[ aquarius records — Electronic ]

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Showing results 1851 through 1900 of 5033.

Remixes of Hood by Duo Fourteen.

Geez Hood, don't rush me! I'm barely done checkin' out (and thoroughly diggin') your newest EP when you drop a brand new album in my lap. Alright, I'll quit my whinging 'cause more Hood music is nothing to complain about. This album is really dreamy and delicious. That recent teaser EP hinted at more shoegazer leanings, but with regards to Outside Closer we say, "Nevermind shoegazer, this is a stargazer." On songs such as the third "Any Hopeful Thoughts Arrive" and seventh "Still Rain Fell", you can't help but be swept up, up, up and away. Everything -- from the wispy breathy vocals to the plucked acoustic guitar to the shuffling processed beats to the understated horns to the droning organ tones -- is interwoven into swirling total bliss. Gorgeous.

MPEG stream: Still Rain Fell
MPEG stream: Winter 72

It's been a while since we last heard from Hood, but in anticipation of their forthcoming full length Outside Closer, they've resurfaced with these five breezy tracks. Much less split personality than their past efforts have had the tendency to be -- they would be postrock-y on one track and blissed-out indie-tronica the next -- Hood have integrated their two selves into a consistent shimmery dreaminess of glistening guitars, processed beats, gauzy washes and hushed vocals. On the surface, this may simply seem cut from the same cloth as the current crop of pretty euro-pop-tronica (such as Morr Music's Styrofoam, LaliPuna, etc... heck, not to mention that just like those artists, Hood's also been cavorting with indie hiphoppers such as Themselves!), but closer listens reveal Hood's music to possess considerably more dynamics and substance. Nice! Can't wait for the new album!

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Hot Chip follow up their debut with an even more satisfying collection of smart and fun electronic pop. With a more assured yet equally creative and satisfying sound, this record seems less self-conscious and more realized than Coming On Strong. Listening to Hot Chip sort of feels like going to a disco with super sweet nerdy boys in glasses. They have no problem shaking their asses yet manage to stay sensitive and intelligent at the same time. Even at their most catchy there is something bittersweet underneath it all that makes Hot Chip such a satisfying and pleasing listen. Folks who like The Postal Service, more recent Notwist and have Daft Punk records in their collection should check this out for sure!

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Latest from this master of murky psychedelic slo-mo soul, and while we were expecting another batch of that distinctive HTDW warped and warbly lo-fi soul music, all ghostly and spectral and otherworldly, this 4 song 10" has definitely thrown us for a loop. It's still soul, just not really slo-mo, in fact, the three part title track sounds more like something you'd hear from Antony & The Johnsons, lush, piano driven, with soaring strings, and dreamy falsetto vox, if anything, this proves that HTDW can really sing, cuz this is all about his voice, and the lush accompaniment only adds drama and emotion, just gorgeous soulful pop, the songs stately and elegant, building to seriously cathartic climaxes, the third part is the most intense, a fantastic slab of lush chamber soul, a little bit hazy and softly psychedelic, but other than some reverb it still seems mostly unadorned, but really, it doesn't need anything else. The final track is about as close as things get to the more murky, witchy HTDW sound, and takes the strings from the title track, and those gorgeous vox, and adds a bit of murk, some subtly twisted effects, a cool skeletal hand clap rhythm, the Prince like vocals settled amidst the blurred dreamy soul, a perfect ending to a surprising, and surprisingly satisfying sonic detour, which has us wondering if this is a one off, or if the new full length might offer more of this less twisted murky sound, either way, we're psyched to hear more. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES, but almost sold out. These may be the last copies we can get. Housed in a super swank sleeve, thick textured paper, with embossed lettering.

RSI is another UK label trafficking in difficult and totally original electronic music (like countrymates Fflint Central). It's a shame that they only make cd-rs. I find it hard to believe they wouldn't be able to sell 1000 cds, but it hardly makes a difference, because this stuff is so good. This is fucking way out. Agonised wails of tortured souls buried underneth a suffocating layer of digital buzz/crapout littered with trashcan lid precussion. That's how it begins. And it never really lets up. Crazy and all over the place and totally original. Demented organs and horns battle malfunctioning drum machines spitting out inhuman and terminally unfunky rhythms. Sheets of high end skree and whirring harmonics punctuated by a barrage of peculiar sounding percussion: chirping bird snares, fist in the gut kick drums, and erratic cookie sheet clatter. And a track that sounds like they sampled some sort of post rock/fusion band playing in an airplane hanger, chopped it up and then unleashed an unholy plague of maniacal modems and renegade synths. This is some crazy shit. Recommended.

