[ aquarius records — Compilation Split ]

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And another issue of this venerable UK metal monthly. Lamb Of God (meh) is on the cover, but also in this ish you'll find St. Vitus, Burzum, Watain, Behemoth, Tesseract, Down, Paradise Lost, Rammstein, year-end poll results, and some 2012 scouting reports... also, comes with free cd sampler, with tracks from Noctum, RAM, Crippled Black Phoenix, and more...

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

SORRY. Metallica's Kirk Hammett is on the cover, been getting a lot of mileage lately out of his (admittedly amazing) collection of horror memorabila, with a book and all. Then, inside, also: Fen, Dordeduh, Weapon, Graveyard, Von, Destruction, Troubled Horse, Nine Covens, and more. Plus the usual news, reviews, and other metallic goodness. We particularly liked the regular "Mix Tape Mayhem" feature this ish, with the guitarist of Katatonia, who picks the likes of W.A.S.P., Priest, Crue, Maiden, KISS, a man after our own heart. And there's also the usual cd sampler stuck to the cover, too!

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

SORRY. Latest issue of this UK metal mag, stoner rock heavies Orange Goblin on the cover, inside, the usual fantastically varied cast of black/doom/noise/sci-fi/sludge/post metal (and not quite metal) outfits: Voivod, Suffocation, Tomahawk, Satan's Wrath, Septic Flesh, Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell, Cult Of Luna, Exhumed, The Bronx, Enforcer, Ghoul, Andee's new obsession the Chinese outfit Tengger Cavalry (who fuse epic metal with Chinese and Mongolian folk music, including horse hair fiddles, throat singing and more!), Vried, Koldbrann and more. There's tons of reviews of course, as well as a Hard Of Hearing, Invisible Jukebox style listening session with Canadian metalheads Cauldron, and some back page mix tape mayhem from Nick Barker of Cradle Of Filth, Lock-Up, Dimmu Borgir, Old Man's Child, Brujeria, etc. And as always includes a cd sample featuring new tracks from Suffocation, Devourment, Helloween and a bunch of bands we've never heard of including the awesomely named outfits Teaspoonriverneck and Fuckshovel!

Looks like a good issue of ye olde Terrorizer here. Darkthrone on the cover, also Kvelertak, Ghost ("And The Rise Of Occult Metal"), Clutch, Rotting Christ, Spektr, Kongh, Necrowretch and tons more. Including an article about a band called Sabzius, blurbed on the cover as "11 F*cking Hours! The World's Longest Song?!" Gotta read about that. AND, you get not one but two free cds this time, one the usual "Fear Candy" sampler with tracks from Darkthrone and others, the other being an Eastern European metal compilation with a whole bunch of bands mostly new to us.

A monthly metal must-read. Cover star: Lee Dorrian of doomsters Cathedral on the occasion of the release of their final album. Also: Repulsion, Uncle Acid, Carcass (new album coming soon!!), Nails, Meads Of Asphodel, Moss, Taake, and plenty more good stuff. Reviews galore, news too, and as always this comes with a free cd sampler stuck to the front cover.

Brand new split 7" from East Bay pop punks Terry Malts, whose two songs here are just as good as anything on their recent full length, two new blasts of fuzzy poppy punkiness, all crunchy fuzzy guitars, woozy basslines, hooks galore, some rad guitar freakouts and of course those vocals that continues to remind us of Morrissey, or maybe more accurately Morrisey-worshipping punks the Smoking Popes. Both tracks here kill, although the second might be our fave, the vocals taking on a distinctly echo drenched eighties vibe that perfectly suits TM's punky garage pop. Terry Malts share the split with a group called Dead Angle, who we'd never heard before, but who remind us a bit of Veronica Falls, which is a very good thing. Fuzzed guitar jangle, dreamy female vox, a bit lo-fi, with some seriously dirgey breakdowns rife with feedback, and of course hooks a plenty. The second track is all wiry riffs and kinetic rhythms, sounding more post punk than garage pop, but both tracks have us definitely wanting to hear more!

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Ace Of Spades is a cd-r series of live recordings showcasing the intimate acoustic music of a variety of local indie artists. The series so far boasts consistently strong performances from all participants (well played and well recorded at Mama Buzz Cafe in Oakland). The Volume 6 edition was recorded on February 20th, 2005 and features a few songs each from Mike Therieau, Brian Glaze, Paul Panamarenko, James Moore and Monique Lacour.

MPEG stream: Tomorrow's Woman
MPEG stream: Don't Come Messin' Round

What's your favorite TMBG song? "Ana Ng", "Birdhouse In Your Soul", "Don't Let's Start", "Particle Man", "Spider", "I Palindrome I", "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)"? Well, you've got another prime opportunity to figure it out! Yup, here's yet another They Might Be Giants compilation, but it's a much more concise one. Whereas its double disc predecessors "Dial-A-Song: 20 Years of They Might Be Giants" and "Then: The Earlier Years" were a bit pricey and overwhelming, this new collection has somehow whittled their highlights down to one single ultra concentrated cd serving of TMBG bliss. It's still a whopping 29 songs long though! They could've easily called it "The Best Of..." or "Greatest Hits", but dubbing it a "User's Guide" works just fine. It's sorta one step away from those "...For Dummies" or "Idiot's Guide To..." how-to series -- perfect for that rare guy or gal who has yet to experience the assorted pop mastery of the 'Two Johns'. The liner notes even includes an assortment of both relevant and seemingly irrelevant trivia facts and figures. One thing tho', you'll need a magnifying glass to read them. The print is teeny tiny!

MPEG stream: She's An Angel
MPEG stream: Ana Ng

Despite the title, this is NOT a complete compilation of the two Johns' Dial-A-Song answering machine genius. Bummer! I mean, sure, they let us know in the liner notes that almost each of the songs here originated as a dial-a-song, but that's just not the same. Hold your horses though 'cause what this two cd set is is a gigantic, stellar collection of They Might Be Giants' best to commemorate their 20th year together! Bonanza! They kick it all off with a triple whammy of "Birdhouse In Your Soul," "Ana Ng," and "Don't Let's Stop", but the running order of the songs from there on is somewhat puzzling. Seems to be just a big jumble. Definitely not chronological nor alphabetical, but it does come with a hefty booklet filled with photos, discography, lyrics, and band-written essays - all laid out phonebook style. There's 52 songs in all including a handful of live versions as well as their contributions to the television and movie world (for Austin Powers and Malcolm In The Middle respectively). A genuine TMBG fan undoubtably already owns a copy (or two) of each of the albums from which 95% of these songs come, but then again, a genuine TMBG fan is also undoubtably a completist so.... TMBG fan or not, if you like finely crafted eclectic, eccentric pop, this is splendid!

