[ aquarius records — Electronic ]

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Showing results 1651 through 1700 of 5033.

At one time, Goem seemed like a great idea - a bunch of Musique Concrete informed post-industrialists trying their hand at Pan Sonic style minimalist techno. For a couple of releases, it worked quite well; but "Gast" proves how incredibly limited Goem have become with their project, and how boring the microsound community has become as a whole. This album is a collection of remixes /

RealAudio clip: Second Walk (Taylor Deupree Remix)

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

SORRY. Goem's austere post-techno explorations have taken this Dutch trio (Frans de Waard, Roel Meelkop, and Peter Duimelinks) into a realm subaudible tones and muffled static rhythms on this effort. Their entry in the well-regarded Mort Aux Vaches series of radio broadcasts brings them much closer to the Studio 1 sound that Wolfgang Voigt pioneered with Mike Ink / M:1:5. Monochrome pulses phase through various EQ settings and knob twiddling effects that could easily make this pass for a release on Kompakt. It may thus be not surprising to learn that the source material for the final cut originated from Mr. Voigt himself!

Kick ass packaging aside (well over 1200 holes punched into cardstock and etched jewel case, so be careful!), Goem's "Punik" is one of the more interesting releases in the current deluge of lowercase / post-techno albums. Using a Student Simulator (simply qualified as a device used in medical school, for what, we don't really know) and a broken Doctor Rhythm drum machine triggering Boucle synthesizers at Stockholm's EMS Studios, "Punik" percolates with electron squiggles and ping-pong motorik slabs of rhythm, that could be the sound equal to Bridget Riley's Op-Art modernism.

We are told that the track "ems een" utilizes music by Muslimgauze, but Goem (the post-techno collective featuring Roel Meelkop, Frans De Ward, and Peter Duimelinks) has systematically elimated everything from Muslimgauze's Arabic electronica except for a somatic bass pulse. Clinical rhythms and terse electron manipulation in the same vein as Mika Vainio and Ryoji Ikeda.

Presented for your party pleasure: this DVD compiles a performance by righteous party-monger Gold Chains at San Francisco's Beta Lounge, along with plenty of extra videos and live performances, including the awesome "I Come From San Francisco" video, shot on a BART train! Locals: look for yourself and your friends in the videos. Out-of towners: experience the magic of a Gold Chains show from the comfort of your living room. The live at Beta Lounge portion comes peppered by unfortunate amounts of clean-cut white girls in flygirl pose mode and art-school graduate ghetto parody, but Gold Chains himself puts on a helluva show as always, making the most uptight of booties shake and temporarily redeeming the white-boy indie-electronic hip-hop genre (at least until the next time I'm reminded of the existence of Cex). Although it's funny; I know I was pretty drunk that night, but I remember the show being totally crazy, like crowd surfing, buckets of sweat, jam-packed dance-your-ass-off crazy. Somehow, the video doesn't quite seem to convey the mayhem. Perhaps the filming would have benefitted from another approach, or maybe I was just more wasted than I realized. Hmmm.

Who rocks the parti? Local darling Gold Chains cracks the whip with five new dancefloor hotties giving a heads up to the Cologne and Berlin Schaffelfieber sound. Having travelled the world in his brief career as Gold Chains, Topher Lafata has absorbed the sounds of other lands to craft his own brand of electrosonic hiphop thunder. Following on his acclaimed debut for Orthlorng Musork, "Straight From Your Radio" is another brief encounter with the hard beat mystic nonmaterialistic witch doctor. Each track is very distinct from the next from the rubbery bass of the lead off track to the absurd cootchie song. So silly and repetitious, it lyrically reminded me of Snow's "The Informer" from '93. Continuing on, "Let's Make It" pumps out the big beats Sweet and Gary Glitter style. Y'know those thumpin' '70s enormo-party anthems! He even does a reworking of Samhain's "Human Pony Girl"! Come join the caravan...

RealAudio clip: I Treat Your Cootchie Like A Maze
RealAudio clip: Let's Make It
RealAudio clip: Human Pony Girl

Don't call Gold Chains a player, he's in love with you. And don't call him played out, 'cause this single is another evolutionary step for the genre twisting, scruffy-voiced laptop MC. Broken electric funk and tech-hop beats infuse one of Gold Chains catchiest, best-produced (and that's saying a lot) tracks to date. Features a hectic pitched-up remix by Kit Clayton, and a groovy house-ier mix by Luomo (aka Vladislav Delay).

Gold Chains' new abum is again a kick ass, completely weird hybrid of hip hop and bedroom electronics so over the top and colorful that it demands a lot of attention. Not as completely catchy as his selftitled debut, this is still exciting and a fun listen. And check out "Break or Be Broken", decidedly non hip hop love song with pretty rock chord progressions, a good direction for Gold Chains.

MPEG stream: Young Miss America
MPEG stream: Break or Be Broken

SF indie hip-hop artist Gold Chains brings it again! Rocking a more earnest and cynical parti... When The World Was Our Friend offers up more broken electric funk and tech-hop beats for fans of previous albums, though on a slightly darker and harder note. Congruent to its title, the album is less hoochies in thongs sippin champagne in the hot tub, and more holy shit man what the fuck is going on. More emphasized this time around is frequent collaborator Sue Cie, singing a generous amount of the tracks. When The World definitely pushes Gold Chains into a different realm. Looking forward to it being pushed even harder!

