British avant-garde "stereo" guitarist Gary Smith unleashes the third release from his power trio Mass, wherein he's joined by the equally out there and extreme rhythm section of Gary Jeff and Lou Ciccotelli. You might know these guys from their contributions to projects like God and Aufgehoben No Process. Mass is a bit less oppressive than those bands, closer to "jazz" but not what most people think of as jazz, of course. Yessir, their electronics, improv moves, and rock-derived power combine for another satisfying head-bender.
18 years later, Fred Frith (Naked City, Henry Cow, Skeleton Crew) and Bill Laswell (Praxis, Material, Painkiller, Arcana) are joined by Charles Hayward (This Heat) to reform Massacre--a brutal and complex improv-rock trio that wupped asses and ears back in the early '80's. Adolf Wolfli cover art.
Lonely Heart is the fourth album by avant-rock, experimental power trio Massacre, featuring Fred Frith (guitar), Bill Laswell (bass guitar) and Charles Hayward (drums). It was recorded live at Festival Sons D'Hiver in Paris on January 25, 2003, and at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark on June 26, 2003.
Masstishaddhu's only album was released on United Daries back in 1988 and finally sees its long overdue cd reissue on Psychedelic Pig. Fronted by the hermetic Richard Rupenus (who also masterminded the noise scrape of The New Blockaders, the baffling Dada collages of The Mixed Band Philanthrophist, and the industrial rituals of Metgumbnerbone), Masstishaddhu is an entirely new vocabulary for Rupenus as he employs a healthy dose of Indian drones, deep transcendental chants, and bowed metal clatter. While references to the grizled malevolence of Organum or even some Nurse With Wound stuff may be appropriate, Masstishaddhu's dark, heavily opiated improvisations sit much closer to the American improv-damage of the Sun City Girls and No Neck Blues Band at their nost subtle. Jim has actually been looking for this album for several years now, and happily announces its return!
NOW ON VINYL!!! Deluxe packaging, extra music too! The Important label vinylizes this out of print Abduction cd release from '04, which was the first thing we'd heard from the MMoB. This reissue includes 20 more minutes of music from the original sessions, it's on 180 gram vinyl, and comes in a gorgeous heavy duty gatefold sleeve with new, gold metallic artwork, wrapped in an obi, wow. Here's what we said about the cd edition back when:
Ostensibly the Master Musicians of Bukkake is one John Schuller and one Randall Dunn, but for the recording of The Visible Sign Of Invisible Order the two have called into service a veritable supergroup of the Northwest's avant-garde to assist in its recording including both Alan Bishop and Charlie Gocher of Sun City Girls, violinist extraordinaire Eyvind Kang, drummer Shahzad Ismaily (Secret Chiefs contributors among other things) and more. Of the parents here Master Musicians seems to take more of its genes from the Sun City Girls, but not so much that you couldn't be fooled into believing it was adopted. Spacious soundscapes comprising field recordings, relocated ethnic percussion of vague origin lays the foundation for haunting and murky acoustic guitars, flutes and wordless vocals. That both the Secret Chiefs and the Sun City Girls are avid usurpers and subverters of the world of music are common interests enough to spawn such a child.
Sun City Girls fans! Drone-doom freaks! Here's your unlikely crossover dream come true, kind of. A psychedelically heavy (sometimes) and always eerily exotic new album on the Conspiracy label from this band with the wiseass faux-ethnic name (if you don't know what Bukkake is, don't ask, and definitely don't Google it - if you do, be aware it's NSFW). Now including members of Earth and Burning Witch amongst their ranks, and once again boasting cameo appearances from folks belonging to the Sun City Girls and Secret Chiefs 3, this is exactly (and excellently) what we might have expected from this project. Acoustic ethnic instrument buzz and drone meets guitars-leaning-on-amps buzz and drone. There's electronic FX and analog synths alongside field recordings, bells and chimes and gamelan percussion mixed with Tibetan monkish low-end drone-chant, and let's not forget the flute and Mellotron... The seven tracks of Totem One span a wild, wide range of (moody) moods, from the heavy throbbing maelstrom that is "Schism Prism / Adamatios" to the spacey, spooky folk ramble of "Cascade Cathedral". The most Sun City Girlish moment here is probably "People Of The Drifting Houses", not surprisingly the track which features guest vocals provided by Alan Bishop of SCGs and Sublime Frequencies fame.