RealAudio clip: Birdhouse In Your Soul
RealAudio clip: Minimum Wage
RealAudio clip: New York City
RealAudio clip: Dr. Evil

Oh the two Johns never seem to run out of wacky ideas, do they?! And their track record is freakishly good. With the skillz of old tyme ad jingle writers they churn out a steady flow of musical nuggets of every shape and color. Even when the concept seems flimsy, the resulting songcraft is so addictively exuberant and just plain well done that any furrowed brows of criticism evaporate into thin air. For their 2004 tour, they got it in their brains to record a tune for each and every venue they played. Ok, why not? They can pen a jingle about pretty much anything! Venue Songs offers up the aural and visual fruits of those labors. Mind you, many of them don't really seem to be 'about' the actual venue. The insertion of the respective venue's name in the lyrics seems like an afterthought or a convenient rhyme. Ah well, it's still pretty entertaining! The cd compiles the resulting songs -- some live and some studio recorded -- plus five additional studio tracks. The dvd presents videos of eleven of those venues, and four more visual treats including a work they did with aQ fave web-based dynamo Homestar Runner titled Experimental Film. The dvd is narrated by a character known as the Deranged Millionaire (aka John Hodgman of The Daily Show, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, and This American Life among other pursuits). Their diehard fans will surely gobble this up in one bite and need another copy post haste. On the other hand, non-devotees may find this maddeningly dorky. As novel, nutty and 'revenge of the nerds' as ever.

We had never heard This Will Destroy You until recently, but we were pretty into it, they do that sort of brooding, post rock epic majesty sort of thing, but they definitely have their own take on that sound. Seems like folks into Explosions In The Sky and that sort of stuff would go nuts for these guys. The two TWDY tracks here, definitely still hew to that Explosions / Godspeed template, but they do some really cool stuff here. The 11 minute "Brutalism & The Worship Of The Machine" begins all shoegazey and blissed out, sort of Nadja / Jesu territory, big heavy drums, and ethereal guitar shimmer, the melodies lilting and minor key, buried beneath the sheets of guitars and what could be buried vocals, plenty of effects and weird bits of grind and crunch, the sound continually growing more and more dense, until the drums disappear, leaving just a slow drift of muted thrum and bits of record crackle, and a barely there melody, which gives way to some super hushed post rocky slowcore, the drums delicate, the rest of the instruments chiming and softly swelling, building there way back up, but this time, they're joined by what sounds like horns, and don't explode in climax, instead just sort of moan and drift wearily, very rainy day sounding, not quite funereal, but definitely wistful, before slipping back into soft effected shimmer. The follow up track, a brief melodic addendum, is a whole different beast, muted melodies, warm rumbles, distant streaks of smeared sound, all laced with some electronic skitter, and more crackle and glitch, giving it a sort of Boards Of Canada vibe. Nice. This Will Destroy You share the split with another band we've heard before but just never gotten around to reviewing, Lymbyc System, whose sound is more of an electronic / post rock hybrid, falling somewhere between Fridge and Four Tet, but with a bit more heft, loping drums, warm organs, glitchy skitter, tinkling chimes, give way to some soaring heavy guitars, majestic melodies, laced with samples and plenty of effects, exploding into a kick ass frenzied mathrock workout for the last minute or two, but never losing any of the melody or dreaminess. The other two tracks explore similar sounds, great production, the sounds clear, the arrangements slipping from hushed and intimate to majestic in a matter of minutes, lots of crunch and glitch and buzz, but also lots of skittery drums, warm riffs, moody drift, some Tortoise-y almost-jazz, a pretty heady concoction that is easy to get lost in. Of the two, we probably lean toward the more muscular and epic This Will Destroy You, but both bands work together well sonically, and thus this split actually almost plays out like more of a proper record than two bands teamed up. This doesn't actually come out for a while, but we lucked out and managed to get a bunch early, so all you folks into post rock and math rock and big guitars and slow building epic post metal drift and skittery slowcore and everything in between, this comes highly recommended.

MPEG stream: Brutalism & The Worship of the Machine
MPEG stream: Processed Spirits

