[ aquarius records — Compilation Split ]

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MPEG stream: Born To Be Wild
MPEG stream: When I Buy My Wife
MPEG stream: Siki, Siki Baba

Japanese psychedelic heavies Boris return, this time sharing a split with UK psychfolkie (and former frontman for Crippled Black Phoenix) Joe Volk. Apparently born of a chance meeting at a festival, it's a bit of a weird match up, but both sides are pretty cool. Boris deliver a sidelong three part epic, which begins with a sprawling bit of field recording flecked, sample heavy shimmer, all softly swelling chords, and dense clouds of cymbal shimmer, dreamy and druggy and delightfully drifty, which leads directly into the second part, a glorious blast of bombastic metal pop heaviness, which weirdly enough is a dead ringer for late period Cave In, powerful soaring vocals, big bashing drums, droned out guitars, swirls of electronic squiggle, really it's not that far removed from recent Boris jams, but it's super polished and catchy, and hell it suits them! The final movement bookends the proper song second track with another stretch of swirling synths and murky woozy guitars, lots of shifting textures and buried vocals, everything blurred and bleary and abstract, a long form coda/outro that takes the classic slo-mo sludge of old Boris and recasts it as something much more serene and tranquil. The flipside introduces (many of) us to Joe Volk, who starts things off super spare, just acoustic guitar, the vibe is darkly dramatic and subtly psychedelic, the sound surprisingly lush, definitely reminiscent of classic seventies acid folk, fingerpicked steel string buzz, ghostly background harmonies, Volk's voice raspy and weathered, the whole first track a gradually slow build, culminating in the final few minutes of brooding buzz, moaning cellos and dense tribal drumming. The second track seems like more of an outro, sonically similar but even more stripped down, instrumental, a spare bit of skeletal, minimal folk, dark and dreamy. While we never got all that into Crippled Black Phoenix, this definitely has us hankering to hear more solo stuff from Volk. Packaged in super striking full color sleeves, with printed full color insert with liner notes and lyrics. Weirdly expensive too for some reason, sorry...

We took pre-orders on this ultra limited Boris rarity, but we managed to get a handful of extra copies, so for those folks who forgot to preorder, or folks who are only hearing about this now, here's your chance (however brief) to nab one of these... As with all Boris stuff, it's gorgeously packaged, a red and black pictured disc, printed to look like it's cracked into pieces, to go along with the title. It sits behind a piece of red vellum, with the band names printed lightly across the top so you can also see the picture disc through the vellum. Includes a DVD in a similarly 'damaged' packaging. So the 10" matches up Boris with their more punk rock countrymen Stupid Babies Go Mad, both it seems paying homage to Black Flag's "Damaged" in their own way. Each apparently covering a song by the other... SBGM are up first and kick out the super aggro old school So-Cal punk rock jams, but way supercharged, with ultra distorted vocals, squealing feedback everywhere, super heavy and intense and very much in the tradition of the track and the band this is a tribute too. But it seems as if SBGM have jammed three tracks into one, the second two are sort of two parts of the same song, slightly more groovy but still pretty punk, a chunky main riff and seriously pounding drumming, and a cool minor key guitar harmony refrain that makes the band sound almost like a more punk rock Iron Maiden. The flipside finds Boris doing their punk rock thing. Starting off in full on dirge mode, droning and downtuned, maybe channeling later era SST, huge slooooow riffing, monstrous drumming, feedback wrapped around crumbling distortion, until the band kicks it into gear, more aggro punk rock, Boris style, complete with squiggly leads, shouted vocals and an old school sing along chorus. Included with the 10" is a 70+ minute dvd, capturing a live show by both bands. It begins with about one minute of awesome Boris footage, blown out and tinted red, in some huge venue, an extended psych blowout, the drums a chaotic swirl, the guitar and bass soaring and shrieking�And then it stops, and suddenly we're watching Stupid Babies Go Mad, kicking out the jams big time in a furious 30 minute set, super high contrast, damaged film stock, a blazing live show, looks pretty amazing, wild and sweaty and boozy and brilliant... Then it's back to Boris, on the same blown out red tinted film stock, doing some gorgeous tripped out slow psych, super in the red and heavy as fuck� until they launch into more rocking territory, a whole set packed with heavy, distorted garage psych freaked out jams, with lots and lots of gong action!!! And the band destroy, the sound is raw and ultra hot, distorted and really fierce, the band is definitely on fire, and the way it's filmed makes it seem even more wild and intense. LIMITED TO 1500 COPIES. Once these are gone we won't be able to get more.

What more do you need to know? Two new songs, one from sludge pop masters Torche, and one from Japanese psychedelic post doom drone metallers Boris. The Torche track is of course incredible, taking their crushing downtuned pop and stretching it WAY out into a sprawling downtuned prog-pop, post-metal epic, with bursts of frenzied riffing, pounding drumming, weird almost industrial sounding percussion, constantly shifting tempos, slipping from weird doomed out feedback drenched crush, to Melvins-y lurch and lumber, to full on power-pop-in-metal's-clothing, to pounding relentless metallic chug. It's only 6 minutes but there's plenty of Torche-y goodness crammed into those 6 minutes... The Boris track is twice the length, and takes its sweet time, a brooding slow build, all minimal skeletal guitars, and strange distant grinding ambient whirr, before exploding into a washed out woozy slowcore, that goes right into a full on black metal blast beat, accompanied by barely audible insectoid riffing, while over the top, dreamy sweet pop vocals are draped, making for just about the strangest juxtaposition ever. But it works, it's bizarre, and unexpected, but it sounds like some weird black metal / dream pop hybrid, and it sort of slips back and forth for the rest of the song, the blackened shoegaze side often bleeding into the lumbering slowcore side, the various elements constantly shifting, but that strange black metal pop thing making this really really rad. After a long stretch of shimmering ambient drift, the song shifts gears yet again, and the band get all sludge-y and doomy, their monstrous plod laced with both melody and bursts of grinding hissing noise, before blinking out as if the tape suddenly ran out. Killer artwork from Hydra Head's Aaron Turner, and of course crazy crazy limited, we got a bunch of these, but are not sure if we'll be able to get more once they sell out, so get one while you can, and we apologize in advance if you can't... BTW: This is the same Boris / Torche record that was released in Japan last year, only now getting a domestic release, same music, but new artwork! So if you plunked down for the expensive import, you already have this, and don't need another one, unless of course like most Boris fanatics you need multiple versions of the same release. But for everyone else, do not hesitate, this rules, and you most definitely NEED it!

