Thank God for the nerds! The Framework Seasonal series continues with an amazing set of archival recordings from the Derby Tape Recording Club and the Leicester Tape Recording Club. Yeah, you read that right. Tape Recording Clubs! These represented two regional clubs which operated in this little known phenomenon that reached a peak in the late '60s and early '70s with commercial grade technology becoming readily available. Many of these clubs would actually record onto reel-to-reel tape, organizing outings upon which the participants would pool resources in order to collect primitive field recordings of motorcycle races, the howler monkeys from the Paignton Zoo, bowling tournaments, a guided tour from a power turbine... and yeah, there's a recorded example of trainspotting with a young man reading off the line and make of a particular train to the heart of England. Many of these recordings show their age with lots of tape hiss, compressed frequencies, clunky hard-stop edits, and a few bits of blown-out microphone distortion; but, really when is that a criticism here at aQuarius? But the charms of these recordings are not just found in the patina of crackle and flutter; the documented sounds themselves are often accompanied by narration from the various club members. One of our favorite field recordings is the bicycle ride of Leicester's John Buckler, who huffs and puffs his way through traffic noting the fish and chips shop to his left and how out of shape he is from a two minute bike ride uphill. There's a couple extracts from the Derby club's Christmas Party including a spirited round of musical chairs; and another gem is the radio advertisement from the Derby club complete with Derbyshire-ish bleepity electronics and an earnest call to join the club. Library Music enthusiasts will be rapt with joy over these antiquated sounds! What a gem of an album!
As we've noted before, the proceeds from the Framework Seasonal discs go to support the Framework Radio series of broadcasts dedicated to field recordings and their use in composition. Hence, the price.
Here's the sixth in the ongoing cd series from Framework, the weekly radio series hosted by Patrick McGinley (aka Murmer) who defines the broadcasts as a "show consecrated to field-recording and its use in composition. Field-recording, phonography, the art of sound-hunting. Open your ears and listen!" All of these recordings found on the Framework Seasonal series are exclusive tracks, and as on the radio series, McGinley actively seeks out and encourages many emerging sound artists by including their work alongside some of more well known phonographers and sound ecologists. Mathieu Ruhlmann's exemplary piece of tactile slithering only cites amplified medical equipment and debris, with the hushed white noise of rumpled textures reflecting similar sounds from Small Cruel Party and Loren Chasse. One the finest composers of phonography Eric La Casa does not disappoint with his concrete-styled piece of clanging metal, military-installation rumblings conjoined with ominous bursts of thunder and seemingly indifferent field recordings to the tectonic shifts occurring throughout. Chris Whitehead's expressive chemical reactions emerge as small skittering events with echoing reverberations across plates of metal; but with the small interludes from what sounds like a muffled guitar, the piece almost recalls a super stripped down / subdued version of a Michael Morley / Gate track. Kim Walker's slow psychographical collage traces the various sites of sonic interest from the ancient kingdom of Moray located in what is now Scotland. Seafaring birds, oceanic roar, and the sounds of urban din lace this sunny sounding recording. Artificial Memory Trace, Sawako and David Velez take very hands off approaches to their straight field recordings - with AMT & Sawako recording the din of insects in the forest and Velez setting up a microphone inside an empty metal oil drum being struck by branches in the wind. These Seasonal Issues are super limited, and the proceeds of each issue goes towards the continued production of the Framework radio series.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
A quick look at the listing of groups on this super limited triple cd-r collection of songs from France, or about France, or with some sort of French angle, should have most weird music fans freaking out bigtime. All exclusive tracks from tons of AQ faves, including: The Shitty Listener, Quetzolcoatl, Brothers Of The Occult Sisterhood, Silvester Anfang, Heavy Winged, Tom Carter, The North Sea, Taiga Remains, Ashtray Navigations, Uton, The Futurians, Mike Tamburo, Tanakh, Black Forest Black Sea, Ben Reynolds, Volcano The Bear, 6majik9, CJA, The Stumps, Gregg Kowalsky, Fursaxa, Seht, Valerio Cosi, Fabi Orsi, Birds Of Delay, Bjerga / Iverson, Robert Horton and more more more. 3+ hours of strange and magical sounds from all over the world, but all centered around France. From the ultra lo-fi barely audible pop genius of The Shitty Listener, the gorgeous mournful steel string Appalachian folk of The North Sea, the washed out murky drift of Quetzolcoatl, some super spare solo electric guitar drift from Tom Carter, a bit of haunting high end tribal buzz from Brothers Of The Occult Sisterhood, some gorgeous shuffle and twang, slither and creep from Silvester Anfang, an epic druggy slowburning NZ-style krautrockish jam from The Stumps, some whispered crystalline shimmer from Fursaxa and we could go on and on. Varied and expansive, from folk to drone to noise to pound to swirl to buzz to twang...
As with all RuralFaune stuff, meticulously packaged, each one hand assembled, three spray painted discs, rouge, blanc and bleu (the colors of the French flag), housed in a cool textured red and orange wallpaper cover, in a thick vinyl sleeve, with a sticker on the front. Inside is a huge fold out, 2 sided poster insert, with liner notes on one side and a painting on the other, as well as a bunch of other inserts, stickers, a tiny square of paper hand numbered and a "piece of blotting paper impregnated with red wine"!
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. We will NOT be able to get more...
This is another limited cd-r from the mighty VHF, and once again they do it up right. No chintzy photocopied, thrown together bullshit. This cd-r comes in a gorgeous cardboard gatefold with full color images (of a whimsical frog) pasted on the front and
A followup to the recent Broasted or Fried compilation released on the dependable UK label Harmless, FreakOff again collects "Latin breakbeats, basslines, and boogaloo" recorded from 1963 to '73, made predominantly by Puerto Rican Hispanics living in NYC,
Unauthorized remixes of Missy Elliot's "Get Ur Freak On" by Kid 606, Kevin Blechdom, Max Tundra, Posterboys of the Apocalypse, Mortal & Chemist and Kid 666 (uh, Kid 606 again). Sure to go out of print quickly, if not destroyed by Miss E and Elektra's lawyers first. The Kid's "Take The Piss On" humorously plunders in the melody of A-Ha's "Take On Me".
