Matmos have that very rare and special talent of being able to turn endless creativity and playful spirit into something transcendental. While much of the press they get ends up being about their unique methods and approaches to gathering sounds (plastic surgery, semen, polish trains, rats, etc.) or the famous folks they have worked with (Bjork, Kronos Quartet, Terry Riley, etc.) the truth is that ultimately it's the strength of their varied albums and engaging live performances that have made them one of the best and most compelling music makers of the last decade.
Supreme Balloon finds Matmos stripped down in a sense as they put their contact mic's away and decided to make a record made solely with synthesizers and samplers, and the results are pretty damn stunning! Showing that they could give the DFA camp a tutorial if asked ("Polychords"), keeping their playful spirit on high with their Switched on Matmos take on "Les Folies Francaises" as well as reaching outer orbits of pure psychedelic bliss on the 24 minute title track. They use their wide range of synthesizers to create a kraut-like sensation with bursts of fluorescence and a sense of adventure and eye on the multicolor sky that is so damn hard to resist. Matmos manage to find the hidden smile in Klaus Schulze's stern visage, the relics of a Tangerine Dream with a half dose of ecstasy we always wished was out there somewhere. Once again they've proven that you can be smart without being stiff, playful without being dumb. Supreme Balloon will be a definite contender for record of the year!
(P.S., vinyl fans should note that the double-LP version of this record comes with three extra tracks including a great collaboration with Terry Riley titled "The Hashish Master"!)
If Drew Daniel got to indulge his big-booty-beach-party perversions on the Soft Pink Truth album, then Martin Schmidt, who is the other half of Matmos duo, should have the opportunity to elaborate his own musical virtues and vices. That said, it would be too easy to qualify "The Civil War" as the Martin record; but there are many more than a few similarities between this album and the previous outing "The West," Matmos' historically coded album which Matmos has publicly announced as being masterminded by Martin. Again, Matmos and their comrades in arms (J Lesser, Blevin Blechtum, Keith Fullerton Whitman, David Grubbs, Mark Lightcap, and others) wield some atypical instruments -- an emergency alarm system, blood, a rabbit pelt, conductive jelly, and an ultrasonic doppler flow detector (huh?); but what is most surprising about "The Civil War" is its dramatic break from the directions of contemporary electronica. Structurally, this album is a pastiche of jaunty Renaissance jigs, fife and drum marches, medieval madrigals for hurdy gurdy, and rustic folk. Yet, smeared across the surfaces of these archaic musics are digital pixels, microtonal glissandos, misplaced electronic beats, and intrusive glitches. This is an overtly clever take on appropriation, never allowing an exact mimesis of the older forms, rather Matmos position the old and the new in a context of dislocation. At their best, perhaps on "The Struggle Against Unreality Begins," Matmos reconstitutes the alchemy of Coil during their "Horse Rotovator" period, where the anarchronistic references collapse into a monstrous dirge with sly glances toward the carnivalesque.
Those Bjork fans who love her swansongs and wish to indulge in the genius of her technicians must be warned that "The Civil War" is a willfully difficult listen. But those adventurous listeners will certainly be delighted by the collision of state of the art electronics and the music of yesteryear.
San Francisco's darling electronic conceptualists Matmos have crafted an ambitious collection of audio portraits for their 6th full album, allowing their baroque sampling tricknology to articulate the metaphors in mapping out the complexities of each of the portraits. The collection of audio portraits represents the inspiration pantheon for Matmos, ranging from the ivory tower of academia to far reaches of underground culture. Hence, there's analytical philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, the scabrous feminist Valarie Solanas, New York house legend Larry Levan, Germs' frontman Darby Crash, homoerotic photographer James Bidgood, eccentric producer Joe Meek, gay chronicler Boyd McDonald, countercultural godfather William S. Burroughs, and noir-thriller novelist Patricia Highsmith. Matmos' work has always been a cavalcade of electro-acoustic stunts directed within a studied and adventurous reading of contemporary electronica tinged with comedic overtones, ranging from black humour to slapstick antics. The Rose Has Teeth In The Mouth Of A Beast is no different, romping through wah-wah splattered porno funk, mutant disco beats clipped with diva-house vocals, noirish concrete-collages, and tracks literally wrapped in semen stained sheets. As Matmos deconstructs and compresses the dense histories of each of their portrait subjects into the context of a six to ten minute electronica tracks, it's the details that Matmos amass that give each of their portraits such charm and pleasure. Very well done, indeed!
