[ aquarius records — Electronic ]

IMPORTANT (Please read to avoid confusion): Some items below may be tagged with a bold, red, all-caps OUT OF PRINT/UNAVAILABLE notice. This does NOT mean that all other items not so tagged are, in fact, in stock — or for that matter, in print and available, though there's a good chance they are. Some folks get confused on this point, and we can see why, so please read this for further clarification and other important before-you-order information. Unlike some mailorder websites, we don't have an electronic inventory system linked to our site, so you can't be sure of what we actually have or don't have in stock at any given moment without asking us — please email our mailorder department for availability status — or better yet, just go ahead and place your order using our shopping cart function and we'll get back to you with the status of each item. If you have general non-mailorder questions, email the store.

Showing results 3551 through 3600 of 5033.

We made the cd reissue of this a Record Of The Week back on list #265... then Too Pure let it go out of print again (twice)! But now, it's been reissued on vinyl by Modern Classics, a subsidiary of Medical Records, yay. Please read on to find out why picked it as a ROTW: God, we love this record! We've never stopped loving it. In the years since it was first released in 1993, it's never sounded tired or dated to us. Can't say that for a whole lot of other electronica records. So we are really glad to see our good old friend back in print again... We have been playing this daily since we got it, and we're surprised how many folks have never heard of Seefeel or experienced their incredible ocean of sound. So what is all the fuss about, you say? Well, Seefeel at their peak were one of the main players that spawned the nineties electronica genre, at a time when there were only Dance and Rock sections in most music stores. Their sound was a delirious mash-up between the shoe-gazing swirl of My Bloody Valentine, the machinic rhythm programming of Autechre, the ambient chill of Aphex Twin and the driving pulse of Stereolab, with an early hint toward the looping repetitions of William Basinski. They bridged ambient techno and indie rock by foregoing rock music's verse and chorus structures in favor of beats and loops wrapped inside icy motorik rhythms, industrial whirs, blurbs of female vocals and dubby bass lines. Like the best work of minimal composers, Seefeel's long-form compositions create a warmly hypnotic form of static movement that refused to fit neatly into music for either dance floors or chill out lounges. Quique was their head-turning debut following two EP releases featuring remixes by Aphex Twin. That connection surely gained them a bigger following, but Seefeel was always one of those bands that should have been bigger. Of course such a potent and influential debut would lead to many of their contemporaries, bands such as Bowery Electric, Labradford, Boards Of Canada and Flying Saucer Attack, to take Seefeel's initial explorations in sound further into Post-Rock, Trip Hop, IDM and Neo-Psych territories, leaving Seefeel at a bit of a loss for a follow-up. Signing to Warp, they delved further into a dark ambient direction in the vein of groups like Main, Ice and Scorn, that was just too stark for a wider audience to appreciate. They put out two more albums before splintering off into various side projects such as Scala, Disjecta and Sneakster. Listening to Quique now, it has lost none of its powerful splendor and warmly chilled charm. Add this to the list of favorite one really really good record bands like My Bloody Valentine and Stone Roses. So amazingly awesome!

MPEG stream: Climatic Phase #3
MPEG stream: Plainsong
MPEG stream: Filter Dub
MPEG stream: Signals

God, we love this record! We've never stopped loving it. In its fourteen years of existence, it's never sounded tired or dated. Can't say that for a whole lot of other electronica records. So we are really glad to see our good old friend back in print again with this super nice 2cd deluxe re-issue. If you missed this the first time around, then you are in for a real treat, and if you bought this the first time around, you may just need to buy it again to get the whole extra disc of unreleased tracks and alternate mixes. We have been playing this daily since we got it, and we're surprised how many folks have never heard of Seefeel or experienced their incredible ocean of sound. So what is all the fuss about, you say? Well, Seefeel at their peak were one of the main players that spawned the nineties electronica genre, at a time when there were only Dance and Rock sections in most music stores. Their sound was a delirious mash-up between the shoe-gazing swirl of My Bloody Valentine, the machinic rhythm programming of Autechre, the ambient chill of Aphex Twin and the driving pulse of Stereolab, with an early hint toward the looping repetitions of William Basinski. They bridged ambient techno and indie rock by foregoing rock music's verse and chorus structures in favor of beats and loops wrapped inside icy motorik rhythms, industrial whirs, blurbs of female vocals and dubby bass lines. Like the best work of minimal composers, Seefeel's long-form compositions create a warmly hypnotic form of static movement that refused to fit neatly into music for either dance floors or chill out lounges. Quique was their head-turning debut following two EP releases featuring remixes by Aphex Twin. That connection surely gained them a bigger following, but Seefeel was always one of those bands that should have been bigger. Of course such a potent and influential debut would lead to many of their contemporaries, bands such as Bowery Electric, Labradford, Boards Of Canada and Flying Saucer Attack, to take Seefeel's initial explorations in sound further into Post-Rock, Trip Hop, IDM and Neo-Psych territories, leaving Seefeel at a bit of a loss for a follow-up. Signing to Warp, they delved further into a dark ambient direction in the vein of groups like Main, Ice and Scorn, that was just too stark for a wider audience to appreciate. They put out two more albums before splintering off into various side projects such as Scala, Disjecta and Sneakster. The bonus disc contains six previously unreleased tracks, and three alternate mixes from a limited white label 12" and two ambient compilations. Out of the unreleased tracks, "Clique" sounds like it just barely missed the cut from the original album line-up while "Silent Pool" is a longer version of Quique's closing track "Signals". "My Super 20" and "Is It Now?" are long beat-less swims that are a warmer hint at their future direction and the two other unreleased tracks are versions of opening track "Climatic Phase #3, and "Time to Find Me" from their first EP. It might sound like at first listen that there is some repetition between the two discs, but it's really more in line with classic ambient music's infatuation with the Dub tradition of versioning, the adding or removing of various elements in a song to give it a totally different spin. Each version really does give a different feel even if the basic structures seem similar. Seriously, the second disc is just more of what you love already, and gives us a little more of the stuff we've been missing for ages. Listening to Quique fourteen years later, it has lost none of its powerful splendor and warmly chilled charm. Add this to the list of favorite one record bands like My Bloody Valentine and Stone Roses. So Amazingly Awesome!!!! Reissue of the year so far and so totally recommended!!!!!!!!!

