[ aquarius records — Electronic ]

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Showing results 701 through 750 of 5033.

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If you dug the recent Yeti ep from this Canadian fella (Dan Snaith formerly aka Manitoba), you might be cravin' more Caribou right about now. Well, whad'ya know? His new full length just came a-flutterin' in. Dreamy electronic indie pop with plenty of nature themes -- lots of buzzy, chirpy, insect-y sounds and song titles include "Bees", "Barnowl", "Lord Leopard", "Hello Hammerheads" "Pelican Narrows" and of course the "Yeti". Amid the wildlife, he also fits in a respectful nod to the great electronic music innovator Morton Subotnick on the album's second track "Subotnick". Overall, he creates a soft, smudgey pastel hued scene in which he dabbles with dreamy shoegazer and cyclical krautrock influences to good effect.

MPEG stream: Subotnick
MPEG stream: Hello Hammerheads

The Torontonian artist Dan Snaith who now goes by the professional moniker Caribou used to prefer to be addressed by the name of a Canadian prairie province. Minor legal battles ensued with the elder musical artist Handsome Dick Manitoba claiming the name, and the rest is history. While Snaith was Manitoba, he released two terrific albums 2003's Up In Flames and 2001's Start Breaking My Heart which have now been reissued under his 'new' name, each with a bonus disc packed with extra material. Snaith has amassed quite an impressive body of work to date culminating in last year's very warmly received The Milk Of Human Kindness. Draws comparisons to fellow electronic popsters such as Jimmy Tamborello's select projects (Dntel, James Figurine, Postal Service) and the whole Morr Music roster (LaliPuna, Isan, Styrofoam), but incorporates a broader palette of more defined styles and influences. Swirling dreaminess occasionally drifting into jazzy shoegazer territory. Always a pleasure!

MPEG stream: Jacknuggeted
MPEG stream: Cherrybomb Part II

For a few releases this fellow (given name Dan Snaith) formerly went by the moniker Manitoba -- geography lesson: that's the Canadian province located between Saskatchewan and Ontario -- but he's recently switched over to the name of both a heavily antlered wilderness creature and a mountainous region in another province, British Columbia. Okay, now that classtime is over, let's move on to the music... this electronic-pop-trician has crafted a trio of tracks from playful but not excessively twee sounds that make you think he's been rummaging around in the toybox. But don't worry, none of the toys... oops, we mean sounds are gonna spring out and sock you in the nose. I mean, yeah, the live drums get a little rambunctious near the end of the title track as well as the third, but then it sinks back into his more typical mellowness with acoustic guitar plucking, and rounds from a lil' flute or recorder that's sorta like a mini ode to Wickerman. Furthermore, let it also be known that this has nothing to do with Amon Duul II's classic kraut-psych album of the same name. No, this is a much gentler beast. Dreamy, softly pulsing, gauzy and almost Christmas-y in its shimmery frosted chimey-ness! A promising prelude to his forthcoming album, The Milk Of Human Kindness (due out very very soon).

MPEG stream: Yeti
MPEG stream: Boreal Forest Opper

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SORRY. Not only is Wendy Carlos a pioneer of electornic music as we now know & love it. Her transformation from Walter to Wendy led to a new beginning in music making for Carlos. No longer was there just an academic and novelty approached to a new form of music(see "Switched On Bach"), but her music started to take a much more intense and focused eye. Haunting sounds, creepy melodies, something bubbling under the surface. Her work is most heard in film scores she has done over the last few decades..with this, her score for A Clockwork Orange being a seminal moment and a great place to start the voyage into the magical mystery of Wendy Carlos.

This really kind of had to be Record Of The Week. We're darn excited about it, and we're sure as heck not the only ones. John Carpenter, as you probably know, is a director of horror films and sci-fi thrillers, who also composes the soundtracks - suspenseful, powerful, pulsating - for many of his movies (often with collaborator Alan Howarth). We've reviewed reissues of many of our favorites: Halloween, The Fog, Assault On Precinct 13, Escape From New York� classics, all. In recent years, as you probably also are away, there have been many, many, MANY artists who are hugely, obviously, inspired by the film music of John Carpenter. We're talking artists like Zombi, Umberto, The Night Terrors, Majeure, Nightsatan, Steve Moore, Roll The Dice, Zombie Zombie (who did a whole disc of Carpenter covers), Crypt Vapor, and quite a few others. So, in our reviews, we're constantly saying stuff sounds "Carpenter-y", "Carpenter-esque", referring to "John Carpenter worship", and in general using the soundtracks of John Carpenter as a necessary reference point for all these bands who indeed do worship him. (Italian giallo soundtrack greats Goblin, of course, are also another big influence on this crowd, but the synth-ier side of things is especially Carpenter-y.) So it's about time John Carpenter himself got in on the act, and put out an album of his own, of music for the music's sake, not associated with any particular, actual film. Sacred Bones has scooped everybody with this brand new album of non-soundtrack music by John Carpenter. Carpenter recently formed a trio with his son (who is in a rock band) and godson (a film composer) and they jammed in his home studio until they came up with these pieces, freed entirely from the constraints of scoring specific scenes in a film. Instead, YOU provide the mental images� Despite the title, these tracks weren't ever meant for any of his films - it's not like they're from the cutting room floor, or were intended for movies that never got made - although, he could always use some of these themes in something in the future, we suppose. In light of what we said above, you know it's tough for us to review this without quite tautologically saying it sounds very John Carpenter-y!! Which is EXACTLY what we all want it to sound like, obviously. Heavy on the spooky '80s sounding synths, and propulsive chase-sequence grooves. The nine tracks here are each given a simple but evocative title, almost like this is Carpenter's own collection of "library music". There's thumping opener "Vortex", urgent and ominous, haunted by a repeated piano motif, followed by the melodic nightmare romance of "Obsidian", its powerful throb taking on epic proportions. Next, "Fallen" is another suspenseful transmission from the horror-zone. Then, side one (on the vinyl) closer "Domain" takes on some more uplifting qualities, but evokes many moods, propelled by Euro-disco beats and colored by heavy synth and organ flourishes. Powerful stuff, big grooves, stirring melodies, lots of atmosphere, and a bit of that "training montage" vibe we love. And so it goes, the remaining tracks ("Mystery", "Abyss", "Wraith", "Purgatory", "Night") replete with eerie tinkling synths, creepy organ, soaring guitar soloing, minimal percussive skitter, hypnotically repetitive rhythms, thick synth bass, and the miasma of droning electronics. Very, very satisfying; recommended to all fans of Carpenter and his acolytes! While we won't say "accept no imitations" (we LOVE the imitations), it is nice to get the real deal from the maestro. Now if only they'd go on tour... and if SB would reissue the rare record JC made in 1985 with his band The Coupe De Villes, pressed only for friends... Note: there is vinyl of this too, but we didn't get as many copies as we'd ordered, and have already run out - but, we're told a repress is on the way, possibly around the end of March.

