[ aquarius records — Electronic ]

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Showing results 2101 through 2150 of 5033.

Volume six in the notorious Tigerbeat singles series, Kid 606 teams up with Electric Company as Kevin Blechdom does "Long Thong Silver", a ridiculous cover of Sisqo's "Thong Song" that's just wrong-wr-wrong-wrong-wrong. I guess it was funny the first time,

Number eight in the Tigerbeat6 '$' series of limited split singles. Kid606 takes on two lesser known artists from across the globe, ASCDI (not to be confused with ASCII) and Printed Circuit (aka Claire Broadley, with releases on Irritant and Elefant as well as a remix disc on Catmobile).

The third installment of Shotgun Wedding, Violent Turd's strictly limited soundclash series. A speedy mash-up of a million hiphop songs along a brutal beat assault. Each of the three tracks has its own flavor with Cex's a bit gentler. It has moments of softness, subtlety and electronic contemplation spanning the length of the piece. And then bam! 606's "Gizm Collission" is a smashup of recycled techno trash and pieces of familiar hip-hop that hits you in the brain. I can almost hear a whistle. Whoah.

MPEG stream: Up From DaBassment
MPEG stream: DJ No Evil BaltiMix 6000

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SORRY. Getting out of a bad rut of post-rock releases, Fat Cat has started releasing the split 12" again. Kid 606 supplies white hot distortion to farting electronic breakbeats infused with layers of timestretched samples and digital manipulation of skipped cds (qualified as the additional production of Kid 606's alter-ego Disc). Christoph de Babalon, with his first release since the awesome 1997 DHR album "If You're Into It, I'm Out Of It," is still a master of the drone & bass aesthetic of washing out the archetypal Amen breaks within ominous bass pulsations and hoovering atmospheres.

The first in a series of proposed split 7" singles on the über-hip Tigerbeat6 label. Oakland based Kid 606 on the A, Japanese artist Com.a takes the B. High price to pay for a 7", but you're gonna have to pay a shitload more on eBay when these babies are gone...

Number seven in the unstoppable Tigerbeat6 '$' series of split singles. This time the Kid steps in the ring to take on Madrid's unstoppable DJ/Rupture, who if you recall, put out one of the best hardcore fuckstep/hiphop/ragga/noise mix discs last year. Watch for his upcoming "Minesweeper Mix CD" coming very soon... Limited, so act fast!

Volume four in the super limited $ series of split singles. Oaktown's Kid 606 once again plunders Ice Cube while Japan's Joseph Nothing runs around in ritalin fueled hip hop circles. Backwards.

Volume 5 in Tigerbeat6's "$" series. Kid 606 throws down another hip-hop slammer. Posterboys make a bunch of noise. Limited.

Third in the $ series of split 7"s on Tigerbeat6. One track each by Oakland's Kid 606 and Brooklyn's Timeblind. Limited to 750 copies, so act fast!

Huh? Aside from the fact that both artists have numbers in their names, this seems like quite the strange bedfellows sort of team up. The electronic mish mash mayhem of Kid 606 on one side of the 12" colored (pink or blue) vinyl, the bludgeoning stoner rock instrumentals of the Boston duo known as 5ive (or, to use their new, full name, 5ive's Continuum Research Project). Weird, eh? And that's just the idea. Of course, if you've heard the 2XH vs. HHR Vol. 1 compilation, which featured a bunch of grind/doom bands as well as drone and electronic acts (including the ubiquitous Kid 606) you know that the Hydra Head/Tortuga guys have an affinity for the Kid's brand of electronic fuckery in addition to sheer metallic heaviness. Hey, just like us! So, maybe it all makes sense. The two tracks from 5ive are in their usual awesomely sludgey bass and drums style, excellent. Then on the flip, there's three from Kid 606, the first of which features processed, distorted solo guitar and loops, almost as if he's making an effort to fit in with 5ive. Very cool actually. His next track is some Casio-beat goofiness, but that's then followed by a third track again with guitar, but spacier and more psychedelic. All in all, the Kid's tracks here are a lot more subdued and 'musical' than we expected.

The NY-based hiphop trio Dalek contributed rhymes to that excellent Techno Animal track "Dead Man's Curse", so it makes sense that Techno Anim's Kevin Martin and Justin Broadrick introduced Dalek to our own local darling Kid606. Thus, this excellent collaboration. As I've enthused in other reviews, Dalek's epic, incantatory vocal stylings are pushed right up against apocalyptic, doom-laden instrumentation: high pitched squealing feedback that sounds like air raid sirens, abandoned machine bleeps, paranoid dub-heavy beats, crashing cymbals and other live drumming, shimmering guitar. They are an apt match with Kid 606 and his bad boy I'll-mess-with-anything-and-make-it-kick-yr-ass style. So, as if the original "Ruin It" track that appears here isn't great enough -- all glitchy fuzzed out broken buried melody courtesy Kid606 -- then Dalek ups and makes it even more intense and dramatic and spooky. Really good, some of the best material from either artists I've heard yet. In addition to the two title tracks here, there's even a slow sort of My Bloody Valentine-ish slice of melancholia here, laden with murk and record static. That piece appears only on the cd ep, as does the closer track "satans hard drive" which Dalek constructed spontaneously from one of the Kid's busted hard disks. Yeah, it's noisy!

RealAudio clip: Ruin It, Ruin Them, Ruin Yourself then Ruin Me (original)
RealAudio clip: Ruin It, Ruin Them, Ruin Yourself then Ruin Me -- Dalek remix
RealAudio clip: Vague Recollection

Took a while for these to materialize from the man and his peeps, but better late than never we s'pose! Bay Area lone mouthpiece Kid Beyond takes his moniker seriously taking the art of beatboxing beyond the hip hop common place. And though he definitely isn't a youngster (when we saw him perfom live a while ago he resembled a life size Barney Rubble!), he keeps energies and spirits youthfully high and welcoming as he loops and layers his oral utterances and sputterances into a catchy grooviness. Who'd think a beatboxer would cover Portishead? Seems like an unlikely choice, but KB does it style and it totally works!