MPEG stream: Better Together
MPEG stream: Come To Cali

Gold Panda's Lucky Shiner records was a unanimous store fave, and was probably one of thee best electronic records released last year. And unlike much of the dark droney electronic stuff we dig so much, Lucky Shiner was all playful and sunshiney, a dizzying deftly assembled sample heavy bliss out that slipped from propulsive and energetic to playful and funky, often in the same song, so it should come as no surprise that Gold Panda's mix for the esteemed DJ Kicks series follows a similarly playful path, opening up with a new GP track, the awesomely titled "An Iceberg Hurled Northward Through Clouds", which sounds like it could have come right off of Lucky Shiner, all stuttery beats and dreamy loops, truncated vocal samples and woozy sunshiney melodies, a little wistful, but warm and pretty much perfect, which leads right into the rest of the mix, featuring a handful of groups we love, but a whole bunch that were new to us, which is the ideal sort of mix, and it is a great mix, dancey and dreamy with a super laid back flow, more for sort of chilling out and wandering with headphones on than for the dancefloor. Some of our favorites: Closer Musik weaves a lush bit of house-y shuffle that's warm and washed out and super melodic, Jan Jelinek channels some Superfly funk through his fractured minimal filter and turns it into something more Raster-Noton, Matthewdavid unleashes some dense blissed out dubsteppy slo-mo kaleidoscopic funk, and Giuseppe Ielasi unfurls a thick warm crumblingly distorted swirl of Pop Ambient drift, there's more, but you get the drift. One of our favorite DJ Kicks for sure so far, and if you liked Lucky Shiner as much as us, then this one will probably hit the spot too!

MPEG stream: An Iceberg Hurled Northward Through Clouds
MPEG stream: Charisma Theme
MPEG stream: Uzi Mahmood
MPEG stream: Like You Mean It
MPEG stream: 2

Gold Panda's Lucky Shiner was one of our favorite electronic records from last year, so we were super psyched to discover this special Record Store Day remix 12", with four super distinctive and very different versions of one of the tracks from Lucky Shiner, by some pretty cool remixers. Star Slinger is up first, and douses the original in super thick buzzing dubsteppy bass, and thickens up the beats, everything distorted and intense and blurred and fantastically prismatic. Baths takes the opposite approach and stretch the original into something much more minimal and blissy, hushed and muted, lots of backwards smears, tinkling melodies, warm and warbled, a sort of housey almost pop ambient vibe, deep soft pulses, and haunting pianos, so so lovely. AQ faves, drone steppers Forest Swords totally reinvent the track as a glitched out sprawl of folky abstract minimalism, drifty and dreamy and so otherworldly. Halls takes the track EVEN further, and transforms it into a hazy, gauzy, softly glimmering stretch of abstract ambience. And finally, the original is tacked on the end in all its playful looped and sampled glory. SUPER LIMITED. This was a Record Store Day release, so stock is limited, and odds are once these are gone that'll be it.

Gold Panda's Lucky Shiner had to be one of our favorite electronic records of 2010, a looped and layered gem that played like a more lo-fi version of The Field, and had everyone here a little obsessed. After two years, we get our first taste of some new GP in the form of this limited two track 7", and A side "Mountain" immediately reminds us of why we love Gold Panda so much, a woozy shimmery backdrop, beneath a sort of world music groove, all wreathed in crackle, and laced with Morricone-esque guitar twang, the whole thing has a super Eastern, almost raga like vibe, swooping backwards melodies, some scattered handclaps, until the beat blossoms into something much more booming, and stuttery, a little footwork going on, and the song is transformed into a skittery heady slab of psychedelic electro pop! The B side, "Financial District", sounds like it could have been plucked right off of Lucky Shiner, with its warbly droning melodies and layered woozy atmosphere, and then the beat drops, all handclaps and tightly wound skitter, laced with some old school 808's, the track a groovy sun-dappled prismatic sonic shuffle, with a gorgeous psychedelic second half, all fractured electronics and soaring high end melodies. So good. Can't wait for the new full length!

Domestic release of the lp by Zurich tech house artist Stefan Altenburger aka Golden Boy. Originally issued by Ladomat in 2001, the folks at Emperor Norton repackaged the whole affair with new artwork by photographer Jules Spinatsch and two bonus cuts.

It's been nearly two years since we first heard the Portland, OR duo, Golden Retriever. That first cd-r release was so uber-limited that they were gone before most people had the chance to even register it. Thankfully this follow-up on Root Strata is both on vinyl and has a larger pressing, but that doesn't mean it will be around forever, so don't wait too long. Light Cones sees the duo of Matt Carlson (one half of Bonus) and Jonthan Sielaff further expounding on their signature dynamic of modular synthesizer and bass clarinet interplay. Over two side long tracks, each about 20 minutes, the duo push the musical limitations of their essentially monophonic instruments into new forms and shapes. The beautiful ambient drift of their first release is present in long stretches, but they're buffered against darker passages of alien cathedral-ish organ swells, laserium like wave-forms, low-end whooshes and mechanoid insect-buzz swirls. The clarinet provides a clear reed tone in the mid-range that lyrically elevates the sound while keeping it just shy of a stratospheric etherealness, often descending pitches into an abyss of soft microtonal angularity. There is a sense of cosmic uplift to the work here that is not casually offered but comes only after thoughtful attentive listening through some deeply sonic twists and turns. Gorgeous stuff!

