[ aquarius records — Electronic ]

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Showing results 101 through 150 of 5033.

French electronica sensations Air, with their big hit/best song in a radio edit and three exciting mixes...including one by Beck Hansen. Also, "Jeanne" with Francoise Hardy appears here.

Two album tracks "Surfing On A Rocket" and "Alpha Beta Gaga" from Air's most recent full length Talkie Walkie get put through the remix mill -- three mixes a piece by the likes of Juan MacLean (ex-Six Finger Satellite), Mark Ronson, Nomo Heroes, and Joakim. The stand-out is the first "A.B.G." mix on which Ronson gets all funky and hippity-hoppy with some help from Rhymefest. Pretty cool. Plus briefly interrupting the remix party is one brand new track the slow, smoooth swooner "Easy Going Woman".

MPEG stream: Easy Going Woman
MPEG stream: Alpha Beta Gaga - Mark Ronson Vocal Mix (feat. Rhymefest)

Wow, we've been blowing through these new Air cds so fast that it doesn't even seem like we need to bother to review it, it's like "here's that Air cd that you're already buying" would do. But, in case you're curious, the consensus here is that Talkie Walkie is really nice, not quite another Moon Safari thinks Allan, but Andee thinks otherwise. Gorgeously shimmery, reverbed piano and handclaps, sweet angelic vocals, lilting melodies, lush harmonies, and surprisingly catchy songs. If you didn't know this was Air, you'd be forgiven for thinking it was some new indie-rock / Elephant 6 / Notwist / psych-pop record. In fact the Notwist is an apt comparison, as is the Postal Service. Sweet indie rock fused with skittery electronica. And the results are so sublime. They even quote "I'm Not In Love" by 10CC in one song, complete with the heavy breathing! Remember the amazing music Air did for Sophia Coppola's Virgin Suicides. How the music managed to be as gauzy and sweetly innocent and emotionally charged as the film? Well, imagine that same sort of vibe but in a totally pop context! So good. Thankfully Air seem to have finally shed their loungy / exotica / kitsch for good in favor of this new, lush, much more satisfying sound. And I for one can't wait to hear more. This limited edition comes with a bonus DVD featuring a 35 minute live film with behind the scenes footage and other bonus stuff.

MPEG stream: Venus
MPEG stream: Cherry Blossom Girl

A new album from Air! And it comes in the form of a soundtrack for Sofia Coppola's film 'The Virgin Suicides'. Smoky sax, a scattering of spoken word, soaring musical swells, and cascading piano. Quietly groovy, but not without a frantic chase theme included in the mix (which Andee said sounds like black metal).

This grew out of a performance where Air provided instrumental backing for Allessandro Baricco reading from his novel, City. Baricco is a well-known contemporary Italian author, and City is about a young Mathematician with a vivid fantasy life. Baricco reads his stories while Air play soothing, kind of creepy soundscapes. Baricco has a deep, lovely voice and the music of the Italian language makes this something strangely soothing to put on in the background. Dark and dreamy with lots of rumble and warm sonic blur, with field recordings of wind and chimes and all sort of other atmospheric ephemera. Nice. MPEG Download: "Bird" [/audio/air_bariccobird.mp3] MPEG Stream: "Bird" [/audio/air_bariccobird.m3u] MPEG Download: "Pat Cobhan Ride" [/audio/air_bariccopatcobhan.mp3]

MPEG stream: Bird
MPEG stream: Pat Cobhan Ride
MPEG stream: Il Primo Giorno

This is the first we've heard from Akatombo in more than three years. The last cd from this Scotsman living in Japan came in the form of Unconfirmed Reports, a record we sold tons of back in the day, and even after several years, False Positives seems to take up pretty much right where Unconfirmed Reports left of. A killer collection of programmed beats, layered samples, dark atmospheres, thick guitars, and droney-ambience, sounding at times like Muslimgauze, or like a more chill Necro Deathmort, or one of those bands who might have shared a compilation with Techno Animal or Sidewinder back in the day. The vibe is definitely on the isolationist tip, murky and claustrophobic, the beats are crunchy and caustic, more often lurching and lumbering than skittering or shuffling, and those beats are set amidst thick swells of grim sinister ambience, and blackened latenight atmospheres. And as we mentioned in our review of Unconfirmed Reports, that really is just the way we like it. A sort of dubbed out downtempo dance music that's not so much for dancing, but lurking, hanging out in the shadows, in empty clubs in empty cities, everything crumbling and decayed, a seriously dystopic soundtrack for some wasted scorched earth future. The opening track is super misleading, a Kompakt style house music rife with samples, and dubbed out snares, it has us thinking that maybe things had in fact changed, but then the second song kicks in and we're back in the dark dank world that Akatombo seems to call home, sounding like a backing track for some Sensational B Side or a long lost Spectre jam, all low slung and dirgey, twangy Morricone guitars over a loping blackened groove, very cinematic, almost like Barry Adamson by way of Techno Animal, but then it just keeps getting darker, the beats more muted, the textures more blurred and dense, the vibe sinister and malevolent, murky pulses beneath thick swirls of tarpit thrum, clouds of blackbuzz driven by a machinelike industrial pound, stuttery rhythms wrapped around fragmented samples and the occasional stretch of almost big beat groove, which gives way to some blackened slithery downtuned dirgery, which in turn becomes a gauzy almost Tim Hecker like sprawl, before once again, splintering into another stretch of abject rhythmic miserablism, or tranced out blackhole propulsion. Packaged in an oversized full color sleeve, inside are liner notes, as well as random newspaper clippings, and like Unconfirmed Reports, False Positives also includes a dvd-r with a handful of videos.

MPEG stream: Melt Again
MPEG stream: Shi-Shi Mai
MPEG stream: False Positives

We weren't sure what to expect from this one at all. An oversized sleeve, with Japanese characters adoring the front, as well as the sticker sealing it shut. Inside, a handful of random newspaper clippings, some oversized full color inserts. The work of a Scotsman, who once lived in SF and now lives in Japan, with a previous record released on Colin Newman's (of Wire) label Swim, and this record engineered by one of the guys from legendary Japanese psych rockers Les Rallizes Denudes... No clues at all to what it might actually sound like, but we needn't have worried, as Akatombo traffic in some seriously dark electronic throb, all deep rumbling bass, and minimal drum skitter. A strange hybrid of more modern dubstep, and old school post industrial soundscapery, the mood is ominous and haunting, the melodies minor key and sinister, the beats aren't big, although they are dense and powerful, but the bass most certainly is, we find ourselves cranking the bass on our system, and every track sets the whole house a rumbling. A super thick throbbing low end shock wave of sound, that pulses beneath the muted rhythmic pound, and the strange processed voices, the chopped and looped samples, a swirling, roiling blackened sea of low end, that sprawls and oozes. Fans of stuff like Spectre, Scorn and Muslimgauze will definitely dig, in fact, Akatombo does in some ways sound like a composite of those three. Some Eastern influence here and there, some deep bass dub dynamics, some serious industrial leanings, all woven together into a minimal/maximal songsuite of seriously deep listening blackened chillout music, a smoldering smear of some slow motion dancefloor density. We even hear some Portishead in there too, a little jazziness as well, some Bohren maybe? This is definitely some seriously aQ style electronica, a heavy, murky, lowslung late night blackend drone groove, that is more mood music than dance music, which is generally the way we like it. Packaged in an oversized printed envelope, each one hand numbered, with multiple inserts, newspaper clippings, as well as a dvd-r featuring three video clips. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!