MPEG stream: Obsidian
MPEG stream: Domain
MPEG stream: Night

Carter Tutti. Chris & Cosey. There may be a semantic difference somewhere to be discussed, but this album brigades what those differences may be as the pair of Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti have crafted an album of material mined from the back catalogue of Chris & Cosey albums under the moniker Carter Tutti. Over the past four years, the couple has been touring vigorously, with the set including revamped / recorded / reengineered versions of the older Chris & Cosey material. So many people approached them with requests for the live recordings of these newer versions that they went into the studio to properly sequence these tracks for an album. And we gotta say that Carter Tutti offer up one hell of a recapitulation, and at times, they really do better themselves than what they had done back in the '80s. When Throbbing Gristle broke up and Chris & Cosey ventured out on their own, they adopted the seductive electro-pop subversion facets of TG to their own devices. Their albums eagerly consumed technology and fused any and all forms of electronics into the sexual / somatic rhythms of the human body. Admittedly, some times their ideas were hindered by the technologies that were at their disposal. Samplers that could only fire so fast and so much. MIDI programming that was limited by latency, memory, and timing issues. Jump several decades, and what Chris & Cosey did in the '80s with a bank of synthesizers and sequencers can now be done on any given phone. So many of these recapitulations work with the same set of melodies and sequences, but smoothed out the technological stumbling blocks. "Driving Blind" was one of the better tracks on their 1984 album Songs Of Love And Lust; and here, the two flesh out the arpeggiation of the sequences with a dense polyphony of streaming electronics above their whipcrack techno production - and Cosey's skulldrill monotone mantras are as compelling, delirious, and sexy as ever. "BeatBeatBeat" is one of the most refreshing recreations, mostly because the original was pretty damn annoying, again with a minimal, surgical set of cybernetic techno and Cosey reworking the vocal chorus into more of a celestial chime and less of a mosquito irritant. The S&M inspired "Sin" finds Cosey channelling Siouxsie more so than she's ever done in the full-throated bellows of sexual depravity above another finely tuned machine of chome-plated techno. One can hope that whatever new material comes out of this redux, it will follow this template which is pretty fucking great.

MPEG stream: Retrodect (2015 Version)
MPEG stream: Driving Blind (2015 Version)
MPEG stream: Sin (2015 Version)

We highlighted the vinyl last time, and now it's available on cd too! It's funny to think that if you could somehow remove someone you probably have never heard of from existence how remarkably changed things would be. Case in point, British electronic composer and inventor Tristram Cary, considered by some "the father of electronic music" who gets this loving and long overdue retrospective treatment from Trunk Records (hopefully it's the first of many). Perhaps not as well known as Daphne Oram, Delia Derbyshire, or John Baker, Cary made an indelible mark on modern music, not just for his soundtracks to such Hammer classics as Quartermass and The Pit, and his sound effects work for the first Dr. Who series, but one of his most important contributions was his role in the creation of EMS (Electronic Music Studios), the UK's first ever synthesizer company. Without their first major products, the VCS 3 synthesizer, the suitcase Synthi[A] and the Delaware, The BBC Radiophonic workshop, Brian Eno and Pink Floyd (just to name a few artists) would have had sounded completely different. Born the third son of novelist Joyce Cary, Tristram Cary learned electronics not through artistic or musical means but as a radar operator in the Royal Navy where he first encountered modern German tape equipment. He soon became interested in working with recorded sound, and after studying composition and learning a few instruments, he started building up his first electronic studio. Subtitled, Works For Film, Television, Exhibition and Sculpture, the pieces included here are mostly from his commissions as an industrial sound designer creating sound pieces for industrial films and sculptural World Expo exhibitions. Highlights include "Divertimento" a piece that Olivetti commissioned for the grand opening of their UK training center in Surrey. Combining the cold sounds of Olivetti's business machines against the warmth of the human voice (represented here by the Ambrosian singers ) and a jazz drummer. "Shapes For Living", a short film about product design, premiered at EXPO 70 and most of the non-instrument sounds were created by enhanced and exaggerated recordings of bad packaging, poor design and users struggling with it. "A Hill, Some Sheep and A Living" was for a 1967 television documentary and features an instrumental ensemble. The final track "Narcissus", features a flute player and two tape recorders that starts off soft and pastoral and ends up all kinds of weirdly terrifying as the flute playing through the recorders gets more layered and processed and sped up. Cary died two years ago and Johnny Trunk had been working with him and Cary's son John on this compilation for a couple of years before, so it's nice that this retrospective highlighting a little known, but highly influential player in the development of British electronic music finally sees the light of day!