MPEG stream: Light Cones
MPEG stream: Observer

A very welcome return to form for Goldfrapp. Sometimes it's best to know what you do best and just take it to its highest level of excellence. And what Goldfrapp do best is create total modern day disco delights that flow with such ease and pleasure. We hadn't been too crazy about their last couple outings which found them trying to veer in a more folk and rock based sound, but Head First is making us fall in love with them all over again. Songs that take off high to the sky and float in clouds of smoke with such an infectious glow. The first time we played this in the store one of our customers nailed it, saying "It's like the best part of the '80s with better production." And for sure there is a very nice '80s feeling on Head First, with so many folks going back to the detached and cold side of '80s glory, it's really nice to hear the more colorful and pure fun side of '80s dance glory updated in such a wonderful way. Listening to Head First makes you feel like you are dancing in the ending credits of Fame, or amidst all sorts of beautiful people in a fantastical club with Xanadu being projected onto the sparkling dancefloor while Giorgio Moroder is on the decks, the confluence of all these sights and sounds sweeping you away. Welcome back Goldfrapp!

MPEG stream: Rocket
MPEG stream: I Wanna Life
MPEG stream: Dreaming

You know, it is really pitiful that because of the huge amount of press coverage Goldie's new album is going to receive (mainstream music critics not knowing or caring about the difference between a good and a bad record anyway), many folks who haven't heard Jungle yet are going to give this album one listen and dismiss the whole genre. We really TRIED to review this cd for you but found it impossible to get past the first track, "Mother", whose initial 26 minutes consist of (let's face it) wimpy monkish vocalizing over whooshy synthesized atmospherics. When the beats kick in after that interminable intro, they are so egregiously uncompelling and boring that we screamed in frustration. And the track is ONE HOUR LONG. And then the second disc begins with Goldie "rapping" only it's really really bad, so we're sorry but... AQ cannot recoommend this record. Well, actually, Roni Size fans might like it.

We've been digging so hard on so much good techno lately. Even the techno averse among us (and some of you, too) have been won over by killer releases from Shed, Terrence Dixon and others. The latest comes in the form of 17:50, a new record from Berlin producer Stefan Goldmann (who we knew from cassette on The Tapeworm wherein he remixed Fennesz), which finds him ditching Western harmonies in favor of new pitch systems that create a whole slew of crazy sounds and exotic alien melodies, all melded to pulsing skitter and robotic grooves, and peppered with all sort of dirty, low fidelity sounds, giving these tracks a seriously raw vibe, and pushing it even further afield from standard techno, so much so, that even those of you who have continued to resist, might just find it impossible when faced with 17:50. The two track opening one two punch will seal the deal in a matter of minutes. The title track / intro sets things up, with a shuffling skitter, some machine like pulses, all hissy and brittle and lo-fi, quickly blossoming into a super distorted groove that's more experimental and melodic than techno, laced with weird buzzing melodies and clattery organic percussion. Which leads directly into the opening track proper, which introduces a strange melody that will be stuck in your head FOREVER, woozy and exotic, draped over a crazy groove, and dappled with all sorts of squelches and melodic curlicues. Eventually some thick rubbery bass swoops in, and only adds to the track's catchiness, the percussion from the opening track returns, and suddenly, it's some crazy psychedelic fractured robotic funk. The rest of the record follow suit, employing these alternative pitch systems to craft melodies that while definitely alien, are totally irresistible, especially when locked into Goldmann's serious techno grooves. Mix in lots of buzz and gristle, plenty texture and loads of layers, let the sounds bleed and ooze, distort and decay, and you end up with one of the coolest, weirdest techno records we've heard. And absolutely a new favorite. Most definitely giving the Shed and Dixon records a run for their money.

MPEG stream: 17:50
MPEG stream: Carrion Crow
MPEG stream: Rigid Chain
MPEG stream: Empty Suit

Mu.Zz.Le is a 10 song mini-album that acts as a sort of a temporary fix until the next Gonjasufi full length. While these are songs that easily could have been left-over from the A Killer and A Sufi sessions (an album we loved!), the flow here has a more tight-knit focus than the kitchen sink approach of the first album. Blurry spectral keyboards and pitched-shifted vocals, not to mention the odd typographical layout of the title, display a witch-house production influence, but the sounds are scuffed and blunted with enough of the stoned grime of his debut that it feels like a natural progression. The tone rides heavily on the melancholy with echoing vocals far-off in the mix and slow doomy beats, but with everything sounding at arm's distance, it may take awhile for the emotional and melodic heft of the songs to really sink in. But it's definitely worth the wait.

MPEG stream: White Picket Fence
MPEG stream: Nikels And Dimes
MPEG stream: The Blame