MPEG stream: Friend For Hire
MPEG stream: Pragmatism
MPEG stream: Cypher

Like Jonah Sharp (aka Spacetime Continuum) and Tom Jenkinson (aka Squarepusher), Mitchell Akiyama arrived at electronica after extensive training as a jazz musician. That said, Mitchell's jazz roots don't really show here. "Hope That Lines Don't Cross" is

We loved the dreamy yet glitchy album Small Explosions That Are Yours To Keep from earlier this year by Montreal electro-acoustic composer Mitchell Akiyama, as did quite a few of you...so here's something new from him that may be of interest. Akiyama's entry into Staalplaat's Mort Aux Vaches series of cds documenting live-on-the-air performances for the Dutch radio station VPRO. For this 44 minute recording, Akiyama digitally processed his own live guitar playing (no pre-recorded samples were utilized). What you'll hear are placid, ambient guitar melodies given a scratchy, static-y scrubbing, making this sound a bit like one of the loops from Philip Jeck's turntable, or the result of shortwave radio interference. In fact, it's kinda funny that this was meant for a radio broadcast, since any listeners not up to speed with the standards of "experimental" music-making might just think that they had really bad reception! This is mostly quite gentle, but with a bleeding edge of sonic overload that now and then builds to near-painful levels of distortion before subsiding and again letting the melancholic guitar wash and clicking rhythms soothe your ears. Really beautiful. Packaged in a thin, folded sheet of embossed copper! Watch you don't cut yrself on it...

MPEG stream: "untitled

The Small Explosions That Are Yours To Keep (if you purchase this, that is, which we recommend you do) are the eleven instrumental songs/soundscapes found on this latest, lovely electro-acoustic outing from Montreal's Mitchell Akiyama. His is a dreamy world of stuttering electronica, abstract yet pretty, with fragments of melody coaxed from what sound like swooning strings, accordion wheezes, delicate piano, and tinkling bells amongst other playthings. The gauzy glitch and crackle put us in mind of Tarwater, Oval, Alog and Philip Jeck. It's just really really nice... Allan's mom (visiting SF) heard this playing in the store and immediately bought a copy she liked it so much! In fact, he was gonna get her to review it, but that didn't happen unfortunately. He does remember her saying that she thought that each track sounded like a different insect, some happy, some sad, young and old, producing some sort of sap or syrup...honey I guess. Something like that. We can kind of hear where she's coming from with that. You (or your mom) might come up with a different mental image, but we imagine that if you like gentle, moody rainy-day electronica with a certain 'clicks n' cuts' element you'd like this too. Likewise even if you didn't know you liked any sort of electronica (like Allan's mom previous to hearing this). Recommended!

MPEG stream: Strategies For Combatting Invisibility
MPEG stream: Full Then Felt
MPEG stream: Contrapuntal Lung Apparatus

Every couple of years in electronica, there is a specific sound or a defined aesthetic that grabs the attention of the community as a whole. Even within the seemingly conceptually aloof parameters of glitch manipulation, mimesis and mimicry have been endemic, as numerous artists have mirrored the genre's figureheads -- Oval, Pole, Fennesz, and now Stephan Mathieu. As with his previous record "Hope That Lines Don't Cross," Canadian electron peddler Mitchell Akiyama has liberally appropriated the sounds of another. That former album used Vladislav Delay / Pole as his template, and "Temporary Music" seeks the sounds of Mathieu and Oval's "Diskont 94." As on Mathieu's Full Swing recordings, Akiyama centers on the digital fragment to craft an enveloping cloud of electro-drone bristling and densely packed shards of granular synthesis. Don't get me wrong, it's certainly a beautiful record to behold; but one that never strives for its own voice. Released as a part of the new "Raster-Post" series housed in quite nice silkscreened, fold-out cardstock sleeve and bound with an elastic band.

RealAudio clip: Thaw
RealAudio clip: Arterial

Another gorgeously grim slab of blackened minimal techno from this recent Record Of The Week honoree, and like that self titled full length, this new 12" is another harrowing expanse of rumbles, and groans, deep vibrations, and cinematic sound design, all wound around skeletal rhythms and buried pulsations. Pretty sure it's meant to spin at 45, but at 33 it's transformed into something even more like SUNNO))) gone techno. The opening track is peppered with weird orc-ish grunts, and a subtly Muslimgauze vibe, while the follow up is a bit more straight up jungle, albeit still wound up in a black haze, and and slow that down for some seriously old school sounding breakbeat slugstep. The flipside is another spare sprawl that quickly ramps up into a skittery groover, which actually does sound like it's meant to be at 33, sped up to 45, it's frantic and frenetic, but at 33, it's a head nodding pulsating come down bliss out, before finishing off with another atmospheric ambient jam, this one laced with field recordings and heavily dubbed out, murky and mysterious, the techno element sublimated into rib cage rattling low end throb, and some second half stutter step drum programming. Housed in super striking, embossed covers, and pressed on silver metallic swirled vinyl.