On October 29, 2000, the United States Supreme Court ruled against the appeal of Mumia Abu-Jamal who, unjustly convicted of murdering a policeman, has been on death row for 18 years. This means the governor of Pennsylvania can sign the execution order at any time. The case against Mumia is completely fucked, if you hadn't already heard. Four witnesses said they saw someone else shoot the cop and flee the scene; two witnesses at the trial came forward and said they'd been forced by the police to lie under oath; the obviously-biased judge that has overseen his case from the beginning has sentenced twice as many people to death than any other judge in the country; the list of travesties goes on and on.
If Mumia's life has ever depended on a public, international outcry of support, it's right now more than ever. So this benefit cd is one form of that: an impressive, internationally assembled roster of musicians all contributing tracks, most of them exclusive and composed specifically for and about Mumia. It's really, really excellent music -- a scintillating survey of utterly contemporary grooves -- from wailing reggae to downtempo triphop, righteous and fiery hiphop, dub, and jungle. Contributors include Roni Size, Primal Scream (with Augustus Pablo), Asian Dub Foundation, Fun-Da-Mental, Third Eye Foundation, Zion Train, Smith & Mighty, the Rootsman, Chumbawumba, and so many more.
Double cd with fat booklet containing details of the case, quotes from the Declaration of Independence, Martin Luther King Jr, Rage Against the Machine, Amnesty International, and Mumia himself. And fascinating sections on the Black Panthers, the fucked up US prison system, other political victims like the Rosenbergs and Leonard Peltier, tons of contact and web-related info, and more.
See here for more Amnesty International's detailed and complete report [http://www.amnestyusa.org/abolish/reports/mumia/content.html].
Benefit compilation for Jason Baldwin, Damien Echols & Jessie Misskelley, otherwise known as the "West Memphis 3". In 1993 the three men, then teenagers, were tried and convicted for murder (Damien is currently awaiting lethal injection). The case is pretty heart rendingly laid out in the documentary "Paradise Lost", and if you haven't seen it I recommend it. According to the liner notes, the three "liked the kind of music that's on this CD." Though the producers and artists' hearts are in the right place with this comp, I think that these aren't the satanic rock and roll bands that the town was so upset over, and I don't know that the kids had even heard of Steve Earle, Rocket From The Crypt, Tom Waits, Supersuckers, Kelley Deal, Mark Lanegan, L7, John Doe, Murder City Devils or even Nashville Pussy. But they and more artists appear here to assist in their legal fund, and we applaud that. The tracks are all exclusive to this album and quite a few are covers, of the sort of stuff that Damien & Co. probably did listen to: Kelley Deal performs a Pantera song ("Fucking Hostile"--next to the Carnival In Coal version of this, our favorite Pantera cover ever), Murder City Devils play the Misfits ("She"), Zeke does Iron Maiden ("Wrathchild"), Nashville Pussy busts out some AC/DC ("Highway To Hell") and much more.
Who knew? Back in the sixties, not all the folk singers were left-wing pinko peaceniks. Apparently, there were a few "counter-counter-culture" folkies strumming and singing, in much the same style as the more popular likes of Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, and Joan Baez, but with a reactionary, not revolutionary, agenda. Singing songs of patriotism and anti-Communism, three folk troubadours for the "Silent Majority" - Janet Greene, Tony Dolan, and Vera Vanderlaan - appear here, on tracks from releases circa 1965-'68, that now sound quite quaint and corny, and maybe did back then too. Leave it to The Omni Recording Corporation to come up with a collection like this! It's both amusing (in a kind of Stephen Colbert kitsch sort of way), and of nostalgic, historical interest. Which brings up a point - it helps if you know stuff like what the S.D.S. was, and who Alger Hiss was, to fully appreciate these songs. Though everybody will get the jokes about hippies and hygiene! Many of the songs here are passionate and heartfelt ("Cry The Beloved Country", "Remember Bloody Budapest"); others are humorous, both intentionally and otherwise. Tony Dolan's "Abolish, Abolish!", which is actually in support of the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee, is quite Tom Lehrer-esqe in its tone of sarcastic, ironic humor ("Now it calls the Reds destructive, they're not that at all, they're actually very constructive, take a look at the Berlin Wall"). His "Join The S.D.S." is like that too, with one line being "They're the soiled young men, who fight for liberty / they know all the four-letter words, except S-O-A-P". Har har har.
Definitely an amusing novelty, and perhaps a great gift for some older person who might actually appreciate the sentiments expressed (like, your cranky grandpa who voted for Barry Goldwater?). However, we're not sure how many times WE'RE gonna want to hear a song like, say, Vanderlaan's "Modern Paul Revere", a paean to then-governor Ronald Reagan!! Still, lots of chuckles the first few times through, and of course it's packaged with typical Omni care, including fascinating & detailed liner notes, plus vintage graphics from the original releases by these obscure, conservative folkies. Anyone into the politics and culture of the era, should find this cd both interesting and entertaining.
Another incredible collection from Soul Jazz, this one focusing on jazz from the sixties, seventies and early eighties and how that music, and the lives of the performers intersected with the civil rights movement.
As jazz developed and radicalized in the sixties, African American artists began to rebel against the stereotypical image and role of the jazz musician, reimagining their music, the sounds, looking to Africa for inspiration, turning their back in the mainstream, and approaching their music more as art than entertainment, resulting in some of the most revolutionary music made in America, and producing all manner of musical hybrids as well as all sorts of musical and cultural organizations. The booklet is super informative, and will most likely have you wanting to read and learn more. And the music here perfectly captures all the energy, confusion, turmoil, pain, suffering, anger, despair, sadness, hopefulness and joy of the era. Lots of familiar faces: Archie Shepp, Sun Ra, Joe McPhee, Gato Barbieri, Philip Cohran, Art Ensemble Of Chicago, Joe Henderson, but also tons of amazing groups we'd never heard before. And the sounds are all over the map, straight up post bop jazz, wild skronky free jazz, groovy Shaft style jazz funk jams, wah wah guitars, soulful vox, intense tribal drum workouts, smokey late night grooves, some spoken word, some jazz almost verging on dub, lots of African influences for sure, in the instrumentation, the chant like vocals, the arrangements, some amazing flute action, some seriously intense and unique sounds and songs, and we're now on the hunt for records by most of the artists we heard here for the first time, which is always the sign of a great compilation, and this is most certainly a great compilation.
