[ 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 351 through 400 of 5033.

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Two of the three killer Battles eps (C and B) on a single import cd (note: both eps are still available separately) from this far out post Don Cab post Helmet post-prog-jazz-mathrock-whatthefuck-supergroup! Here's what we had to say about the two eps when we first reviewed them a while back: EP C: This is one pedigreed post-rock combo here! Battles consists of Ian Williams (Don Caballero, Storm And Stress), Tyondai Braxton (son of jazz genius Anthony and solo artist in his own right), John Stanier (Helmet, Tomahawk) and Dave Konopka (Lynx). These gents have joined forces to tangle their guitar strings, various drum implements, and electronic gadgetry into a big knot that might seem loose but is probably really tight if you were to try and unravel it. And while their compositions might be 'difficult', listening to this is not. Battles sounds like a post rock band (a la Don Cab or Lynx) playing the music of Conlon Nancarrow on Raymond Scott's Manhattan Research equipment. Or Gershon Kingsley making math rock. Weird, complex, delightful. EP B: Battles seems to have a thing for EPs. Well, why not? Might be the best format for their brand of attention-span sapping math rock. And you do get a full half-hour here, filled out with these five tracks of advanced instrumental action. This band -- featuring (ahem, selling points here) Ian Williams from Don Caballero/Storm And Stress, Tyondai "Son of Anthony" Braxton, John Stanier of Helmet/Tomahawk and Lynx's Dave Konopka -- are pros at making impressively complicated yet undeniably enjoyable post-rock music, as lively as it is listenable (which we mean in a good way). Often hectic but never harsh. It's as if these guys are taking King Crimson's early '80s comeback classic Discipline and giving it a fractured, abstract and electronic makeover. Venturing into totally deconstructed Starfuckers-ish territory, the twelve minute "BTTLS" might be the highlight, or at least the most abstract track on here by far... but the whole B EP is a fine dose of Battles for their quickly growing legion of fans.

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Back in 2012, we raved about a cd from some mysterious French instrumental math/post/noise rock combo called Poles. At the time, we compared them to Psychic Paramount, Dazzling Killmen, Laddio Bolocko, Don Cab, Breadwinner, needless to say, these guys fit perfectly amongst those math/post rock elite. We had been hankering for more ever since, and recently, the band got in touch to let us know, that there might finally be more on the horizon, but in the meantime, one of the Poles had a new record under the name Batwan, but warned us right up front it was NOTHING like Poles, and he was not kidding. Instead, the music of Batwan is a sort of blackened industrial soundscaping, the opener a long sprawling field of pulsing guitar thrum, and dense sweeps of gnarled noisiness that ebb and flow, all over a constantly roiling field of ambient noise, and industrial whir, but that noisiness soon abates, leaving hazy drifts of softly reverberating thrum, shot through with barely there melodies, and buried percussion, not to mention what sounds like human voices processed into a chorus of croaking frogs, not to mention what sounds like some scissor snipping, some abstract drumming, some keening sine wave tones, little electronic squiggles, bells and chimes, all woven into what eventually becomes a sort of Caretaker-esque bit of faded melancholic drift. And that's just the first track. The rest of the pieces are much shorter, but share a similar sonic palette, from a throbbing sort of minimal industrial house music, all muted and muddied and draped with cleaning metallic melodies, to a blurry little stretch of kosmische synth swirl, peppered with bits of crunch and clatter, to creepy haunted house noisescapes, to hushed minimal avant rock creep, to warped electro weirdness, to harrowing cinematic ambience, and finally to a harrowing, droned out slow build, that takes an unsteady raga, and transforms it into something woozy and melty, and gradually more and more soul stirringly ominous, before finally fading out completely.

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The "next big thing?" Well, to us, this seems to be somewhat banal post-rock / electronica jazz fusion. Still, fans of recent discs by Kruder & Dorfmeister, Squarepusher and Tortoise may well enjoy "Human Patterns".