So imagine some sort of ultra doom band, like Bunkur or Moss or Corrupted, the downtuned low end heaviness, the brooding, harrowing blackened sound world; now imagine, if you can, a band like that that doesn't make doom metal, or sludge, or even dronemusic, but instead makes electronic music. Imagine some hellish danceclub, hidden away in some cavern, far below the surface of the earth, where only demons, and those that dwell in the shadows, could be found. And certainly not on the dancefloor - this music is not for dancing, it's too ominous, too grim, too blackened. That club is wreathed in shadows, with some mysterious DJ spinning records with ribcage rattling lowend, skull caving beats, the sounds droney and bleak, blown out and minimally murky, some sort of black avant dub maybe? That may all sound too good to be true, or classic aQ hyperbole, but this debut full length from Akkord, definitely evokes exactly that sort of scenario. Just check out the opener, "Torr Vale", preferably on a really loud speaker, or in a car, system BOOMING, or in headphones, volume cranked, it's stunningly immersive, the low end a physical presence, less dance music or electronica than abstract sound design, we're tempted to make comparisons to Ben Frost, Roly Porter, Pole, Demdike Stare, there's definitely a huge hauntological vibe going on for sure, but somehow, this is even more grim and sinister than anything Demdike Stare has conjured up. Swaths of blackened shimmer, clipped beats, submerged in a murky sprawl of tarpit ambience, squelchy synths add subtle colorations, but it's all about the low end, the rumbling, whirring, churning bass, peppered with sonar pings, and rhythmic pulsations for sure, but those elements play out more like light desperately trying to escape from a black hole, and that's what Akkord have conjured up, a sonic black hole, crushing, and blackened, dark and yeah, doomy. It took us ages before we could make it past that first track, and while nothing on the rest of the record is nearly as black and bleak, that dark energy definitely surges throughout, or more accurately, oozes. "Smoke Circle" cranks up the rhythm a bit, the feel sort of double dutch, a little tribal, with little blurts of free jazz skitter mixed in, but all draped over another ominous backdrop of low end rumbles, this time accompanied by a cool looped vocal, buried way down in the mix, the vibe undeniable groovy, but with a seriously sinister undercurrent. Some tracks, like "3dOS" get downright house-y, sounding like they wouldn't be out of place on some Kompakt release, but even here, the sound is wreathed in shadow, about as feel-bad as a feel-good music can get, especially when it breaks down into, some swirling, pulsing death dub drifts. "Folded Edge" is another groover, almost jungle-y, but wreathed in creepy slowed down vox, and in the background, all manner of low end warble, and rib cage rattling thrum, the echo drenched vocal snippets dubbed out and psychedelic, the whole thing tripped out and trance-y. The rest of the record offers up variations on Akkord's grim sonic theme, pulsing, motorik rhythms, some house-y, some jungle-y, some techno, all clipped and fragmented, and all sort of shadowy and sinister. The best moments though remain tracks like "Channel Drift", where the beat is a monotonous pulse, buried beneath a sprawl of cinematic shimmer, weird field recorded clatter, all hazy and murky and washed out, it's not until more than halfway through that the beat emerges from the murk, a bit of skittery jungle, that devolves into a woozy lope, or the killer closer "Undertow", another bit of creaking low end grimnity, hauntological for sure, swirling and heavily panned, sounds swooping from speaker to speaker, sounding more like Nurse With Wound via Demdike Stare, some mutant strain of abstract industrial electro-dub minimal murk. So killer. Fans of the Basic House record we made Record Of The Week recently, or Ben Frost, Roly Porter, Demdike Stare, Andy Stott, Vatican Shadow, Silent Servant, all all those various strains of dark mutant electronica, this could very well be your new favorite record. It is ours!

MPEG stream: Torr Vale
MPEG stream: Smoke Circle
MPEG stream: 3dOS
MPEG stream: Folded Edge
MPEG stream: Channel Drift

We've been a bit obsessed with the haunting minimal techno sound design of Akkord, so much so that we made their (his?) full length our Record Of The Week a while back, and ended up comparing it to doom groups like Bunkur and Moss; Akkord's heaving blackened malevolence, and sinister soundtrackiness transforming their dark electronica into something much more epic and harrowing. So it makes perfect sense that two of our other favorite masters of the electronic dark arts would chime in, with their own remix takes on Akkord's already brilliantly bleak soundworld. Haxan Cloak radically reinvent whatever song it is they've chosen, it's impossible to tell, we're tempted to think it might be some confusional collage of all of them, but Haxan Cloak delivers a tripped out sprawl of his own cinematic sound design, stereo-panned heavily, weird ambient sounds swooping from speaker to speaker, draped over a skeletal digidub pulse, and a field of spare Raster-Noton like clicks and flutters, slowly building to a dense barrage of glitched out industrial crunch, the sound veering wildly from hushed pulsation, to wild rhythmic freakout, all the while, wreathed in mournful melodies and moaning drones, with at least one burst of crazily caustic electro-noise that somehow manages to sound intense and beautiful and weirdly moving and sorta heartbreaking. The flipside finds Dominick Fernow, is his guise as Vatican Shadow, offering up a remix that's not nearly as overtly terrifying, much more subdued, and way less abstract, the sound like, well, like Vatican Shadow, a pulsating low slung gothic groove, a gauzy stretch of minimal batcave techno, with syncopated rhythms, and ominous low shimmer, a hazy house music that sounds like it could be some obscure Kompakt 12", but more shadowy and sinister.

MPEG stream: HTH020 (The Haxan Cloak's Cloud of Witness)
MPEG stream: Typeface/Greyscale (Vatican Shadow's The World Is Complete)

We always talked about trying to start a live jungle band, drum and bass played by a REAL band, no synths or laptops, just guitars and bass and drums. Lots of drums. In fact, we spent a lot of time trying to figure out how many drummers you would need, or how insane a drummer it would take to simulate that lightning speed skitter and stutter. So what exactly would it take, in terms of instrumentation to accurately recreate that jungle sound, or say maybe the sound of Aphex Twin? Well judging from this record right here, it would take flute, alto flute, piccolo, oboe, English horn, clarinet, bass clarinet, alto saxophone, bassoon, horn, horsoon, horse horn, Jew's harp, trumpet, duck call, trombone, steel drums, plastic tubing, mbira, piano, celesta, Fender Rhodes, violin, viola, accordian, cello, electric bass, upright bass, electric guitar, tambura, voice, cocktail stirrer kalimba, water hose, curtain rods, air pumps, engraving tool and of course FOUR percussionists and TWO drummers!! Phew. No wonder we could never get it to work. This massive ensemble manages to take songs by Aphex Twin and give them a classical organic makeover, and the results are pretty fantastic, owing as much to the brilliant and undeniably catchy songs of Aphex Twin as it does to the clever arrangements and deft musicianship of the Alarm Will Sound players. Aphex tracks definitely lend themselves to this sort of re-imagining, the older stuff is dense and rhythmic, clattery and chaotic, already feeling a bit twentieth century classical, so you can imagine that a group of modern classical musicians would have no problem playing, and playing with the material, having already tackled Cage and Reich and Riley and Feldman. The new stuff is rife with soaring strings and pizzicato melodies, so having a full string section tackling those parts, and then being supported by a complement of horns and a huge corps of percussion, only makes the originals sound that much more lush and musical. And then there's the redone tracks from Selected Ambient Works Volume 2, which in this context, are so perfectly lovely and hypnotic, they prove once again (remember the Phillip Glass Aphex Twin remixes?) that had Richard D. James chosen a different musical tack (modern classical minimalism), we might speak of him in the same breath as Cage or Riley or Feldman (with whom James most definitely shares a similar subtly melodic flair), instead of groups like Boards Of Canada or Bola.

