[ aquarius records — Electronic ]

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What is it with Brooklyn and cold / new / synth wave? There must be some magical portal between 2012 Brooklyn and early eighties Berlin, or rainy Sheffield circa the early days of the Human League, or something. What else could explain the legions of synth wielding goths that call Brooklyn home. Whatever it is, we're definitely not complaining. The most recent result of this sonic timewarp comes in the form of record number two from Brooklyn duo Black Marble, whose sounds is a warm, lush, washed out electro pop new wave, very raw and DIY sounding, lo-fi but still lush, all driving low slung bass lines, deep, dramatic echo drenched vox, pulsing muted synths, skeletal propulsive rhythms, all of that good stuff. But as we've mentioned before, it's easy to get the 'sound' right, very few bands have the songs to back it up. However, like some of our other gloomy faves, the Soft Moon, Trust, Craft Spells, Minks, etc., Black Marble craft some seriously excellent pop songs. Opener "Cruel Summer" is easily one of our favorite gloom pop / cold wave jams yet, with just a hint of Goblin / Carpenter fused with their eighties style minor key moody electro pop, the vocals especially deep and dramatic, most of the song spent locked into a pulsing motorik loop, cinematic and tranced out, laced with lilting melodies, and subtle hook that is irresistible, the sound a bit like a retro cold wave Magnetic Fields. The follow up "MSQ No-Extra" is just as good, which a churning industrial rhythm, looped beneath ethereal kosmische shimmer, and a serious New Order style bassline, cascading synths, and booming percussion, and another huge hook, the song sounds like it could have been plucked from some classic eighties soundtrack (Breakfast Club?), and that's pretty much how the rest of the record plays out, one eighties style new wave electro pop classic after another, with the occasional bit of abstract cold wave drift, like the awesome closer "Unrelated", which almost sounds more like Zombi or Umberto, that retro synthscapery, definitely informing the group's more electro pop sound. Great stuff, and essential for fans of all things Sacred Bones / Captured Tracks and that whole modern cold / new / synth wave axis.

MPEG stream: Cruel Summer
MPEG stream: MSQ No-Extra
MPEG stream: A Great Design
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We hadn't heard anything really about this new release on DFA but when we first put it on we immediately thought "this sort of sounds like a way more dancey version of a Gavin Russom & Delia Gonzalez record." And whattayaknow? After actually checking the liner notes, we discovered that this is indeed the work of one half of that duo, Gavin Russom. Setting out to make a much more blatantly dancefloor-centric record, this finds Russom channeling the ghosts of Acid House and for sure the influence of his time spent in late night dance clubs while living in Berlin. While some of the record is very fast paced and strobe light ready, it's the more slow burning moments that really push the album into the stratosphere. Russom has such a way with those dark and drifty tones and melodies, so hypnotic and trancelike. No doubt that Russom is drawing from not only his love of dance music culture but also his other more eclectic influences like horror-prog (Goblin) and the repetition and motorik quality of classic krautrock. But make no mistake, this is for sure a full on techno record, and a damn good one! Some of these songs are so long and stretched out, providing the perfect soundtrack to some mind altering k-hole that can't be escaped.

MPEG stream: Death Tunnel
MPEG stream: Dreamcatcher
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THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORRY. Another Record Store Day artifact (thanks to everyone who came out for RSD!!!) that we managed to get enough of, so we'd have a few left after the big day, to share with the aQ faithful who don't have a local record store to call their own, or who just consider US their indie record shop. A little taster of the upcoming Black Moth Super Rainbow full length. This 7" is limited to 500 copies, pressed on orange vinyl, and was whipped up just for Record Store Day. It features the awesomely titled jam "Born On A Day The Sun Didn't Rise" from the new album, which is everything we could have hoped for, all druggy and swirly and sun dappled and psychedelic. There are strings and warn whirring synths, and breathless dreamy vox, and lilting melodies, not super freaked out or spastic, although there are hits of swooping electronics and glitchy bits, but for the most part this is just some awesomely new wave flecked jangly futuristic psych pop. The flipside offers up a drastically different demo version, that actually sounds more like Blackmoth, skittery drum machines, the main melody plucked out on a banjo, disembodied vocodered vocals, the strings pushed way up in the mix, much more of a hip hop / trip hop vibe, more effects and swooping swirling synths, really rad, and exclusive to this here 7". Can NOT wait for the new record, but this will hold us over until then...

Another tasty and colorful slab of vinyl from BMSR. No one delivers warm, warped and fuzzy melodic electronic jams better then these guys. We've fallen deeply in love with their sound over the last few years and they have yet to disappoint. This picture disc offers two great new instrumental tracks that showcase their slower and more warped and warbly side. Still filled with such delicious hooks but we love that these longer tracks allow them to space out and get a little more cosmic and psychedelic. It's still unmistakably BMSR, their signature sound all oozy and melty and drippy and druggy and divine... The picture disc comes with a coupon for a free download, but you can't beat listening to this on your turntable and watching the colored wax spin around and around as you get lost in their catchy orbit. Very limited so jump on this while you can!

Black Moth Super Rainbow have made quite an impact in the last couple years with their crunchy and poppy take on analog electronic pop, a sound that falls so near the more playful side of Boards Of Canada, and has us imagining what it might sound like if Air covered Daft Punk, using busted up old equipment, the result would have to be oh so charming and satisfying. Drippers is essentially a collection of outtakes and unreleased tracks, but this is no throwaway ep. In fact we've been playing this nonstop, loving how thick and distorted the sounds here are and marvelling at BMSR's ability to conjure up such catchy and washed out electronic pop delights. The fact that they got Mike Watt to play on one of our favorite tracks ("Black Yogurt") has us even more smitten. Complete with a scratch n' sniff cover, this is music that engages all the sensations and keeps us coming back for more and more. (FYI, 10" vinyl version forthcoming...)