Gorgeous packaging, with a massive booklet packed with tons of photos and extensive liner notes... a great companion to the rad coffee table book of album cover art Soul Jazz also released under this title, reviewed last list.
NOW ON VINYL! This is part one...
Another incredible collection from Soul Jazz, this one focusing on jazz from the sixties, seventies and early eighties and how that music, and the lives of the performers intersected with the civil rights movement.
As jazz developed and radicalized in the sixties, African American artists began to rebel against the stereotypical image and role of the jazz musician, reimagining their music, the sounds, looking to Africa for inspiration, turning their back in the mainstream, and approaching their music more as art than entertainment, resulting in some of the most revolutionary music made in America, and producing all manner of musical hybrids as well as all sorts of musical and cultural organizations. The booklet is super informative, and will most likely have you wanting to read and learn more. And the music here perfectly captures all the energy, confusion, turmoil, pain, suffering, anger, despair, sadness, hopefulness and joy of the era. Lots of familiar faces: Archie Shepp, Sun Ra, Joe McPhee, Gato Barbieri, Philip Cohran, Art Ensemble Of Chicago, Joe Henderson, but also tons of amazing groups we'd never heard before. And the sounds are all over the map, straight up post bop jazz, wild skronky free jazz, groovy Shaft style jazz funk jams, wah wah guitars, soulful vox, intense tribal drum workouts, smokey late night grooves, some spoken word, some jazz almost verging on dub, lots of African influences for sure, in the instrumentation, the chant like vocals, the arrangements, some amazing flute action, some seriously intense and unique sounds and songs, and we're now on the hunt for records by most of the artists we heard here for the first time, which is always the sign of a great compilation, and this is most certainly a great compilation.
NOW ON VINYL! This is part two...
Another incredible collection from Soul Jazz, this one focusing on jazz from the sixties, seventies and early eighties and how that music, and the lives of the performers intersected with the civil rights movement.
As jazz developed and radicalized in the sixties, African American artists began to rebel against the stereotypical image and role of the jazz musician, reimagining their music, the sounds, looking to Africa for inspiration, turning their back in the mainstream, and approaching their music more as art than entertainment, resulting in some of the most revolutionary music made in America, and producing all manner of musical hybrids as well as all sorts of musical and cultural organizations. The booklet is super informative, and will most likely have you wanting to read and learn more. And the music here perfectly captures all the energy, confusion, turmoil, pain, suffering, anger, despair, sadness, hopefulness and joy of the era. Lots of familiar faces: Archie Shepp, Sun Ra, Joe McPhee, Gato Barbieri, Philip Cohran, Art Ensemble Of Chicago, Joe Henderson, but also tons of amazing groups we'd never heard before. And the sounds are all over the map, straight up post bop jazz, wild skronky free jazz, groovy Shaft style jazz funk jams, wah wah guitars, soulful vox, intense tribal drum workouts, smokey late night grooves, some spoken word, some jazz almost verging on dub, lots of African influences for sure, in the instrumentation, the chant like vocals, the arrangements, some amazing flute action, some seriously intense and unique sounds and songs, and we're now on the hunt for records by most of the artists we heard here for the first time, which is always the sign of a great compilation, and this is most certainly a great compilation.
New all-American installment in this electronica compilation series, with contributions from Yankees like Tipsy, DJ Spooky, Sub Dub, DJ Wally, Thievery Corporation and others. Studio K7, by the way, is Kruder and Dorfmeister's new domestic imprint, so it's all stuff they like.
Another in the series featuring Tipsy, Kreidler, Andrea Parker, Pan Sonic and Alan Vega, Ryuichi Sakamoto and many more.
"Frequencies [HZ]" is a musical compendium of an exhibition of sound art curated by the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, Germany, and acts as a Readers Digest / K-Tel anthology of the "who's who" in the current global community of experimental / noise / minimal / glitch music. Here, you get 28 two-minute tracks from a ton of artists including Achim Wollscheid, Marc Behrens, Alva Noto, Christophe Charles, C.M. von Hausswolff, Cyclo, Ekkehard Ehlers, Errorsmith, Farmers Manual, Frank Bretschneider, Hecker, Mainpal Inv., Marcus Schmickler, Merzbow, Monolake, Opiate, Pan Sonic, Pita, Pomassl, Random Industries, Richard Chartier, Ryoji Ikeda, Senking, SND, Steinbráchel, Stephan Mathieu, Thomas Koner, and Ultra-Red. Limited to 1000 copies, and packaged in an artful styrofoam package designed by Carsten Nicolai.
Another double disc jetsetter extravaganza compiled by the one and only DJ Tom Thump. This one is infused with the influences of Latin and African sounds and features a mix of familiar faces and newcomers -- Ocote Soul Sounds as remixed by Thievery Corporation, Romanowski, Aloe Blacc, John Beltran, Patato Valdes, Do featuring Omar Sosa and Greg Landau, Bobi Cespedes, Dtek, Zeb, 4Hero with Hector Calderon, Osunlade, Combo Moderna with Gerardo Frisina, Fort Knox Five with Mo'Horizons and many more!
Brand new Lo Records compilation, this time for an unbelievably low price of $6.98. Exclusive tracks from the likes of Kid 606, The Remote Viewer, Hrvatski (excellent track), Rothko, Ceefax, and much more. At 21 tracks in length, the price is right.
If you think you don't know Bread's music, think again. It might just be that you don't know the name of the artist behind that old tune you know and love so well. Many of Bread's songs have become so much a part of the day-to-day (let alone Musak'd ad nauseum), that song credits are seldom mentioned.
