[ aquarius records catalogue

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Showing results 251 through 300 of 358.

New ep from this band...elements of Cat Power. White Magic, Young Marble Giants.

The focal point of Young People's second album is set squarely on Katie Eastburn's lilting, sedated vocals -- an odd mix of beleaguered'n'world weary and tentative, sweet, almost childlike. Her untethered, off the cuff delivery runs the gamut from top-of-her-lungs exuberance to lullaby hushed, and this unpredictability is right in line with the group's overall offkilter, earthy dissonance. From song to song, she along with fellow members Jeff Rosenberg and Jarrett Silberman trade off on guitar, bass and percussion duties. Guitars are raw and sinewy, drums are loose and primal. Although at times the art-folk proceedings may seem rather unstable and ramshackle even, they're not without structure. War Prayers is definitely a much more devil-may-care, dynamic array of songs than those of YP's self-titled debut, and they resonate with an increased confidence and energy.

MPEG stream: Dutch Oven
MPEG stream: Early Poetry

At first we thought this record was pretty good, a sort of indie, twangy Cat Power / Dirty Three / Palace-y pastiche. That is, until the second track, and then the third, and then the fourth, when it became obvious that the entire record sounded EXACTLY the same, like it was in the same key, and the vocalist's wannabe-Cat-Power warble had the range of, well, maybe all of 2 or 3 notes, and the guitar player, who is in fact a fantastic guitar player, was going to opt instead to let his guitar feedback and whine and hum with the minimum amount of interference. Maybe that's a little bit harsh, but the record taken as a whole is a very monochromatic affair, and not necessarily in a good way, with the vocals and guitar just sort of droning on and on, less in a hypnotic way, and more in a sort of nagging way, if that makes any sense. Definitely worth a peek if you are fanatical about indie-rock-twang and/or the above mentioned bands, but otherwise this might be a pass.

RealAudio clip: Death Don't Have No Mercy

A killer new two song blast from these SF shoegazers, and both sides kill. The A side sounds like it could have been plucked off one of their records proper, equal parts Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine, thick blown out riffs, blurred into billows of soft noise, simple, driving krautrocky rhythms, thick driving basslines, ethereal angelic vox, super droned out and totally hypnotic, heavily reverbed and gloriously washed out and woozy. The B side might be even better, ditching the more standard elements of 'song' and instead weaving a super thick, dense, atmospheric sprawl of heavily layered guitardrone, channeling the mighty Spacemen 3, or minimal early krautrock, but here, cranked up and doused in distortion, hypnotic and hazy, pulsing and churning, a constantly shifting miasma of buzz and thrum, super heady and heavy and very psychedelic. So great. Definitely has us hankering for a new full length.

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The long awaited debut full length from Young Prisms, a youthful SF Mission District based quartet who kick out some of the raddest psychedelic shoegaze slacker jams we've heard in ages. Thick clouds of swirling soft focus guitar noise and churning grinding muted crunch obscure drifty indecipherable vocals, spidery guitar melodies running throughout, propulsive indie jangle wreathed in reverb, shuffling drums, loads of effects, somewhere in this swirl of shifting sounds and layered lurk pretty little pop songs, but those pop songs drag along all manner of sonic detritus in their wake, transforming the group's stripped down garage pop into something much more grand, something that sounds like Sonic Youth crossed with My Bloody Valentine, but even more blissed out and ethereal, the vocals lilting and haunting sometimes give the songs a Blonde Redhead vibe, but way more chaotic and dreamily noise drenched, and still with enough jangle and crunch that they can still hang with the cool kids (Ty Segall, Thee Oh Sees, etc.), and while these guys are in fact pretty dang cool, they're also still outsiders, noisier, heavier, their sound more washed out and deliriously druggy, the songs, no matter how simple or stripped down in the beginning, seem to always blossom into explosive garage psych blowouts, huge billowing clouds of gauzy hazey buzz and thick clouds of psychdrone blissdrift blur. But never completely obscuring the jangle pop underneath, Which is what makes these guys so good. We dig big time!

MPEG stream: Friends For Now
MPEG stream: If You Want To
MPEG stream: Sugar

Latest from these SF shoegazers, and like the last one, Friends For Now, In Between finds the band's sound falling somewhere between Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine and Blonde Redhead, this time maybe even some Mazzy Star. Right out of the gate, the band take the sound of the last records, and blur it even more, unleashing a lazy, sprawl of smeared chords, breathy female vox, simple skeletal rhythms, all wreathed in a cloud of gauzy shimmer, total mid-nineties style dreampop, and YP do it better than most, taking simple pop songs, and dousing them in effects, the production lush and layered, allowing for a heavy part to somehow get even heavier, usually with a sudden eruption of low end, or a strange thickening of the guitar sound, however they do it, it makes for some heady psych pop bliss out for sure. The rest of the record follows suit, with dreamy boy/girl vox, chiming guitar jangle, swirling effects, hooks galore, soaring choruses, with much of In Between sounding like it could have come from the Slumberland back catalog, which is not a bad thing at all. The band equally adept at fuzzy girl group style reverb shimmer pop and crunchy fuzzy shoegaze, the record rife with MBV-isms, but the band employ them in a way that makes MBV seem like an influence, rather than In Between sounding like an inadvertent homage. There are so many great bands in SF these days, but as far as blissed out jangle and shoegaze dream pop, nobody can touch Young Prisms. So good.