We've listed this before, long ago, but have been out of it for a while...but now, along with Boris' "Amplifier Worship" and the Keiji Haino w/ Boris disc, we've got this back in stock *and* at a much cheaper price than before (while supplies last). This is a

Our favorite local one man arboreal black metal band returns with a brief split to tide us over until the impending release of both V and VI, in the seemingly (and thankfully) unending barrage of material oozing up from the verdant realm. And like the last few Botanist releases, the tracks here find the sound drifting every further away from the black metal that, only barely, defined the sound of those recordings. Minus the vokills, the three tracks here are super melodic, a little bit blissy and shoegazey, and sound like some avant post rock you might find on Temporary Residence. Even with blast beats and a healthy heaping of buzz, the tracks here soar and chime, you can almost envision some wistful sad boy vox and suddenly, this is total teenage mixtape material, which is not a bad thing at all. And when the blacker elements are woven in, it becomes something truly strange and wonderful, and just further demonstrates, why the rest of the world, particularly the non metal portion, have been flipping out over this stuff. Palace Of Worms on the other hand, is something all together more metallic and grim, their opening track a creepy doomy sprawl, all woozy minor key melodies, haunting ambience, the sound slowly building to something much more epic and majestic, a black buzz, but one that's muted and swaddled in swoonsome synths, giving the sound a sort of washed out and sun dappled quality, which makes it a good match for Botanist. But those moments of wispiness, are more than made up for by some more intense, growly, metallic black buzz, the sound deftly balance between the two, songs flitting from grinding downtuned churn, to synthy shimmer, to crystalline post-metal drift and back again. Great great stuff from both bands, and some seriously awesome cover art to boot!

MPEG stream: Tillandsia
MPEG stream: Ode To Joy (Hurrah, The End Draws Nigh)

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SORRY. Here's a nice pairing, featuring Expo 70, who needs no introduction to the aQ readership, and Brainworlds, an Atlanta based guitarist whose work at least here rivals that of Expo 70. Both of these long tracks are recordings from a night of cosmic meditation in 2010 at the seminal performance space Eyedrum in Atlanta. Brainworlds' deep guitar tones float weightlessly in a shimmering expanse from his hypnotic loops and evocative cosmic solo work outs that come across like some lost Ash Ra Tempel jam getting remixed by Troum at their most stratospheric. Really stunning work, and this would have been great to see live given the reverberant acoustics of Eyedrum. Justin Wright was in more of a cosmic mindset for that performance too. Wright's guitars take after some of Michael Rother's phrasing at the beginning of his set, locking into a darker heavier mantra as the performance moves forward with a pulsing rhythm and heavy chords reminiscent of Expo 70's masterful album Black Ohm. Classic drugged-out space drone bliss from both Brainworlds and Expo 70. We're pretty sure this is a 60 minute tape; it's damn long regardless... but it's limited too, just 100 copies released from the Hooker Vision imprint run in part by Rachel Evans of Motion Sickness of Time Travel.

MPEG stream: Labyrinthitis
MPEG stream: Stepping Further Outside Petulance...

Edited by West Coast sound artists Brandon LaBelle and Steve Roden, "Site of Sound" is a compendium of theoretical discourses within conceptually based sound art. Along with the rather dense and at times poetic texts, the book also features a cd of work by the authors. Featured both on cd and in print are Achim Wollscheid, Christina Kubisch, RLW, John Hudak, Toshiya Tsonuda, Christof Migone, Steve Peters, m/s, and others. Text only contributers include Loren Chasse, Giancarlo Toniuitti, CM von Hausswolff, Leif Elgrenn, David Dunn, etc.

