[ aquarius records catalogue

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SORRY.

16 tracks from the soundtracks to the various Shaft movies, some material otherwise not easily available on cd. Isaac Hayes (with his classic theme of course), The Four Tops, Bernard Purdie & Johnny Pate all contribute.

Twist-A-Rama was a '60s teen talent show which broadcast in upstate New York. This compilation subtitled "Crude 1965 Garage Sounds From The Mohawk Valley: New York Garage Bands Vol. 1", is certainly packed full of the raw garage and surf sounds of the time, but is far from crude. Quite an impressive array of original songs from cleancut teen bands such as The Toffs, The Brix, and The Galaxies. Note: this cd was mastered from a mint copy of the LP which was released 35 years ago, and includes all the original liner notes... and surface noise. Yay!

A tribute to the Shaggs, what a weird idea. When I heard about this release I wondered if the bands on it were going to attempt to emulate the musical ineptness that was what made the Shaggs who they were, and if so, then why bother. Or would they turn the crazy songs by the Shaggs into their own style, which could be interesting. Thankfully it is the latter for the most part. Ida does a pretty, soft Ida-like version of "Philosophy Of The World". The Thinking Fellers do a great ethereal version of "Who Are Parents" and the best part is that they enunciate each word so the rad crazy lyrics are quite clear. I must admit there were some songs that bugged me like crazy, songs that were wacky and essentially just bad versions of bad songs, but without the demented innocence that made the Shaggs the Shaggs. But you know anything that reminds us how great and pure the Shaggs were is worthwhile in my book.

RealAudio clip: Philosophy of the World
RealAudio clip: Who Are Parents

Specially priced cd sampler of three different Balinese music genres - Gamelan Jegog, Gamelan Semar Pegulingan, and Gender Wayang. Jegog is the relatively recently developed bamboo gamelan found mostly in West Bali. Absolutely stunning and LOUD, the aesthetic of Jegog is an attempt to recreate the tone and volume of gongs and metallophones with bamboo. Semar Pegulingan (so named after Semar, the god of love) is the gamelan that traditionally played outside the king's chamber in the afternoons and evenings while the king slept with the queen (think of it as make out music) back before the Dutch got their dirty paws all over Bali. Gender Wayang is the music which accompanies Balinese shadow puppet plays (Wayang Kulit.) Consisting of four gender - metallophones, each with ten flat bronze keys suspended over bamboo resonators - Gender Wayang is considered the most complex and technically difficult music in Bali.

Sometimes you just have to know when to say "No Corky!" and lift the needle from the record or press 'eject'. This compilation is one of those times. Hate to say it, but it seems ol' Crippled Dick have let us down this time with Between Or Beyond The Northern Lights. A shame considering how we've applauded and eagerly anticipated their ecclectic array of artists and compilations (including the super groovy, kitschful Pop-Shopping and Shake Sauvage collections as well as releases from Oxbow and Peter Thomas). Subtitled "Rare Fusion From Scandinavia 1967 -1978, this sort of sounds like the bland jazz you'd hear seeping out of the cocktail lounge of a '70s hotel. A bevy of poodling saxophones and muted trumpets, an occasional burp of analog synth, omnipresent tik-teeek-tik hihats, and tootily flute... you get the idea! Eck.

RealAudio clip: Mr. Minor

From the masters of dredging up obscure euro-pop and jazz, Crippled Dick Hot Wax takes you on a time warp behind the iron curtain to listen to late 60's & mid 70's jazz grooves -- mostly tracks from Poland and Czechoslovakia are represented here, though there

RealAudio clip: A Dance
RealAudio clip: A Day In The City
RealAudio clip: Funky Dla Franki

"Between Two Points" is yet another compilation of electronic glitches and lowercase music. Disc one is more rhythmic in its nature with morse code bleeps and rhythmic sine wave modulations from Noto, Taylor Deupree, Sogar, Mikael Stavostrand, Komet, Dan Abrams, Kim Cascone, and Vend. Disc two is barely there with Bernhard Gunter providing the most activity of sound amongst the Please will somebody issue a moratorium on compilations as predictable as this one? I'll give you 20 bucks if you make it happen. Well, maybe just 10. But it's gotta happen.

MPEG stream: A Dream Of Distant Summer
MPEG stream: Wrapped In Water
MPEG stream: Studies Of The Oak As Pertaining To Druidic Rites Of Passage