When we first heard a track from this album a few months ago, our immediate reaction was A) wow, we really had better find a way to get it for the store and B) if and when we do, it'll probably have to be a Record Of The Week. And that was just from hearing ONE song. Fortunately, we did manage to get some of these imports, and the rest of the record only confirmed and amplified our first impression. Record Of The Week it is! (Actually, some of us here, like Andee, were already Bebey fans from way back, but for others of us, gosh, what an introduction...) As you know, we've certainly seen a bunch of great groovy African reissues lately (in fact, there's a couple others elsewhere on this week's list). But this collection of the late Cameroonian composer & writer Francis Bebey's music is rather unique, to say the least. And it's got something in common with another cool item we're reviewing this week, the vintage "electronic soul" compilation Personal Space. As the title indicates, the focus here is on the especially electronic side of his discography, from the era when multi-instrumentalist Bebey experimented with the latest gear - tape recorders, keyboards, drum machines - to record his own music at home in Paris, making for delightfully dancey, avant-garde Afropop. The track we had heard was the first one here, "New Track", an over 8 minute long number that starts off with tinkling thumb piano before blaring synth stabs, burbling keys, and ticking drum machine rhythms kick in... pretty soon, the song has become dense with loops and layers, repeating vocals about bananas and potatoes and politics creating a kind of cheerfully confusing mantra. It's as fresh and charming and mesmeric and groovy today as it was when Bebey recorded it in back in '82. Though this would pretty much be worth it just for that memorable song alone, the rest of this 14-track collection is full of further futuristic Afrofunk highlights. Meaning, more blurting synthesized horns, head bopping basslines, thumping electronic beats augmented by hand percussion, and laidback vocals - some spoken, some sung, in various languages (Duala, French and English). Bebey's talent on classical guitar is also evident. It's quite an amazing mix altogether; 'makossa' music from Cameroon meets "Blow Your Head" style Moog outbursts (as on the woozy instrumental track "Super Jingle", with its skronky synth shiver set amidst hypnotic percussive pulsations). Sometimes the mood gets emotive in other ways, Bebey bringing the beats down and singing sadly in a soft, ragged voice... Here we will go out on a limb, and make a wild hypothetical rock crit "cross between this and that" equation, of Konono No.1 + Arthur Russell, whattya think? Basically, this is as cool as anything you could imagine something called "African Electronic Music 1975-1982" might possibly sound like! And maybe even cooler than that. Packaged with liner notes in both English and French.

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With his most recent album Guero which recalled his early Odelay funky finery, Sir Beck certainly gave the remixers lots of easy-goin' groovy stuff to work with, and the results from the likes of Air, El-P among others do complement and compliment the originals quite well. Don't be expecting anything here to blow your mind though, it all pretty much sticks to Remixing 101, but much like its source album, its own pleasingly sun'n'weed-baked laidback shufflin' funkiness just might grow on you.

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Rashad Becker is a name most folks are probably more used to seeing on OTHER people's records, he is, and has been for the last decade plus, THEE go-to guy to have your record cut for vinyl. A master of his craft, who is able to produce stunning results in the analog realm, massive bass, deep layered sounds, lush and spacious, gritty and grimy, Becker was often the last step in a meticulous process, resulting in some of the most incredible records of the last few years. Check your collection and we guarantee you a handful were cut and/or mastered at Dubplates & Mastering, where Becker has been plying his trade for the past fifteen years. And we'll be the first to admit that technical mastery does not necessarily translate into creative genius, but in the case of Traditional Music Of Notational Species, Vol. 1, an argument could definitely be made that Becker's talent is not limited to the mastering lab. In fact, Traditional Music is far from traditional, and is quite difficult to describe, although a faithful long time aQ customer already proclaimed it his record of the year hands down, and we have to say we're inclined to agree. Split into two sides, the first, 'Dances', the second 'Themes', the record opens with a dense constantly shifting landscape of grinding textures, mutating electronics, synthy squelch, deep rumbles, skittery rhythmic pulsations, the vibe is almost playful, but that playfulness is definitely tempered by a dark shadowy moodiness, it's wild and loose, free and abstract, melodies blossom and fragment, collapsing into swirling tangles, it's just on the verge of noise, but instead, remains textural and atmospheric, almost like a modern day Perrey & Kingsley, deconstructed, the various elements recombined as some mutant modern minimal electroacoustic experimental electronica. That pretty much sets the groundwork for the first side, we're reminded of some past aQ faves like Roly Porter's Aftertime, or any recordings by Ben Frost, this sounds less like 'music' and more like some avant sound design, "Dances II" expands on the opener, weaving what sounds like fragmented vocals, and dark spidery melodies, into something strangely brooding, wreathed in a caustic cloud of flitting molecules of crumbling noise, and burbling underwater shimmer, all seemingly digitized and then corrupted, processed into something approaching a much more angular and aggressive Oval, overlapping layers, stuttering non-rhythms, it's expansive and cinematic, but at the same time dizzyingly dense, driven by thick rib cage rattling swells of low end thrum. The sound grows gradually more industrial, sounds slip backwards and swoop and swirl, a sea of squelches pinging from speaker to speaker, buried Morse code melodies, lots of hiss and hum sculpted into sheets of dark energy, and a blissed out barrage of blackened crumble, building to a near psychedelic squall, before closing out the side with a dark rhythmic sprawl, that touches on the hauntological electronica of Demdike Stare and the like, but so much more sinister, and woozily warped, a mad scientist reinterpretation, recasting the moody lope, as something feral and fracture, peppered with deep sub-bass pulsations, and drowsily fluctuating rhythms, it's like Stockhausen jamming with Demdike Stare, which is about as great, and as fucked up, as it sounds. The flipside, made up of four 'themes', dials back some of the crunch and buzz, opening with a dreamy field of alien electronics, fluttering and flitting, still gritty and crunchy, the sounds organic and analog, rough around the edges, but deftly woven into choir of electro-chirps and woozy moaning chordal swells, laced with burst of laser beam FX, but then a super heavy bass crunch creeps in, and it's stunning, it's meaner, and more brutal, and more physical that most dubstep drops, but with a totally different effect in this context, adding some seriously sinister heft, but before you know it, it's disappeared, leaving just a field of electronic firefly flutter. The rest of the 'Themes' play out like some mysterious soundtrack to a documentary about alien life, you can almost imagine the camera panning over strange sprawls of gnarled landscape, or drifting through the bottomless abyss of some alien sea, the electronics often sounding like the chitter of insects, again like some twisted field recording captured elsewhere in the galaxy, slipping from hushed skitter to epic avant kosmische and back again, culminating in what sounds like some warped choral piece, a gnarled choir of 'voices', sounding like field recordings captured in some Victorian mental institution, and then processed into something even more warped, all laid over a roiling sea of electronic gristle and industrial clatter, all held together by sheets of blurred buzz and ominous insectoid thrum. Strange stuff for sure, but in its own weird way, hauntingly and confusionally lovely. Cut and mastered by Becker himself of course. Pressed on 140 gram vinyl, and like all Pan releases, housed in a super striking, screen printed heavy plastic PVC sleeve.