RealAudio clip: Appy Fracture
RealAudio clip: Fuck I

In recent years, Keith Fullerton-Whitman has been focusing on the beautiful strains of minimalism speckled with an exceptional craftsmanship and radical rewriting of historical precedents. Fortunately, he's not forgotten about his Hrvatski moniker where he applies his Amen break (the classic drum and bass loop!) obsession to short attention span theatre. Irrevocably Overdriven Bleak Freakout Megamix is a live set from his summer 2004 jaunt to San Francisco, where he performed at the Rx Gallery through the Jiffy Scuttler series for avant-electronica performances. And yes, the set does live up to its name, mangling many of the same mathematically acrobatic drum 'n' bass rhythms found on his previous albums (Oiseaux 96-98 and Swarm & Dither) in a toxic soup of knob-twiddling noise that's as good as non-jazz Squarepusher records or the more antagonistic Aphex Twin tracks. The seamless audio program of the show is splattered with 91 tracks, the longest of which clocks in at a mere 48 seconds. We like!

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

SORRY. The debut album from Hrvatski (the prosaic electronica expert at Forced Exposure) is a drum & bass disc that almost all junglists will absolutely hate. 'Oiseaux 96-98' is a rumination on the Amen break (THE quintessential drum & bass break) which Hrvatski treats less as the structural placefinder and more as a hypnotic noise crashing endlessly next to looping toxic drones and field recordings of wildly screeching Hitchcockian birds. By also incorporatating the likes of detuned acoustic guitars, a 190+ bpm Pink Floyd cover, garage-sale organs, and hand held dulcimers, this near-drop out from the Berklee School of Music (and former Guitar Player magazine 'Metal Detector' columnist) unloads his vast store of musical knowledge and ideas. Hrvatski has created an unusual synthesis of Stockhausen's excess, Farmer's Manual's digital glitch worship, and of course The Winston's 'Amen, Brother' (in the liner notes, he does apologize for overabundance of the aforementioned break, because 'it just sounded so damn good...'). Recommended!!

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

SORRY. Not cheaply made floppy vinyl on this seven inch. No sir. Hrvatski wouldn't think of it. This has some of the fattest, heaviest vinyl we've ever seen on a seven inch. "Raume" sounds much like early / non-jazz Squarepusher, where the complexity of the drum programming meant more than being true to drum & bass tropes. In other words, mind-boggling.

Following the electronically toxic explorations of the Winston Bros' "Amen" break on the "Oiseaux 96-98" album, Keith Fullerton Whitman returns with his second album as Hrvatski. "Swarm & Dither" further expands the fusions of drum & bass with obscure '60s psyche-rock, plenty of Max / MSP patches, and an open dialogue (critical and otherwise) with academic composition. The "Amen" breaks still run rampant throughout the "Swarm & Dither" cuts, but are less of a unifying factor than on Hrvatski's preceding album. Rather, Whitman under the Hrvatski guise treats each individual track as insular structures where he's responding and reacting to all of the elements within. "Swarm & Dither" is less of a wholly conceived album, and more of a collection of completed fragments. At times, these individual tracks are celebratory eruptions of DSP gabbacore jungle (i.e. the magnificent version cover of "Paint It Black" which also appeared on the amazing tUMULt compilation "Painted Black"); at others, they display a dry sense of humor that's more of satrical witticism than another self-reflexive piss-take (i.e. the Commodore 64 8-bit melodies appearing on "Marbles" on top of a rhythmic kaleidoscope of perpetually menacing breakbeats and 909 stabs); and on others, Hrvatski displays serious expositions on grindcore and elite '60s electronic composition (esp. Stockhausen and Riley). The album ends on a particularly anti-electronic note, with Hrvastki doing a very straight cover of Trad, Gras, och Steiner's "Waltz of Tegenborg" -- a Swedish psych / prog tune perfect for happy-go-lucky dancing trolls. It's a perfectly odd ending to a wonderfully odd album.

RealAudio clip: Paint It Black
RealAudio clip: Vatstep DSP
RealAudio clip: Marbles

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

SORRY.

For fans of Dam-Funk , Flying Lotus and James Pants. Neo-Electro funk with lots of cheesy eighties synth patches and wobbly beats!