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

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Originally released way back in 1999, this strange split/collaboration was at the time, just about the coolest weirdest black metal (and otherwise) record we had ever heard, a record that really sounded like it was made just for aQ, unfortunately, that was long enough ago that the aQ list was still in its infancy, and thus, this amazing and baffling and brilliant record got short shrift. Just three sentences. But really those three sentences should be enough to convince you: "Emperor covers Thorns songs, Thorns covers Emperor, although it's hard to tell which band is which, a good thing we think. Ends up sounding like a gothic, black metal soundtrack that's been given a John Oswald-style Plunderphonic treatment. The most evil use of Cubase we know of. Bizarre and amazing!!" If there was ever a should-have-been-Record-Of-The-Week, this was most decidedly it. Thankfully, this just got reissued, and with bonus tracks to boot, so it seemed like the perfect time to revisit, and give this record the aQ love it so very much deserves, and heck, odds are lots of current aQ customers might not have been getting our list back in the day, so this is for you, and for anyone who needs (or just wants) a little more than those three sentences... Emperor should need no introduction, they are elite members of the black metal pantheon, alongside Burzum, Satyricon, Mayhem, Immortal, Ulver and Enslaved. Their sound epic and majestic, symphonic and super technical, easily still one of our favorite black metal bands EVER. Thorns however might need a bit more of an introduction. Folks who read Lords Of Chaos, might recognize Thorns mainman (only man!) Snorre W. Ruch as having played a part in the infamous murder of Euronymous, by Varg Vikernes of Burzum. Ruch was with Vikernes that fateful night and was sentenced to 8 years in prison as an accessory to murder. Thorns only ever released one proper full length, and that was not until 2001, well after this collaboration. But this collaboration, wow, not sure where to start, and not even sure how it came to be. It seems it had been years since the very first Thorns demos (not to mention the pre-Thorns outfit Stigma Diabolicum), so this split was intended to introduce Thorns to the scene, in preparation for his upcoming full length, and featured various older Thorns tracks reinterpreted by Emperor, as well as Thorns covering some classic Emperor jams. It was Thorns first new material since 1992, and weirdly enough actually featured Satyr from Satyricon on vocals. So it sounds like a pretty bad ass black metal match up, but it doesn't necessarily explain how goddamn weird it turned out. The opening Emperor track is some strange sample heavy orchestral industrial workout, all looped samples, field recordings, strange metallic clanks, martial snares, moaning horn like melodies, faux strings, bursts of glitchy distorted vocals, frenzied guitars, and a super intense cinematic orchestral outro that leads right into a new version of Thorns' "Aerie Descent" from his first demo, a buzzing midtempo bit of blackness, laced with soaring synths, programmed electronics, definitely that modern Moonfog black metal sound that came to define the label and the scene, there are some strange samples, but for the most part the song is a dirgey bit of black metal buzz, laced with various bits of strange sonic filigree, finishing off with a stretch of church organ, haunting and mysterious. The next track is where it gets really strange, a new Emperor created from various bits of an old Thorns demo, and it begins as a strange collage of weird electronics, backwards rhythms, whispered vox, disembodied guitar buzz, again weirdly industrial, before the black buzz kicks in, but it's all wrapped around that electronic skitter, not to mention some bizarre industrial percussion, the sounds looped and chaotic, changing speeds, the voices processed, skittering and stuttering, laced with rhythmic bursts of static, circus calliope, and then finally a furious blast of looped black metal right at the end. Still one of the coolest and weirdest black metal jams EVER. Next up Emperor tackles Thorns' "Aerie Descent" and it sounds like classic Emperor, epic and majestic, furious buzzing, super intricate and heavy, the drumming incredible, the production massive, the organ outro somehow even creepier here. Emperor go again with "Thus March The Night Spirit", a classical reworking of their classic "Thus Spake The Nightspirit" from their brilliant Anthems To The Welkin At Dusk, and the black buzz of the original is transformed into some Tim Burton-ish soundtrack, all soaring strings, darkly moody and tense, with flurries of rapid fire notes, and soaring strings, no wonder Emperor sounded so majestic. Thorns takes control again, redoing yet another old demo track, a creepy almost industrial sounding crawl, the guitars liquid and warbly, the riff slippery and strange, while a mechanical rhythm plods and creaks, the guitars get buzzier, the song gradually growing more and more blasting and black, but the vocals are weirdly processed, and even at it's pounding heaviest, the song is peppered with strange programmed beats and subtle electronics, exactly the sort of stuff that would end up defining Thorns weird mechanized take on black metal. "The Discipline Of Earth" is a Thorns original, and is the perfect blend of orchestral bombast, technical black metal, and brooding black ambience, again laced with programmed rhythms, swirling FX and electronics, creepy vox, before finally erupting into full on black buzz mode, only occasionally slowing down, at which points the underlying electronics and programming come to the fore. And finally, Thorns finishes things off with a cover of Emperor's "Cosmic Keys To My Creation And Times", a plodding doomy dirge, with huge crumbling chords, strange sung/spoken vocals, thick swaths of buzz, muted Teutonic pounding, all strangely and fantastically mechanical and industrial. In addition to the record proper, this new reissue tacks on three bonus tracks, two pre-production mixes of tracks from the record, and a previously unreleased track, the Thorns demo "You That Mingle May", featuring Satyr again, but also Fenriz from Darkthrone. So totally essential, black metalheads who have somehow made it this far without owning this, right that wrong RIGHT NOW. And the thing is, this record is so cool and weird and varied and textured, that even folks with only a passing interest in or curiosity about black metal, might just find themselves blown away...

MPEG stream: Aerie Descent
MPEG stream: I Am
MPEG stream: Aerie Descent
MPEG stream: The Discipline Of Earth

Latest from split release loving Baton Rouge heavies Thou, teaming up this time around with a similarly sludge minded outfit from Germany called Human Intruder, and as much as we love Thou, Human Intruder come damn close to stealing the show here. Their track begins as an appropriately massive crushing detuned doom dirge, a lurching and lumbering creep, with tripped out, almost falsetto vox wailing off in the distance, but then things switch gears, a second vocal, a more harsh bellowed howl comes in, along side some unlikely piano, and maybe even strings, the sound transformed into something weirdly haunting and pretty, moody and super dramatic, the bellowed vox the only thing keeping this from turning into some sort of epic post rock. The guitars are super dynamic, the riffs dropping out completely, to reveal the hushed melody beneath, before dropping right back in again. The song eventually finishes off with a heavy, groovy, almost southern stoner sludge sounding outro. We have GOT to hear more from these guys. Thou definitely hold their own, while not as weird as Human Intruder, their sound is still pretty sick, a murky, downtuned slithery doooooom, with harsh shrieked vox, the riffs warped and woozy, and way down in the mix, a seriously drum/vokill heavy mix, which suits the insane inhuman screeches, and crazy double kick drumming, pounding and howling away over a muted washed out downtuned churn, a sound way more Khanate than Eyehategod, finishing off a bang, that bang in this case being some punked out metallic noise rock crush. Fuck yeah. Super swank packaging, a 6 panel fold out jacket, held shut by a Japanese style vellum obi. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES.

MPEG stream: Fatal Alliance
MPEG stream: The Butcher's Bill

Holy shit are we glad this thing finally got a much deserved reissue. Originally available as a super limited cassette, the two copies that managed to worm their way into the store were immediately snapped up by Andee and former aQuarian Cameron. Their gain was certainly the rest of the world's misfortune, because some of us couldn't stop listening to Cameron's copy before he jetted off to New York. For the longest time we could only conjure memories of these songs in our heads. Thou's contribution here, the four part epic "Abandoned", is some of the most majestic, beautiful, and psychedelic doom metal to emerge in quite some time. It also manages to be ugly as fuck. But damn, these songs just SOAR, everything is wrapped up in a blanket of ultra dense distortion with glacial drumming and some seriously unbelievable throat shredding goodness, the kind that makes mothers everywhere wonder what would make good boys want to do such things to their vocal chords. Storming out of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Thou follow proudly in the tradition of their sludgey, thick as tar forefathers like Eyehategod, Crowbar, and the rest of the usual suspects, but there's definitely something about these guys that stands on its own, not to mention a pretty heavy black metal influence. While thankfully avoiding falling into an "indie" metal trap, Thou nonetheless successfully incorporates a blissed out melodicism that only a fool would deny. Leech's contribution, an untitled 20+ minute monster of a track, is mighty impressive as well. The band hails from Salem, Oregon, and while we don't know anything about them other than this, it's pretty clear we have some research to do, because you all know how we love our Cascadian black metal. The song winds all over the place with super melodic guitar leads and some great basslines (which you can actually HEAR, unlike many black metal bands). The tortured vocals will definitely hit the spot for anyone digging Weakling, WITTR, you know, that kind of thing. The song is so melancholy, but it just sounds totally unstoppable and out for blood, we really hope to hear more from these guys soon. The classy white record comes housed in a nice looking full color gatefold with a screenprinted poster, a crusty patch, and whaddya know, a free download card. And while it's great having this album available once again, it's still limited to a mere 750 copies with no plans for a cd release, so act fast!