Remix albums are tricky affairs. Often times there are only one or two truly notable tracks, or there are too many disparate remixers that cramp the flow of the listening experience from beginning to end. While this reworking of Gonjasufi's amazing debut, A Sufi and A Killer, doesn't trump the original (really, what remix album has ever done that?), this is surprisingly one of the best remix albums we have heard in a long while. Why that is, is rather curious because it's not that there is just one or two really drop-dead standout tracks, or they're trying to make it more friendly for the dance floor. Rather it's because all the remixes work together in an interesting way that make the overall flow a really nice listen. It offers a ghostly alternate universe to the sound-world Flying Lotus, Mainframe and Gaslamp Killer brought to Gonjasufi's debut. Beginning with Mark Pritchard's (Harmonia 313, Afrika Hi-tech) spookier take on "Ancestors", Bibio's low-key groove on "Candylane" and Dam Mantle's dub-hop reworking of "Ageing", the unusual choice of Broadcast & The Focus Group to remix "DedND" with a chopped up collage of middle eastern strings harps, flutes and sampled vocal snippets adds to the otherworldly proceedings by removing it from the original almost entirely. Jeremiah Jae and Shlomo add a smeary dreamy dubstep twist to "Kobwebz" and "Change" , while Bear in Heaven, have the most minimal electro rework with "Love Of Reign". Another unusual choice of Oneohtrix Point Never to remix the Tom Waits-ish "She's Gone" results in a chopped and screwed rework pitching Gonjasufi's vocals up and down over a syrupy layer of noise. The last remix by Dem Hunger Bowel Blood of "SuzieQ" is the darkest and strangest taking the punkish quality of the original and smearing it slowly across a bleak queasy landscape. The restraint from upping the tempos too much from the originals was a smart choice, as the sound of Gonjasufi works best on the more stoned, slowed and ambient level. There's just enough variety not to get too stuck in a similar sound, while at the same time complimenting each other really well. We wish more remix records were this consistent!

MPEG stream: Ancestors (Mark Pritchard Remix)
MPEG stream: Ageing (Dam Mantle Remix)
MPEG stream: Caliph's Tea Party (Broadcast & The Focus Group Remix)
MPEG stream: Love of Reign (Bear In Heaven Remix)
MPEG stream: SuzieQ (Dem Hunger Bowel Blood Remix)

A few years ago electro wizard/producer Gonzales surprised us all with the release of an immaculate and beautiful solo piano recording. For some weird reason the record seemed to come and go in the blink of an eye, but thankfully the Sunnyside label has saved the day and made this gorgeous record available once again. Best known for his production work with the likes of Peaches, Feist and various artists on the Kitty-Yo label as well as his own forays into electro-pop and hip-hop, Gonzales shows that you just never know what somebody has up their sleeves. Playing piano since he was a young child, Solo Piano is the work of an obviously gifted musician but also someone with a keen sense of rich melody and elegant execution. Conjuring up the spirit of Erik Satie and George Gershwin, Solo Piano is that perfect mix of skill and simplicity. Short tracks, breezy and tranquil and beautiful. Oh so nice!

MPEG stream: Overnight
MPEG stream: Meischeid
MPEG stream: Basmati

God, this sucks ass. Only if you really liked him at the recent Peaches live show will you probably want this. With names like Patric Catani (EC8OR), Bomb 20 and even Peaches given production credits (and even a L'Trimm sample!), you'd hope for a decent record, but the godawful lyrics are just so damn bad.

Delia Gonzalez and Gavin Russom's alchemic synthesizer excursions invoking 70's Klaus Schulze/Manuel Gottsching/Tangerine Dream's long-form synth-prog efforts get the remix treatment on this single. What you get is an alternate take and 3 remixes of the song "Relevee" from their self-titled full length on DFA. The remixers are DFA (of course), Baby Ford ('80s acid-house, anyone?) and the minimalist house of Carl Craig, whose latest remixes, this and his remix of Rhythm and Sound's "Poor People Must Work" is actually making us enjoy house music. Which, as you well know, is quite a feat around here.

MPEG stream: Relevee (Alternate Version)
MPEG stream: Relevee (Carl Craig Remix)

Somehow missed this when it came out last year. But with Delia & Gavin being recent Arthur Magazine cover stars we figured we should get on the ball. Some of us remember hearing a 12" of theirs on DFA that stood out as it was really like nothing else on the label. These weren't sounds interested in making you dance and shaking your ass, instead they were about creating a trance, a hypnotizing, tranquil and space-bound dreamlike state. The album takes the same approach and even widens and propels its effect. With 5 long songs that will no doubt make you think of the best of Tangerine Dream. So entrancing and mesmerizing. The Days of Mars sort of sounds like trying to travel to outer space in an old helicopter that rises ever so slowly with its rotors going around and around, an analog starship travelling through some druggy digital universe. Taking cues from lots of the best of 70's electronic minded ambient recordings, like the collaborations between Eno & Cluster, as well as the most spaced out moments of pre-Wall Pink Floyd, this is a record that totally nails its sound so well. Something so mesmerizing, empty, and creepy about its presence. There have been times near closing hour where there will be just one person in the store and this will be on and there's just the weirdest tension that begins to permeate the store. Like a film loop of a acid drenched washed out kodachrome shot image that you can't stop staring at. This is the sound of hours after the rave, days of being awake, nights of being in a complete daze. A late night early morning eyes wide shut dreamstate blissout for sure! We are hooked!

MPEG stream: Relevee
MPEG stream: Black Spring

Goodiepal is an extremely shy young man from Denmark who plays gleefully bent music that teeters on the fringes of experimental electronica (ala Mego) and Scandinavian flavored folk music. A collector of unusually tweaked and jagged sounds, Goodiepal maintains a day job independently contracting sound work from companies like Nokia, Chupa Chups, Hitachi, Carlsberg, Matrix, blah blah blah... Anyway, the music itself disguises a dissonant, troublemaking problem child with wide-eyed innocence as captivating as it is irritating. To confuse even further, he records under aliases like Chupa Chups and Mainpal Inv. and collaborates with the Italian Gamers In Exile and those V/VM pranksters. From dreamy, otherworldly arrangements involving acoustic guitars, resonating chimes, car horns, toy recorders and other wind instruments to a brilliantly conceived acapella track performed through a vocoder, Goodiepal brings back a Jean Jacques Perry or Electric Company (the old TV program, mind you) feel to inspire a new, inventive, and playful electronic music. After I first put this on, I looked again inside the cardboard package to see if there was a toy prize! On Dat Politics' own label Skipp!