MPEG stream: Floating In Blue
MPEG stream: Dead Flowers
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Avid readers of the aQ list will no doubt remember our obsession with Chicago's Footwork scene, also known as 'jukin', we've reviewed records by DJ Nate, DJ Roc, as well as that kick ass Bangs & Works comp, and we played those records to death in the store, each a brilliantly twisted collection of footwork jams, which for the uninitiated is a mutant strain of hip hop that is weirdly skittery and maddeningly repetitive, the music a nonstop barrage of layered loops and repeated vocal fragments, skeletal 808 rhythms, stuttery handclaps, definitely the sort of thing that has some people nodding along and shaking it, while others are tearing their hair out. It's obviously designed for the dancefloor, so stereo listening is a whole different experience, but like those DJ Nate and DJ Roc records, there's definitely something to this stuff that transcends the dancefloor. Never more so than on Space Zone, the debut from 18 year old Young Smoke aka David Davis, who doesn't rely so much on sampling old spacey funk jams, but instead creates his own spaced out atmosphere using a bunch of self made samples from a battery of synths, and has created a seriously futuristic slab of footwork, channeling old cheesy soundtracks, John Carpenter, Tangerine Dream, all sorts of retro futurism into his twisted spaced out sound. On the surface, there's definitely a similarity to those other footwork jams we've reviewed in the past, but Young Smoke's sound is definitely much more composed and musical, still repetitive, and looped, each song essentially a single melody, and a single beat, looped and layered, but check out the opener, the title track, which is a dreamy chunk of almost bubblegum electro, with vocodered vox crooning "Welcome to the space zone" over lazer beam blurts and sci-fi squiggles, all wrapped around a groovy 8 bit skitter. It's the perfect introduction for sure, but it's not all bubblegummy, the second track "Warning", begins with a cascade of kosmische synths, which gives way to a buzzing klaxon, and a robotic voice repeating the word "Warning", while all around, booming bass and stuttering beats swarm around dense swirls of tangled almost psychedelic synth melodies, which leads right into "Futuristic Musick", which wraps a tinkling ghostly melody and shortwave squelch around a churning muted pulse, soon adding some swoonsome synth swells, the drums tribal and abstract, very cosmic and cinematic, and check out the closer, "Heat Impact" which sounds like some eighties action flick theme sliced and diced and transformed into a wild blast of alien hypno-groove stutter-funk. By now it should be apparent, that this stuff is not all that far removed from all the retro-futurism and kosmische synthscapery that's all the rave these days, give a listen to the samples and you'll see what we mean, it's just that here, it's funked up a bit, wedded to hip hop skitter and electro-alien-stutter, which makes for some serious future dancefloor destruction, but also some big time headphone bliss out.

MPEG stream: Space Zone
MPEG stream: Warning
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MPEG stream: Destroy Him My Robots
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Up until now, Louisville noise rockers Young Widows have trafficked in a dense, bass heavy almost sludgey sort of crush, more in line with groups like Jesus Lizard, Harvey Milk, Karp, Lubricated Goat and Drive Like Jehu, total AmRep old school knuckle dragging, ass kicking pound and pummel. But over the course of the last full length and the series of 7" collaborations, the band did not shy away from melody, and displayed a keen pop sense, that in other bands might seem out of place, but YW just folded that poppiness right in along with the crashing drums, and buzzy basslines, and while we should have been prepared for this, we really just weren't. Some of that sound and vibe is still present, but In And Out Of Youth And Lightness is a whole 'nother kind of beast. Brooding and slithery, a little bit twangy, low slung, druggy and hazy and a little washed out, imagine a noise rock version of aQ slowcore faves True Widow, and you'd definitely be close. The drums are muted and minimal, shuffling more than pounding, the bass still thick and buzzy and driving the proceedings, but here it's more gloom pop than noise rock. The guitars are spidery and skeletal, minor key, unfurling haunting melodies and woozy chords. The opening track sounds like it could burst into proper noise rock action at any point, but it never does, it doesn't need to, instead, it just drifts drowsily, all drugged out and sun baked and gloriously languid. But the band haven't ditched their noise rock past completely, they can still whip up a serious din, like on the churning riffy "Future Heart", but even then, the vibe is way more post punk, old school gloom rock, all wound up in TW's heavier guitars and mathy crush, yet even amongst all this roiling heaviness, the guitars are reverby, the vocals deep and dramatic, the sound not so heavy as moody, and then just as quickly as the band exploded into noise rock action, they slip right back into brooding blackened ballad territory, "In And Out Of Lightness" sounding a bit like Woven Hand or Sixteen Horsepower, all grimly bluesy, swampy, murky and moody. "Lean On The Ghost" is another slo-mo doom pop twang folk trudge, a hazy chunk of slowcore blues that melds Amrep to apocalyptic swamp folk, and on it goes. The band having essentially totally transformed into a some glorious sort of of post punk slowcore combo, and as much as we loved them before, this new sound is WAY hitting the spot. Every song a grim black gem, heavy, hooky, haunting, the more we listen, the more we think this might be challenging the most recent True Widow as our record of the year. And it has us imagining our dream tour: Young Widows, True Widow, Crystal Stilts, Woven Hand... if only!