Managed to get a handful of these split tour 12"s when Thrones, aka Joe Preston, was in town recently. This two song 45rpm12" matches up Preston's Thrones with the new-to-us Sedan, who we had never even heard of before, but whose track here kills, a moody broody rhythmic chunk of kick ass post rock, plenty mathy, with big drums, lush thick guitars, definitely sounds like it could be a new record by some nineties Thrill Jockey band, BUT, the group pepper their math/post rockisms with cool stretches of haunting cinematic chamber music, all layered drones and swoonsome shimmer. Pretty great, and unexpected, and has us definitely wanting to hear more. The Thrones side offers up a different side of the Thrones we're used to, unfurling a dark, droney super minimal low end creep, all slithery and gurgly, a rumbling drone that soon reveals itself as being pitched down processed vox, the sound blur into a sort of post industrial black ambience, until the song blossoms into cool melody, but again, those synthy sounding melodies are in fact Preston's processed voice, it's total avant a cappella prog, or something, whatever it is, it's awesomely dirgey and droney and a little bit sci-fi, a tripped out minimal ambient soundtrack that might have some Thrones obsessives on the haunt for heavy scratching their chins, the rest of us can revel in Preston's mysterious dark soundscapery. Probably crazy limited, so not sure if we can get more. Nice cover art too!

Here's the cd version of volume two of My Cat Is An Alien's split series with artists they like. This time that Italian drone duo shares disc space with a band we really like as well, our pals Thuja. A good match for sure. Thuja's track "The Magma Is The Brother Of The Stone" (great title guys!) is an 18 minute improv that segues almost imperceptably into MCIAA's equally lengthy "When The Earth Whispered Your Name". Both are narcotic and nocturnal-sounding, with Thuja's seeming closer to the Earth while MCIAA's drones down from space. Highly recommended to fans of either band!!

MPEG stream: The Magma Is The Brother Of The Stone
MPEG stream: When The Earth Whispered Your Name

MPEG stream: The Invisible
MPEG stream: Horned And Blind

We went a little nuts for the is Richmond, VA outfit a while back, when we reviewed their demo tape. So now they're back, and they still totally kick our ass, with their modern take on sludgy chaotic Amrep style mathy noise rock. Everything we loved on the tape is here in full effect, heavy, crushing drumming, huge chugging bass, ultra tangled riffery, with grooves buried amidst the murk and crush, lots of distortion, howled vocals, crumbling downtuned guitars, it's a sound we miss a lot and so few bands are able to pull it off, but these guys can, BIG TIME. Amrep, Dazzling Killmen, Drive Like Jehu, if that stuff pushes your buttons, you gotta get this (and the tape while you're at it). On the flipside, Brooklyn comb Apeshit also channel some retro sounds, but their sound is yet another one we've been missing like crazy, and hardly any bands can manage anymore. That super spastic, over the top Gravity style screamo, think Heroin, Orchid, Mohinder.... short furious bursts of damaged thrash chaos, loads of feedback, thick swaths of scrape and grind, super lo-fi but still crazy heavy, tons of tempo changes, super dynamic with killer bits of epic drama and speaker shredding blasts of white hot howl and buzz. Together these two bands sound like they must destroy live, the sort of show you crawl from, bruised and bloody, deaf and drenched in sweat, and dying for more. The ultimate noise-rock / screamo tagteam matchup... Gorgeous full color cover, printed insert with liner notes and lyrics, pressed on transparent lavender vinyl. And as all things like this, crazy limited!

MPEG stream: Bounce (Feat. Dr. Dre, Missy Elliott & Justin Timberlake)
MPEG stream: One And Only (feat. Fallout Boy)
MPEG stream: Throw It On Me (Feat. The Hives)

Lucid dreaming and hypnogogic mirroring of a drift towards unconsciousness. These are the goals presented through the electronic experiments from Timm Mason and Cathartech, two artists operating under the banner of conducting a "Sleep Study" through sound. The Seattle based electronic artist Mason set up his modular synths with a series of augmented circuit patches that he manipulated and modified over a series of 10 nights attempting to find a set that mimicked his own dissolve from a waking state into the earliest stages of sleep. While there is a bed of hushed white noise slowly pulsing like a slightly snoring bed partner above a placidly undulated set of sustained sawtoothed tones, this is not the banal, braintuning drivel of much of the '80s / '90s new age and ambient poppycock. Mason's hand-off patches allow for very slow cycles of squelched blurts and whirring clatter to burst forth throughout the piece. Cathartech on the other hand wanted to work within the liminal state of dreaming and being awake, thanks to a holistic recipe of various chemicals, tinctures, and yes stilton cheese (!!!) that promotes the recall of dreams. Cathartech woke himself up after two hours of deep sleep over the course of several weeks to capture whatever automatic writing may come through him in that state and be recorded through his gear of electronics, contact microphones, etc. By comparison to the electronic sequences and sci-fi rigor of Mason's work, this is far more of an abstracted cauldron of drone, smoke, and dislocation not at all dissimilar to those recent collages from irr. app. (ext.). Limited to something like 60 copies.

MPEG stream: Alpha Expansion

This new Tipsy cd is so appropriately titled! The lively festivities feature some fabulous reworkings of their playful trip hop tracks by a bunch of AQ faves from around the globe: Matmos (SF), People Like Us (Kent), Bran Flakes (Seattle), and Optiganally Yours (San Diego), as well as World Standard (Tokyo), High Llamas (London), Curd Duca (Vienna) and nine others. With nutty collage cover art (guinea pigs! green slime! shag carpet!) that'd be just as suited on a cd by Stock, Hausen & Walkman or the aforementioned People Like Us. Very bubbly and fun, for people who don't take electronica without a dose of bubblegum.