MPEG stream: Music For Light (Red /Green/White)
MPEG stream: A Hill, Some Sheep and a Living
MPEG stream: The Curious History of Money
MPEG stream: Divertimento (Start)
MPEG stream: Narcissus

The ubiquity of the remix album has infiltrated the heady realm of the microsonic blip. The remix album of Kim Cascone's "Blue Cube" album (originally on Raster, remixed for Digital Narcis) could be defined in terms of the viral recodification of data from a pure form into a mutatation, with remixes from electron engineers like Pita, *O, V/VM, Robert Henke, Taylor Deupree, John Hudak, Quest, Bochum Welt, Testu Inoue, Dumb Type, Terre Thaemlitz, and Nobukazu Takemura. Most remix albums fail with a broad lack of aesthetic / qualitative consistancy. In keeping a rather small palette to chose from and the uniform desire to maintain the miniscule bleeps of Cascone's original work, the featured artists have done one (and one only) remarkable thing on this remix album in bringing a degree of consistancy to the album.

This album features 14 tracks with various combinations of Andreas Berthing, Kim Cascone, Audrey Kiritchenko, and Kotra remixing each other's source material through digital means. Whatever the source material might have been is irrelavent, as the the end results on "Fourfold Symmetry" are a polite demonstration of the parameters of abstraction of the digital glitch, with a dedicated metholodogy that favors anonymity and anti-emotionality. For all of the rhetoric about the chance operations and coaxing of errors between the man / machine interface, this album is exactly what you'd expect: bristling collages of granular synthesis and digital feedback from Max / MSP patches toppling computerized droning fluctuations of sound. A word of warning about the packaging for the album: Nexsound has given themselves an interesting folio envelope held together by tabs extending from one of the sides of the folio. This design works alright on something flexible like paper (which works just fine for the Moglass album) but this album uses a rigid plastic instead of paper that will tear after repeated usages.

RealAudio clip: 01 - Composed by Cascone, Sources by Kiritchenko
RealAudio clip: 12 - Composed by Bethling, Sources by Kotra

Originally released on the Cassingle label, the debut album from AQ fave one-man band Casiotone For The Painfully Alone now happily gets reissued on Tomlab (also home to his dreamy, sweet second full length "Pocket Symphonies For the Lonesome Subway Cars"). What can we say? It still gives us the warm fuzzies. If you require a more in depth description... here's what we said the first time around: Owen Ashworth has set his ruminations on the awkwardness of crushes and infatuation with rock stars to music. With just a couple of casio keyboards, a distortion pedal or two, and a 4-track, Owen's Casiotone for the Painfully Alone somehow succeeds, teetering between affected bedroom-rock naivete, and excerpts from a musical diary never meant for strangers' probing eyes. A recommended album for fans of early Sebadoh and Magnetic Fields, and especially the legendary early Mountain Goats cassettes.

RealAudio clip: When The Bridge Toll Was A Dollar
RealAudio clip: Casiotone For The Painfully Alone Joins The Foreign Legion

Yaaay, a new album from our dear pal Mr. Casiotone For The Painfully Alone (aka Owen Ashworth)! Seems like it was only yesterday that his last full length Twinkle Echo was released, but it was actually 2003. Wow, time sure flys! Anyhoo, Etiquette picks right up where that album left off, even in the cover art department with another lovely, enchantingly odd painting by his pal Heidi Anderson. Tho' Ashworth might portray a perpetually bashful, lovelorn teenager in his lyrics and stage presence, the musical manner in which he conveys his heartfelt confessions and sentiments has blossomed and flourished with each subsequent album. Yes, his beloved trademark bedroom-y lo-fi quality of bittersweet valentines being played out on thriftstore-scored toy electronic keyboards still surfaces here and there, but the compositions have gotten increasingly ambitious. Indeed this is his most grand (but still unmistakably CFTPA) to date. No longer a one man band (or at least not for the time being), he has a bunch of friends joining in the musicmaking fun which certainly contributes a good deal to the breadth of the recordings. Lots of different voices singing and playing a much more varied array of instruments. One thing tho' that we must take issue with is that while there are times and places when the phrase "menstrual blood" should be mentioned, a Casiotone song ("Love Connection") seems like the last place you'd want to hear it... sung. It sure made us hit the brakes and go, "Whoa!" Don't get us wrong, we're not squirmish, but when we spend the better part of a CFTPA album getting up to 'holding hands' speed, it's a bit of a nasty jolt to be reminded of that time of month. Maybe they should've taken a cue from the same song's later lyrics "Some things are best left unsaid"? Perhaps somewhat unfortunately that's also the album's final song. Ah well, just press 'play' once more. You'll be right back to the beginning again, and all will be well.