Easily the world's most twisted outsider metal mashup. Damaged and demented aQ faves, Midwest metal militia Breathilizor (to read more about our undying love of Breathilizor, check out the review of their Metal Dump 7" elsewhere on the aQ website), teamed up here with the brilliantly monikered Doktor Bitch, who we know absolutely nothing about, but who somehow sound like Breathilizor's sick sonic soulmates. Before we get to the music, we sometimes like to take in all the visuals, all the non musical elements that help set the scene, and in this case, what a scene. Let's take the Breathilizor side first. The cover art is incredible, super glossy and full color, some sort of zombie holiday elf, horned and fanged, eating the brain and chewing on the spind of a soon to be deceased metalhead, all beneath the album title: Imperative Of The Electron Snake AKA Baffled By The Blood Moat, and their awesome, super slick new logo. Inside, there are band photos, assembled in the shape of an upside down cross, some of the band wearing corpsepaint, some regular dudes, and much mayhem and destruction evident. There's also the legend: "Breathilizor is a nun's laughter. A nun's laughter is Breathilizor." Hmmm. And then there are the song titles, as we mentioned in the review of their 7", the songs follow a strict title code of "SOMETHING ---OF--- SOMETHING ELSE", so this time around, it's "Troll Of Spinal Chord's Destruction" (guess that's a troll on the cover), "Mountain Of Manson", "Stevie Nicks Of Goat Head Metal", "Virus Of Hollywood Sequel", "Infirmities Of Metal", "Albatross Of Gossamer", "Softball League Of Satan" and "Something Of Something Part VII". And we won't even get into the lyrics, needless to say, they are insane and brilliant. On to the Doktor Bitch side, another glossy full color cover, this one featuring a brain fondling radioactive zombie, some Japanese characters in a square puddle of blood, and the band name in big 3D blood red letters. Inside over a photo of seamonsters beating each other with sticks, the band members are listed: Alozzamas, Necroponde and Pat Minotaur, as are the song titles: "Lavender Trainwreck", "Axial Rake/Radius Gash", "Have 'N A Relapse", "Vaguilla", "How Is That For Evil? (For Poopy)", "Super Fast Night Dump" and finally "You Chop My Head Off". There are liner notes to, most tellingly, thank you's sent out to "butt, eggs, ciggies and inmates". So after all that, what the hell does it sound like? And why do both sides/halves seem like they could be the same band? Well, that's cuz some of the Breathilizors are also in Doktor Bitch! So for those not familiar with Breathilizor, imagine some sort of classic chugging metal, a dizzying mix of Venom and Slayer, all tangled up with elements of doom and sludge, but focused mostly on riff heavy super rocking, and blasting thrashing heaviness, then of course there are the lyrics, delivered in a strange nasally drawl, a sort of underground outsider metal version of Jello Biafra maybe, jamming tons of words into small spaces, spinning far out yarns, and tales of the impossible, and the unknowable and the downright evil! Doktor Bitch, somehow take the Breathilizor sound, and fuck it even further up, wrapping it in sonic murk, and transforming it it into a grinding punky metallic noise rock, plenty of chugging riffage, but those riffs often collapse into tangled gnarled squalls of churning blackened metalnoize, before eventually returning to the riff. The vocals are grunted and gurgly, the sound chaotic and loose and frenzied, laced with the occasional bit of lead guitar, but mostly heavy on the downtuned low end, a muddy, blackened sludge drenched riff rock to counter Breathilizor's by-comparison classic (albeit fucked up and fractured) metal sound. Needless to say, if you like your heaviness damaged and demented and baffling and confusional and whatthefuck, then you just may have found you weirdo metal dream team match up.

Bridez front woman, and the cover star of this here 7" single, is none other then Liza Thorn, who was responsible for unleashing a thrilling and damaging whirlwind of fierce energy here in the Bay Area with her previous band So So Many White White Tigers. While Bridez is a much more song based endeavor, there is still that reckless energy and dirty quality to their songs that makes this such a fun, fiery and righteously sleazy debut. We hear healthy doses of Pussy Galore, early Hole and the early recordings of The Runaways. Bringing a much needed element of danger and drunken passion to fucked up rock n' roll. So good!

By the time you read this, adoring fans of Mr. Conor 'Bright Eyes' Oberst will undoubtably have already scooped up a copy (or two) of this seven record set. If you count yourself among those legions, but are also a cardcarrying member of the slowpoke club then... guess what?! There's a seven record box set of Bright Eyes! It includes five of his albums (many of which have been out of print for some time) plus other rare goodies. Here's the lowdown: A Collection of Songs Written and Recorded 1995-1997 (pressed on 2 lps, first time on vinyl!), Letting off the Happiness (with its original cover art and a Japanese import bonus song), the Every Day and Every Night ep, the excellent Fevers and Mirrors (remastered on 2 lps and including two Japanese import bonus songs), Don't Be Frightened of Turning the Page (aka the four B.E. songs from Oh Holy Fools - The Music of Son, Ambulance and Bright Eyes plus two bonus songs). If you're not familiar with the woeful, trembling indie folk sounds of B.E. yet, this might not be the place to start (unless you're also a vinyl nut and an extreme completist to boot). Maybe first check out his most recent full length Lifted Or The Story is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground.

When we first put this disc on for a spin, many here recognized the indie folk sound of Bright Eyes right away (without seeing the artists' and cd's names), but the vocals seemed unfamiliar. Either Conor Oberst has swiftly become a very mature, composed singer or someone else is handling some of the vocal duties. Well, to reassure those who adore Oberst's woebegone voice, it's the latter. Yup, hot on the heels of the Bright Eyes/Britt Daniel reissued split EP comes another Oberst pairing -- this time with fellow Omaha, Nebraskans Neva Dinova. You can certainly take the title as a tip-off that these two parties got together to drown their sorrows in wine and song. The six songs are warm and casual including bits of chitchat in the opening tune. On the non-Oberst-sung songs, things tend towards a lush, countrified Coldplay sound (check out the third song "Poison"). This may not win Bright Eyes many new admirers, but it surely should pique interest in Neva Dinova.

MPEG stream: Poison
MPEG stream: Black Comedy

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SORRY. For those of you who've been itchin' for some more from SF's mellow, pretty electronicians Broker/Dealer or simply those of you in need of some electronic levity, here's a new and unusual B/D snippet. It's a Hall & Oates-tinged track called "Haulin' Oats". Actually this 12" is a bit silly all the way around as the flipside contains an equally Joe Jackson-flavored cut by Rollmottle that goes by the name "Steppin' Right On Out".

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

SORRY.

The first two volumes of "James Brown's Funky People" (collecting tracks recorded for Brown's early '70s People Records imprint by his revue's various sidemen and associates) have long been essential funk must-haves, and now we get a surprise third volume! These tracks have never before been released on CD, it says here. Featuring the likes of Bobby Bird, Hank Ballard, The Believers, Sweet Charles, Beau Dollar, Fred Wesley & The J.B.'s, Lyn Collins, Vicki Anderson, Marva Whitney, Dee Felice Trio, and A.A.B.B.

