt, and this time, they strip away all the -beats-, leaving just dreamy soundscapes, swirling eddies of sound, lonely chords, melodies drifitng lazily into space with no beats left to keep them earthbound. The result is a gorgeous, shimmery ambient music, angelic and ethereal, eschewing all of its techno roots, instead positioning itself somewhere between the late night chill out of the Orb, and that sort of barely-there music for meditation. New Age? As much as classic Tangerine Dream was new age, which is to say, a little certainly. But these Pop Ambient compilations manage to be soothing and shimmery without crossing the line into Windham Hill / Yoga tape schmaltz. Think AQ faves Gas with the beats stripped away completely. Or think an even more blissed out, less glitchy Oval. Gently strummed guitar chords, spaced far enough apart that you can almost hear the notes dissipate into the ether, gradually mutating melodies are stretched over a vast expanse of pastoral hum, shrouded in clouds of whir, subtle sonic swells create 10 bpm rhythms that don't sound like rhythms at all, tinlking chimes create shimmery waves that move slowly outward forever like ripples in a pond. So good. Perfectly dreamy and relaxing. Impossible not to love, this is volume four in Kompakt's Pop Ambient series and they just keep getting better. And more ambient. At this rate by volume 6 or 7 there may not be any sound left at all, just gentle whispers and inaudible drones. Can't wait. (fyi, the cd has one more track than the vinyl.)

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Another installment in the absolutely flawless Pop Ambient series. We casually mentioned in our review of the 2004 Pop Ambient comp that we weren't all that keen on techno. A few folks took it a bit too personally so this here review should hopefully smooth some ruffled feathers. It's true, we never liked the mainstream techno that much. It was the mutant strains that really hit the spot for us. But that's the case with pop music as well. And metal. And indie rock. And hell, music in general. That's sort of the point of this list and this store. It's the ferreting out of weird and wonderful subsets of genres that may not initially appeal to us. Finding that one techno record that the black metal folks might dig, or finding that one grindcore records that even indie rockers can't resist. So it is with the Pop Ambient. Gone are most of the beats, and ALL of the four on the floor throb, and most of the techno trappings, and left in their place are a ghostly glimmers, a shimmering trace of a pop song, the musical equivalent of catching something in the corner of your eye. Like condensation, little beads of melody slowly slip earthward, while indistinct melodies drift past like the last vestiges of early morning fog. Subtle and sleepy, dreamy and drowsy, gleaming and glistening, completely mesmerizingly hypnotic. The perfect sounds for warm fires, rainy days, late nights, full moons, thick fogs, lonely evenings, not so lonely evenings, good books, deep sleeps, a lazy afternoons and for drifting into nothingness. Tracks from the Orb, Gas, Ulf Lohmann, Thomas Fehlmann, Klimek, Andrew Thomas, Pass Into Silence, Triola, Popnoname, DJ Koze, and Peter Grummich. The LP is a few tracks shorter than the cd.

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There has yet to be a Pop Ambient compilation (we're up to number 6 now) that hasn't gone straight to our "most listened to" pile, and more often than not, that pile of special sleep cds we all keep by our bed. Makes perfect sense as there are very few records we get that are as deliriously dreamy and sweetly sleepy and gorgeously gossamer and late night langorous as these Pop Ambients. For those of you who don't know what the heck we're talking about, Pop Ambient is a mutant strain of techno that does away completely with all the beats, and almost all vestiges of the techno framework, leaving nothing but the ghostly remnants, drifting otherworldly melodies and shimmering shuffling ambience, a gorgeous abstract swirl of smeared melody and warm layered whirls of sound. The key to Pop Ambient is that while it is indeed ambient, and instrumental, and soothingly serene, it somehow manages to never slip into New Age pap. It remains vital and dense and interesting to listen to, as much as it lets us drift away in a gauzy cloud of sparkle and shimmer. Pop Ambient 2006 is perhaps the most soft focus outing yet, every note and chord and cluster of sound rendered fuzzy and indistinct, as if viewed through a fogged up window, the whole sonic world a blurred glimpse of some other world, a vision of the past, frozen in time and drifting by us frame by frame. Pop Ambient 2006 is the musical version of laying in the grass and watching clouds drift lazily by, or floating in the sea, eyes closed, feeling the gentle swells undulate gently beneath you, a sweet, rich, warm, pure sound that envelops you in its soft embrace, like having your head wrapped in cotton, your ears filled with honey, and your body made weightless. So absolutely lovely.