The husband and wife duo Jeff & Jane Hudson started out in art-punk outfit The Rentals (not to be a confused with the Weezer side-project of the same name from the '90s). There were a couple of Rentals singles, one of which landed on Beggars Banquet in 1979, before the band broke-up. The Hudsons relocated to New York from Boston, and shifted towards synths, drum machines, and electronics in their collaborative project. Their first ep - World Trade - was released in 1981 through the seminal No Wave Lust/Unlust label alongside Mars, Dark Day, Martin Rev, Lydia Lunch, Z'ev, etc., and the Hudsons had made the rounds of all the punk spaces at the time, opening for Suicide on at least one occasion. Flesh was their second album, one that they recorded at home and released themselves in 1982. There is an insularity to this album that asks something of a chicken and an egg question. Was their self-financing the result of an expressive solipsism, or vice versa? Regardless, Flesh is a record that didn't have many contemporaries in New York, although if they hailed from San Francisco, the Residents, Snakefinger, and the Psyclones would have all been kindred spirits. Jane and Jeff wrote darkly carnivalesque, post-punk numbers through early Roland synths and drum machines, accompanying bass, guitar, vocals, and a lot of warbling effects. Their flanging, weird sound grafted onto the chicken scratch guitars certainly looks forward to what Blank Dogs would do some 30 years later. So it's no surprise that Blank Dogs' label Captured Tracks would be one of the two two labels releasing this reissue, which comes with a ton of bonus material, including the aforementioned World Trade ep, the "No Club" single, and the punchy art-punk dance number "Special World," originally released as a single in 1983 before the Hudsons transitions from music to video art. Great stuff!

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There's been so much amazing, dark minimal techno lately we can barely keep up, and so much good stuff, that even the techno haters here have come around. Recently we've been inundated with killer records from Shed, Terrence Dixon, Chasing Voices, Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement, Kowton, Miles, Function, Silent Servant, and even techno influenced outliers like Vatican Shadow, Christian Cosmos, etc. You can add Huerco S. to the list. And while we know, a quick Google search, and we could tell you all about Huerco S., his real name, where he's from, what other group's he's played in, all that jazz, but sometimes not knowing anything is way better, especially when it comes to music like this. Colonial Patterns sounds so mysterious, it's murky, and moody, washed out, minimal and abstract, the sounds are crumbly and faded, the beats are barely there, more like buried pulsations, hushed rhythmic swells, a rumbling throb, wreathed in all manner of sonic detritus, so much so, that we're loathe to even really qualify this as techno. It has techno elements for sure, but to these ears it has much more in common with folks like Tim Hecker or the Caretaker, atmospheric ambience, everything wasted and decayed, even the melodies sound half formed, and ancient, as if over the course of the record, they've gradually been eroded, existing now more as sonic shadows, as audio imprints of sounds lost and faded away, some tracks are formed from fragmented vocals, looped into maddeningly tranced out soft focus stutters, which gradually blur into pure sound, the 'vocals' absorbed into something greater, like a way more arcane, abstract version of the Field, the beats are barely ever actually beats, more like skeletal arrangements of rhythmic elements, on some tracks, the beats consist of nothing more than fractured fields of static, possibly the result of gunked up tape heads, yet somehow, the results are magical, and yeah, mysterious. The tracks that do exist closer to proper techno, even those display all manner of warped sonic anomalies, swirling and psychedelic, on the verge of collapse, held together by the most skeletal of rhythmic support, while others are purely abstract arrangements of sound and rhythm, rhythm and sound, dubby, droney, drowsy, dirgey, strange samples surfacing throughout, only to be re-engineered into something wholly other, stumbling, skittering, stuttering, lurching, lumbering, woozy, meditative, hypnotic and mesmerizing, totally alien, yet strangely warm and soothing, tranquil and totally and utterly entrancing. Definitely a contender for year end lists, electronic / techno or otherwise, and a new unanimous aQ fave!!!

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Norwegian singer-songwriter Hanne Hukkelberg's debut, Little Things, was an enchanting collection of delicate instrumentation, fluttering vocals, and sophisticated songwriting. It took more than a few of us here at aQ by surprise and became something of a sleeper hit for lazy sun-drenched afternoons. The same sensibilities that made Little Things so successful are evident on Rykestrasse 68: vocals pushed to the front of the mix, dry, personal and sultry while a kaleidoscope of drips, drops, bells and whistles flutters in the background. However, the darker mood and sense of melancholy on this record make it more suitable for grey days and rain-streaked windows than its sunnier predecessor. The obvious points of comparison are, of course, artists like Bjork, Feist and Tujiko Noriko -- powerhouse singers who blend fractured acoustic sounds, electronic flourishes and sophisticated songwriting; however, Rykestrasse 68 stands on its own as a beautiful work from a tremendously talented artist who manages to achieve a really engaging combination of naivete and a deliberate, self-aware intellectualism. It's a winning blend, evident in the mix between the toy instruments and found sounds that lend the record a certain childlike quality and the darkness and drama to that comes out in its best moments (take her cover of The Pixies' "Break My Body," for example). This, much like her previous, will undoubtedly fly beneath the radar, as it falls into that awkward middle ground between something you'd read about in The Wire and cafe-friendly pop. However, give this one a chance and it'll undoubtedly become the perfect soundtrack to some quiet, melancholy moment in your life. Simply gorgeous.