While only one of us here has actually been to Turkey (that would be Allan, the lucky bastard), we'll all pretty obsessed with Turkish psych/prog/folk music for quite a while now, as is evidenced by the fact that we review pretty much everything we can get our hands on. Edip Akbayram, Erkin Koray, 3 Hur-El, Mogollar, Bulent, Selda as well as comps galore, Love Peace And Poetry, Turkish Delights, Hava Narghile, we just can't get enough. The one aspect of Turkish music we haven't really explored is 'club' music. Could be that we generally don't even like American club music, as none of us are or ever were really what you might consider clubkids. Or it could be that there was never any really comprehensive collection of Turkish club music. Probably a little of both. But leave it to Germany's mighty Trikont label to set us straight. With such a big Turkish population in Germany, the Istanbul music scene has a following there too, and Trikont asked popular DJ Ipek Ipekcioglu to put this collection together. Underground Grooves Of Turkey covers a wide expanse of Turkish sounds, from straight up dance floor pop, to weird guitar heavy grooves, to dub and hip hop, and pretty much every stop in between. While the sound veers dramatically all over the sonic map, there are definitely aspects that seem to be present in most, if not all of these tracks. We hear LOTS of Bollywood music stylings. The more playful upbeat tracks, the ones with big beats, wild rhythms and strings all over the place, it's hard not to imagine huge big budget dance scenes, dancers twirling, epic and massive and WILD. The more low key, laid back tracks alternately remind us of Muslimgauze, Dead Can Dance, and Jaz Coleman and Anne Dudley's Middle Eastern themed Songs From The Victorious City released several years back. As well as obviously all of the vintage Turkish music we have been digging. Every single one of these songs is totally unique in its own way, and distinctly Turkish, incorporating all manner of other sounds while managing to sound fresh and original. The first track on the comp, The Night Session's "La Mirage" had us at hello. Imagine 50 Cent's "In Da Club" with its loping laid back swagger, mashed up with haunting minor key, Eastern tinged strings, fluttering flutes and soaring Arabesque vocals. Pretty kick ass. Could definitely be a club hit here. Surprised this track hasn't already been snapped up by that whole Sounds Of The Asian underground scene. With a comp this varied, probably the best way to approach it is track by track. Worth it for the opening song alone, but the rest of the disc is dense and dizzyingly wonderful as well: -- A soundscape of dense swirls of playful, festive Bollywood exuberance, with amazing vocals from Sivan Perwer, one of the most famous Kurdish vocalists, now living in Germany. -- Cay Taylan from Vienna, doing a more modern take, a downtempo triphopped version of a traditional Turkish dance, with lots of strings, Eastern percussion, lots of spacey FX and some groovy dubbed out rhythms. -- A super pop gem from Nil Karaibrahimgil. A mix of drum and bass and hip hop, a childlike rhyme about the weaknesses of men, a sort of Eastern version of the Spice Girls or M.I.A., kind of sassy, and playful, fun, and funky, -- Baba Zula mixes traditional jazz with Eastern psychedelia, a heady swirl of dreamlike vocals, traditional percussion and melodies, and plenty of late night jazzy shuffle. Some of his past recordings were produced by Mad Professor! -- Orient Expressions are from Istanbul and carry on the musical tradition of Alevites, a religious minority of Turkish Islam, with a track based on a Kurdish folk song, taking traditional religious music and giving it a dubby electronic makeover, with washed out atmospheres, lilting vocals and super laid back beats, almost like a much more Eastern Enigma or Dead Can Dance -- Ayhan Sicimoglu is the first Latin musician in the Turkish music scene and offers up a bad ass dancehall jam, a stuttery funky beat over a buzzing kazoo-like melody played on a Zurna, a traditional Turkish folk instrument with just a hint of the dreaded Reggaeton sound (which sounds KILLER here)! -- dZihan & Kamien are a Swiss / Bosnian duo from Vienna, who craft epic trip hop dubscapes of shuffling slithering rhythms, minor key strings, strange vocal snippets, all wrapped into super catchy laid back grooves. -- Ceza is one of the biggest names in the still developing Turkish rap scene. He gets compared to Eminem all the time, cuz of his rapid fire flow and whiney voice, and that's not far off the mark. If you can imagine Eminem rapping IN TURKISH over a killer bed of swooping Bollywood strings, fuzzy bass, and skittery almost dancehall rhythms... Wow! -- The music of Burhan Ocal is really hard to describe, VERY Bollywood sounding, epic and dense, lots of funky rhythms, strings soaring and stirring, elements of Turkish traditional folk music, and some really strange female vocals from Emal Sayin, "the dame of Turkish art-music". She has a strangely strangled sounding mewl that goes from guttural growl to throaty croon, all over super dense and complex string parts and skittery electronic drums. Cool! -- Baba Cay unfurls a groovy laid back ambient chillout groove, a sort of blissed out R+B, a little hint of new age swoosh, and plenty of Turkish filigree BUT it's not sung in Turkish, instead he sings in a made up language a la Magma or the Ruins. -- The band with the very un-Turkish sounding name of Brooklyn Funk Essentials are all about super festive party music, equal parts USA and Turkey, with elements of Klezmer, ska, acid jazz, funk and hip hop, a wild block party groove, with loads of horns, that go from ska bounce to dizzying Klezmer swirl in the blink of an eye. Almost like a Turkish / Klezmer version of Jurassic 5! -- Burhan Ocal is a famous Turkish percussionist, who weaves an intricate percussive backdrop over which traditional instruments like saz and oud buzz and swirl, a droning gorgeous rhythmic ritual, simultaneously ancient and modern, near the end a drum kit kicks in and then it sounds like some modernized Zakir Hussein jam. So good. Very reminiscent of Muslimgauze. -- Goksel is a modern Turkish pop singer, with a breathy passionate voice, very melodramatic, performing here some sort of displaced modern American pop ballad, filtered through a distinctly Eastern vibe, reverbed guitars and traditional percussion mixed into soft focus Turkish moody pop, with a slight Western (as in country and western) twang. Her voice actually sounds remarkably like Nina Persson from the Cardigans! -- Replikas are a guitar heavy underground rock band, who have been written up in the Wire and have even worked with Sonic Youth (and downtown NY) producer Wharton Tiers. Big distorted guitars, pounding drums, driving rhythms, sprinkled with distinctly Turkish bits here and there, soaring vocal melodies, moody strings, all makes for a gorgeous and strangely affecting track... Not sure how this fits in with the rest of these "underground grooves" but pretty cool nonetheless. -- Finally, the last track comes from Taner Demiralp, a young conductor / composer who delivers an almost liturgical sounding piece based on a traditional poem, praising the sultans, composed in the style of court music from the Ottoman Empire, including the lyrics and vocals, which are sung and composed in a traditional style no longer in use. Gorgeous crooned melodies over mournful minor key strings, all over a shuffling stuttering electronic beat. creepy and quite beautiful. Absolutely essential for fans of Turkish music, and anyone who loved any of the Turkish psych compilations we've listed in the past. And all you folks who dig stuff like Kruder And Dorfmeister, Tosca, Peace Orchestra, Kid Loco and the like and just might be open to something a little more exotic, might really dig this stuff. Like all Trikont releases, Beyond Istanbul is packaged in a full color digipak, and includes a massive set of liner notes, with a history of modern Turkish music, notes on each song and artist, as well as lots of photos!