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Chris Madak is the man behind the Bee Mask, a project with several dozen cassette releases issued over the past couple of years. Madak should also be noted as the principle behind the exceptionally curated Deception Island tape label, which had the foresight to release Oneohtrix Point Never's Betrayed In The Octagon as well as a handful of killer Emeralds related side projects. That said, not much from Bee Mask's own discography has made it through here, with blister popping electrical noise and synth sequencing seeming to be par for the course. Yet through those circuit bent experiments, Bee Mask emerges fully evolved as a master synthesist of all things elekronische and kosmische circa 1975. Canzoni Dal Laboratorio Del Silenzio Cosmico is a wonderfully varied album whose hallucinatory narratives speak to a purposeful and thoroughly intelligent design in its creation. Throughout you'll hear distinct references to the likes of Roland Kayn, Tangerine Dream (e.g. Electronic Meditations), Jean-Claude Eloy, Francoise Bayle, anything from Sky Records you could think of in the mid to late '70s, and even the more bombastic electronic interludes offered by Pink Floyd for that matter. The album opens in a more studied fashion through a sequence of carillion bell tones backmasked with a series of soft vocal grunts and gradually building set of electronic percolations, but all of this is engulfed in a tidal wave of polydactyl synth sequencing and brainfried electronic percolations only to morph again into a cavernous expanse of elongated tone and drone. The album's numerous detours and labyrinthine structures twist and devolve constantly across both sides of the record, delving into melodic phrasing in the electronic sequences only to shift deftly into plunging electrical vibrations of pulsing synth noise and delirious crescendos popping throughout. The fact that John Elliott of Emeralds has brought this to vinyl after a release on Gift Tapes a while back should not go unnoticed. Spectrum Spools is his new imprint, released through Editions Mego, and this should be a label not to be missed. Certainly not this release, that's for sure.

Here stands the monumental anthology, culled from the numerous cassettes and cd-rs that Chris Madak has released over the past decade or so, under the moniker Bee Mask. Like Emeralds and Oneohtrix Point Never, Madak is single-minded in his retrogarde aesthetic for synthesized compositions based on a vintage 1970s' cosmology. But where many of the '70s synth revivalists have coyingly adopted a full-fledged new age aesthetic through effervescent prettiness and soft-focus ambient swirl, Bee Mask offers up his own dysptopic take on psychedelic electronics through a crucible of cracked circuits, tape splutter, infernal field recordings, and a hell of a lot of sustained synth drones oscillating into crescendos of dissonant thumming. The zoner tracks on Elegy For Beach Friday (and there are a number of them) never sit in the background seeking a sublimated hypnosis, rather Madak zooms in on the placid pools of sound to unveil intense percolations and swarming vibrations. There's a scientific rigor to his pieces that finds Bee Mask orbiting around the dense, alienating electronics from Matt Shoemaker, Rick Reed, and Bernard Parmigiani. But, Madak is also one to tease with the subtle swelling melodies that harken to the more emotive works from Omit and Emeralds. If his work shares anything with the retro electronic tapestries that are the forgotten soundtracks for a summer sunset, Madak would rather blind the audience with the intensity of the sun, complete with blisters on the skin and technological mishaps from sunspots. Brilliant!

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

SORRY. Skweee!!! See our Museum of Future Sound review for more explanation...

If it hasn't happened already, Beige is likely to receive accolades from somebody like ArtForum or some other dinosaur institution desperately seeking a connection with what's 'hip' by claiming allegiance with electronica. Beige makes electronica that should be

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Fun, quirky, electronica from Germany ala the Mike and Rich album.

You might be more familiar with this label for their awesome string of reggae, soul, funk, disco and post-punk re-issues and compilations, but every now and again they'll toss into the mix a release by a current artist. This time it's the second full length from UK electro-funk artist Bell. Seven Types Of Six contains a dozen tweaked and bloopy electronic tracks with chopped up soul vocals, an unwavering 4/4 beat, and lots of analog synth, video game-y accents. Check out the very Playstation2 REZesque third track... it's almost like he just recorded himself playing the game (this is the same sneaking suspicion we had for one of the tracks on DJ Shadow's Private Press from a couple of years ago -- see that review for more clarification on the game). A kinetically fun and engaging release.