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What more can we say about this Pop Ambient series. Or the 'genre' in general. Its quickly become one of our favorite sounds, a blissy fuzzy ambience that is soothing and serene. Droney and drifty and dreamy and otherworldly. For those of you who have never heard of Pop Ambient, it's a term coined for a specific strain of techno, where most of the beats are removed, leaving just sjimmer and swirl of the music behind the beats. Lush looped soundscapes of warm synthesizer swells, deep drifts of slow moving sound, all washed out and blurry, the 'dance music' version of all that drone music we love, Basinski, Tim Hecker, Fennesz, Aidan Baker and the like. In fact none of them would seem at all out of place on a Pop Ambient compilation. Think Brian Eno, Tangerine Dream, but updated for the 21st century, chill out music that is not vapid or light, but is dense and deep and lush. 2007's volume is just as good or maybe even better than the preceding six volumes. Some familiar names, Markus Guentner, Thomas Felmann (of the Orb), Klimek, Andrew Thomas, most who we have raved about in the past. But some new names as well. Probably the most exciting track is a seldom heard rarity from Wolfgang Voigt's Gas! Gas is most definitely one of out favorite practitioners of the pulsing blissy pop ambient, and it's been years! We've been dying for some new music from Gas, so while this is technically not new, it sure does hit the spot. A relentless pulse beneath thick swirls of minor key sound, house music buried beneath layer after layer of glistening shimmering sound. The rest of this disc is just as good. Numerous variations on the Pop Ambience, looped vocals stretched into stuttering M83 style fuzz drone soundscapes, acoustic guitar loops arranged into stuttering rhythms, skipping cds smeared Oval style into lush orchestration, all of it so devastatingly dreamy. Every time a new Pop Ambient record comes out, it just replaces the one before it as the perfect late night dream drift record... Until next year!

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It's that time again. As inevitable and as the first snowfall, the first day of spring, the end of summer, comes a brand new installment of blissy beatless electronica from Kompakt. Since 2000, Kompakt has been releasing collections of what they call Pop Ambient. Techno with the beats removed, leaving just billowy clouds of shimmery sound, the vestiges of beats that once were now only ghostly pulses, or distant soft swells. Dreamlike melodies, washed out loops, whirring electronic shuffles, bits of glitch smoothed into soft rounded textures, bits of guitar strum pulled apart, the notes drifting weightless amidst bleary eyed ambience. Not sure what else to say at this point. By now, almost everyone we know anxiously awaits the arrival of a new Pop Ambient comp. Immediately, a whole new world of late night drift, a dark swirling ocean of sound that is at once soothing and mysterious, glimmering and haunting. This collection is no different. Most of the names are familiar by now: The Field, Markus Guentner, Andrew Thomas, Ulf Lohmann, DJ Koze, Klimek. The sounds are quite familiar as well. Gauzy, sun dappled, breathless and whispery, a sort of streamlined new age, meditative and mesmerizing, hypnotic and completely tranquil. Many techno tropes are still present, but here they are transformed into distinctly non techno shapes and arrangements. Most of the songs, are simple with only a single part. Slowly shifting and drifting and transforming. It's like Steve Reich or Terry Riley or Phillip Glass composing late night chill out techno. Long stretches of blurred fragmented melodies. Synths and strings wheeze and warble, the beats that remain are nothing more than metronomic bits of hiss, heartbeat like pulses, wreathed in prismatic sparkles, clouds of record crackle, hazy streaks of smoothed out shimmer. It's like a whole sound based on that one part of 10CC's "I'm Not In Love", a washed out sprawl of droning chordal buzz, but stretched out into billowing transparent sonic sheets, laced with subtly soaring strings, tiny bits of glitch and fuzz, dramatic, dreamy, soporific and sweetly serene. But not without just a hint of melancholy. All the tracks are amazing, but a few stand out, Klimek's "The Ice Storm" a slab of seriously cinematic soundscaping, replete with warm washes of synths, and super dramatic Bernard Hermann strings, an occasionally surfacing bit of percussive skitter, all woven into a darkly personal mysterious drift. And of course The Field, who we love, offers up one of his best tracks ever, "Kappsta 2", with an immediately recognizable skipping hiccupping looped cd landscape, like a much more dramatic Oval, with synths and vocals and strings and fuzzy bass all chopped and blurred into a kaleidoscopic, and strangely rhythmic expanse of dizzying and diffused dreamdrone. As always absolutely breathtaking. And oh so highly recommended.