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BACK IN PRINT!!! Perhaps you've heard the quiet rumbling accolades for The Human League's early non-synthpop recordings. Up until now, only mere glimpses were available via their Reproduction album from 1979 and to a lesser degree 1980's Travelogue. Well, here's a UK import of twenty previously unreleased songs that predate their '80s glory. They were compiled from the label's own collection of bootlegs as well as from restored master tapes that have been locked away in the group's studio for over two decades. In those days ('77 to '79) they were also known as The Future. Decidedly un-pop, this Human League was an altogether different entity back then with a line-up that included Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh (who went on to form Heaven 17). Actually many of these works were performed by only these two gents. It was they rather than Philip Oakey who pretty much ran the early Future / Human League show. They constructed much more abstract and exploratory soundscapes with a heavier, graver mood than the later Oakey-fronted fluff that would bring the group fame (i.e, the weak songwriting, thin synth sounds, and off-key vocals of "Fascination"). Odd, yet effectively frail falsetto and deep spoken vocals converse over the low viscous electronic marches and swooping spaced-out analog synthesizer excursions with no drums or guitars. It actually would be quite at home accompanying the art-wave film Liquid Sky or on a bill with the Residents. Truly, much of this sounds quite fresh and adventurous today. All except one track were produced by Ware and Marsh. Note: the sound quality does vary from track to track, however this compilation still stands up as a revealing and intriguing document of this group's early works. Much more impressive and much less dated than both Heaven 17 and later Human League combined. Recommended.

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From the obi: "Born in Waco, Texas, Jerry Hunt was a friend of Jack Ruby, a pianist in strip clubs, a student of the occult and the founder of his own mailorder church at the age of 15. Jerry Hunt was also one of the great pioneers of live electronic music. Very much a modern-day shaman, he designed most of his own equipment and used it in ways to create backdrops for his own magical performances that referred to, among many other things, exotic ritual, the esoteric traditions of Rosicrucianism, Aleister Crowley and modern science. The SongDrapes were some of Jerry's last and greatest creations, and feature vocalists Karen Finley, Shelley Hirsch and Mike Patton."

