If only Beck's last outing was as creative and colorful as this! Cornelius tends to take his time between albums but when they finally drop and sound this good and this meticulously crafted, we realize it's well worth the wait. With an uncanny ability to be both challenging and so damn catchy, Cornelius continues his streak with great pop record after great pop records, never afraid to explore new sounds while still making the whole sonic experience so fun to listen to. Picking up nicely where Point left off, this new record is perfectly titled as there is a breezy and brainy sensuality at play, and as always Cornelius effortlessly travels in all sorts of directions throughout the record, without ever losing cohesiveness. When other folks try the same sort of thing you usually just feel lost and bewildered by the haphazard musical confusion, but when Cornelius takes you from dreamy to rambunctious, blissed out to bumpin' and fractured to smoothed out, you just close your eyes and let yourself go, being carried away by colorful waves of sound headed for another engaging adventure in sound. So nice!
ATTENTION: LOVESLIESCRUSHING FANS!! We managed to get a handful of these split 12"s direct from the man himself, one side a gorgeous slab of hazy LLC style shimmer, the other an equally lovely bit of abstract guitarscaping from a new to us outfit, it's already out of print, we have a handful of copies, but they will probably not be around for long.
The Cortez side is of course Scott Cortez, the man behind Lovesliescrushing, and the sound is quite similar to much of the LLC stuff, in particular the fantastic Voirshin record, hushed and hazy, ultra minimal, a blurred lovely stretch of softly layered drones, glimmering and glistening and aquatic sounding, very much reminiscent of William Basinski, like if you locked up the tapes that were the source for this record, in 20 years, it'd be all crumbling and decayed and disintegrating.
The flipside is from a group called Language Of Light, who we've never heard until now, a good match for Cortez, similarly washed out and ethereal, but more structured, chiming guitars streaks over processed metallic shimmer, with muted hazy melodies, before the sound shifts to something much darker and ominous, a jagged processed loopscape, weirdly warped and noisy, but that quickly gives way to the final movement, more lovely guitar ambience, blurred and gauzy and otherworldly.
Perhaps best known for being the 'electronics guy' in the live version of Nine Inch Nails, Alessandro Cortini is also a formidable solo artist, as well as one of the few masters of the Buchla synthesizer. Having heard none of his solo work to date, we were actually expecting some sort of analog synth, goth industrial hybrid, would make sense since it ended up on the Hospital label, but instead, Sonno is a gorgeously hushed and evocative collection of minimal synthscapes, recorded in various hotel rooms on tour, all with just a single synth and a delay pedal, occasionally some portable speakers, the sounds defined not simply by Cortini's compositions and the settings on the instruments, but also the rooms, open windows, resonant tiled bathrooms, faucets on, the whir of air conditioners, sounds from the outside leaking in, all of this subtle and deftly woven into delicate, crystalline sprawls of soft focus synthsound, some tracks here cinematic an sinister, but most are ethereal and airy, fans of Emeralds will find much to love here, although Cortini's vision is much more low fidelity, but it's easy to forget about the fidelity completely, as the sounds are lush, and lovely, even the darker, shadowier movements, are gauzy and dreamlike, sometimes building to ominous billows of resonant thrum, but just as often settling into something tranquil and tranced out.
Imagine Stars Of The Lid, and Emeralds, and William Basinski, and the Caretaker, all blurred into a hauntingly mesmeric ambient kraut-psych, a pulsing, atmospheric dream-drone drift... gorgeous stuff...
These German post-rockers continue on in the light, jazzy, prog-ish pop vein that they embarked on in their previous endeavour 'Fantasy', but it's perhaps even more bright and pretty than that. Yes, it appears they've definitely left the advanced math books behind. Lovely and chiming like a super-deluxe music box, but with a steady, anchoring rhythm section so it won't float away.
It's been almost 3 years since we last heard from Cousin Silas and back then he was slouching around dark electronic graveyards and dodgy ambient parts of town with the rest of the Fflint Records stable. For this most recent release, Silas may have relocated to Earthrid records, another upstart electronic cd-r label, but his Fflinty roots still show, and that Silas sound we love so much is still in full effect. That sound is a delicate shimmer, a blissed out ambience, chillout music for folks who hate chillout music. A warm, languid and luxurious pop ambience, like a Boards Of Canada record stripped of any trace of rhythm, all the beats removed leaving just a soft billowy cloud of sound. Thick washes of slow shifting swirl, beneath all sorts of subtle swoonsome melodies float and hover, spin and shift, like watching oil and water mix, dreamy and drone-y and rife with all manner of muted color. When rhythms do surface, they are mumbled and subtle, more like a soft pulse or a minimal murky throb. But always way down in the mix, beneath an expansive sparkling and twinkling ocean of sound. The record's title Necropolis Line sounds ominous, and the skull locomotive and train wreck imagery on the cd seem to reinforce that vibe, however, this disc really isn't as dark or dreary or ominous or evil as you might expect, instead it's way at the other end of the spectrum, slightly out of focus, fuzzy and rich with subtle melody, sun dappled, lazy and hazy and oh so dreamlike. In the past we've described Cousin Silas as Boards Of Canada or The Orb for the underground set. But this new record is so soft and shimmery and accessible, it might be more accurate to classify this as Fflint for the mainstream set. Either way, one of the dreamiest slabs of latenight / early morning ambience we've heard in ages. So lovely!
For every ecstatic high, there often needs to be a soul crushing descent, a dark, dark comedown. San Francisco electronic music pioneer Patrick Cowley is best known for his trailblazing signature sound which helped spawn a whole dance music genre (Hi-NRG), as well as his amazing production work, not to mention guest spots on many of our favorite Sylvester tracks. But we always knew there was another side to Patrick Cowley's musical genius. His life ended way too early, as one of the first victims of the AIDS epidemic (before they even understood what AIDS was), but in the short time he was on this planet he recorded hours and hours of electronic music light-years ahead of its time. Most of those recordings have never seen the light of day.