MPEG stream: Climatic Phase #3
MPEG stream: Plainsong
MPEG stream: Filter Dub
MPEG stream: Signals

It's been nearly 15 years since we last heard from seminal electronic shoegazers Seefeel, and nearly 18 years since their breathtaking debut Qique. During the nineties, few could touch Seefeel, their sound a glorious mash up of Stereolab, My Bloody Valentine, Autechre and Aphex Twin, warm and hypnotic, dubby and drifty, programmed beats, and swirling psychedelic textures, lush minimal female vox, industrial buzz, glitchy electronics, austere atmospheres, haunting and mysterious and otherworldly, a sound that today still sounds fresh and original and miles beyond most modern electronic outfits. We had no idea what to expect, after such a long absence, and without Mark Van Hoen, who went on to do Locust (not THE Locust) after Seefeel. Obviously we would have loved another Qique, but at the same time, it would have been rather anticlimactic to wait all that time for more of the same, especially when we have a legion of groups doing their best Seefeel already. So it seems, the band have returned with a whole new sound, and while not ditching their old sound, it is a pretty drastic shift, right from the start, a thick, gristly bit of tangled glitch and spacey effects, giving way to a spare robotic beat, laced with distorted shards of melody, a strangely stuttery, crunchy, aggressive chunk of abstract, electrophunk, underpinned by a warm fluid bassline, and some softly swirling chordal swells, some ethereal vox, the sound gradually gaining cohesion, blossoming into a fantastically hypnotic, softly psychedelic bit of stuttery shoegaze glitch. After a brief bit of electronic buzz and shimmer, comes the record's single, released as a 10" a few months back, hazy female vox, over another super minimal beat, wrapped around some deep low end warble, all wreathed in a halo of electronic crackle, a strange alien groove, subtly warped and warbly, laced with sun dappled streaks of melody, the group once again creating their own sort of electronic shoegaze, something at once beholden to the sound they pioneered, and simultaneously sounding fresh and new, and very little like anything else. Sci-fi lazer blasts drift over tinkling melodies and video game bleeps and bloops, thick washed out swirls of prismatic shimmer whirl around shuffling industrial rhythms, waves of warm guitar wash over skeletal beats, chiming glimmering melodies rain down like sunflakes glistening in winter sunlight, dubsteppy bass warbles wrap around jagged synths and breathy dreampop vox, the sounds crunchy and glitchy, warm and whirring, lush and layered, ever shifting soundscapes of fragmented pop and fractured abstract electronica, of fuzzed out psychedelic shoegaze, and downtempo dreamlike drift, a gorgeous collection of fantastically ethereal, ephemeral, buzzy electro bliss. Incredible.

MPEG stream: Dead Guitars
MPEG stream: Faults
MPEG stream: Rip-Run

Holy shit this is amazing. You might have thought that Burial and Rhythm & Sound and Pole had deconstructed dub about as far as it could go, but this mysterious outfit has conjured up some of the most tripped out, weirdly psychedelic ultra minimal digital dub we've ever heard. Those above mentioned groups are definitely good jumping off points, and if you like any/all of those, then you're gonna probably want this too, but those are just jumping off points. SeekersInternational dig way deeper, their sounds drifting unmoored to conventional rhythms, swirling and abstract and totally spaced out and druggy, the roots of the sound are definitely old school styled digi-dub, but the sounds here are stretched way out, pulled apart, until it's more like an impression of dub, than actual dub. Imagine the Bush Chemists and Pole remixed by Lesser, or something equally weird, dubbed out grooves, warped loops, layers creepily swirling, lazer synths emerging from the murk, vocals drenched in reverb, everything collaged and layered, sampled song fragments drifting in and our of focus, at times maddeningly repetitive, only to blur into blissed out ambient dub drift, the Burial vibe is huge, but imagine that sound WAY more druggy and drowsy and woozily warped. The B side gets even more abstract, opening with a super skeletal dub, instrumental, almost straight forward if it wasn't for how ghostly and minimal and barely there much of the sound is. And if THAT one is barely there, the next one is a mind blower, constructing a full on dub jam out of nothing but sonic detritus, static, and crackle and buzz, hiss and hum, skitter, squelch, reverb and echo, all somehow sculpted into a sweet slab of spectral dub, some of the coolest shit we've ever heard. The record finishes off with a final burst of abstract fragmented murky, druggy, dubby drift, that left us wanting more more more!! So great, and yeah, probably crazy limited too, so best grab one before they're gone!

MPEG stream: Plunged Light Riddim
MPEG stream: Touch Riddim
MPEG stream: Droplets Riddim
MPEG stream: Stop Motion

Obscure reissues like this really make our day. This disc brings to light German brothers Eckhart und Wolf-J.'s experiments in instrumental electronic music circa 1971-73, a la early Kraftwerk, Kluster, Conrad Schnitzler, and the Silver Apples... Short, freeky pieces done with home-built synths in some Dusseldorf basement. Give me weirdo D.I.Y. krautrock electronics like this over the output of today's laptop dorks any day!

MPEG stream: Overture - Jeder Ist Heutzutage Glucklich
MPEG stream: Speedy Achmed

Rop, ex-Peechees member, has moved to New York where he hones his DJ and turntablist skills as DJ Ropstyle. Semiautomatic features the additional talents of Akiko. Fans of Kid Koala's funny style and ICU/IQU's lo-fi d'n'b will enjoy this.

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

SORRY. Definitely the 'summer album' for the stellar monthly series of minimalist electronica counting down to the year 2000. Bubbling pulses from banks of little black boxes build sounds that move from pretty drones into dense if rather sedate electronic dub. Senking's twenty minutes share a lot of the same tonalities and structures as Aphex Twin's monumental Selected Ambient Works Volume 2.

Continuing his reconstructions of electro found on his previous releases from Raster and Karaoke Kalk, Jens Massel (aka Senking) digitally sanitizes what could easily be vinyl surface noise into elegant post-techno pulsations that are not unlike Pan Sonic's pioneering "Vakio" album. These rhythms with their clusters of pinprick glitchiness relentlessly clatter through out the short 26 minute program, whilst Massel builds feedback tones that shift in density, aggressiveness, and volume. As a whole, the shortened 26 minute program screeches up to a tense crescendo, plunges down to static minimalims, and rebounds through submariner ambience, all the while maintaining a continuous mix of variable rhythms. Quite nice. Released as a part of the new "Raster-Post" series housed in nice silkscreened, fold-out cardstock folder and bound with an elastic band.

RealAudio clip: Forge 1
RealAudio clip: Forge 2

Senking hails from Cologne, yet has developed an unusual electro-dub technique which is quite the detour from the usual Cologne fair of A-Musik's dadaist humor or Kompakt's techno minimalism. Starting off with rolling bass loops and sleek black ambience, Senking's dub goes so deep as to never really have a bottom, just an enveloping stroboscopic pulsation of bass tones. Jens Massel (aka Senking) has claimed his influences to be both the Aphex Twin's early work and 'Laughing Stock' by Talk Talk, and has left his sound with a spartan abstract way of constructing his pieces. This work culls two vinyl only EPs ("Ping" and "Thaw") on one CD, and predates his amazing "Trial" album for Raster-Noton.

If the archetypal Raster-Noton style of pixel-point rhythms and clinical data-streams represent "Ping", then Senking's far more sensual approach here to the click-n-groove would indeed be "Pong". It's the deeper, weightier side of the equation, but undeniably linked to that equation. The Cologne based sound engineer Jens Massel is more interested in a thickened low-end with rumbling basslines more indebted to a slowmotion techstep cruise or more of a Demdike Stare / Ghost Box electro-haunt than the post-techno shuffle ingrained in most every Raster-Noton artist's DNA. The Raster sounds of sonar blip echo, small rhythmic points, and slashing post-acid squelches do surface as the skeletal grid of rhythm guiding the throbbing bassbin rattle, yet Massel is not averse to coupling these sounds with moody, almost noirish melodic phrases for piano, Rhodes organ, and even some vibraphone. Pong is quite an evocative downtempo record that effectively comes across as something like a Pole / Bohren & Der Club Of Gore collaboration! The second disc is a CD-ROM with a re-engineered version of the old-school Atari game Pong as a 3-D game, that looks and feels a lot like another old-school Atari video game Tempest. We haven't played around that much with it, but at least it looks really cool!