MPEG stream: Wandering Star
MPEG stream: Mothership (Mutaytor Dublab Remix)

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SORRY. Finally Montreal's Eric San releases his debut full length. You've probably all heard the story of how Kid Koala got signed to Ninjatune -- Eric picked up the Ninjatune guys for a Montreal show, played his legendary Scratchcratchratchatch tape in the van all sneaky-like, and everyone was blown away. (This tape, which Aquarius was the only store in the world to sell, is now long out of print but you can hear a similar set at betalounge.com.) Kid Koala is a turntablist with more than his share of storytelling, songwriting abilities, so the pieces are so much better than your everyday series of tricks. He and DJ Z-Trip are the ones who will be making the turntablist record that will bring the world together like a Coca Cola commerical. I'd like to teach the world to scratch. Or something. If you're already into turntablist stuff, you already know you should get this album, and if you're new to the genre, this is one of the best places to start. Honestly. The cd comes with a cd-rom video game (a vinyl version of Asteroids) and a supercute comic book. While supplies last, get a free Kid Koala sticker with purchase. Highly recommended!

If you've never heard Kid Koala before, be prepared for a seriously head spinning wild ride. Unlike most DJ's, Koala doesn't go for insane turntable pyrotechnics, or goofy classic rock / hip hop mash ups, instead he uses his nimble mixing skills to weave together elaborate journeys through sound, assembling new songs out of various scratchy vinyl fragments, or subtly tweaking old songs into warbly tripped out new ones. Rock riffs get skipped and stuttered into new groovier shapes, Koala accompanies himself on old jazz jams with various instruments "played" on another turntable, lots of soundtrack snippets and random voices get all tangled up into bizarre conversations, separate records get mixed into super psychedelic blowouts, blues jams are peppered with slippery turntable solos. The results are twisted and slightly off kilter, like viewing a turntable jam through a cracked funhouse mirror. Alternately super rocking, super groovy, crazy funky, or just chin scratchingly baffling. The most amazing thing is that Koala does all this stuff with just turntables and a reel to reel. This isn't some nerd with a computer, meticulously piecing together bits and pieces, this is one guy, a bunch of turntables, and some seriously mad skillz.

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You're already probably quite aware of how much we like French electronica artist Kid Loco, responsible for A Grand Love Story, one of the prettiest records ever to kick Air's ass. Here Kid Loco contributes to Studio k7's series of DJ sets (Andrea Parker, Kruder & Dorfmeister, DJ Cam, and Kemistry + Storm have also done DJ Kicks discs). And he does a wonderful job of constructing an at times melancholy & delicate, at times dramatic and upbeat set. Making appearances in the mix are such artists as Boards of Canada, Lisa Germano, DJ Vadim, Cinematic Orchestra, and Future Pilot AKA. This is one of those all around quality discs with such broad appeal that we sell one almost every time we play it. Highly recommended by Windy!

The industry standard for the remix album does not always make for easy listening; for example, a remix by Oval sequenced next to a remix by Cornelius can easily be an unlistenable juxtaposition. Fortunately, a few artists and labels have realized this blunder in reconstruction, and have compiled albums containing the the work of a SINGLE remixer. Kid Loco's collection is the second of this superior interpretation of the remix album that we have discovered (Funkstorung's being the first). Kid Loco's seductive neo-funk/trip-hop remix work melds the disparate sounds of The Pastels, Uriel, St. Etienne, Talvin Singh, Kat Onoma, High Llamas, Pulp, Gak Sato, Badmarsh + Shri, Mogwai, Cornu, and Tommy Hools. All of these tracks have been previously released; if you didn't get 'em the first time round, you can get 'em now.

Hmm. Kid Loco's newest full length is not as incandescently good as his A Grand Love Story, although it has its high points. The weed-smoking, ladies-lovin' French Kid Loco is writing more proper songs, as opposed to just sit-back-and-kick-it loungey

RealAudio clip: Lucy's Talking
RealAudio clip: A Little Bit of Soul

3 tracks off the proper Grand Love Story album (the double disc French import many of you have bought from us already), plus 3 remixes from the likes of St. Etienne, Gak Sato, Jim O'Rourke, Dmitri From Paris, and more. Why Atlantic released this thing domestically instead of the proper full album (which they have no plans to release despite its excellence) is a mystery to us. But for those who've never heard Kid Loco, this is a fine introduction to some of his best songs ("Love Me Sweet" and "She's My Lover").

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SORRY. Even more than his pal the Aphex Twin, Mike Paradinas likes the pretty and the melodic and that's why he crosses over so well. Mike's undergone several dozen facelifts since we last saw him as Kid Spatula, having the surgeon's putty knife mold him from �-Ziq to Kid Spatula then to Tusken Raiders and Jake Slazenger, then back to �-Ziq then to just Mike (as in Mike & Rich, a record with Aphex Twin) and back to �-Ziq... It seems that Paradinas' surgeon came pretty close to reclaiming the warped electro-thud of his brilliant 1996 "Spatula Freak" album. Squiggly electronica noise bleeding over fractured breakbeats, and occasional techno stomps makes for darn good listening for the most part. Those wacky fart & grunt noises remain, though, to prove what a big dork he still is.

You might have noticed the curious term "clown-hop" listed amongst the numerous micro-genres of our electronica section, and wondered what the fuck that is. Admittedly, "clown-hop" is a genre that really doesn't exist outside of the context of Mike Paradinas (and maybe Atom Heart), as I'm pretty sure the term was coined to describe the tongue in cheek collaboration between Paradinas (aka Mu-Ziq, Jake Slazenger, and Kid Spatula) and Richard James (aka The Aphex Twin). Regardless, the funny shoe still fits so why not make Paradinas wear the clumsy name...? Meast is the third album done under Paradinas' Kid Spatula moniker. Yes, irony is central to the album; but unlike most ironists who eschew quality control in their smug productions, Paradinas' productions always sound amazing. Meast is actually a collection of unreleased material from 1994-1998, a period of time which offered the best Paradinas material (e.g. Mu-Ziq's Tango 'n' Vectiv and Bluff Limbo). Meast obviously resembles much of that work wherein jazzy two-step drum & bass rhythms clashed with pseudo-electro breakbeat clunkiness, yet his sublime plinkity-plonk melodies managed to hold everything together. Within this body of work, Paradinas infused a much needed wit to the reigning IDM sounds of mid-90s electronica.