In recent years it seems a whole genre of "space-disco" has emerged out of the influence of the Sylvester track "I Need Somebody To Love", produced by Cowley, who almost single handedly created the cut's distinctive minimal spacey/sensual sound. And within the many solo Cowley releases, there were hints of this darker sonic side, a whole part of his music making beyond the greatness he created for disco divas and sweaty dance floors. Tracks like "Mutant Man" and "Sea Hunt" gave us an intoxicating glimpse into a much weirder and way more abstract world of synth-sounds, that had us hungering for more...
Enter School Daze, a Dark Entries collection of previously unreleased tracks, which showcase that warped and dark side of Cowley's music. These tracks were originally commissioned by the LA-based Fox Studios, makers of gay porn, and as we listen to this over and over, we can only imagine what kind of hazy, foggy, fucked up, beyond high, drug addled state of mind that folks must have been in to watch pornography set to these dark & dizzying sounds!
The opening track is the outlier here, a chunk of classic Cowley Hi-NRG, but it's certainly a misleading introduction, as throughout the rest of School Daze, there is hardly a trace of Cowley's typical dance floor production, instead these songs much more concerned with capturing a mood and vibe that evokes melting and dripping trippiness, seemingly designed for late, late nights long after the party has ended. Tracks like "Tides Of Man" take us on a harrowing dark voyage, the listener losing control and spiralling deeper and deeper into the empty void. "Seven Sacred Pools" displays an epic side of Cowley's sound, the track drifts drowsily from underwater warble and woozy spaciness into shimmering and tranquil soft wave shimmer, the sort of soundworld we wish could get lost in forever. The title track reveals Cowley reigning over his own majestic prog sci-fi fantasyland. Whatever the sound, Cowley somehow makes it his own! And we love it!
Traces of Tangerine Dream, Vangelis, Jean Michel Jarre, Kraftwerk, Harmonia, Cluster, The BBC Radio Workshop and even musique concrete are woven throughout School Daze. We're also reminded quite a bit of some of the proto-dark techno records that Moebius was making in the early '80s with Conny Plank and Gerd Beerbohm, on albums like Double Cut, Strange Music, Material, and Zero Set. What's even more astonishing is how so many of these sounds predate by several decades the sound of so many of our favorite contemporary electronic artists. In fact, we might go so far as to call the sound on School Daze "proto-IDM", as these tracks contain blueprints to the more spaced-out sides of artists like Aphex Twin, Boards Of Canada, The Orb, Seefeel, Bola and Isolee, as well as some of our more recent faves like Glitterbug, Actress, Reuber, Gatekeeper, Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom.
It's unclear exactly how many of these tracks actually made it into the films, but we can safely say this is still some of the most fucked up, avant-garde porn music we've ever heard. In fact we wonder if Matmos took inspiration from some of these Cowley tracks when they were asked to create their own soundtracks to some underground kinked out porn...
While the circumstances of these songs being commissioned for porn makes for a fascinating and intriguing story, there's certainly no shortage of lost reissues with wild stories behind them. Sadly, it's often the case, that many of those super hyped releases, are way more interesting to read about than actually listen to. But in the case of School Daze, these are truly subversive and trance inducing sounds that still hold up after all these years. In fact, some of this stuff actually sounds way more damaged and avant than almost any new left-field electronic release that comes our way. For an artist so known for taking his listeners higher, School Daze plays out like the sonic version of what happens afterwards, the wasted aftermath of staying up all night, awake for days, smiling, sweating, arms in the air, it's the sound of bodily displacement, the dreadful coming down. When you can no longer dance, or even stand, but instead are left gliding, sliding, swirling, reaching, caressing, wishing, hallucinating, and grasping for one last chance of ecstatic bliss. This is the dark, drifty, drugged out record of the year!
HUGE kudos to Dark Entries not only for releasing this amazing artifact, but for donating the proceeds to Project Open Hand and AIDS Housing Alliance, two wonderful San Francisco nonprofits who do important work helping those whose lives have been impacted by HIV and AIDS.
***Prude Alert*** The inside sleeves of this gatefold double lp contain LOTS of explicit still images from the pornos that many of these songs were featured in!! You have been warned!
While the late great Patrick Cowley is best known for his amazing disco and hi-NRG production for folks like Sylvester and the Megatone label he started, very much like his east coast counterpart Arthur Russell Cowley wore many different musical hats. It hasn't been until the recent unearthing of literally hundreds of reels of tape from his archives that the world is getting a glimpse of all the way-ahead-of-its-time synth/electronic music he was madly creating before and during his reign as San Francisco's most respected disco maestro.
In the late '70s Cowley appeared on a record by his friend Jorge Socarras' band, the way left-field post-punk group Indoor Life (one of their great tracks was recently featured on the Finders Keepers comp, Cross Continental Record Raid Road Trip). During those same years the two were also collaborating on a project together which sadly never got released, which turned out to be Catholic, and is the first record to get unearthed from those deep vaults of Cowley's that have only just begun to be explored.
Recorded between 1976-1979, Cowley and Socarras really found a way to create charged synth-wave/post-punk that was very much in line with what other forward minded San Francisco folks like The Units and Tuxedomoon were making. With Cowley handling the bulk of the instrumentation (synth, guitar, bass, drums, drum machines, etc.) and Socarras delivering dramatic and ice cold vocals falling somewhere between Gary Numan and Public Image Ltd. Catholic displays lots of range, from more slow burning grooves to full throttle attacks, New Romantic leanings to proto-Industrial crunch. It's cool to hear what people think is actually playing when we have this on, we've heard everything from Foetus to Ultravox to Cabaret Voltaire. We can't wait to hear so much more of the amazing music that Cowley created in his much too short of life (he passed away in 1982, one of the earliest casualties of the AIDS epidemic) but luckily for all of us he left an incredible musical legacy that will live on forever!