At long last, possibly our favorite Matmos record ever is back in print! The West is by far the most sprawling and highway ready record in their illustrious back catalog. With all the well deserved attention they've received over the years for their innovative methods and countless collaborations one thing that's often overlooked is how well their records tend to predict and predate what's about to come floating up from the musical underground. Recorded and released a few years before the big new weird America/freak folk movement took off and before everyone was using laptops to create folktronica, Matmos made this amazing album that perfectly melds their leftfield electronic roots with spacious and trance inducing guitar to create the kind of record you would imagine might have been made if Henry Flynt and Jim O'Rourke were to collaborate or if Christian Fennesz got to twist knobs while John Fahey was playing in one of his most exploratory moments. With a long list of guests including J. Lesser and David Pajo (Slint, Papa M) on board for the record, Drew & Martin once again demonstrate how great they are at letting others into their world and being open to where the sounds will take them while still maintaining a distinct vision.
The West is for sure one of our favorite roadtrip records of all time. "Sun on 5 at 152" really does sound exactly how it feels when the sun is blasting through your dirty windshield and you can't really see what's ahead but you keep your foot on the pedal and just follow the road to wherever it may lead you. While no two Matmos records are alike The West probably finds its most kindred spirit in The Civil War, another Matmos record that proves there is much more to these great music makers then simply synths and samples. No matter what they create, soul seeps richly through their fractured sounds and in our opinion The West may be their most soulful, satisfying and resonating release EVER. Highly recommended!
This is one of our unanimous store favorites, a very accesible, murky electronic record inspired by electro and the sounds of hair, breathing and Polish trains. Recommended without reservation, this is some of the best of the bunch.
This limited edition collection of live material from Matmos with J Lesser (and a couple of guests) exposes the improvisational ability of this San Francisco electronica duo (or trio if you count Lesser) who are mostly reknowned for their transmutation of
Matmos wanted to keep this a limited release, only selling these to a handful of shops across the globe. While not quite exclusive to Aquarius, this album isn't terribly likely to be showing up at many other shops! Act fast!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Love Is Real, the last record from warped lo-fi popsmith John Maus, is an all time aQ favorite, a dizzying trip into some alternate reality FM radio, where the Cure recorded on answering machines, OMD crafted pop hits on broken tape decks and malfunctioning 4 tracks, a cosmic beat laden dream pop drug trip that managed to be as catchy and irresistible as it was baffling and totally and insanely demented.
Needless to say, we were super excited to discover there was a new John Maus record, the strangely titled We Must Become The Pitiless Censors Of Ourselves, a record that got even stranger when we discovered there was a song called "Cop Killer" on it. Naturally we assumed it was a cover of Body Count's infamous banned jam, so we played that track first, and besides being surprised that it was in fact an original, we also ended up being totally blown away by what might be the sweetest, most dreamily twisted John Maus track EVER.
A broody, almost torch songy ballad, all woozy synths, and big eighties drums, Maus delivering the bizarrely provocative lyrics in his best warm velvety croon: "Cop killer, cop killer, Let's kill the cops tonight, kiiiiiiill them, cop killer, kill every cop in sight", and then the delirious refrain "Against the law" repeated over and over in a tangled storm of intense pulsing synths. The sound lush and explosive, thick and softly blown out, a serious shot across Ariel Pink's bow, a definite challenge for the warped lysergic lo-fi pop crown, a challenge that's gonna be tough to answer. Especially considering that the rest of the record, is just as good, if not as immediately catchy. But catchy it is. "Matter Of Fact" sounds like Maus channeling Devo through his cracked eighties FM pop filter, with some equally baffling lyrics ("Pussy is not the matter of fact"), and some gorgeous hazy synth ambience. "Streetlight" is total eighties new wave pop with the delay and echo effects cranked, the vocals careening wildly through dubbed out clouds of delay, while underneath synths pulse and rhythms groove. "Quantum Leap" is haunting and gorgeously gloomy, Maus the consummate crooner, his deep dramatic vocals bobbing atop thick bouncy basslines, handclap percussion, and lots of swirling sonic murk. "...And The Rain" is another darkly dramatic dream pop doom synth dirge, all rainy late night ambience, and again cloaked in thick swirls of soft focus distortion and blurred echoey shimmer, every track seeming to constantly grow more and more washed out and effects drenched, constantly on the verge of total collapse, but somehow, the more tripped out and damaged they sound, the more pretty and poppy and dreamy they become, a fantastically fractured collection of twisted outsider gloom pop that really has no equal. About as close to a perfect pop record as Maus is liable to get, assuming you like your pop buried in buzz and all blurry and druggy and woozy and warped. Which we most definitely DO.
I'm pretty sure that this is Thomas P. Brinkmann, although no information can be found on the record inspite of an etching with Pole and Din (it sound like neither) scrawled on the run-out groove. Yet the metronomic techno punctuated by a disjointed looping sample of a jazz riff has all the signifiers that Tom is the man behind this one. Fans of Plastikman and Chain Reaction should take note!