MPEG stream: Housewife
MPEG stream: Trike

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The minute we threw this one, we were totally captivated. The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble are a gloriously creepy crawly mutant jazz combo, equal parts DJ Shadow's Endtroducing, seventies horror movie soundtracks, late night jazz and super sluggish blown out trip hop. The KDJE originally formed to create live soundtracks for films by FM Murnau, Fritz Lang and the like, taking their inspiration from such unlikely sources as animators the Quay Brothers and artists Bosch, Picasso and Goya and boy does it show. A full on group, not one dude and his laptop, the KDJE unfurl haunting imaginary soundtracks, dark and dense, smoky and noir, everything in rich lustrous shades of black and grey, shuffling jazzy skitter underpins melancholy moaning horns bathed in reverb, pizzicato strings and minor key guitars hover and dart furtively, a drizzly rainy day jazz dirge, so creepy and mysterious and lovely, and that's just the first song. The rest of the record wanders similarly rainslicked streets, hat pulled down low, collar pulled way up, face obscured by shadows, the wet streets reflecting the orange grey glow of the streetlights, the buildings like totem poles of shadowy ghosts, the sky a blackish grey, turning the vibrant city into a lonely monochrome. This record is just so ominous and foreboding, so emotionally charged, so haunting and murky, imagine DJ Shadow collaborating with Tricky, mix in plenty of Raymond Chandler some dingy bars, some laid back jazz, some doomy dark ambience, some muted Boards Of Canada shuffle and thump, the whole thing drenched in late night ambience and warm warped M83 style whir and you'll have a rough idea. The ultimate soundtrack for late night lonely walks through the city.

MPEG stream: The Nothing Changes
MPEG stream: Pearls For Swine
RealAudio clip: Adaptation Of The Koto Song

Not sure why we didn't review the recent full length from Killing Sound, a trio of producers which includes aQ fave Vessel, but this remix of the opening track from that record has us thinking we better right that wrong, although here, that track gets reworked as something way more fierce and fucked up and brutal. The more chilled out original, here recast as some dark, dark jungle, all droned out ambience, brooding sonic malevolence, laced with haunting vox, that devolves into some seriously grimy, dubbed out drum and bass, all oozing low end throb, echo drenched skitter, the whole thing laced with all manner of creepy sound FX, what sounds like a power drill, stretched out into a keening tone, plenty of crunch and crumble, a slow build to a seriously bombastic finale, rib cage rattling bass and pounding beats, all wreathed in a swirl of grim atmospheric ambience. Killer!

MPEG stream: $ixxx Harmonie$ Version

This has quickly become THE chill out / going-to-sleep, warm inside rainy outside record of the last few weeks. So lush and lovely. Sort of in the vein of Kompakt's Pop Ambient series. Warm and muted, skittery rhythms and deep distant heroin house throbs beneath gently finger picked guitars, shuffling shifting chordal drones and drifting hazy melodies. The perfect mix of Gas's ambient shimmer, Oval's crystalline underwater flutter and Chain Reaction's propulsive thump, all set nicely into a strangely post rock framework. So good.

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Don't let the inappropriate band name fool you. We had visions of dorky noise rock, or maybe fuzzy garage pop goofs, when in fact, King Dude is something much more haunting and enthralling, initially lumped in with the whole witch house scene, due in part to releases on witch house labels like Disaro and Clan Destine, the sound of King Dude, aka TJ Cowgill, who also does time in Book Of Black Earth, is more a dark brooding, neo-folk, think Death In June, Blood Axis, Cult Of Youth, Sol Invictus, urgently strummed guitars, deep dramatic sung/spoken vocals, the vibe haunting and otherworldly, minor key and melancholy, occasionally strident and majestic, but more often moody and mournful, the lyrics full of blood and sky, earth and fire, death and the beyond, a ritualistic doom folk, channeling the seventies British acid folk of groups like Comus and Incredible String Band through the more modern industrial folk sound of the above mentioned groups. Female vocals add dreamy harmonies here and there, but for the most part, this is dark stripped down twang flecked doom/neo folk that should also appeal to fans of Woven Hand, Sixteen Horsepower, Hexvessel, Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat, Der Blutharsch and the like. This record collects the out of print My Beloved Ghost ep, the out of print Black Triangle 7", and tacks on one unreleased bonus track. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!

MPEG stream: My Beloved Ghost
MPEG stream: Harry Rag
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Fans of DJ Shadow, Boom Bip, that recent Unagi disc, QBert, Madlib, Ninjatune label, Dr Octagon and all Dan the Automator projects: you will looove this. It's my (Windy) new favorite record. Now, in another review this week I wasn't at all ashamed in admitting that I don't know the material of Peter Gabriel, but let's make it clear that I haven't heard any other MF Doom material, and now the excellence of this King Geedorah album is going to make me have to go backwards to hear Doom's Operation Doomsday and all the other stuff. Anyway, this is hip hop, some of the best I've heard in a long time. Each track has the de riguer single hook that loops throughout, which can sometimes threaten to bore, but only in lesser hands. With Doom the hooks -- often soundtrack-derived orchestral, swelling piano and string dramatics -- are delicious so sustaining them creates just the most luxurious comfortable groove. And he adds ample doses of applied audio grit -- sudden glitches, vinyl static, disjointed drums, vocal snippets interspersed with the skills of several guest MCs -- that just enhance the casually pulled together feel of the album. It's not messily done, mind you, just flows so well that it seems effortlessly catchy and kickass.