RealAudio clip: Icon Dub
RealAudio clip: Lick Lick Flick Flick
RealAudio clip: My Robotic Skills Have Failed

Some changes have taken place in the Gorillaz 'virtual band' ranks since their wildly popular, super vibrant and fun self-titled debut in 2000. That album was a wholly collaborative effort between Blur-man Damon Albarn, man-of-many-hats Dan The Automator, and cartoon illustrator Jamie Hewlett along with contributions from Miho Hatori, Ibrahim Ferrer and Del Tha Funkee Homosapien. For one thing, Mr. Automator has left the clubhouse, leaving Albarn as the lone lord of the musical manor. An immediate clue-in to the contrast between 'old' and 'new' Gorillaz can be read in the album's title and seen in Hewlett's latest Gorillaz' illustrations. He continues to provide the visual representation of the group, but his former palette of playful cartoonish hues have been replaced by the darker tones found in the more mature subject matter of graphic novels -- a suitable match for the headier undertones of the music. On the cover characters' faces there's nothing but grimaces and suspicious scowls. When we heard that Danger Mouse was slipping into the production control seat formerly occupied by The Automator, we were expecting some manner of radical changes in the Gorillaz's actual sound -- perhaps a little wilder approach or sumthin'? -- but it's really not that drastic of a departure from their past recordings. No, the primary difference is in the album's moodier undercurrent. Whereas the conceptual and sonic effervescence of its predecessor offered a sense of escapism, once you delve beneath the shiny pop surface of Demon Days, things feel somewhat more claustrophobic, sinister and foreboding. Guests this time include Neneh Cherry, Martina Topley-Bird, Happy Mondays' Shaun Ryder (!), London Community Gospel Choir, San Fernandez Youth Chorus and even Dennis Hopper! Dig it!

MPEG stream: Last Living Souls
MPEG stream: Dare

Well they certainly didn't make it easy to figure the whys and wherefore of this companion to the proper Gorillaz album. It looks like a bunch of remixes, alternate version, and songs that didn't make it onto the other album. It's decent and listenable, even

RealAudio clip: 19-2000 (Soulchild remix)
RealAudio clip: Faust

Import disc featuring Dan the Automator with guests Damon Albarn (Blur), Miho Hatori (Cibo Matto), Ibrahim Ferrer (Buena Vista Social Club), and Del tha Funky Homosapien. Sounds exactly like you'd think it would (assuming you'd think it would sound mostly

RealAudio clip: Sound Check
RealAudio clip: Double Bass

We've long been fans of Japanese dubstepper Goth-Trad, aka Takeaki Maruyama, who has been responsible for some of our favorite 12"s ("Back To Chill" still gets regular spins), and who most remarkably is much more than a DJ or laptop jockey, instead playing samplers, keyboards and designing and building his own instruments, creating a sound that while essentially dubstep, incorporates all manner of other electronic musics, jungle, dub, house, techno, and we were expecting to dig this new full length for sure, but were totally unprepared for the killer opening track "Man In The Maze", the first half of which is total haunting soundtrack, all pizzicato strings, soaring swoonsome strings, dark looped piano melodies, woozy basslines, the sort of sound that has you wondering why nobody has tapped this guy to score their movie, so moving and emotional and darkly evocative, for a minute we had fantasies that maybe for this record he ditched the beats all together and created some imaginary soundtrack, but fear not, the beats come in gradually, subtle typewriter chitter, simple pulse, a strange layered sort of handclap, and then finally, the beat drops, skittery and stuttery, mirrored by another pizzicato string melody, the groove woozy and warped and totally incredible, another track we had to listen to about 20 times before we could bring ourselves to move on. And while the rest of the record is not nearly so cinematic, the tracks are pretty moody and atmospheric, definitely dubbed out, minimal and fantastically abstract, less overtly dubstep than past outings, more a sort of stripped down late night techno, all skeletal and spare, but when the dubstep does drop, like on "Air Breaker", it's fantastically noisy, squelchy and seriously tripped out. The rest of the record is all over the place darkly funky one second, moody and murky the next, skittery and glitchy the next. The other jam here has to be "Mirage", which mixes playful bubbly synths with woozy warbly melodies, glitchy beats and thick layered buzz, laced with bursts of eighties synth swirl and fuzzy low end blurt, somehow super funky, but also weirdly psychedelic. Easily one of our new favorite electronica / dubstep / techno records for sure!