Limited stock on this Hooker Vision imprint, from the newly minted project Coyote Image Classic - which is the husband / wife pairing of Grant and Rachel Evans - the former better known as Nova Scotia Arms, and the latter as Motion Sickness Of Time Travel. Four tracks spread over two cassettes (one 21 minutes, the other 14) of mostly acoustically sourced songs on piano and guitar whose languid, late-night atmospheres really taps into the beautifully forest-dwelling spirits of the Jewelled Antler sound we championed back in the day, complete with self-destructing tape warbling that sounds like our crappy machine eating the tape, but such sounds are the residues from THEIR crappy tape machine. Within these sounds, it's easy to hear Roy Montgomery's downer tones amidst the cascades of delay on the B side of this set. As good as both of these two are using synths and electronics, they might be better with this set-up. Hopefully, this will be a project they'll continue and in greater quantities! Already sold out at the source. Last copies ever.
SF's Crack:WAR strike back with two new tracks of electro street hustle with slovenly vocalisations. No, they didn't tour Africa, but their fans sure act like animals at their live shows. Wild.
Now on vinyl! Remixed and remastered!
Here's what we said about the cd version:
"Silent Fantasy" is the dementedly catchy full length debut from SF's Crack:WAR. Like the baddest girls in the schoolyard, frontwomen Le Kim & L'Erin accost listeners with spoken-sung lyrics that often go off the rails from sassy into the realm of the surreal and sordidly bizarre. Meanwhile, King Riff and Obscuratron put together distorted disco deconstructions that the right combination of substances would probably render wildly danceable. The sounds may not be too vastly removed from the legions of electro clones, but those looking for a soundtrack to lolling about trendy clubs and shopping for designer handbags will definitely be disappointed. This is San Francisco, not New York, and noise reigns supreme. You want cutting edge fashion? Crack:WAR give you over the top renditions of clowns, sailors, and bloody, masked anti-heroes. You asked for benignly "shocking," "sexy" lyrics and dirty-girl posing? Crack:WAR will give you illicit sex in caves with mutilated body parts, but you're gonna have to pay. Unlikely to be a hit at electro clubs in Williamsburg, and I mean that in purely complimentary terms.
Electronic art-noise soundclash representing SF and Ann Arbor. San Francisco's Crack:WAR, fresh off their tour of Japan, pump out three dark electro tracks -- Liquid Sky meets Throbbing Gristle. Ann Arbor rock deconstrucivists Wolf Eyes churn out a sidelong
On album #2, Crack W.A.R. have tempered their bad girl electro-sass wild side in favor of a more brooding, dankly industrial sound. Still very energetic tempo-wise, but somewhat less in-your-face in the vocal department. The haphazard cut'n'paste fashion of their Silent Fantasy album and rambunctious live shows were what stirred a fun, messy, funky ruckus in the local hipster scene last year. On Cosmic Mind Flight, they seem to have opted for less noise and spectacle and shifted their priorities to honing their songs and sound. As a result, it does sound 'better' but you might find it a bit lacking in the C:W.A.R. bizarro personality that drenched their debut.
"Silent Fantasy" is the dementedly catchy full length debut from Crack:WAR. Like the baddest girls in the schoolyard, frontwomen Le Kim & L'Erin accost listeners with spoken-sung lyrics that often go off the rails from sassy into the realm of the surreal and sordidly bizarre. Meanwhile, King Riff and Obscuratron put together distorted disco deconstructions that the right combination of substances would probably render wildly danceable. The sounds may not be too vastly removed from the legions of electro clones, but those looking for a soundtrack to lolling about trendy clubs and shopping for designer handbags will definitely be disappointed. This is San Francisco, not New York, and noise reigns supreme. You want cutting edge fashion? Crack:WAR give you over the top renditions of clowns, sailors, and bloody, masked anti-heroes. You asked for benignly "shocking," "sexy" lyrics and dirty-girl posing? Crack:WAR will give you illicit sex in caves with mutilated body parts, but you're gonna have to pay. Unlikely to be a hit at electro clubs in Williamsburg, and I mean that in purely complimentary terms. Added bonus: seizure-inducing live videos to play on your computer!
Here's yet another record that under different circumstances could have been and yeah probably should have been a Record Of The Week. But for one thing, it's crazy expensive, and for another, it's taken us months to get enough just to list, and highlight, let alone make it ROTW. So that said, be prepared when we sell out to patiently wait while we try to get more. But for now, dig it:
Classical music by Ravel and Mussorgsky, recut, remixed, and recontextualized by techno legends Carl Craig and Moritz Von Oswald. The result? A gloriously plunderphonic soundscape that slips from shimmery soft focus drift, to a subtly chopped and screwed version of the original piece, to jumbled and blurred Oval-like digital collages, to skittery minimal house music, to dubbed out electronica, to groovy cinematic disco, to spaced out rhythmic ambience, well heck, needless to say, these guys basically pulled off the techno version of a kick ass Tim Hecker / Philip Jeck / Oval record.
The liner notes go into great detail about the process and the idea and the recording, but as with most records, it's the sounds that matter most, and the sounds here are divine. And the whole record somehow works as a single multi movement-ed piece. Each one drifting into the next, the segues seamless, even if the tracks are dramatically different.