MPEG stream: Luma
MPEG stream: Painbug In My Eye
MPEG stream: Breathing Trouble

Yet another installment in Raster-Noton's similarly sleeved (simple black and silver diecut digipaks, quite nice) and sonically consistent Raster.Post series. Voulme four is the work of Senking and is another beauty (like the Komet elsewhere on this list), helping restore our faith in modern electronica, a genre that has been getting less and less fascinating with every compilation and same-sounding record. Unlike the warm dreaminess of the Komet, this is a much colder beast altogether, more ghostly and spare, chilly and skeletal, with skittery rhythms, glitching and shuffling across an epic expanse of blackness, and rhythmic pulses and ribcage-rattling swells of bass throb supporting almost-melodies that are barely there. Think a more clinical, more abstract, less dub-obsessed Pole, and you start to get the idea. Hard to say why this is so pleasing, but it really is. Quite possibly my favorite electronica record of the year!

MPEG stream: Stand
MPEG stream: Settle

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

SORRY. Raster's conceptualism of electronic, almost utopian purity has some interesting theoretical leanings, but the cold minimalism of Raster/Noton succeeds more often than not through the novelty of subtle melodies and interesting rhythmic patterns. While most of the critical acclaim for Raster / Noton is deserved, they are undoubtably purveyors of The New; and Senking's "Trial" is no different. With techno and dub each getting the digital deconstruction in the respective work of Thomas Brinkmann and Pole, Senking's work has been emerging as the reductivist reclamation of electro, sounding much like a clinical atomization of Andrea Parker or Depth Charge. Senking's deep grooves of thudding sub-bass plod boldly through the Raster / Noton signature sound of skittering digital errata. Certainly recommended to the already converted... and definitely a good start for any one interested in such things.

Senor Coconut is back with a new set of party favorites. His endearing covers over the years have included everyone from Kraftwerk, Yellow Magic Orchestra, and Sade. This time out he's on a trip around the globe with each song being a cover of an artist from somewhere different in the world. But his eye is clearly on catchy and mostly familiar pop music (Eurythmics, Daft Punk, Telex, etc). Still totally fun and playful but not quite at the level of pure joy and innovative reinterpreting that his prior releases demonstrated. It kind of feels a little phoned in, but still filled with enough winners to keep us smiling.

MPEG stream: Around the World (Intro)
MPEG stream: Sweet Dreams
MPEG stream: Moscow Discow

Few artists' music can guarantee to brighten your days and nights the way Atom Heart (and his numerous aliases) can. Any new release from this fella is received with a huge aQ grin! If you dug the recent Yellow Magic Fever tribute from the always deliriously delightful Senor Coconut and Los Negritos' Speed-Merengue Mega-Mix, you know what we're talking about and you definitely won't wanna miss these freshly reissued earlier Senor Coconut releases including this, his awesome Kraftwerk tribute! Even if you got 'em the first time around, heck, we're sure you know somebody who'd benefit from this festive treat! Back in 2000, we had this to say about El Baile Aleman: Senor Coconut is actually the guy better known as techno/electronica artist Atom Heart. He's moved to Chile and gone all Latin and groovy on us. However, all the songs on this (high-) concept album are Kraftwerk covers! So this joins a long line of weird and wonderful tributes to Kraftwerk. Soon we'll be able to have a whole bin at Aquarius dedicated to such endeavors: the Balenescu Quartet one, the Terre Thaemlitz one, the one with all the Slovenian acts, the Japanese import one, the Miami Bass one, etc. etc. Anyways, so incredibly executed down to the tiniest detail, this one will sit at the top of the heap! Super duper fun.

MPEG stream: The Robots (Cha-Cha-Cha)
MPEG stream: Neon Lights (Cha-Cha-Cha)

It's been awhile since we last heard from Uwe Schmidt's latin playboy alter ego Senor Coconut. Not at all surprising with all of his other personas and projects in the works - Atom Heart, Mambotur, Los Samplers, Geeez'n'Gosh, Roger Tubesound, Disk Orchestra, Midisport and the list goes on! But at long last, here's a small vinyl dose. No Kraftwerk covers here, these are three versions of his effervescent track "Electrolatino" (one of them a DJ Rodriguez remix). Nice.

Few artists' music can guarantee to brighten your days and nights the way Atom Heart (and his numerous aliases) can. Any new release from this fella is received with a huge aQ grin! If you dug the recent Yellow Magic Fever tribute from the always deliriously delightful Senor Coconut and Los Negritos' Speed-Merengue Mega-Mix, you know what we're talking about and you definitely won't wanna miss these freshly reissued earlier Senor Coconut releases including his awesome Kraftwerk tribute El Baile Aleman! Even if you got 'em the first time around, heck, we're sure you know somebody who'd benefit from this festive treat! Back in 2000, we had this to say about Gran Baile Con Senor Coconut: Mambo-electronica-fuckery from German cum Chilean Atom Heart. Much more skittery and abrasive than his more recent Kraftwerk covers record, really innovative work that has more staying power without that gimmick. Think V/VM meets Stock, Hausen & Walkman, meets Rancho Relaxo All-Stars. Heavily entrenched in the drill & bass laptop / breakbeat damage employed by Aphex Twin and early Squarepusher, but using samples culled from the rich Cuban traditions of Cha Cha and Mambo. Highly recommended.

MPEG stream: Chocolatina (Guaguanco Libre)
MPEG stream: Suavito (Jive Eclectico)

A German electronic artist living in Chile doing samba versions of Japanese electro-pop pioneers Yellow Magic Orchestra. Well it would only sound absurd if it were anyone else but the ever so loveable Senor Coconut. With him, it's a no brainer. After paying homage to Kraftwerk on the now classic and sadly out of print disc El Baile Aleman, and exploring all sorts of covers on his instant party hit "Fiesta Songs". This carries on in the same fun samba-with-a-twist spirit of those recordings while actually featuring all three members of Yellow Magic Orchestra at different points throughout the record. Also making appearances are members of Mouse on Mars, Dee-Lite and Nouvelle Vague. Senor Coconut has proven himself to be some sort of a hipster Les Baxter for his generation. Appropriating other musical cultures, with tongue in cheek and earnest respect living side by side. Most of all he continues to provide some playful fun to a world that is often all too serious for its own good.

MPEG stream: Yellow Magic
MPEG stream: The Madmen

Uwe Schmidt returns with another Senor Coconut record to tickle our ears. If you're not familiar with the chameleonlike Schmidt, these are just a few of the other aliases he's recorded as: Los Samplers (Perez Prado drill n' bass), XXX (Atom with Chilean rapper Tea Time), Midisport (Brazilian samba gets the midi hatchet), Bund Deutscher Programmierer (refried laptops a la Mille Plateaux), The Roger Tubesound Ensemble ("digital jazz" in Atom's own words). Wow! Senor Coconut is where Schmidt works out his love for samba, the cha cha cha, merengue, etc, and to make it more fun for him, he likes to cover the most unlikely tracks. Here we've got tracks by Sade, the Doors, Elton John, even Jean Michel Jarre. Unfortunately there's also a Michael Jackson cover ("Beat It") which, of course, instantly calls to mind Weird Al and now I can't seem to listen to this record anymore without picturing the videos for 'Eat It', "Fat' or 'Another One Rides The Bus'. Very fun, but you might want to start with the Senor's Kraftwerk tribute, El Baile Aleman. That one we can recommend start to finish.