Finally some new music from aQ faves FRKSE, whose last lp, Guilt Surveillance, we made Record Of The Week, and for good reason. A stunning collection of home brewed mad scientist rhythmic experiments, all twisted loops, mutated samples, home built machines, noise and sonic detritus, somehow sculpted into heady, hypnotic, robotic soundscapes, reminding us a bit of Strotter Inst, but even more damaged and decayed, the sound gorgeously hypnotic, but at the same time, like the soundtrack to some dystopian wasteland. But before we get to the new FRKSE tracks, this here is a split, with another aQ fave, Husere Grav, a Texan one man band who specializes in harrowing, Lustmordian black ambience, and twisted industrial soundscapery, and these tracks here are some of his best yet. The opener, a haunting sonic smoldering, that sounds like a blackened Caretaker, all buried melodies, wistful and melancholic, but wreaths in crumbling, rumbling buzz, and burnished hiss and whir, hazy and hypnotic, we would have been more than happy if this dystopian drift filled up the whole side, but instead, the sound shifts into something even more abstract, what sounds like a field recording of some subterranean passage, the whir of distant machines, fragments of conversation, all blurred and smeared into a dreamlike sibilance, and amidst this sort of slow moving, near static shimmer, all manner of melody and texture seem to fade in and fade out, ghostly and ephemeral. The rest of the side is easily the most lovely stuff we've heard yet from Husere Grav, no caustic crunch, no ominous rumbling, instead, it's a darkly delicate sprawl of reverberant thrum, softly pulsing tones, all spread out into lush layers, deep dense billows of sound, softly haunting, deeply tranquil, some seriously lowercase, cinematic, slo-mo bliss out of the highest order. Fans of hushed ambient drift and deeeeeep listening drone music will be smitten for sure. The FRKSE side is just as good as we expected/hoped. A ramshackle assemblage of beats, percussion, rhythm, some bits sound like actual drums, but mostly it sounds like found sounds, hiss and static from old records, the clang of metal on metal, the pulse and throb of an lp run off groove, what might be plucked rubber bands, or a processed heartbeat, who knows, and who cares! The sound settles into a totally hypnotic rhythm right out of the gate, and then the sound is constantly in flux, a sort of junkyard industrial, the main rhythm, gathering noise and detritus as it goes, whether that's simply more rhythm, or thick swaths of crumbling crunch, or squalls of hissy, staticky psychedelia. Like pretty much every track we've heard from FRKSE, it's so immediately mesmerizing, you sort o never want it to end, but invariably it does, only to conjure up a new rhythm, which is equally enthralling. But here, that first rhythm fades out, leaving the surrounding sounds to swirl and shimmer, a long stretch of soft-noise ambience, that like the HG side is surprisingly lovely, only to culminate in one final rhythmic stretch, a slow brooding bit of almost doom sounding lope, but it's not heavy, instead, it's a muted pulse, a lumbering, somnambulant groove, a dreamily lovely tarpit-creep, that again, sounds like it's being performed by junkyard automatons, or some strange crew of cobbled together robots, but the amazing thing is that it doesn't sound robotic, it sounds human, and emotional, the sound infused with a haunting, pathos, a melancholia, that transforms it into something otherworldly. Fantastic! Beautiful packaging too, simple plain white covers with a piece of white plaster/gauze affixed to the front. Includes two inserts. NO download. And as you might imagine. EXTREMELY limited!

Here we go again. Another record that I am totally obsessed with, that I listen to like mad, that I try to get all my friends to buy, but that when it comes time to review, I can't figure out how to describe in words that do justice to just how great this record is. Since we first got this in, the second release from strangely named Hwyl Nofio, a UK collective fronted by AQ pal Steve Parry, I would just fumble with superlatives and end up spitiing out something like "I don't know. It's just great. Buy it!!!" But I figure I would try to do a little better than that for the list. While the mood is similar to the first record, there seems to be a more sort of 'rock' influence. Not rock like Van Halen, but rock in the sense that there are guitars (lots of em) and really identifiable instruments. Where the first album blurred the instrumentation into a dark and dreamy wash of subterranean rumble, Hymnal achieves the same basic effect but by keeping the edges a little more distinct. Not to say this won't appeal to your droning side becaue it certainly will. But it also just might appeal to your slow motion, instrumental slow-core side as well! A very dark and sinister record. Dreamy and hypnotic, but sort of aggressive and threatening at the same time. The entire record is a nightmarescape set on a foundation of rumbling, swelling, washes of thick warm low end shimmer. Basses, and guitars and organs and horns all settle into a cloying fog of glacial downtuned thrum, slowly shifting, melodic flourishes barely visible below the surface. While pianos and guitars supply abstract melodies, their notes dropped delicately one by one, creating a pointillist map of some haunting afterlife/ghost world. Equal parts Stars Of The Lid, Sunn 0))), Jonathan Coleclough, Maeor Tri, Starfuckers, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Labradford, Morton Feldman and all the music that frightens us when we're awake, and soothes us when we're not. Definitely one of the most beautiful, haunting and original records of the year! MPEG Download: "A Brutality Of Fact" [/audio/hwylbrutality.mp3] MPEG Stream: "A Brutality Of Fact" [/audio/hwylbrutality.m3u] MPEG Download: "All You Knew Were Doomed" [/audio/hwyldoomed.mp3]

MPEG stream: A Brutality Of Fact
MPEG stream: All You Knew Were Doomed
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THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORRY. We heard about Hwyl-Nofio from AQ pal Kevin who does the amazing UK zine Salt (see elsewhere in this list) and finally managed to get our hands on a bunch. It's kind of a hard record to explain. But I've been listening to this almost every night when I go to bed, if that tells you anything. Dark and dreamy and cinematic. Somewhere between musique concrete, Stars Of The Lid, David Darling (solo cello) and drone ala Jonathan Coleclough, Troum or Mirror. Hwyl-Nofio is Steve Parry, and the records sound centers around his restrained, haunting piano, some times prepared, sometimes effected, but always simple and gorgeous. Dark slowly building somber bass swells cycle endlessly as melancholy piano hesitantly joins in. Warm washes of whispery rumble spread like thick rich fog, spilling from the speakers as distant high end notes twinkle and sparkle. Wheezing dissonance is laid beneath whirring church organs and keening guitars. Rumbling and bubbling low end floods your ears like molasses, while in the background, subtle clatter, plucked guitar and throbbing pulses. This has become my absolute favorite bliss out, late night, chill out record ever! So gorgeous and so good.