MPEG stream: Young Rivers
MPEG stream: Future Heart
MPEG stream: In And Out Of Lightness

Record number two from these Louisville sluggers (sorry), another slab of churning, bass heavy, noisy, groovy riff rock, landing somewhere between the Jesus Lizard and Karp, Harvey Milk and Caustic Resin, Lubricated Goat and Drive Like Jehu. In fact these guys sound like they were spawned from an AmRep Mom and a Touch And Go Dad, which is absolutely not a bad thing. Opener "Took A Turn" has one of the sickest bass sounds EVER, a roiling, crumbling super distorted groove that goes on and on and on, beneath the weary mush mouthed vocals, building tension like crazy, until he sings "Drums..." and then the drums come in, the bass still grinding away, and then finally the guitar drops, a thick blanket of melody over that near static bassline. "Old Skin" has a killer riff, a sort of downtuned Iron Maiden sort of thing, that is totally mesmerizing, and continues on though most of the song, even when the band is furiously pounding away. In fact, most of these songs consist of no more than two parts, but that's all it takes, this is blown out, heavy as fuck, sweaty, live and loud, with a definite nod to Bleach�era Nirvana. This stuff definitely sound killer on record, but it's easy to tell these guys must destroy live, even moreso, knowing that these tracks were actually recorded at various locations, studios, practice spaces, live shows (on those you can sometimes hear the crowd), but they're not meant to sound live, just to sound LIVE, cuz most bands do play and sound better in front of a crowd, so the final tracks were culled from all of those recordings and performances, and the results speak for themselves, loud, heavy, intense and definitely live sounding. Anyone into the above mentioned bands will definitely dig this big time. And wow, the packaging, super intense, multi folded, 8 panels, of varying length, all overlapping to form different versions of the cover image, hard to explain, you just gotta see it, super striking!

MPEG stream: Took A Turn
MPEG stream: Old Skin

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SORRY. Splits are always a strange proposition, it's not always clear what brings the two bands together, often the union is sonic, but just as often it's something less obvious, the bands are on tour together, the bands are pals, but split 7"s are pretty great, just speaking for ourselves, splits have often been responsible for introducing us to new bands even though we bought the split just for the OTHER band. That hardly applies here though. Again, not sure what brought these two bands together, we're guessing it's Louisville. The Louisville connection is strong between both bands and the label. The Young Widows jam might just be our favorite from these punk rockers yet, stripped down and bass heavy, tons of space, angular guitars, draped over the crunchy buzzy low end, the bass and drums locked tight, the vocals sung spoken, long stretches of pulsing effects, a kick ass climax, low slung and heavy as fuck, can't help but think of Shellac, Tar, Helmet, all that sort of stuff. We loved the last YW full length, we're assuming this got recorded afterwards, cuz it would seem insane to leave a song this good off the record. Will Oldham as Bonnie Prince Billy offers up his own winner on the flip, a dark and lush, sprawling bit of country blues, surprisingly poppy, some gorgeous vocal harmonies carry the song, as the instrumentation is minimal and subdued. It reminds us of seventies Laurel Canyon style strum and shimmer, there's even an awesome, just this side of cheesy, dramatic spoken word part, before a super emotional second half, again heavy on the vocal harmonies, makes us think folks into Fleet Foxes who have somehow missed out on Oldham all this time, might just be immediately smitten.