Who doesn't know the '70s tear-jerkers "If", "The Goodbye Girl", "Everything I Own", "Make It With You" or the puzzlingly titled "Baby, I'm A Want You" by this band? Do you remember, as Cup does, that there was even a non-Muppet puppet performance set to that song on the Muppet Show!? Well, it seems there's plenty of other folks who have a fond Bread memory or two or three too. '70s nostalgia is here with a -- albeit gentle -- vengeance, and Bread were definitely a soft rock staple of that decade. Sure those songs that we heard on AM radio back then were as vanilla as can be, but you have to admit the popcraft is still the sweetest something to behold. Main songwriter David Gates skillfully captured the weepy lows of love lost or unrequited. Oh so much yearning and heartache! This tribute kicks off with Josh Rouse doin' his best Gates impersonation on "It Doesn't Matter To Me". Following him are much less faithful but still very respectful covers performed by Kings Of Convenience's Erland Oye ("Friends & Lovers"), Call And Response ("Baby, I'm A Want You"), Oranger ("Make It With You"), Paula Frazer ("Everything I Own"), The Moore Brothers ("Look At Me"), Parchman Farm's Eric Shea with Bart Davenport ("Goodbye Girl"), Mojave 3's Rachel Goswell ("If"), Emily Sparks ("Too Much Love"), Cake ("The Guitar Man"), Holy Sons ("The Last Time"), Dambuilders' Dave Derby ("I Use The Soap"), and the Posies fellas Jonathan Auer and Ken Stringfellow doin' one song each on his own ("Games Of Magic" and "Down On My Knees" respectively). If you're too young to have experienced these songs firsthand, you might still wanna give this comp a listen 'cause it offers shining examples of fine pop artists present coming together with fine pop songs past.
The annual all-day Frisco Freakout psychedelic festival has happened on two occasions so far, most recently earlier this month and also back in October of '08. Perhaps you were there! You shoulda been, it was a great show, both years. Co-sponsored by KUSF radio, Arthur Magazine, and yours truly Aquarius Records, and organized in part by Ripley from Wooden Shjips, the Frisco Freakout benefits Creativity Explored, a worthy cause right here in the Mission, where developmentally challenged adults get to express themselves artistically (and make amazing art they do!).
This year at the festival, there was a limited edition compilation cassette for sale featuring a selection of live performances recorded at the first Freakout. We scored a few copies - and are selling 'em for what we paid for 'em, $5 each, all of which goes to Creativity Explored. They only made 100 tapes and we of course just have a handful, when they're gone they're gone, so first come first served, and sorry if you don't get one.
There's songs here from Crystal Antlers, Art Lessing, Wooden Shjips, Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound, Ascended Master, The Bad Trips, Greg Ashley, Sequin Trails, and Earthless (who's track is an excerpt 'cause of course an entire Earthless jam would have probably filled a whole side of this tape!).
You know that guy with the Grizzly Adams beard you're always seeing skating down Valencia 'n dumpster diving outside Ti Couz? That would be the world famous artist that AQ knows as nice Mr Chris Johansson, who has single handedly released this double disc set featuring almost 50 of his favorite Bay Area rockscene bands (many of the tracks live). Everyone from Coachwhips to Caesura, Touched By a Janitor, Vetiver, Mr and Mrs Evil, Tarentel, Veronica Lipgloss, Trackstar, Total Shutdown, Quails, Troll, Erase Errata, A Tension, Tussle, Virginia Dare, Zmrzlina, Aislers Set, Tommy Guerrero, Crack W.A.R., Sonny Smith, Zeigenbock Kopf, Deep Throats, and so many more.
As with most comps meant to survey a local scene, this is a mixed bag, but there's tons more good stuff here than bad, and it's a real good way to taste what the local scene has to offer if you're not one of those folks that goes out to hear live music all the time. An exciting listen.
Double disc foldout digipack features artwork by local artists Jo Jackson, Chris Corales, Tony Cox, Dave Schubert, many more, but not, as far as I can tell, any of Johansson's stuff.
A remastered reissue of this compilation of word and sound from 1980! The title might be From Brussels With Love -- the city where the original release's label Les Disques Crepuscule was based -- but the contributions are by artists from well beyond that city's limits drawing from comrades in Manchester and London (many from the Factory Records camp). It features many wellknowns, soon to be wellknowns and certainly more obscure artists from back in the day: John Foxx, Thomas Dolby, Repetition, Harold Budd, Durutti Column, Martin Hannett, Michael Nyman, Phill Niblock, Richard Jobson, Bill Nelson, Kevin Hewick, New Order, Radio Romance, Gavin Bryars, Der Plan, B.C. Gilbert and Graham Lewis. Along with the music are included two interview clips with Jeanne Moreau and Brian Eno. The latter is layered with Niblock's gently droning "Third Trombone". Although it does come with a 20 page booklet, unfortunately this new cd version doesn't come with any special packaging unlike the original cassette release which purportedly came in a PVC jacket with a badge and booklet. A very cool and incredibly varied historical document.
BORIS BORIS BORIS BORIS BORIS. Okay. Just wanted to get the attention of all you freaks who can't get enough of Japan's mighty Boris (and we know there's a lot of you, since we can't seem to keep any Boris in stock for more than two seconds!!) And since
A rare occurrence happened the other day when LA producer and promoter Andrew Lojero came by the shop selling this collection he put together of underground L.A. artists from the hip and difficult-to-classify hybrid genres of soul, jazz and electronica. We recognized a few of the artists such as the Madlib produced Yesterday's New Quintet and Sound Directions as well as Flying Lotus and Georgia Anne Muldrow, so we bought a couple and when we put it on in the store, two people came up and immediately bought both copies we had. Sensing a hit on our hands, we called Andrew up while he was still in town and ordered a bunch more and it has been selling rather steadily without much assistance from us. But we're listing it anyway, because it's really, really good.