MPEG stream: Black Yogurt (Featuring Mike Watt)
MPEG stream: We Are The Pagans (Dandelion Gum Outtake)

Whoa, Graveface Records, take it easy! Who do you think you are? Droppin' not one but two Black Moth Super Rainbow albums in our laps at once? We're not complaining, but don't *you* think Start A People and Falling Through A Field are just a lot of tunes to digest and enjoy at once? That's forty one total -- yes, we counted! Start A People is a reissue of their 2004 album and along with the sixteen original tracks comes a pair of bonus tracks. The good thing about having this much BMSR is that you can put the cd on, then go ahead and drift off into daydream land without worrying that you're gonna have to change discs anytime soon. We fell so in love with their latest album Dandylion Gum, so when we found out there was earlier BMSR stuff we were both excited yet a little skeptical, maybe there was a reason we hadn't heard those early recordings, maybe the band was just coming into it's own now. Luckily that was so not the case as these earlier recordings show that BMSR have been creating irresistible and fuzzy sounding electronic pop from the get go. Like a much more playful and charming version of Air, listening to Start A People is like a psychedelic soundtrack to playing Candyland as a little kid. Filled with wonder, heavily processed vocals on some tracks and evoking all kinds of marvelous color. We keep falling deeper and deeper in love with Black Moth Super Rainbow!

MPEG stream: Snail Garden
MPEG stream: Raspberry Dawn
MPEG stream: I Am The Alphabet

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

SORRY.

We've got a couple copies of this lp, released last year on Dangerous Age, a new label run by John Elliott of Emeralds. Black Past is one guy from Cleveland, putting his synths to use to live out some dark kosmische krauty motorcycle groove fantasies (the alternative title for this is "A Soundtrack for a Deranged Motorcyclist"). Drums and guitars etc. are also employed for these minimal motorik one man jams. Simple but effective, repetitive and hypnotic. Limited to 300 copies, vinyl-only.

We've been super obsessed with this killer slab of grim, blackened, nocturnal, techno minimalism, a dread fueled sprawl of bleak electronica and droned out sci-fi industrialism that's even more remarkable as it's the first Black Rain release in 18 years!! Black Rain mastermind Stuart Argabright is hardly a household name, yet the man has an impressive catalog of high-caliber recordings along an axis of futurist / cyberpunk / darkly post-punk electronica dating back to the late '70s. His first fruits were in the form of the Factory sponsored Ike Yard, whose gloomy electro-dirges followed in the wake of the No New York contingent, followed by some far more club-oriented projects including the one-hit wonder Dominatrix and the eccentric Death Comet Crew (working with the pioneer of Afro-futurism, Rammellzee). Black Rain was the band that Argabright began with fellow DCC-member Shinichi Shimokawa in 1992 or thereabouts, and was originally commissioned to draft the score for a film version of Johnny Mnemonic. Despite his long-standing friendship with Phillip K. Dick, the Black Rain tracks were scrapped in favor of a high-budget Hollywood score after Keanu Reeves was pegged for the lead. After Blackest Ever Black pressed up a short-program lp 2010 of that soundtrack work from the early '90s (all of which had appeared on the Fifth Colvmn cd entitled 1.0), Argabright returned to the Black Rain moniker, possibly with Shimokawa at his right hand again. Dark Pool continues the thread of tense cyborg-electronica crafted through those nixed Johnny Mnemonic soundtracks. The introductory track features a spoken word preface from Sean Young (best known as the android Rachel from Blade Runner) amongst a flurry of electrically screeching birds, extending the P.K. Dick allusions. Dystopian electronic shadows and hauntological drones brace much of Dark Pool, with Black Rain snapping into rhythmic passages of taut pneumatic samples and polished-machine drum programming. "Xibalba Road Metamorph" is a track that Dominick Fernow could only dream of producing as Prurient or Vatican Shadow, hammering its electro-static pulses with iron-fisted brutality and cold-blooded precision. The aptly named "Data River" spills out clinical beeps and drill-hammer rhythms on par with the sterility of Mika Vainio's Metri or any of the Raster Noton folk, with toxic drones of any villainous techno track lurking in the distance. Black Rain does pull the rug out from under us on the final track which rockets forward with a modern-day Moroder-esque tension, all dynamic arpeggiation and teeth-gritting electronic suspense only to abruptly cut the power, marking the end of the album. If we were to apply the cinematic, gothic / sci-fi allusion that this albums begs for, then this coda marks the unexpected termination of the android protagonist. Achtung! Bang! Click. End.

MPEG stream: Burst
MPEG stream: Xibalba Road Metamorph
MPEG stream: Night In New Chiang Saen
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In recent years we've had a geyser of dance punk, dance pop and dance rock, but dance metal? Naw, not really. The record label's description of this French duo gave us cause to brace ourselves. Mentions of Norwegian black metal fascinations, song titles like "Brenn Di Ega Kjerke" (Norwegian to English translation: burn your own church), acid house, '80s synth pop and My Bloody Valentine's Loveless piqued our twisted interest. However, dance metal it's not. Although heavy axe wielding machismo and well-oiled flexing do factor in throughout the album, this is more akin to the fevered techno industrial stomp of Primal Scream. More metallic than metal per se. And making just as strong an impression are the gentler moments when they fall more in step with the suave dramatics of Jarvis Cocker and Pulp. They also borrow a bit of lewd swagger from garage rawk trashies like The Cramps, the glammy bloat of Gary Glitter and Sigue Sigue Sputnik and the over the top vocal intonations of Laibach. No, it's nothing really new, in fact a lot of this sounds absolutely dated, but it sure is fun and a bit silly in an Andrew W.K. kind of way... but French.