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Now on swank ass double vinyl! We were a little hesitant to check this out at first, even though we've loved all the tracks we've heard on various comps, because for some reason it was described as dark dubstep with "spoken word vocals". Spoken word? Ugh. Thankfully, one person's spoken word is another's woozy warbly mumbly crooning, 'spoken word' not in the crappy poetry slam sense, but as in brooding smoldering, slow motion toasting, totally reminiscent of classic Tricky, especially Nearly God, the music too, all hazy, and druggy and somnambulant, the beats, cough syrupy, gorgeous late night, rain soaked, glacial tarpit slow jam ballads. Totally dubbed out and minimal, the production hazy and gauzy and softly psychedelic. There's a new Massive Attack out this week too, and it's not bad, but listening to this, all we can think is this is how we wish Massive Attack sounded now. Every track is a bleary eyed, druggy drift through warped, slow melting downtempo dubscapes, the rhythms, clipped and skittery, horns moaning in the background, wheezing keyboards, clouds of record crackle, the vocals, both male and female, wreathed in reverb and echo, draped over the slowly undulating grooves, sultry and sexy, so darkly languorous, murky and mysterious, the beats thick and dense and heavy, all wrapped in a laid back and lysergic, grimly psychedelic atmosphere, which makes sense considering the man behind the King Midas Sound is none other than Kevin Martin, aka The Bug! WAY RECOMMENDED!

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Reboot Stereophonic is a new label with a mission to rescue from flea-market obscurity rare recordings that take Jewish identity into some surprising musical directions. What better, then, than this for one of their first releases? God Is A Moog is a double disc compiling the religious-themed compositions of Moog maestro Gershon Kingsley, of Perrey-Kingsley and "Pop Corn" fame. File under: Exotica/New Age/Judaism. And Rock Opera. Subtitled "The Electronic Prayers Of Gershon Kingsley", this mostly features music recorded circa 1968-1974, much of it never before released. Disc one starts with a five-song suite called "Maven On The Moog", featuring cantor Harold Orbach singing Yiddish traditional folk songs accompanied by Kingsley's space-age synth. Then it gets more far-out sound-wise with "The Jewish Experience" parts 1-5. As this collection progresses, you'll also hear wise words from the Torah gravely intoned over bleepy-bloopy Moog backing, a track with a Bruce Haack-style computerized voice ("I Have A Little Brain", made on Kingley's Macintosh in 1999) as well as much in the way of over-the-top rock opera a la Hair or Godspell, which is simultaneously the best and worst stuff here, perhaps. Kingsley's Moog-laden rock opera efforts ("Shabbat For Today" and "The Fifth Cup") are to be found on the second disc, which has got the most groove and weirdness and inadvertent laffs of the two. Some of these songs are just SOOOO kitschy and, well, let's just be honest: bad. Not the music so much, but some of the lyrics and singing are really terrible (though of course very well-meant). But it's in that so bad it's good, or well not good but darn funny category. Wait 'til you hear the song about the extinct dinosaurs, or the one about the ten plagues. Maybe the word we should use isn't terrible, it's awesome. Awesomely absurd. And sincere, you've gotta give it that. Moog for Moog's sake fans might prefer disc one (and/or yearn for an instrumental version of all of this), but anyone into unfettered goofball expressions of spiritual feeling, and Vietnam-era pop-prog silliness should be quite entertained by these tracks. Complete with its interesting and informative liner notes, this whole thing is definitely a cool and unusual addition to the discography of Moog-related recordings!

MPEG stream: The Jewish Experience Part 5
MPEG stream: L'cho Adonoy
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'60s Moog-pop pioneer Gershon Kingsley, of Perrey and Kingsley fame, made some fab music without partner Jean-Jacques Perrey as well -- such as his hit single "Pop Corn" which you'll find on this at-long-last reissued edition of Kingsley's 1969 masterpiece, the incredibly FUN album Music To Moog By. Along with snazzy originals like "Pop Corn" and energetic album-opener "Hey, Hey", Kingsley also gives the Moog instrumental treatment to Simon and Garfunkel's "Scarborough Fair" and both "Nowhere Man" and "Paperback Writer" by the Beatles. He also sneaks in some Beethoven too, and takes writing credit for a manic version of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star"! Sometimes his Moog sounds like a church organ, other times like the whip-whip-wap of a hip hop dj's turntable. It's a frothy, hip, pop-psychedelic space age 'electronica' album all right. Released the year man landed on the moon, you can imagine it spinning on the Apollo 11 hi-fi, had the astronauts been partying up there. Wonderful stuff.