MPEG stream: Riders on the Storm
MPEG stream: Oxygene (Part III)

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

SORRY. Senor Coconut is actually the guy better known as techno/electronica artist Atom Heart. He's moved to Chile and gone all Latin and groovy on us. However, all the songs on this (high-) concept album are Kraftwerk covers! So this joins a long line of weird and wonderful tributes to Kraftwerk. Soon we'll be able to have a whole bin at Aquarius dedicated to such endeavors: the Balenescu Quartet one, the Terre Thaemlitz one, the one with all the Slovenian acts, the Japanese import one, the Miami Bass one, etc. etc. Anyway, this is pretty fun.

RealAudio clip: Tour de France

We first got a teaser for this long promised full length matchup way back in 2002 on the Spectre record Parts Unknown, which featured super stoned rapper Sensational on 4 tracks, and it was solid gold, Spectre's creepy ominous dubscapes, and Sensational's mushmouthed mumble, twisted, druggy, off kilter and so good. So who should come by Aquarius just now, but Spectre himself, dropping off this latest disc, a full length showdown / match up / tag team, and it's just as good as those 4 tracks from way back when. Seems like Spectre has dialed back the sinister, instead crafting some very Sensational appropriate tracks, loopy and loping, twisted and stuttery, muted and abstract, clipped and cracking, the perfect bed for Sensational to lay down his drugged out stream of consciousness fffffflow, woozy, warped and warbly, strings sing, horns bleat, a skeletal beat skitters, weaving an almost Hitchcock sounding backdrop for some drawled genius. Slowed down vocals, demonic and growly (remember those from Spectre records?) ooze over some crunchy stabs and some hiccupping beats, lazer fire from some sci-fi movie wraps around a hazy Wu-worthy should sample, looped Led Zep gives way to pizzicatto strings and looped birdsong, Spectre has always been a beat master, and this disc proves he's only gotten better, how come he's not doing beats for the big guys, if we were Kanye or Jay-Z or 50 Cent and heard this shit, we'd get Spectre up to the compound and get him crafting beats PRONTO. And along those same lines, why does everyone want T-Pain and Lil' Wayne to guest on their records? Hell, can you imagine some MTV hip hop jam breaking down into a cough syrup trudge and Sensational strolling out rapping some unintelligable weirdness into a pair of headphones? If only...

MPEG stream: The Way I Like
MPEG stream: The Boom
MPEG stream: Rip Like This
MPEG stream: Boom Bash Shit

Dunno why we've taken so long to get around to listing this... not 'cause it's not cool. It is! Our favorite stoned (really stoned) sounding rapper teams up with a Japanese electronic noise dude!!

Spacey, synth-based prog/psych from the early '70s (or whenever!) doesn't get much better than this. The trio Sensations' Fix captured something pretty special on their tripped out, ultra-underground sounding debut, originally released by Italian Polydor in 1974 and now reissued on vinyl for the first time, by local archival label Superior Viaduct. While it sounds like it could have been made in a synth-stuffed bunker in Berlin, or somewhere in the pastoral English countryside (outside, under the stars, towards the break of dawn), this was actually recorded in an suburban basement in the USA, on a 4-track, by an Italian musician, Franco Falsini (the composer, credited with "guitars and synthesizers"), and two Americans he recruited, Richard Ursillo ("bass guitars and electronic pedals") and Keith Edwards ("drums and percussion"). Though for much of this, Mr. Edwards sits out, as the mysterious floating electronics and blissful strum of Fragments Of Light are ofttimes purely ethereal, only occasionally lashed to propulsive beats, and even those are may be machine-made, with what sounds like live drumming on really only one of the tracks (however, he's apparently the guy that turned Falsini on to LSD, so he should get some musical credit for that). Song titles include "Nuclear War In Your Brain", "Music Without Gravity", "Music Is Painting In The Air" and "Telepathic Children"; all seem quite appropriate, even the cryptic ones we don't understand. The drifty, druggy, echoing synthed-out weirdness of this, however, is balanced (or, rather, enhanced) by Falsini's knack for wonderful melodies, that's the key to this varied and delightful basement-recorded, often melancholic Minimoog fantasia. As you may recall, last year we were super excited to highlight a Sensations' Fix anthology, Music Is Painting In The Air, put out by the RVNG label. We mentioned then how we've been longtime fans of this band's hard-to-find debut record, which we hoped hoped hoped would someday be reissued in its entirety (the anthology included just a few tracks from Fragments Of Light, in alternate versions). So, big ups to Superior Viaduct for making this happen. Man, we're not engineers so we wouldn't know about the superiority of their viaducts, but we do know the label's choice of records to reissue certainly is superior! Third aQuarius Record Of The Week this year already - Craig Leon, Devo, now Sensations' Fix! And, there's *another* great SV reish reviewed this list too, Heldon's Interface - and we also just got in their lp of the Solaris soundtrack, too! In our review of the RVNG collection we said some stuff we may as well more-or-less repeat 'cause it applies here completely. SF's electronic-based driftworks have a quite lovely "pop" side to 'em too, sometimes - while mostly instrumental, a few tracks do have gentle, breathy Robert Wyatt-ish singing to go with the hazy, meandering, meditative atmospheres. It's definitely not the usual sort of quasi-operatic, over-the-top, classically influenced Italian prog that we're used to (and love), from bands like Il Balletto Di Bronzo, Le Orme, or Osanna, no. Also fairly far from the sinister soundtrack funk of Goblin. Sensations' Fix are different, having more in common with the kosmiche krautrock electronics of the era - such as Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, Cluster, Popul Vuh, Michael Rother, Ashra, A.R. & Machines, and You (among others who came before and after). They also may have indeed been influenced by the Canterbury sound of bands like the Soft Machine, so one Italian prog act we could compare them to would be Picchio Dal Pozzo. We could also compare 'em to a kinder, gentler version of Richard Pinhas & Heldon, from France, with a similar futuristic comingling of synthesizer and effected guitar, for sure (and thus is makes sense Superior Viaduct would release this simultaneously with the aforementioned Heldon lp too). Also the Heldon comparison brings up another big influence - Robert Fripp. Indeed, this record bears the inscription: "Dear Robert, you'll be glad to know that the heavenly music organisation is here too", a reference to the track "The Heavenly Music Corporation" on the A side of Fripp & Eno's No Pussyfooting album from '73. Oh, and on the surprisingly sunshiney vocal track "Do You Love Me?", we get a bit of an early Yes vibe. So, if you want to something to enjoy that's just sooooooo very cosmic and dreamy and melodic, this is highly recommended!!