MPEG stream: La Mirage
MPEG stream: Butun Kizlar Toplandik
MPEG stream: Tekirdag Karsilasmasi
MPEG stream: Omur Sayaci

A breast cancer research benefit compilation of experimental music ranging from beautiful droning ambience to all out noise. featuring Bran, John Wiese, Skin Crime, Negative Entropy, Josh Norton Cabal, and more. Proceeds donated to the Howard Brown Health Center's Cancer Quality of Life Study. Nice. And it's for a good cause!

We know with the flood of calls and questions we got that lots of you have been really excited for this proto-hip-hop collection to finally arrive. While the recent New York Noise comps did a great job of taking us back to the heyday of the NY post-punk/noise scene, Big Apple Rappin' takes us to that same era in NYC but this time its the early exciting years of hip-hop culture that gets the oh so nice elaborate, thoughtful and tasty Soul Jazz treatment. It had been so hard to get hands on tracks by pioneers like Cold Crush Brothers, Spoonie Gee, T Ski Valley. The Jamaica Girls, etc. These are the sounds that would soon influence the next generation of hip-hop like Run-DMC, The Beastie Boys, Kool Moe Dee, Eric B & Rakim. Something so wonderful about how these sounds really do evoke such good feelings. Every time we play this in the store we notice how customers start tapping feet, then we see their necks start to move back and forth and next thing you know they are pretty much full on dancing. We've even caught some booty's shaking in the metal and experimental sections. So much of the early NYC Hip-Hop scene had such a great sense of freedom, you can hear a much more feminine touch in lots of these songs that would later be a little more scarce to find in the hip-hop scene. You can feel the influence that gay disco and the entire melting pot of NYC had on this exciting era of hip-hop as well. Wax collectors check this out on vinyl as the contents of the double cd can be had on two slabs of double vinyl split into two volumes.

MPEG stream: Spoonin' Rap
MPEG stream: How We Gonna Make The Black Nation Rise
MPEG stream: Big Apple Rappin'
MPEG stream: Standing On The Top

We know with the flood of calls and questions we got that lots of you have been really excited for this proto-hip-hop collection to finally arrive. While the recent New York Noise comps did a great job of taking us back to the heyday of the NY post-punk/noise scene, Big Apple Rappin' takes us to that same era in NYC but this time its the early exciting years of hip-hop culture that gets the oh so nice elaborate, thoughtful and tasty Soul Jazz treatment. It had been so hard to get hands on tracks by pioneers like Cold Crush Brothers, Spoonie Gee, T Ski Valley. The Jamaica Girls, etc. These are the sounds that would soon influence the next generation of hip-hop like Run-DMC, The Beastie Boys, Kool Moe Dee, Eric B & Rakim. Something so wonderful about how these sounds really do evoke such good feelings. Every time we play this in the store we notice how customers start tapping feet, then we see their necks start to move back and forth and next thing you know they are pretty much full on dancing. We've even caught some booty's shaking in the metal and experimental sections. So much of the early NYC Hip-Hop scene had such a great sense of freedom, you can hear a much more feminine touch in lots of these songs that would later be a little more scarce to find in the hip-hop scene. You can feel the influence that gay disco and the entire melting pot of NYC had on this exciting era of hip-hop as well. Wax collectors check this out on vinyl as the contents of the double cd can be had on two slabs of double vinyl split into two volumes.