The intro is a gorgeous hushed drone, laced with delicate melodies and soft breathless shimmers, almost new agey, a gorgeous ethereal drift that introduces the fanfare that will be the basis for the next few movements. And thus the first movement, a bit of dramatic fanfare, shuffling snares, stuttering horns, the arrangement is subtle, so on the surface it almost feels unaltered, but the notes seem to skitter, and overlap, creating a subtle yet dizzy march, until the second movement introduces the trill of still other horns, locked into a loop over the original, that in turn draped over the deep soft shimmer of the intro, a dense layered landscapes of sampled snares and horns, that grows more hypnotic and mesmerizing, until near the end, the first sign of added rhythms surfaces, a simple high hat pattern draped over that looped horn mesmer, building even more in the beginning of the third movement, before shifting gears completely part way through, the drums taking the lead, the Mussorgsky and the Ravel, relegated mere building blocks, samples transformed into wholly new shapes. The fourth movement follows suit, a gorgeous skittery, late night chunk of minimal Kompakt style techno, with plenty of synth buzz and dubby effects.
There's a brief interlude beginning with some jagged rhythms, and ending with some swoonsome swirling synths, which is simply preparing us for the two loooong closers.
The first, Movement 5, begins with a flurry of deep ominous horns, and dramatic strings, subtly looped into a never ending high end drone, the click in the loop a rhythmic pulse, pounded piano, all very ominous and sinister and epic, before giving way to something much more house-y and clubby, sounding a bit like a house music version of the James Bond theme, complete with those ominous horns, and plenty of sinister strings, which brings us to the final movement, quickly becoming our favorite, a woozy soundscape, all the various strings and horns muted and blurred into a slow shifting backdrop to simple stripped down percussion, distant drones, moaning strings, all hovering beneath the surface, an awesomely hypnotic main loop, and a groovy minimal rhythm, bells chiming in the distance, the backdrop gradually growing ever more ominous and atonal, but fading out completely. Leaving just the rhythm to play itself out.
So so good. Occupies some strange nether region between minimal techno, processed soundscapery, classical, new age, avant dronemusic, plunderphonics, pushes all our buttons, and most likely yours too. Gorgeously packaged like an old Deutsche Grammophon classical record, deluxe booklet with lots of photos and liner notes, and again, these have been tough to get a hold of so please be patient if we run out.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Second Mille Plateaux release by this glitchy electronica artiste, who also recorded the excellent "Approximate Love Boat" disc under the name Lo Res. Includes a remix by Meme recording artist Henrik Johannson.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Very good, very odd debut on the revered Mille Plateaux label from a So Cal electronica dadaist who has previously recorded for Phthalo and Metroplex. Warped 4/4 techno with wild swells of dark and spastic drum programming...
Not sure about you, but Cristal for us conjures up images of MTV Cribs and Jay-Z and 50 Cent partying at some exclusive club, or hot babes in bikinis sipping drinks on a yacht moored right off Miami Beach, but most definitely evoke the dark blackened sonic abyss that is this, the first release from the oddly monickered Cristal, a trio that just so happens to feature one member of long time aQ faves Labradford.
And Labradford is a good jumping off point for Cristal, there's a definitely sonic connection, but where Labradford built on the most minimal of sounds, this trio seems to break the sound down into the smallest possible parts, creating, hyper detailed microscopic droneworlds that virtually REQUIRE headphones.
Lots of blurbs have referenced SUNNO))) but the sound of Cristal is less about power and force, more about texture and timbre, whereas SUNNO))) explode outward, Cristal collapse inward, like that ride at Disneyland, where you travel into the microscope. This is minimal microscopic, but incredibly rich and detailed sound.
Ultra deep ambience, a sound both subterranean and subaquatic, metallic shimmering high end washes over everything like some sort of alien sheen, fields of glistening cricket like chitter adds texture to otherwise slow shifting smooth expanses of warm soft swirl, dreamy and ethereal, fields of high tones surface here and there like a symphony of gently rubbed wine glasses, the only real jarring moment is at the beginning of side 2, the opening track an ear splitting burst of super hot white noise hiss, almost Merzbowian in its intensity, all chaotic and crumbling and buzzy, but the disc quickly returns to it's more tranquil drift for the remainder of side 2, a wash of low end whispers, of textured blurred melodies, sounding quite a bit like some Ligeti choral piece sloooooowed way down. Really quite lovely. Just be prepared for that brief blast, otherwise, a gorgeously deep dark minimal dronescape that will for sure hit the spot for the slow and low obsessed.
LIMITED ONE TIME PRESSING OF 500 COPIES. Pressed on 180 gram vinyl. Housed in a super swank gatefold sleeve, printed black on black!
Yup, things tend to come around full circle, don't they? Cristina and her then husband Michael Zilka conspired to cash in on the whole disco craze of the late '70s but with a biting sense of sarcasm and a smarty-pants arrogance. With Zilka founding the now legendary Ze Records and Cristina releasing the 'artfully dumb' single "Disco Clone" in 1978, the two certainly started out on the right foot. Jump forward some twenty-five years later with a post-punk / avant-disco revival exploding thanks to the likes of the LCD Soundsystem, the Rapture, and the rest of the DFA line-up, and Cristina and her now ex-husband Michael Zilka have conspired to cash in once again with the reissue of her first two albums. Doll In The Box was originally an eponymous LP on Ze, released back in 1980 and was produced by August Darnell (better known as the ringleader of Kid Creole and the Coconuts). Perhaps we're too familiar with the more-clever-than-thou sensibility of LCD Soundsystem's "Losing My Edge" that ripples throughout the entire post-disco retread, but Cristina's Doll In The Box sounds like a pretty straight forward disco album. Mind you, it's a mighty fine disco album with the rhythmic mono-pulse augmented by minimalist barrio swings, goof-ball covers (e.g. "Drive My Car" by The Beatles with Cristina affecting the air-headed breathiness of Marilyn Monroe), and lots of big, brash, baroque string section frilliness.