"In The Lightness Of The Sonoran" could be the recently reviewed Harappian Night Recordings attempting to channel SUNNO))), whilst other tracks (simultaneously) bring to mind such not-entirely-disparate artists as Angus MacLise, Blood Of The Black Owl, Six Organs Of Admittance, Ghost, and Acid Mothers Temple. The latter especially, for instance on the most freaked out parts of the aforementioned "Schism Prism / Adamatios" or during the blissful ceremony of the album-ending nine minute long "Eaglewolf". Fantastic. We're now eagerly looking forward to further Totem installments! (Totem Two is due out later this year on the SCG-related Abduction label, that released MMOB's prior album as well.)
NB. The vinyl version of this comes with a coupon for free mp3 download of the whole album.
Yet another mantric missive from these musical missionaries and cosmic sonic seers, a collective of sorts, its membership drawn from several somewhat similarly likeminded groups, including Earth, Sun City Girls, and Burning Witch among others. And as with past installments in the ongoing Totem series, here the Master Musicians weave lush, slow building soundscapes, drawing on all manner of musics, Eastern ragas, Western space rock, minimal dronemusic, experimental ambience, freaky forest folk and who knows what all else, woven deftly into dark, brooding, expansive epics.
Totem Three begins ominously with chiming bells, a deep rumbling synth drone, tinkling chimes, a darkly meditative drift, deep vocals, horns and other low tones, are all layered on top of that initial drone, the sound swept up by slow shimmering swells, laced with strange spacey effects, just below the surface, an intro of sorts, leading directly into the much more traditionally song-y "In The Twilight Of The Kali Yuga", those shimmering swells from the first track carrying over, but in the place of the drone, strummed steel string guitars, fluttering flutes, sitar like buzz, Eastern hand drums, and the quickly song coalesces into a surprisingly jaunty bit of Middle Eastern sounding folk, rife with hazy vox, and tabla, as well as other percussion. Before the record returns to the drone of the opener. But again, that rumbling buzzing synth is overlaid with some sort of woodwind, balancing the ominous vibe of the drone, thick downtuned guitar chords are unfurled, as are bells, and chantlike vox, the result a strange sort of Eastern style folky dirge, SUNNO))) like guitars beneath a meditative raga.
The record splits the rest of its time between a buzzy, Middle Eastern style folk, lush with fiddles and handclaps, and group vocals, albeit with a bit more buzz and strange sonic filigree than actual traditional music, soaring string laden almost soundtracky ambience, moody and dramatic, and haunting minimal dronemusic, replete with moaning horns, creepy incantations, glitched out electronics, finally finishing off with a seriously left field bit of cinematic weirdness, that basically sounds like the soundtrack to some eighties straight to video Indian movie, all cheesy eighties synths, groovy Euro disco rhythms, and of course some bloopy bass and some shredding guitar solos, the sort of thing that would definitely appeal to folks into Zombi and Umberto and the like. Compared to Totems One and Two, Three seems to lean a bit more towards the atmospheric, away from the heavy.
As always weird and wonderful, with appropriately eye popping psychedelic cover art courtesy of Seldon Hunt.
As we mentioned in the review of the MSV 7" a while back, for a genre that seems to be the NEXT BIG THING, actual physical recordings are surprisingly difficult to come by. Which is maybe the point, much of the musical output comes in the form of tracks on SoundCloud, videos on YouTube, as super limited cd-r's or downloads, and most of the bands have names that are essentially un-Googlable, all symbols and shapes, A's become little black triangles, or three stylized crosses becomes 'Ritualz', etc, hard not to become intrigued, or obsessed, and we most definitely seem to be both.