MPEG stream: Spoonin' Rap
MPEG stream: How We Gonna Make The Black Nation Rise
MPEG stream: Sure Shot

We know with the flood of calls and questions we got that lots of you have been really excited for this proto-hip-hop collection to finally arrive. While the recent New York Noise comps did a great job of taking us back to the heyday of the NY post-punk/noise scene, Big Apple Rappin' takes us to that same era in NYC but this time its the early exciting years of hip-hop culture that gets the oh so nice elaborate, thoughtful and tasty Soul Jazz treatment. It had been so hard to get hands on tracks by pioneers like Cold Crush Brothers, Spoonie Gee, T Ski Valley. The Jamaica Girls, etc. These are the sounds that would soon influence the next generation of hip-hop like Run-DMC, The Beastie Boys, Kool Moe Dee, Eric B & Rakim. Something so wonderful about how these sounds really do evoke such good feelings. Every time we play this in the store we notice how customers start tapping feet, then we see their necks start to move back and forth and next thing you know they are pretty much full on dancing. We've even caught some booty's shaking in the metal and experimental sections. So much of the early NYC Hip-Hop scene had such a great sense of freedom, you can hear a much more feminine touch in lots of these songs that would later be a little more scarce to find in the hip-hop scene. You can feel the influence that gay disco and the entire melting pot of NYC had on this exciting era of hip-hop as well. Wax collectors check this out on vinyl as the contents of the double cd can be had on two slabs of double vinyl split into two volumes.

MPEG stream: Big Apple Rappin'
MPEG stream: Rock The Beat
MPEG stream: Standing On The Top

Contemporary bluegrass star mandolinist Ricky Skaggs put together this tribute to Bill Monroe, the universally acknowledged father of bluegrass. While this record shouldn't substitute for a Monroe record in your collection, there are nonetheless several standout tracks worth the price of the disc, including Dolly Parton's verison of Cry, Cry Darlin' and songs sung by the Dixie Chicks (uh huh) and Charlie Daniels. Also appearing: Dwight Yoakam, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Travis Tritt, Patty Loveless, Bruce Hornsby. And Skaggs plays mandolin on every track!

Good old Greensleeves comes through with a brand new series of collections. Along with their Biggest Ragga Dancehall Anthems of 1999, 2000 & 2001, they've rolled back the tape 13 years to throw together a double disc (or two part double LP if that's your preference) of their top picks of chart topping dancehall tracks from the birth of the genre in 1979 to 1982. 40 tracks in all from some of the original heavyweights of the genre like Barrington Levy, Johnny Osbourne, Yellowman, Eek-A-Mouse, Michigan & Smiley, Dennis Brown, (old timer) John Holt, Don Carlos and much more. Being on the cusp of the advent of full-fledged digital studio dominance of the Jamaican recording industry, there's lots of steam roller bass lines, phasey-chorused guitars and the occaisional synth percussion hit. We can't let this one go without a word about the cover. We're used to seeing dancehall collections with cheesy covers consisting of chicks in thongs, so we were kind of disappointed that Greensleeves backed out of an otherwise excellent cover photo for this one. A vintage snapshot of a stud posing in front of his Mercedes would be perfect save for Greensleeves' decision to plaster his body from neck to manhood with the album's title. Small grief we concede, but it had to be mentioned.

RealAudio clip: Bathroom Sex
RealAudio clip: Another One Bites The Dust
RealAudio clip: How The West Was Won
RealAudio clip: Bone Connection

Good old Greensleeves comes through with a brand new series of collections. Along with their Biggest Ragga Dancehall Anthems of 1999, 2000 & 2001, they've rolled back the tape 13 years to throw together a double disc (or two part double LP if that's your preference) of their top picks of chart topping dancehall tracks from the birth of the genre in 1979 to 1982. 40 tracks in all from some of the original heavyweights of the genre like Barrington Levy, Johnny Osbourne, Yellowman, Eek-A-Mouse, Michigan & Smiley, Dennis Brown, (old timer) John Holt, Don Carlos and much more. Being on the cusp of the advent of full-fledged digital studio dominance of the Jamaican recording industry, there's lots of steam roller bass lines, phasey-chorused guitars and the occaisional synth percussion hit. We can't let this one go without a word about the cover. We're used to seeing dancehall collections with cheesy covers consisting of chicks in thongs, so we were kind of disappointed that Greensleeves backed out of an otherwise excellent cover photo for this one. A vintage snapshot of a stud posing in front of his Mercedes would be perfect save for Greensleeves' decision to plaster his body from neck to manhood with the album's title. Small grief we concede, but it had to be mentioned.

Budget minded double disc dancehall collections from Greensleeves which feature the label's top picks for the years 1999, 2000 and 2001. What with 40 tracks on each one, they're a bit of a mixed bag. But with contributions from the likes of Capleton, Ward 21, Elephant Man, Sizzla, Lexxus, Barrington Levy, Mr. Vegas, Bounty Killer, Beenie Man, Buju Banton, Merciless and more, there's something for everyone here.

RealAudio clip: Boom Wha Dis
RealAudio clip: Who Am I

Budget minded double disc dancehall collections from Greensleeves which feature the label's top picks for the years 1999, 2000 and 2001. What with 40 tracks on each one, they're a bit of a mixed bag. But with contributions from the likes of Capleton, Ward 21, Elephant Man, Sizzla, Lexxus, Barrington Levy, Mr. Vegas, Bounty Killer, Beenie Man, Buju Banton, Merciless and more, there's something for everyone here.

RealAudio clip: Blood Stain
RealAudio clip: Tight & Right

Budget minded double disc dancehall collections from Greensleeves which feature the label's top picks for the years 1999, 2000 and 2001. What with 40 tracks on each one, they're a bit of a mixed bag. But with contributions from the likes of Capleton, Ward 21, Elephant Man, Sizzla, Lexxus, Barrington Levy, Mr. Vegas, Bounty Killer, Beenie Man, Buju Banton, Merciless and more, there's something for everyone here.