Recently profiled in The Wire, Skiz "Spectre" Fernando and his WordSound label have released quite a few "illbient" hip hop records that we've been into here at Aquarius. This compilation highlights several of our faves from the WordSound crew: Scotty Hard, Spectre, Prince Charming, and of course rapper Sensational, among others. It's the soundtrack to Skiz's low-budget, 'student' WordSound film Crooked, which was previously available as a double with the DVD of said film. This is the better deal though, as it's 4 bucks cheaper AND you won't end up watching the decidedly tedious movie. Great soundtrack, though. This version, by the way, has 2 extra tracks but is also about eight minutes shorter, for some reason...OH WAIT, I figured it out: this disc is ENTIRELY DIFFERENT! So, forget what we said about this being a better deal, it's in fact a different deal. That was the "soundtrack", this is the "original score". Hmm. It seems that these are the tracks that were made expressly for the film, but weren't included on the soundtrack cd that came with the dvd. Unlike that disc, there's no previously available stuff on here (which was the case with several of the Sensational cuts on that one). So you gotta get both, WordSound hedz. This one's all about incidental mostly instrumental music from a dark, dubby, hiphop perspective, which is what a lot of WordSound stuff sounds like, even when it's not meant for an actual film. Artists, aside from the above mentioned, included Mentol Nomad, the dreaded Bill Laswell, Mr. Dead, and live drum n' bassers UV Ray.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The story behind Crunch is an interesting one, indeed: Michael Fakesch (the member of Funkstorung who runs the Intelligent Dance Music boutique label Music Aus Strom) claims that he has no information about the identity or origin of Crunch. He received a DAT
Here's the second album from the London IDM / electronica duo Crunch, who had previously sent Michael Fakesch of Funkstorung an anonymous demo, which struck him so much that he released it despite Fakesch's claim that Crunch refused to communicate beyond that aforementioned demo. One can imagine that the radio silence treatment has ended for Crunch, as they've hired several like-minded IDM beatbreakers to remix their work (Funkstorung, Lusine ICL, Skoptic, and Bit_Meddler). As before, Crunch patterns themself after the 'classic' Autechre sound of "Chiastic Slide" and "LP5," where repetitions of minor-key, reverb soaked melodies (which could just be looped samples from snippets of a randomly generated slew of tones) intertwine with sputtering breakbeats. As Autechre's last couple of releases ("Confield" and "Gantz Graf") have expressed a stronger desire for generative randomness and non-structural rhythms, Crunch makes for a fine substitute for those looking for that specific IDM template.
Originally released as a crazy limited cassette, this twisted slab of retro electro synth pop psychedelia is now available on vinyl, on the same label that brought us the vinyl reissue of Mater Suspiria Vision's Crack Witch, and while Crypt Thing are less witchy, they're definitely no less twisted.
The work of a British teenager, Crypt Thing start things off with a blast of warped, witchy, house-y (and yeah a little witch house-y), stuttering, druggy electro weirdness, that definitely sets things up for something dark and damaged, but it doesn't take long for the sound to shift to something much more old school eighties electo, or classic MTV synth pop, or even slowed down soul, but all filtered through CT's seriously warped sonic sensibilities. The pitch seems to constantly warble, the vibe is psychedelic for sure, but a sort of cheesy retro pop style psychedelia, as if some future civilization was trying to reconstruct eighties pop music from garbled fragments transmitted across light years, the result like a twisted tangle of Prince, Simple Minds, Rick Astley, Naked Eyes, Kajagoogoo and Heaven 17, but the a futuristic alien interpretation, all woozy and warbly, occasionally peppered with echo drenched falsetto vox, but more often than not left to pulse and buzz, jangle and thump, the soundtrack to some lost interplanetary prom, a collection of dreamily divine, desolate dancefloor, roller rink couples skate, drugpsych electro retro pop bliss out jams, that should most definitely appeal to Hype Williams, Ariel Pink, Greatest Hits, Craft Spells, D'Eon, Games, Outer Limits Recordings, Gary War, Gatekeeper, Blank Dogs, Pink Skull, Soft Metals, How To Dress Well, Laurel Halo and all the rest...
Now on Vinyl!
One of the trends that we've noticed in the last several years with many of our favorite music makers is that it's seemingly become about releasing as MUCH as you can as OFTEN as you can. And while it's awesome to get so much new music from bands you like, there is still something to be said for really taking your time and crafting fully realized albums that may take a few years to wait for. At the rate that everyone is putting out releases, we almost just figured that Crystal Castles had somehow vanished or had broken up since we haven't heard a peep from them since their infectious debut from a couple years ago.
Luckily they are indeed back and sounding perhaps even more focused, frantic, infectious and engaging than on their debut. (Though would it have killed them to have spent just a few more minutes and come up with an album title? Having two self-titled discs is a bit confusing!) Equal parts '80s flashback, electro-pop with cold wave persuasions, primitive electronics, post-punk spazzy convulsions (the first track would have sounded right at home on one of our favorite spazzcore records by folks like The Locust, The VSS, or Clikatat Ikatowi), and catchy pop prowess. This is one of those records that really does appeal to so many different musical ears, and just about all of us at AQ can't stop listening to it. While it's not too unusual for Andee and Allan to come running up to the front of the store to see what's playing, this time it was Cup, whose desk is the furthest from the front, who had to make a beeline to the speakers to find out who it was covering '80s Canadian glammy new wavers Platinum Blonde! And the fact that Crystal Castles even chose one of the lesser hits of theirs to cover, not to mention that singer Alice Glass hadn't even been born yet when the original was released, just proves this duo has done their homework over the years and are now WAY ahead of the pack!