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Another year, another collection of gauzy, washed out atmospheric shimmer from Kompakt. The latest in their ongoing series chronicling the more ambient (and poppy?) side of techno, but unlike past installments, there has been a serious shift this time around. Not only are there a bunch of new artists, but the sound itself has definitely been transformed. Before, Pop Ambient seemed to be more about processed electronics and bleary eared synthscapes, like techno with the beats stripped away, but this time around, while those electronic and synth elements haven't been abandoned completely, the sound seems much more organic, more Kranky than Kompakt, more like a sound unto itself. We use Pop Ambient to describe much of our favorite drone music, hazy, shimmery, gauzy, dreamy, be it Tim Hecker, Aidan Baker, Jesu and the like, Pop Ambient, for us at least, has become a sort of analog to shoegaze, a drifting sound blurred and smeared and indistinct, while somehow remaining melodic and mesmerizing. Its relation to techno tenuous, if entirely nonexistent at this point, having taken off a life, and a sound of its very own. Every Pop Ambient comp has been a huge hit around here, so much so that we just naturally assumed that we had probably made all of them Records Of The Week in the past, but upon checking, we realized only one had made ROTW. Well, now TWO. 2009's Pop Ambient focuses much more on real instruments, horns, guitars, pianos, all woven into the already familiar landscape of soft synths and barely there rhythmic pulses, a swirling slow moving ambience, that flits from haunting chamber music, to looped post rock, to deep drone. The first thing you might notice, is some very aQ artists amidst the usual suspects, sure there's Klimek, Andrew Thomas, Burger / Voigt, but then also Tim Hecker and The Fun Years, as if they had asked for our 2 cents in putting together this year's comp. And sonically, we couldn't have done better ourselves. Much darker, and more mysterious than past installments, surprisingly varied, but it works beautifully as an album, not just a collection. Warped orchestral fanfares are slowed down and blurred beautifully, with a subtle rhythmic undercurrent, warm woozy horns blurred into sun dappled streaks, shimmery dramatic strings wind around plaintive piano, gorgeous and soundtracky, moody free jazz records get spun at 16 rpm, the piano plucking out a funereal dirge, flutes woven into wavering sheets of sound, record crackle everywhere, bits of electronic shimmer get stretched out into gauzy looped soundscapes, simple repetitive guitar figures lope dreamily over long stretches of harmonized horns, epic sweeping swells of dramatic buzz ebb and flow over buried melodies, distorted guitars unwind amidst swirling clouds of gritty textured ambience, skittering Oval-like loopscapes stutter and glitch soft focus tendrils of electronic whir, spidery guitars tangle with looped samples, locking into impossibly dreamy drifts of hypnotic repetition. It's a breathtaking collection of sonic wonder, of sounds we truly consider to be Pop Ambience, haunting and otherworldly, subtly dark, sometimes ominous, always gorgeous, and of course totally recommended. And while this is a no brainer for the Pop Ambient obsessed, the minimal techno folks, and the Kompakt fanatics, this record might prove to be a new favorite for anyone into Stars Of The Lid, Pan American, Labradford, Eluvium, Windy And Carl and other purveyors of deep drone and nocturnal drift.