RealAudio clip: Jerusalem Lane
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Up until now, we knew Hyetal as a Bristol based dubstepper, with killer jams on all sorts of labels from Punch Drunk to Planet Mu, his sound a soulful, tripped out variant of classic dubstep, but who here, on Broadcast, has ditched the whole dubplate / 12" single / dancefloor driven approach and crafted a record proper, one that plays out like some strange Eighties giallo soundtrack, equal parts Goblin, John Carpenter, witch housers Salem, and nineties IDM, not to mention some serious soul. Opener "Ritual" is the grimmest of the bunch, and the most witch house-y, total blackened synth heavy drag, the sounds distorted and crumbly, the beat a soporific creep, lots of buzz, and swirl, and some total Carpenter like soundtracky melodies, all minor key and haunting as hell. "Diamond Islands" continues the vibe, with a skittery abstract beat, some woozy, sinister synths, some big eighties drums, breathy vocals suspended over the swirling electronic backdrop, the vibe low slung and retro, but also weirdly abstract and futuristic. "Phoenix" takes some swaggery dubstep, stirs in some 8 bit eighties video game sounds, and some cheesy soundtracky synths, into some total VHS dubstep new age soundtrack soul, while "Beach Scene" conjures up the exact opposite, some grimy chase through the gritty streets of some post apocalyptic wasteland. And weirdly enough, "The Chase" doesn't really evoke a chase, but is darkly tense, a pulsing new wave synthscape, that leads directly into "Searchlight", which takes Boards Of Canada style warm and washed out IDM, mixes in some weird eighties synths and some blooping bleeping video game music, not to mention some fragmented soul vox, for a dizzying bit of haunting skittery electro wave. "Dimepiece" is all minimal and stripped down, with distant melodies, a churning propulsive melody, but with some awesome swaths of dubstep bas wobble, underpinning echo drenched disembodied female vox. The record continues on, straddling the line between abstract dubstep, vintage Carpenter soundtrack, old school IDM, and dark minimal electro soul, finally finishing off with the haunting and gorgeously brooding "Black Black Black", a sort of post Portishead chunk of downtempo slither, sexy female vocals crooned over a Burial style slo-mo dubstep beat, all wound up with pulsing synths, and deep thick swells of haunting ambience, and draped with some chiming, lilting eighties pop melodies, only to fade out into nearly two minutes of crashing surf. So nice. Note: the double 12" vinyl version only includes 5 of the 10 tracks found on the compact disc format.

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Not to be confused with the infamous music video director, THIS Hype Williams is a Euro boy/girl duo who traffic in a woozy washed out, looped and loopy lysergic dubbed out witchy electronica, like How To Dress Well crossed with The Skaters, each track, a dizzying hypnoscape of cyclical rhythms, of layered melodies, and processed vox, a sound all syrupy and sludgey and seriously lo-fi, casio-core writ downtempo dancefloor drawl, chopped and screwed, and not all that far removed from Witch Housers like oOoOO or Salem, the same sort of cough syrup soaked electro dub, all skittery and shuffly, warped and warbly, everything dragging and druggy, sloe eyed and slithery, the bass is fuzzy and buzzy but is muted and blurred beneath robotic primitive rhythms, and hazy swirls of dreamlike melody, samples are manipulated, processed, stretched and reimagined, Sade becomes an icy chunk of electro murk (not here, but on another record, HW samples aQ fave Doug Blunt, AND half of Hype Williams calls himself D. Blunt, hmmmm), elsewhere the samples are not so easy to pick out, instead they're simply shards and streaks and fragments, all woven into HW's psychedelic skitter and bleary creepy crawl. From ominous mysterious mumbly murk, to hazy, looped dreampop drift, from twisted chaotic collaged shuffle funk to Ariel Pink style alien FM radio groove pop, all the tracks here ooze and bleed and melt before your ears into one ever shifting organic assemblage of late night, under water, doped up, drift off, zombie funk...