RealAudio clip: Pump Up
RealAudio clip: Bounce A Gal

The third volume of unearthed African music treasures from the 1970s, tracks so rare that they originally only appeared in TV shows or in library archives. Yum! Of the three volumes of this stuff that Comet has reissued, this the jazziest of the lot, filled with boogieing organ and piano. This is true "rare groove" for people who get off on using phrases like that (you know who you are). Here we have music from Cameroon, Ghana, South Africa, Nigeria, etc, and includes a great track with the Art Ensemble of Chicago!!

RealAudio clip: Kilimanjaro My Home
RealAudio clip: Gislaine

From one of our favorite labels, France's Pandemonium (home of Hint, Guapo, and others) is born a new all electronic label called Bip Hop. Their first release (actually a series of releases) "The Bip Hop Generation" looks to be an interesting collection of experimental electronics, digital glitch worship, and IDM abstractions. The first in the series compiles tracks from Marumari, Schneider TM, Massimo, Goem, Phonem, and Ultra Milkmaids, and ranges from darkish, abstract, drum & bass to sinewave based techno minimalism to ticklish pop electronica. Really Nice.

Of the increasing volume of electronic music compilations that continue to flood the markets, the two "Bip Hop" compilations hold the unique distinction of being more than a document of who's hot and who's not in electronica. Instead of cramming 20 tracks into 72 minutes of space, "Bip Hop Generation 2" only features 6 artists -- Bernhard Fleischmann, Arovane, Warmdesk, Kohn, Wang Inc, and Laurent Pernice -- who are each given much longer amounts of time to showcase their wears, often with several smaller contributions which allows the artist to stretch out a bit and flex some musical muscle. Fleischmann, Pernice, and Warmdesk generate off-kilter techno similar to early Aphex Twin and Plaid, while Arovane continues down the Boards Of Canada path of moody melody. Wang Inc and Kohn offer a handful of wistful and melodic analogue sketches. Even for those of us who think there should be a moratorium on electronica compilations, this is worth checking out!

RealAudio clip: Aube
RealAudio clip: Plecq
RealAudio clip: Nynl Square

Third in the series of international blip-bleep compilations from this French label. This edition features 14 tracks of previously unreleased music from six electronic musicians: AQ-fave Neotropic from England, Austrialian "lowercase" artist Pimmon, Bovine Life (UK), Novel 23 (Russia), Zonk't (France), and Atau Tanaka (Japan).

Ah those French and their electronics, if there's one thing we've learned, they're really good at busting out catchy synth lines and addictive dance tunes. France in the late '70s to mid '80s particularly, held an abundance of innovative and distinct synth-based cold-wave acts, many of whom where under the radar and less popular than the likes of Jean Michel Jarre or Richard Pinhas, but still rich in texture and just as brilliant. We read somewhere that Ruth sold just 50 copies of their (amazing) album released in 1985. The fact that we know next to nothing about any of the artists on this comp makes it even better! If the Tigersushi Collection, So Young But So Cold that we listed a while back tickled your fancy, Bippp will not disappoint. The folks here at aQ have been eating this up! This compilation, put out by Everloving, licensed from the French label Born Bad, is a marvelous collection of raw futuristic energy and minimalist beats. In it you hear the beginnings of cold wave, dark-wave, post punk, and electro pop. Act's "Ping Pong" suggests everything from The Police to early New Order while the quirky efforts of "Touche Pas Mon Sexe" by The Comix is fast, spastic and bouncy with minimal drum machine effects, slicing synth stabs, and swirly, grinding melodies similar to Kraftwerk or early OMD. CKC's "20h25", catchy as all hell, stands out the most with backing robotic vocals, eerie Casio lines, and a somewhat random slap bass break mid-song. In the pulsing, metronomic works of "Pretty Day" by Mary Moore, another gem in the collection and one of the only two tracks with English vocals, Mary sings about love and death in equally coy tones. TGV's "Partie 1" is sort of a punk anthem (as are a couple others in the collection) with interlocking key patterns and quick, nervous yelps. Seems a little out of place that the last song, "Rainbow Man", is a tune by Ed Banger (present day French electro monarch) label frontman Busy P (who samples the "Touche Pas Mon Sexe" track by The Comix listed earlier on in the comp) though the Collection's title suggests French New Wave "1979-85"..?? Still a damned good track regardless. And maybe the bait to get some of the young 'uns interested in this cool old stuff. Really it's astounding how fresh in quality the bulk of these songs are as well, as if they could've been released within the last five years, on a label like Ed Banger... Most of the bands on the compilation apparently released vinyl runs of 1000 or less the first time around. Lacking an aboveground hit by a homegrown version of Depeche Mode or Soft Cell, the scene portrayed on Bippp remained largely hidden. As brilliant and often catchy as the tunes are, they remained weirdly confidential. We can only hope that the release of Bippp leads to reissues of full albums by these acts! We already knew we needed that Ruth record back in print.