MPEG stream: Brenn Di Ega Kjerke
MPEG stream: I'm A Man

The latest from longtime aQ faves Black To Comm is a bit of a departure, a soundtrack for a Singaporean silent film (one that has been soundtracked by other artists in the past, including Oren Ambarchi among others), which was apparently recorded while Marc Richter, aka Black To Comm, was under sedation and on heavy pain killers recovering from an injury, which seemed appropriate considering the film itself was about slowness and decay, sleep and death, and while we have yet to see the film, the music on its own is quite striking. A dizzying collage of samples and electronics, singing bowls and singing saw, and some singing too, the result is heady and psychedelic, dark and droney, grim and gristly. The opening track drapes some woozy crooning over a shimmering dronescape laced with wheezing melodies, glitched out electronics and random rhythmic clatter. The follow up track is much more contemplative and spare, softly processed acoustic guitar, gently glitchy, hints of Oval and Ambarchi, swooping backwards effects, a crystalline psychedelic folk, drifting along side more of those hauntingly crooned vox, those vox getting deeper and more dramatic and weirder and weirder. The music seeming to detune alongside. From there, the soundtrack drifts dreamily, delicate piano floats serenely through soft clouds of static, over lush chordal swells, all hazy and crystalline, the vox a dark dreamy croon, a strange sort of almost Caretaker sounding ballad, before expanding into an almost Our Love Will Destroy The World sounding soft cacophony, swirling swaths of tinkling chimes and woozy loops, layered high end shimmer and lush soft focus thrum, the vocals this time drifting way down in the mix, and finally, the score finishes off with a gorgeous bit of druggy cabaret, gauzy and bleary and gently blurred into a softly churning driftscape, rife with strange animal sounds, buried rhythmic pulses, and dark delicate vocalizations, maybe our favorite track of the bunch. Definitely a lot different than past B2C releases in some ways, especially the vocals, which for some here were a dealbreaker, but to most of us, it sounds a bit like Antony from Antony & The Johnsons singing over a strange swirl of dark electronics and abstract psychedelic loopscaping, a gorgeously haunting songsuite of dark electroballads blurred and smeared into something much more abstract and atmospheric, which we are digging quite a bit!

MPEG stream: Stickstoff II
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A brand new record from this weirdo German drone combo (or maybe it's a one man band), and it's a doozy. We have been pretty into everything we've heard from BTC, so we were pretty excited to get out hands on this new one. In the past, we, and other folks have compares Black To Comm to groups like Oval, Pimmon, Fennesz, Earth and Merzbow, but the truth is in fact much stranger, and much more difficult to describe. This is definitely drone music, but it's so mysterious sounding, not all low end rumbles or shimmering high end skree, instead, it's a seemingly haphazard assemblage of sounds and musical fragments, looped and processed and chopped up, then woven into looooong undulating dronescapes, that churn and shimmer and buzz and whir, but also twist themselves into strange shapes, offering up incidental melodic overtones and subtle rhythms. And the strange thing is the parts really don't matter so much, in that they are eventually transformed into something entirely new. It reminds us of an exhibit at the museum, where a voice would repeat a single word or phrase over and over, and you would try to pick out the word, but it was practically impossible, the looped speech immediately turned into something sonically mysterious and impenetrable. Fractal Hair Geometry is similar in that the source sounds are super varied, but within minutes, even seconds, the source becomes meaningless, instead it is simple an element in a swooning and swaying and woozily hypnotic whole. Chanted vocals, whirring organs, mysterious shimmers, squiggly melodies, buzzing Theremins, electronic glitches, analog synths, wheezing harmoniums, and those are just guesses, cuz just like that museum exhibit, it's difficult to tell what the source sounds are. We also didn't try that hard. It's like trying to peek under the table to see how a magician does a trick. We don't want to know. It's more fun to get lost in these mysterious sounds. One track even introduces a muted techno throb, and for a brief second it sounds like the weirdest record Kompakt never released. It's really hard to describe this stuff, which is probably why we like it so much, check out the sound samples, and hear for yourself!

MPEG stream: Negative Volumes
MPEG stream: Orange Record
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James Blake is a curious case. We wonder if he had some standard folk guitar or piano backing to his frigid soul songs, would we be into this that much? But Blake's songs are far from standard, and despite the mainstream pop and RnB vocabulary he borrows heavily from (Auto-Tune, guest rapper stints, the gospel-tinged vocalizations), he creates something quite unpredictable and beautifully unique in the strange fractured arrangements. Like Nina Simone in reservedly dramatic avant-electronica mode, Blake keeps his songwriting emotionally effective while keeping enough distance so as not to become vocally overwrought or musically anthemic. The chilled production evokes an atmosphere of dreamy spaciousness, pillowy clouds of piano, filtered samples, bass pulses and far away post-dubstep rhythms. Blake is as close as we're probably going to get to Arthur Russell and Burial having a beautiful musical child together.