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Finally, the latest installment of pop ambience is here, a record we look forward to all year. Very few series, whether they be compilations, TV shows, movies, whatever, can make it to 10 installments, at least not without the quality suffering big time, but the Pop Ambient series continues to be amazing. And untouchable. We'd say that every one is better than the last, but that wouldn't be entirely true, since every single one has been equally fantastic. The 2009 installment introduced some new blood, some non Kompakt folks dabbling in their own ambient pop, like Tim Hecker and The Fun Years, along with the usual suspects. But for 2010, Kompakt decided to keep it in the family, lots of familiar names: The Orb, Mikkel Metal, Thomas Fehlmann, Dettinger, Andrew Thomas, Wolfgang Voigt, DJ Koze, but with a couple tracks from Brock Van Wey, whose Echospace imprint owes no small debt to Kompakt, and one from new to us Marsen Jules, with maybe the best song on the disc. Jules' "The Sound Of One Lip Kissing" starts things off with surprisingly dark and ominous take on the Pop Ambient sound, a gorgeously grim, lopped slow motion creep, all deep tones, lots of space, and a spare skeletal rhythm, all murky and warm and washed out, the various tones looped and stuttered into blurred sonic ripples, cinematic and darkly epic, we find ourselves playing that one track over and over and over. The two Brock Van Wey tracks take the post Chain Reaction minimal space dub sound of Echospace, and gives it a shimmery, sun dappled pop ambient overhaul, bits of guitar, and fragmented voices, wreathed in delay, and looped into ethereal dreamscapes, Van Wey's 17 minute closer "Will you Know Where to Find Me" begins as a muted blurry low end drift, but soon explodes into a glorious prismatic shoegaze blowout, that sounds a bit like a drumless M83, nearly static, a pulsing cloud of bleary eyed female vox and processed buzz, so epic and gorgeous. In between lurks plenty of soft focus beauty, from glistening, echo drenched slowcore dream pop, to swirling seas of hiss and crackle and submerged melody, to stuttery high end drones, to blurred gauzy piano driven abstract ambient ballads, to cinematic sting laden drifts, to super intense and emotional looped dronescapes, to hushed outer space minimal psychedelia, to blissed out slow motion mesmer. Another utterly gorgeous and transcendently divine ambient pop music, which will just have to hold us over until 2011... For vinyl folks, fear not, the lp version includes the cd as well...

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A new Pop Ambient collection is always exciting news around here, perhaps our favorite single ongoing series of electronic music compilations EVER. And goddamn if we don't reference the Pop Ambient sound in about half our reviews. But it's inevitable really, after all the sound we've come to know as Pop Ambient is just so gorgeous and glorious, washed out and hazy and gauzey and dreamlike. It's techno without the beats, it's new age without the schmaltz, it's dark deep listening, but it's also ethereal and ephemeral and the sort of sound that ends up being the soundtrack to so much of our lives, so soothing and mesmerizing and hypnotic, dreamlike sounds that entrance, and lull and transport us to some other place, thus, a new batch of Pop Ambient jams is some soothing sonic balm for our weary musical souls... The biggest surprise this time around might be opening with a track by ANBB, the collaborative duo of Alva Noto and Blixa Bargeld of Einsturzende Neubaten, whose music, even here, is barely Pop Ambient, the sound is muted and buzzy, electronic and abstract, a slow building drone, that's more ominous than dreamy, very soundtracky and dramatic, with deep electronic pulses, and then right near the end, vocals come in, and the song is transformed into some strange bit of haunting electro cabaret. But that's about as weird as it gets, the rest of the record slips back into the swirling shimmering electronic dreamscapes we've come to love, pianos unleash flurries of notes that drift beneath soft swells of muted buzz and skittery barely there rhythms, warm whirring chordal streaks are layered and stretched out into beautiful sun dappled blurscapes, full on daydreamy fuzz pop like a druggier driftier M83 meanders and drifts like some after school special playing in slow motion, the standout track might be "30.6.1881", by Crato, who we'd never heard before, whose take on Pop Ambience is on the dark side, mixing a little heroin house underwater pulse to the otherwise whirring ethereal blur, fantastically warped and blurred and in places surprisingly noisy. But other than that and the opener, the rest of the record finds the Pop Ambient stable at their most blissed out, their most woozy and soft focus, featuring some of the usual culprits: Thomas Fehlmann, Jurgen Paape, Mikkel Metal, Wolfgang Voigt, Triola, as well as some fresh faces: Bhutan Tiger Rescue, Crato, Bvdub, Barnt and more. As always, absolutely, utterly and wholeheartedly recommended, total bliss out dreaminess for sure, and if you're just discovering the world of Pop Ambience, prepare to become totally obsessed, and with a desire to track down the first TEN volumes as well...