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Still more grime and dubstep madness from the only label that seems to be really bringing us the grime-y goodness we want. THAT WE NEED!! And it's another killer. Benga is a big deal in the tiny world of dubstep, but this is the first we've heard from him outside a handful of comps. Side A is some super stripped down dubstep with BIG BIG beats that had our speakers shaking off the shelves, fuzzy blown out basslines, droning warbles in the background and some weird haunting Hitchcockian synth melodies. The B side has some of the most killer low end we've ever heard. HUGE foundation rattling low end rumble, wrapped in thick reverb and spaced out dubby FX, like King Tubby gone grime, with cinematic pizzicato strings, like the soundtrack to some dubstep thriller. Nice!

Having released a superhuman amount of singles and split 12"s for Tempa , Big Apple, Planet Mu, and Hot Flush labels, Benga is most definitely one of the key figures bringing dubstep to a wider audience. That's mainly due to the UK club success of "Night", Benga's collaboration with Coki, his Tempa labelmate. The quivering nervous build-up to a massively skittery and surfy air-raid siren release cemented the producer's reputation as one to watch. Now with this full length, Benga is given room to expand the boundaries of what dubstep can be. Utilizing plaintive jazz horns, synth squelches, moody electro, warmer textures and beats that veer more towards house than genremates Burial or Kode 9, Diary of An Afro Warrior is more than a series of strung together singles but a richly complex and diverse dancefloor manifesto that is amongst the best the genre has to offer. Highly Recommended!

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Hot single from Benga's latest!

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There are unfortunately, some non-musical factors that contribute to what records we choose to be our Record Of The Week. Cost is one. There have been plenty of $30, or $40, or even $50 records that we've chosen to not make ROTW just because a record like that is often well outside a lot of folks' range of affordability. Once in a while we do make an exception, but that's usually when a record is SO good we just can't say no. Another factor is availability. No matter how great a record is, if we can only ever get 5 or 10 or 20 copies, often not knowing how long it will take to get more, or if we'll be able to get more at all, then we usually choose to highlight it, or if the numbers are super small, not list it at all (which is another reason visiting aQ in person is always a good idea, there's plenty of stuff that doesn't make it onto the list!). Anyway, the point of all this, is that we have been LOVING this Benge record, and until now we've only been able to get it in dribs and drabs, 5 copies here, 2 copies there, but we finally managed to get a bunch. A bunch in this case being about 15 copies. So fair warning, this disc is AWESOME, everyone is gonna want one, so when we sell out, please be patient, we're already doing our best to get more in, it just might take a while. So quick on the trigger, or be ready to wait patiently. And what kind of record deserves all of these disclaimers? What kind of record can we be so sure all aQ list readers will want? How about a miniature hardcover book, containing a cd with 20 tracks, each track performed on a different synthesizer, from a different year, spanning the years 1968 to 1998, a sonic roadmap of the evolution of the synthesizer, from the first commercially available synths in the late sixties, to the introduction of fully digital synthesizers in the late eighties. Each page of the book featuring a full color photo of the synthesizer used to create that track, along with a schematic of that synth, as well as liner notes all about the synthesizer, as well as how the track was created. That all still might not be enough if the music wasn't amazing, but it is. Somehow strangely cohesive, even though 20 different instruments were used, the sounds here are uniformly blissed out and dreamy, a sort of new age droney drifty washed out shimmer, peppered with beautiful melodies and occasional percussion. Did you love the recent Bogner record of the week? Do you love Tangerine Dream? Popol Vuh? That Edmond De Dyster reissue? Deuter? The William Eaton reissue on EM? Steve Hillage's Rainbow Dome Music? Any number of avant electronic dronemusic cd-r's? Then you'll love this. Or if you're just a music geek that loves these sorts of 'objects', or tech-heads who love vintage gear. Hard to really imagine anyone not digging this big time. So beyond the book, and the photos and the liner notes and the cool packaging, the music within is truly divine, and fairly diverse, from long slow oceans of sound, swirling and shimmering and sun dappled, to space aged glitch and skitter, hum and buzz, primitive robot disco bleep and bloop, to haunting Goblin-y synthscapery, to fluttery ethereal electronica rife with crystalline melodies and simple rhythms, to super creepy and dark cinematic ambience, to playful electronic shuffles, to blown out expansive cosmic shimmerscapes and on and on. This could very well have been a super boring demonstration style record, and granted, most of us probably would have bought it anyway for the book and the pix and the strange sounds, being the huge music geeks we are, but thankfully, even with all the extras stripped away, we'd still be left with a gorgeous, playful, pretty, blissed out, warm and shimmery, slightly ominous, dramatic and epic, bleepy and bloopy experimental space age new age ambient electronic record. Which is even better. Needless to say, WAY recommended. Amazing packaging, a miniature hardcover book, with tons of photos and liner notes and schematics, as well as an introduction by Robin Rimbaud aka Scanner. And again, these have been tough to keep in stock, so if we run out, please be patient while we wait for more to arrive.