Salem was the first glimpse the mainstream world got of this strange new genre, a sound that somehow melded blown out lo-fi synths, minimal electro, twisted samples, old school goth, minimal techno, slowed down Southern style chopped and screwed hip hop, choral vox, big beats, into something distorted and murky yet weirdly epic, a sound that the creators described as Witch House, but has also been dubbed grave rave, zombie rave, cave rave and is sometimes lumped in with nu-gaze and chill wave and other outsider electronic micro genres. And Salem is the shit, hell, we made it our Record Of The Week, how could we not, it was and IS one of the coolest record of the last few years. But if Salem are the young witch house upstarts, ramshackle punks legendary for their chaotic live performances, yet who somehow managed to make what is possibly THEE defining record of the genre, and if groups like oOoOO and Balam Acab are crafters of a witch house that is more melodic and dancefloor friendly, then Mater Suspiria Vision are like some mysterious bearded witch house council, the masters of the scene, black cloaked figures that live in a cave somewhere, never glimpsed in the flesh, only via their transmissions, mostly amazing, twisted, fantastically fucked up YouTube videos, mini horror epics, always accompanied by MSV's dirgey, haunting soundtracks, often releasing 3 or 4 in a single day. No idea where these guys are from (Kabul?), if it's one person or a group, male or female, the mystery only adds to the appeal, the imagery, the videos, and the music, which even in a genre defined by it's 'witchiness' manages to be seriously dark, and grim, creepy and scary.
Originally released as a super limited cassette tape, Crack Witch has now been resurrected on vinyl, by the newly launched Living Tapes label (run by the guy from outsider black metal weirdos Yoga by the way), and is probably the best witch house document since Salem's King Night. But MSV's witch house is something else all together, something all together more EVIL sounding, not sure if it's that they're conceived to accompany videos, but they also tend to be super cinematic, just check out the opener "Call Of The Witches", thick buzzing ominous synths, strange snippets of foreign language dialogue, strange spaced out stuttery beats, a stumbling groove, terrified shrieks, sobbing and weeping, everything reverby and echoey, and then an awesome dizzying blast of strange processed melodies, backward synths, almost like Teenage Filmstars style witch house, totally tripped out and seriously sonically scary.
"Evil House Of Forbidden Fruit" offers up big echoey beats, strange heavily effected vocals, the sound super distorted and crumbly, stuttery and rhythmic, underneath mysterious melodies swell, subtle synths pulse, all building to a crunchy corrosive climax. "House Of 7 Witches" is all swirly and shimmery by comparison, until the shimmer is buried beneath an avalanche of heavily delayed beats, and buzzing synth squelch, the beats getting louder and more distorted, careening back and forth, eventually totally obscuring all the other sounds. Finally, side one finishes of with the much more subdued "Wtxchs (A Suite Of Decay), with a low slung groove, wreathed in skitter and hiss, crackle and buzz, and some ominous reverbed female vocals courtesy of someone called Shazzula, the result a sort of warped witchy Portishead, downtempo and lo-fi, a grim ghostly ballad, that quickly splinters into a noise drenched cacophony, all thick synth buzz and glitched out electronics, buried vox, swirling effects, all draped over a skeletal beat, buried in the mix, a lurching dubnoise creep.
All of side 2 is taken up by the 24 minute epic "Trip 2012", a darkly cinematic epic, cobbled together from what sounds like bits of film music, as well as snippets of dialogue, but super reverby and echoey, like a sonic fun house mirror, it's not until about 3 minutes in that the synth drops, a thick, buzzing, snarly bit of wheezing chordal crunch, the various shards of delay and echo coalescing into a sort of beat, again weirdly reminding us of the most far out Teenage Filmstars jams, a sprawling, dubbed out dronescape, every single note, every melody, every voice, transformed by malfunctioning effects into streaks of otherworldly sound, like a way more dubbed out Wolf Eyes in places, a sort of heaving, crumbling industrial crunch, but way more spaced out, and ominous, more creepy and cinematic, and WAY more witchy.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES! Super striking eye popping full color covers.
For all the Witch House music out there, it seems like very little of it actually gets released. Instead it's shared, and downloaded, offered on Soundcloud and various other sites, occasionally released as super limited cd-r's, but proper releases are few and far between.