Not so much a compilation as it is a collection of specially made tracks that showcase the sunny multifaceted vitality of the urban LA scene. Tripped out broken beats, lounge-y interludes, jazzy R&B inflected grooves, sometimes edgy, sometimes mellow and all sounding remarkably fresh. Along with each track, Lojero asked contemporary LA artists to design a unique piece of art, all of which are featured in the accompanying booklet. 17 tracks of blissful awesomeness awaits you. Don't hesitate.
Originally released as a series of SUPER limited split vinyl eps, a 7", a 10" and a 12", each teaming up bizarre mysterious French black metallers Malicious Secrets with some of their more well known countrymen: Antaeus, Mutiilation and Deathspell Omega. Holy shit! You might as well stop reading right now and order one of these as fast as you can. You shouldn't even need us to tell you how totally fucking mindblowing this comp is. Antaeus offer up a short buzzing blast of ultra grim blackness, a fuzzed out blur of droning black metal, downtuned guitars, blown out lightning fast blast beats, guttural growls, the whole thing a white hot lo-fi blast of utter brutality. Then of course there's Mutiilation, who not only offer up a reverb drenched burst of atmospheric blackened buzz, also super lo-fi, blasting and buzzing, and hauntingly creepy crawly like it was recorded in a cave or at the bottom of a well, but they also do a cover of Sinatra's "My Way"! But you wouldn't necessarily know it, the croonsome orginal becoms a harsh ptichfork to the head, dripping with thick droney guitars and shrieking black howls, although it does have a super cool, riffy sort of un-metal breakdown in the middle. Most of you will need this for the final track, a brand new, exclusive to this comp 20 minute epic from Deathspell Omega, rife with impossibly obtuse riffs, weird atonal guitar skree, super complex rhythms, haunting ambeint dronescapes, weird math-metal breakdowns, and of course some of the fiercest fucked up black metal ever. Woah.
As if that weren't enough, let's not forget the three tracks from Malicious Secrets, each of their three tracks from the splits are totally dizzying swirls of ultra fucked up, BIZARRE black metal, riffs are bent and twisted into impossible shapes, blasting drums are sprayed wildly all over the place, each song is a serpentine, non-linear sonic mindfuck, a huge spastic black churning whirlpool, with little bits of riff or little streaks of blast beat surfacing now and again, while over the whole thing the vocalist moans and groans, low and haunting, each syllable stretched into long drawn out bellows, sometimes breaking into hacking coughs or throat clearing before once again returning to an utterly agonizing wail. So totally fucked up and so totally amazing!
If you dig the two New York Noise comps that Soul Jazz released recently, here comes another comp that is an absolute must have. While the Noise on those aforementioned comps actually leaned more towards the rhythmic and even dancy side of the early 80's NY scene, the newest installment in the Kitchen Archives series gets a little more down and dirty. It kicks off with two very rare versions of early Sonic Youth tracks the first featuring lyrics, vocals and guitar contributed by Michael Gira! (Swans, Angels of Light, Young God Records), then Swans jump in with two tracks of their own, from back in their pre-Jarboe existence. Then it's Arthur Russell time! We can never get enough of the totally wild and wide range of sounds Russell created in in his all too short life. His tracks here focus more on his no-wave minimalist, rough around the edges and completely haunting sounding as opposed to his later dancefloor leanings. And no comp focusing on early '80s sonic exploration in NYC would be complete without Christian Marclay whose turntable manipulations would foreshadow so much of the 'turntablism' and experimental music in general that was to follow in the upcoming decades. Rhys Chatham represents with his classic "Guitar Trio" and the disc is rounded out by a free jazz influenced rock-out track by Elliott Sharp. Another totally tasty slice of that early '80s NY underground that we can't stop eating up.
Compiled by the venerable Country Music Foundation, this features Ray Charles, Ivory Joe Hunter, Al Green, Charley Pride, Aaron Neville, Ted Hawkins, Stoney Edwards, Professor Longhair, Etta James, Joe Tex, Leadbelly, the Supremes (!), Wynonie Harris, Solomon Burke, and a host of lesser known black country music musicians.
Would you rather fight than swish? If so, we think you may be protesting too much, as this compilation of gay themed tunes contests. This hilarious and thankfully varied comp from the fine folks at Trikont showcases the prevalence of "the love that dare not speak its name" in songs from the early sixties to the late seventies. Starting with Jose Saria (aka. The Widow Norton) who held court at the Black Cat in San Francisco in the 50's and ending with Sylvester's uplifting Disco classic "You Make Me Feel", the 24 songs here range from novelty tunes ("Florence of Arabia"), spoken word (Rod McKuen!) queer subtext in songs by "straight" bands (The Kinks, The Ramones) and just rare and amazing songs by Curt Boettcher, The Twinkeyz, and Black Randy & The Metro Squad that are well worth the price of admission no matter where your proclivities lie. Check it out, we won't tell.
Extensive liner notes in both English and German.
The second volume to Black Horizons' tribute arrangements for the films of Ingmar Bergman sports the same oversized jewel case as the first. So, we'll reiterate what we mentioned about the packaging on the first volume: Black Horizons has packaged this in an extra-large oversized plastic clamshell that fits all three cassettes comfortably inside. Yeah, it looks really sharp, but the problem with this plastic housing is that if you break this case, you will NEVER find a replacement.
Onto the musical program, Black Horizons has commissioned a number of artists to score particular scenes from Bergman films, which are annotated with the specific time from said films so you could scrub through Passion Of Anna or The Seventh Seal and sync up the tape. Nope, we're not going to do that... instead we'll dig into the tapes themselves. Micromelancolie & Sindre Berje are sporadic collaborators from the Northern regions of Europe, offering an industrial meditation of grey din and emptiness pocked with incidental squalor and threatening avian calls. The Southern Californian outfit German Army churns a hypnotic set of voodoo rhythms and esoteric chants. L'Acephale seems to actually use the Swedish dialogue from The Seventh Seal alongside a melancholy neo-folk strum that slips from one depressive motif to another before launching into a burst of wintery black metal for one of the highlights on this compilation. We're gonna have to assume that the hauntological / grimly cinematic cello thrum of Head Dress is an entirely different project than the one who crafted acid-fried excess for No Quarter and Mexican Summer. Nice stuff, though! The enigmatic Spettro Family swirls synths, spells, and spooky FX that have much more of giallo / Goblin feel than anything else on these tapes. And the final entry comes from Night Worship, a thoroughly unknown drone project that grafts luminous tones from voice and trombone to bunker quality drones and rumble. Limited to 150 copies!