After a full length and a split with fellow math/noise rockers Hawks, we still can't seem to get enough of Minneapolis rockers Buildings, who deliver another blast of bass heavy AmRep style pigfuck noise rock radness, sinewy distorto guitars wrapped around thick buzzing bass, shards of shrieking feedback, and some serious drum pound, not to mention a killer hook and some fierce riffage, the Buildings track here might only be 2:41, but odds are you'll find yourself listening to it over and over. On the flipside, we're introduced to Made In Canada, who weirdly enough were actually made in France, and these guys do the whole brooding mathy noisy rock thing too, but there sound is more muted and restrained, reminding us a bit of Shellac, right down to the sung/spoken vox, and the dense tangle of bass buzz and dense drumming, but the bass here is way more thick and filthy, the sound a bit more blown out, but the band more than capable of whipping up some gnarled bass heavy riff rock that fans of all things mathy, noisy and heavy will no doubt dig big time. And they even manage to infuse some cool, delicate psychedelic parts into their mathy churn. Definitely wanna hear more from these guys... LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!!

MPEG stream: Cutting Off Your Good Hand
MPEG stream: The Water Cure

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SORRY. Wherein Built to Spill cover a Heavenly song ("By The Way"), and the ex-Heavenly people now known as Marine Research do a Built to Spill cover ("Sick & Wrong").

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SORRY.

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

SORRY. We got less than 20 of these, so we won't go into too much detail, since we could have done with at least twice that many, but c'mon, funeral folk weirdos Silvester Anfang and creeped out black ambient ritualist Burial Hex together on a 7", how amazing is that?! Unfortunately for all but about 20 of you, it is plenty amazing! But, it's LIMITED TO 500 copies (each one hand numbered), and already sold out, so if you want one, better be quick. The Silvester Anfang side is gorgeous and dark and tribal and trippy, with a definite Morricone vibe, high end guitar squiggles way off in the distance, simple drumming, twangy guitars up front, some seriously super dramatic crescendos, but all the way through super raw and lo-fi, with a wild tangled second half that almost sounds space rock! The Burial Hex side is a primitive and fractured lo-fi noise ritual, deep synthy rumbles, super distorted vocals, like a more doomy blackened Whitehouse if that makes any sense, vocals run through a bank of Merzbow-ish effects, the music a surprisingly gorgeous and minimal sprawl of deep rib cage rattling tones and low low low low buzz. Cool and creepy.

A new installment of "oppressive necro electronics" from Burial Hex, aka Clay Ruby, who when not whipping up these abject clouds of filthy black ambience, spends his time rocking out psychedelically in Jex Thoth, getting filthy metal in Wormsblood, and creating all manner of folky weirdness in Davenport (besides running the kick ass Skulls Of Heaven label). But Burial Hex is so far removed from Ruby's other combos, they barely warrant mentioning. Burial Hex is the sound of some ancient black ritual, some sick sonik sorcery, where, guitars wind around electronics, and are all smeared into thick heaving slabs of doomdronedirge. The first of two tracks here however sounds bit different that what we're used to, introducing vocals, a howled feral wail, that ends up making this sound like some post industrial blackened Oxbow, minimal guitar strum, bursts of static, fragments of electronic skitter, creepy and atmospheric but super ethereal and hauntingly tense. The second track returns to more familiar territory, a long sprawling slow motion doomscape, downtuned guitars draped over fractured electronics, bits of shuffling minimal percussion, warm whirring church organs, samples and found sounds, all very mysterious, subtly folky, damaged and abstract, and very very cinematic. Never heard of Zola Jesus before, but they're a good match for Burial Hex, countering with their own sort of blackened soundscapery. A softly whirling cloud of glitched out electronics, disembodied vocals, almost choral sounding, swirling swooping effects, shards of new wave-y synth, eventually transforming into a nightmarish industrial creep, doused in more effects, all wrapped in thick billowy sheets of downtuned rumble, slipping from spaced out otherworldliness to grim, blackened, doom drenched dronemusick. Pressed on super thick vinyl and housed in gorgeous matte sleeves, all the text printed in clear reflective ink.

We're more and more convinced that Burmese are San Francisco's greatest band. So fucking heavy, and so intensely aggressive, so totally unlike any other bands in the scene. Live they destroy, and somehow on record, their vitreous violence comes through loud and clear. For those new to Burmese, this is grinding low end ultra pummel, sludge and speed mixed into an impossible sonic stew, a little like Whitehouse crossed with Drop Dead, which makes no sense, but which is why Burmese are so fucking awesome. This set of songs was recorded live on WFMU and is so blown out. the recording so hot, that it's essentially just impenetrable walls of bass guitar growl, huge pounding sonic boom drums and inhuman shrieks. Scary stuff. Teamed up with Burmese are 16 Bitch Pile Up, who traffic in abstract free noise, noxious clouds of ambient murk, with distant feral vocals and percussion that sounds like someone moving filing cabinets. Harsh and creepy, but what would you expect when one of the band members is credited with playing a bag of glass. Part of Not Not Fun's Bored Fortress series of limited 7"s, packaged in a cool red and metallic gold silkscreened cover complete with little stick on pink leaves!

Never heard Fistula before, but they definitely prove themselves, at least on this here split, to be one of the few bands that can stand up to the ferocity and absolute fucking musical anvil to the skull that is Burmese. After two releases on our own Andee's tUMULt label, Burmese hook up with fellow noisemakers Fistula for an absolute sonic orgy of untold proportions of AQ pal Adam's Crucial Blast label. The ten Burmese tracks show them moving even further away from conventional grind / sludge into a world all their own, Whitehouse collides with Drop Dead, Throbbing Gristle with Masonna on lead vocals and Corrupted as back up band. This is pure fucking noise. Moments of grinding fury do peek through, as do little bursts of rhythmic mayhem and occasional electronic overload, but overall this is just two drummers and two bassists stuffing your head in a blender with a speaker at the bottom. Fistula respond with four slightly longer tracks of metallic crush. The first an abstract dirge with the lead vocals replaced by a hacking cough. Like an underground sludge "Sweet Leaf". But the other three tracks prove Fistula to be masters of the BIG RIFF. Supercharged drone / dirge metal, huge and galloping, pummelling and fucking MASSIVE.