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MPEG stream: Untitled

Latest slab of psychedelic dancefloor drag / slo-mo soul / eighties synth wave weirdness from this European boy/girl duo (not to be confused with the hip hop video director), and it's more of what we loved about the other HW record, all hazy synths, and laid back handclap rhythms, fuzzy new wave basslines, and sultry vox. The opening track almost sounds like it could (should?) be on Italians Do It Better, that sort of Euro disco wave, the second track on the A side sounds like some lost instrumental version of one of Madonna's eighties B-sides, which leads right into the first track on the B-side which could have been modeled on Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time", some sort of alternate universe prom night slow dance ballad, but warped and tweaked and warbly, all cheesy synths and eighties drum machine and shopping mall Wurlitzers. The final track is really strange, the prettiest of the bunch, a dreamy lilting gamelan like melody, all murky and swirly and druggy, but then over the top there there are some super strange sampled vox, which change the vibe completely. Speaking of which, since there was no speed indicated on the label, we were listening to this at 33, and holy crap does it sound awesomely woozy and witch housey all slowed down...

New mysterious lp from the equally mysterious duo, Hype Williams. Housed in a blank white 12" sleeve with a blank white label and white vinyl and no identifying information whatsoever, except for a sticker on the shrink wrap. Hell, it took us awhile to even figure out what speed it's supposed to play at and we're still not really sure. Crackly and hollowed out synth washes and bouncy but distant drum machines play in deceptively basic minimal-funk pitch-shifted arrangements that slowly wooze and morph into dreamy soul refractions. Hazy and murky like their witch-house contemporaries would be good descriptors, but it's much more of a hot muddled electro mess than spindly goth horror daydream. Dam-Funk on Nyquil, perhaps? Supposedly these songs have titles, but there is no listing, maybe if we slavishly followed the blogs, we might have a clue, but it's hard to tell where one track ends and another one starts. We don't even know which is side one or two. Hype Williams may revel in their particular brand of confounding prankishness and seem not to care if you are in on their joke or not, but if their output wasn't so curiously intriguing, we might have not given this a second thought. Truth be told, we can't stop trying to wrap our heads around it, so that's gotta be something, right?

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

SORRY. Limited edition large poster screenprinted on blueprint paper - so each is one-of-a-kind! Features the face of Crack: We Are Rock member Erin. Designed by Slang (who's responsible for a number of other stunning, highly covetted, non-paper posters for SF artists like Church Steps, Sounds Of The Barbary Coast, Kit Clayton, and O.S.T. go to: www.slanginternational.org).

1" button: uniquely shiny chrome with black print of the band's head-bending-fork logo.

1" button: uniquely shiny chrome with black print of the Teletwin logo.

New I Am Spoonbender stickers are now here! Striking Egyptian motif. Bright orange, black and white weather-proof vinyl. 2" wide by 6" high.

During the two years between I Am Spoonbender's "Teletwin" EP and the "Shown Actual Size" 3-song EP, electro-revivalism -- or perhaps better known as the stupid cliche 'electroclash' (who's fighting anyway?) -- has self-destructed. Once a succinct manifestation of perfectly machined rhythms and plastic passion with an android sheen (e.g. Adult.), electro-revivalism is now just a vapidly stylistic coke dream of robot sex and perfectly coiffed hair. Indeed, I Am Spoonbender have developed a tight, very flashy live persona complete with choreographed lighting, op-art film references, and sharp costuming. However, beneath their theatrical glitz, I Am Spoonbender remains dedicated to crafting an avant-pop homunculus out of This Heat and Gary Numan, or perhaps alternately stated, IAS strives for a means to rock without guitars. For Spoonbender, electro has simply been a convenient vehicle to attain some of their goals (art? popularity? world domination?). That said, "Shown Actual Size" is probably the least electro sounding record from I Am Spoonbender, centered upon the vocal duets of Donaldson and Cup (yes, the same Cup whose smiling face can be found behind the counter at Aquarius) fronting punchy synthetic grooves and metronomic electrical sparks (plus bass guitar played by Dave Edwardson of Neurosis!). These two voices bounce between fractured narratives that not only imply a humanistic optimism about extracting meaning out of miscommunication, but also a cautiousness towards the technologies which may be complicating the lives that they seek to improve. Hopefully, more material will soon follow these far too brief 13 minutes. The album cover is a psychedelic / sci-fi '70s photograph of a phallic burst of water shooting into an androgynous mouth that you may recognise as the cover of Ash Ra's "Correlations", borrowed here -with permission- from Storm, the man behind Hipgnosis, the design firm responsible for that image as well as many other legendary album covers (Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and tons more).