MPEG stream: 20h25
MPEG stream: Pretty Day
MPEG stream: Game And Performance

Also now available on vinyl!! Yay! Ah those French and their electronics, if there's one thing we've learned, they're really good at busting out catchy synth lines and addictive dance tunes. France in the late '70s to mid '80s particularly, held an abundance of innovative and distinct synth-based cold-wave acts, many of whom where under the radar and less popular than the likes of Jean Michel Jarre or Richard Pinhas, but still rich in texture and just as brilliant. We read somewhere that Ruth sold just 50 copies of their (amazing) album released in 1985. The fact that we know next to nothing about any of the artists on this comp makes it even better! If the Tigersushi Collection, So Young But So Cold that we listed a while back tickled your fancy, Bippp will not disappoint. The folks here at aQ have been eating this up! This compilation, put out by Everloving, licensed from the French label Born Bad, is a marvelous collection of raw futuristic energy and minimalist beats. In it you hear the beginnings of cold wave, dark-wave, post punk, and electro pop. Act's "Ping Pong" suggests everything from The Police to early New Order while the quirky efforts of "Touche Pas Mon Sexe" by The Comix is fast, spastic and bouncy with minimal drum machine effects, slicing synth stabs, and swirly, grinding melodies similar to Kraftwerk or early OMD. CKC's "20h25", catchy as all hell, stands out the most with backing robotic vocals, eerie Casio lines, and a somewhat random slap bass break mid-song. In the pulsing, metronomic works of "Pretty Day" by Mary Moore, another gem in the collection and one of the only two tracks with English vocals, Mary sings about love and death in equally coy tones. TGV's "Partie 1" is sort of a punk anthem (as are a couple others in the collection) with interlocking key patterns and quick, nervous yelps. Seems a little out of place that the last song, "Rainbow Man", is a tune by Ed Banger (present day French electro monarch) label frontman Busy P (who samples the "Touche Pas Mon Sexe" track by The Comix listed earlier on in the comp) though the Collection's title suggests French New Wave "1979-85"..?? Still a damned good track regardless. And maybe the bait to get some of the young 'uns interested in this cool old stuff. Really it's astounding how fresh in quality the bulk of these songs are as well, as if they could've been released within the last five years, on a label like Ed Banger... Most of the bands on the compilation apparently released vinyl runs of 1000 or less the first time around. Lacking an aboveground hit by a homegrown version of Depeche Mode or Soft Cell, the scene portrayed on Bippp remained largely hidden. As brilliant and often catchy as the tunes are, they remained weirdly confidential. We can only hope that the release of Bippp leads to reissues of full albums by these acts! We already knew we needed that Ruth record back in print.

MPEG stream: 20h25
MPEG stream: Pretty Day
MPEG stream: Game And Performance

All right! We managed to acquire a few more copies of this limited edition Record Store Day vinyl item from a Finders Keepers connection of ours, so we're now able to list it. Only a handful in stock, though, and we won't be getting any more. It's a 10" compilation featuring six female songbirds (as it were), or flocks of songbirds, from around the world, in the feminine freak/folk/funk fashion you'd expect, some of these lovely ladies hailing from the '70s, some happenin' now but still sounding like they belong on vintage vinyl... From the modern day, there's samplings of the Vashti Bunyan inspired fairy tale folk of Magpahi (aka Alison Cooper), Italian troubadour Emma Tricca, and Misty Dixon's Jane Weaver, all of whom you might know from the B-Music Bearded Ladies comp. Dug up from way back when, rare tracks from Iron Curtain era Polish girl group Ali Babki, Welsh teens Sidan, and the lovely Soledad Miranda, best known as an actress from the sexy cult horror flick Vampyros Lesbos! That one's a real standout, can't wait for the B-Music full-length Soledad anthology coming up! Limited to 1000 copies, a 2010 RSD special.

The last volume of De Wolfe Library grooves we had went out of print pretty fast, so don't hesitate on this one if you are so inclined. This is actually not the sequel to Jason Willet's DJ-curated Music De Wolfe Vol. 1 we listed a couple of years ago, but the sequel to a comp we didn't carry called Bite Hard, now sadly gone. Only two of the songs on Music De Wolfe vol. 1 appear here. The De Wolfe Studio (aka Music De Wolfe Sound Library) began in 1909 as a studio for music to accompany silent films, but it's heyday was in the seventies as the go-to studio for killer crime funk. Spy chases, criminal action films and tense moody thrillers were De Wolfe's specialty and have since been key source material for many hip-hop samples from Kool G. Rap, High & Mighty and Cam'ron. Compiled by Joel Martin, the record nut behind the Dawn of the Dead unreleased soundtrack music (all of those cues too were from the De Wolfe library) and Warren De Wolfe, this is the first compilation to be released directly from the De Wolfe studio. Let's hope there's plenty more!