MPEG stream: Cliffs
MPEG stream: Logon Rock Witch
MPEG stream: Mt. Saint Michel

One of two new releases from local label Time Released Sound, this one from Canadian songstress/soundscaper Lyndsie Alguire, who we had never heard or heard of before, and who apparently used to traffic in a sound more rooted in piano/vocal interplay. But the sonics here however are much more suited to TRS's aesthetic of field recording flecked cinematic ambience, with Alguire weaving a lush landscape of collaged sound, the vibe reminiscent in fact of Nurse With Wound's prettier moments at times, but exploring a sound much more tranquil and lovely at others, with her piano still the focus. After a brief opening track of swirling atmospheres and slow shifting layers, ominous rumbles and blurred soft focus psychedelic shimmer, the first song proper unfurls, lyrical lovely piano, set on a bed of processed voices, manipulated field recordings, all smeared into a dreamlike haze. But Alguire has more up her sleeve, the sound slowly shifting into something that sound much more 4AD or Projekt, a sort of gauzey shoegaze, driven by programmed beats, and ethereal vocals, all wreathed around her melancholic piano. The record finishes with the epic 10+ minute "All Possible Stories", a dense collages drift, sample voices and layered field recordings woven into a softly undulating field of warm whirring chordal thrum, the piano here washed out into hazy clouds of color, the whole thing a haunting, filmic, dreamlike drift. So lovely. And as always, Time Released Sound has pulled out all the stops, no standard version on this one, just the pricey special art edition, a sealed printed envelope encloses a folded foot long accordion like insert, made from a hundred year old educational flash card, mounted with 8 reproductions of polaroid prints of the rather attractive artist mostly nude, the insert printed with sentence fragments, the whole thing as mysterious as the music it contains. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!!

MPEG stream: I Was Dreaming Of You
MPEG stream: You Used To Look Happy

As the title states, this cd is a collection of Alias remixes! Over the years along with his own compositions, Alias (alias Brendon Whitney) has also meticulously sliced, diced and craftily reassembled tunes by the varied likes of LaliPuna, Lucky Pierre, John Vanderslice, Sixtoo, 13 & God, Boy In Static and Giardini Di Miro among others. Processing their dream-tronica, hip hop and indie pop originals in richly contrasting shades, he brings bassy funkiness to the breezily poppy, washy atmospheres to the cleaner beats, and defined melody to the more abstract tracks. Came out last year, but just as nice now.

MPEG stream: Exodus Damage - Remix For John Vanderslice
MPEG stream: Given Ground - Remix For Giardini Di Miro

Wow, not sure what we were expecting with this new Alias album, but it sure wasn't this - a remarkably grand, ebullient and shimmeringly pretty album! It's as though Flaming Lips decided hiphop was their next avenue of musical adventure. No, really! Also quite reminiscent of late '90s IDM (such as Oval or Plaid) or early '00s jazz-tinged pop-tronica (such as Four Tet or Ulrich Schnauss), Resurgam is a lush affair that's blissed out yet driving at the same time. Fans of all of the above will surely find much to dig into here!

MPEG stream: New To A Few
MPEG stream: Death Watch

Despite what I am about to say, this is indeed an ultra groovy dream of an album and is well worth picking up. Really! It is unfortunate that these associations do tend to cloud the listening experience, but even without being much of a TV watcher I have to say that this new collaboration between Alias and his little brother Ehren (particularly the fifth track) really reminded us of that (albeit great) Aphex Twin track that was used in a bank commercial... alas! What distinguishes Alias & Ehren from Richard D. James here though is that they direct their spotlight to the sounds of saxophones for the melodic elements in their music. Overall, they're sound is more in line with the likes of Jimmy Tamborello (Dntel, Postal Service), Canada's Caribou, or the artists on the German pretty pop-tronic label Morr Music. Breezy and blissful, but not unexpectedly with a little more rhythm and bass presence.

MPEG stream: Back & Forth
MPEG stream: Miso Stomp

I (Sally) loooooove Ellen Allien. When I bought her album Thrills a coupla years ago, I was busting out dance moves for weeks in my bedroom that I didn't even know existed inside of me. When I'm at a dance party/club, I can catapult the DJ from all right to great (in my head) in a matter of seconds if they throw on Ellen. Her presence was a gift to collaborator Apparat on "Orchestra of Bubbles." Her music is electronic perfection as far as I'm concerned -- seemingly simple, yet complicated and hella sexy. Though all of Allien's records are incredible throughout, I've found that there are always one or two songs I could listen to on repeat for days. On Thrills it was "Magma" and "The Brain Is Lost," and on Orchestra of Bubbles I couldn't get enough of "Way Out." Following suit with Fabric 34, a remix record, "Harrowdown Hill" (Thom Yorke) alone makes this record worth every cent. Allien has achieved exactly what you hope for in a remix -- she's taken a nearly perfect song and pushed it over the edge to absolute perfection. Overall, Fabric 34 tends to be a bit more ultra-loungy than her previous works, but she manages to still throw in the special stuff that really makes her music stand out.

MPEG stream: The Sun Can't Compare (Remix)
MPEG stream: Harrowdown Hill (Remix)

This is Ellen Allien's new mix cd and she throws down some electronic dance hotties like Apparat (whose "Cheap Thrills" makes for one of the high points in this set, along with the track that follows it "Numb" by Tomas Andersson), Step Time Orchestra, and Plaid as well as tossing in a few of her own, but she stumbles near the starting gate with a track by Dr FeelX called "Relax Your Body". A deep male (we assume it's the doctor's) voice proclaims the message in the music... it is indeed to "relax your body". He also commands you to "move your body", and then continues on with some truly painful rhymes. He does his best (worst?) Schwarznegger, deadpanning aerobicize lyrics like "you may be happy / or you may be sad / don't worry about your problems / just get into the groove." Ouch. Fortunately once you've passed that track, things take a turn for the (much) better.

MPEG stream: Cheap Thrills
MPEG stream: Numb

There is a pensive urgency to this new collaboration between Ellen Allien and Sascha Ring (aka Apparat) that is hard to pin down. While most tracks seem prime for the dancefloor, they aren't without apprehension. It seems to come from the mutual understanding that the best tracks on a Giorgio Moroder soundtrack are the chase themes. Moodily energetic yet indescribably threatening, like trying to concentrate on a math test when you know the school bully is going to beat you up after class. The collaborative process also prevents the music from getting either too electroclash/techno house on Allien's part or too idm/glitchcore on Apparat's part, striking a nice balance between both extremes. If Giorgio Moroder did a record on Kompakt, we suspect it would sound a lot like this!