Like The Knife lending a helping hand to lead Adult. back to greatness, or Caribou, Hot Chip, Goldfrapp, Chromatics, M83 and The Junior Boys all somehow poisoned by a much darker goth-like magic potion. Even those of us who are usually a little shy when it comes to beat orientated music are totally digging this as there is something much more weird and nuanced happening than on lots of other electro-pop records that come our way. It's super fun but not dumb, varied but not erratic, gets out-there but not alienating, sexy but not a put on. Bottom line, it's a fucking awesome record!
Man, we really, really love old school video games around here. The Tron and Rastan games in the store, the Arcade Ambience field recording series, Power Pill Fist, etc. It has to be part of what lured us into the world of Toronto's Crystal Castles and their 8-bit electro mayhem. We're so glad this finally came out, because half of these tracks have been on the internet for about two years and a legitimate release was looking sort of unlikely. But here it is! We digress, on with the review.
Okay, so the duo has been lumped in -- maybe mistakenly -- with the Klaxons, Justice, Digitalism, and the like, but we hear darker, more interesting minor key melodies that occasionally hint at things like The Knife and Junior Boys. In reality, they're not divorced from any of those bands, but there's something about them that gets us. No, not just the aural video game quality, but the undeniable urge to somehow say they're just a bit more punk. Fun. Playful. In fact, there's a handful of tracks on the record that aren't even mixed. And when we saw them play here a year or so ago, their singer Alice was telling us about how she had been kicked out of the previous night's venue for underage drinking.
It doesn't hurt their art-punk street cred that they're best buds with LA's own Health, who they did a split 7" with a year or so ago. When listening to Crystal Castles, there's the feeling that this duo would be just as happy blasting their sounds through a shitty stereo system at their friend's house party, but lucky for us everyone else seems to be feeling it too -- and now they can invite us along to the party.
Cultural Amnesia would have certainly disappeared entirely, but one of the band's earliest supporters was an 18 year old kid named Geoff Rushton, who later changed his name to John Balance when he formed Coil in 1983 (the same year that Cultural Amnesia ceased activities). Cultural Amnesia managed three cassettes, some compilation tracks, and a half-finished album during that time period, with one of those cassettes being released through Rushton's Hearsay And Heresy label. In all likelihood, Coil completists had come across these cassettes and brought them to light over two decades later. Vinyl On Demand was responsible for one of the anthologies of Cultural Amnesia material, but the better collection was Enormous Savages first released on vinyl by Anna Logue in 2006. This cd version through Klanggalerie flushes out the comp with five tracks recorded in recent years, now that they've gotten back together.
Had it not been for their early demise, this was a band that could have followed in the footsteps of Throbbing Gristle, Clock DVA, Dome, and Cabaret Voltaire circa 1981, as a blank austerity followed through the eccentric darkness grafted onto post-punk songs bristling with inventive if cheap electronics. Choppy sparkplug guitars influenced by Keith Levene's work on PiL's Metal Box punctuate the synthetic melodies, drum machinations, and motorik electronics. Lyrically, these are abject tales of blood, scars, alienation, and British misery, with some of the lyrics penned by Rushton himself. Those painfully eloquent songs are prescient of what Rushton was to bring to Coil's early work on Scatology, but they serve Cultural Amnesia very well on their own. The band had reformed in 2000, and offered 5 new tracks, which actually seem to pick up right where they left off, moving more towards the Pop Group's muscular grooves and fidgety funk, with the same Spartan tape recording which dominated their early work. A very welcome document from Britain's cassette culture.
We already knew Chris Cunningham was scary. Or was at the very least capable of conjuring up some scary images. C'mon, had you EVER seen a video as absolutely frightening as Aphex Twin's "Come To Daddy"? We thought not. Well, it seems appropriate then that this new video finds Cunningham and Richard James together again, and rest assured that "Rubber Johhny" almost makes "Come To Daddy" seem like a Backstreet Boys video. This time instead of lots of demented children with James' face, James plays the deformed and wheelchair bound Rubber Johnny, who lurks in the darkness where he is kept alone and locked up, peeking from behind walls or hunched over in his wheelchair pushed into a dark corner. The whole thing is a rapid fire series of shots and quick cuts, shot entirely in night vision it seems like, and we only get brief glimpses of Johnny, but every one offers a little more and each glimpse is more horrifying than the last. Holy fuck! What is it with these guys? And how the hell do they do it? This is absolutely amazing. Someone has to get Cunningham to make a movie. We can hardly imagine how insane that would be. And also, if the "Rubber Johnny" video wasn't enough, the book it comes packaged in features image after image of some of the most disturbing and fucked up photoshop EVER. Lots of armpits and buttholes and foreheads and scrotums all chopped and seamlessly assembled into some of the freakiest sort-of-human- creatures you will ever see. Eeeuw.
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Subtitled quite aptly "Electro-Acoustic Mood Music", the sequel to Curd Duca's Elevator starts off with his odd ball electronica/psychedelia and veers off into digital explosions, non-metric pulses, and jazz cut ups... all executed with a casual precision that makes even the most experimental parts highly listenable. Fans of Stock Hausen & Walkman should take note!
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"Digitalanalog mood music". Possibly the most accessible Mille Plateaux artist, the mysterious Curd Duca make quite short, pastoral pieces suffused with melodies and lightness, a little bit bossa nova, a little bit lounge, a little bit noisy weirdness. Always interesting. Recommended.
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"Minimalist mood music" based on the music of Wagner.
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Similar to the apocalyptic drum and bass of labelmate Panacea (whom we love love love), but the horror show here is rather more clinical and restrained, though no less dark.