MPEG stream: New Year's Kiss
MPEG stream: Scattered Pearls

AQ's sweetest pal Owen Ashworth moved from SF to lo-fi pop haven Portland, OR a short time ago. And we've dearly missed his quiet, but completely passionate enthusing over our mutual pop faves -- in particular, Young Marble Giants. The minimal, sweet music that

RealAudio clip: Lesley Gore On The TAMI Show

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.

Not sure what it is exactly that makes Cassetteboy manage to sidestep being nothing more than an overplayed bad joke, but there is most definitely SOMETHING. Most mashups, cut ups, Negativland style wacky plunderphonic records get played out in no time at all, the sort of records you -maybe- put on a mix tape now and then or throw on at a party, but ultimately they end up at the bottom of some pile gathering dust. But we find ourselves listening to Cassetteboy all the time, over and over, and laughing our asses off. Random bits of dialogue, movie clips, all manner of music, and lots of immediately recognizable voices, all chopped up and mixed up and re-assembled into super snarky, bitter, fuck the world sound snippets and song fragments, rife with anti-social sentiments, anti-government propaganda, some truly messed up Harry Potter porn, a crazy funny, awesome anti-Streets track, and all manner of perplexing non-sequitur humor, and loads of peurile silliness. Just give the sound samples a listen. If the Harry Potter clip doesn't make you laugh out loud, well, then this is probably not the record for you, but if it does, then you are in for a treat, as there is plenty of stuff even sillier, more outrageous and way more offensive.

MPEG stream: Lambonaise Tonight
MPEG stream: Clever Girl
MPEG stream: Gownday
MPEG stream: Saltgrain
MPEG stream: From This Day On
MPEG stream: Yer Little Pipedream

As much as we feel like we oughta hate this stuff, Cassetteboy are just so good at their schtick that we can't seem to get enough. This is a bit like Negativland, only with that dry British humor and a much wider self deprecating streak. Most bands who do the whole cut and paste, spoken word taken out of context, weird sound bites over dance music thing end up sounding stupid and like they're trying way to hard to be funny and cool and hip and still somehow failing miserably. Cassetteboy on the other hand, sound like they're just fucking around, and thus there's no hipster weight to what they're doing, but the stuff they're doing is so perfect, and so funny, we can't help but dig it. Cassetteboy sound like blokes you'd want to have over, and sit around listening to crazy fucked up music. Mick's Tape is indeed a mix tape, made up of CB's wacky and sometimes tasteless chop jobs, turning innocent speeches and silly folks songs and instructional recordings into laugh out loud nasties. Then some bizarre and random actual songs (Ivor Cutler, Curtis Mayfield, Ramsey Lewis, Astrud Gilberto, Fennesz, Happy Mondays, Fela Kuti, Shalamar) as well as somekiller tracks from MF Doom, Jaylib, and Squarepusher. It's basically the ultimate aQuarius mix, tons of insane weirdness and laugh out loud silliness, some killer classic tunes, some super dope hip hop, some way out experimental noise, all woven together into a somewhat cohesive but joyously chaotic whole!

MPEG stream: This Woman Stinks!
MPEG stream: Good Morning, How Are You, Shut Up!
MPEG stream: Cobblers
MPEG stream: C U In Court
MPEG stream: Gopher It
MPEG stream: Hoes Down

The newest exercise in plunderphonia comes from merry old England in the form of Cassetteboy! Taking cues from People Like Us, Negativland, Tape-beatles, and John Oswald, Cassetteboy excel in the art of making people say naughty things. As such The Parker Tapes is probably not the best disc for those who don't enjoy the baser and more puerile forms of humor (or channel surfing style editing.) But for those who do revel in such things, Cassetteboy is the best source for your plunderfix. Unlike most of the artists who work in the realm of media reappropriation, Cassetteboy is decidedly un-musical. Which isn't a rib against them. Though there are bits of music sampled in the course of events, it's the narrative of television and radio voices that are the primary focus of Cassetteboy's wrath. The 98 tracks crammed onto this disc don't lend themselves to much in the way of instrumental interludes. But goddamn is this stuff funny, from subtly changing Bowie's lyrics to "here I am shitting in a tin can.... and farting in a most peculiar way...." to Bill Gates admitting that Microsoft gets in to schools to control our kids... to an awesome monkey themed montage to... well, you get the idea. Relentless and stupidly brilliant. EVERYTIME this is played in the store, customers are either silently chuckling, laughing uproariously or coming up to find out what the hell we're listening to! This is the party cd/mix tape/answering machine message record of the year!!

RealAudio clip: [Track 24]
RealAudio clip: [Track 38]
RealAudio clip: [Track 51]
RealAudio clip: [Track 58]

very very limited pressing of 300!

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SORRY. Can't say that any of the EC8OR records have anything for me. But when EC8OR's Gina and Patric are working independently of each other, the results kick ass. Patric's latest assualt features an arsenal of 'Amen' breaks shattered into high velocity shards of spastic snares and devestating bass. Digital Hardcore junkies will be most pleased!

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SORRY. EC8OR leader Patrick Catani's newest solo album, "Hitler 2000", although now re-named (for cd release) "Attitude PC8" and with much of the 'wacky' Hitler artwork removed, is a huge pounding slab of distorted breakbeats and straight-up noise. Brutal and catchy and funny. Kind of like a tagteam match between Lesser, Alec Empire, Kid 606, and Merzbow. It's hard to believe that this stuff can keep getting harder and more distorted and more fucked up, but it does. We're still waiting (hoping?) for a domestic release on this one, for now here's the import.