MPEG stream: Turbo Dreams
MPEG stream: Way Out

Record number two from the acclaimed Norwegian duo. Alog's Eide and Haugan discreetly tiptoe their way through a plethora of styles, as on their debut "Red Shift Swing". "Duck-Rabbit", however, was mostly inspired by ideas and themes created through

RealAudio clip: Duck-Rabbit
RealAudio clip: Objects Began To Appear From The Future

"Raindrops streaking down the car window music", complete with a mechanical windshield-wipers sounding beat, music that possesses a feeling that is blurred and melancholy, pretty and abstract, just like the way lines of rain water coursing across window-glass through which one is lazily viewing a passing landscape can be... that's our assessment of this new disc from Norwegian electronic 'pop' duo Alog. Minatures is their third album for Rune Grammofon, and we must say it's quite nice indeed. It's a very organic sound Alog have, each piece a shimmering, droning, rhythmic steady-state with decorative sonic, melodic embellishments. The Alog moniker comes from a combination of digitAL and anaLOG (we're told, seems likely) so it's no surprise that one track, or part of a track, here might sound like it could only come from the inside of a computer, while another part might be an ambient field recording from nature. And 'regular' instruments (guitar, cello, etc.) are also employed, to construct these Steve Reich-like, blissful (but sometime suspensefully tense) minimalist minatures. As per the title, which was apparently inspired by Turkish minature paintings, an artform that holds to certain strict rules, one of which apparently requires that they depict "only pure radiant coloured objects configured in mysterious patterns". Which is as good as any as a description of Alog's lovely music on this album (along with our visual rain-window notion). PS. We'll try to get the recent Phonophani album Oak Or Rock reviewed soon, that's one-half of Alog and also on Rune G., and in stock too.

MPEG stream: Severe Punishment And Lasting Bliss
MPEG stream: St. Paul Sessions II

"Jazzy trip-hop" that's great for making out. The first release on Massive Attack's new label, Melankolic.

Awesome archival release from Alter Echo and ERS-One, featuring Dr. Israel, who aQ folks might remember from his killer dubbed out Sabbath cover. But this here disc is a killer chunk of low-slung, proto-dubstep, a thick slithery dubby groove and some super filthy buzzy low end, cranked the whole store shook, gunshots and toasting here and there throughout, the whole vibe hazy and ghostly and druggy and laid back, but that bassline and the minimal rhythm is totally irresistible. One sided single, in a plain yellow sleeve. WAY LIMITED.

Not to be confused with the Italian Alter Ego who collaborated with Philip Jeck and Gavin Bryars on the recent reinterpretation of Bryars' classic The Sinking Of The Titanic, although come to think of it, it might be pretty amazing to hear THESE guys interpret Bryars' super somber epic. This Alter Ego is from Germany, and they tend to mine similar ground as folks like Justice and Daft Punk, that sort of high energy, dance floor destroying good time techno, lots of heavy buzzy synths, swooping squiggly melodies, bouncing infectious rhythms, fun and funny, goofy and a bit wild. Super playful and funky, but also pretty weird. The opener sounds like a Basement Jaxx instrumental, super fuzzy and groovy, synths snarling all over the place, some awesome fuzzy melodies, but then out of nowhere the track breaks down into this weird stumbling percussive sounding rhythmic stutter, all strange pizzicato strings and arpeggiated beats, hard to explain, completely interrupts the flow, but sounds so perfect anyway, the band effortlessly slip back into, it, only to drop out and do that weird confusional breakdown a few more times. Which is precisely what makes this disc, and these guys so appealing. All of the tracks begin with a similar template. Block rockin beats, fuzzy throbbing synths, woozy melodies, bits of dubstep, dancehall and techno, all wound up weirdly tangled electro / techno hybrids, but then things get all wonky, in a very good way, some tracks get all epic and majestic, the synths swelling into huge grandiose melodies, others fall apart into angular new wave freakouts, some sound like experimental synth jams, others end up super minimal, like some squiggly slightly tweaked take on the Kompakt sound. On the surface, this stuff will totally hit the spot for anyone into any of the abovementioned bands, folks who want to just hit the dancefloor and get totally lost. But for those of us with an aversion to the dancefloor, but who still dig dance music, this shit is thick and heavy, layered and off kilter, weird and cool and just a bit fucked, without ever losing its groove.

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Members of Stereolab, Add N to (x), and (the unfortunately named) Hairy Butter join forces to noodle about with their analog toys for a soundtrack to some upcoming movie I'm sure we'll hear more about.

A couple years ago, we discovered a musical gem someone had dropped by the store which had sat unnoticed for awhile until it finally caught the eye of AQ staffer Andrew. It was a double cd-r set of coldly seductive improvised instrumental synthscapes called Tripping The Dark Fantastic, by a little known five member group from Scotland called Altres. Most of their music was recorded in 1983-84 and released in limited cassette runs. The band went on hiatus in '85 but has since reformed 17 years later! We described the group's sound like this: "Altres manage to recall some of the best things throughout the history of electronic music as well as some of the hazier realms of rock n' roll (their website lists Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Philip Glass, Throbbing Gristle, Faust, the Doors, and the Church as influences; at various times we also picked up on Cluster, Heldon, Popul Vuh, and Zombi's coked out disco side), but the end sound is clearly their own. The songs effortlessly ooze deep, krauty melodies with a sustained and cinematic ambience, and when they break out the drum machines things can head into high speed Moroder territory, always a good thing." After we reviewed it, we ended up selling a ton of 'em. Well, that review was noticed by Dark Entries label head honcho and aQ pal Josh Cheon, who became a fan and got in contact with Altres, and now 30 years after the band was formed they finally have made their vinyl debut! Archives selects seven of the best tracks from their five cassette releases. For those thinking there may be a lot of overlap between this record and the 2cd-r set, fear not. There is in fact only one song, "Icefield" that's on both releases, which we initially described as a darkly unsettling interlude that makes you think of, yes, ice fields, and probably some foreboding windowless compound as well. Coming at the end of side one, it's a great connecting piece between the two sides, showcasing the rest of the killer new-to-us material. It's really quite special to see some attention being paid to this ambitious but short-lived group, who managed to sound both cold and melodic, cinematic and claustrophobic, robotic and utterly human. The sheer array of equipment used on these recordings is staggering as well and enough to make any synth geek salivate: Casio MT40 Moog Prodigy, EDP Wasp, Roland SH-101, Casio VL-Tone, Korg MS20, MS50, SQ10 Poly-61, Ibanez guitar and vocoder. All of the instruments are fed through various effects and echo units and yet, amazingly everything is played and recorded live - there are no overdubs - which is pretty incredible to think about as so much of their work is so complex and rich that an extraordinary amount of musicianship seems to be at play to bring forth such strong compositions. The pieces here are less minimal wave than one would expect, but instead seem to come through as a hybrid of provocative pulsating kraut-inflected atmospheres, Moroderic overdrive, a futuristic foreboding and cinematic robotic woe. We're reminded at times, of Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury's recently rejected score for the new Judge Dredd reboot, which gets played a ton in the store, especially on the second track, "Panic". Of course there's been no shortage of synth-worshippers past and present that we could compare this to, but there is something so stirringly visual about Altres' music that makes it beautifully all its own, probably stemming from the fact that when this music was made, the members didn't have a quarter of the contextual relationships with similar music and movements that we can easily nowadays connect them with. We're proud to have been instrumental in the group's rediscovery, and we hope more folks discover them because of this record. The vinyl comes housed in a neon green jacket featuring the original design from the "Rise" cassette by Mike Nelson. Each lp includes a photocopied clear acetate with unreleased photos and notes for each song. Fantastic!