Somehow this is the very first full length from Michael Mayer we've reviewed, although we've long been fans, and have dug his tracks on a bunch of the Kompakt total compilations. But this new one is a doozy, don't let the goofy title fool you. The record starts out super dark and atmospheric, thick swirls of textured shimmer, haunting melodies, everything wreathed in a druggy haze, the sound less Kompakt techno, heck, even less Pop Ambient, and more sort of electronic chamber music / drone folk, super soundtracky and cinematic, the opening track sounds like it could have been plucked straight out of the opening credits of some mysterious foreign art film. The second track starts out similarly, before dropping a big beat, into the almost Bernard Hermann sounding soundscape below, but it makes for a heady combo, the gauzy soundtracky backdrop infusing the beat with some serious pathos, and then Mayer adds in all sorts of electronics, and eventually adds female voices, blurred into an angelic smear, the sound blossoming into something strangely groovy and weirdly funky, but still dark and moody.
Not all of the record is so cinematic, with the sound dipping into more straight ahead Kompakt style techno, or retro Goblin / Carpenter style synth grooves, but throughout the record, Mayer continues to return to that murky mysterious soundcaping of those first few tracks, like on "Roses", where he samples some old folk song, and stretches the final word of the lyric into a gauzy blur, before adding the beat, or the strange harp driven birdsong laced exotica of "Baumhaus", or the horn flecked, xylophone heavy, techno-ska thing that is "Rudi Was A Punk", which might be the coolest/weirdest track here. But then there's the closer, which is total Euro techno electro pop, right down to the crooned dramatic vocals and house-y groove. It's goofy for sure, but after a minute or two of thinking "I should skip this track", you find yourself not wanting it to end...
It's gonna be interesting to hear what Emeralds will sound like on their follow-up to the 2010 album Does It Look Like I'm Here? Since that album, two of the three members - John Elliott and Mark McGuire - have been super prolific in their own projects, all of which seem to be eschewing the post-noise melancholy which streamed through Emeralds' melodies of intertwined kosmische synth arpeggiation and stratospheric guitar loopings. Elliott's numerous solo and side projects have found him entertaining a new age ethos more and more, complete with a cosmically induced alter-ego. So far the music's still good for Elliott, but there could be some warning signs that he could take a nose-dive in the worst possible way. At least, his Spectrum Spools imprint seems to be keeping an edgier sensibility (especially those Bee Mask albums). Mark McGuire's own work has been one of a perpetually-stoned-in-summertime time-loop, where his brightly ringing guitar wraps itself into layered patterns upon which he builds cinematically charged ambient-pop crescendos. His album Living With Yourself certainly built from this template, and McGuire proves just how versatile that template can be on Get Lost. There's plenty of effervescent synths which noodle and blorp through rippling echo patterns, which takeover McGuire's proceedings on the aptly named "Firefly Constellations" but McGuire is at his best when employing guitar and loop station as on the urgent chime of "Another Dead End" furthered by Vini Reilly like flourishes that burst into an expressive solo mirroring something from early Guru Guru. The rest of the tracks settle into a warm groove as if bathed in late-summer sunlight, including the vocal number "Alma" which certainly looks to Animal Collective in its quadruple-tracked vocals but with an ear for Eno's melodies instead of Brian Wilson's. McGuire has never failed in delivering something lovely, and that's the case with Get Lost.
We've always love musicians who make music out of ice, so we were super intrigued by this 7". The latest from Land and Sea, the Oakland-based imprint that publishes small run books and records from visual and sound artists, this is a beautifully minimal sound piece by artist and sound engineer, Colin McKelvey. Taking his inspiration from a famous conceptual sculpture from 1970 by Bay Area artist Paul Kos called Sound of Ice Melting, where Kos placed eight microphones around a large ice block to amplify the sound of its melting. Originally composed by McKelvey as a long-form composition called "Composition for Synthesizer, Voice and Ice", this 7" is two versions of various "canti" (a poetic division, or significant excerpt) from the original composition, a studio edit and a live edit that was performed at the Berkeley Art Museum in conjunction with a show that featured the Paul Kos sculpture. The piece is about space as much as it's about sound and the atmosphere involving the modular synth in varied frequencies along with the slow rumble of ice create a reverent but slowly destabilizing mood. The live edit has more of an echoing atmosphere given the reverberating properties of the architecture in which it was performed. Fans of the Touch label and experimental composers like Alvin Curran will find lots to love here. Beautifully packaged in an embossed white paper sleeve on clear vinyl with inserts including notes on the piece and an essay on the ambiguities of ephemeral sound. Limited to 100 copies, we have 5, we may be able to get more, but no guarantees, so you know what that means!