MPEG stream: Hey, Hey
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Leyland Kirby's sprawling Sadly The Future Is No Longer What It Was collection, which compiled the vinyl double lps When We Parted My Heart Wanted To Die, When Did Our Dreams And Futures Drift So Far Apart, and Memories Live Longer Than Dreams, sounded exactly how those titles would lead you to believe: wistful, melancholy, a blurred sonic approximation of fading memories and tarnished dreams, of lost loves and long lonely nights, the sounds so achingly beautiful, a bleary collage of loops and field recordings and layered ambience, lush drones, and fragmented melodies, it easily became a unanimous favorite, and a record we couldn't keep in stock. We had a similar response to the Caretaker, an alter ego of Kirby's, who as the Caretaker explored a similarly obfuscated, antique filmstrip sound, but culled from slowed down jazz records, ancient chunks of vinyl reimagined, rendered in blurred and smeared streaks, and evoking a similarly emotional response. Thus we, and lots of you, became OBSESSED, needing to own everything Leyland Kirby or the Caretaker released, and always hankering for more. So now, after a protracted silence, Leyland Kirby returns, with yet another series, this one entitled Intrigue & Stuff, spread out over 4 separate lps, this being volume 1, and this time, with a whole different sound. And we mean WAY different. Gone is all the scratchy ambience, the warped and warbly loops, the haunting minor key pianos, the mysterious moody textures, the blurred bleary beauty, and in its place is a strange chunk of warped electronica. Yep. Just have a listener to opener "Video 2000", which plays like a super distorted, slightly fractured Boards Of Canada, or like some techno record slowed waaay down, and run through a handful of effects pedals with dying batteries, the sound are super distorted, buzzy and fuzzy, the beat drags, gloriously, the rhythm loping, the melodies sun dappled and glimmering, a sort of blown out lo-fi downtempo avant IDM, which leads directly into the bloopy bleepy moody drift of "Re-Record Not Fade Away" with majestic synth shimmer laid beneath a blooping alien melody. "Neon-Lit Atoms" is up next, and again, is super distorted, the beats crumbling and crunchy, even the synth sounds seem to crumble, the sound a bit like some strange DJ Screw jam, but here wreathed in swirling sci-fi synths, lush and Eighties sounding, but when wedded to the weird crunch and crumble, it becomes something else entirely, eventually blossoming into something that definitely borrows from the whole Carpenter / Goblin soundtrack sound, but then twists it all up into something fractured and fantastically fucked up. "Live For The Future, Long For The Past" was apparently used for a BBC documentary, which is a little surprising, because, while it is stately and elegant, majestic and moody, it's also dark, and droney, super distorted, and creepy as hell, the grinding distorted buzz that seems to wreath all the sounds make the vibe downright apocalyptic, the synths slightly new wave-y, but here stretched into long tense tones, and buried in thick layers of distorted sonic rubble, like the theme music for some futuristic sporting event, recorded and stored on some way too fragile media, only to be dug up hundreds of years later and played back in all it's decayed and nearly destroyed glory, seeming to slowly fall apart as it plays. "Low Entropy" sounds like an interlude of sorts, a descending plink plonk piano melody coupled with a blown out ultra distorted counter melody, the two in a woozy, tangled otherworldly harmony, which finally leads into the final track, "Ruined Visions", which is perhaps a reinterpretation of a John Denver song, but regardless, is a fantastically abject chunk of slo-mo, cough syrup synth, dreamdrone drag, the sounds seeming to melt and ooze and crumble and fracture, the melodies wavery and woozy, the main melody so mournful and melancholic, but all the sounds slightly off kilter, a little bit witch house-y, its a gloriously warped and druggy electro-ballad, a chopped and screwed synthscape, stretched into streaks and warbles, and winding down like a battery of synths being played on some old, slowly dying Victrola. Ultra minimal packaging, plain black big-hole disco style 12" sleeve, and of course, very very limited.

MPEG stream: Video 2000
MPEG stream: Live For The Future, Long For The Past

As we mentioned in the review of volume one of Leyland Kirby's new four part series Intrigue & Stuff, his work has become a bit of an obsession for us around, here, and from what we can gather, many of you out there. His sprawling Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was collection was and is definitely a unanimous aQ favorite. And don't even get us started on The Caretaker, his hauntological mixtapes of crackly old jazz records, mysterious, haunting and otherwordly sonic studies on memory and loss. So it's not surprising that the first volume of this new series threw us for a bit of a loop. But hell, if there's anybody you SHOULD expect the unexpected from, it's Kirby. Thus we grew to love Intrigue & Stuff volume 1, which was in fact a collection of twisted murky electronics, fractured reimagined IDM, crumbling synth shimmer, not to mention some grinding distorted buzz and some dreamy droned out electro warble, and just from the above descriptions, you begin to realize that maybe it wasn't so sonically out of character after all. But then what to expect from the second volume? Surely not more of the same we imagined. And in fact, it's definitely not, it's more of a return to the sound we imagine most folks were hoping for with volume one, sonic decay, warped slo-mo samples, crumbling distortion, everything woozy and warped. This time, separated into just three tracks, the shortest a little over 4 minutes, the longest nearly 20, Kirby slips back into his hauntological guise, with the opening track, the provocatively titled "Eventually, It Eats Your Lungs", unfurling as a super distorted slo-mo soulful creep, a deep crooned vocal suspended in fields of churning staticky buzz, of blurred chordal shimmer, the sounds all wreathed in effects, and crumbling from the speakers, it's almost like a Caretaker remix of some Burial track, the same sort of creepy murky soul, the vibe is so mysterious and hauntingly sinister, laced with super cinematic cues, it's WAY too short at 12 minutes, this is the sort of thing we could listen to FOREVER, and found ourselves wishing Kirby had stretched that track into a whole record. The relatively brief "Speeded Up Slow Motion" sort of sounds exactly like the title implies, a dizzying spatial shimmer, with pulses of distorted ambience, careening back and forth between the left and right stereo fields, while in the background, new agey melodies tinkle and chime, and as amazing as this one sounds, we definitely could not handle a whole record of this. But in fact, it seems to be a bit of a palate cleanser, preparing our ears for the epic sprawl of the final track, "Complex Expedition", which begins with a long slow drift, wreathed in a haze of hushed static, driven by subtle muted low end pulsations, and rife with bits of abstract dub, sounding a little like some super ambient abstract version of Pole, every sound wrapped in echo and sent drifting into the ether, it's not until about 5 minutes in, that the main melody surfaces, a playful darkly distorted bit of carnivalesque bleep and bloop, that quickly turns sinister, and minor key, and we're in definite Goblin territory, the track slips back into the initial ultra minimal drift, and the sound slowly and dreamily slips back and forth, that second melody returning, but each time more greyed out and grim, until finally the process seems to reverse itself, and the track seems to emerge from darkness, luxuriating in the light, only to moments later disappear into darkness for good. Fantastic, of course, and already we're hankering for volume three...

MPEG stream: Eventually, It Eats Your Lungs
MPEG stream: Speeded Up Slow Motion
MPEG stream: Complex Expedition

Richard H. Kirk's lengthy career - including the anti-funk industrial production of Cabaret Voltaire to the innovative bleep techno of Tricky Disco - has been dominated by the continuous and often critical investigation of the beat. 'LoopStatic' is no different, as a collection of lengthy club-friendly techno thumpers with Giorgio Moroder-esque synthetic arrpegiations, acid squiggliness, and anthemic four-on-the-floor drum production. So Mr. Kirk, if the usage of the beat had been a critique of a variety of cultural control mechanisms in the 80s, what does it mean now? Somehow disco made under the ghost of Burroughs is supposed to have 'meaning.' It may have a groovy beat, but it's just disco.