MPEG stream: Retrograde
MPEG stream: Voyeur
MPEG stream: Take A Fall For Me (featuring RZA)

There never seems to be any shortage of hype going around the music world. These days more than ever. And all too often those being hyped so much in the blogosphere world just never really deliver the goods to warrant all the hoopla. But every now and then a record comes along that totally does deserve all that attention, such is the case with this amazing album by James Blake. Immediately it reminds us of some amazing combination of several of our favorite records ever. Radiohead's Kid A, Burial's Untrue, Arthur Russell's Calling Out Of Context, and Antony & The Johnsons if they made a record produced by Massive Attack and Swarms. Warm rushes of dubstep inspired backbeats meet gospel like vocal delivery, often auto-tuned but in such a moody and satisfying way. One of our customers who was going through a hard day when we had this playing in the store, came up to the counter and said "This is massaging my mind in ways I needed so badly." We can totally see where he was coming from. This is the kind of record made for melting, floating, and coming down softly.

MPEG stream: Unluck
MPEG stream: Limit To Your Love
MPEG stream: I Mind

Blanketship's second album starts off in a much more funky and trip-hop-y fashion than anything found on his previous cd Threeps, but it definitely doesn't stay put. This one-man band aka Jared Blum keeps things moving along, drawing from a plethora of inspirations and sound sources, but always keeping thoughts of pop in the back of his mind. Incorporating samples of psychedelia, jazz, earthen folk, field recordings, and world beat, he's pieced together each track on Summer Set, with some considerably more structured than others. Catchily groovy and playfully spirited.

MPEG stream: County Fare
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This new cd from SF's one man band Blanketship compiles three of his cd-r and cassette eps (hence the title, get it?) from the last couple of years. In chronological order, they are: L'Homme Invisible, Captain Assure, and Willow Bend. However, the tracks -- 25 in all -- have been jumbled together into an all new running order. It flows very well, making for a delightful full length. Maybe Cup's gone a little bit nutty, but she thought she heard lil' kitties mewing throughout this cd (particularly on the track "Dwarfism"). Then again maybe it was all due to the fact that just moments earlier we were listening to the plentiful meowing on the Cats & Kittens cd. Nonetheless, this is not a bad thing! The sounds, whether they are indeed meows or not, totally complemented the overall soft 'n' soothing atmosphere. On each track, Blanketship craftily arranges a soundscape of electronic melodies, sampled sounds, programmed rhythms among other things resulting in an airy collage. Sometimes a bit ghostly, sometimes a bit '60s British mystery movie-esque, sometimes a bit like a kranky ol' videogame, quite often playful and novel. Nice!

MPEG stream: Dwarfism
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Stunning new two track single from one half of, duh, Blectum From Blechdom. Fluttering, wondrous instumental synth lullabies that evoke the electronic work of Raymond Scott, the player piano compositions of Conlon Nancarrow, and even traces of Kurt Weill, but with a contemporary Schematic twist. Make sense? Remember a time in life when electronic synthesizers were accessible to the public and everyone had this crazy idea of what the year 2000 was going to be like? We were gonna live on the moon and live in capsules and wear spacesuits, we were preparing for the FUTURE! Well, I'm actually too young to remember, but these songs make me think about that kind of exhilarating bewilderment. Yeah, it's kinda like that...

Kevin Blechdom's latest album comes in the form of a frantic electronic-rock opera-style extravaganza. In contrast to her past recordings that frequently teetered into juvenile booby-joke, one-trick-pony territory (also a problem we've had with the music of Chicks On Speed whose label released this cd), this comes across as considerably more mature and composed... but no less kooky. Uhh, but we should let you know that breasts (her own) do make an appearance on this album's cover photo. Also on prominent display here... musically, is her startlingly broad stylistic spectrum. She delves robustly into diva drama, beefy rock, singy-songy pop, distorted funk, electro-kitsch and beyond. Finally, a Blechdom album with tracks that bear repeat listens, and with a number of compositions that are worthy of the critical acclaim that has been bestowed upon her in the past. That said, this is still something of an acquired taste. Check out the audio clips to see if your palate welcomes the camp-o-phonic sounds of Ms Blechdom.

MPEG stream: Coming
MPEG stream: Love You From The Heart

During the brief hiatus that was once thought to be the demise of Blectum From Blechdom, each member went on to craft their own, distinct personalities. While Blevin tucked herself away to assemble the epic sonic explorations of "Talon Slalom", Kevin took to small stages around the world, presenting her Kurt-Weill-meets-karaoke-diva-performance-artist-as-portrayed-by-Mary-Katherine-Gallagher-gone-completely-mad to the masses willing to endure that highly engaging, albeit cringeworthy affair. "I Love Presets", unlike the beautifully awe-inspiring solo material on the instrumental "The Inside Story" or "And The Tempo Of Doom" eps, focuses on Kevin's "pop star" potential, with emphasis on vocal delivery and lyrical "wit". Songs tend to be personal, as displayed in her heart-wrenching cover of Tina Turner's "Private Dancer" or her much-too-informative reminiscence of a former relationship in "Mr. Miguel". The highlights, musically, are in the Kurt Weill / carnivalesque "Shelley Sho'nuff" and Kevin's response to gearhounding know-it-alls in "Talkin' Tech". Also included is the current Blectum standard, "Interspecies Love". This is pure kitsch, novel for a few listens, but sadly tires much too quickly...