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SORRY. Part two in the Young Widows four part split single series, with cool glossy psychedelic covers that will fit together into one big puzzle, once you have all four. And hell, so far, we can see no reason not to want all of them. The first one, was a split with Bonny Prince Billy, both sides ruled, the YW song in particular, we mentioned that it was way too good to have been left off the record, but here we got again, with another killer jam, that sounds way too good to be an album reject (although you could look at it more as a single A-side!), anyway, Young Widows kick out the super thick, nineties style post/math rock heaviness, all churning bass and pounding rhythms, some scary effected vocals, the sound very Shellac-y, which is in no way a bad thing, short, sharp, heavy as fuck, and catchy as all get out. Beginning to think these guys might be one of the best sort of noise rock bands going. Teamed up here with Japanese spazz rock legends Melt-Banana, who begin with some awesome progged out rock opera slow build, all skittery drums, squiggly keyboards, epic guitars, which suddenly changes gears and the band are spitting out their instantly recognizable fractured bouncy chipmunky prog pop, this time rife with all manner of wild guitar weirdness, outer space electronics (at least that's what it sounds like, could be more guitar) and some crazy crazy HOOKS! As always, super limited, number two in the series, another winner, plenty to keep us satiated while we wait for parts 3 and 4!

Final installment in Young Widows' 4 part split single series, the first three were with Will Oldham, Melt-Banana and Pelican, this last one is with a band called My Disco, but no matter how good the other bands are, pick these up for the Young Widows' jams, all four of em, including this latest, are total nineties AmRep, Touch And Go style noise rock rippers of the highest order, also bucking the trend of throw away tracks on 7"s, again bringing us back to an era where 7"s were precisely where the best songs by a band were to be found, and damn if these 4 tracks aren't the best thing we've heard from Young Widows, sludgey low slung bass lines, pounding math rock drummage, chiming angular guitars, slicing and arcing over drawled sung / spoken / shouted vocals, and catchy as all get out, think Rapeman, Tar, Vertigo, Jesus Lizard all that stuff and you'll be in the right neighborhood (and right decade). My Disco do their own sort of dour post punk noise rock, stripped down and spread out, caustic minor key guitars over loping basslines and lazy drums, hazy and weary and a bit woozy, a laid back soft noise jam, definitely a good fit with the Young Widows, a slight gothic tinge, but definitely the tone and timbre make this sound like it could have been some AmRep B-side. Rad stuff. Here's hoping these all get compiled on a cd sometime soon, but for now, you'll have to buy all 4, especially cuz they all have killer cover art and the four sleeves all fit together into one big 14" x 14" image. Cool... ----* ----* Selected New Arrivals : ----*

Volume 3 in the 4 part series of split singles from noise rockers the Young Widows. The first two featured the band teamed up with Bonnie Prince Billy and Melt-Banana, and for number 3 they go toe to toe with metallic post rockers Pelican. Of the three volumes so far, this is the most laid back and least heavy of the Young Widows jams, a long tribal slow building almost Shellac sounding groove, all drums and buzzing bass, while the guitar grinds and scrapes, tons of space, very minimal, then the vocals come in, hovering over the spare musical backdrop, reminds us quite bit of that classic Amphetamine Reptile sound, especially when the guitar locks in with the vocals, sounds like it could be one of the weirder cooler lesser known groups in the AmRep stable. The last minute though gets rough and raw and heavy, channeling some supercharged Fugazi, howled vocals and sharp crunchy guitars, another killer jam that just like the other two volumes, sounds too good to be relegated to a 7". Or it's a return to the good ol' days when the best songs WERE on 7"s. Pelican does what they do best for their side, heavy, chunky, melodic instrumental epic metallic post rock, and it sounds fantastic. This particular number is WAY on the melodic side, even with it's churning chugging breakdown, the main part is gorgeous, majestic and massive and crazy catchy. These guys do just keep getting better, but like the 12" featured elsewhere on this list, we still find ourselves imagining various singers doing their thing on Pelican songs. Here's a rad idea for a weirdo Pelican project. Those guys should pick their favorite vocalists, and have those vocalists pick their favorite Pelican songs, and record vocals for a record of 'vocal mixes'. Just give us some credit if it happens! Like the other 7"s in the series, packaged in cool spot varnished full color covers, all four of which fit together to form one big creepy angular skull image. ----* ----* Highlights : ----*

From our pals at Oakland tape label Sanity Muffin comes an Italian import of this minimal masterpiece, available on tape for the first time ever. Composed in 1962, recorded in 1984, The 2nd Dream Of The High Tension Line... is classic LMY, a sprawling longform field of tranced out, spiritual dronemusic, single notes stretched out for ages, a softly and subtly shifting field of overtones and microtones, drifting textures, an epic expanse of super intense, innerspace, deep listening, zoner, psychedelic, minimal drift bliss of the highest order, so simple, yet so sonically rich and deeply and melodically complex, seemingly static for long stretches but surprisingly dynamic and utterly and totally mesmerizing. Music to get lost in, to let carry you away, anyone into modern dronemusic who has yet to experience the music of the master, this is the perfect place to start. EXTREMELY LIMITED!!! Nice full color J-card with minimal liner notes.