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Working at Aquarius brings all kinds of new sounds to our lives. It's always great coming across something you have never even heard of and wondering how you could have gone on for so long without it, and we literally get new stuff sent in from all over the world. Sometimes it can be difficult to get to everything, we try our damnedest, though. And as unfortunate as it is to say, sometimes it can be simply overwhelming dealing with scores of random things that may, sadly, just miss the mark. But there are certainly exceptions to all that, and we can't think of any one greater in recent memory than this amazing double disc from Dundee, Scotland's Altres. One of the members was in San Francisco months back and dropped off a couple copies, which sat unlistened to for a bit too long. Then, curious one day, we threw it on and we were immediately blown away by the majestic electronic sounds pouring out of our speakers. Songs that just sounded, well, CLASSIC. Altres manage to recall some of the best things throughout the history of electronic music as well as some of the hazier realms of rock n' roll (their website lists Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Philip Glass, Throbbing Gristle, Faust, the Doors, and the Church as influences; at various times we also picked up on Cluster, Heldon, Popul Vuh, and Zombi's coked out disco side), but the end sound is clearly their own. The songs effortlessly ooze deep, krauty melodies with a sustained and cinematic ambience, and when they break out the drum machines things can head into high speed Moroder territory, always a good thing. It would just be unfair to the world if we didn't put this on our list, and we have no doubt that many aQ customers will be immediately taken with this. And while you're scratching your head wondering why you have never heard of Altres (we sure hadn't), there is, in fact, quite a story behind everything. The group initially came together in 1983 before calling it quits two years later. In that time, Altres managed to play a handful of shows and produce a number of limited run cassettes, which make up the first disc of Tripping The Dark Fantastic. Even though these songs are coming from what you can imagine is an archaic source, they sound amazingly clear and powerful. Disc 2 features songs from the regrouped Altres, who decided to get back together a staggering 17 years later. Whatever cynical thoughts about band reunions that might be running through your head can be put to rest, because these songs (spanning from 2003-2006) are clearly the work of the same dedicated soundsmiths. Things sound a little more "modern" at times, we can assume that by 2003 the Altres guys had probably snagged a digital synth or two, but what's special is how they use their instruments, and like the early material, these songs are super melodic, slightly ominous, and darkly evocative. The album begins with the 13 minute "Golden Country", with arpeggiated synth pulses guiding you into a world that is both spacey and strangely pastoral. It's like looking out across some expansive future horizon with the dramatic synth sweeps making you unsure if you are in sinister or friendly territory. Either way, it's intriguing and a good way to set the stage for the rest of the album. "Snakebridge" is like a high speed chase through some futuristic world of uncertainty. Heavy basslines and a relentless driving rhythm take you all over the place, and the best part is the fact that the song is 11 minutes, giving you plenty of time to get lost in it. There's a cool mid-song break that makes you feel like you've just ducked into some back alleyway before starting up again. To give you a reference point, it actually *sounds* like this stuff could have been a heavy influence on Trans Am's Futureworld. Disc 1 ends with "Icefield", another darkly unsettling piece that makes you think of, yes icefields, and probably some foreboding windowless compound as well. Disc 2 kicks off with the catchy "Earworm", another romp through a future of back alleys in post-apocalyptic slums. On "Dusktreader", lightly played acoustic guitars that would sound at home on a nice, private press stoner folk lp mix with wispy synths that are rhythmic despite a lack of actual percussion. Recorded live, "(Shadow Of A) Broken Mirror" utilizes another arpeggiated synth sequence with a simple drum machine beat. It has a very cool buildup with some slashing guitar chords, and it makes sense that this is live, as it sounds like the result of a band rather than just someone's half assed electronic project. Closer "Throb" is something that will probably appeal to fans of Circle, it's almost like some electro-jazz hybrid cranking out murky underwater melodies that bring the album to a close as perfectly as it began. Wow, we could go on and on about what an awesome surprise this is from a band that deserves your attention. Thinking of the music you are familiar with from the band's initial run, you may question why and how Altres could have gone unrecognized after making such original and self-aware music. But better late than never. Highest recommendation possible.

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Most aQ customers are familiar with Roland P. Young, whose Isophonic Boogie Woogie album, reissued a while back on EM from Japan, blew our minds sky high. The ultimate culmination of Young's quest to create what he called "Afro spiritual minimal electronic space music" which is exactly what it sounded like, minimal free jazz, but cobbled together out of strange unlikely instruments, woven into long stretches of dronemusic, or freaked out almost psychedelic sounding swirling murkiness, the whole record was an otherworldly mind expanding avant jazz masterpiece for sure. So somehow it makes perfect sense, that Altz, an electronic musician and DJ from Japan, who we know mostly from remixing the Boredoms, wanted a crack and remixing this records and creating his OWN isophonic boogie woogie. So here you go. It's kind of a tall order since the original is pretty awesome, and way wacked already, but what the heck, Altz does his thing, chops and edits, adds effects, loops flutes and introduces fuzzy synths and skittery bits of buzz, distant voices, but what he does mainly is add beats, it's definitely cool and groovy, but does tend toward the cheesy here and there. The best moments are weirdly enough the most beatless, where the free jazz is matched with some seemingly free drum freakouts, or when the original drums are somehow looped into a fragmented beat, or when the various elements are blurred into a weird buzzy drone, rife with buried horns, and rumbling bass. A lot of the more beat heavy tracks chop up and recontextualize the originals so much, that if you weren't familiar with the Young original, you might not even know they were samples, you might just assume they were some cool weird sounds. Which they most definitely are. Check out the sound samples. This won't necessarily appeal to the same folks who loved the original, but if you're in the market for some twisted up free jazz avant beatmaking, then this might just hit the spot.

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About a year and half ago, Carsten Nicolai (aka Alva Noto) dazzled us with the Transall trilogy of cd eps that bristled with crisp sinewave shards and low slung rhythmic blasts that sounded down right funky from time to time. For is an entirely different facet for Mr. Nicolai, as he's soothed the systematic sex machine grooves for ionized molecules into a shimmering palette of elegant vibrations. As Nicolai explains in the liner notes, For "brings together disparate recordings created throughout the last four years, unified under a theme of dedication. All nine studies share the history of being made specifically for someone or for a project that for one reason or another remains open ended." And those individuals earning dedications include John Cage, Jhonn Balance, TVPow, Jeff Wall, Peter Roehr, Ernie & Bert (we can only assume he means the Sesame Street characters), and a few others. Nicolai gently crafts each of the dedications into a polite, electronic ambience cobbled from intertwined sinewaves and hushed rhythms.