More pioneering electronic music unearthed by Japan's EM Records (previous releases include discs by Barton Smith, David Rosenboom, and Noah Creshevsky). This time, it's Barton and Priscilla McLean. A husband and wife team, but no Sonny and Cher here!! This duo performed live as the "McLean Mix", and were responsible for a bunch of sought-after Folkways LPs in their time, including 1979's "Electro-Symphonic Landscapes" (all the tracks from which are found here). The cover of this cd is an adaptation of the cover of that LP, the artwork actually being the graphical score for Barton's "Song Of The Nahuatl" (it's interesting to note that while the McLeans worked together, they didn't collaborate compositionally it seems -- half the tracks here are by the Mr. and half by the Mrs.). The McLeans got their start together in electronic composition in academia, at the University of Indiana, South Bend, 'round about 1973, when the Music Department there brought in a huge EMS Synthi-100 synthesizer and Synthi-256 sequencer. Hours of tape-splicing creativity would ensue! That mega-synthesizer was later repossessed (!) so the McLeans turned to musique concrete techniques (bouncing steak knives on violin strings, metal bars on piano strings, that sort of thing) to source their sounds, combined with the output of what electronic equipment they were able to access. Much of this disc, tracks dating back to 1975, feature this sort of laborious processing of sound. And the results are fantastic! Reminds us a bit of the classic Forbidden Planet soundtrack by Louis and Bebe Barron, another husband and wife team who preceded the McLeans in the annals of electronic music... In addition to the vintage '70s stuff here, there's a couple tracks of some newer material from the digital age... which holds up quite well, actually! Keening drones, mysterious pulses, psychedelic bleepage -- yep, way better than Sonny n' Cher!
EM has graciously provided both English and Japanese liner notes, so the 22 page cd booklet makes good reading for anyone curious about the McLeans' musical methodology, as well as providing cool graphics and intriguing photos to ponder.
British electronica maverick MDK starts "A Friend Is A Stranger You Haven't Met" on the evil side of things, with a digitally hacked collage of industrial strength thrash metal. Before you begin to think about Francisco Lopez or Alec Empire and their digital synthesis of metal, MDK makes a quick left turn into beautifully Oval-esque passages for laptop processed string samples. This trend of quick genre edits continues through hip hop, Mego noise, house grooves, etc... Fortunately, MDK has enough sense to retain a common thread to his work -- an undefined sentiment of sadness. This is an album that is strangely seductive, and superior to his previous full-length.
We've slowly been dipping into the impressive catalog of Debacle Records, and pretty much everything we've heard so far has ruled, the recently reviewed Blackout cd-r by space psych explorers Expo 70, and the synth and vocal bliss drone excursions of The Slaves, and now this, the most recent record from Megabats, whose pun titled cd-r offers up a selection of sounds that definitely fit pretty perfectly between both The Slaves and Expo 70, as well as other spaced out electronic weirdos like Fuck Buttons and Oneohtrix Point Never and Pulse Emitter, a sort of sci-fi synth drone tethered to pulsing minimal electro, and then blurred into hazy expanses of far out shimmery drone flecked electro synth throb, that manages to be energizing and urgent, while somehow remaining blissed out and spacey and oh so hypnotic.
The 'beats' are buried underneath thick layers of synth buzz, the beat usually a barely audible pulse, a sort of heroin house underwater rhythm, skeletal and spare, there less for propulsion or groove, and more for an anchor, a mesmerizing metronomic center, which entrances and enthralls, as the layers of buzz and thrum slowly wrap themselves around you and fill your ears with liquid warmth.
Total late night drugged out, sun rise chill out drift off soundscapery, every track here is epic and repetitive and hypnotic, many ditching the pulse completely and instead unfurling lush landscapes of glistening glimmering synthy shimmer, sun dappled sheets of spacey swirl, culminating in the title track, which takes all of the above, and adds a strangely ominous vibe, cinematic and darkly sinister, a fuzzy low end drone drifting beneath crystalline melodies and hushed buzzy blur, the two elements inexorably linked, a darkly beautiful bit of soundtracky synth swell, haunting but also weirdly spacey and soothing, a brooding new age spacesynth finish to a pretty fantastic collection of otherworldly, electro zoner-drone drone-drift bliss!
Our only real exposure to Dan Melchior, frontman of the Broke Revue and sometime collaborator with Billy Childish and Holly Golightly, was on a recent split with local garage poppers the Fresh & Onlys, and we were blown away, describing his side of the split as "awesomely super distorted garage pop, like Elvis Costello, all jammed up and slathered in crumbling hiss and grit, the vocals delivered in a thick English accent, the drums blown out, effects all over the place, everything buried beneath a patina of blurred buzz..." which pretty much describes Melchior's Siltbreeze record as well, but if anything, all the blown out weirdness and heavily effected and damaged aspects we dug so much on that 7", have been cranked WAY up here. Noisier, more lo-fi, way more chaotic and confusional, the proper songs that do surface are slathered in distortion and FX, and transformed into some sort of outsider lo-fi avant garage psych weirdness.