MPEG stream: Sweet Fucking Mouth / Livingwage
MPEG stream: Spill My Fuck
MPEG stream: Green Lung

Man, there sure are more and more amazing grind bands these days. It's like all kids do these days is practice blast beats instead of doing their homework. But who's complaining? This is a split from two of grinds brightest pupils. Both are fast and furious, the production is top notch, and the songs from both bands are completely fucking brutal.

Killer blast of Bay Area garage rock / fuzz pop from two of our favorite groops, on this new split from local label Mt. St. Mtn., the A side a brand new jam from sixties styled, organ driven garage psych troubadours Burnt Ones, who deliver a delirious chunk of baroque-pop styled fuzz, all hazy vocals and jangly guitars, swirling and hypnotic and dreamily psychedelic, while the flipside is a new (old) track from sadly now defunct aQ faves The Mallard, whose track here is all lo-fi lope and reverby jangle, with washed out vocals, swirling soaring psych guitar melodies, crunchy riffs, and loose limbed drumming, with a cool stuttery bridge that pops up throughout, giving it a weirdly mathy vibe in places, and ultimately once again reminding us again how much we miss The Mallard! LIMITED TO 500 COPIES! Housed in a super swank, 4 color debossed sleeve, and pressed on crazy colored swirled vinyl!

Here's a 2013 Record Store Day release that we just discovered we still had a small stash of! Well known collector/musician Joe Bussard doing a couple of acoustic guitar songs on an old-timey 78 rpm 10" record, packaged in a plain manilla sleeve like in the old days. Bussard's been collecting jazz, folk, blues, bluegrass, etc. 78's since the 1940s and so he sure knows how it ought to sound, the two tracks "Guitar Rag" and "Screwdriver Slide" (yep, played with a screwdriver) coming off like authentic dusty (but lively) old tunes indeed. For fans of John Fahey (who's first recordings came out on Bussard's own Fonotone label), Jack Rose, and all the old-timey down-home stuff those guys were fans of, too... LIMITED TO 625 COPIES.

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

SORRY. The return of Chicago's instrumental hypno-psych-kraut rock groovers Cave. Hot on the heels of the recent single/cd-r combo on Trensmat (now out of print, so don't ask) come two more stretched out jamz that manage to push all our buttons: repetitive, psychedelic, heavy, hypnotic... remember the track "Butthash" from the 7"? That we described thusly: "A bouncy groover, with swirly synths, caffeinated rhythms, and buried vocals, a bit angular, a little new wave, equal parts krautrock, and spaced out shimmer, but all tangled up and kaleidoscopic." Well, that was a 'mellowed out' remix of the first Cave track right here. So now take that description, add heavier guitars, all sorts of synths, howled distorted vocals, pounding drums, and wind it all up into a relentless killer groove that would do Circle or Pharaoh Overlord proud, kicking out the jams like Wooden Shjips on 45. The second track is more of the same, krauty and psychedelic, drums locked into a super tight rhythm, the guitars locked right in too, keyboards offering up all kinds of tripped out counterpoint, and more fuzzy effects drenched vocals soaring over the top, not so much singing as sort of howling along, the whole thing getting more and more fuzzy and distorted as the song progresses. Cave share this 10" split with California Raisins, who may just have one of the WORST band names ever, but that doesn't stop them from kicking up a serious racket themselves. Hailing from Columbia, Missouri (where Cave called home before Chicago), California Raisins rock similar territory as Cave, the core of their sound a tightly wound guitar / synth hypnogroove, the difference being that CR are way more of a noisy, punky ROCK band, with much looser and wilder drums, and a vocalist whose wail is WAY up in the mix, his vocals heavily distorted and reverbed, turning what could have been a sort of psychedelic krautrock into more of a tripped out hypno garage stomp, plenty of Stooges-y swagger, Brainbombs-y pummel, but occasionally wrapped around super hypnotic krautrock style grooves or spread out over buzzy synth drenched crunch. Lo-fi and distorted and heavy and noisy and garage-y and a pretty good match for Cave's more looped sounding kraut psych grooves. Packaged in hand screened silver and black sleeves (screened by the dudes in Cave) with a photocopied insert, and a cd (not a cd-r) featuring all the songs from the 10"!

MPEG stream: Butthash
MPEG stream: Down At The Flop House

Why mess with a good thing? Seminal krautrockers Can are downright inspiring, apparently, and short of adding four-on-floor-beats to make an insta-dance track, you be hardpressed to ruin a Can song. 15 classic tracks are remixed by the likes of Brian Eno, Sonic Youth, The Orb, A Guy Called Gerald, Pete Shelley, U.N.K.L.E., Bruce Gilbert and others. Some drum'n'bass, some weirdo techno noodling, and more than a few quite interesting interpretations. Double cd for the price of one.

Oh crap. It's here. It was indeed only a matter of time. A canine / avian metal meeting. Or something. On the one hand/paw/claw/side, there's Hatebeak, the grinding death metal juggernaut, fronted by lead vocalist Waldo, who just so happens to be a parrot! On the other, there's Caninus, a thuggy, metalic hardcore mosh pit bull of a band, fangs bared, leashes swinging, ummm, tails wagging. Yep, Caninus is fronted by tag team vocalists Budgie and Basil, both of whom happen to be pitbulls. If there was EVER a record made for AQ customers it's this one!!! Caninus is in full grind mode on this split, with spastic hyperspeed drum machines, buzzing lightning bolt guitars and Waldo's unmistakabe squawk. Caninus counters with some serious moshworthy metallic hardcore, bordering on death metal, with HUGE downtuned riffs, blasting drums, and a wicked array of snarls and growls and barks. And if there was ever any doubt, both bands ostensibly being joke bands, these guys are definitely true metalheads as the whole release is steeped in metal injokes. The Caninus cover art is Napalm Death's Scum album cover, except all of the people in the original are now dogs! The Hatebeak side is titled Bird Seeds Of Vengeance, named after the Nile album Black Seeds Of Vengeance, the cover depicting Hatebeak vocalist Waldo facing off against a bust of King Tut, the whole cover surrounded in Egyptian filligree. And then on the inside there is a photo of Waldo perched on what they purport to be the Spear Of Longinus, the actual spear that a Roman soldier used to stab Jesus in the side when he was on the cross! And then there's the Caninus lyrics, dense with metal / hardcore parody and written from the point of view of a dog (obviously)! Hatebeak declare "Avian Victory!" while Caninus proclaim "Go Vegan" as well as "Fuck You New York Post and New York Times" and in their thanks list give props to PETA, an animal shelter and even a pet supply store!! THE ANIMALS ARE NOW THE (METAL) MASTERS!!