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SORRY. Another Digital Hardcore militant, better known for his work with EC8OR.

In 2001 East Bay's Catfive released a good record filled with unlikely samples -- Fela-style afrofunk, Brazilian batucada, lounge, moments of dub, scratching that sounds like a twisted harmonica -- that worked so well atop a mix of beats and groove. The new 7" is somewhat timely -- a pro-peace, anti-war message -- but as such is maybe a little too predictable, featuring samples of Bush I and II, other politicians, journalists, Elvis, etc. Negativland is funnier, but Catfive's hearts are certainly in the right place. The B-side is a cool gimmick, though. It plays backward -- i.e. the needle starts in the middle and works its way outwards. It's a bunch of cartoon / old movie / tv samples with a similar political bent as side A, but without added music. On transparent red vinyl.

Remember that amazing Milk Cult record from last year? I'm liking this Cat Five record for the same reasons: it's a winning combination (a bit lighter than Milk Cult) of unlikely samples mixed together in a very accessible, headnodding fashion. Every sound or sample works both as a percussive and a melodic element, whether it's Fela-style afrofunk, Brazilian batucada, lounge music, moments of dub, scratching that sounds like a twisted harmonica, or silly film clips, it all works well, like a hip hop gig filmed in 1920s madcap silent film style. Or DJ Shadow's ditzy younger cousin or something. Cat Five are from East Bay, headed by the guy otherwise known as Balanceman (who released an album on Deluxe). A nice surprise!

RealAudio clip: Linkage
RealAudio clip: Shadrach
RealAudio clip: Travelite
RealAudio clip: Run 2 the Jungle

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SORRY. Easily the most pop oriented & dancefloor friendly release for the catastrophic drum & bass label Position Chrome, Cativo lightens the mood set by Panacea & Problem Child for a melodic drum & bass album jack-knifed with tense two-step swing beats.

Chicago musician makes an entire album of abstract beat driven trip hop. Nice, especially the first track's strong start, but missing something, perhaps either [1] an MC, or [2] anything to set it apart from the 8 thousand other folks who make music like this. Pleasant listening but not original enough for these ears.

RealAudio clip: All These Todays Just Melt Into Tomorrows

In 1992, Richard James issued a handful of mysterious singles under the moniker Caustic Window, all the while maintaining his vangarde reinterpretations of UR acid trax and post-rave breakcore with occasional detours into chimingly playful melodies topping eerie drones and shuffling rhythms. Given the timeframe when these tracks were created, they have a lot more in common with the first chapter of the Aphex Twin album Selected Ambient Works Volume One. Caustic Window has often been sited as the most abrasive of the Aphex Twin side projects; and while there are some numbers which Alec Empire clearly used as a springboard for his Digital Hardcore ethos, there's plenty of lilting electronica for the Boards Of Canada crowd. Of course, all of the original Caustic Window singles disappeared very quickly, and reappeared about 10 years ago on the self-evidently titled album Compilation. That set went out of print, which brings us to the modern day where the Rephlex has reissued this material once again so that Richard D. James' electronic brilliance can continue to tickle our ears and rattle our bones.

MPEG stream: Joyrex 14
MPEG stream: Cordialatron

New vinyl only collection from these spaced out psychedelic kraut-punks, collecting a bunch of, as the title suggests, their singles from the last 6 or 7 years, a few we've already reviewed, so probably best to revisit those, which will no doubt give you an idea of what you're in for. Included is their single on Trensmat, which begins with the weird protofunk of "Butthash", 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, which leads directly into "Machines & Muscles" with its Circle-like guitar groove, some hand drums, very tribal and looped sounding, suspended in a field of space streakings and smears of soft effects in the background, the drums get a little more obtuse, a bit busier, but that main riff stays LOCKED in, until it begins to get ALL tripped out, distorted, effects drenched, swinging from speaker to speaker, dizzyingly tripped out, and then finally, the drums kick in proper, and we're in total hynorock bliss, little bits of keyboard pepper, the stuttery rhythm, the main riff staying solid and unwavering, while all around it various other sounds swoop and shimmer. Also included is the B side from the Made In Malaysia 7" on Important, "Boneyard", fuzzy, spaced out, murky, krautrocky, lysergic, druggy, lots of trippy effects laden psych guitar, a propulsive garagey groove, pounding metronomic drumming, WAY more Hawkwind and Monster Magnet and especially Loop than the full length proper. Think Heads and White Hills and other purveyors of hypno space rock, and this track will definitely push those very same buttons. Beyond that, the comp also tosses in a handful of jams from records we were never able to get, which was presumably true for some of you folks too, the tracks from their Static Caravan 7", two tracks from Giradiscos 7" and one unreleased track only available here. The Static Caravan tracks are on the more rocking side, the band winding their krautrocky synths around some seriously hard rocking space rock, again channeling the Heads and White Hills and of course Hawkwind, with the second, getting all proggy and weirdly space-funky, wild tribal drums over percolating synth melodies, like a Neu! track jacked up and spinning at 78rpm. The Giradiscos tracks are even cooler/stranger adding a sort of Ethiopian groove to the proceedings, the first track sounding like some lost slab of cosmic Ethiopian psych funk, while the second gets all blessed out and laid back, another groover, but this one sort of dashed and dreamy and druggy. And finally, the unreleased track, which might be the oddest of the bunch, adding actual vocals, almost jam band sounding, the music on its own is still pretty motorik and propulsive, but those vocals make it sound like some warped hyper-charged version of the Grateful Dead or something, which sounds weird, but we're guessing it's a comparison the band would dig a lot. Sadly no download, but there is an insert, with some liner notes, and comes housed in a super minimal stickered jacket.