RealAudio clip: Interspecies Love
RealAudio clip: Shelley Sho'nuff

Kevin Blechdom (of acclaimed Oakland duo Blectum From Blechdom) busts out her first solo recording, nine short, laconic lullabies (one of which, "Shooshee", is a variation of a Blectum From Blechdom track) composed entirely with software programs written by

RealAudio clip: ready4love

Someone has to say it, it might as well be us. C'mon!!! You studied music at Mills for fuck's sake!!! You were honored alongside RYOJI IKEDA and OVAL by the Ars Electronica, the biggest honor in digital music, beating out everybody ever featured in The Wire, EVERYBODY! But all you do is sing stupid songs, terribly off key, to retarded programmed nursery rhyme electronica, about boobs and butts and stuff only grade schoolers think is funny. Christ, this is depressing/embarrassing. But people (those Ars Electronica folks for one, and possibly Fred Frith who actually appears on this disc) seem to like the Blechdom thing, so maybe we're missing something. Some sample lyrics: "There's a boob-a-que in here, my tits are on fire / My ballpark boobs are about to explode." Ugh, well, whatever we might be missing doesn't sound like something we want to get.

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

SORRY. Blectum From Blechdom's mutant electronica has been coupled with the post-Aphex tricknology of Chris "O.S.T." Douglas for this super limited lathe cut 10" produced for Dial Records. One side is more rhythmically based, with algorithmic workouts of erratic shortwave bleeping situated above a mock house drum machine build. The other side is far more whimsical, entirely unconcerned with their audience's intellectual sensibilities. Kevin & Blevin Blectum present a vocal mimicry of tapes made by teenage girls as they sing along, completely off key, to their favourite boy bands, squealing with delight. Broken calliope melodies plink and plonk along with the embarassingly quaint vocals. Yup, the covers are actual buttprints by Kevin & Blevin... if you get lucky you might find one or two very long black hairs accompanying your buttprint. (Blevin Blectum claims this is not one of theirs but is the result of the detritus found in Mike Dial's house.)

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

SORRY. Blectum From Blechdom keeps on getting better and weirder with each release. "De Snaunted Haus" is the fourth release this year for San Francisco's carnivalesque electro-shock / horror-techno duo. There honestly hasn't been much that sounds like Blectum From Blechdom, it's almost like somebody took a baseball bat to the head of Laurie Anderson and made her act, punch-drunk, in some really silly horror skits, scored on a Casio keyboard by somebody who has never listened to anything but Thinking Fellers albums at the wrong speed. Their warped electronica simulates child-like melodies as reflected through a funhouse mirror of distortion and exaggeration, and in-between these songs Blectum From Blechdom set up surreal skits that involve mad ducks, bloodied children, and the undead, all of which end in somebody screaming (nice touch). So we say: Blectoids, keep hammering away at Laurie Anderson's head with that baseball bat! If only.

RealAudio clip: Son-Toe-Fury
RealAudio clip: Hotrodderdam

We told it like it really is last time with our harsh-but-honest assessment of Kevin Blechdom's "Your Butt" ep...so there's no going back now. But perhaps this new disc from quite a few people's favorite female Oakland electronics and cabaret duo is deserving of a better fate. Or perhaps not. From the vaginal themed artwork to song titles like "Shithole" and "Toilet Trouble" this celebrates the side of BFB that we just don't appreciate, their not so much childlike as childish aesthetic... Of course, ample warning is given where it says on the sleeve that "this is a compilation of BFB's most drunken and messy live musical moments." Still, the resulting glitchy sound-world of computers gone bad features plenty of crunchy bleepy beats and drones, that, seemingly mechanical and random as they are, aren't unpleasant. But, when the duo start singing, that's when this slides from "kinda cool, kitschy instrumental electronica act" to "annoying, noisy joke band that's just not for us"... Again though, it can't be denied that BFB do indeed have their fans, and doubtless fans will want and need this disc, more power to 'em. We'll just agree to disagree, no hard feelings. Apparently, this is to be the last ever BFB release, but now have two separate full-fledged solo careers to, er, look forward to.

RealAudio clip: Jump Jo Bones
RealAudio clip: Open Fly

Blectum from Blechdom's "Haus de Snaus" is a collection of the previously listed but currently out of print releases "Snauses And Mallards" (their first EP, originally on Kit Clayton's Orthlorng Musork) and "De Snaunted Haus" (their 4th release on Tigerbeat So here's what we've previously written: "Snauses and Mallards" from Kit Clayton's Orthlorng Musork label is from Blectum From Blechdom - the work of two local technicians showcasing their electronic output from the Mills College conservatory. This eight track 12", while playful and childlike, has a distinctly creepy and maniacal element, sort of like the sounds of scary funhouse at an evil carnival. Or something. It's full of dense sample mutilation, constructed into spasmodic yet anthemic rhythmic complexities. The music hints at both '80s electro and at early computer music with all of its nerdy whimsy & tinniness. Quality stuff for, say, fans of Matmos' textured 'organica' (to use Hrvatski's term for it). Blectum From Blechdom keeps on getting better and weirder with each release. "De Snaunted Haus" is the fourth release this year for San Francisco's carnivalesque electro-shock / horror-techno duo. There honestly hasn't been much that sounds like Blectum From Blechdom, it's almost like somebody took a baseball bat to the head of Laurie Anderson and made her act, punch-drunk, in some really silly horror skits, scored on a Casio keyboard by somebody who has never listened to anything but Thinking Fellers albums at the wrong speed. Their warped electronica simulates child-like melodies as reflected through a funhouse mirror of distortion and exaggeration, and in-between these songs Blectum From Blechdom set up surreal skits that involve mad ducks, bloodied children, and the undead, all of which end in somebody screaming (nice touch). So we say: Blectoids, keep hammering away at Laurie Anderson's head with that baseball bat! If only.