MPEG stream: Odradek (for Jhonn Balance)
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Part two of Carsten Nicolai's (aka Alva Noto) apparently ongoing 'For' series, in which he composes songs for specific people, the first volume featured tracks dedicated to and composed in honor of John Cage, Jhonn Balance, TVPow, Jeff Wall, Peter Roehr, Ernie And Bert (!) and several others. This time around it's A Garment, Chain Music, Marta Feuchtwanger, two for Heiner Muller, Andrei Tarkovsky, Camera Lucida, two for Dieter Rams, Phill Niblock, Evgeny Murzin and the kingdom of Elgaland-Vargaland. Don't recognize most of those names? Neither do we, it doesn't matter that much though really, the important thing is that these people inspired Nicolai to create some of the warmest and most melodic music of his career. Like the first volume, this is anything but cold sterile glitch and click. The tracks here and lush, and elegant, warm and melodic, rhythmic, dreamy and quite lovely. Opener "Garment" could have gone on forever, a woozy downtempo groove composed from short bursts of static, beeps, smears of hiss, all draped over a looped low end melancholic melody. Some of the tracks are quite brief, field recordings, room sounds, planes passing overhead, lush bell-like tones stretched into hushed streaks of whispered ambience, glitched out high end bleeps and bloops, but those act more as interludes for the longer form pieces. "Argonaut" is breathtaking, long slow tones woven into a sweet soft melody, peppered with looped melodies, soft streaks of barely there hiss, tinkling chimes, while "Stalker" is a haunting stretch of subterranean outer space minimalism, the various tones and textures heavily reverbed, wrapped in a blurred sonic gauze, while that low melody from the previous track resurfaces, plus a creepy spoken word part, intense and beautiful. Elsewhere Nicolai dabbles in glistening crystalline pop ambience, fuzzy spaced out dream dub minimalism, thick layered dronemusic, and the cool thing is, the more you listen, and the further you get into the record, the more you realize, Nicolai is using mostly the same sounds, recontextualized for each track, for each person, a slowly shifting, interconnected song suite culminating in a strange snare driven buzzscape, and the almost jaunty sounding final track, that sounds almost like traditional chamber music, filtered through Nicolai's buzz/click/glitch/hiss/hum approach to soundmaking. Gorgeous!

MPEG stream: Garment (For A Garment)
MPEG stream: Argonaut (For Heiner Muller)
MPEG stream: Early Winter (For Phill Niblock)

Recording with addition of Alva to his Noto moniker, Carsten Nicolai hasn't altered his palette of sine wave oscillations, modulating tones, rhythmic clicks, and other electronic gizmos, all bathed in a clinical purity of sound. Surrounding himself with these machines, Nicolai sets up little repetitions that build to, dare I say, catchy complexities full of rhythmic invention and hinting at melodies.

RealAudio clip: Prototypes track two

Two new batches of ultra clinical, vacuum sealed, glitched out minimalism from Alva Noto and Raster-Noton. The difference this time around is that these tracks are FUNKY. Well, sort of. Gorgeously packaged in oversized cardboard sleeves, printed with tripped out geometric patterns and pressed on those 3" cds embedded in 5" clear plastic, and assembled in such a perfect way, it's obvious that the Raster folk are designers first, musicians second. And that feeling comes across in the music as well. Painfully precise, perfectly constructed, and completely sterile. But in a good way. From the song titles ("Funkbugfx") to the head nodding rhythms contained within, this is obviously Alva Noto's funk record. But it's unlike any funk you've ever heard. Sine waves, and test tones and rumbling bass frequencies, white and pink noise, are all painstakingly constructed into a delicate lattice of alien funk, an extreme (and extremely rigid) dance floor music for some unimaginable outer (or inner) space dance party. Where the guests are all blocks of crystal, or swirling clouds of molecules, or pools of gelatinous ooze that sort of undulate sexily to the glith and click of this unfunky funk. These are the kind of grooves that you can picture scientists in sealed vacuum suits rocking out to in their lab on their ipods. Or maybe imagine Ryoji Ikeda and Sachiko M getting together to "jam" and running through some James Brown tunes, but in their inimitable, barely there style. Weird but pretty wonderful too.

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The third in a trio of new releases of ultra clinical, vacuum sealed, glitched out minimalism from Alva Noto and Raster-Noton (the other two, Transrapid and Transvision we listed last time). What's Alva Noto up to with thise? These tracks are FUNKY. Well, sort of. Gorgeously packaged in oversized cardboard sleeves, printed with tripped out geometric patterns and pressed on those 3" cds embedded in 5" clear plastic, and assembled in such a perfect way, it's obvious that the Raster folk are designers first, musicians second. And that feeling comes across in the music as well. Painfully precise, perfectly constructed, and completely sterile. But in a good way. From the song titles ("Funkbugfx") to the head nodding rhythms contained within, this is obviously Alva Noto's funk record. But it's unlike any funk you've ever heard. Sine waves, and test tones and rumbling bass frequencies, white and pink noise, are all painstakingly constructed into a delicate lattice of alien funk, an extreme (and extremely rigid) dance floor music for some unimaginable outer (or inner) space dance party. Where the guests are all blocks of crystal, or swirling clouds of molecules, or pools of gelatinous ooze that sort of undulate sexily to the glith and click of this unfunky funk. These are the kind of grooves that you can picture scientists in sealed vacuum suits rocking out to in their lab on their ipods. Or maybe imagine Ryoji Ikeda and Sachiko M getting together to "jam" and running through some James Brown tunes, but in their inimitable, barely there style. Weird but pretty wonderful too.

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Although I don't predict that Carsten Nicolai (aka Noto and Alva Noto) will be taking a sabbatical any time soon, the global electronica community might be better for it if he did. Not because his work's not great -- quite the opposite. It's just that the proliferation of Noto imitators might subside, and maybe artists would be more inclined to try something new. Maybe.