"Atomizer" is some sort of no-fi distorto new wave, the whole song driven by a churning muddied electronic pulse, the vocals distorted and WAY up in the mix, robotic and clinical, but crumbling around the edges, pelted by jagged shards of blown out guitar, and squalls of cascading psychnoise, and the lyrics, twisted and appropriately baffling. "Bewildered And Wild" begins all folky and strummy, until the vocals come in, all processed and effected, making it sound like some alien blues, everything smeared with grit and grime and hiss, total interplanetary back porch moon blues weirdness, rife with the occasional super distorted swell of low end buzz. "Bread Bin Wailing (Moonlight Crow)" is all muted backwards warble, and ultra thick metallic bass buzz, echoey vocals, smears of psychedelic leads, and so it goes, the whole record some sort of drug addled bedroom blues, filtered through NZ noise rock, eighties cold wave, outsider loner zoner psych, and spit out in all its filthy fractured fucked up glory! Think Suicide crossed with Chrome crossed with the Shadow Ring crossed with Robyn Hitchcock crossed with Alastair Galbraith crossed Wreck Small Speakers on Expensive Stereos. Indeed.
Comes with a download coupon too...
We still really have no idea who this Dan Melchior guy is. We first discovered him via a split with SF jangle poppers the Fresh & Onlys, his side of the split a huge surprise, knocking us for a loop, and turning the previously unknown to us Melchior into a serious aQ fave. His recent lp for Siltbreeze Assemblage Blues only helped seal the deal, but where that record seemed custom made for Siltbreeze, seeming to tap into the twisted psychedelic side of Melchior's sound, and focusing on the noisier tripper more fucked up songs, this new one definitely sounds more in line with the tracks from that split single, a woozy, super melodic, shuffling, acoustic guitar flecked garage pop, hints of that classic sixties sound, plenty of weird distortion and lots of reverb, but here used sparingly, and in the interest of crafting an incredible collection of quirky lo-fi pop.
Opener "Summer In Siberia" is fuzzy and jangly, with a perfect main melody, and a killer soaring sixties style chorus, the guitars warmly distorted and crumbly, Melchior's vocals delivered in a heavily accented British brogue, the production weirdly blown out and in-the-red, while the following track is a moody minor key chunk of quirky lo-fi outsider pop, super catchy, but strangely haunting and minor key. "Squalor On Sunday" is a pounding blast of psychedelic garage rock, with some super weird vocals, wheezing organs, crunchy guitars, all wound into a noisy blurred stretch of fuzzy washed out jangle. "Catbird" is a dour atonal dirge, the guitars careening from speaker to speaker, the vocals sung/spoken, the vibe reminds us of Purling Hiss, the same sort of classic rock beholden hookiness, but here, but as beholden to the most twisted of the nineties NZ pop, and actually, much of the record sounds like it could be some long lost Xpressway or Flying Nun record from the nineties, total perfect pop, but all twisted up and turned inside out, creating a fuzzy dreamy din, all psychedelic and warped but without losing any of the poppiness or hookiness. Somehow this new full length manages to be the perfect mix of that poppy split single and the way weirder Siltbreeze record, resulting in a gloriously skewed, cacophonous fuzzy psychedelic garage pop masterpiece that we can't seem to stop listening to.
Originally released as a super limited cassette, this killer chunk of witch house gets the deluxe vinyl treatment, and fuck the haters out there, it sounds as good as ever. Again, it bears repeating that for a genre that seemed to be born, get WAY too popular, and then incur a ridiculous backlash in such a short amount of time, the number of ACTUAL releases is surprisingly low, with most of the tracks released as cd-r's or mp3's or on SoundCloud or whatever, which is kind of a bummer, cuz as much as popular opinion may have turned, we still love this sound. The thick gloomy synths, the skittery crunk like beats, the chopped and screwed vocals, the doomy psychedelic ambience, all woven into some weird sort of grim gloomy electro, which appropriately goes by many genre names, drag, grave rave, zombie rave, cave rave, but you know what, we're fin with witch house. And really, if you dug the Salem (and really how could you not?!), then this will definitely push those same buttons. Not nearly as M83 blown out shoegaze pop (although there are some very M83 moments), and minus the rapping, Mellow Grave while sonically similar in many ways, definitely have their own take on WH, which is more of a gloomy new wave pop, infused with all the above mentioned elements, we hear bits of Joy Division for sure, New Order, Cold Cave, seems like adventurous fans of those bands might dig this as well. Industrial percussion, wheezing ominous synths, rhythmic stutter and skitter, warm deeply crooned vocals, loads of psychedelic effects, the songs usually crawl and creep, but when the tempo gets cranked, the frantic vibe is pretty exhilarating.