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As a pure genre, drum & bass clearly reached its zenith a few years back and has tried to resurrect itself with all sorts of wacky 'nu-skools' like neuro-funk and speed garage... when drum & bass probably should be viewed as just another colour in the electronica palette. The Position Chrome stable artists of Panacea, Heinrich At Hart, and Current Value had originated their sound at the darkest end of the tech-step spectrum, but have been increasingly shedding the references of drum & bass, in favor of circular oscillations of dark beats and eerie atmospheres, while maintaining the clinical electro-shock metaphors of tech-step. Sounds like Skinny Puppy, doesn't it.
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Ultra clinical, stripped down tech step. Hard and mean and scary and COLD. On Force Inc./Position chrome.
Ipecac unleashes the latest chapter in the saga of the Curse Of The Golden Vampire -- otherwise known as Alec Empire and Techno Animal (Justin Broadrick and Kevin Martin). The last CotGV was a crushing super distorted dub/breakbeat/jungle free for all that we all pretty much dug. The new one is too, sort of. It's a much sloppier and noisier affair, which could be a good thing I suppose. But for me, it's lacking the huge beats that made the first one so appealing. Well, they're still there, but they're buried under so much nosie and skree and shkkkkgghhhhhhh that the whole thing sometimes veers closer to Japanoise territory than their DHR lineage would have you expecting. So, if you need a noise fix, and like your noise with some beats, this may be just what you need.
This album from Cursor Miner (aka Robert Tubb) is a darn sonic rollercoaster ride. A super fun and eclectic album, it starts out with an ominous 40 second digital roar, then proceeds into a Beck-ish slouchy, loping fashion which mutates into more stuttery electronics and bumpity-bump programmed beats like Hrvatski or Kid 606. All chopped up, chunky and playful with a definite pop heart, it blends together acoustic guitars, rubbery blumps and bleeps, samples and processed vocals. Cool.
The longtime dj collaborator and aQ fave turntable wizard Cut Chemist, who over the years has jammed with the likes of Jurassic 5, Ozomatli, DJ Shadow, Shortkut and Madlib, finally goes it alone... well, sorta. He's got a little help from his friends and the backing of a major label. Markedly absent is an abundance of wildly kinetic displays of scratchin' dexterity. With the exception of The Audience Is Listening's final track (and theme song!), his ol' over the top acrobatics on the decks have been tempered into the for the most part even-keeled energetically groovin' tracks. Its potential appeal is far broader. Although he is most renowned as a jaw-dropping turntablist, Cut Chemist has effectively done his part to further define the turntable as an everyday instrument rather than gimmick/trickster accessory -- muting its presence rather than trumpeting it. His beloved wit and playfulness are fortunately still fully intact in his samplin' selection as is evident in tracks such as "Spat". Other standouts surface midway through the proceedings, the sixth track "What's The Altitude" which features Hymnal (who along with Edan and Mr. Lif on "Storm" contributes the scant MC presence on the album -- both tracks shine a little bit extra) and the seventh "Metrorail Thru Space". A solid, skillfully composed and assembled solo debut.
Black Mamba was the 2nd full-length album from the amazing "Afro-Noise" project of Whitehouse's William Bennett. We made it a Record Of The Week when it came out on cd in 2012. Now, at last, the tracks from that cd (most of them anyway) have made their way to vinyl, spread across two records - Afro Noise Volume 3 and 4. Two of the tracks from Black Mamba aren't included, but making up for that, these records DO contain a bunch of non-album tracks, including all four tracks (in remastered and/or reworked form?) from last year's hard to find Madwoman 12", plus what appears to be an entirely new cut, "Vaudou Take Me High" to lead off Volume 3.
Our review of Black Mamba is pretty big so we're not going to repeat it here (you can look it up elsewhere on our site if you like) but just a brief excerpt for those unfamiliar with Cut Hands:
...It's about the beats, stunning, stuttering polyrhythmic tick-tockery, in and out of which Bennett weaves elements of distortion and noise to great effect. So it's a lot like the debut, only with the "almost machine-like intensity of the hand percussion" perhaps pushed to further extremes, but the harsh noise factor in fact toned down somewhat. Bennett's carefully constructed attacks of primal boom bap and metallic click-track chaos are powerfully "possessive", a pleasant sensation in combination with the more ambient, moody elements of this disc, of which there are plenty.
Vol. 3 features "Vandou Take Me High", "Krokodilo Theme", "Immersion", "Erzulie D'En Tort", "Witness The Spread Of The Dream", "No Spare No Soul", "Kongo", and "Madwoman". Volume 4 has "Eat Them Like Bread", "El Palo Mayombe", "Black Mamba", "Inchantment", "River Mumma", "54 Needles", "Nzambi Ia Ngonde", and "Nine-Night".
Each limited to 750 copies only.
Black Mamba was the 2nd full-length album from the amazing "Afro-Noise" project of Whitehouse's William Bennett. We made it a Record Of The Week when it came out on cd in 2012. Now, at last, the tracks from that cd (most of them anyway) have made their way to vinyl, spread across two records - Afro Noise Volume 3 and 4. Two of the tracks from Black Mamba aren't included, but making up for that, these records DO contain a bunch of non-album tracks, including all four tracks (in remastered and/or reworked form?) from last year's hard to find Madwoman 12", plus what appears to be an entirely new cut, "Vaudou Take Me High" to lead off Volume 3.
Our review of Black Mamba is pretty big so we're not going to repeat it here (you can look it up elsewhere on our site if you like) but just a brief excerpt for those unfamiliar with Cut Hands:
...It's about the beats, stunning, stuttering polyrhythmic tick-tockery, in and out of which Bennett weaves elements of distortion and noise to great effect. So it's a lot like the debut, only with the "almost machine-like intensity of the hand percussion" perhaps pushed to further extremes, but the harsh noise factor in fact toned down somewhat. Bennett's carefully constructed attacks of primal boom bap and metallic click-track chaos are powerfully "possessive", a pleasant sensation in combination with the more ambient, moody elements of this disc, of which there are plenty.