MPEG stream: Excerpt I
MPEG stream: Excerpt II

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We dug the second volume of Nate Young's Regression series (Stay Asleep, on NNA), but volume three is even better, taking the zombified beats and creepy plodding of that record and pulling it apart into something even more abstract, transforming it into some sort of hauntological musique concrete, which so impressed the dudes from Demdike Stare, that not only did they release it on their label, but they also contributed their own track / remix. And in fact, when listening to the record all the way through, Demdike's track is almost indistinguishable from Young's, the whole of Regression Volume 3 in keeping with Demdike's idiosyncratic approach to soundscaping, albeit filtered through Young's Wolf Eyes style junkyard aesthetic. And in some ways, this does bear some similarities to our favorite Wolf Eyes records, but here Young is using some of those sounds, as well as a whole bunch of new ones, to craft a seriously bizarre alien sound world. Minimal percussion forms the basis of most of the record, creating a sort-of-electronica, but super slow, woozy and stumbling, some tracks laced with ominous synths, giving the the feel of more recent Carpenter/Goblin worshippers, but something altogether more fucked and fractured, while throughout, bursts of static, fields of hiss and thrum, squiggles or radio interference, damaged FX, all get tangled into the spare and spacious mix, of what is in some ways a noise record, but a surprisingly lovely, textured and nuanced one, some tracks sound like field recordings, reminding us of the Conet Project, or the S.E.T.I. recordings, others are pure power electronics, gouts of buzz streaked with high end squiggles, grinding low end peppered with caustic pulsations, and still others are murky plods, wreathed in clouds of shimmering effects, and driven by thick swells of deep rib cage rattling rumbles. In some ways, this is a perfect companion for the recent Will Over Matter record we made Record Of The Week, a similarly twisted collection of outsider electronic minimalism, but where WoM was an exercise in longform tones and caustic dronology, Regression Volume 3 is in some ways much more nuanced, with almost proper songs, some surprisingly melodic moments, with much of the record classifiable as actually being lovely, which is definitely not a descriptor that gets hauled out very often for Young and his Wolf Eyes compatriots. A fantastic, and fantastically abstract collection of hauntological minimal outsider electronic soundscapery, that we have been listening to like crazy! Packaged in a gorgeous gatefold jacket, the vinyl lps pressed on two different colored vinyl, one clear, one black.

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Founding member of Wolf Eyes, Nate Young, offers a stark, acid flashback of the bleakest moments of industrial cassette culture circa 1985 on Stay Asleep. His nightmarish, atonal melodies have been stripped bare of brutalist, rabid noise; but the primitive approach to structure is right out of the Wolf Eyes playbook with the woozy melodies and rhythms always hitting on the first beat of the lethargic pace. Young's engineering is one that takes Cabaret Voltaire's desiccation of sound to a zombified extreme. So much so, it seems that Young might be going for clubtrax for zombies. Step one, lurch two. "Brains!" Step one, lurch two. For all of the creepy-crawly plodding of this album, there are occasionally weird moments where the clunked atonality of it all is just plain goofy. Not exactly what's been expected from Nate Young, but a pretty compelling record nonetheless. Oh yeah, it's cut at 45 RPM; so if you want to this really fucking slow, make sure to drop it down to 33, where it takes on the funereal crawl of a ridiculously Spartan electro-doom number, if such a thing exists.

Didn't like this one that much, sorry. Kinda corny actually.

There isn't really a review for this because, much to our disappointment, we couldn't get past the first minute of the first song. See if you can.

RealAudio clip: You're My Girl

MPEG stream: Shining Light
MPEG stream: Beautiful Bluebird

Jim Jarmusch's new film Dead Man is a western. Our friend Hank who used to be in Crime and who now produces self-admitted unwatchable movies said that even he found Dead Man unwatchable. Imagine Cannes, Hank all dolled up in a tuxedo, Jarmusch also in a tuxedo, a big crowd assembled to watch Dead Man. Halfway through the film, French guy stands up in the balcony and yells "Piece of sheet, Jeem!" Mayhem, in several languages, ensues throughout the theater, and Hank says he saw Edward Scissorhands unobtrusively slinking out of there. This is the first release from Young's new label Vapor Records (also home to Jonathan Richman).

You know when an old friend buys you gift that you don't really need or want, and even though the gift sucks, you're kinda happy they thought of you. That's kinda how we feel about this new Neil Young album, Fork In The Road. I mean don't get us wrong, we're happy to see Neil has finally picked up the electric guitar again after a few years of playing strictly acoustic, and to hear him playing with some old members of Crazy Horse is pretty bad ass. But we have to be honest, while there are some good moments on the album (i.e. rippin' solos from Neil through his mostly homemade guitar rig) it skims dangerously close to the borderline of cheesy, dad-rock territory. Although we do have to say, here at the shop we've been playing it in the store, always in anticipation of this one incredibly awesome/hilarious moment when Neil starts to repeat "cough up the bucks, cough up the bucks" in this weird hip-hop type of chant. So freakin' good. But like a bad gift from a friend, it's the thought that counts, and you can't help but be charmed by the classy ways of Mr. Young.