RealAudio clip: Sweet Cinnamon Punch
RealAudio clip: Reverse Cowgirl

In spite of sporting a designwork very much like the recent output from Kozik, this split between stalwart prognosticators of the apocalypse Today Is The Day and Kentucky's bass heavy grind core group Metatron is not on Man's Ruin (who did in fact go out of

RealAudio clip: End Of Light
RealAudio clip: The Descent

Some of us are shocked that there's a volume two, collecting still more of the cracked electronic soul pop lo-fi disco of mysterious YouTube phenom Tonetta, but then, there are plenty of folks, like most of us here, that have been waiting for another volume. Why you might ask? Why indeed. Not sure we can describe Tonetta better than we did in the review of the first volume, so probably better to just revisit: "We were trying to find a simple succinct way of describing Tonetta, and decided to turn to the online source for all things freaky, Freakipedia (oddly enough there was no entry for Tonetta on Wikipedia) where Tonetta's entry described him as "an incredibly gay older man on YouTube who dances half naked to songs he pre-recorded. While most of the music sounds the same in his videos, his lyrics largely differ dealing with sexual fetishes such as pissing and pooping, larger women and men, and ass to mouth." Which does pretty much sum it up. Tonetta dresses in strange ripped Flashdance style outfits, g-strings, torn sweatshirts, bustiers, weird masks, sometimes pantyhose over his head, wigs, dresses, whatever, sometimes he's practically nude, he shimmies and shakes, in a diamond shaped frame surrounded by trippy colors, in front of a backdrop that looks like it's probably in his basement, white curtains, a black sheet hung on the wall and/or a bunch of balloons." Wow huh? It's definitely weird stuff, but it's engendered a bit of a crazy obsession among all sorts of music lovers, ourselves included. And you'll know how you feel the second you hear it. The songs are super simple, usually, just one or two parts, drum machines, looped samples, disco basslines, all lo-fi and distorted, alternatingly groovy, psychedelic, stumbling and damaged, tripped out and funky, sometimes a head spinning collision of all of those. The song titles, like on the first volume, speak, well, volumes: "Hot Little Fuck, "G+B Showers", "Rape Victim", "Doin A Dyke Tonight", "Picking On Lennon", "Ultimate Whore", "Daddys Little Boy", "Big Rig", "Death Sentence", you get the drift. It's warped, and bizarre, demented, and weird as all get out, but it's also surprisingly catchy, and a bit irresistible, and while you may scoff now, once you get an earful you might find yourself as obsessed as the rest of us. Don't believe us? Check out the sound samples, or better yet, go watch a few Tonetta vids on YouTube, and then come back for this (and volume one!) when you're ready! Super fancy packaging, thick silkscreeened jacket, each one hand numbered, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, printed full color inner sleeve, pressed on nice heavy vinyl, and includes a cd that features all the tracks on the lp PLUS two bonus tracks.

MPEG stream: Big Rig
MPEG stream: Hot Little Fuck
MPEG stream: The Charge

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

SORRY.

This tireless veteran DJ is certainly no stranger to SF party-goers or regulars to his weekly Red Wine Social. The omnipresent DJ TophOne (psst, not to be confused with the other Bay Area Toph aka Gold Chains!) has released a mix cd-r so that you can take the good times home with you! How 'bout a peek at what he's spinning? It really runs the good time gamut from current locals such as Lyrics Born and Paradise Boys to classic rock Steely Dan, John Cougar Stevie Winwood, Eddie Money and Queen to a multitude of other tracks by other DJs such as DJ Zeph, DJ Shadow, DJ Marz, DJ Smash and Z-Trip. 33 tracks total.

For whatever reason, we never paid much attention to Part Chimp, you think with a monkey related name like that we'd be all over those guys, and listening to this split now, we're sort of kicking ourselves, a cool monkey name AND they shred, laying down some seriously blown out heaviness, a sort of stoner rock sludge, the guitars thick and oozy, the riffs Sabbathy and slow, laced with shredding psychedelic leads, the drums bombastic, everything woven into a serious head caving chunk of head bangable downtuned metallic riff rock, that is TOTALLY hitting the spot. To the point that we might just have to go track down all of these guys records. Cuz both tracks here kill, one a Hawkwind cover, that sounds like the original dipped in filth and supercharged. Note to self: Part Chimp RULE! Ok, now that we've got that out of the way, we can say, that it almost didn't matter WHO was on the other side of this split, and not just cuz they'd be going up against Torche, but also cuz they'd be going up against Torche doing ALL GUIDED BY VOICES COVERS!! And yeah, it's just as great as it sounds, they tackle "Exit Flagger", "Postal Blowfish" and "Unleashed! The Large Hearted Boy", all of which could totally be Torche songs proper. Usually when some super heavy band covers a pop song, we think to ourselves, "why isn't there just a band who actually sound like that, who are crazy heavy, but write killer pop hooks", but in this case, we know the answer, there IS, and that band is Torche. The GBV songs were mini masterpieces to begin with, so when wedded to pounding drums and huge distorted guitars, they turn into pretty much totally perfect pop metal bliss, and we can honestly say, we've listened to these three songs over and over nearly nonstop since we got this in. Maybe Torche will cover Bee Thousand in its entirety. We can dream. Probably crazy limited, and features super cool space ape sci-fi cover art!

MPEG stream: Exit Flagger
MPEG stream: Dr. Horse

We've been fans of Unicorn for a while now, not nearly as long as we've been fans of -unicorns-, but close. On their Playing With Light� record, we began our review with these words: "Goddamn this record is beautiful. We mean seriously beautiful. So beautiful it sort of has us at a loss for words." Needless to say, we sold tons of those, and it remains an AQ favorite (and we'll hopefully soon have more copies, thanks for being patient). So since then we would snap up anything those guys (or that guy, we're not sure) did.� This latest one is no different. Well, no different in that we snapped it right up, but definitely different sounding. At least the first Unicorn track here, a hissy high end drift, all upper register whir and shimmer and skree, what sounds like balloons and compressed air, very strange, but after that it's back to the Unicorn of old, with deep resonant drones, strange electronic glitches, haunting rhythmic loops, really quite beautiful, but Unicorn here are all over the place, the next track is another abstract industrial soundscape of low end whir and rhythmic hiss, some more high end weirdness, then back to more dark droniness finishing off with some super minimal hushed drift. Not as straight up beautiful as the other discs, but way more varied and interesting, intense and unique.� Unicorn are paired off here with Torso, who we had never heard before, but we're led to believe features members of Man Is The Bastard / Bastard Noise, and it sounds like it could be true, Torso's take on the drone is much more raw and abrasive, gritty and buzzy, with the tones blown out and crumbling, verging on power electronics, but remaining just on this side of noise, like a much heavier more lo-fi Niblock, with long drawn out notes layered on top of each other, allowed to pulse and beat and subtly shift and change. Torso also add all sorts of other sounds to the mix, random slabs of distant buzz, electronic crackle, what sounds like a drill of some kind, creepy voices, warbly turntables, bits of found sound, distorted vocals, feedback, all woven into the mesmerizing fabric of Torso's harsh drones. Really cool. Definitely need to hear more.� Packaged in a gorgeous, multi colored, metallic ink, screen printed fold over cardstock sleeve in a thick vinyl pouch. Nice!