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It's that time again, Kompakt's yearly installment in their Pop Ambient series, a release we ALWAYS look forward to and one that typically immediately becomes out new favorite sleeping / chillout / late night listen, and this one looks to be no different. In that respect at least. One way it IS different this time around is the opening track. More on that in a second. For folks new to Pop Ambience, it's basically like minimal electronica with the beats stripped way, leaving just lush expanses of whoosh and shimmer, blurred melodies and abstract ambience. It's also become a sort of go to descriptor for that sound we love so much, the sort of hazy, gauzy, washed out soundscaping of folks like Tim Hecker and the Caretaker and the like, with these comps offering up new tracks by old faves, and every time at least one or two new discoveries. The big discovery this time around for us, and the one responsible for the above mentioned opening track, goes by the name of Mohn, and delivers what might be the darkest, heaviest Pop Ambient track yet, a thick hazy landscape of blurred, crumbling greys and blacks, lots of space, abstractly rhythmic, almost doomy, dense gristly swells, that remain warmly melodic, but still hauntingly ominous. It's a gorgeous cinematic creep, super dynamic, and darkly moody, growing more spare and skeletal near the end, we've been listening to just this track over and over, and while it's the first we've really heard from Mohn, we're definitely dying to hear more. The comp returns to more familiar ground with some more familiar names after that, Superpitcher, Wolfgang Voigt, Triola, Marsen Jules, Simon Scott, and while the rest of the tracks here are much prettier, and way less dark, and more traditionally pop ambient, they still retain a bit of that ominous undercurrent, usually in the form of more melancholic melodies, with lush shimmers drifting amidst sonic shadows, repeated motifs adding just a teeny bit of cinematic tension. Superpitcher's lush and lovely "Jackson" might be one of the most gorgeous things we've heard from him, all processed voices and looped pianos, repetitive and cyclical and totally mesmerizing. Another new name Morek offers up a bit of dark and gristly buzz, wreathed of course in lustrous swirls of haze and shimmer, while Triola weaves a dreamlike expanse of swoonsome drift, and almost post rock sounding brood. Voigt's track here sounds like a lost soundtrack for some acid drenched Tim Burton film, like the tape is warping and undulating before your very ears, transforming beauty into something a bit darker and shadowy, while Jules adds what might be the only actual beats here, but in the form of reverbed and blurred skitters, the whole thing super dense, dubbed out and dreamy. Simon Scott weaves a sprawling bit of string laden soundtracky drift, evoking images of rainswept streets and dark mysterious cities, until the new-to-us Loops Of Your Heart finishes things off with a wistful bit of gauzy guitarscaping, all sweetly tangled melodies, and subtly processed atmospheres, everything wreathed in a streaks of sonic gristle and some soft focus cosmic swirl. So lovely.

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[ aquarius records catalogue — V ]