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We won't go into too much detail with this one, cuz like everything else we've ever had from this Aussie dronescaper, this is extremely limited (just 50 copies total, of which we got 10), which is a shame, cuz as we've mentioned in past reviews, the music of Berber Ox is pretty goddamn fantastic, and is definitely the sort of thing that deserves to be heard by more than just fifty people. Needless to say, act fast if you want one of these, cuz like the two tapes, and two cd-r's we've had before, Private Everywhere is another stunner, melding field recordings with strange psychedelic ambience, abstract percussion, buried rhythms, shifting textures and tangled melodies, heaving swells of chordal thrum underpin fields of high end pulses, and mysterious echo drenched rhythms, skeletal and spare, all drifting above hushed expanses of truncated voices, of crumbling chords, of swirling electronics. In places, the sound blossoms into fierce fields of blackened buzz, the sort of dronelord dirge that could give SUNNO))) a run for their money, while in others, the sound swings all the way to the other end of the spectrum, unfurling slow blossoming field of bell like chimes and gamelan like melodies, blurred into meditative sprawls of dreamdronedrift. Long tracks that build slowly, weaving their way through daily life, the sounds of cars, bicycles, footsteps, loudspeaker announcements, all hover in the ether, while modern minimalist dronescapes pulse ominously, emitting arcs of subtle overtones, constantly shifting and mutating, slipping easily from ominous, sinister rumble, to crystalline cosmic shimmer and back again, finally culminating in the strangely out of place closer, that adds to the Berber Ox sound, a skittery Kompakt like techno beat, sounding like it could end up as a 12" on UK label Trensmat, which is not a bad thing at all... LIMITED TO 50 COPIES, each one hand numbered, housed in a cardboard sleeve, with full color, paste-on artwork affixed to the front and back.

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Latest release from this Australian soundscaper / dronologist, another collection of self described "weird-ass psychedelic drone/field recording/collage", and really, no matter how many ways of describing the oddly monikered Berber Ox, we have yet to come up with a more succinctly accurate description. But while that is a pretty accurate thumbnail descriptor, it doesn't really do justice to Berber Ox's dark and surreal dronescapes. Four lengthy tracks, the shortest, 7:41, the longest a whopping 28:07, the sourced field recordings are for the most part blurred into impressionistic smears, layered tones, lush drifts of muted electrical crunch fused to shimmery soft focus chordal whir, a deft balance of grit and gristle, thrum and drift, the opener begins with some strange grinding bits of low end, almost rhythmic, which are quickly stretched out and subsumed by a whirring flow of tangled tones and blurred ambience. There does seem to be some fragments of the original field recordings, bits of click and skitter, but those elements merely add texture to the tracks glacial forward momentum. The much longer second track, is another bit of breathless shimmer, all soft swells and softened edges, it's not until well into the track, where the vibe begins to feel mildly industrial, with the background whir and hiss gradually overtaking the more melodic hum in the foreground. Darkly dreamy and utterly meditative. The flipside begins with another short one, the awesomely titled "Bear And Vortex", which unfurls an ultra minimal rumble, that sounds almost like the wind whooshing past a microphone (and could very well be just that), and doesn't really move much beyond that, a hushed murky murmur of a track, with other haunting incidental sounds creeping into the picture, the result much like the sound of exploring some old abandoned underground bunker, a low level thrum, distant reverb drenched barely there ghostlike echoes, all softly blurred into an ultra minimal expanse of hushed grey ambience. Finally, the record finishes off with the nearly half hour long "Kong", which again continues Berber Ox's dark and delicate exploration of some otherworldly / subterranean sound work, another dark expanse of layered softnoise shimmer, and buried melodic fragments, the field recording are most noticeable here, the occasional clang, tolling bells, what could be animal sounds, everything wreathed in a foggy sonic haze, until about three quarters of the way through, when the fog seems to dissipate, leaving something much more overtly musical, melodies become more fully formed, the background noises, almost rhythmic, the tolling bells, woven into something lustrous and lovely. Fans of all things dark and dreamy and droney will dig this, Berber Ox definitely deserves a spot on your shelf alongside Tim Hecker, Thomas Koner, Philip Jeck, Machinefabriek and the like, assuming of course you have a very strange way of alphabetizing your records... Printed bright yellow cassettes, housed in super colorful J-cards, limited to just 111 copies.

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Tortoise-tronica! That's the one word which sprung to our mind after listening to the first few tracks on this album by this peculiarly named duo. The Berg Sans Nipple are Lori Sean Berg and Shane Aspegren, a couple of scruffy fellows who hail from France and Nebraska respectively. They take the jazz infused post-rock influence of that venerable band and funnel it through a primarily electronic focused instrument palette. Then they add some Notwist-y murmured male vocals, a little smooth soul, and the results are something fresh and new that sits just as comfily alongside Broken Social Scene and Air as it does the above mentioned Windy City veterans. Nice!

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Jonas Bering's "Beinfait" represents a recent strain of German experimental techno which has been jacking up the tempo of the Chain Reaction sound just above the motorik speed of the Cologne sound (i.e. Wolfgang Voigt, Michael Meyer, Modernist, etc). With the quickly paced matrix of hardly stompin' beats, Bering elicts ghostly yet soulful melodies common in Carl Craig and even a few Giorgio Moroder synth arpeggiations. Excellent headphone listening...