MPEG stream: The Gloaming
MPEG stream: Silver Thrust
MPEG stream: Hammerheads
MPEG stream: Motives 1
MPEG stream: Myriad

From the same label that brought us that amazing Shitmat grunge cover split (the one that came packaged in actual flannel shirts!) comes this new vinyl only comp of totally fucked up and genius junglized drill and bass ravecore, featuring the best Shitmat track in ages! A sort of cover of Oasis' "Champagne Supernova" but all sped up and doused in drum damage with manic synth stabs and chopped up jungle beats and that Oasis track is all cut up so the line about "getting high" is repeated over and over, all tangled up with Shitmat's completely insane spastic beat freakout. So good. And the rest ain't so shabby either. Mochipet offers up a murky and manic jam, plenty of glitch, pounding beat, all sorts of garbled sounds, chopped up samples, eventually transforming into a crazed jungle blowout. The Foxdye take a Pointer Sisters track, speed it up, twist it all around, add some seriously frenzied drill and bass, and turn it into the dance party JAM OF THE YEAR for sure! The flipside is pretty great too, Blaerg revs up some FM radio chestnut dousing it in THICK jungle bass and wild spastic drum skitter. The H8RS go all old school rave but add plenty of jungle, the whole thing getting all stuttery and skittery. Graz offers up some classic nineties style jungle rave, and finally Selector Catalogue takes some old school B-Boy jam, revs it up, flips the speed to 78, adds a heap of distortion, and tangles the whole thing into a gnarled squall of hiccupping stop start, ultra dense skipping and stuttering droned out fractured drum damaged ravecore. Fuck yeah. Gorgeous packaging too. Eye popping full color cartoon cover, each one hand customized, and each one hand numbered (LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!!), pressed on thick green and yellow swirled vinyl.

Crackling recordings from the 1920s and '30s of wonderful harmonica-based tunes accompanied by some banjo, fiddle, guitar and creaky, weathered voices from every nook and cranny of the country. Many of the people whose music graces this compilation were

RealAudio clip: Chased Old Satan Through the Door

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No doubt about it, the legacy and inspiration of Fela Kuti's music ranks right up their with The Beatles and James Brown in terms of how much of an impact and lasting impression it has left on music of future generations. Without Fela there wouldn't have been Afro-beat as we know it. And luckily so many of the musicians he has influenced produce sounds with the same kind of fire, intensity and rhythm that he laid the blueprints for. This awesome compilation brings together the best of Fela's disciples from many areas on the globe including Nigeria, Columbia, Ghana, Trinidad, New York, and more. This is exactly how we like our Afro-beat, raw, super charged and full of uncompromising power. It's impossible not to move to these rich groove filled burners. What's extra awesome and exciting is that most of these artists are new to our ears, besides Daktaris, the Whitefield Brothers,and Bola Johnson we really hadn't heard of many of these folks and damn they are all blowing us away! Lever Brothers, Gay Flamingoes, Lisandro Meza, Segun Bucknoh, Phirpo Y Sus Caribes....now we want to get our hands on all of their stuff! Most of the tracks on here are previously unreleased and while the cd is packaged lovingly in a small hardcover book with photos and liner notes, the vinyl is packaged in a totally amazing over the top box set with the music divvied up over four 10" records with a 24 page book packed with the same amazing photos and liner notes. So on fire and so highly recommended!

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Arab-American violin; Thai Buddhist ritual performance; One of the first commercial recordings of Bali Gamelan; Northumbrian bagpipes; a Hindu Tamil Wedding song; a French Cameroun Rhumba; a scene from a Chinese Opera; a Turkish folk-dance song; Hutzl wedding music from the Ukraine; An unearthly theme from a supernatural Indian soundtrack; a ten-year-old Swedish girl singing with a zither... What do these and many other far-flung sounds on this compilation have to do with each other? Are they the results of meticulous years of travel, recording, and collecting in the field? Well, no. Were they extracted from some archivist's well-researched collection of indigenous music? Um, not exactly. What these sounds do have in common is they are all culled from 78 rpm recordings made between 1918-1955; feature artists and ensembles from all over the world, mostly Europe, Asia and the Middle East (though some tracks were recorded in America); and come from the collection of one person, Ian Nagoski, who admittedly made no special efforts to find them. Instead the music found him. Never traveling more than 30 minutes from his home in the US, never buying through mail and not spending very much money, Nagoski has been able to amass an incredible collection of global treasures, finding gems through diligence, patience and perseverance that most antique record collectors wouldn't have the stamina to suffer through. Looking at some of the reproductions of the labels, some with only hand-written words, we can only imagine at how many hours of guesswork, collecting and concentrated listening Nagoski must have endured to filter the wheat from the chaff. Well-researched liner notes give clues to the origins of these 24 tracks, and Dust-to-Digital have done a fine job of cleaning up the sound (some might say a little too well -- there's nothing wrong with a little vinyl crackle here and there!). But what's really nice is to listen to a collection of songs that are not thematically arranged or compiled within a specifically defined ethno-musical context. Just these strange and beautiful documents of lost worlds colliding together discovered through the displaced happenstance of chance. Giving us hope that there are still undiscovered musical gold within our grasp. Highly recommended! Oh, and we wanted to mention one song in particular, which everytime it's played in the store has customers and employees alike perking up their ears at its strange almost creepy beauty. It's music from a Japanese Kabuki, called "Songs In Grief", performed by Sinkou Son & Kouran Kin, and it's perhaps the most haunting beautiful thing we've ever heard. Mysterious little vocal trills, strange chanting, a bit like Elizabeth Clare Prophet, but so much more haunting and enchanting. It gives us chills everytime we hear it, and even if the rest of the comp wasn't so absolutely amazing, would be worth the price of admission alone!