MPEG stream: Boneyard
MPEG stream: Butthash
MPEG stream: Machines And Muscles

The latest from these psychedelic krautrockers sees the band pushing in a decidedly different direction, at least on the opening track, which is straight up fusiony psych-kraut funkiness. And we're not talking slightly funky, we're talking total kraut-funk FUNK, groovy rhythms, wild percussion, slithery guitar jangle, woozy, burbly basslines, some spidery wah wah guitar leads, definitely pretty tranced out and hypnotic still, but definitely seriously funky. This IS however, Cave after all, so we were prepared for something twisted to maybe happen, yet after 4 or 5 minutes we were convinced maybe we were mistaken, and the band had decided to just go for it, but then, BAM, super heavy guitars swoop in, for some heavy rock riffage, still funky, but now a sort of seventies style heavy rock groove, like a super charged James Gang or something, totally psychedelic, and spacey, and yeah, funky and groovy, but more like Goat sort of, once those guitars kick in, a total heavy groove rock bliss out. But it only lasts a few minutes, soon, the guitars peel away, as does much of the funk, leaving just a super spare sprawl of pulsing, shuffling, grooving minimalism. Strange, but seriously cool. From there on out, the band slip back into more familiar Cave territory, the groovy kraut-y hypnorock of "Silver Headband", that sounds like a more crystalline and sun dappled Circle, replete with constantly shifting sonic cycles, layered melodies, and again, near the end, some seriously heavy, almost metallic guitar crunch, the song exploding into yet another blast of rad riffiness. And the funk isn't gone, it resurfaces in "Arrow's Myth" but much more subtly, the band doing their best Bitches Brew, all murky freeform psychedelic space-funk, flurries of wah guitar, warm whirring organ, murky atmospheres and motorik drumming, plenty of percussion, but everything sorta blurred into a heady, druggy sprawl, until about three quarters through, when the groove proper kicks in, and in come the HORNS, and again, it's total seventies jazz-funk worship, and it KILLS. The last two tracks are classic Cave, two sprawling space groove epics, the first, sounding a bit like Stereolab crossed with Goat, and given a heavy psychedelic jazz makeover, the second more laid back and dreamily psychedelic, spaced out and droney, the band locked into one of those endless woozy grooves, that falls somewhere between psychedelic space rock, and drowsy, Spacemen 3 style bongsmoke fueled mesmer...

MPEG stream: Sweaty Fingers
MPEG stream: Silver Headband
MPEG stream: Arrow's Myth

It's that time again. When Richard James (aka Aphex Twin) drives his tank home and holes up in his big 'ol bank/bunker and draws the shades in fear. When Autechre sit on their fire escape, listening to the mysterious strains of the latest Fflint central release drifting across the city, pondering whether it's time to just throw in the towel and head down to the pawn shop and get rid of all their gear. When Boards Of Canada realise that their days are numbered and people will only let them make the same record so many times. Our favorite electronic underdogs return to show the world how it's done. And just how well it can be done without a budget or a video or magazine ads or a bunch of pats on the back from other "electronic musicians." This latest Fflint missive is the newest release from the mysterious Cavendish Sanguine. Taking elements of all the above mentioned bands, mixing in all sorts of abstract noise and random weirdness and coming up with some of the most compelling and beautiful experimental electronica we've heard. The sound this time around is slightly more 'rock' than past releases. Not rock in the traditional sense, not even remotely, but more in the sense that it sounds really organic and is less a seemingly random assortment of sounds, and more a semi-structured set of parts and songs, that at times sound like it could definitely be a band, and not just a solitary figure hunched over a keyboard in a dark corner. Mysterious and sing songy Krautrock, jangly and noisy, rambling and shambolic, gives way to shimmery skree, melodies shifting and eventually splitting apart and forming new more abstract melodies. Chirping birds and gutteral Orc-ish vocalisations over a bed of keening chimes and high end swells. Abstract IDM is deconstructed into even more abstract beats, shuffling and skittering beneath shifting chords and slabs of minor key sound. Rich sheets of dense sound, layers of sweet ambience, and the metallic hum of excited strings, eventually becoming clipped and static, a hypnotic looped rhythm over accordions, crowd sounds and more bird calls. As always, amazingly good, completely baffling and totally original.

MPEG stream: Hyderus
MPEG stream: Bronze

Another installment in Fflint Central's campaign to take over the world. Or if not the world, to at least annoy the fuck out of your neighbors! For those of you just tuning in, Fflint is a small cd-r label run by a couple of guys in the UK, who manage to put out some of the best experimental electronica we've ever heard. I'm still amazed that Warp or Lo or someone hasn't just snapped up

RealAudio clip: The Clouding Of Judgement
RealAudio clip: Rictus
RealAudio clip: Azeotrope
RealAudio clip: Quack Nostrum

Full length number two from the mighty Cavendish Sanguine (1/2 of the demented team that run the awesome UK fucked-electronic label Fflint) and it's just as good as we've come to expect from everything they put out. CS was always the moodiest, least So good.