MPEG stream: When Worlds Collide
MPEG stream: Fuel Line

MPEG stream: Down By The River
MPEG stream: Old Man

Believe us, we were very skeptical of this brand new release from the godfather of grunge, interestingly titled Le Noise and housed in a stark, black & white cd booklet. But after seeing a solo set at the Fox Theater in Oakland a few months back, Neil pushing monumental amounts of fuzz and volume through four vintage Fender tube amps, we knew Mr. Young would be back to the heavy amplifier worship we've heard on past albums like Year of the Horse or Zuma. Le Noise reminds us that Neil isn't the type of performer that sticks to what's comfortable, safely plucking away at old songs for fans of his own generation. Instead he continues to explore new ground and expand the taste level of himself and his listeners. For Le Noise, Neil enlists the help of legendary producer Daniel Lanois to piece together his heaviest album in the last decade. And as the title may suggest, not only is Le Noise heavy, but there is an experimental undercurrent throughout the entire album, Neil's voice often shrouded in delay and reverb, noisy underwatery washes of electronic sizzle and shimmering feedback flutter about, we think Neil's been listening to Fennesz. We also love how bare bones Le Noise is, no sign of Crazy Horse here, only Neil and his guitar, sometimes acoustic but mostly blaringly loud electric. Not even any drums or percussion, just lots of low end rumble and tube amp sizzle to accompany Shakey's quivering voice. So great and so recommended!

MPEG stream: Walk With Me
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There is a magical moment about three songs in on this amazing live acoustic document from 1971 where we get to hear the reaction of an audience hearing "Old Man" for the very first time. Recorded between After the Gold Rush and Harvest, this set covers Young's most classic material including "Helpless", "Journey Through the Past", a medley of "A Man Needs A Maid/Heart Of Gold", and the first official release of "Bad Fog of Loneliness". With just acoustic guitar and piano, it's no wonder that this intimate set has existed in bootleg form for so long. It's so good! Released as part of a live archive reissue series, the first being a live set from Fillmore East with Crazy Horse, it also includes the DVD of this essential performance. Recommended!!

MPEG stream: Old Man
MPEG stream: A Man Needs A Maid/Heart Of Gold

Oh Neil, how we love you down deep and for your past and for the songs we'll never forget. And yes your recent outings have been less then stellar. There have been a few glimmers of hope in recent years, and seeing you play live is still such a treat. And we're happy that you have felt the urgency to release a new work speaking out against this war we continue to be in and this administration that continues to do just about everything wrong. And like most of your recent outings there are a couple moments that ring with some past glory while most of it is well, a bit less then stellar. But we do still love you. And that's what's important isn't it?

MPEG stream: Living with War
MPEG stream: Let's Impeach the President

A collection of music performed live on tour, all pre-1975 classic Young material such as Tonight's the Night, Motorcycle Mama, an 18 minute version of Cowgirl in the Sand (from Windy's favorite Young album Everybody Knows This is Nowhere) and a ferocious version of All Along the Watchtower (with guest Chrissie Hynde).

"Buffalo Springfield Again" is a song title here, and "Neil Young Again" would have been a good album title for this, his 29th album. 29th! Acoustic-y, quality stuff from this '60s veteran/grunge-era hero. Quite nice, fans will be pleased. Note, this is the regular jewel-case version...there's also a cardboard digipak style edition, which comes with a semi-large folding poster insert, but it costs amost $10 more. Not worth it.

Finally, the record that nearly ruined Neil Young gets a proper cd release! And what better time than in the current electro-resurgence, retro-eighties new wave craze!!! Every band and their mother are now singing through a vocoder, but Neil was doing that shit 20 years ago!!! And people HATED it. 'Trans' was his worse selling record and had everyone predicting the end of Neil Young. But as always, people just don't get it. This record is awesome (though that opinion is not universal among AQ-staffers, we must admit). The first track starts out like any old Neil Young record, good old rock and roll, lulling you into believing nothing has changed. But track two kicks into future-gear, transporting us to 'the future' of music as it could only be imagined by folks in the eighties. A world of robots and robot cars and 'futuristic rock and roll' where everyone sings through vocoders and all melodies are played by wheedling little computers (or guitars rigged to sound like it). And weirdly enough, it's sort of a dark depressing, melancholy world. The melodies are mostly minor key, the emotions evoked are mostly -not- happy, and maybe the future is not so bright after all. That's part of the charm of 'Trans'. All kitsch value aside, this is a really cool record. With some of these songs, you'd think you were listening to that new Flaming Lips album, maybe. Great songs, catchy melodies, all sort of wistful and morose and sorrowfully dreamy -- in a futuristic sort of way!

RealAudio clip: Computer Age
RealAudio clip: We R In Control
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More jams from grunge's granddad and those crazy Crazy Horse guys. Get past the first song and this is a quite lovely, very emotional, satisfying album.