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Tributes are always sort of a tough call. Sometimes you'd rather just hear the originals, or sometimes there's one great version in a sea of total shit. So we're happy to report, that this tribute to Black Flag succeeds on several levels. First, it's Black Flag!! I mean, c'mon, Black Flag rule! And of course deserve to be covered, as well as worshipped. The downside of that though, is that Black Flag are so good, it almost seems pointless to cover them. But it is a covers compilation so that point is moot I suppose. And the selection of bands here is pretty strong, lots of AQ faves (Dillinger Escape Plan, Converge, Coalesce, Burnt By The Sun) and lots of pretty kick ass lesser-knowns (Anodyne, Playing Enemy, Planes Mistaken For Stars). All of whom give us REALLY HEAVY versions of songs we already love. Not all that different (except maybe Dillinger's sort-of-jungle version of Damaged II) but all really good. So it really depends on where you stand on tribute compilations. But metalcore's finest covering pnk rock's finest...you could do a lot worse. MPEG Download: DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN "Damaged I & II" [/audio/dillingerdamaged.mp3] MPEG Stream: DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN "Damaged I & II" [/audio/dillingerdamaged.m3u]

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Oh boy, can the stellar reissue label Strut do no wrong? Doubtful, cos they just keep coming out with amazing compilations and reissues, unearthing the most forgotten genres and movements mostly taken from the seventies. There's the Disco Not Disco comp, Now they've compiled the first ever look back at the best of Black Rio, that movement in the seventies that saw young black Brazilians getting political and turning away from the far-too-commercial samba in favor of James Brown. This is funky soul music, and the tracks here are so fun. There's everything from hard gritty funk to smooth soul to an unlikely instrumental cover of "Rapper's Delight" (the last sample below)! And as with all the Strut releases, there are voluminous liner notes placing the entire musical movement in a clear context, as well as lots of photos. Highly recommended.

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Black Stars: Ghana's Hiplife Generation is a challenging, and possibly rewarding collection of tunes from the last five odd years comprised of, as the title would indicate, "hiplife" music from Ghana. But what is hiplife? you may ask, and apparently that's the question this compilation sets out to answer. Clearly, as is often the case in the game of inventing and naming new musical genres, we're dealing with the sometimes awkward, and other times ecstatic middle ground between two already canonized genres, in this case "highlife" and "hiphop". Stateside, having recently savored and suffered contemporary permutations of highlife via The Dirty Projectors and Vampire Weekend, as well as receiving a handful of uncorruptably good vintage highlife collections from the Soundways label, it seems ripe time to check in with what's happening to highlife on its mother content. The results are mixed. In general the affair is very much an energetic and confused amalgam of hip-hop, dancehall, reggaeton, a little bit of textured bloop and bleep, sampled and looped highlife guitar, and even at times some of the spare synthesized organicism and mystique of dubstep. In all cases however, there is nothing of the gritty texture, glow, and blown out splendor of vintage highlife that has been so endlessly loved and fetishised in the United States. The palette is rigorously pop, and even at times, to our ears strikingly childish. Think Disney's somewhat jingoistic take on African music in the Lion King, or even for those deep lovers of early '90s cartoons, Tailspin! So, if that variety of positive freneticism is your bag, and you want to know what's up in Ghana, then come along. Also, if you're just in a curious and actively transcendent mood, you might enjoy this for its educational value as well. However, to all others, consider this a mere suggestion, not required listening.

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An inexpensive double cd collection of over twenty of the world's most evilly evil black metal outfits. A true pantheon of Satanic art: Abigor, Dissection, Satyricon, Enthroned, Impaled Nazarene, Emperor and many others.

The cult '70s New York punk film Blank Generation sees a reissue on the spankin' new DVD format. With rare, you-were-there shots of the bands on stage and off, there's Television, Blondie, Ramones, Talking Heads, Patti Smith Group, The Heartbreakers, The

Indeed. '70s funk/jazz/proto-rap comp, with some not-so-big names as well as famous folks (but tending towards their more obscure output of the latter). Curtis Mayfield, Sly Stone, The Last Poets, The Meters, Lightnin' Rod, JB-refugees Pee Wee Ellis and Maceo

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Completely charming compilation of soundtracks to imaginary video games! Yes it is as good as it sounds, very intense yet harmless and fun at the same time. Besides the music, the best part of the package is the descriptions of the games, truly stuff worthy of Kool Keith's crazy brain, for example: "FAMILY TREE POLO: Bounce through time in your ambulance. Save your injury prone ancestors so you may eventually be born." For full game descriptions, see www.luckykitchen.com [http://www.luckykitchen.com/]. Features contributions from: Nick Birmingham & Daniel Beattie (UK, Hot Air/Spymania), V/VM (Manchester UK), Soundcard (UK, Spymania), Colongib, Egghatcher, Jake Mandell (Worm Interface), Personal Electronics, Tim Kotch, Marumari, Blitter vs. Hrvatski (Reckankreuzungsklankewerkzeuge), Flexible Products, Aerospace, Flatline Racing System, Stupid Lepton, Wheaton Research, Suetsu & Underwood, Underwood. Crucial underground electronic scenarios, charmingly packaged in a perversely non-video-game-aesthetic hand-sewn felt envelope. Limited to 746 numbered copies. A contender for "album of the week".

[ aquarius records catalogue — V ]