As far as we know this may very well be the first proper release (definitely the first and only vinyl, there's been a cd-r and a cassette) from the mysterious collective called Mater Suspiria Vision, purveyors of witch house, or perhaps ghost drone, haunted disco trance, or even drag, depending on who you ask. The sound of witch house, for the uninitiated, is a twisted hybrid of classic goth, nineties techno, DJ Screw style slowed down sounds (hence the term drag), and all manner of spooky creepy atmospheres, horror movies, giallo soundtracks, all woven into a witchy bit of electronic psychedelic creepiness. And the various monikers tend to be heavy on the strange symbols that you get by pressing option or control on your keyboards, you know, little black triangles, tiny crosses, all those sorts of zapf dingbats style icons. Anyway, Salem is probably the most high profile witch house combo out there, but of all the other outfits we've heard, Mater Suspiria Vision is probably the only other group that comes close to conjuring up the same sort of mystery, coupled with the same sort of sonic heft.
No idea if MSV is a group or a person, it seems to be some sort of collective, or where they're located, all of their various pages list their home as Kabul, which seems suspect. In addition to music, they also create incredible tripped our psychedelic videos, that perfectly capture the same twisted vibe as their music. And they somehow manage to release a continuous stream of sights and sounds, new ones seemingly every day, which is why it's even more remarkable that this is one of only a tiny handful of actual MSV releases.
Regardless, it's a doozy, if you dug the Salem, and the oOoOO and the Balam Acab and maybe that Big Pink Tapes comp, then you are definitely gonna want this. And if you've yet to take the witch house plunge, but dig stuff like Leyland Kirby and Demdike Stare, odds are this is gonna be right up your alley.
A two parter titled provocatively "Exorcism Of The Hippies", it's all fat fuzzed out woozy warbly bass, thick low end swells, strange stuttery handclap rhythms, swooping spaced out effects, creepy dubbed out slo-mo atmospherics, strange voices, vocal snippets and samples, all blurred and smeared, a hazy, gauzy lysergic psychedelic trip out, the soundtrack to some strange foreign horror film from the seventies, coupled to some primitive old school techno 12", both spinning at 16rpm, the whole thing doused in cough syrup and left in the sun, cursed by a witch, buried in a graveyard, only to be dug up, melted down and mixed with liquid thorazine and a handful of horse tranquilizers and then pressed into this here 7". SO GOOD!
Packaged in super swank full color covers, and LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!
One of our very favorite electronica glitch artists here bestows another pretty display of his trademarked fluttery tones of delicately coaxed digital processing. "Die Entdeckrung Des Wetters" appears to be a collection of tracks commissioned for various art installations: "Touch" being for a glass exhibition in th Berliner Townhall (where Mathieu created a wonderous digitized vibration from what sounds like ringing glass tones and breathy rushes of air) and the title track being a permanent installation for the Cultural Heritage Voelklinger Huette, an artspace housed in a 19th Century iron foundery. For the latter installation, Mathieu was asked to design a sound installation for the old cokery, where coal was distilled into the far more potent fuelsource coke by burning coal at extreme temperatures. While the furnace invokes rather malevolent metaphors, Mathieu keeps this track within his typically airy aesthetic. Another track on this compilation is an extraction from Mathieu's Full Swing album "Edits," in particular the Yo La Tengo remix "Love."
Knowing full well that the average art observer spends less than 8 seconds with any piece of art, Mathieu composed all of these pieces as a repetitive series of loops; thus, this collection isn't as action packed as some of the other Mathieu releases, but holds some exceptional digitized tones.
One of two new Tapeworm's this week, as in limited cassette releases on UK tape label The Tapeworm, the other is a bit of Tesla coil rhythmatism from NYC audio alchemist Lary Seven, and this one, a selection of data driven sounds created by aQ fave Stephan Mathieu. And we do mean these are actually the sounds of data, with Mathieu taking pictures of his equipment in the studio and then transforming that data into music, or more specifically sound, as while this strange array of grinding static, crunchy rhythms, looped thrum, screeching sine waves and modem-malfunction crunch and stutter may be music to our ears, this is a pretty challenging chunk of abstract industrial rhythms, and Raster-Noton style beep-click-buzz, but raw and blown out and in the red, sound that seem to be pushing the speakers to their very limit, but in doing so, creating a strange sort of low fidelity primitive electronica, a jagged collage of Merzbowish grey noise and crumbling electro-glitch buzz, the sound snowballing into thick squalls of corrosive almost psychedelic sounding blur, but just as often splintering into a strange sort of caveman krautrock, rendered in shades of hum and hiss, peppered with jagged shards of electronic gristle and barbed streaks of smeared hiss.