We love Alva Noto. His minimal rhythmic soundscapes are just so fantastic, dense and complex but at the same time impossibly simple and spare. And everything he does is so high concept. But in a way, that's not obvious just listening to the music. This may be art, high concept art, but the resulting sounds transcend art, and become music, and grooves, pleasing to the ear, not only the mind.� Unitxt is Alva Noto's (aka Carsten Nicolai) return to 'the rhythm' after a handful of releases (in several different series) that were much more esoteric and ambient. Unitxt is still pretty ridiculously high concept, with the songs developed through various methods: one song is a portrait of Nicolai converted into sound, another is based on the golden ratio, a recitation of an endless row of numbers, another is based on a reading of the various items in Nicolai's wallet, credit cards, business cards, notes, just reading the words and numbers and converting the resulting information into sound. Endlessly amusing for sure, but it wouldn't mean shit if the music was bad. Thankfully, this is exactly the stuff we love from Nicolai, super clinical machine like soundscapes of skitter and glitch. everything sharp and clipped, the grooves far from funky, at least in the normal sense, but VERY funky in some sort of fucked up futuristic minimal robot dancefloor way. A few of the tracks feature vocals, but they're in German, and spoken quickly and rhythmically, making them less like lyrics and more like another overlaid rhythm (especially when the voice is just reciting numbers). Imagine a huge white glass cube filled with robots, all hunkered over computers and drum machines, and synthesizers and equalizers, everything totally automated, huge gears turning, machines pulsing, the robots locked into the same motion over and over, a strange assembly line. At the end, a tiny speaker, facing a huge empty grassy field, a blue sky, nothing in the sky but a single white cloud. Perfectly ovoid. Out of the speaker comes this. That's what we imagine when we listen to Unitxt. Stripped down, cool and clinical outer space future robot anti-funk, laced with plenty of sculpted buzz and crackle, and shaped from bits of hiss and crunch.� Tacked on to the end of the record, are a whole series of fragments and sound sources, each created from transforming an image or information into sound. These are 'Source Code Solos' to be played over the other tracks, or might assume, that with these sounds, and your own giant robot manned glass cube sound factory, you could make your very own Unitxt!

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After a multitude of records filled with austere expanses of ultra minimal, cold and clinical beep and click, or warm lush dreamlike ambience, Alva Noto, aka Carsten Nicolai, finally seemed to embrace the funk a few years back - which for some of us, would not have been a good thing necessarily, if it weren't Nicolai, cuz Alva Noto funk is something utterly unto itself, a wild super dynamic robotic funk that takes all manner of glitch and whir, hum and click, beep and hiss, and weaves those minimal building blocks into something incredibly and impossibly groovy. This might be the best Alva Noto funk record yet. Weird and minimal enough for the dancefloor hating avant experimental headphone set, but holy shit, we can barely imagine what would happen if some big time DJ just unleashed one of these jams at full volume, besides everyone going apeshit, it seems like everybody's brains and eardrums would just melt, these sounds so pure, the lows so intense and rib cage rattlingly low, the highs piercing sine waves, and in-between, all manner of hum and hiss that we imagine would blow your hair back if you were standing in front of a big pile of speakers. But in headphones, this is total bliss out alien robofunk, that sounds better than anything we can imagine! But this is Alva Noto, so there's lots of other stuff going on, long stretches of glitched out super ominous buzz, over some looped skitter, or some weird swirling lush drones, or some dizzying rapidfire percussive stutter, some full on speaker shredding noise, some gorgeously serene electronic ambience, but it always eventually returns to the funk, or the groove, or whatever you call the thing that makes these weird beeps and clicks take over your body and force it to move along to the music. So goddamn great!

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Part two of Alva Noto's Xerrox series takes up right where the last one left off, continuing on in a much more buzzy, blissy, droney vein, way more textural and melodic than many of the AN records that have come before. In the review of volume one we mentioned Pop Ambient, and if anything volume 2 is even more washed out and shimmery, right out of the gate, AN offers up a warm wash of muted buzz, and thick gristly whir, softly pulsating, layered and warm, seemingly gone are the harsh tones and glitchy clicks and pops found on most Raster-Noton releases. Could be that Xerrox is just a concept record, but we have to say, as much as we loved the clipped minimalism of other Alva Noto records, the sounds here are quite divine. But this is an Alva Noto record, so even these warm whirls of drifting ambience, are laced with bits of static and hiss, super high end sine waves, but they're woven deftly into the sound, and serve to simply add more texture. There's a brief bit of super minimal beep and rumble, but then it's right back into that gorgeous drifty haze, that could just as soon be a Tim Hecker record. "Xerrox Meta Phaser" follows suit, at least in the beginning, a soft whirring soundscape, that quickly escalates into an almost Sunn like dirge before exploding into a squall of blown out white noise. And then we're back to the dreamy dronemusic, this time, stretched out strings, smeared into soft summery swells, laced with a patina of gritty hiss, and so it goes, the whole record is a dark swirling expanse of muted minimal melodies, warm textures, mysterious drones, and delicate hazy drifts, the usual glitch and buzz, relegated to accents and filigree, rarely interfering in the rest of the record's blissy sprawl. Any one of these tracks would be right at home on the newest, more Kranky-fied Pop Ambient comp, and thus, this might be the first Raster-Noton record that might just appeal to all the drone and dirge folks as much as the glitch and pop people. Like all R-N stuff, gorgeously designed and packaged, an oversized diecut, 8 panel sleeve, the cd nestled within the diecuts, the art spare and minimal and striking.

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Insen is the exquisite follow-up to Vrioon, which was the first collaborative outing for seminal electronic musicians Alva Noto (aka Carsten Nicolai) and Ryuichi Sakamoto that came out in 2003. As on their first album, Insen centers upon the balance between the impressionist piano passages of Sakamoto and the cold yet graceful production of Nicolai. While the differences between the two records are subtle, they are certainly noteworthy as Nicolai slices up Sakamoto's piano into fine slivers of time-stretched fragments, terse rhythms, and blurred ambience. In turn, Nicolai realigns these sounds with Sakamoto's untreated notes, providing a complex interplay between the piano and its fractured electronic mimesis. In structuring all of the pieces on Insen, Nicolai occasionally situates his electronics along a parallel path to Sakamoto's piano, and slowly moves the two paths toward different directions, with Nicolai's rhythms achieving velocity and tension whereas Sakamoto's pointillist notes remain weighless and transient. Yet, Nicolai always teases with losing control over the composition, as he often snaps back into a somber atmosphere of minimalist smears, resorting to a similiar strategy as heard on Eno's epic Thursday Afternoon. Stunning.

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When the dollars-to-minutes ratio eeks close to 1:1, we tend to get a little uncomfortable. Really, what's the big deal about David "Organum" Jackman doubling or even tripling up the sounds on his $15.00 singles that clock in at a couple of minutes? There's also been talk of this marketing psychology from this mathematical ratio due to a pending Boris LP, which is not going to be cheap (not surprising), but also isn't one of their monstrously long drone-doom pieces either... well it's just sorta long. So the question always comes down to the quality of the merchandise, is Boris worth the price of admission? The same question should be asked of the third collaboration between Carsten Nicolai (aka Alva Noto) and Ryuichi Sakamoto, which clocks in a little under 20 minutes. Again, the division of labor puts Sakamoto at the piano and Nicolai at the laptop, with Sakamoto providing a series of impressionist clusters of piano notes and elegant repetitions, and Nicolai smudging those sounds through his pixel crunching software. Harmonically crisp and deftly performed, the three pieces on Revep offer a nice variation on the theme set by the first two collaborations Vrioon and Insen. Sakamoto fans will delight that he's offered a new arrangement for his classic piece "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence," which Nicolai aerosolizes into a fine mist of digital ephemera and pin-pricked ambience. Certainly as lovely as the first two!

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