First things first. If you buy this, by all means protect the clamshell casing with your LIFE! Black Horizons has packaged this in an extra-large oversized plastic clamshell that fits all three cassettes comfortably inside. Yeah, it looks really sharp, but the problem with this plastic housing is that if you break this case, you will NEVER find a replacement. We'll take great care to enshroud this boxset in plenty of packing material for all shipments outside these doors; but the fragility of such a plastic case speaks to the benefits of modular design (e.g. the standard jewel case and the standard clamshell).
That said, Black Horizons presents a ponderous collection of doom-laden electronics, crusty dirge-metal, and ash-smeared drones all done as musical arrangements for the films of Ingmar Bergman, with contributions from Persistence In Mourning, Fear Konstruktor, Swamp Horse, Terence Hannum, Ryan Unks, and King Dude. Persistence In Mourning opens proceedings with a creaky, crusty neo-folk passage whose waltzing melodies across acoustic instruments lashes plenty of scabrous scrapes across the violins that's much more Alastair Galbraith than Tony Wakeford, before the outfit settles into a lo-fi apocalyptic doom dirge laced with piano and compressed feedback. The Russian dark ambient outfit Fear Konstruktor follows the snaking shadows that Cranioclast proposed as the cryptic soundtracks to private rituals. Josh Lay is one of the characters creating the blackened minimalism and wild-eyed stasis for Swamp Horse, very much akin to the recent KTL recordings. Locrian's cofounder Terence Hannum takes up the flip of this cassette with two slow-burning black ambient crescendos rising out of elegiac melodies and thickened downtuned walls of crumbled distortion. Ryan Unks, formerly of the grindcore band Creation Is Crucifixion and the pummelingly malevolent Human Quena Orchestra, dials into the spooky synth vein with a numbing drone setting the stage for serialist / radiophonic tone clusters. King Dude rounds out the compilation, loosening up for something far more shambolic in his doom-folk oeuvre, with sweeping atmospheres, wintry pagan drones, wordless chants, and a melancholy acoustic guitar strum girding the proceedings. Not quite Douglas P meets Elvis P (as is the formula for his previous albums), but this long form suite serves King Dude very well. LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!! All three tapes housed in the aforementioned triple cassette case, and wrapped in a super striking, black and silver ink-ed oversized J-card.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Experimental hardcore, power violence, noise, crust, etc. comp--starring Amps For Christ, Bastard Noise, Bullet In The Head, Drop Dead, Lightning Bolt, Men's Recovery Project, Rubber O Cement, Tit Wrench, and many others.
Cup has been raging about it for months. Allan finally got a hold of an import dvd of it (and a t-shirt!). Andee's just about to watch it. And we've got the import soundtrack compilation in stock now!
Sooo, what's with all the hubbub?! Well, the center of attention is a mockumentary indie film which may be described as "Driver 23" meets "Heavy Metal Parking Lot" meets "American Movie", but... Canadian. It's all about the tragicomic misadventures of two Molson-chugging burnouts (think a Canadian Bill and Ted, ten years older and wasted most of the time) spewing stoner wisdom like "turn up the good, turn down the suck!"
If that piqued your interest (or not), give the following news a moment's ponder too...
This cd contains a couple of extra special songs performed by AQ ultra-fave Canucks the New Pornographers *and* Sloan (psst, they even do a Rush song)! This very well could be the only peep you'll be hearing from those NPs until they unleash their new album sometime next year, and who knows when we'll be hearing from those Sloan boys? So if you need your fix... FUBAR is where it's at! It's also where you'll find NoMeansNo, Chixdiggit, The Sweet, Girlschool and more. For the most part the concept here is Canadian indie/pop punk bands doing covers of Canadian rock/metal classics from the past: thus, NoMeansNo does Neil Young, GOB tackles Kick Axe's "Heavy Metal Shuffle", Sum 41 performs the Helix anthem "Rock You", while other bands cover April Wine, Loverboy, Toronto, BTO, etc. And lets not forget he-man Canadian metaller Thor (a wonderfully tongue-in-cheek 80's relic himself) doing the film's catchy theme, "FUBAR Is A Super Rocker". Throw in some originals from Creeper (loser metal band of Fubar star "Dean") and some out-of-context dialogue from the film, and what other album could possibly be more fun and surreal?? ...Know what else? These filmmakers received funding from the Canadian government to do this. Fill yer boots, eh!
Finally as a little aside, we'd like to clarify that the Aquarius Records who released this compilation is not us, but a Canadian label with the same name. But, unlike most things on their label, we'd be proud to have put this out ourselves if we were a label... Canada + Comedy + Metal + The New Pornographers + Helix + Thor + Sloan + Kick Axe = Aquarius Record of the Week Big Time!!!
What the hell am I listening to? That's the reaction to a few minutes spent with this comp in the cd player. It's a very weird mix of stuff! Fujirekodsu is a new label set up by Tokyo's Cha-Bashira and Cologne's A-Musik labels to release unknown and unusual music from Japan and Europe (and all the artists on here, Japanese or not, either live or have spent time in Japan). This new label/project has received some assistance from the Tokyo record shop Los Apson, who some might recall released a bizarre compilation of their own back in '96 or so. We are told that this is sort of part II of that, and it is equally crazed. Don't get the idea that this is your typical Japanese noise thing, as it's not particularily noisy in the Merzbow sense; rather, there's a lot of different musical styles on here, including electronic groove, installation sounds, "actionism", lo-fi pop, and odd glitch-works. Nothing remotely ordinary however. Some of the names involved (a few that folks might know, but not many!): Why Sheep?, Smurf Otoko Gumi, Susumu Yokota, Christophe Charles/Brandon Labelle/Steve Roden, Q of Q, Noise Ramones (Eye and Yoshimi of Boredoms), Evil Moisture, Hair Stylistics, AOA, Rudolpf Eb.er, Nagata Kazunao, Tennessees, American Cherry, Tapes Klar!, L?K?O?, Vagamoron, many more. There's 29 tracks of this insanity. Pretty cool!