MPEG stream: Fragments Of Light
MPEG stream: Music Is Painting In The Air
MPEG stream: Spacer Energy Age
MPEG stream: Space Closure

Severed Heads never really fit comfortably with any particular convention of the post-punk aesthetics; and when the project quietly disappeared in 2008, their demise was announced without much in the way of fanfare. Essentially a solo project of Australian electronic musician Tom Ellard, Severed Heads began in Sydney back in 1979 with Ellard experimenting with tape loops, DIY electronic kits, and rudimentary noise making devices all finding something of a commonality through lurching rhythms within this primordial soup of sound-making. Eventually, samplers and drum machines made their way into the Severed Heads repertoire, the group's best years from 1983 to 1988 or thereabouts, thanks to their avant-garde smarts throwing a monkey-wrench into synth-punk conventions. City Slab Horror (1985) was the second album that Severed Heads produced for Ink Records (and later reissued through Nettwerk). A deliberately imperfect record, City Slab Horror seeks to work against the latticework of rhythmic structures and melodic fluidity, with samples firing at irregular intervals and atonal pitches running rampant throughout the record. Exposing the rigidity of the mechanized form was one of the common strategems for synth-punk practitioners, with Fad Gadget and The Flying Lizards doing similarly disjointed avant-pop projects. While Severed Heads would eventually streamline into a sensible synth-pop project, City Slab Horror showcased how engaging Ellard could be in his wanderings through mad scientist archetypes, comic book horrorscaping, hiccupping sequencing, and inelegantly playful tunes.

MPEG stream: Spastic Crunch
MPEG stream: 4WD
MPEG stream: Cyflea, Rated R

Severed Heads were born from a what-the-fuck project called Mr. And Mrs. No Smoking Sign in the punk diaspora circa 1979, with both groups taking on those names as piss-take stratagems of invoking the horror industrial culture for the former, and downright awkwardness for the latter. Tape loops and mediated collages were the crux of MAMNSS and Severed Heads, which never really settled into the gravity-well of industrial culture, maintaining a sometimes overt sense of humor and a number of forays into legitimately brilliant minimal-wave / synth-pop tunes. By the early 80s though, the founding members Richard Fielding and Andrew Wright parted ways with Tom Ellard, who kept Severed Heads going through the '80s and beyond. It seemed Wright left because he wanted the project to move in a more musical direction; and Fielding thought just the opposite, leading to his anti-performance project called The Nobodies where he would set up automatons to perform in his absence. Since The Accident (1983) was the first major album for Ellard / Severed Heads coming on the heels of a handful of tapes that warbled between primitive electro-pop and tape loop deconstructions. The most notable track on Since The Accident was essentially an afterthought -- the bouncy OMD-esque number "Dead Eyes Opened" which Ellard tacked on to fill up some space on the tape submitted to the label that originally released the album. It quickly became a hit on Australian radio and opened up a considerable amount of doors for Severed Heads (including an opening tour spot for Skinny Puppy). Throughout Since The Accident, there are numerous avant-pop excursions of layering tape loops in varying stages of synchronicity with drum machines and sequences, including the deftly produced tracks "Exploring The Secrets Of Treating Deaf Mutes" and "A Million Angels." But there were also the vertiginous tape loop / turntablist mantras reminiscent of early Christian Marclay / Gum tracks as heard on "Brassiere, In Rome" and "Gashing The Old Mae West" (the latter of which was released as an insane 21 minute "Marathon Mix" of hypno-psychosis on another 12", which obviously couldn't make it onto the reissue of the original lp). Weird and brilliant stuff.

MPEG stream: Dead Eyes Opened
MPEG stream: Gashing The Old Mae West
MPEG stream: Godsong

The best way we can think of to describe Sex Worker, the solo project of Daniel from Mi Ami, is like a lo-fi, lysergic pop Prince, the music is minimal and electronic, slipping from James Ferraro like warped tropical loopscapes, to super minimal dubbed out house, to eighties disco by way of Ariel Pink, to lo-fi 4-track electro, the perfect back up tracks for Daniel's sexy crooned falsetto vox, but there's more to Sex Worker than faux soul, shit gets pretty fucked up throughout. Sure, much of the record is spent slithery sexily through dimly lit neon soaked eighties nightclubs, crooning in dark basement underground discos, and speeding along empty roads with tinted windows and the top down, but the sound definitely gets weirder than all that, brooding and ominous and almost sci-fi here and there, super distorted and blown out elsewhere, the vocals an anguished howl over buried beats and warped looped melodies, loopy squelchy playful electronic skitter butted up against, skittery, stuttering almost skipping sounding soundscapes of warped FX drenched buzz and warbly glitched out crunch, before finally settling back down for the final 10 minute workout, "Honeymoon Babylon", haunting and electronic and minimal, the beats crumbling and distorted, laced with ghost like melodies, and all sorts of creepy effects and twisted production, and after a brief bit of falsetto crooning, the song devolves into an awesomely fractured futuristic electro jam, all droney and woozy and seriously druggy and psychedelic.

MPEG stream: Tough Love
MPEG stream: Rhythm Of The Night

One of three new releases this week from what might be our favorite tape label, The Tapeworm, who as always remain impossibly sonically unpredictable. This one from the oddly named duo SGR'CAV is in fact a collaboration between someone you likely know, Cristian Vogel, and someone you likely don't, SOS Gunver Ryberg, and together, these two whip up a very Tapeworm worthy soundscape of staticky alien broadcasts, haunting chordal drift, lots of hiss and hum, loads of space, a field of warped sonic events that seem to be drifting in a haze of near silence, the sound building to thick tarpit buzz, then splintering into skittery blasts of fragmented crunch, occasionally smoothing out into gauzy swirls of soft focus shimmer, but just as often, collapsing into tangled collages of psychedelic free-noise ambience. At times primitive and lo-fi, at others, heavily textured and caustic, and still at others, dark and delicately lovely. LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!!

Shabotinski is the oddball Viennese electronica work from Christoph Kurzmann (from Orchestra 33 1/3) and Dafeldecker. Oval like digital skittering produce subtle melodic episodes linking irony laden jazz-electronica-pop medleys ususally found on Cheap Records. The song fragments sound remarkably similar to the electronic facets of Six Finger Satellite, if they had a sultry trumpet player meandering over the post Kraftwerk / Section 25 drum machines.

Working from a similar blueprint as Tortoise, Shabotinski uses the studio as an instrument to warp and mutate the basic rock/jazz structure. Yet, the dissonant grinding tones so familiar to Mego's brand of electronica saves this from sounding like Tortoise, their offshoots or their disciples.

We've been dying for this. Shackleton's live set for Fabric, a collection of unreleased tracks, exclusives, and even a handful of older classics (reworked into wholly new and never heard before versions), all woven into a sprawling, claustrophobic avant dubstep soundscape, that manages to be groovy, and creepy, haunting and abstract, rhythmic and skeletal, super minimal and strangely funky, almost like some hauntological take on dubstep. Ritualistic, occultic, with plenty of looped, super minimal rhythms, strange disembodied voices, mysterious samples, reverb drenched soulful croons drifting through fields of hazy shimmer and dubbed out ambience, occasional cinematic strings, lurching lumbering low end, lots of haze and gauze and blurred atmospheres, all looped and layered and stretched out into ethereal streaks of spectral sound, but unlike a lot of dubstep, Shackleton is more about the beats, and the surrounding ambience is super subtle, sometimes so much so, that it sounds like the beats are just skittering through empty space, but it's all a deft arrangement of tension and release, it's precisely how Shackleton weaves this moody, intense, and darkly claustrophobic soundworld. Oddly enough (or maybe not), much of the sound here reminds us of African Head Charge, the same sort of abstract spiritual dub vibe, but stripped WAY WAY down and spaced WAY WAY out. Druggy and psychedelic, as much as rhythmic and hypnotic. So great. Even though it's a comp / DJ mix, and not a proper album per se, it might just be the best Shackleton release yet! Like all Fabric mixes, comes in a cool metal box, with a printed inner sleeve, and a heavy printed cardstock slipcover.