RealAudio clip: Son-Toe-Fury
RealAudio clip: Hotrodderdam

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

SORRY. The second release from Kit Clayton's Orthlorng Musork label is from Blectum From Blechdom - the work of two local technicians showcasing their electronic output from the Mills College conservatory. This eight track 12", while playful and childlike, has a distinctly creepy and maniacal element, sort of like the sounds of scary funhouse at an evil carnival. Or something. It's full of dense sample mutilation, constructed into spasmodic yet anthemic rhythmic complexities. The music hints at both '80s electro and at early computer music with all of its nerdy whimsy & tinniness. Quality stuff for, say, fans of Matmos' textured 'organica' (to use Hrvatski's term for it).

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

SORRY. After their "Snauses & Mallards" ep for Kit Clayton's Orthlorng Musork, the Bay Area computer / sampler duo Blectum from Blechdum has finally released their debut album. And what a debut it is too! Like V/VM's best moments, Blectum from Blechdum appear at times to be unconcerned with the bastions of good taste in attempts at unadulterated electronica silliness far removed from the stodginess of typical IDM. Whimsical vocal cut-ups and demented childlike melodies dominate their wacked machine music. But far from being a comedy ensemble, Blectum will turn to the bleep groove of early Warp singles filling their sound with stuttering percolations and warbled electronics.

There's a certain kind of electronic music we used to love that seems to have gone M.I.A. lately. That kind of off kilter abstract experimentalism that seemed to be an offshoot of IDM, like IDM's deformed younger sibling that was kept locked up in the basement, thankfully with a full complement of recording gear and electronics. Lesser was one of our favorites. And at times, so too were Blectum From Blechdom. A motley crew who sort of skirted the 'mainstream' creating their own sound, their own scene, taking the electronic music of the day and twisting it all up. While Lesser seemed to do no wrong, or if he did wrong, it was so gloriously wrong it was right, BfB were a bit more hit and miss. The two personalities pulling in two distinctly different directions. And to be honest, we much preferred Blevin's trajectory to Kevin's. As later records demonstrated, Kevin leaned more toward the bratty and puerile, a much more Chicks On Speed vibe, mixing Karaoke with damaged versions of commercial pop, while Blevin (aka Bevin) was much more academic, and experimental, with an ear for texture and rhythm not that far removed from her hubby Lesser.� Apparently the two have reunited and are once again a going concern, but more immediately, Blevin has finally released a new solo record, the first in 4 years, and it's pretty damn great. And actually, the fact that the opening track is a cover of a song by the mysterious Reverend Fred Lane just blows our minds. We've been trying to track Lane down to reissue his long out of print Shimmy Disc records, some of the most twisted genius EVER. And BB's version is equally twisted, but in a whole different way. Lots of rhythmic skitter, thick throbbing bass, she sings too but here voice is twisted and processed into strange stutters and streaks, the whole thing has a weirdly prog feel, a bit like a damaged Squarepusher covering some obscure lost seventies prog rarity, but all chopped up and reassembled. It definitely doesn't sound that much like the original, but the concept! And the sound. Fucking awesome. The rest of the record holds up pretty well considering there are no more Fred Lane covers, "Cygnet" with its snippets of soaring strings layered over dark meandering beats and ominous whirring ambience, "Foyer Fire", a glitchy, hiss, static flecked 8-bit carnival jam, each track is totally unique but manages to link to the sounds before and after seamlessly, from chaotic cut and paste, to woozy backwards warble, to hiccupping warbly fractured jungle, to blissed out smears of skitter and flutter, reminding us quite a bit of a more subdued (slightly) and�less caffeinated Stock, Hausen And Walkman.� The record finishes off with the truly haunting closer "Avian Enamel", with its chopped and processed harmonies, muted rhythmic thump, mysterious voices, weirdly groovy beats, all peppered with little flurries of glitch and crackle, buried samples, woozy loops, everything smoothed out into a drone-y beatscape both moody and mesmerizing. A fine return for sure. Now if we can just tempt Lesser out of hiding...

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SORRY.

During the past six months or so, Blevin and Kevin Blectum have taken separate paths away from the fictional agendas of Blectum from Blechdom, which earned the pair an honorable mention at the 2001 Ars Electronica festival. While Blevin had previously released an album for Phthalo as D84, this is her first album as Blevin Blectum and is, not surprisingly, a very silly piece of DSP-filter-happy electronica. While both Blevin and Kevin have put aside the punch-drunk deranged mythologies of snauses and mad mallards of their solo albums, they have maintained Blechdom's post-ironic stance of building electronica out of purposefully ugly, arrhythmic, or just conventionally 'wrong' fragments of whimsical sound, in direct contrast to their impressive technical prowess over their gear. The first half of "Talon Slalom" is a discombobulated mix of garishly bubbly 8-bit sonic cavacades, insipid melodies, drooling information overload, and whimsically clumsy rhythms. Occasionally some seasick techno develops over the course of the first half of the album, with asynchronous samples splattered randomly across the rhythmic scaffold of a simple 4/4 beat. While the first half of the album seems maybe a little too silly, Blevin makes a conscientious effort to develop like-minded funhouse fragments into spiralling passages of surreal looped electro-waltzes. And the results are actually quite impressive. Fun and funny, but still complex and thoughtful and truly inspired. This latter half is certainly enough to balance out the opening follies of "Talon Slalom."