MPEG stream: River Grave
MPEG stream: Behind The Field
MPEG stream: Reanimation Case No. 6
MPEG stream: Lanterns On Water

Three boyz. Two bands. Two albums. Toughguy Fantasy is an aural onslaught of noise insanity. Barely keeping up with itself, it's sorta in the vein of Lightning Bolt but with more musical toys and much more disfunction, making for an intangible attack from all angles. Arctic Boyz is the slightly quieter sibling. Still chaotic for the most part, imagine Hella without "songs" with much clattering feedback. Starts off with a slightly middle-eastern flavor, and ramps up into a scratchy non-sensical maelstrom. Features members of Hella, Chrime in Choir, The Appreciation and Holy Smokes: Zach, Carson and Justin.

MPEG stream: Thank Gods It's Friday
MPEG stream: Quanah

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

MPEG stream: Trans Am Megamix
MPEG stream: Oval Megamix

While Troum and their previous incarnation Maeror Tri may be familiar to Aquarius customers, the other two participants in this three way split release, Kallabris and Tam Quam Tabula Rasa, are certainly far more obscure entries from the post-industrial, noise 'n' drone community. With loose connections to the anagramatically complex, post-industrial ensemble Cranioclast, Kallabris detaches from most external references with two lengthy cuts of clinical Minimalism, subduing all sounds into purely concrete ambience. Tam Quam Tabula Rasa hails from the Italian scene of industrial ritualists, which has presented outfits like Ain Soph and Sigillum S. The restrained atmopsheres of Kallabris are again present; yet TQTR situates clanging metallic percussion and death-industrial allusions into the perpetual droning. AQ favorites Troum are in top form on their two lengthy tracks which are clearly the strongest amongst the three. With hissing drones, muffled distortion, and bleary reverberations built from guitars, bass, and source material from Yen Pox, Troum again position themselves as the malevolent doppelganger of My Bloody Valentine, with their beautiful guitar drones creeping into empathically haunting and occasionally threatening references. Limited stock! MPEG Stream: KALLABRIS "Napping" [/audio/kallabrisnapping.m3u]

MPEG stream: Napping
MPEG stream: Finiens

Release number three from local label Voltaire Records, and it's another good one. After the debut from Publicist (aka Sebastian Thomson from Trans Am) and the Affairs Online compilation, which included the debut of Lovelock (aka Steve Moore of Zombi), comes this killer split, featuring Publicist once again, this time teamed up with aQ faves Tussle, with each band offering up one original, and then remixing a song by the other. Tussle start things off with a groovy chunk of bouncy bass driven electro, wreathed in strings, and underpinned by what sounds like blurred pianos, it's a dizzying mix of dancefloor slink, and low slung electro-pop, the production lush and softly psychedelic, the rhythms a bit dubbed out, definitely digging the new sound, and we're excited to hear more. They also take on Publicist's "Hand To Mouth" from the Voltaire 12" and make it their own, pulsing synths, garbled processed vox, even bigger beats, some robotic funk swirled in, what sounds almost like some talk box, seriously propulsive and groovy. Publicist offers up some minimal synthscapery, a stuttery rhythmic bit of clipped synth pulse, over a krautdisco groove, and some thick funky basslines, everything softly distorted and seriously buzzy, the song blossoming into a sort of sci-fi Moroder-ish disco funk groove, with some swirly psychedelic synths and some kick ass robo-vox. And then Tussle's track gets Publicized into something a bit darker and groovier, thick dubbed out bass pulses, wild percussion, all over a churning low end groove and lush swells of cosmic synth, not to mention some weird breathy vocalizations, the whole thing sounding like the music from the credit sequence in some eighties sci-fi fantasy epic. Awesome!

MPEG stream: Soft Crush (Publicist Remix)
MPEG stream: Hand To Mouth (Tussle Remix)

The Snowbringer Cult was a double cd originally released way back in 2008 on the Students of Decay label, and was the first proper cd release from French bedroom drone-psych-folk epic from Natural Snow Buildings, the boy/girl duo of Mehdi Amaziane and Solange Gularte, that double cd included a NSB full length, as well as an album from each of their solo projects, those being Isengrind and Twinsistermoon. That double cd is finally available again, but has also been reissued on vinyl for the first time, with each of the three parts being released separately as its own record. Natural Snow Buildings have been a band since WAY back in 1999, toiling quietly WAY underground, and over the course of the last decade plus, have only really released a handful of records, and in the first 6 or 7 years, they only managed 4 cd-r's and two tapes, the total number of copies of all 6 of those releases hovering at about 250. That's insane! At the time we couldn't help wonder how a band with such a small catalog, that has reached so few ears, could generate so much fanboy freakout?! But that's precisely what happened. And thankfully, and perhaps surprisingly, in the case of NSB, and the two solo offshoots, the hype does not seem unwarranted. The freaking out more than merited. The music of Amaziane and Gularte is definitely something special, much more than the usual generic fx laden droned out abstract cd-r floor-core that seems to be constantly flooding the scene, this duo write actual songs, and create gorgeous soundscapes, they mix raga-like psyche with fluttery folk, deep drones with pristine pop, weaving it all together into something spectacular. Mehdi begins the Twinsistermoon record with a sound that perfectly compliments Solange's Isengrind record (and makes it obvious why the two work so well together in NSB), long drawn out glimmering high end tones, draped over a dark minor key folky strum, and simple percussion, while Mehdi's feminine sounding falsetto soars over the top, all infused with some sort of freaky folky Wickerman vibe. Gorgeous and haunting. That track is followed up by a short chunk of perfect dreamfolk, simple folky strum, and Mehdi's crystal clear vocals, ringing out, pure and impossibly high, if you didn't know better you might think this was some rare track by some lost seventies female folkie. And so it goes, tracks weaving back and forth, from warm washed out blissy dreamy dronescapes, to simple stripped down folk, often the two sounds drifting into each other, cross pollinating, the folk songs short and seemingly serving to separate the longer sprawling expanses of drone and shimmer, the two sounds dramatically different, but somehow complimenting one another perfectly.