MPEG stream: Man In The Maze
MPEG stream: Departure
MPEG stream: Cosmos

At last, a nicely done new cd reissue of this renowned early '80s krautrock / proto-techno classic! We've actually never before reviewed E2-E4 because the previous reissues were expensive and kinda hard to come by, though we DID once list a double cd tribute to this record, imported from Japan, featuring tracks by the likes of Rovo, Buffalo Daughter, and Eye from the Boredoms, who took up the entire 2nd disc with his extended mix (wish we still had that, but it's long gone). Better, though, to have this, the actual album that inspired the tribute. Here's some of what we said about it when we reviewed that Japanese tribute disc: German guitar guru Manuel Gottsching, founder of legendary krautrock pioneers Ash Ra Temple (which morphed into the new-age-ier Ashra), made a few records in the eighties under his own name. E2-E4, recorded in Berlin in 1981, and released in '84, was first and foremost among them. It's rightly hailed as a classic and was a great inspiration for early Detroit techno artists like Derrick May and Carl Craig. The resonant timelessness of E2-E4 has extended beyond many other albums of the era and its influence has continuously popped up in more recent minimalist techno circles - most noticeably within the Cologne scene. We went on to say that while the reinterpretations on the tribute disc were cool, you should check out the real deal, and now here it is. It's one loooong track, approximately one hour in length, with nine titled and timed subdivisions indicated on the cover (suggestive of a chess match: "Quiet Nervousness", "Queen A Pawn", "Draw"...), that flows and flows and flows, Gottsching's guitar and electronics drifting and dancing beautifully over the continuous, pulsating, subtly-shifting proto-techno beat. It's so very pleasant and airy, also soooo hypnotic and ahead of its time. An hour you won't want to end, once it has lulled you into trance. Listening to this, it's easy to see why the Boredoms' Eye would revere it, and of course those abovementioned Detroit legends too. This "30th Anniversary" edition comes packaged in a nice embossed miniature lp style sleeve showing off its iconic chess-board cover design.

MPEG stream: E2-E4 excerpt 1
MPEG stream: E2-E4 excerpt 2

NOW ON VINYL! At last, a nicely done new vinyl reissue of this renowned early '80s krautrock / proto-techno classic! We've actually never before reviewed E2-E4 because the previous reissues were expensive and kinda hard to come by, though we DID once list a double cd tribute to this record, imported from Japan, featuring tracks by the likes of Rovo, Buffalo Daughter, and Eye from the Boredoms, who took up the entire 2nd disc with his extended mix (wish we still had that, but it's long gone). Better, though, to have this, the actual album that inspired the tribute. Here's some of what we said about it when we reviewed that Japanese tribute disc: German guitar guru Manuel Gottsching, founder of legendary krautrock pioneers Ash Ra Temple (which morphed into the new-age-ier Ashra), made a few records in the eighties under his own name. E2-E4, recorded in Berlin in 1981, and released in '84, was first and foremost among them. It's rightly hailed as a classic and was a great inspiration for early Detroit techno artists like Derrick May and Carl Craig. The resonant timelessness of E2-E4 has extended beyond many other albums of the era and its influence has continuously popped up in more recent minimalist techno circles - most noticeably within the Cologne scene. We went on to say that while the reinterpretations on the tribute disc were cool, you should check out the real deal, and now here it is. It's one loooong track, approximately one hour in length, with nine titled and timed subdivisions indicated on the cover (suggestive of a chess match: "Quiet Nervousness", "Queen A Pawn", "Draw"...), that flows and flows and flows, Gottsching's guitar and electronics drifting and dancing beautifully over the continuous, pulsating, subtly-shifting proto-techno beat. It's so very pleasant and airy, also soooo hypnotic and ahead of its time. An hour you won't want to end, once it has lulled you into trance. Listening to this, it's easy to see why the Boredoms' Eye would revere it, and of course those abovementioned Detroit legends too.

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Latest from Northwestern weirdo electronic label Fukdup, who most famously gave us the awesome grungecore 7" that featured Shitmat covering Nirvana and came packaged in a real flannel shirt! This new one is from Seattle based Graz, who describes his sound as "rapid-fire-amen-infused-mashcore federally certified to crush any party" or as a "glitched out high-speed rave rendition of radio's yesteryear", both pretty much nail it. The beats are all jungly, but not all hyperspeed drum and bass, more often sort of midtempo groovy and funky, and the samples, well, they're all radio hits, past and present Busta Rhymes, Avril Lavigne, Toni Basil, the Archies, Yello and tons more. Those samples sped up, chopped up, layered, twisted up, turned inside out, flipped backwards, slowed down, and strapped to wild unhinged off-kilter beats, rambunctious and chaotic and fun as fuck. Track pulse and throb and pound and bang, housey one second, jungly the next, dipping toes into happy hardcore, dancehall, ragga, rave, drum and bass, and whatever twisted hybrid of all of the above Graz can whip up. Fun and funky, goofy and pretty much the perfect fractured and freaky and fucked up dance party record. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, packaged with candy bones in the cd spine, and a button!

When this arrived in the shop, there was a collective cry,"Whoa, Greater Than One? What ever happened to them?" Well, it turns out that the once prolific industrial dance duo ceased to be after Lee Newman died of cancer in 1995. While the pairing of Lee Newman and Michael Wells had a handful of fantastic if agitated Greater Than One albums that graced the Wax Trax! catalogue throughout the late '80s and early '90s, they were also a leading proponent of the bleep techno sound that marked the early incarnation of Warp Records in recording as Tricky Disco. Needless to say, Kill The Pedagogue predates all of that stuff, having been originally released back in 1985 as a self-released cassette. Greater Than One had much more in common with the rhythm and noise collages of Throbbing Gristle and TG's many disciples (esp. Hunting Lodge, Portion Control, and Hula) through distorted tape loops, media samples disfigured through warbling varispeed tricks, and post-Cabaret Voltaire drum machines pushed toward exhaustion with their tumbling patterns of tribal rhythms. Given that the original cassette was a mere 28 minutes long, those fine folks at Brainwashed filled out the disc with MP3s including all of the material from another self-released cassette from back in the day called Lay Your Penis Down plus a bunch of photos and the like.