Fflint Central is a U.K. label run by two extraordinarily nice guys and darn fine hosts (good enough to befriend a sick and bedraggled on-tour Andee and buy him Cokes). Fflint specializes in experimental electronics and harsh abstract noise. One would think that there's enough, or too much of both, but the men from Fflint have that something special (fuck-you attitude? undefinable sound? sense of humor?) that makes these records way better and way more interesting than the majority of the 'electronica' we hear these days. Fans of VV/M, Lesser and other 'troublesome' electonica will dig this stuff. Affordable CD-Rs. Go ahead and take a chance. You may regret it... Besides having the greatest band name ever, BL&D whip up a malfunctioning maelstrom of stuttering, fuzzed out synth and hiccupping bursts of skull pounding glitchery. Sputtering clicks and oscillating low end rumbles are draped over chest rattling modulated pulses, creating some of the fiercest, coolest experimental electronica we've heard in a while. Like music for that video game the devil forces you to play in hell, for eternity. Awesome.

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Fflint Central is a U.K. label run by two extraordinarily nice guys and darn fine hosts (good enough to befriend a sick and bedraggled on-tour Andee and buy him Cokes). Fflint specializes in experimental electronics and harsh abstract noise. One would think that there's enough, or too much of both, but the men from Fflint have that something special (fuck-you attitude? undefinable sound? sense of humor?) that makes these records way better and way more interesting than the majority of the 'electronica' we hear these days. Fans of VV/M, Lesser and other 'troublesome' electonica will dig this stuff. Affordable CD-Rs. Go ahead and take a chance. You may regret it... Record number two from the brilliantly named BL+D. This is a little more droney and hypnotic than the first Berkowitz record, but equally as fucked. Spazzy organ solos degrade into super distorted, hypnotic pulsing, slowly evolving like a Charlemagne Palestine piece, albeit with a full battery of broken down machinery, malfunctioning effects, and distorted alien transmissions. Noisey but still musical, BL+D are like a thinking man's VV/M.

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We had never heard of Ron Berry before, but Oakland tape label Sanity Muffin has unearthed two psychedelic space synth gems from this unsung synth pioneer. Building his own synths, sequencers and drum machines, Berry created two albums of dreamy kosmische synthscapery, beholden to folks like Klaus Schulze and JD Emmanuel, but also predicting much of the new synth music coming out today. A Voice In The Wilderness was record number two from Berry, originally released in 1983, and is a sprawling two part, 44 minute cosmic synth epic, which starts off like some mysterious planetarium show, the soundtrack to the birth of the universe, all swirling shimmers, and deep rumbling pulsations, a slow build from ark to light, the sound eventually transforming into a prismatic tranquility, very cinematic, lush and layered and darkly dramatic, the first side/track moving through multiple movements, brooding and hushed one minute, propulsive and almost krautrocky the next, the rhythms when they surface skeletal and skittery, with a definite Kraftwerk / Tangerine Dream vibe, but most of the first side spent in spaced out drift mode. The second half/side starts of similarly, moody minimal drift, sun dappled and dreamlike, slowly fading to near silence, a stretch of barely there thrum and distant pulses, what sound like faux field recordings, eventually erupting into a Geiger counter like electronic freak out, swirling and percussive, only to slip right back into that whispery drift, this time laced with subtle percussion, only to slowly build to a dreamy, melancholy drift of soaring softly swirling synths, moody minor key melodies, spare skittery rhythms, a laid back, electro-kraut synth pop that gradually fades into a soft psychedelic shimmer. Gorgeous stuff, and absolutely essential for fans of early minimal synth music for sure. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!

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We had never heard of Ron Berry before, but Oakland tape label Sanity Muffin has unearthed two psychedelic space synth gems from this unsung synth pioneer. Building his own synths, sequencers and drum machines, Berry created two albums of dreamy kosmische synthscapery, beholden to folks like Klaus Schulze and JD Emmanuel, but also predicting much of the new synth music coming out today. 1982's Where Dark Forces Meet weaves a lush, ominous sprawl of deep cosmic drones, and percolating synth melodies, with playful pulsing poppiness, check out the opener "Sea Of Tranquility", which broods and drifts ominously for the first few minutes before the drum machines surface, and the song is transformed into a weird sort of electro-synth groove, but which soon blossoms into something much more dreamy and blissfully psychedelic, which is basically Berry's MO here, unfurling gorgeous hazy shimmers, and soft focus sonic ripples, tranquil sprawls of softly pulsating synths, occasionally peppered with motorik rhythms. The best moments for us are where the rhythms are abandoned, leaving just gauzy celestial drifts, like the glimmering sonic starfield of the title track, or the moody, minor key drift of "View From A Bedsit Window", which almost sounds like some lost video game music. Gorgeous stuff, and absolutely essential for fans of early minimal synth music for sure. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!