Got a handful of these three way split lps featuring some heavy rock outfits we hadn't heard before now, but are digging all three, pretty, umm� heavily. Four tracks from each, up first is Canyons who hail from Missouri, and who we had never heard before but who absolutely push all out mathmetalpunk buttons, reminding us a bit of local noise rockers Kowloon Walled City, but a bit more punky, their furious pound splintering into wild proggy mathiness as often as AmRep style head caving sonic swagger. Tigon, who are from right here in the Bay Area, counter with their own brand of heaviness, much more murky and bass heavy, and way more wildly mathy, sounding almost like a super charged Nomeansno merged with a more lo-fi Unsane, furiously howled vox over the constantly shifting sonic churn below, occasionally slipping into something much more broody and stripped down, but those moments are balance by some seriously epic post rock infused metal majesty. The AmRep vibe is strong with these guys too. They also remind us a bit of Young Widows, which is most definitely not a bad thing. And finally Foreign Theaters, who also hail from Missouri, round out the three way with their Melvins-y dirge rock, heavy hints of Black Flag, all woven into roiling brooding metallic punk, their songs much shorter, short sharp bursts of urgent heaviness, a noise drenched punk that occasionally slips into woozy slithery dirgery, but spends most of its time pounding and churning, the throat shredding vox wreathed in tangled droned out guitars that definitely make FT's punk more post punk and noise rock than punk proper, and we dig it! LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, pressed on recycled black vinyl, and housed in a full color sleeve with a printed insert and a download coupon.

MPEG stream: I'm Worthy All The Time
MPEG stream: Dreadnaught
MPEG stream: Yinz Playin' Piss Feet

Killer new split 7" featuring one of our favorite Chinese indie rock outfits, Carsick Cars, teamed up with a Minneapolis psych rock band we'd heard of, but hadn't actually heard until now. The Carsick Cars side is super bubbly, poppy, and sunshiney, fuzzy guitars, fizzy melodies, effervescent almost power pop, crunchy and jangly in equal measure, maybe the best sounding jam we've heard from these guys, which makes sense as it's an outtake from the sessions for their newest record 3 (which we'll review on the next list, and it's great! And we DO have them in stock, cd and vinyl, both kinda different too!), produced by NZ legend Hamish Kilgour and Pete Kember, aka Sonic Boom. It's kind of hard to figure out why this was an OUTTAKE, cuz it's a scorcher, and the Hamish Kilgour connection makes a lot of sonic sense, cuz this totally sound like it could be some lost Flying Nun rarity, which is high praise indeed! The Flavor Crystals side is a bit more downcast, moody and broody, with gothy guitar shimmer over a lowslung bassline and motorik drumming, the vocals a reverby whispery croon, Moon Duo fans will definitely flip. Soon the surrounding sounds build, pulsing and pulsating, adding a dark sonic swirl to the proceedings, as the song proper follows suit, growing more dense and driving, heavy and hypnotic, before launching into some serious spaced out psych for the last few minutes, that will definitely hit the spot for fans of White Hills, The Heads, Moon Duo, etc. Definitely need to hear more from these guys. Gorgeously packaged, super eye popping, over the top cartoon art sleeves, each with a different, equally eye popping postcard inside, and pressed on dark red vinyl! Oh, and probably pretty limited as well!

MPEG stream: Yoko
MPEG stream: Mirror In My Mind

Both Cornelius Cardew and David Bedford were leading proponents of avant-garde composition in England during the '60s. Cardew's experimentation with graphical notation and a democratization of performance through improvisation were radical departures from the controlled strategies of his former mentor Karlheinz Stockhausen. His most successful realization of these ideas was the epic 7 hour composition "The Great Learning," a composition based on the set of Confucian texts of the same name which lays down a basic ethical and political code. This piece was actualized by his unprecendented Scratch Orchestra, an ensemble filled with professional and untrained musicians given simple instructions as well as the mandate to respond according to how the performance itself wanted to be performed, not by how the composer intended it to sound. "The Great Learning" comprised of 7 paragraphs, each with its own unique set of parameters. A few years back, we had offered a collection of recordings from "The Great Learning" published by the Cortical Foundation; yet, due to the continued medical situation that persists with Cortical Foundation's owner Gary Todd, that album has gone missing. However, this collection through Deutsche Grammophon includes 2 of the paragraphs (number 2 and number 7) from the same (and possibly only) session documented on the Cortical album. The recitation of these Confucian texts -- with Paragraph 2 as a tumultous drum and voice procession and Paragraph 7 as an angelic choir -- sounds very much like the perversions of Catholic liturgies from the black masses of the Satanic Church with an authoritative delivery, an almost Gnostic indecipherability, and a bleakly somber overtone. Cardew's intentions for using this text are to express the inherent human failings of attempting to live up to the most basic of moral codes. Despite his pairing the metaphor of failure with the distinctly sprirtual overtones in the work, Cardew may not be actually talking about spiritual collapse or the failure of religions. Rather, "The Great Learning" postulates that if there is a higher state to mankind, then it will be our goal to attempt to find a means to that state, even if that is an impossible goal. Later aligning himself with Maoism, Cardew's unwavering optimism for man's ability to escape the confines of oppression is most articulate within this outstanding composition. That isn't to take anything away from David Bedford, who had been a member of Cardew's Scratch Orchestra. In his two beautiful vocal pieces, Bedford conveys a majestic impressionism of sound, drawing upon the poems of Kenneth Patchen. Where there is an undeniable tension and dischord within the Cardew pieces, there is a lightness and ephemeralism found within Bedford's. Altogether, the four pieces make for a very complementary pair of recordings.