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British electro-acoustic artist Peter Green is best known for his collaborations with Mike Dred, Virtual Farmer and Laptop Dancing (both on Rephlex). This original score was commissioned by the United Spirits Theatre Company for the latest West End production of Macbeth. Not too impressive, sort of ambient electro-acoustic soundtracky stuff. Mediocre.

Having roots in EBM and industrial dance klang, Gridlock's "Trace" settles down into the fertile soil of IDM plowed by Autechre. While not much in the way of originality, this album is a very well done piece of IDM, mirroring the distorto-crunch plodding breakbeats and minor-key half melodies pleading for melancholia found on Autechre's "Amber" and Bola's "Fyuti." MPEG Download: "Front" [/audio/gridlockfront.mp3]

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We weren't familiar at all with Jason Grier, but seeing him teamed up with Nite Jewel on this outing definitely grabbed our attention, as she's for sure one of our favorite left-field hazy dance floor peddlers. Grier gives us a nice peek at how great Nite Jewel sounds in a more uptempo setting. But not to fear, there are still those great valium-on-the-disco-dance-floor moments, like the ten minute syrupy jam "On And On", and the sizzling slow burn of "Midnight Blue". In fact this ep has pretty much perfect pacing, starting off with the more poppy dance jams and then easing into a more atmospheric post-disco comedown. Nice.

We loved what we heard on Grimes' split 12" with D'eon that we were finally able to review a few lists ago, but our love for Grimes really blossomed when some of us got to catch her/them live several months ago, in town opening for Austra. We could tell then that they were on the verge of creating something pretty awesome. Visions totally delivers on that promise, Grimes' glorious soft gaze synth driven sound creating not just a hazy atmosphere but producing memorable and mesmerizing pop songs as well. Like the sounds of Gang Gang Dance and Glasser softly drifting through a smoke filled room, the sounds here manage to be both tender and sexy. While Grimes may too often be pigeonholed as a witch house band, there is something much more bright, melodic and sonically rounded about their sound and approach. Each song has its own distinct vibe and tonal color. Sometimes it sounds like Little Dragon doing the most seductive Blondie song ever and other times it's like Chromatics letting their hair down at an after hours '90s RnB dance party. Airy without being too light, addictive without being too saccharine. Visions definitely transports us to some fantastical sonic otherworld that we're digging big time...

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We had never heard Canadian electro-soul experimentalist Grimes before, but had heard a lot about her, and we have to say, her sound definitely lives up to the hype, her voice spectral and girlish, a sweet high croon one second, a Kate Bush like wail the next, the vocals wrapped in ethereal atmospheric swirls and pulsing electro synths, skittery IDM rhythms, all subtly glitched out, laced with haunting pianos, everything hazy and reverby, a little witch house-y, but for all it's weirdness and experimentalism, it's also seriously poppy, and about as commercial as stuff like this can get without switching teams, like in some alternate universe, this would be all over the radio, and should be. Folks who dig Zola Jesus, Glass Candy, Salem, oOoOO, Cosmetics and the like will dig big time. D'eon, whose Palinopsia 12" we reviewed a while back, drags things back squarely into some outsider soul / weirdo electronics netherworld, with a gorgeous, hazy softly psychedelic intro, all swooshy new age synths, and spidery barely there guitar, cascading melodies, swoonsome underwater bass, and a melodic refrain that had this sounding almost like a re-interpretation of the Twin Peaks theme, but laced with a skeletal rhythm created by glitchy cell phone interference, that immediately recognizable stuttery static... But after that, it's back to the fractured fucked up retro soul D'eon does so well, super washed out, kaleidoscopic eighties flashback grooves, Terrence Trent D'Arby like soulful vox, draped over smears of synth shimmer, and warbly loops, an avant IDM soul that seems to gradually blossom into even more crunchy glitched out rhythms, almost jungly at one point, but never shedding its gloriously dated eighties haze. The closer, with its electronic bass, and electro handclaps, definitely sounds like some lost eighties VHS soundtrack, bouncy, soulful, groovy, and fracturedly funky.

It took some of us a while to come around, but we eventually ended up digging Grizzly Bear's debut, Veckatimest, quite a bit - orchestral pop equal parts Van Dyke Parks and Elliott Smith, lush and lovely, impossibly catchy, dreamily dramatic. So we were definitely prepared to dig this new one, but we weren't necessarily prepared for THIS. Give the opening track a listen (the first sound sample below), and be as baffled by us by GB's new sound, and we mean baffled in a good way, a really good way, in place of their sweetly twee Pitchfork-y pop, is something downright PROGGY, dark and driving, they sound like some obscure Italian prog from the seventies, we hear a little Yes too, some Comus even, everything minor key and darkly tinged, intensely strummed acoustic guitars, the vocals reminding us of Terry Reid, the dense mix rife with blooping percolating synths, driven by bombastic drumming, the sounds stereo panned, swooping from speaker to speaker, there's even some seriously hard rocking fuzz drenched psych guitar, it's total modern retro trip out psychedelic prog. We're curious how fans of the last record will feel about this, but we can definitely tell you we're LOVING it. Sort of the way Malachai reimagined seventies proto metal and fuzzy psych rock, the sound here, at least in places, is equal parts obscure prog and acid folk, a bit modernized for sure, but that opener, wow. Nothing else on the record is so overtly retro prog, but that vibe does ooze into the rest of the record, giving the whole thing a definite retro feel, the production, the arrangements, the songs, plenty of tripped out experimentation, dark drones, GB's dreamy pop does of course shine through in places, but for the most part, the feel is a bit more haunting and melancholic, and yeah, folky / proggy / sixties / seventies sounding, with some of the songs dipping into early Peter Gabriel and Genesis territory (just check out "What's Wrong"), and others unfurling as almost classic rock sounding ballads, but darkly psychedelic and dramatically brooding (check out the closer "Sun In Your Eyes"), which makes for a cool / strange balance for the overt pop that surfaces throughout. Awesome!