MPEG stream: Amantsokan

This new split 7" features a pair of well matched young bands from around these parts -- the Bay Area's Dame Satan and Two Sheds from Sacramento. They're druggy, dusky hued country folks who slink about in the shadows. Their all too brief two songs harken a woodsy winter chill. Can't wait for more! The record is pressed on the palest seafoam green vinyl and is packaged in a beautiful screen printed sleeve.

From the same label that brought us the killer 7"/cd from Spanish electro punk outfit Der Ventilator (reviewed elsewhere on this list), comes this killer split, featuring long time fave US Girls, and new super hyped combo (or one man band, we're not sure), Dirty Beaches. US Girls, aka Megan Remy offers up another fantastic batch of lo-fi psychedelic greywave, all murky and muddy, haunting and ritualistic, a strange drum driven vocal chant starts things off, her voice witchy and warped, all wreathed in a cloud of whirring low end, before the sound blossoms into a weird electronic groove, all minimal programmed percussion, beneath a soft haze of distortion and tangled psychedelic guitars, before launching into the final and longest track, a sort of creepy underwater goth dub workout, that sounds a bit like a more minimal avant lo-fi Zola Jesus, a looped sonar rhythm, Remy's vocals chant like and mesmerizing, eventually the beat and vox are swallowed up by a cloud of electronic squiggles and warped spaced out FX. Dirty Beaches is similarly murky and echoey, but instead of witchy electronic minimalism, he/they offer up a moody croon over a super minimal bit of rhythmic crunch, and some barely audible melody, the sound a woozy, warped bit of washed out drift, the rhythm more like a distant chugging train, a hushed pulse, there seems to be some super minimal guitar too, an almost Johnny Cash bit of low slung strum, but it too is wreathed in murk and transformed into just another warped undulating throb, the whole thing dark and dreamily dubby. Super sweet packaging, full color cover in a thick plastic sleeve sealed with a sticker, pressed on green vinyl with a download coupon too.

MPEG stream: Mah Marie
MPEG stream: Drunk Driving

Lupine Norwegian tricksters Ulver have been around for 10 years now, and mark the occasion with this invitational remix album, something very appropriate for a group whose whole career has been about morphing and reinventing themselves, remaining weirdo outsiders in whatever genre they visit. A decade ago they started out (and still have some residual allegiance to) the Nordic black metal genre, but today we're not sure what genre they claim, certainly it's not metal anymore. Glitchy electronica and downtempo beats took over from buzzing guitars and blast beats, but there's a definite connection between the two as this project proves. Remixers include Ulver themselves (whose track goes way back to their Vargnatt demo tape from '93 for source material) and an international cast of experimentalists: Merzbow, Fennesz, Stars Of The Lid, Neotropic, Bogdan Raczynski, Third Eye Foundation, Information, Upland, Pita, V/Vm, Jazzkammer and a few others. An impressive and unusual line-up, certainly not entirely what we expected. Some do drones, some delve into beat-scapes, while others go for the raw black stuff, such as Merzbow (of course) whose ten-minute "Vow me Ibrzu" is one of the highlights, being a properly scary and noisy trawl through the evil riffage of Ulver's metallic past. Quite a few of the mixes are drawn from Ulver's more recent electronica efforts (Perdition City, the Silence eps, and the Lycantropen Themes soundtrack), but not all -- early stuff from Ulver's classic lycanthropian "Trilogie" of black metal albums (Bergtatt and Nattens Madrigal specifically) makes it on here as well. Several more mixes derive from Ulver's industrial version of William Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell, the double cd that was an early signpost of Ulver's willingness to violate genre norms and musical categorization. Like it says here, wolves evolve... MPEG Download: FENNESZ "Only The Poor Have To Travel" [/audio/ulverfennesz.mp3] MPEG Stream: FENNESZ "Only The Poor Have To Travel" [/audio/ulverfennesz.m3u] MPEG Download: UPLAND "Lost In Moments Remix" [/audio/ulverupland.mp3]

MPEG stream: Only The Poor Have To Travel
MPEG stream: Lost In Moments Remix
MPEG stream: Vow me Ibrzu

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

SORRY. Bootleg (note it's on "Dead Not Found" not legit label "Head Not Found") release of early material by two legendary Norwegian black metal acts, the now so avant garde that they're not black metal anymore Ulver and black metal diehards even today Immortal. Of course back in the early '90s, both bands were True with a captial T: raw, church-burning black metal of the purest sort. Demotape tracks from both bands (4 from Ulver, 3 from Immortal), plus an Ulver song from their rare split 7" with Mysticum. Ulver's stuff melds neo-classical melodicism with lo-fi Burzum-style noise-production, which certainly sets the stage for several of their later releases. Immortal's tracks are EXTREMELY lo-fi, with the Popeye death-grunts being the most audible aspect. Oh, the atmosphere! For fans only, of course (who will also no doubt appreciate the shocking anti-Dimmu Borgir tray-card graphics).

A two hour plus anthology of rare digitally remastered studio clips and live footage by various groups from the archives of Factory Records, Factory Benelux, Les Disques du Crepuscle between 1979 and 1987. Featuring Antena, A Certain Ratio, Josef K, Caberet Voltaire, Section 25, Durutti Column, New Order, Crispy Ambulance, Tuxedomoon, Paul Haig, Quando Quango and many, many others.