RealAudio clip: The Wicked Pair Were Dancing
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Originally released in 2008 and reissued on Cold Spring with a bonus track, haunting modern chamber music from this one man composer / soundscaper. Looped pianos, layered strings, barely there vox, and all sorts of manipulated atmospheres. Soft noise and lush landscapes of sound, dark and mysterious and quite lovely. LIMITED TO 200 COPIES.

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SORRY. "The first in a series of extremely heavy reggae soundclash/soundsystem inspired 7 inches" it says here. And the series is off to a good start with this entry by Bloodclaat Gangsta Youth, otherwise known as the harder-than-digital-hardcore beat terrorist DJ Scud. Brutal as expected.

New from Blue, who were previously responsible for the enjoyable Mexican Church. Less blanched out dub and more haunting darkcore drum & bass with a flare for arrhythmic drum programming a la Squarepusher.

Blue Daisy is the murkily downtempo project spearheaded by London producer Kwesi Darko, who's one to slide between any number of electronica's microgenres - dubstep, leftfield house, soulful croons, banging trax, and lots of nocturnal ambience. These may be the same strategies towards a hauntological electric dub that Demdike Stare had used to build their epic works, but Darko's wandering, disjointed beats gravitate back to a post-hip hop structuralism instead of the cryptic crate-digging of Demdike Stare. The resultant debut album from Blue Daisy (after a handful of killer 12"s and 10"s) looks through Burial back to the opiated Bristol sound of Tricky, Portishead, and Massive Attack. The female voice - compressed through layers of static and shitty microphones - is a constant theme throughout the album, certainly alluding to how Beth Gibbons sounded in Portishead. "Firewall" (featuring the occasional Blue Daisy vocalist Anneke Warburton) situates that static-saturated, angelic voice above a grizzled, snaking bassline and echo-pulse breakbeats. The album fractures through collages of media samples and blurred ambience, re-forming into the darkcore productions of "Shadow Assassins" and "Psyche Inquiry" which come across somewhere between RZA and Dalek, complete with gnarled psych-funk guitar riffs amidst the heavy beats. Out of these subterranean cuts, sparkling ambient synth lines morph into Kompakt-styled rolling minimal techno sourced from hypnotic bloop, monophunk beats, and disembodied female vocals again from Warburton, rounding out this mighty fine album.

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This disc (compiling two rare & expensive late '60s lps) reveals NYC's the Blues Magoos to be the missing link between the Count Five, the MC5, and -gasp- the new Monster Magnet! Sounds impossible but it's true! Squirrelly garage rock wrapped in farfisa organ and swirly psychedelia, tempered with a healthy dose of bubblegum pop and a silly sense of humor. The album titles are right-on, and 'the band was known for wearing bellbottoms trimmed with neon plastic tubes'! Includes an amazing cover of Maceo Marriweather's 'Worried Life Blues'. This welcome reissue has been a constant on the AQ-stereo ever since it showed up! This record reflects our growing interest in the drug culture of the late '60s...oops, I mean, their interest.

Morr Music continue their singular vision of keepin' you as relaxed and unriled as possible. Indeed, this German label have amassed quite a stable of like-minded dreamy indie pop-tronica artists, and here's the latest addition to their family. It's F.S. Blumm's Zweite Meer album. Psst, for those keeping score, it's actually his second release on Morr. His first was 2001's Mondekuchen, notably the first acoustic album released on that label. Anyways, his muted music immediately settles right in by the hearth with some ultra soft prettiness composed from a blend of acoustic guitar, glockenspiel, melodica, accordion, harmonium, french horn and more. Zweite Meer also snuggles in cozily next to the music by The Album Leaf. Just give this a back-to-back listen with A.L.'s recently reissued Seal Beach EP. So lovely!