The marquee on the cover also has Miles Davis on it! And our pal JW says this is better than Les Rallizes!!

Grunge godfather Neil Young has often been a hit or miss proposition, especially lately. That's gonna happen when you've been around for so long and made so many albums, some of 'em of the contractual obligation variety (and others merely misguided)... But we always get at least a little bit bit curious when a new Neil Young comes out. There's always the chance he's gonna bring the heavy amp-worship, as on the quite excellent Le Noise a couple years ago. Plus, this one's with his beloved band Crazy Horse. However, so was another disc of his this year, Americana, which we didn't bother to review 'cause we felt it fell into that "misguided" category - Neil & Co. doing hoary old tunes like "Oh Susannah" and "This Land Is Your Land", really? But we're ready to give Neil and his Crazy Horse brethren another chance, or rather, they've given us another chance, two discs worth. The first disc of which, we'll note up front, starts with a nearly half-hour long track called "Driftin' Back". Basically, what you think of that, will determine whether you want to proceed with checking this whole thing out. Nobody can say that Neil Young & Crazy Horse are afraid of the word "indulgent". You know you're in for some endless jamming, for good or ill. Check out the sound samples, see what you think. Your mileage may vary, as do the lengths of these songs, there's 3-4 minute numbers but also a couple in the 16-17 minute range, along that that aforementioned opening epic. While lyrically this is Neil's typical old fogey hippie getting old stuff, you'll get more out of this from listening instead to the way his guitar swooops and soars, drifts and rumbles. Ultimately, that's the payoff; that sound, that soloing. Thus, some of the Neil Young fans here at aQ were willing to swallow this Psychedelic Pill, and found it mesmeric, but others here might have reviewed it with one of those "McKayla Maroney is not impressed" photoshop pics. Oh, and this IS on vinyl too, but for some reason (and not just 'cause it's of neccessity a triple lp) it's really outrageously expensive. We could probably order it for you if you ask, but we're not gonna get any otherwise.

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During a time of creative restlessness and an ornery disregard for his audience and label alike, Neil Young throughout the eighties tried out several genre exercises with very mixed results. Though looking back on them now, records like the electronic rock album Trans (1982) and his rockabilly mini-record, Everybody's Rockin' (1983) have developed their own peculiar charm, even if David Geffen didn't think so back then (he tried to sue Young for making deliberately uncommercial records). The third of these records, Old Ways (1985), was a straight up country record that fared worse than the previous two. But while the contract dispute was raging on, Young was out on a year long tour with a band of country session greats including Spooner Oldham, Hargus Robbins, Rufus Thibodeaux and Ben Keith called The International Harvesters. While the resulting album was not one of Young's best, this new Archives series release (Vol. 9 for those who are counting!) showcases what a great live band they were, and it shines a brighter light on this grey period of Young's career. While a few tracks were featured on the Old Ways album, he also reworks earlier songs such as "Are You Ready For The Country", and "Motor City" and Southern Pacific" from the critically maligned hard rock album Re*Ac*Tor from 1981, giving them more a honky tonk stomp and chug feel. There's even a reworking of Buggalo Springfield's "Flying On The Ground is Wrong". But for Neil Young enthusiasts, the real reason to pick this up maybe the inclusion of 5 never before released tracks that are all first rate! All in all, a kick-ass and rollicking live set that is worthy of this great archival series. We'd be stocking the vinyl of this too, but for some reason ol' Neil or his management/record company thinks folks should pay $55 for it! Good grief.

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It was tough to not be won over by this one before we even heard it. It's called Damp Circuits, it features a twisted cover with bright Chinese characters over a murky landscape of clouds and lightning, over which an image of a man fiddling with a huge bank of electronics is superimposed, and it's subtitled The Golden Era Of Synthesizers In East Asia, and yeah, it's just as good as all of that had us hoping it would be. Young was a Hong Kong musician and producer who modernized Chinese folk melodies by performing them on (at the time) state of the art synths, adding fuzzed out wah guitar, groovy basslines and whirring organs, the vibe slips from groovy funkiness to woozy exotica, to fuzzy sixties garage to what sounds like a revved up synthesized traditional folk (replete with weird crowd sounds). Fans of Perry & Kingsley, Dick Hyman, and other synth pioneers will FLIP. Listen to the samples and you'll be smitten, here's hoping there's lots more where this came from! On the Sublime Frequencies offshoot sub-label Sham Palace!