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The Beta Band are still really skilled at mixing together a total hodgepodge of sounds, from ethnic drumming to tinkling piano, dub, weird atmospherics, space age melodica, and shuffling breakbeat percussion. The Pink-Floyd-style hushed unison vocals have

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Betty Botox is none other than JD Twitch, one half of Scotish super-duo Optimo. Yes, they named themselves after the Liquid Liquid song of the same name, and you may remember them from the inimitable Kill the DJ series a few years back. The one that had beats and mashups of everything from Laibach to Arthur Russell to Sun City Girls to Ricardo Villalobos - in a DANCE mix! Huh?! Anyway, this disc compiles various re-edits and remixes completed by Ms. Botox himself. Whatever you do, don't get scared. Yes, this is music you can dance to, but it has mixes of fucking Hawkwind and that Italian industrial group Pankow. Remember them? This guy is digging pretty deep, and thanks to artists like this we still have some faith in dancing. Did we mention that there's even an edit of The Jellies "Jive Baby on a Saturday Night?" Well, listen in as Ms. Botox warps and rearranges this super weird, psychedelic disco trip-fest. Hell, we might even bust out our eye-liner if and when he decides to tackle Fini Tribe's bizarre cover of "I Want More" by Can. Yes, that really happened. Fans of fun, this is for you.

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There seems to be a trend over the last few years in Norwegian metal. A serious obsession with techno, that when combined with the distinctly Black metal notion that maturing musically means becoming LESS metal, results in all sort of new permutations, that while definitely pushing the boundaries, tend to disappoint long time fans. Look at Manes, Arcturus, Ulver, etc. So what does this have to do with Beyond Dawn? Well...they started out as a seriously grim black metal band, whose unlikely use of a trombone was the only clue to their future direction. They soon moved in a distinctly dirge-y, melancholy, gloom pop direction, sounding more like Katatonia and even the Swans (due in no small part to the vocalist's uncanny Michael Gira like croon) and less like Darkthrone of Mayhem. At the same time, they began to incorporate all sorts of electronic glitchery: drum machines, weird processing, and studio trickery. On Frysh, their latest and weirdest record to date, things have gone about as far away from metal as humanly (or inhumanly) possible. They've pretty much given up the metal ghost entirely, opting for a melancholy techno-doom-pop. Weird bleeping synth melodies hover over skittish almost-techno rhythms, shimmering washes of synthesizer hum, and even some slide guitar! The sticker on the cd calls them "Norwegian's Loungecore Kings". Not sure how accurate that really is, but this definitely has more in common sonically with Depeche Mode or the Pet Shop Boys that it does with any metal bands I can think of. But don't get the wrong impression. This record RULES! Finally a metal band, that instead of talking about how much they love Depeche Mode or some other gloomy pop bands, and maybe even covering a Depeche Mode song once in a while, actually writes gorgeously catchy and sweetly depressive songs that rival those of any of their influences. To me this sounds like a more electronic Angels Of Light, or a metal flecked Magnetic Fields, or Dntel or the Postal Service covering Katatonia with Michael Gira on vocals. So so good. Took me a while to get over the silly and garish cover and the 'loungecore kings' sticker and the goofy new band member names (Clubshoes, Tore Jazztobakk, Hi-Fi Haavik, and Espen Weltschmertz). I was smelling 'jokeband' for sure. But the more I listen to Frysh, the more it reveals itself as a decidedly rich, multi-layered tapestry of perfectly morose, exquisitely crafted, bewitchingly dreamy techno pop gems. SO recommended!

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Ahhh, how nice is it to see the name Beyond Dawn again? One of the great unsung heroes of the '90s Norwegian metal scene, Beyond Dawn never quite got the accolades they deserved . Maybe because even in their early heavier days they were a hard band to pin a genre to. Maybe because they were one of the first metal bands in Norway to abandon metal altogether for more experimental territory. Maybe because every record sounded so drastically different than the last. Maybe it's because they almost never played outside of their native country. Or maybe it's just because they had, like, A TON of trombone. Whatever the reason, a band who should have enjoyed a career as illustrious and respected as their countrymates Ulver (who the band played some of their earliest shows with in 1993) instead dissolved over a decade ago with the most cult of followings. But thankfully Duplicate Records has done all fans of heavy downer weirdness a great service in releasing this retrospective. But in classically unpredictable fashion, this isn't a greatest hits package so much as it is a two cd chronological collection of odds & sods: album demos, alternate mixes, outtakes and live recordings. Despite how that may sound, it works surprisingly well as an introduction to this band's surreal shadowy world, touching neatly on everything that made them interesting. Even in their earlier days of brooding gothic doom there was a touch the modern and avant garde, a somber and mournful dirge in the tradition of early Anathema complimented perfectly by Espen Ingierd's vocals, deep and commanding but strangely emotionless and distant, at times a dead ringer for Michael Gira. And like we mentioned earlier there's that trombone, which is never far away, and man, if Beyond Dawn don't make a good argument for the trombone being the saddest sounding instrument of all time (in fact this release inspired this topic of conversation in the store the other day: Why don't more metal bands use trombones???), but at the same time it lends a certain regal timeless quality to their music that really sets it apart. The second disc tackles the 2000's when the band left metal behind entirely, and began flirting with downtempo electronics, nocturnal dub, post punk and melancholy pop. While it's aesthetically a much quieter approach, it was no less emotionally captivating, engrossing and at times devastating. And while the band certainly evolved drastically as they progressed, this collection provides a nice way to follow the threads that ran through the band's sound, especially the general mood they always seemed to conjure up no matter what genres they were experimenting with: a sort of lonely distinguished elegance. Nocturnal and shimmering, depressive yet strangely proud, like putting on your best suit in preparation for the gallows. Highly recommended for fans of Vaura, Swans, Beastmilk, Ulver, and all things strange, sad and loud.