MPEG stream: Hypno Angel
MPEG stream: Interlude: Blood Rhythm With Wishy Drones
MPEG stream: Deadman
MPEG stream: Man On A String (Part 1)

This has been out for a while, but we hadn't been able to track down copies until now. It's been a while since we've heard from Shackleton, and we were sort of amazed to realize that this was the first proper album from Shackleton we'd ever reviewed, there was a Fabric mix, there was a collaboration with Pinch, a collection of ep's, a split with Mordant Music and Vindicatrix, and those awesome Skull Disco comps, but this is the first record proper. Even though technically it's not a proper album per se, apparently the whole first disc here was in fact a series of ep's, recorded using, yep you guessed it, some sort of Italian drawbar organ (whatever that is), and this the tracks seemed to all belong together, and they definitely do, the sound seems less dark, and more playful than on past Shackleton recordings we've heard, gone is much of the dubsteppiness, the droniness, the darkness, and in its place, a much more vibrant and multi hued soundworld. A dizzying concoction of stuttery beats, of swirling melodies, strange voices, fragmented samples, blurred collages spinning across the stereo field, slipping easily from synthy, krauty mesmer, to almost Eastern sounding Muslimgauze style beatscapes, from crackle drenched minimal house music, to dubbed out abstract low end minimalism, and from swirly almost soundtracky ambience, to skittery Kompakt style techno. The vibe is super varied, every song constantly mutating and shifting, some serious avant techno ear candy for sure, but it definitely makes it a tough one to describe, however, as far as listening, it's endlessly mesmerizing, every track here deeeeep and lushly layered, multiple beats, weird loops, lots of samples, mysterious voices, all deftly chopped up and reconfigured into some serious hypno-techno mesmer. The second disc was originally intended to be a bonus 12", but there ended up being too much music to fit on a single 12", and thus became its own record, and as the title suggests, was written to be more spacious and abstract, which it is, but really it's all relative. This is no pop ambience, it's Shackleton's warped take on 'quiet' music, which is really not that quiet at all, full of sputtering rhythms, ping pong beats, buzzing synth thrum, thick swaths of rumble and hum, and spare skeletal rhythms. The opener is seriously dark and sinister, more like the dubsteppier Shackleton of old, but a bit more droned out, but really, that's as dark, and as quiet as it gets. Part two adds female vocals, woozy melodic percussion, bigger beats, warbly samples, sheets of glitchy squelch, fluttery flutes, there's a definite kitchen sink thing going on, but Shackleton can pull it off, and while this is not strictly ambient, or even really quiet, it is pretty abstract, and impressionistic, lots of tranced out loopage, mesmerizing melodies, plenty of texture, the tracks lengthy explorations of some warped sonic otherworld, pairing maddeningly repetitive melodies, with ominous spoken word, African chants, bloopy bleepy effects, all of those elements constantly blurring and looping, drifting in and out of phase, it's like a modern chill out dancefloor plunderphonia, and it's pretty goddamn psychedelic, and seriously, mind meltingly addictive.

MPEG stream: (For The) Love Of Weeping
MPEG stream: Touched
MPEG stream: Seven Present Tenses
MPEG stream: Powerplant
MPEG stream: Music For The Quiet Hour Part One
MPEG stream: Music For The Quiet Hour Part Five

For the dubstep obsessed among us, especially those of us who aren't scouring DJ shops for white labels and limited 12"s, this collection is a godsend. Gathering up, as the title suggests, 3 eps from one of our favorite dubsteppers, Shackleton, who faithful aQ-ers probably remember from the Skull Disco collections, the Steppas' Delight comps and the recent split with Mordant Music. The music of Shackleton is not just your regular old dubstep, it's super lush and expansive, skittery and groovy, dark and haunting, and these jams are no different. Spare and skeletal, yet impossibly full and dense, minimal on the melodies as well as the beats, these eps are super stripped down, even by Shackleton standards, these tracks are not as bass heavy as you might imagine, more light and ethereal, not light in spirit, but in sound, the vibe is still dark and mysterious. The strange vocal snippets in "(No More) Negative Thoughts", the twisted woozy melodies and stuttery hand claps on "It's Time For Love", the cool tabla laced drift of "Mountains Of Ashes", the super dark and noisy droniness of "There's A Slow Train Coming", which is about as sinister as it gets here, the record is jam packed with cool stark beats, and all sorts of moody melody and bleak ambience, culminating in the closer "Something Has Got To Give", with it's chopped up vox, creepy processed laughter, koto style strings, shimmering minor key drones and the brittle barely there beat, it's almost like a dubstep soundtrack for a lost giallo, malevolent and cinematic and seriously sinister!

MPEG stream: (No More) Negative Thoughts
MPEG stream: Mountains Of Ashes
MPEG stream: Asha In The Tabernacle

A nice reminder of why we love DJ Shadow comes in the form of this best of Mo' Wax Singles compilation that culls together all of his groundbreaking early sides and remixes that put the London-based label on the map. Spanning the years 1993-2000, some of the tracks are alternative versions of material from Endtroducing, and Pre-emptive Strike but also included are the Dark Days Soundtrack single and a handful of remixes, among them Depeche Mode, Folk Implosion, Massive Attack, and Blackalicious. It's cool to have all these tracks compiled together, sort of like a beloved old friend we haven't seen in ages.

MPEG stream: High Noon
MPEG stream: Dark Days
MPEG stream: Natural One (Folk Implosion Remix)

One of our fave albums and all-time best sellers, Josh "DJ Shadow" Davis' seminal Endtroducing debut, finally in stock on vinyl!! For a long time, our website's listing of it had just a single word review, but that word was "amazing". A while later, when a deluxe cd reissue came out, we took the opportunity to write a few hundred more words, pretty much amounting to saying the same thing, "amazing". Here they are: Shadow's masterpiece is a brilliant example of hip hop DJ-as-composer, sample-based songwriting, a mostly instrumental suite of songs built entirely from sounds, hooks and grooves sourced from the depths of Shadow's extensive record collection. He didn't invent the idea, of course, but he did do it better than almost anyone before (or after!) him, garnering for himself worldwide fame and heaps of deserved critical praise. And even if you scratch (heh) your head when we talk about turntablists and sampling, rest assured that, process aside, this is a great album that transcends genre tags and easy categorization. It's dark, dramatic, bright, hip-hop, soul, and jazz. It is very accessible. Shadow picked cool samples (like the Pugh Rogefeldt bit that helped us sell a ton of reissued cds by that particular Swedish '60s psych-folkster) AND also turned these samples utterly into his own, new music. Music that's groovy and moody and challenging, never all that easy to figure out, and not at all about turntablist hi-jinx or trickery, just about careful listening and the love of all kinds of old LPs!! Cut Chemist, in the liner notes, is quoted as calling DJ Shadow "The King Of Digging" and vinyl collecting/crate digging for sure is celebrated by Endtroducing, from the famous cover shot of the racks in the vast Sacramento shop simply called Records to the grooves reborn within. As Shadow himself put it: "this album reflects a lifetime of vinyl culture". He never topped it and probably never will. Not that anyone else has either! So if you don't have it already - or even if you do, but not on wax - what the heck are you waiting for?