RealAudio clip: Paragraph 2
RealAudio clip: O Now The Drenched Land Wakes

Feeling Strange is a fluid mixed set from Parisian minimalist proponent Jennifer Cardini. Yes, the minimalist techno gestures abound, with plenty of bleeps, bloops, and acid squiggles grafted onto that insistent technotic pulse; but Ms. Cardini doesn't just adhere to the Detroit / Berlin axis of electronica with some very nice transitions into some Moroder-esque arpeggiating disco and leftfield electro-pop. Static, Maurizio, The Hacker, Reinhard Voigt, Apparat, and Luisine are but a few of the selections. Adorned with the Kompakt seal of approval.

MPEG stream: Sometimes I'm Sad For A Few Seconds
MPEG stream: Love Love Love Yeah

We sold tons of the last Carlton Melton full length, Pass It On. In fact we even sold a copy to J. Mascis who made it his top favorite record of 2009. No small feat, there! So the dudes are on a roll, and just before their first big tour, they release this awesome split with the equally heavy Empty Shapes from Delaware. The Carlton Melton side is two tracks. The first, "Call and Response" is nearly side-loooong and begins with a heavy rumble of monolithic sludge eventually progressing into a slow wave of burnt-out blues riffage a la early Comets on Fire, that churns and steeps into a gnarly brew of molten fuzz. The closer, "Purer", is more cosmic and dreamy, built on a layer of percolating synth drones that give way to a more uplifting space rock jam trajectory. This is the first we've heard from Empty Shapes, a 5 piece from Delaware, who contribute 3 tracks to their side. The first, "MLK" is a sprawling cloud of noise a la Bardo Pond, levitating around a repeating head-nodding riff with all kinds of instrumentation stretching the form and shape of the murky haze. "Hell of a Night" and "Lord" bring vocal elements into the works, but heavily effected and damaged, sometimes emotive yet incomprehensible channeling a primitive psych-blues through some New Zealandish free-rock space clutter! Limited to just 300 on brown and white swirled vinyl! Dope!

Local psychedelic space rock heroes Carlton Melton team up with UK psych drifters Kandodo 3 (which is in fact Simon Price of aQ fave the Heads, gone solo, but now seemingly a trio, thus having appended a 3 to the moniker) for this heady slab of cosmic trippiness. CM start things off with three lengthy tracks. The first, being a loping sprawl of head nodding krautrock style mesmer, the drums locked down, pulsing away beneath clouds of shimmering guitars and slow shifting chunks of effervescent riffage. It's the most straight ahead rocking CM track we've heard in a while, but fear not, the follow up gets a bit more abstract, sounding like some blown out electric blues Appalachia coming apart at the seams, dense tangles of buzz and strum gradually unfolding and unfurling, a bit twang flecked and still plenty zoned out. The final track defaults more toward the rocking side of the spectrum, this time a bit nosier and more swinging, channeling some serious classic sounding spacerockiness, although somehow via some interplanetary alien jam band, their hypno-rock churn wrapped in all sorts of slippery slide guitar, conjuring up a sound that's like some twisted Allman Brothers / Hawkwind hybrid, which you know is a very good thing indeed. The now expanded Kandodo 3 fill up the entirety of their side with a single track, one that seems to ooze from the darkest corner of the sonic cosmos, some seriously dense, trippy blissed out dronemusic, a softly pulsing, layered, chordal thrum, that grows gradually more and more wispy, until it's finally just a barely there shadowy swirl, over which a groovy bassline emerges, before it's joined by some tribal percussion, and streaks of guitar buzz drift in from every direction, a hazy cloud of druggy shimmer, over a woozily rhythmic churn. The guitars eventually grow more fierce and less distinct, moving from behind the shadows, the sound more of a Spacemen 3 style druggy drift, chiming harmonics and fragmented bits of melody swirl in the foreground, while that background churn collapses into a roiling black hole of softnoise churn, over which those guitars continue to glow and glimmer, before eventually settling back into one final stretch of tripped out psychedelic grooviness. Pressed on transparent blue vinyl, with cover art by Kandodo 3's Price. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!

We've said it before, and we'll say it again, sometimes it feels like some records were just made specifically for aQ. And this is one of em. So thanks Trensmat, for picking two of our favorite bands, and putting them together on one record, with exclusive (and killer) tracks from both. SF's very own Carlton Melton, offer up a gorgeous bit of thick psychedelic haze called "Company", a serious slow burner, and maybe one of their heaviest yet, a simple stripped down beat anchoring thick undulating layers of blurred guitar buzz, shot through with warm spidery melodies, a brooding chunk of pulsing hypnotic sonic mesmer with a seriously blown out heavy heavy explosive finish. Be sure to download the bonus material (the link's on the sleeve) to get the epic nearly 12 minute long version, which is how this was meant to be heard, sprawling and druggy and EPIC. Too short for us even at twelve minutes. Also with the bonus download you get another track, "Death Whisper", which is another murky brooder, a hazy minimal lo-fi raga, which lopes and lumbers dreamily through fields of buzz and static and dreamy chordal swirl. Former aQ Record Of The Week-ers Mugstar offer up another fantastically epic psychedelic space jam, thick driving buzzing bassline, dense busy drumming, shimmery guitar jangle, churning moody riffage, a sinisterly slow build, that manages to grow more tense and ominous and intense, without ever actually getting louder or exploding into a crashing cacophonous climax, instead, weaving a dense sprawl of churning psychedelic krautrock-style hypnorock that almost sounds like a more muscly Circle. And with the bonus download, you get a second track, the hushed minimal "Never (Part 1)", which is all sun dappled and dreamy, hushed and hazy, all soft swirls, skittery rhythms, whirring organs, definitely shades of Spacemen 3 or Loop, a sort of druggy blissed out spacepsych drift. So great. Nice full color sleeves, and as mentioned above, a download with tons of bonus material, SUPER LIMITED of course. Already sold out at the label, which means these are the last copies we'll ever be able to get.