The opening track might still be our fave, with its horror movies synths over drum machine skitter and deep rumbling bass buzz, it's easy to imagine this as some sort of modern John Carpenter influenced composition for some crazed art flick, and then the vocals come in, and becomes some sort of dour witchy synth pop, laced with all manner of tangled melodies, and clipped and looped voices buried in the mix, haunting and hooky and so great. The second track is just as cool, sacrificing the thick low end heaviness for some killer stuttery industrial beats, that wind around more crooned vox and cool hooky distorted synth melodies that almost sound like some weird guitar buzz, the whole thing peppered with these machinegun like blasts of percussion. So killer. Recommended for fans of any of the current crop of new / cold / synth / electro wave, and obviously anyone who digs Salem, Balam Acab, Mater Suspiria Vision and all the rest, this is most definitely your new favorite record.
Croatian computer technician Robert Merlak offers his second album for Phthalo, whose releases are becoming more and more out of the ordinary -- too fucked up for IDM based electronica, too lo-fi for musique concrete consideration. Nauseating synthesis of neurotic drones and wildly spinning drum machine eruptions make up the most of "Albumski," which sounds more like what we'd have expected from the new General Magic.
PHTHALO 08. Robert Merlak's "Icepick Tracks" are an assortment of brutal industro.crunch.plod.thump.stomp.sledge.hammer.rip.tear.clang.boom.grind.electronica powerbooking. Could be SPK? Could be V/Vm? Sure it could.
Although it says that this is not a remix record on the sticker, not sure what else you could call it. A bunch of folks incorporate bits of the Merzbow record Amlux into their original compositions. The sound is all over the place. From hip-hop instrumentals to crazy turntablism to glitched out big beats to all out noise to malfunctioning video game sounds to riot grrl-ish techno to droning soundscapes and beyond. Features: DJ Spooky, DJ/ Rupture, Plug, Alec Empire, Negativland, Hrvatski, Mouse On Mars, KK Null, Kim Cascone, Kim Hiorthoy, Nobukazu Takemura, E.A.R./Sonic Boom, Cornelius, Atom, Custom Drummer, Bola, Jack Dangers, Freiband and a bunch more. Two discs!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Not just another Merzbow noise-blast disc, this is a remix compilation that lets folks like, among others, Jim O'Rourke, Panasonic, Autechre, Bernhard Gunter, and Masami Akita himself, take the noise and create something perhaps more obviously structured with it. As such, it's pretty interesting, and if you're not going to buy all 2,000 Merzbow releases this year, this one at least should be considered. In fact, even if you weren't going to buy *any* Merzbow this year or any other year, "Scumtron" might still be for you. Certainly fans of Panasonic-style beat-cruch won't be disappointed.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Split disc between two noise giants from Japan via Kid 606's Tigerbeat6 imprint. Masami Akita furthers his explorations in the digital domain, appropriating the tranquil somniloquisms of Olivier Messiaen's "Mode De Valeurs Et D'intensite Pour Piano" and transmutating it into the unique extremity that is Merzbow. The Kouhei tracks are slightly more rhythmic, though somewhat static, DHR-style beat destruction. You might recall his work from the "Upside Down" release on Mille Plateaux to which Merzbow as well as Masonna contributed.
The long awaited second installment in the who-knows-how-many-parts Patikel series, which features a collaboration between AQ fave Swedish dark ambient, militant folk, black metal noise technician Nordvargr (Toroidh, MZ412, Folkstorm, Goatvargr, HH9, etc...) and Japanese noise legend Masami Akita aka Merzbow.
Strange bedfellows maybe, but the results here, as on the first installment, are pretty mind-blowing. Akita generated the sounds, Nordvargr took those sounds and twisted them into completely new forms, the result some strange noise/drone/rhythm hybrid that is WAY more listenable than it has any right to be.
The opener sets the tone, a twenty minute crumbling distorted noisescape, like bits of old Merzbow records all chopped up and assembled again Frankenstein's monster fashion, that veers from full on near-metallic crunch, to strange skittery almost IDM, but even at it's calmest, the track is still rife with strange sounds and damaged FX, bursts of harsh noise surfacing here and there amidst an alien landscape of stutters and shuffles, of creaks and squeaks, almost like a black metal Mouse On Mars if one could even imagine such a thing.
The second track sounds heavier on the Nordvargr than the Merzbow, a rumbling shimmering low end, that creeps and drifts before splintering briefly into another rhythmic glitchscape, just as quickly transforming into a buzzing snarling fuzzed out drone, thick and corrosive, subtly rhythmic, but intense and crackling with energy. Deep cavernous tones swell in the background, while above the blurry buzz, strange crunchy electronic pulses mark out a simple static rhythm.