RealAudio clip: Hall of Tendrils
RealAudio clip: Plague
RealAudio clip: South Stack

Cd_Slopper is the collaborative work of Mego contributers Oswald Berthold (of Farmer's Manual) and Florian Hecker. "SaskieWaxi" features both a musical program and an HTML-executable element of text / graphics / etc. The musical format is certainly informed I'll admit that I gave the CDrom portion only 30 minutes or so, but each attempt to view / install the software of the visual data resulted in the computer acting all funny (opening up the wrong programs, not finding the proper html link, or simply crashing). I'm reminded of so many art gallery exhibitions of "internet art" which find the computers always in a similar state of disarray... making me wonder, [1] is that what is supposed to happen (thus, making a really lame comment about the nature of computer glitch), [2] is the artist just a bumbling idiot, or [3] did the last viewer try to download some porn, thereby fucking up the system? In any event, I'm not impressed with this portion of the evening's program.

The cool photos of the synths on the cover, and the band name might be enough for some synth obsessives, without any further coaxing. But also note the label: Sun Ark, home to Sun Araw. And that's who's on here: Cameron Stallones of way out dub masters Sun Araw (and Magic Lantern, let's not forget his other great psych outfit) with several of his usual cohorts, including M. Geddes Gengras. We only have the vaguest notion of the story behind this project - apparently there's a multimedia cultural center in Rotterdam called The Worm, and they have quite a collection of synthesizers, and they let Stallones et. al. have at 'em last year, and thus The Celebrate Music Synthesizer Group was born. Or something like that. Dunno if it's a one-off or what, but the sprawling double vinyl (-only) lp that has resulted is pretty nice, if gurgling whoosh and burbling bleep and rhythmic Geiger-counter clicks and other classic "synth noises" are what floats your boat. With cryptic track titles like "4P4C Slack" and "Worm = Spice" this is tech-head retro-proto-techno music, for gear lovin' sci-fi nerds, for sure! If the Creel Pone crowd went clubbin' this is the kind of synth jammage that they'd wanna get down to.

MPEG stream: Worm = Spice

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

SORRY. As Celluloid Mata only has a few very limited releases, their name probably won't seem as familiar as those who have been asked to remix them... nevertheless, you should expect to see their name popping up in the near future as their dark atmospheric breakbeats resemble all of things Skam. These remixes range from the electro fuckery of DJ Speedranch to James Plotkin's mutant electonica / prog rock and Drahomira Song Orchestra's clubby throb.

Celluloid Mata "Sable" is a dark (almost industrial) electronica album heavy on the distorted breakbeat crunch and the harsh electronic collage. Definitely for the Meat Beat Manifesto / Scorn crowd.

We don't do this often, but sometimes, the easiest thing is just to link to a YouTube video. Especially 'cause it's what got us interested in tracking down this reissue in the first place! Made us kind of obsessed, actually. You'll see/hear why if you go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgGK4qBTwpw&ob=av2n, and check out the psychedelic video version of this album's title track. (For those who just want a quick idea, take a look at the album cover operating room scene, that's in the vid, complete with people dressed up in disturbing animal masks, a Rolls Royce driving through the desert, naked ladies in the jungle, and, well, just watch it...) So, Jean-Marc Cerrone was/is a French dance music producer and badass drummer (elsewhere on YouTube you can see him live in concert, kicking out the massive drum solos). The more disco-savvy among us here had heard of him, he's up there with Giorgio Moroder in the Euro-Disco pantheon. And Supernature, from 1977, his 3rd album, is the jam. A disco-PROG masterpiece. The title track starts things off, the one that crazy video's for, and dominates, being almost ten minutes long in its album version. An epic. No ordinary club fare here, on the surface maybe, but the disco diva vocals (lyrics by Lene Lovich!) are about some dystopian sci-fi scenario wherein twisted science is turning men into monstrous beasts (which explains - sort of - some of the video's surreal imagery), these mutants rising up against their masters. Hauntingly, she sings lines like "how can I explain, things are different today, darkness all around, and no one makes a sound..." Woah, downer disco. It's pretty dark, and weird, and the thump thump thump of the music gets that way too, with some fat synth bass riffing at about the six minute mark that brings this into imaginary Magma doing disco territory, almost. Cerrone sure puts his state of the art ARP Odyssey Mk III to good use here. The track ends with hint of 2001's "Also Sprach Zarathustra", that's how epic this is. The rest of the side maintains the mood, "Supernature" segueing seamlessly into Cerrone's solo spot "Sweet Drums", his insistent beats heavily effected and spaced out, and that's followed by the more blissfully eerie electronics of "In The Smoke", which could be from a Goblin soundtrack. Side two (tracks 4-6 on this cd), is the brighter side... More typical fusion-funked Euro-Disco anthems, all three songs with "Love" in the title ("Give Me Love", "Love Is Here", "Love Is The Answer"), great stuff though, top-knotch! Lush, lively dancefloor fodder for sure. So, recommended to fans of Zombi, Goblin, Moroder, and the recently departed Donna Summer. This import reish, in one of those rounded-corner "Super Jewel Boxes", comes with extensively detailed liner notes in the cd booklet, illustrated in full color.