MPEG stream: Company
MPEG stream: Black Fountain

Brand new split of heavy freakiness from one of our favorite local bands Carlton Melton teamed up here with new-to-us bizarre shamanistic cult collective Qumran Orphics. The Melton side is two 10 minutes slabs, the first, "March Of The Cicadas", sounds exactly like the title implies, a slowmotion dirge over martial rhythms with buzzing electronic hisses and stratospheric guitar leads. The closer, "Murder Ridge" is a noirish Bardo Pond-like spiral of burning sonic embers and sustained decay. The Qumran Orphics side is a stranger beast altogether. Recorded from a live set at the Blank Club in San Jose, Qumran Orphics is led by KFJC DJ Cy Thoth (host of the show Firebunker, that plays lots of our favorite metal and experimental sounds), backed by an array of simmering guitars and shifting droning electronics. Like a strange and unfurling Crowleian ritual, Cy Thoth croakingly intones bizarre utterances one might hear in an H.P. Lovecraft story. It's a wild and charged performance. Not sure where this project will go next, all info on the group is rather scant or cryptic, but we're definitely curious! Super limited to 259 copies, pressed on smoked wood and blood colored swirl vinyl. These probably won't last long....

In an interview for Re/Search sometime in the early '80s, J.G. Ballard quipped that San Francisco must have the highest population of deviants with college degrees. Back then, the Bay Area did boast a sizable contingent of acid-damaged drop-outs, sexpot performance artists, transgendered punks, mischievous hucksters, members of Caroliner, and the unclassifiables, all flying their freak flags, with those numbers gradually dwindling, relocating, and/or aging over the ensuing decades. The weirdos and the degenerate artists still exist; yes, they do! But San Francisco should be a little ashamed that most of them live in the East Bay. Berkeley denizen Gregory Scharpen is one such character, who sometimes goes by the pseudonym Thomas Carnacki and sometimes is the absurdist bandleader for various minstrels operating under a banner of the same name, that being Thomas Carnacki. A gnomish / wizardly type with an old-growth beard and extraneous tentacles dipped with ectoplasm, Scharpen / Carnacki is a larger-than-life character who toils in film, theatre and sound design, with his expertise finding sympathetic ears and fingers in irr. app. (ext.) and Nurse With Wound. This split release marks the first slab of vinyl for Carnacki, and finds him / them working in parallel with the equally obtuse but less flamboyant outfit Vulcanus 68. The Carnacki ensemble for this 20 minute track includes stalwarts Jesse Burson and Gregory Hagan (the latter also being in Common Eider, King Eider) and occasionalists Sheila Bosco and Cheryl E. Leonard. What these five are doing in a room is really anybody's guess. Huffing glue and fumbling with Tibetan bowls? Channeling the spirits of grizzled thugs and wrestling with those ghosts? Ripping apart a piano and putting the whole thing back together all wrong? All of these could be the method acting principles behind these nocturnal collages and strange actions of slow-moving events. Oakland's Vulcanus 68 (nee Jared Blum and Dominic Cramp) dial in something not too dissimilar to Homotopy To Marie, with plenty of gurgling noises, radiophonic allusions, backmasked gestures, and hauntologically challenged puffs of smoke. These too could have originated from similarly liver-destroying acts of sound immolation as on the Carnacki side of things. Yeah, this really could have been a United Dairies release circa 1983. Limited to 250 copies and comes with a download.

MPEG stream: Elegant Things, Distressing Things...
MPEG stream: Arcano XV

We just got these brand new Casiotone For The Painfully Alone 7" records straight from the man himself! It's a split 7" with his pal Sara Han aka Fox Pause. His side has three of his wonderfully doleful heartache tunes with his trademark deep boyish near-spoken delivery and his comparatively spritely percolating Casiotone rhythms and melodies. Her side has four much more peppy twee songs. She sings in the opposite end of the octave range from him. High, sugary sweetness.

Well, this is a weird one! A four-way split of Portland bands with two of the bands playing at the same time on each side(?!) You have to pan hard right or left to hear each band alone. I guess it sort of makes sense when all the bands seem to traffic in a kind of ramshackle mumbly Americana with a bent towards the freaky. It just builds an added layer of bizarre disorientation to the proceedings when you play them at the same time. Pretty cool but super weird and really limited!

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

SORRY. Three-way split release, the second in this intentionally odd series on Toyo Records. SoCal grindsters Cattle Decaptitation start it off, followed by Nebraska spazzcore freaks Armatron. Finally, the disc is anchored with the approx. 20-minute long "Il Ritorno" from our very own Andee's new post- A Minor Forest band, here dubbed Ticwar 1 (making their first recorded appearance). After the fast/fun assaults of Cattle Decap. and Armatron, the Ticwar track seems (even more) glacially slow and immense. Their lengthy "Il Ritorno" composition touches upon lovely post-rock guitar strum, before lumbering into massive Sabbath / Monster Magnet inspired stoner rock riffing, the groove disrupted by Lesser-style digital glitch fuckery. Eventually it winds down into a gorgeous drone-coda. Experimental stoner rock? Post-metal? Can't wait to hear more (Andee? nudge, nudge). So, quite recommended.