How can you resist a band name like Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat? And with a name like that, what can one possibly expect musically? Well, surprisingly the music here manages to conjure up the same sort of dark confusional forboding that the name hints at. Forbidden? Taboo? Some sort of alchemical majick? Some sort of witchy incantation? Why else would one...um, well you know. On If The Sky Falls, We Shall Catch Larks, KTAOABC, the project of a young Belgian musician and instrument builder named Stef Heeren, unfurls a gorgeously dark, mesmerizing chunk of minimal, melodic, brooding, lilting and lovely doom folk. Harrowing and brooding, falling somewhere between the apocalyptic ur-folk of Current 93, the rickety, swampy biblical dirge of Woven Hand, the brooding acoustic bombast of later Swans, seventies pagan psych-folk (Comus, Incredible String Band, etc.) and even some of the strident prostletyzing of New Model Army. Very spare in its instrumentation and structure, aggressively strummed acoustic guitars underpinning ultra dramatic and slightly venomous vocals, occasional bells and strings and piano, subtle cooing background vocals, all very repetitive and hypnotic, churning in a thick fog of emotional turmoil and spiritual unease. Dark and droning, intense and intensely fervent, slipping from loose slithery balladeering to fiery and impassioned swells of soul-laid-bare sermonizing. Really quite amazing. Fans of C93, Nick Cave, Death In June, Comus, Swans, Der Blutharsch, Richard Youngs, Woven Hand and 16HP will certainly swoon, but this should definitely appeal to fans of all things emotional and dark, folky and forboding. Beautifully packaged in a minimally screenprinted fold over cardboard sleeve.

MPEG stream: Nihil, As In Nihilism
MPEG stream: Almost, Silver

After a handful of 12" singles and compilation appearances, "Wake Up" is the much anticipated debut full length from the Cologne-based duo Kitbuilders. Alongside American outfits like Adult. and Fischerspooner, Kitbuilders are at the forefront of the

RealAudio clip: Wake Up
RealAudio clip: Disease

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

SORRY. Klangstabil's "Gioco Bambino" finds the duo only using a Nintendo Gameboy with an additional cartridge and a few simple effect boxes. Not at all a whimsical affair, the resulting paranoid electronica is full of increasingly complex post-techno arppegiations, made of those simplistic Nintendo tones and clipped rhythmic stutters. Released on Conrad Schnitzler's Plate Lunch records, but wouldn't be out of place on Raster or 12k.

About a couple years too late to be fresh, this is an album of downtempo electronica that is strikingly like Boards of Canada -- in that the lush bass beats impart melody while above it the melancholy synths and effects cavort in minor key introspectiveness.

RealAudio clip: Accent

Klimek might just be our favorite practitioner of this known as Pop Ambient. The swirl and shimmer of chill out techno music without the beats. Leaving just gorgeous gaseous whirls of sound that soothe and mesmerize, sprawling expanses of glistening, glimmering gauzy soft focus ambient dreampop. Most aQ customers are already hip to the whole Pop Ambient thing, we sell tons of the Kompakt Pop Ambient comps, and those collections do tend to work well as albums, just not compilations, the various artists' sonic likemindedness coming through as a series of songs that blend and mesh into each other, offering a woozy late night dreamlike journey through sound. But there are serious limitations to what a compilation can offer. It's a series of brief glimpses into these sonic worlds the artists create, and more often than not, we want to crawl in and get lost. The recent record from The Field is a great example, maybe the best ambient techno release since the last Gas record, dreamy and bleary and fuzzy sounds wrapped around haunting loops and skipping beats. Not so much heroin house as, as well, maybe ecstasy house. Like laying on dewy grass and watching fluffy white clouds make strange shapes in a cobalt blue sky. But when the sun sets, and the moon comes over the trees, the stars twinkling, that's when Klimek steps in, our own sonic sandman, sprinkling his gritty, granular pixie dust into our ears, sending us drifting into the netherworld between this world and the world of dreams. While we've loved pretty much every Klimek record, this new one might be the darkest, and best yet. A much bigger focus on the guitar, and consequently the song. Bits of tangled picking, or softly strummed chords, are wreathed in digital buzz, or chopped up and sent skittering like rocks skipping across a pond. The sound is almost more Morr music than Kompakt (which makes sense since this one is NOT on Kompakt). More like one of those pop bands who dip their minor key minimalism in a swirling cauldron of strange hiss and warm thick reverb. But unlike much of that music, the sound here is quite dark, ominous and swirling, tense and intense, moody and cinematic. The idea behind this disc is pretty unique as well. Each song dedicated to two of Klimek's idols, not always musical, and the two influences don't always seem compatible. But somehow they end up sounding pretty perfect. The source sounds often culled from the works of one or both of the influences. The track dedicated to Mark Hollis and Giacinto Scelsi, takes just the opening chord from one of Hollis's songs, and stretches and smears it into a gauzy midnight drift, soft and sweetly shimmery. The track dedicated to Eugene Chadborne and Henry Kaiser, is the most obtuse, weird little squalls of stuttery guitar and glitchy electronic FX, but they are somehow woven into something warm and beautiful, the edges smoothed, with only brief flashes of the gnarled riffage beneath. Other tracks are based on / influenced by artists as varied as Kurt Kirkwood, Steven Spielberg, Marvin Gaye and Michael Gira (to name just the ones we've heard of), but those influences are just that, and this isn't any sort of plunderphonic experiment, it's merely Klimek recognizing the artists who have shaped his sonic worldview, and offering up a tribute, as abstract and hazy as that tribute might be. Absolutely stunning.

MPEG stream: For Jim Hall & Kurt Kirkwood
MPEG stream: For Eugene Chadborne & Henry Kaiser
MPEG stream: For Mark Hollis & Giacinto Scelsi

More absolutely blissy pop ambient lovliness!