The third track is Part 2 to the opener's Part 1, and takes the openers skitter to a much meaner, much harsher place, a swirling high end cloud of hissing static and keening sine waves, over a relentlessly pulsing backdrop, that changes pitch, and tempo, stuttering and hiccuping, creating a gorgeously confusional rhythmscape, eventually breaking into a near-groove, a loping downtempo slither, but still wrapped in all manner of electronic detritus and squalls of fuzz and crackle and whir.
The closer winds things down with more of a whisper than a scream, the glitchy rhythms are still present, but they are ultra minimal, skeletal, almost like shortwave interference, beneath a tidal swirl of murk and blur, a dark ambient buzz that stretches lazily into long expanses of slow shifting sounds. Over the course of the track, little bits of melody surface here and there, the rhythms get more agitated before drifting back beneath the surface, and mysterious voices surface amidst sparkling sonic glimmers and moaning ambient rumble, a dreamy dark ambient coda to an intense slab of droning skittering buzz and crunch, shimmer and swirl.
Partikel II is IDM for the demon set, a blackened noise drenched skitter, an abstract metallic free-electronica, and a definite droney dancefloor filler, that is if you want your dancefloor filled with shuffling zombies, growling beasts and unspeakable denizens of the underworld...
And who doesn't?!
The Root Strata label hasn't been as active as they used to be, what with main founder Jefre Cantu-Ledesma living in Europe and then moving back to San Francisco temporarily and now heading to New York to stay awhile... Hopefully they'll get back to a more regular release schedule real soon.
But until then, we got this to deep primitive drone record to tide us over and it's a stunner. Messages is the New York duo of Taketo Shimada & Tres Warren. We never carried their previous recordings, but are now kicking ourselves for not tuning in sooner. Even though Mirage is the third full-length release, this was recorded in 2008 before their first two albums and has remained unreleased until now.
Four long-form excursions with a lyrical pastoral focus using an array of acoustic and electric drone instruments reminding us of like minded wayfarers Taj Mahal Travellers, Deep Listening Band, Date Palms and Portraits. Limited to 500 copies.
A few years back, Clear Records made a big stink about some upcoming electronica greats called Metamatics, and released some limited edition singles and an album. The key to their proclamations must have been 'upcoming', as those releases were downright dull. Three years later, District Six has released the best work from Metamatics... 4 tracks of moody, downbeat electro-jazz falling in between Boards of Canada, Spacetime Continuum, and Carl Craig. A solid release.
Unlike the majority of electronica artists who change their moniker like they change pants, Metamatics has retained their name after a number of stylistic changes. "Neo Ouija" finds the outfit embracing an essentialized drum & bass that takes the jazz infused elements of LTJ Bukem to a brittle skitterish shuffle, full of precious breakbeats and melodies.
It's a great week for Mum fans! We just got in their Nightly Cares 3"cd/7" single and this 'all ages' graphic novel which stars Louis, the dumpling-ish looking main character (he kinda looks like a crudely drawn baby turtle creature that could be from Andee's fave Homestar Runner website), as well as a supporting cast of frollicking carrots, mechanical dogs, polka-dot mushrooms, a wizard and a frumpy Hitler-looking villain. There's some great lines of dialogue (a sampling: "My eyebrows are crawling all over my face" and "Suffocating in a custard world"), but you might be wondering how is Mum involved? Well, they along with the band Hey have each contributed a wistful version of the theme song "Dreams Never Die To FC" for the accompanying cd which also contains some animated Louis flicks with Mum/Hey soundtrack music to boot.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
This is the reissue of the first Schematic single. I actually got to hear this when I was working for the defunct Pulse Soniq distribution (about time) two years ago, but was burnt on electronica (being forced to buy crappy house singles because the salespeople were too lazy to sell a Sahko title can get you a little jaded). It is a good thing that Schematic reissued this as I would have missed an exceptional piece of dark arpeggiating Skam-ish IDM. Recommended.
For as much hype, attention and press these guys get we have to admit not many of us at the store even heard their debut. We caught a song here and there and we could tell it was fun catchy stuff but we weren't quite sure what all the fuss was about. With their new album we decided to dig in a bit and damn are we glad we did. Because at the end of the day, and all the fashion spreads, magazine covers, teenage adornment, blog hype, it all doesn't matter if the music doesn't hold up. And with Congratulations, MGMT have shown they are a band that can back up their good looks and youthful energy with totally awesome music!