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Read about Amon Tobin, Christian Fennesz, Mum, Negativland, Suicide, Rosy Parlane, Wobbly, Ikue Mori, Goodiepal, and lots more in this ninth issue of the ever thicker and slicker "experimental electronic music magazine" Grooves. Music *and* gear reviews fill out the pages, making this good reading for both electronica consumers and producers.

We reviewed Harald Grosskopf's effervescent 1980 solo debut, Synthesist, a few lists back, an album inspired by LSD and heartbreak in equal measure. Along with that new reissue, Bureau B has also reissued Grosskopf's follow-up from six years later, Oceanheart, with a remastered sound and new cover art, and it's equally effervescent if slightly more tranquil than its predecessor. Is there a more new-ageish title than Oceanheart? The change in cover art too had us scrambling to Google to see what the original cover looked like, and there it was in all of it's new age glory, a softly painted ocean vista as viewed from behind a strange rock wall, not bad really. But then that FONT! Not even a good terrible eighties font, but that more pretentious bookstore font that was so overused in the later eighties. Ugh! Glad they changed the cover. The thing is Oceanheart is not really that new agey. Apart from the title song that is the only true ambient track, most of Oceanheart is very percussive and propulsive, apt for someone who began his career as one of Krautrock's foremost percussionists. Most of the tracks carry minimal driving uptempo rhythms that suggest a flowing stasis with built-up melodic nuances. Even when the tracks slow down to mid or even no tempo, there is still a strong Teutonic vibe that reminds us of a more ambient Kraftwerk, or more rhythmic Manuel Gottsching. In fact it's VERY reminiscent of Gottsching's New Age of Earth, and as that is one of our favorite ambient kraut records ever, that is not a bad thing whatsoever!

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Previously reissued via the RVNG label in 2011, Bureau B reissues this kraut-synth rarity once again with its original cover. Here's what we wrote about it previously: Before 1979, Harald Grosskopf was mostly known as a percussionist for Ash Ra Tempel, Cosmic Jokers and Klaus Schulze. But during one bleak summer where his longtime girlfriend left him, he fortuitously met up with two musicians who he would later collaborate with in the band You (whose 2 releases have also been reissued on Bureau B). One of them lent Grosskopf his flat for the summer and a mini-Moog and sequencers to work on a solo record. With a reel to reel and eight track recorder he received from Schulze as compensation for his contribution on some recordings, Grosskopf then had to teach himself how to use all the new equipment, which was no easy task. But his perseverance paid off as the result is one of the finer synth outings we've heard from the era. There is a nice percolating exuberance to the tracks aided with the forwarding momentum of percussion that keeps things moving along, while other tracks show a deep space ambient side. Definitely a precursor for what much of what Jonas Reinhardt and Zombi are doing nowadays. Highly Recommended!!!! Bureau B has also reissued Grosskopf's more new agey follow-up, Oceanheart, which we also have in stock, and will review soon too, probably when the cd versions of both show up...

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

SORRY. The second in a series of three, this features remixes of Ground Zero's Consume Red disc. Bob Ostertag, Violent Onsen Geisha, Gastr del Sol, Stock Hausen & Walkman and others participate.

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

SORRY. The third volume of the three-part "Consume Ground Zero" project--this is the one which consists of "remixes" derived from volumes one and two, submitted by the general public and selected for this release. An international line-up of names neither you nor I have probably ever heard of before (Art Karaoke, Stomach Oh-Yeah, DJ Smallcock, Xonk, etc.) except of course for celebrated AQ-pals Matmos who also make an appearance here. Japanese digipak import.

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

SORRY. March 8, 1998 was the date of the final performace of Otomo Yoshihide's turntable/improv-jazz outfit, Ground Zero, with a huge ensemble backing him (Sachiko M, Hirose Jyunji, Kikuchi Naruyoshi, Okura Masahiko, Chino Syuichi, Masuno Tatsuki, Nagata Kazuano, Nasuno Mitsuru, Uemura Masahiro, Yoshigaki Yasuhiro, and Kondo Yoshiaki). The first two tracks are Ground Zero's speed-jazz-noise assaults pretty close to Painkiller and Naked City playing at the same time. While the last is the breathtakingly hypnotic Consume Red of super slow moving turntable rumble with almost Egyptian-reed-like flares of horns.

Otomo Yoshihide, the Japanese sampling dynamo, leads this 6-piece band in some creative jumpcuts.

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

SORRY. Yay! After being out of print for the last couple of years, this fantastic album has finally been reissued! Unfortunately it's not a domestic reissue, so the price tag is still import-high. But it's well worth the $, being one of our very favorite discs by Otomo Yoshihide's amazing sampling/noise/jazz outfit Ground Zero. This one's all covers, Ground Zero interpretations of tunes as far ranging as Massacre's "Bones" to John Philip Sousa's "Washington Post March", Omoide Hatoba to Burt Bacharach... Includes liner notes in both English and Japanese explaining Otomo's reasons for doing each song. Great album, great band. If you missed it the first time, get it now!!

RealAudio clip: A Better Tomorrow + I Say A Little Prayer