MPEG stream: Supernature
MPEG stream: In The Smoke
MPEG stream: Give Me Love

Now domestic! This former import-only CeU album (originally released in 2005 on the Sao Paulo based Urban Jungle label) is now available here in the States courtesy of the Six Degrees label. The lovely Brazilian singer whose full name is Maria Do Ceu Whitaker Pocas draws easy comparisons to Bebel Gilberto, and will surely appeal to her labelmate's fanbase. At once sultry and fresh-faced, CeU's breezy, smooth groove of samba, dub and electronica laced with delicious horn and percussion accompaniments evokes gorgeous, warm summer evenings. Ah yes, the calendar might proclaim that it is April, but while this soulful, chill-out album is spinning it's a steamy August night in Sao Paulo.

MPEG stream: Lenda
MPEG stream: 10 Contados

Oops! It's the second full length from hyperactive emo / hip-hop / IDM whizkid Rjyan Kidwell. That's right, I said emo. In addition to the fluffy pop-laced hip-hop beats and whimsical sonic landscapes, Rjyan busts out his acoustic guitar and cries out

From Kid 606's label comes the newest album from nineteen year old kid Cex, who you may happily file next to those other bedroom electronica madmen such as Kid 606, Lesser, and Aphex Twin. He might even be a bit too young, as the material on this disc is more like perfectly executed homework rather than a wellspring of new ideas. For fans of Aphex Twin, Autechre, Kid 606, etc. Includes a Dismemberment Plan remix!

Cex sinks knee-deep in dub and industrial sounds on his latest full length. As usual his lower brow presence on the Temporary Residence label sorta sticks out like a sore thumb amid the often lovely, atmospheric post-rock recordings that make up the majority of the label's catalog. Admittedly we've had something of a love/hate relationship with Cex over the years, but this time around y'know what? We're leaning more towards the former... well maybe at least 'like'. Heh heh. Somewhat surprisingly Sketchi's a morass of gloom and grit with not a giggle or grin in sight... except for maybe some of the song titles (such as "Waiting 4 Yankovic"!). Quite a marked departure from his past mischievous, silly releases. An oddly limited pressing of 1000.

MPEG stream: Damon Kvols
MPEG stream: Camber Sands

Cex certainly has some artistic talent, but "Starship Galactica" shows him to still be just a dorky kid from Baltimore. The majority of this album features what Cex does best -- Autechre / Funkstorung breakbeats with sad, romantic chords derived from both warm acoustic instruments and cold digital algorhythms. However, he inexplicably drops in skits / introductions to these

New record from the underground rock scene's Brian Austin Green (c'mon, you remember, from Beverly Hills 90210....made a rap record....it was BAD) Let's ruin the only 'funny' bit (a skit of all things, a take off of an Eminem skit) on this otherwise dreadful album of white bread, stupid pointless hip-hop by transcribing it here: Jeremy deVine (of Sonna and Temporary Residence) with a tone of businesslike urgency: "Hey Cex, what's up?" Cex goofily unaware: "Hey Jeremy deVine! Good to see you! What's up?" Jeremy: "Cex could you come in here and have a seat, please. Vanessa, shut the door." Cex: "What's up, how's Otis (?) looking for the first week?" Jeremy: "It would be better if you gave me nothing at all. This album is less than nothing. I can't sell this fucking record. Do you know what's happening to me out there?" Cex: "What's the problem?" Jeremy: "Bjork told me to go fuck myself." Cex: "Who's Bjork?" Jeremy: "Aquarius Records told me to shove this record up my ass. Do know what it feels like to be told to have a record shoved up your ass? I'm going to lose my fucking job over this. Do you know why Radiohead's album was so successful? They're singing about homosexuals and Vicodin. You're rhyming about dodgeball and bicycles. Have you been in my office again? Look at this desk! There's a spring busted and it's all messed up. Either change the record or it's not coming out." Cex: "Wait. What am I supposed to do?" Jeremy: "Get the fuck out of my office. Now." For the record, it was Cex who was to be the recipient of record-ass-shoving, not Jeremy deVine. But Jeremy'll do.

RealAudio clip: Gigolo Knights
RealAudio clip: K-12 Days Of Hell
RealAudio clip: Jeremy Devine

Number two in the $ series of Tigerbeat6 singles, this one's got Baltimore's Cex and Los Angeles' Electric Company. Don't know how limited, but I wouldn't wait on these hotcakes...

Second in Klangkrieg's Connected series (volume one featured DJ Scud and Pthalocyanine). Baltimore's Cex reworks the unstoppable Venetian Snares (aka Aaron Funk) and vice versa. Bubbly drill'n'bass from two prolific playas in underground electronica.

When we first heard Chancha Via Circuito's debut a few years back, it was one of the those magical moments when a record by an unknown artist seemed to stop time and everything around us as we became completely emerged in their dubbed out, Latin American cumbia-inspired sounds. With the follow up, Chancha Via Circuito prove that record number one was no fluke, as this album melts and sizzles with its own seductive flair. Sonically it's like some awesome mix of Twilight Circus Dub Sound System, Fauna, Kit Clayton, Massive Attack, Prince Far I, and Rainbow Arabia. Mixing elements of cumbia, minimal techno, dub, and adding strains of traditional folk from the sprawling roads they've traveled near their home outside Buenos Aires, which has taken them across the border to Bolivia and beyond. Like one of our other favorite modern South American psychedelic music makers Las Malas Amistades, Chancha Via Circuito have this amazing ability to incorporate their surroundings and heritage and bring it into the future without compromising its integrity.

MPEG stream: Rio Arriba
MPEG stream: Jos� Larralde - Quimey Neuqu�n (Chancha Via Circuito remix)
MPEG stream: Amelia