RealAudio clip: I Went And Had My Knives Sharpened
RealAudio clip: Re-Dial Meant Remember

'You have been suggested': This is the 1st of 3 in a series of what I Am Spoonbender call 'Hypnotic Trance Pamphlets' -- sort of an 'Oblique Strategies' for the memetic engineering mindset. Ten 2" by 3" cards unique to each series, imprinted with an array of provocative IAS word/image concepts, thoughts and musings enclosed in a hand-numbered red vellum envelope. Tres sublime. Each edition will be limited to 333 copies. When I snap my fingers, you will not snooze on this...

This is the 2nd series of 'Hypnotic Trance Pamphlets' by the Spoonbender Sleep Research Team (the printed-word annex of I Am Spoonbender). Enclosed in each metallic anthracite-hued paper, die-cut envelope are ten 2" by 3" cards (unique to each series), imprinted with an array of provocative IAS word/image concepts, thoughts and musings. Think a sort of 'Oblique Strategies' for the memetic-engineering mindset, although this set has some sociomagico narrative-generating possibilities... mix 'em up! Tres sublime! As with the 1st (and forthcoming 3rd edition), these are limited to 333 hand-numbered copies. Hypnotico! Arouseo! Awakeup!

After the tricky 3-sided-but-on-a-single-12" vinyl release, I Am Spoonbender offers the (one-sided) cd version of Teletwin. This 41-minute ep starts with an altered version of "Stopwatch Static" (here titled "Clocks Grow Old" to expand the meaning of the original), one of the avant-pop numbers from their 1998 album Sender / Receiver which then fades into "Infinity Limiter", a Steve Reich-ian tune for synths, which has become a staple in the I Am Spoonbender live 'Dream Set'. "Where Do Words Go?" at first appears to be a pretty straightforward cover of Berlin's new wave classic "The Metro" -- but upon closer inspection you realize that it is a 'tele-twin' of sorts, with completely different lyrics exactly set to the original melody! This makes IAS' version an imposter -- passing for the orginal, but actually completely different. Lyrically and conceptually, this now places the song entirely within the IAS ethos (illusion / reality, etc). Furthermore, the song eventually detours into layers of melodic deconstructions and time signature shakeups which somehow all reconvene back into the original song structure for its finish. For "Frozen Dog Futurist", IAS generate Heldon-esque synths with an obsessive bassline matching the disorienting punch of Dustin Donaldson's live drumming. This decomposes into digital glitch manipulated organ drones which could easily have origins in the soundtrack to the classic, freaky film Carnival Of Souls. That is followed by "October Blurred By", a hypnotic rhythmic track of flanged bass repeating a complex anti-funk groove that could be mistaken for a Tones On Tail out-take! "They Don't Have Mirrors" continues the aural relay with a caustic electronic wash which gives way to a blast of percussive math cluster bombs topped by slippery bass distortion before breaking down into thick recordings of steam engine horns with backwards digital skittering... and then erupts back into the aforementioned structure. For all of the plastic / new wave sheen that I Am Spoonbender applies to their songs, their structures may in fact be closer to This Heat or Funkstorung's experiments with fracturing electronica by shifting rhythmic elements in and out of atmospheric moods. Note: we have both the Canadian import version released on Mint Records which features extra-stylin' black jewelcase packaging as well as the domestic version released on Little Army Records.

MPEG stream: Clocks Grow Old
MPEG stream: They Don't Have Mirrors
MPEG stream: Frozen Dog Futurist

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

SORRY. The original IAS sticker design! 8"long by 1.5"wide vinyl sticker with silver band name and shiny black antique fork design on matte black background.

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

SORRY. 2" high by 5"wide vinyl sticker with white band name and silver logo on matte black background.

Limited edition 1.5" button: uniquely shiny chrome with black print of the phrase "I went to see I Am Spoonbender and all I got were memories."

Back in stock! An unexpected I Am Spoonbender object for your multidimensional delight and reflection. It's a limited edition 2.25" circular mirror! These were formerly only available from the group at their performances and have been long long gone. However, to commemorate the release of their latest album Buy Hidden Persuaders which has mirror themes running throughout, IAS have made a fresh batch. We've got a small quantity here at aQ. The back is imprinted in black with their logo and the phrase "this is a 2 way mirror" (Who is on the other side? And where are they watching from?) on the same sleekly unique chrome finish as their 1" buttons. Perfectly stylin' and perfectly handy.

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

SORRY. This black 50/50 t-shirt is graced by a white telephone handset design that glows in the dark! It's surrounded by thin red lines. Adult extra large only.