None of us here really like "techno" all that much. That's why we were always so attracted to the mutant strains of techno that manage to turn what often to us seems to be vapid, plastic dance music into cool and creepy, murky weirdness. Chain Reaction's brand of so-called "heroin house" for one. And of course Kompakt's beloved minimal thump. That German label's output was however always really close to being just straight up four on the floor house music, but somehow they always found a way to be sonically creative enough to turn their techno into something new and exciting. And then something weird started happening. The folks at Kompakt called it "pop ambient", a new strain of techno that removed the beat from the equation entirely, relying more on thick organic swells and crystalline melodies than beats. Occasionally, those melodies would fragment and shift and loop and form abstract almost-rhythms, but more often than not, notes and chords would just hover, suspended in an ambient ether, humming and vibrating, shimmering and buzzing. Such is the case with this new Klimek record (an artist who had a track on the Pop Ambient 2004 compilation we also made Record Of The Week a little while back). Spare and sparse and elegently gorgeous. The source material sounds like it must be a guitar. But it's as if the notes were extracted one at a time from the guitar. No strumming or fingerpicking. Just the timbre of a steel string vibrating and disturbing the molecules around it. Removed from its natural setting, these notes sound completely alien, althought they remain rich and organic. Klimek takes these notes and drops them delicately into a warm sonic bath, letting them settle next to complimentary notes, some notes dissolving into nothingness, or disturbing the tranquil stillness, sending off gradually decaying sonic ripples. Imagine the abstract glitch-guitar technique of Fennesz, the underwater ambience of Oval, the quiet parts by your favorite post-rock band, all stretched out, melodies pulled apart until, the notes are almost far enough apart that the melody that birthed it is just a shadowy memeory, a sonic trace, leaving a gorgeous and shimmery landscape of sonorous languor.

MPEG stream: Milk (edit)
MPEG stream: Honey (edit)
MPEG stream: (Sun)rise (edit)

Washed out, hazy, dreamy, shimmery, warm, droney, otherworldly, gauzy, ethereal, all perfectly describe a microgenre we've come to love, called simply Pop Ambient. A techno subgenre, that essentially removed the beats from electronic music, leaving just the shadows, the outlines, the colors, loosed from the stricture of rhythm (for the most part), those colors and moods and textures are free to seep and bleed and drift and vaporize, into whirring soft focus streaks of blurred, almost new age-y ambience. A sound that various other music makers have definitely referenced, Jeck, Tim Hecker, the Fun Years, anyone creating haunting drone music or textured minimalism, will no doubt find themselves drifting into a certain sort of pop ambience. But it seems, that pop ambience has a certain warmth, not quite sunshine-y, but definitely a glow, the imbues the majority of that music with a dreamlike luminescence. While the other folks traffic in something much darker, and while their sound may touch on pop ambience, it remains in the realm of the black, the grey, the sonic underworld. Weirdly enough, we do find ourselves wondering about a pop ambience that was, well, less glowing, more ominous, something darker and more sinister, that could somehow remain ambient pop, without slipping into something else, into dronemusic, or some sort of minimal noisemusic. Strange that it would come from Klimek, who is responsible for some of the dreamiest prettiest pop ambient music we've heard, but Movies Is Magic, Klimek's 'film music' record, is in fact that rare beast, a gorgeous slab of pop ambience, that seethes with tension and emotion and drama, sure it shimmers and glistens, but it also creeps and hums ominously, drones are layered and pulled taut, melodies are minor key and are wrapped around looped cycling strings, field recordings, voices, organic instruments, all woven into Klimek's constantly mutating noir soundscape. Gorgeous and haunting, these tracks evoke everyone from Bohren, to Autechre, Philip Jeck to Pole,�Barry Adamson to Oval, this record would be a perfect fit for Kompakt if it weren't so dark, or Chain Reaction if there were some beats, instead, it exists in some strange rain soaked constant midnight nether region, the pop dialed way back, as is the ambience, this is anything but placid, or calm, this music is alive, crackling with dark energy, tense, and intense, very evocative and textural and moody. The songs are quite varied, but work perfectly together as a whole. Dark moaning horns surface here and there, Bernard Herrmann strings everywhere, the occasional skittery snare, rubbery bass, everything woven and smeared and layered, woozy and dreamlike, a few of the tracks sound all rural, a bit Morricone-ish and Western, subtly twangy with reverbed harmonica, others drift into flute flecked almost Kitaro sounding new age-y flutter, beneath a murmur of rainfall,�disembodied reverbed voices, murky percussion, and hazy looped melodies. Here and there, the record does get all dubby, with little synth stabs, and careening not-quite beats, all wrapped in whir, and exuding a serious sonic import, sometimes sounding almost sinister, but just as often pulling back into something much more melodic and mysterious, straddling the line between lush drift and blackened beauty. Movies Is Magic is our new late night chill out drift off soundtrack, and should certainly appeal to folks who like us maybe always fantasized about a little darkness in their ambient drift. And folks into dark drone music, black ambience, and soundtrack music, might find this the perfect gateway to the fuzzy dreamy drifty world of pop ambience.

MPEG stream: Abyss of Anxiety (Unfolding the Magic)
MPEG stream: Exposed to Life In It's Brutal Meaninglessness
MPEG stream: Exploding Unbearable Desires
MPEG stream: Tears of Happiness (Dismissed Into Mundanity)