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While it was obviously too much to hope for that the new Dean Blunt record could actually live up to its tantalizingly grim title, and contain ACTUAL Black Metal, it does end up being a sonic surprise anyway. Right from the get go, with the opening track a looped sunshine pop concoction of swirling strings, jangle pop guitars, and way-up-in-the-mix deadpan vocals, drawled and laid back, it's not ENTIRELY removed from DB's previous full length, the heartbreak comedown album The Redeemer, but things here get stripped down even further, and become further removed from Blunt's previous project Hype Williams. Black Metal is a collection of ultra personal downer pop, looped gloominess, a sort of fractured slowcore, the bulk of the record following the sonic template set by that first track, a series of looped pop jams, all swirling strings, jangle pop guitars, deadpan laid back vocals, Blunt's vocals almost comical in their awkward fit, which might rankle some listeners, but it's really what gives Black Metal its intimate, home brewed vibe, and if Blunt's vocals seems a bit woozy and warble, prepare yourself for the yowling, atonal female vox (a la Kim Gordon), courtesy of Joanne Robertson, which are even more strange and cold and more often than not charmingly off key. Robertson surfaces throughout Black Metal, occasionally lacing the proceedings with haunting guitar figures, but more often countering Blunt's wasted vocals with her own hazy narcoleptic call and response croon. Highlights include "100", which sans vocals could be Galaxie 500, or some other similarly minded jangle pop outfit, but then Robertson and Blunt join the proceedings, and the song is transformed into something more off kilter, and home brewed sounding, still hauntingly intimate, but with a warped DIY vibe, Robertson's vocals in particular reminding us of early 4-track twee pop, but here set amidst a landscape much more lush and layered. There's the sprawling 13 minute epic "Forever", all stumbling, stuttery programed rhythms, over wheezing shimmers and delicate piano, Robertson crooning forlornly, before the sound starts to get a little bit dubby, with echoes and strange sound effects, only to eventually be joined by some (purposefully?) cheesy sax. Which is followed by the mesmerizingly creepy "X", all spidery guitars draped over softly billowing chordal thrum, a gauzy raga like drone, haunting and hypnotic, which unexpectedly blossoms into some woozy, warbly lo-fi electro, and again more of Robertson's endearingly off-key vocals, all driven by what sound like the hiss of a life support machine (!). The rest of the record is populated by fantastic little electro-dream pop fragments, that again, sans vocals are alternatingly sweetly psychedelic or charmingly experimental, whether it's the cascading shoegaze shimmer of "Heavy", or the spare Doug Blunt styled (no relation? this song has us wondering!) skeletal funk groovery of the misleadingly titled "Punk", which is also laced with soft undulating swirls of faux strings, and some cool Appalachian guitars, the distorted electronic tangle of the also misleadingly titled "Country", which sounds like it could have come out on the Pan label, or the dizzyingly looped murk-pop ballad, again rife with "Careless Whisper" style sax, or even the synth heavy closer that sounds like Blunt and Robertson are channeling Angelo Badalamenti, the whole thing collapsing into some twisted synth dirge, driven by stumbling programmed beats, and Blunt sounding almost like SpaceApe (R.I.P.), a gorgeously bleak electro-jazz, gloom pop dirge that unwinds like the score to some lost Lynchian art film. Fantastic stuff. And perhaps appropriately, minimally and confusionally (and handsomely) packaged in all black with practically no information, other than the track titles.

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Here we have the newest piece of hypnotized dream-hop, back alley drug murk, neuro-mantic soul collage from Dean Blunt & Inga Copeland, formerly (?) known as Hype Williams! And while the sound here is a little more "put together" than some of their previous works, its still filled to the brim with that fucked up what-the-fuck sonic cough syrup sound we have all grown to love! Still hazy as hell smoked out buzz and hiss, mixed with draggy beats and screwed up samples, droney and dark synth drifts, Inga's vocals dubbed out to the max, haunted and peaking in the red on those louder syllables. The songs here are a woozy sprawl, but all mostly under four minutes, making the whole thing really feel like an album "proper". The jams maybe a little more focused than before, and maybe a little more pop-tones in the vocals, but that otherworldly element in their music is anything if not more pronounced. It's just so nice to not be able to put your finger on something, and that is exactly what Hype Williams does for us here. Hype Williams' music is all about reference points on system crashing overload. A combination of sounds and textures resulting from many a late night/early morning YouTube wormhole, filtered through narcotic smoke machine fog, resulting in a sound that is totally confounding, but equally seductive. Track 2 is a dark and sexy crawl through the moonlight, drum machine toms ping ponging from left to right, while a minimal synth outlines the progression. Honestly kind of reminding us of a gloomier, more damaged Enya (such a good thing!), but with Inga's voice being a little more breathy and spaced out. There are many hidden layers in such seemingly stark music. There is a lot of sonic space in the sounds at the forefront, but at about the 1:10 mark of track 2, a haunting little synth wash creeps in, WAY down in the mix, almost perfectly blending with the omnipresent tape hiss buzz. This sort of subtle sonic fuckery is a trade mark of Hype Williams, and Black Is Beautiful seems to exercise it to the point of perfection. Its understated psychedelic drifting, the sound lulling the listener into a sort of fugue state. Track 5 has very strange, euro-infomercial "world" vibes. A snappy little pop song buried in hiss, a gem that sounds like it would fit right in on one of those Sublime Frequency radio comps. Lo-fi dreamy, and catchy as hell. But it's tracks 9 & 10 that really have us reeling. The centerpiece to the album, and the longest songs here, we are treated to EVERYTHING that make Dean and Inga's sound so damn interesting. Track nine starts with a screwed up down-pitched voice (Dean?) talking about reaching the promised land with some homegrown, and then the phrase "Never Look Back" is repeated over and over and over again, kosmiche-y synth drones start to appear and build as the repetition of the phrase goes on and on. Really tranced out, stony subliminal message type of vibe. Than suddenly a song erupts! With Dean rapping the verse in his Houston via Hackney cough syrup drawl, and Inga singing an ear-wormy chorus. This is a pop song, albeit delivered through thick layers of opium smoke and TV glow haze. Hype Williams at their most accessible but still, WTF? Also AMAZING use of samples: "When white people tell other white people" etc. etc. LOL. Track 10 is a draggy slow jam, gothic sort of thing. An aphotic dub jam, slow and low with layers of synths gurgling and bubbling up. The beat just going forever while all sorts of disassociated noises creep in and out of frame, filled with feedback and tripped out dubwise vocal intonations. A jammy hypnotic drugged out creepy crawler of a tune! The rest of the record follows suit, an ecstatic tapestry of blurred vision, lo-fi yet space agey subliminal beats music! Black Is Beautiful sees the duo growing musically without losing sight of their unique aesthetic. A sound track for the over-saturated information age. It seems like it has meaning and message, but whatever that is, is not plainly seen, instead buried under layers of obscure reference and abstract signifiers. And the music itself (our main concern, admittedly) is as fucked up and hypnotic as ever! So, fully recommended!

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