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It's no secret that we've been smitten with the Dark Entries label from the very beginning. Over the years they've cranked out killer reissues of so many obscure lost gems, ranging from post-punk, to dark wave, minimal synth, to left field dance jams, and all with a curatorial hand that's always spot on. In fact this list we have TWO other great Dark Entries titles you should probably grab, but this one in particular stands out as being super unique in that it's a brand NEW recording from an artist right here in San Francisco. We've been waiting for this for a while, as Bezier (aka Robert Yang) has been a fixture in the underground club scene in San Francisco for years, most notably as a member of our favorite DJ collective, Honey Soundsystem. With his debut release he puts his analog synths to use, creating a kind of hi-prog-nrg music that blows us away. Equally influenced by hi-nrg, disco, sci-fi, and a strain of prog that manages to inject sensuality and sexuality into that usually so nerdy of genres. When we caught Bezier live for a special test pressing release party of this record we were swept away, these songs making us move like crazy but also creating a space where sometimes we just closed our eyes and got lost in the swirling arpeggios and actual songs, brimming with movement and dynamics. Ensconced makes us think of some awesome hybrid of Giorgio Moroder and Goblin, or maybe Patrick Cowley sitting in with Chris & Cosey. In fact that comparison is particularly apt, this record inspiring us to grab our favorite Chris & Cosey records, and feeling like Bezier is a modern sonic kindred spirit. All thirty one minutes of the record feel thought out and purposeful, yet never too smart for its own good, allowing for both the mind and body to move in unexpected directions. So totally recommended!

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Some collaborations find a way to strike a balance between two strong aesthetics, and others resolve themselves with one aesthetic absorbing the other. Maurizio Bianchi has been a force to be reckoned with in recent years, thanks to his return to powerful, cold electronics featured on an avalanche of recent releases; yet, it's a little difficult to discern where he is on The House Of Mourning. Ostensibly, this is his collaboration with the German industrial project Telepherique; and from the sounds of the album, it's Telepherique who clearly are in the driver's seat. The looping MIDI-synth electronics, the life-support system rhythms, and the heavy use of sampled Arabic media lend themselves towards the realms of Cabaret Voltaire and Muslimgauze; and it's hardly the all consuming swarm of Bianchi drone that we've come to expect. That said, Telepherique's industrialist klank and threatening atmospheres are well articulated and quite pleasing in their own right. Limited to 500 copies, and supposedly out of print by now.

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Apparently the artist known as Bibio (aka Stephen Wilkinson) is a particular fave of Boards Of Canada's Marcus Eoin. So much so that Eoin recommended that Mush Records check him out, and clearly they agreed 'cause here's Bibio's debut album on that very label. Each of the seventeen tracks is amply processed and arranged from his collections of cassette-recorded field recordings, as well as samples of his own performances on various instruments. According to his bio, Wilkinson's list of influences runs the gamut from Joao Gilberto to My Bloody Valentine, from Incredible String Band to Tortoise, but you really wouldn't be able to tell simply from listening to Fi. Not at all, unlike many other current artists who wear their influences on their sleeves to the point of simply aping their idols, Bibio hasn't fallen into this trap. Furthermore, although many of the tracks may fall under the flavor-of-the-day description of "acoustic guitar melodies with electronic and field recording textures", unlike many other current (dare we say lazy?) artists, Wilkinson doesn't just plop a static-y cloud atop a folk song. No, he fully integrates his sonic elements into a fully enveloping listening experience -- brittle and fuzzy like they've being transmitted out through a rickety antique radio. If we had to come up with a point of reference, we might say that the hazy and dreamlike Fi sounds much like an expanded, modernized take on the outro to the mid-70s 10CC hit "I'm Not In Love". At once, it's atmosphere is intimate yet glisteningly space-y.

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Following up his shimmery, celestial debut album Fi, Bibio brings his music more down to earth with his no less warm 'n' blissful second album, Hand Cranked. Really pretty, willowy, pastoral soundscapes crafted from slightly woozy sampled loops of delicately picked guitar, piano, recorder and other found sounds from his collection of cassette-recorded field recordings. Can't tell for sure if they're real or not (probably are), but adding to the outdoorsy breezy atmosphere of the fifth track "Marram" are some sounds that resemble twittery birdsong. Another stand-out is the final fluttery track "Overgrown". Conjures visions of butterflies, raindrops and babbling brooks. Very very nice!

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