MPEG stream: Mutual Slump
MPEG stream: Midnight In A Perfect World

Believe it or not, one of our fave albums and all-time best sellers, Josh "DJ Shadow" Davis' seminal Endtroducing debut, currently only has a one-word review on our website. Certainly it deserves more than that. Although, at least the word we chose is "amazing". The album's original release on MoWax in 1996 (almost ten years ago!!) more or less predated our obsessive reviewing schedule, so like quite a few other classics it never got its multi-paragraph due on our new arrivals list. And chances are, we figured that listing it our our site with the simple "amazing" recommendation was enough, 'cause it's hard to imagine that everyone hadn't heard of/heard/bought a copy by now. But since, after all, we still sell it steadily, clearly there must be those as yet to discover it. Now, with the release of a double disc digipack "deluxe" edition in a plastic slipcase (a treatment afforded by the same label to the likes of John Coltrane's A Love Supreme, by the way, making this something of an honor for DJ Shadow!), we have the perfect excuse to basically take a few hundred words to say "amazing" again! Shadow's masterpiece (disc one, "The Album") is a brillant example of hip hop DJ-as-composer, sample-based songwriting, a mostly instrumental suite of songs built entirely from sounds, hooks and grooves sourced from the depths of Shadow's extensive record collection. He didn't invent the idea, of course, but he did do it better than almost anyone before (or after!) him, garnering for himself worldwide fame and heaps of deserved critical praise. And even if you scratch (heh) your head when we talk about turntablists and sampling, rest assured that, process aside, this is a great album that transcends genre tags and easy categorization. It's dark, dramatic, bright, hip-hop, soul, and jazz. It is very accessible. Shadow picked cool samples (like the Pugh Rogefeldt bit that helped us sell a ton of reissued cds by that particular Swedish '60s psych-folkster so recently) AND also turned these samples utterly into his own, new music. Music that's groovy and moody and challenging, never all that easy to figure out, and not at all about turntablist hi-jinx or trickery, just about careful listening and the love of all kinds of old LPs!! Cut Chemist, in the liner notes, is quoted as calling DJ Shadow "The King Of Digging" and vinyl collecting/crate digging for sure is celebrated by Endtroducing, from the famous cover shot of the racks in the vast Sacramento shop simply called Records to the grooves reborn within. As Shadow himself put it: "this album reflects a lifetime of vinyl culture". He never topped it (opinions here were mixed about his many-years-later follow-up The Private Press in 2002) and probably never will. Not that anyone else has either! So if you don't have it already, what the heck are you waiting for? And to further underscore the point that this a great and important album, we're told that there's a book in the 33 1/3 Series coming out about it soon too! Then there's disc two, what (aside from the packaging, which includes a booket of photos, essays, and track notes from Shadow himself) makes this a "deluxe" reissue. Disc two, entitled "Excessive Ephemera", features a slew of Endtroducing-era cuts -- alternate takes, demos, remixes, and a live radio performance. In addition to a few tracks that made it out on now-out-of-print MoWax singles, a bunch of these are unheard-before, work-in-progress versions of tracks from the album, so as bonus material this is more about providing insight into the creation of Endtroducing and less about any long-lost tracks that shoulda been on the album. It is kind of a way to listen to Endtroducing again with new ears. And it's nice to have the "extended overhaul" of the all-too-brief album track "Organ Donor", a mix that Shadow created expressly for James Lavelle's DJ use. So, a lot of added value for all Shadow fans who want to pick this up again and re-enter the world of Entroducing. Amazing.

MPEG stream: Mutual Slump
MPEG stream: Midnight In A Perfect World

Not our favorite outing by DJ Shadow. Though we do suspect there's a Magma sample in there somewhere, so that's cool! But also, maybe, Rage Against The Machine??

Not sure if the title of DJ Shadow's new production refers to himself or the listener, but there's no doubt there is something schizophrenically off-kilter here, and the jury is still out on whether this is a successful quality or merely a string of increasingly bad ideas. Chock full of guest appearances (mostly guest rappers-never a good sign!) including local hyphy hip hop stars, Keak da Sneak and Turf Talk, Christina Carter from Charalambides and Chris James from Stateless doing his most earnest Chris Martin/Bono/Thom Yorke imitations. While the consensus from most of us here is that The Outsider as a whole is better than Shadow's last outing, The Private Press, what's missing here is that killer single track that makes the whole worthwhile. That said, we'll give Josh Davis the benefit of the doubt that The Outsider is definitely a grower with patient listeners reaping the most rewards from his erratic multiple personae.

MPEG stream: 3 Freaks
MPEG stream: Artifact
MPEG stream: Erase You

DJ Shadow's second full length is finally here, and I do believe I (Windy) am the only AQ-er who likes it. Well, Jim thinks it's ok, but the general consensus 'twixt my colleagues is that the rest of the field has caught up to him, and he hasn't hitched up his britches to keep ahead of the herd. Hmm. I disagree. Certainly The Private Press is no Endtroducing (his acclaimed debut full length), but neither should it be. It's a lot more accessible and crowdpleasing than the debut, the layers aren't as impenetrably mysterious, and yeah, it requires less work to like it (i.e. not as challenging). But there's nuthin' wrong with that. He's keeping it interesting for himself. The Private Press is a likable, listenable (might we even say, at times lighthearted?) trip. It's got everything from the moody arpeggiated piano lines that're DJ Shadow's signature, soul divas, sad minor key laments, funny Cut Chemist / Kid Koala-style spoken bits, super epic percussive climaxes, and an all over hip hop flavor. And the heartbreakingly sincere audio letters that bracket the album are incredibly well chosen, framing the songs as an emotional musical narrative. *Very* well done. And now for my co-workers to have their say: We have to wonder, though, why he used that old "pure energy" sample. Why don't ya just throw in "I got the power!" too? Not to mention the overused tired, sad android voice (y'know just like the one Radiohead used). Cup sez: We had a DJ Shadow 12" here a little while ago, and I thought one of its tracks sounded as if he'd just plugged in his Playstation 2 system and recorded the sounds of someone playing the game REZ. If you're at all familiar with the game you'll undoubtedly find the Shadow track ringing familiar too. REZ is basically a shooter game, but with an astounding combination of rave-ready sounds and gorgeously trippy visuals - both of which are manipulated by your performance. Oh yeah, and the level bosses are pretty spectacular. Stunningly beautiful and deluxe fun! Really, you could just project the game action on a wall, pump the sounds through a bad-ass sound system, and *POOF!* instant party. Anyways, that track is included here too. And it sticks out like a sore thumb which makes the REZ theory all the more plausible!