Vol. 3 features "Vandou Take Me High", "Krokodilo Theme", "Immersion", "Erzulie D'En Tort", "Witness The Spread Of The Dream", "No Spare No Soul", "Kongo", and "Madwoman". Volume 4 has "Eat Them Like Bread", "El Palo Mayombe", "Black Mamba", "Inchantment", "River Mumma", "54 Needles", "Nzambi Ia Ngonde", and "Nine-Night".
Each limited to 750 copies only.
Another blast of twisted rhythmic "Afro-Noise" from William Bennett, most famously known for his confrontational harsh noise combo Whitehouse, but who around here is probably more beloved for this project, Cut Hands, his most recent project, which fuses traditional African rhythms, with industrial electronics and techno rhythms, creating a series of dark tangled grooves, that somehow push all our buttons. And this new one basically continues on where the recent Black Mamba ep left off. The A side is a furious polyrhythmic barrage, that slips easily from tribal groove, to lurching, loping, stuttering, industrial crunch and back again, driving and fierce, percussive and pretty goddamn hypnotic, the sort of thing we could listen to forever, and we just listened to the A side about four times in a row, and basically had to force ourselves to stop.
The tracks on the flipside are a bit less aggro, sounding a little like old Muslimgauze, or like some current Dom Fernow project (Christian Cosmos, Vatican Shadow, Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement), the beats muted and blunted, at times downright mellow and blissed out, at others, rhythmic but dialed back, sort of murky and moody, but still tranced out and seriously psychedelic...
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Panacea and Future Boi team-up to make more bad-ass distorted pummelling beats that stutter with violence.
One of the few contemporary projects from the crate-digging local label Dark Entries, Cute Heels is the work of the Belgian electronic music Victor Lenis, with Spiritual being his first outing in a physical format. Squelchy, almost acid-like syncopations glide through each of these mid-tempo yet steroid-injected drum machine grooves that maintain a retro-garde pastiche of the Robert Gorl / Chrislo Haas productions of early D.A.F. / Liaisons Dangereuses and the darker moments of early Detroit techno, especially those Model 500 and Cybotron singles from the mid-'80s. Going through each of the tracks on Spiritual, one can pick out very specific homages in his jagged, industrially-minded productions. "Watch The Neon" and the title track cop the same angular, fetish-club funk that Front 242 barked on albums like Geometry and Official Version, where "Metal Disco" pops its limbs out of joint with the cyborg jitteriness of Chris & Cosey's Songs Of Love & Lust. While many of the Lenis' influences used these types of arrangements within the context of popsongs complete with vocals, lyrics, and ego, Spiritual is wholly instrumental leaving the electronics to speak through the blacklight and strobe-fired grids of rhythm and modulated step sequencing.
This new SF group sure do indeed have their cute dial turned up to 'full', bringing together very childlike singsong female vocals, chiming musicbox and piano melodies, and an occasional indie boyish vocal too. That said, they don't completely induce sugar shock by tempering the tracks with some buzzing and hissing IDM interventions. It's a promising direction to take, although it can be somewhat jarring to the flow of the album at times -- as if they weren't quite sure where to go next or perhaps as if individual members wanted to try their hands at different things. It'll be interesting to see where they go from here... whether they'll further fuse the two distinct styles or focus more on one or the other or something altogether different. Anyways, it's a very homespun affair right down to the packaging: both the jewelcase and cd-r are handscreened with an image titled "Polar bunny in a snowstorm" (sorta reminiscent of Zappa's Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A Drowning Witch album illustration) and a sparkly sticker graces the traycard.
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Your second chance to get your hands on Cybotron's seminal proto-Detroit techno lp, Clear, has arrived. Lauded as one of the most anticipated vinyl reissues of 2013, they sold right off the assembly line, but we just managed to snag some more. This is one funky futuristic slab of electro that sounds as fresh now as Kraftwerk did back then, to the band's young members who also dug Detroit radio DJ The Electrifying Mojo, Afro-futurism, and science fiction. Perhaps noting members Juan "Model 500" Atkins and Richard "3070" Davis's affinity for P-Funk in the album's syncopations, Fantasy Records in Berkeley, California originally released it in 1983 under the title Enter. It was later reissued on cd in 1990 with a different track listing and the title changed to Clear, after the track on here with the percolating synth line that everyone from Missy Elliot to T.I. has sampled. It's as recognizable as Afrika Bambaata's "Planet Rock."
Prior to Enter/Clear's release, Atkins had issued many of the tracks as singles under his Model 500 moniker. A young musician just learning to use electronic synthesizers and sequencers, his obsession with Kraftwerk makes itself known on tracks "Clear" and "R-9", while tracks like "Cosmic Raindance" and "El Salvador" align more with Europen synth pop. All ironically depict the dystopic city of man-machines working on the line building America's cars, a future that was already being buried into the past as the late '70s recession and oil crisis lead to the decline in demand for U.S.-made autos. Though Atkins was familiar with the concept of DJ mixes, he aimed to make Cybotron a band with guitar solos (by Jon "Jon 5" Howsley) and traditional song structure. The overall effect is more electro, with a dash of new wave, than for-real techno (that comes later with 1984's "Techno City" or Derrick May's 1987 "Strings of Life," but we'll let you duke that one out amongst yourselves). Fair to say that Atkins would go on to develop Detroit's techno sound alongside Derrick Mays, and Cybotron's original output remains a classic blueprint of where the world of music was heading. This second reissue on vinyl best celebrates the spirit of the Detroit techno DJ scene.