Third release we've carried from the Stellar Auditorium, and we said it before, but it bears repeating, how awesome a label name is that. Totally evokes some sort of black metal lazer light show, the kind we used to sneak into when we were kids, but way more grim and buzzy and space-y. Anyway, a few lists back we reviewed the latest from psychedelic black metal one man band Procer Veneficus, and a mysterious Swedish outfit called Underjordiska, whose full length Dystert Vilse we could barely keep in stock. Their sound a warped blend of epic sweeping shoegazey buzz and warbly and raw soft black noise, that definitely hit the spot for all of us outsider black metal obsessives. So we managed to get a second release from those guys, this one a split with the more ambient but equally dark and mysterious Spectral Lore, who just so happens to be the guy who runs Stellar Auditorium, and whose haunting drift definitely compliments Underjordiska's blown out buzz. Although here even moreso, as Underjordiska try something a little more abstract and ambient. Once again, incredible packaging, full color, very striking, but still weirdly, the disc itself remains a cd-r, this one limited to 300 copies, each one hand numbered. Two tracks, one from each band, both 30 minutes plus! Underjordiska is up first, their track begins with the sound of waves crashing, gulls, all beneath a delicate drift of clean guitar, the sounds of the surf soon fade out, while in their place a strange assemblage of buzz and hiss, and spacey effects all swirl and swoop, the sound growing more metallic, more alien, more chaotic, before slipping back into a swirling morass of churning black low end, and softly muted buzz, a droning crawl, laced with bits of crunch and rumble, becoming gradually more and more minimal, until the sound is all hushed and delicate and almost static, barring some delicate melodic fragments drifting through the darkness. The band build on that minimal foundation, finally adding guitars, and creating a sort of stop motion doom-ic black buzz, layers of droning buzzing guitars seeming to hover and slowly drift into one another playing out some grim melody, but very very very slowly, before the guitars slip away, and the track ends with an almost choral sounding outro. Spectral Lore start out with some downtuned guitars, a noisy bit of distorted riffage, making us think for a moment that we may have gotten the two tracks mixed up, but soon those guitars are smoothed out into a deep subterranean crawl, distant shimmering strings, deep low end drift, with the guitars resurfacing here and there, offering up a squall of crumbling crunch or jagged chug, before slipping back under, the distant drones sounding like some sort of Italian horror soundtrack, getting weirdly Goblin-y at one point, before dissipating in a flurry of delay and reverb, leaving just overtones, overlapping and layered, whirring and effulgent, giving way to a weirdly jazzy mini-jam outro, set in a slowly fading sea of hiss, that becomes the sound of water once again, revisiting the first few moments of the Underjordiska track. Both groups offer up truly strange sonic journeys, mysterious, haunting, otherworldly, meditative and tranquil, but unstable, unpredictable, crafting long stretches of dark ambience, muted shoegazey guitars, deep cavernous drones, crumbling blackened riffage, hushed shimmer, all twisted and transformed, and woven into these mesmerizing alien landscapes...

MPEG stream: Part I
MPEG stream: Part II

This killer two band tag team of weirdo whatthefuck outsider Finnish black metal, previously only available on (out of print) vinyl, NOW ON CD!! Here's what we had to say about this split when we first reviewed the 12": The return of our favorite Finnish black metal weirdos Ride For Revenge, who really are barely even black metal, and actually hardly metal, but they are definitely weird, and this latest epic jam definitely does nothing to convince us otherwise. Beginning the ridiculous (and best ever!) title: "Ridiculed By Ladies Of The Moon", the song begins with a long stretch of warbly synth drone, laced with feedback, slowly undulating, while in the background sounds clank and clatter, sounding either like someone building a robot or someone making dinner, this goes on for a while until BLAM, the drums kick in, the synthy/electronic buzz is joined by HEAVY buzzy bass, and the track is transformed into a stumbling bass heavy dirge, the drums super distorted, which is especially noticeable on the bizarre fills, then the vocals, and awesome alien croak, sick and sinister and totally fucking nuts, the song pounds away, the sound gradually becoming a sort of dirgey space goth doom, dramatic and demented, and then there's the last stretch a wild final few minutes, the drums gone haywire, totally chaotic, the buzz intensified, wreathed in squiggles of white noise, and the sonorous clang of metal on metal, either some distant bells, or more likely, the pots and pans from the above mentioned kitchen being hurled about, a twisted and baffling finish to another incredible warped chunk of sonic weirdness from these guys. Which is a lot to live up to for Undor, who decide to not try to outweird RfR, but instead, offer up a sort of sonic analogue, a stretched out midtempo jam, that sounds like just drums and guitar, the guitar riffing away, but occasionally spiraling into some weird bit of atonal squiggle, or slippery abstract melody, or a brief bit of shred, but always returning to the stumbling, lumbering, lurching main rhythm/riff. The vibe is a bit mournful, at times it sounds a bit like Hypothermia crossed with Varghkoghargasmal, the vocals pushing it over the top, a wild hysterical shriek, that in some weird way balances the slightly more measured tone of the rest of the track. But only slightly.

MPEG stream: Sanguis Sacer (Excerpt)
MPEG stream: Ridiculed By The Ladies Of The Moon (Excerpt)

Just one glance at the cover of this 7" should send most doom obsessives into an involuntary frenzy, the weird black and white washed out image, the twisted barely legible writing, so distinctive and immediately recognizable, but this is not in fact a lost record or weird reissue from New York doom legends Winter, but is in fact, the next best thing, two contemporary outfits, tackling their favorite Winter tunes, an homage / tribute to a criminally under appreciated band, especially considering that their sound predicted pretty much all the slow and low heaviness going on these days, and that the sound, and most of the bands that practice it, would sound a whole lot different if it wasn't for these guys, whether they know it or not. Up first are long time aQ faves Unearthly Trance, who add their own twist but don't drift too far from the original, lumbering, lurching, plodding crusty doom sludge bliss, a filthy midtempo plod, peppered with bursts of double kick drumming, guttural vox, and of course twisted tarpit guitar buzz. UK sludge beasts Volition also don't mess with Winter's sound all that much, unfurling a blackened and dense bit of sprawling doom, that more than classic ultra doom, sounds more like a grindcore record played at 16rpm. Both sides rule, essential modern megadoom, and if you've yet to discover the dismal joy of Winter, maybe these two tracks will convince you to track some of that shit down. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, each one hand numbered, and these are the last copies we'll be able to get...

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

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

Ultra limited split between these two experimental black metal entities. Sadness Saturn is one of the guys behind aQ faves Servile Sect, whose most recent release just got re-issued on vinyl via Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace label, and Utarm is a one man band from Norway; the two square off on this split cassette tape. Utarm are up first, and the sound is more doom than black, the programmed drums a monstrous pound, the music a soaring epic swell of synths, not guitars, or maybe they're super processed guitars, either way, the sound is really unique, reminds us a bit of Gnaw Their Tongues, a sort of cinematic depressive blackness, less about blasting buzz, than dramatic lurching mystery, plenty of strangled tortured heaviness, abstract ambience, everything rife with glitch and skree, the vocals a tortured wail, all wreathed in a blackened haze, raw and in the red and super intense and harrowing. Sadness Saturn traffic in something much more raw and grim, unlike the glistening alien drone drenched blackness of Servile Sect, the sound here is a pounding black murk, the vocals and guitars nearly indistinguishable, all wound around each other like a single cloud of muted black buzz, the drums relentless and machinelike, but buried within SS's cavernous lo-fi crush, are haunting melodies, soaring and epic, the riffs, after repeated listens seem to crystallize, become much more intense and emotional, transforming simple black metal into something strangely melodic and abstract, but still plenty black and grim. Incredible packaging, printed black and white fold out covers with the band logos printed in extra glossy black ink, the tape case housed in a hand assembled slipcover, hand screened with a super striking, and super evil sigil. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. We have about 15, probably the last ones we'll ever get...