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Sometimes you know a record is gonna blow your mind before you even throw it on. Such is most definitely the case with Isophonic Boogie Woogie by Roland P. Young. Heck, it's called Isophonic Boogie Woogie after all! And it's on the seemingly infallible (and impossible to pin down) EM records from Japan who have quickly become our new favorite label, having released Jim Fassett's Symphony Of The Birds, Moolah's Woe Ye Demons Possessed and Sam Moore's MOOOHIEEE! and those are just the ones we've reviewed so far. Plus it's got super tripped out black and white hand drawn cover art, three heads, presumably all Mr. Young, one with a well groomed afro, one with headphones, one with crazy hair that drifts skyward like tentacles, and a third eye right in the center of his forehead, while surrounding the heads are leaves and electronic equipment, and ankhs, and black suns, scorpions, saxophones, sailing ships and cars and pyramids, and a bunch of little Roland P. Young's walking up hillsides, jamming on guitars, getting into cars... you get the idea. This is some seriously far out stuff, and we haven't even heard a note of music, and that's a heck of a lot of trippiness to live up to. Thankfully, Isophonic Boogie Woogie is as weird and as wacked as all the above business would lead you to believe. Originally released in 1980, Isophonic Boogie Woogie was the first realization of Young's unique version of free jazz music, which he referred to as "Afro spiritual minimal electronic space music" which on closer listening is WAY more spot on. Young employs an unlikely arsenal: Kalimba, saxophone, voice, clarinet, electronic bass clarinet, bells, chimes, electronic drones, electronic pulse and electronic accoutrements (!), to craft his spaced out free jazz minimalism. The first track is a warm melodic fugue, woven from the reverberating steel of the kalimba (sounding like a muted mellow version of Konono No.1 actually) with soaring falsetto vocals, before eventually a saxophone joins in, playing soft moody melodies over the rich bed of the kalimba. So nice. Wouldn't mind a whole record of this. But Young has different ideas. The second track is a brief but aggressive blast of solo clarinet, emitting gritty rumbles, a series of droney duck calls, very textural and oblique, and really mysterious sounding. As is the next track, an ominous low end groove, warm distorted and muted melodies, the electronic bass clarinet strangely alien sounding, a groovy jazzy thrum, pulsing and throbbing each note with a strange texture and a bizarre electronic after image that makes the whole thing sound that much more dark and droney. The record's centerpiece (and longest track) is "Loveliness", a 15 minute drift of dense ambient whirs, subtle drones, tinkling chimes, softly struck bells, sizzling cymbals and all sorts of percussive clatter, all beneath a wild free jazz workout, skronks and squeaks and trills, impossible melodies, a tangled free form melodic freakout. Afro spiritual minimal electronic space music indeed! The last track is another long one, with more of that alien sounding electronic bass clarinet, the notes and tones low and rough, with lots of reverbed echoes, the track starts as a thick corrosive drone of rumbling warbling horns, mumbled vocals and all sorts of spacey effects, swooping and swooning, before the clarinet begins to explore its freedom and offers up a litany of strange sounds, from free jazz skronk to percussive patter to playful melodic figures, before drifting back into a droning murky swirl. Some of the coolest, weirdest, most far out free jazz we've heard for sure, and another check in the 'right fucking on!' column for EM! This reissue includes two bonus tracks, one a shuffling funky rhythm, with primitive drum machine over a warm distant sonic glow. swooning sax, like mood music from some long forgotten eighties soundtrack, the other a soft stretch of dreamy mediation music, subtle electronic pulses beneath a swirling wash of moaning horns and shifting subtle tones. Both more melodic and less tripped out than the original tracks but cool nonetheless. Like all the EM reissues, this includes extensive liner notes (all in Japanese, sorry), tons of photos, original album artwork and more.

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Sick electric funk and smoove jazz coexist on this new reissue on local label 4 Men With Beards. It comes chock full of fuzzed out guitar and chunky organ grooves along with slower romantic numbers that veer a bit close to cocktail lounge territory for our liking. Young-Holt Unlimited had hits like "Soulful Strut" for Atlantic and featured members of the Ramsey Lewis Trio. "Oh Girl" was produced by Michael Cuscuna, who produced the Art Ensemble's Bap-tizm (also reissued on 4 Men With Beards), and has string aranngements by Eumir Deodato, the guy who made a disco version of "Also Sprach Zarathustra (2001)" and produced Kool and the Gang. A very slick, jazzy instrumental rare groove classic. ----* ----* Nonesuch Explorer Titles! : ----* We just got the first batch of the Indonesia / South Pacific installment of Nonesuch's Explorer reissues, which total 12 in number. Ten of the discs are from either Java or Bali and just about each one features an entirely different form of gamelan. A Gamelan, as a cursory way of introduction, is an orchestra of primarily bronze (though bamboo gamelan are also common) percussion instruments -- metallophones, gongs, gong-chimes -- and drums. Quite often a gamelan will have a specific repertoire that it is exclusively built for the performance of, and certain ceremonial gamelan are limited to the performance of a single piece. On top of this, throughout Java and Bali there is an ever changing world of both village and court traditions which continue to defy definitions. These discs just in from Bali and Central & Western Java just scratch the surface of gamelan throughout Indonesia, but they're a fine introduction anyway.

[ aquarius records catalogue — Y ]