This former Record Of The Week, now available on vinyl, with swank new cover art... Washed out, hazy, dreamy, shimmery, warm, droney, otherworldly, gauzy, ethereal, all perfectly describe a microgenre we've come to love, called simply Pop Ambient. A techno subgenre, that essentially removed the beats from electronic music, leaving just the shadows, the outlines, the colors, loosed from the stricture of rhythm (for the most part), those colors and moods and textures are free to seep and bleed and drift and vaporize, into whirring soft focus streaks of blurred, almost new age-y ambience. A sound that various other music makers have definitely referenced, Jeck, Tim Hecker, the Fun Years, anyone creating haunting drone music or textured minimalism, will no doubt find themselves drifting into a certain sort of pop ambience. But it seems, that pop ambience has a certain warmth, not quite sunshine-y, but definitely a glow, the imbues the majority of that music with a dreamlike luminescence. While the other folks traffic in something much darker, and while their sound may touch on pop ambience, it remains in the realm of the black, the grey, the sonic underworld. Weirdly enough, we do find ourselves wondering about a pop ambience that was, well, less glowing, more ominous, something darker and more sinister, that could somehow remain ambient pop, without slipping into something else, into dronemusic, or some sort of minimal noisemusic. Strange that it would come from Klimek, who is responsible for some of the dreamiest prettiest pop ambient music we've heard, but Movies Is Magic, Klimek's 'film music' record, is in fact that rare beast, a gorgeous slab of pop ambience, that seethes with tension and emotion and drama, sure it shimmers and glistens, but it also creeps and hums ominously, drones are layered and pulled taut, melodies are minor key and are wrapped around looped cycling strings, field recordings, voices, organic instruments, all woven into Klimek's constantly mutating noir soundscape. Gorgeous and haunting, these tracks evoke everyone from Bohren, to Autechre, Philip Jeck to Pole,�Barry Adamson to Oval, this record would be a perfect fit for Kompakt if it weren't so dark, or Chain Reaction if there were some beats, instead, it exists in some strange rain soaked constant midnight nether region, the pop dialed way back, as is the ambience, this is anything but placid, or calm, this music is alive, crackling with dark energy, tense, and intense, very evocative and textural and moody. The songs are quite varied, but work perfectly together as a whole. Dark moaning horns surface here and there, Bernard Herrmann strings everywhere, the occasional skittery snare, rubbery bass, everything woven and smeared and layered, woozy and dreamlike, a few of the tracks sound all rural, a bit Morricone-ish and Western, subtly twangy with reverbed harmonica, others drift into flute flecked almost Kitaro sounding new age-y flutter, beneath a murmur of rainfall,�disembodied reverbed voices, murky percussion, and hazy looped melodies. Here and there, the record does get all dubby, with little synth stabs, and careening not-quite beats, all wrapped in whir, and exuding a serious sonic import, sometimes sounding almost sinister, but just as often pulling back into something much more melodic and mysterious, straddling the line between lush drift and blackened beauty. Movies Is Magic is our new late night chill out drift off soundtrack, and should certainly appeal to folks who like us maybe always fantasized about a little darkness in their ambient drift. And folks into dark drone music, black ambience, and soundtrack music, might find this the perfect gateway to the fuzzy dreamy drifty world of pop ambience.

MPEG stream: Abyss of Anxiety (Unfolding the Magic)
MPEG stream: Exposed to Life In It's Brutal Meaninglessness
MPEG stream: Exploding Unbearable Desires
MPEG stream: Tears of Happiness (Dismissed Into Mundanity)

There are two facets to the Kompakt sound. The thump thump thump house music side, and the shimmery blissed out 'pop ambient' side. We definitely much favor the the sleepy glistening swoonscapes that define that warm welcoming pop ambient sound (although there are a few Kompakt records where the house beats are just murky and muted enough that the resulting Heroin House sound pushes all those same buttons) and no one does it better than Klimek. Responsible for maybe the defining pop ambient track "Milk And Honey", the perfect blend of electronic drones and subtle simple indie melodies, Music To Fall Asleep continues in a similar direction, exploring post-Eno ambience, and offering up a huge sleepy swirl of sound, that is, duh, perfect to fall asleep to. Warm thick whirls of dense droning synths ebb and flow like a midnight tide, guitars are chopped up and stuttered into smooth sleepy smears, like some sweet slab of indie rock left out in the sun so long it melts into a big puddle, rich chords shimmer into vast expanses of reverb and delay, each melody slowly developing over minutes instead of seconds. What else can we say? This is gorgeous and gentle, delicate and dreamlike, sun dappled and absolutely perfect. Essential for fans of all things pop ambient, and something to hold you over until the next Gas record. And like we even need to say it again, the perfect drifting off to sleep record!

MPEG stream: Pathways To Work
MPEG stream: Music To Fall Asleep To

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

SORRY. "Pre-sampler plunderphonics" from this German duo, first released on LP in '85 by Ata-Tak and now reissued on cd as a Japanese import. Kurt "Pyrolator" Dahlke played in the amazing Der Plan band of new-wave electro weirdness. This is fun stuff in a similar vein, and you won't believe the '80s Buck Rogers recording studio equipment depicted on the inside. With bonus tracks.

A second generation krautrock anomaly created in 1985, Home-Taping is Killing Music is the first and only collaborative lp by Pyrolator (Ata Tak label operative and member of Der Plan) and tape loop tinkerer Arnd Kai Klosowski, now reissued by the always reliable German electronic resurrectionists Bureau B. Using the then burgeoning technology of sampling, this duo created raw sound experiments and whimsical almost Dada-ish musical forms and rhythms, spliced from prerecorded tapes. Not sure if it's a response or parallel to what hip-hop producers like Double Dee and Steinski were doing, but it seems like a precursor to the sample-based dance tracks groups like Colourbox and M.A.R.R.S would mine heavily just a couple of years after this. The Pyrolator / Klosowski material, though, is far weirder, as anyone familiar with Der Plan would expect! Sometimes sounding like the tropical groove of Can's Flow Motion mixed with bits of Penguin Cafe Orchestra colonial exotica and Holger Czukay style song-craft, this may be too odd of a record for the casual listener. But for those who dig the strange and eccentric with the technically innovative, a very cool and unique release. (FYI, the vinyl version includes the cd with it.)

MPEG stream: Osterreich
MPEG stream: Hammond

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

SORRY. Long-awaited reissue of the third and last "Kluster with a K" album from 1971, when the "Cluster with C" duo of Moebius and Roedelius was a trio with Conrad Schnitzler, making pioneering, prehistoric ambient/industrial/ electronica. And, unlike the first two Kluster records, there's no German spoken religious narrative included (and it's plenty spooky without it).