While much had been made about how 'weird' this album was supposed to be compared to their debut, it might be 'weird' for people who are only used to top 40 music, but to us it sounds like delicious breezy psych pop. So awesome how they tap into a really cool Elephant Six vibe, reminding us of some of our favorite records from Olivia Tremor Control, Elf Power, and Apples In Stereo. The album truly is just that, an album. From start to finish they have created a work that flows with such ease and isn't about standout singles, but instead really is about the entire experience of listening to the record from start to finish. With Sonic Boom (Spacemen 3) enlisted to produce the record they knew where to go for just the right touch, a distinctly psychedelic feel that references more of The Beatles psych tendencies than lots of the modern psych peddlers. We also think a lot about one of favorite underrated bands of the past, Beachwood Sparks, as the sounds on Congratulations remind us a lot of some of our favorite BS jams. There is something so genuine sounding and less forced then we somehow were expecting in this record. If we would have received this as some random band's cd-r, we would all be freaking out about what an amazing pop discovery we just made. So just because they are on a huge label and get tons of hype and press, don't write this record off, it deserves your ears because it's really fucking good!
The first batch of the cds comes with a scratch off cover, a weird coin and a 32 page booklet. The first pressing of the lps also comes with a scratch off cover, and is pressed on 180 gram vinyl.
Pay no attention to the Beta Bodega agenda of "covert intelligence operations," as this little 7" of electro-revivalism doesn't fall far from the Adult. sound. Possibly a collaboration between Le Syndicat Electronique, Patcha Kutek, and V8 -- but who can tell from Beta Bodega.
Another member of the Tigerbeat6 family. Whimsical laptop glitchery making use of beeping toy sounds. Not sure what else to say. Nice, cute, catchy and fun.
(from Forced Exposure's update): "If you've been paying attention at all you know about Oval and their masterful brand of underground electronica as issued by Mille Plateaux -- some of the most shockingly desirable music of the 90s. Microstoria is a due made up of Oval's Markus Popp and Mouse On Mars' Jan St. Werner, and the music they make is beautifully abstract electronic wave manipulation, looped and weirdly grooved for maximum pleasure zone entertainment. If you've never been able to find a handle on contemporary "ambient," here's something to try."
Despite the title's implication, Microstoria actually presents the fourth in the "Invisible Architecture" series from Audioglobe, packaged obnoxiously in the oversized 'super jewel cases' alongside the work of Janek Schaefer, the duo of Christian Fennesz & Miko Vainio, and a turntable excursion from Jeck / Tetreault / Yoshihide. The collaboration between Jan St. Werner (Mouse On Mars) and Markus Popp (Oval), Microstoria improvises with purely electronic sound to build tone-bent half melodies and plinky-plonk abstractions. Recorded live at Kaaitheaterstudio in Brussels during the summer of 2000, "Invisible Architecture #3" does not stray far from the successes of their previous albums "SND" or "Model 3,Step 2."
Microstoria is the collaborative effort between Oval's Markus Popp and Mouse On Mars' Jan St. Werner. While the synthesis of Oval's sterile digital skips and Mouse On Mars' ecstatic techno playfulness seems hard to imagine, Microstoria has pulled it off consistently throughout each of their recordings. "Model 3, Step 2" is the third album for the duo, and highlights an important aspect of the process of musical collaboration. Microstoria, who produce sound through a series of improvisations, has been working together long enough that a signature sound has evolved, that does not simply sound like a bunch of idiots diddling with their Powerbooks! The aesthetic of Microstoria is a mischievous one that is bathed in a warm hum of computer drives and electrical fields. The squeaky details sound almost like one of them is trying to fix a leaky faucet with an old oil stained wrench.
Microstoria remix album, compiled from the 12" series. Remixers include Ui, Stereolab (sounding very Stereolab), Japanese noisemaker Violent Onsen Geisha, Oval, Jim O'Rourke (of course), Nicolas Collins, Mouse on Mars, and others.
Second album from German duo -- Markus Popp of Oval and Jan St. Werner of Mouse on Mars.
GGGGGOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!! The ever charming German electronica maven Atom Heart (to some still better known as Senor Coconut, and to others, like his mom, as Uwe Schmidt -- his real name) retains his infatuation with the
Christof Migone is not kidding around with that title.
Migone is a French-Canadian (with the accent definitely on the French side of that equation) conceptual sound artist, who has based this album on recordings of (or inspirations from) the canon which fires daily at noon in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Migone punctuates his incredibly quiet reflections on this explosive sound with extended silences. Migone has at least enough sense to offer a track listing which indicates the silence tracks with the demarcation [0] and warning when an untreated recording of the canon blast (it's track 18)... so you can simply program out all of the unnecessary silent parts and have a concise collection of muffled shock-waves.
Mike Paradinas (a.k.a. u-ziq, Jake Slazenger) and Richard James (a.k.a. Aphex Twin). English import.