RealAudio clip: Fixed Income
RealAudio clip: Monosylabik
RealAudio clip: Giving Up The Ghost
RealAudio clip: Blood On The Motorway

It's been so long since we had some crazy crew of brain meelting tongue twisting outer space hip hop visionaries. Disconnected rhymes, sputtering, glitched out beats, total mind melting confusional free funk freakouts. For a while Antipop Consortium were pushing the envelope, Anticon definitely have their own avant angle. But we've been hankering for someone like Kool Keith. Paging Dr. Octagon. We want some damaged stuttery beats, warped warbly synths and fuzzy glitched out grzzzzt. Most importantly, some maddening slurred, drug drenched, space age, conspiracy theory WHATTHEFUCK flows. Maybe that's why we've been leaning toward Grime so much lately. It just feels so much more dangerous and fucked up and unconcerned with hip hop convention. But now we've got the Shadowhuntaz. A rogue band of futuristic hip hop explorers, who mix the perplexing sci fi / high as fuck mush mouthed ramblings of Dr. Octagon with the glitched out hip hopped electronic squelch and thud, skitter and skid, slowed down IDM beatscapes of Antipop (they are on Skam after all) into a fucking killer trip hop skittery groove. The beats, hiccup and slither, bounce and bump, the music is a claustrophobic swirl of haunting loops, weird industrial clatter, moaning drones, and all sorts of production fuckery, effects swirl and shift, vocals are chopped and looped, skipping samples, warm washes of ambient whir, and then there's the vocals, all different and distinct, some laid back and stoned as fuck, some amped up and rapid fire, all dense with incredible tales of this or that, all sort of druggy and tripped out. Plus there's some totally fucked up scratching, little snatches of DJ freakout, but those scratchfests are run through the Shadowhuntaz supercomputer and spit out the other side a careening chaotic crush of chopped up, impossibly complex textural collages of scratch detritus, like they dropped 3 or 4 DJ's, wildly scratching and tearing shit up, into a huge blender, and then sprayed the resulting funk flecked gore funk all over these tracks. Funky, fucked up, freaked out, cool and creepy and quite possibly contender for hip hop record of the year!

MPEG stream: 2020
MPEG stream: Massive

After the last batch of releases on Hospital, you'd likely be expecting some sort of grim electronica, or downcast techno murk from this UK outfit, but the punky cover art is your first hint that this might just be a bit different. Which it most certainly is. Sure it's grim and murky, but instead of minimal beats and bleak atmospheres, this is classic old school death punk / crust, a la Amebix, Rudimentary Peni, Christian Death, etc. Filthy, fuzzy guitars, simple drum pound, total nihilistic leather jacketed, spikes and denim, backpatch crusty punk, gloomy and atmospheric, with some dark woozy passages, but otherwise a fierce blast of knuckle dragging smash-the-state ferocity, the sprawling B-side spending much of its time in a downtuned crust punk death march ballad, all echo drenched vocals, weird spluttery drumming, down tuned guitar-noise, streaks of feedback, all anchored by a simple, caveman beat, and eventually disappearing in a clouds of primitive electronics. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!

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

SORRY. Subtitled "The Best of Ananda Shankar", this is long overdue (the original LPs command hundreds of dollars) material from Ravi's brother. Completely whacked out psychedelic sitar music, albeit a little cheesier (he covers "Jumpin Jack Flash") but sometimes a lot weirder and more experimental than brother Ravi. Supposedly comes with CD-ROM visuals.

Ananda Shankar (RIP) met up in '99 with British "Asian Underground" DJ State of Bengal for this sitar-funk-electronica session. Indeed an "illustrious cult figure in the secret history of pop culture", Shankar was famed for his East-meets-West psychedelic pop experiments decades ago, and this is a fun and fitting finale to his career. If you were into the "Untouchable Outcaste Beats" comp (which featured an old Shankar track alongside folks from the new Asian/UK DJ scene) and/or are a fan of the likes of Talvin Singh, you should check this out.

She-Satellites is the pseudonym for Atari Teenage Riot's noise programmer Nic Endo, whose second solo album (the first being Nic Endo's 'White Heat' on Digital Hardcore) reflects a more adventurous approach to noise and beats than her contributions in Atari Teenage Riot. The interplay between the digitized tones has an antiquated feel of the electronic music composers of the 60s (sounding very much like Arne Nordheim or Vladimir Ussachevsky) and accompanies a start-n-stop array of crunchy breakbeats. 'At its frequent best, 'Poison Lips' restores frissons of pleasure to noise zones, where punishment beatings had become the rule.' - Biba Kopf / The Wire

For those of you who have been FIENDING for some murky, gritty, booming and dark dubbed out techno, and seething, narcotic wareHOUSE similar to the dose we administered a couple months ago with the fantastic Porter Ricks reissue, Biokenetics, we got it for you RIGHT HERE! Shed, aka Rene Pawlowitz, offers up his third full length, The Killer, and man, while we're kinda bummed we're late to the party, it's SO great to finally arrive! Rolling, mesmeric, corroded bursts of metallic klang tangle with dark and HEAVY synthscapes, rattling bass tones, and subtle trance inducing rhythmic shifts. Hazy clouds of filtered fuzz, and buzzing skree smokin out the disco tech! "I Come By Night" is a nefarious and brooding techno stomper. The sounds of robot chatter and malfunctioning factory equipment crumbled up together and spread tautly over a tectonic rhythm grid, the sounds caustic and mysterious, buzzing and droning and teeming with dark energy. Like a WAY more brutal Actress, other worldly squeaks and blips ricocheting to and fro on top of some seriously gothic synthscapes. "Day After", "Phototype" and "Ride On" are more of a broken, fucked up and moody rendition of dubstep or UKG. The bass drum sound has us thinking of the gnarlier side of Chain Reaction, while the snares and hats swing rigidly on top (an oxymoron, we know, but we don't know how else to describe the confusional yet undeniably groovy sound Shed manages to achieve here). The synth vibes on these tracks are totally haunting. Heavy horror vibrations, and blissy blackened grittiness. Unintelligible vocal snippets looping over and over, creating an infectious syncopation. There are also moments of dubby drifting ambiance that tie The Killer together quite nicely. The introduction, "STP3 The Killer", is a pulsating, Hecker meets Hallucinator vaporous trance dance, while "Gas Up" (Voigt reference?) is a soporific bliss out dreamscape! Bubbling angelic synth tones flow in and out of focus, obscured by a fog of tape hiss. "The Praetorian (Album Mix) is an evolving digital landscape, again reminding us of Tim Hecker circa "Harmony In Ultraviolet". Arpeggiated plink plonking glassinine sonic shards and delicately discordant mesmer floating up to the heavens! Beautiful! The Killer is totally right up our alley, as far as techno goes. Massively heavy at points, dreamy and delicate at others. Blurry and narcotic, trance inducing dubbed out seismic GROOVE! If you dig all those Chain Reaction, Basic Channel and Gas vibes of yore, or are feeling that new experi-techno sound of Actress or that forlorn night music that is Burial, Shed's sound is definitely gonna hit you in the gut (in a pleasurable way)! RECOMMENDED FRESHNESS!

MPEG stream: I Come By Night
MPEG stream: Silent Witness
MPEG stream: Ride On