Awesome collection of singles originally released as 12"s in Man Recordings Funk Mundial series. This is chock full of high energy Baile Funk done so totally right! Daniel Haaksman who started this series has a great ear for the best of the bangers, so it's kind of like getting someone to cut the weaker stuff out and hand you sixteen of the most sizzling, grooving thrillers that have come out of the Baile Funk scene over the last few years.
We were only familiar with a few of these artists like Crookers and Chancha Via Circuito but all the new artists to our ears for sure have been making us shake our stuff. Mixing elements of tech, hip-hop, booty bass, rave culture, all with a frenetic energy that's so damn infectious. We love how this scene seems to be mixed equally with fierce females and charismatic males. While still full on crazy fun, these tracks come off a bit more musical and memorable then the tracks on the Rio Baile Funk comps put out by Essay, we still love those comps but right now Funk Mundial is giving us the goods in a way we can't resist!
Mixmaster of the moment DJ Spinna shows his impeccable taste in "rock breaks and guitars for funky people" with this compilation (put together by Spinna and Monty Burns). The '70s ride again with the choice cuts found here: tracks by Sly Stone ("Trip To Your Heart", which you'll recognize from its sampled use by LL Cool J on "Mama Said Knock You Out"), Santana, Herbie Hancock's Head
For all the stereotypes about how serious and rigid German culture is, we love how so many compilations in recent years have revealed just the opposite, revealing how damn fun and playful so much of the music bursting out of Germany during the '60s and '70s really was. We're talking full on go-go kaleidoscopic cocktail party galore! Much in the spirit of like minded compilations like The In-Kraut series and Disco Deutchland, Funky Frauleins puts its fun focus on the colorful groovy, funky, and disco sounds of the beat queens of Germany from 1968-1978. Just as fun, sassy and spirited as their French go-go counterparts but very much in the '70s with instrumentation that would sound right at home on a game show, in a porno, or even especially at a full on dance party. We only knew a few of these ladies: Su Kramer, Hildegard Knef and Caterina Valente, so we were introduced to a bunch of other super fun vixens. The booklet offers up great photos and bios of all the artists. This is one of those turn off your brain and step into a sweet and delicious cocktail haze kind of records. And we love it.
A '70s funk/soul rarities comp called Funky Funky Detroit has gotta be good, right? Or, to put it another way, it had better be good! And this one sure enough lives up to the Motor City's reputation for funk supremacy. It's a collection of rare and unreleased tracks from the vaults of the Big Hit, Northern and Sport record labels, circa '67-'78. Big Hit and Northern were both owned by Johnnie Mae Matthews, a talented Detroit soul veteran also responsible for the production and quite a lot of the songwriting on the cuts found here. She also was the mother of Kaiya and Artwell Matthews, musicians who co-founded what seems to have been a pretty bad-ass funk band called Black Nasty, based on the six tracks they contribute here. Along with Black Nasty, this 17-track comp includes such artists as The Dramatics, Little Daddy Walton, Herbie Thompson, Calvin Williams, and Lynn Day -- with Black Nasty backing up some of these singers as well. So it's quite a funky family affair documented here. For fans of the funk, definitely worth checking out, especially if you liked that Midwest Funk comp we reviewed a while back on Jazzman. Good stuff to get down with.
We wouldn't really consider ourselves experts on the early 70's funk scene in New Orleans but after getting schooled by this comp we can say we like how it sounds a whole lot! With a collection of soul/funk pleasers from 1969-1973 this is the kind of comp that once you press play all of a sudden your body start swaying and your head starts boppin. With not a stinker in the bunch you get a great glimpse of what it might have been like to be hunkered down in a dark seedy New Orleans nightclub in 1971 while groups with names like Brotherhood, Trick Bag and The Brothers Two, offered up some nice down home, funky funky stuff.
We're so thrilled that the Strut label seems to have come out of hiding recently with not only another great Disco Not Disco comp but now this highly essential collection of jammers from The Compass Point studios in the Bahamas as well. Compass Point was where Chris Blackwell of Island Records fame held court with a house band and production team spearheaded by Sly & Robbie. This collection brings some of the tightest and catchiest jams recorded at Compass Point from 1980-86. Whether it's Grace Jones, Talking Heads, Lizzy Mercier Descloux, Gwen Guthrie (mixed by Larry Levan!), Ian Durry or Chaz Jankel, they were all reaching a creative and grooving peak during this magical era inside Compass Point. While Sly & Robbie have lent their skills to thousands of songs this batch really demonstrates that when they were at their best, those guys helped cultivate a whole new sound and feeling that brought elements of dub and Jamaician roots into disco, soul, funk and new wave.
We can't get enough Funky Nassau, just about every single day since this has arrived whoever's been working up front has been blasting this like crazy (if you've been in lately and now have the lines "I'm Spasticus! Autisticus!" stuck in your head, that's why!) and we're pretty sure this will start getting some heavy rotation on your stereo as well. So damn good!
Funky compilation of turntablism, hip hop, soul, and more, all to benefit music education in urban public schools. Featuring Cut Chemist, Jurassic 5, The Beat Junkies, Ozomatli, Black Eyed Peas, Divine Styler, Aceyalone, and others.
One can always count on Johnny Trunk of the amazing Trunk records for making a mix that is as hilarious and head-scratching as it is beautifully listenable. When asked by strangers what kind of music his label releases, Trunks's response is usually, "you know, funny old shit", which if you think about it is the perfect response to describe the kinds of audible curiosities he reissues, from long forgotten children's TV show soundtracks to obscure novelty records and forgotten jazz greats. A few of the tracks included here are from earlier out of print reissues in the Trunk catalog such as Leona Anderson's wonderfully awful Music To Suffer By, but many of the tracks are from Trunk's private record collection, likely highlighting the best tracks on perhaps otherwise less interesting albums. You get a full gamut of styles and genres from novelty calypso songs from Robert Mitchum and Bernard Cribbins, space-lounge jazz from Alain Romans and Sergio Mihanovich, musique concrete from Pierre Henry and Pierre Schaffer, the punk dub of The Jellies, classical piano from Glenn Gould, ethnic music curios and warped kid songs. So great and for a real nice price, you'd be foolish not to pick this up! (And sorry, the more expensive vinyl version is now gone it seems.)
Another killer Soul Jazz compilation, this one focused on a new genre they've decided to call 'Future Bass', but which is essentially the next step in the evolution of dubstep. Some of the names here are recognizable, as already having made a serious splash in dubstep circles: Ginz, Coki, Ramadanman, LD, but then there are some wild cards, like aQ faves Four Tet, who seem to stick out, but who have actually been making their own sort of 'future bass' for a while now when you think about it, and of course there's a whole mess of names we've never heard before, but somehow, all of these random jams and disparate soundmakers do manage to fit together, into a sound that's definitely futuristic and definitely big on the bass, but beyond that, manages to sprawl in all sorts of incredible and unexpected directions.
The record begins with Mala's "Don't Let Me Go", a stripped down bit of techno skitter, wreathed in chirping electronics, and blurred cascades of space-y shimmer, but the coolest part, is this peripheral rhythm that seems to be constructed from that weird stuttering cell phone interference you sometimes get, that and some softly wheezing dubby melodica, so nice. Four Tet lock into a clipped loop right off the bat, then add their own little shuffling rhythm over the top, and then keep on adding, weird little fragmented melodies, little bits of squelch, thick buzzy synths and playful little bursts of bloop and bleep, a few moments can all synthy and swirly and ambient, but for the most part it's awesomely and endlessly motorik and mesmerizing.
The dubstep contingent definitely push the genre boundaries, Ginz takes a playful melody, and adds a WICKED, crumbling buzzy synth bassline that is SO KILLER, and a strange juxtaposition with the rest of the light airy sounds in the track, Coki's jam might be the most typically dubstep, but that bass warble here is way more brittle and percussive, and a little sci-fi, and it's chopped up a bit so it's a little glitch, sometimes stuttering, other times buzzing, while the rest of the track creeps along ominously in the background, Ramadanman's jam sounds like a sample of "White Lines" sped way up and layered, a throbbing rumbling warbly bassline beneath some dubbed pout ambience and a super skeletal rhythms, the whole thing warped and wonderfully warbly.
Elsewhere the sound slips from playful and party-ish, jittery and bumping, to dark and washed out and almost Portishead-y, all grainy and gristly, like some slowed down electro ballad, to super spare Raster Noton style click and glitch, but even then the bass rumbles and buzzes, to late night almost bossanova sounding shuffles and piano driven half tempo jungle jams that sound downright cinematic, it's all pretty great, big beats, buzzing bass, anyone who's been digging the last few Soul Jazz comps, or all the killer weirdo electronica of late, especially all the variants of the dubstep sound will dig this big time.
When we first got this in, we were really just expecting some sort of crappy house music comp flecked with bits of Latin music, we find we're often misled by titles promising 'future sounds' and other similarly enticing hyperbole, but all it took was about a minute of the first track, and we found ourselves inexorably drawn in, and it only got better with every track, this being the rare sort of comp that truly delivers on its promise, a twisted futuristic hybrid of new electronic experimentalism and rural South American musical styles, the opener taking a sort of samba style rhythm, and wreathing it in all sorts of squiggly synths, rough rumbling buzz, sci-fi FX, some sampled loops vocals, a killer beat, some buzzing almost dubsteppy bass, we would have been perfectly happy if the whole record sounded just like that, but in point of fact none of it does, even remotely.
The second track is all clipped skitter, super distorted buzz drenched melody, woozy stuttery beats, loping and hypnotic, eventually wrapped in some swirling guitar melodies, the vibe dark and epic and sort of post rocky, but more post-electronica, the next track switches gears again, taking South American accordion music, and distorting it to hell, adding some crunchy dirty beats, some buried looped vox, and sending it careening through clouds of soft psychedelic noise. And so it goes, a dizzying barrage of super inventive, most definitely psychedelic, South American avant electronica, that manages to be both experimental, but also groovy, abstract and at times WTF?, but crazy catchy, and almost always with a wicked beat. Carnivalesque melodies are wrapped around some tongue twisting vocalizing, Flamenco guitars are wreathed in echo, and draped over shuffling looped grooves, 8 bit video game sounds become vocodered future-style calypsos, brooding guitar strum blossoms into barely electronic South American folk music, before exploding into a wildly inventive skeletal mad scientist Latin dub, which in turn leads directly into some glitch flecked pop vocal electronica, before one last blast of super distorted beat heavy synth squelch and finally a super buzzy, warbly, robotic groove, that sounds like some classic South American jam performed by one of Pierre Bastien's strange machines, and sung by androids. So great!
How many reasons do you need to buy this amazing compilation? The fact that 100% of the proceeds go to non-profit progressive organisations "working to involve more Americans in our political process, to advocate for ordinary people and traditional American values, and to help keep the United States a country all of us can be proud of"? Or how about unreleased tracks by Death Cab For Cutie, Elliott Smith, Tom Waits, Old 97's, Fountains Of Wayne, They Might Be Giants, Nada Surf and more? Well, what about OK Go doing a killer version of the Zombies' "This Will Be Our Year"? Or Jimmy Eat World doing an super kick ass version of Guided By Voices' "Game Of Pricks"? Or live tracks from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Bright Eyes, and The Flaming Lips. Or alternate versions of tracks by Blink 182, R.E.M., The Long Winters and more? I'll stop right there, because as far as reasons go, that's plenty! Definitely the best comp like this in a long while!