Definitely pretty far removed from our favorite Mathieu records, but pretty curious and cool nonetheless, a noise record, but one that's dynamic, and rhythmic, surprisingly engaging and listenable in a way much noise is most definitely not.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES, already sold out and out of print at the label, so these are the last copies EVER.
Just as Christian Fennesz transformed the canonical rock icons The Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys into sublime electronica-glitch perfection, Stephan Mathieu has pillaged the 'public domain' archives of the 20th century to create his own
Why he records under the moniker Full Swing some of the time and his given name Stephan Mathieu on other occasions is a mystery, as the blueprint for all of his work remains a constant. Nevertheless, Mathieu is quickly becoming the most consistent electronica composer, often upstaging Christian Fennesz and Carsten Nicolai. Picking up where Mathieu left off on his exceptional Full Swing "Edits" album, "Gigue" is a live recording of his synthetic swells expanded out of digital minutae. His signature buzzing resonance drifts warmly out of digitized crackle and thick droning hiss. While such sounds had been common on the aforementioned "Edits" album, Mathieu pushes these sounds even further into a tumultuous wash of reverberant static, white noise and digital percolations, which stand out as quite intense for the typically sublime Mathieu. This crescendo of noise never strives for Merzbow, rather it presents the metaphor of the vast pressures and heat from deep sea hydrothermic vents where blackened plumes of scalding water blast upward amidst the frigid seawater at the bottom of the ocean. A short 30 minutes from this accomplished musician, but well worth every minute!
We've been huge fans of all of Mathieu's releases so far, gorgeous glitchy dronescapes, electronic ambience and all sorts of inventive rhythmic experimentations. On Tape marks the first recording on which Mathieu has left the source material un-processed. The source material in this case is recordings of his labelmates, Swedish trio Tape. Mathieu then added some drumming (he used to be a drummer before he took up the computer as his instrument of choice) and random field recordings which resulted in the subtle beauty of On Tape. Dreamy sepia toned soundscapes of electronic whir, insect like instrument buzz, keening angelic melodies stretched into upper register drones, all warm and otherworldly, sun dappled and crystalline.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
"Wurmloch : Variationen" appears to be the first release for Stephan Mathieu who managed to land his debut on Ritornell -- the high-profile experimental subsidiary of Mille Plateaux / Force Inc. Mathieu has constructed these 5 pieces using an original 11-minute long piano piece which has been digital dissolved into ringing drones scraped with glitches. Occasionally the piano is allowed to speak with its original voice, as elegant chords somberly march through a very slow melody; but for the most part, Mathieu prefers to exploit the coldness of digital entropy as it takes over his piano composition. Quite nice.
Similar to their relationship with Dutch radio station VPRO which resulted in the Mort Aux Vaches series, Staalplaat has begun a cooperation with the Dutch arts initiative Extrapool to release work from Extrapool's artist in residency program. The goal being
What separates both Mathieu and Ehlers from the rest of the glitch electronica field is their wonderful fascination with antiquity and their maintainence of surface noise and grit within a technological setting that typically has an intrinsic aesthetic for cleanliness and sterility. The rich cracklings of surface noise and fuzzy static of an old tube-amp radio emerge throughout their "Heroin" collaboration. Mellotron organs form whimsical melodies before dissolving into warm pools of warbling timbres; a melodica offers playful tunes over a looped and glitched backing track of the same instrument. Occasionally, Mathieu and Ehlers produce something more in step with the purity of the Raster-Noton sound, but for the most part have constructed a beautiful (if mutant) remnant of pop sentimentality, sounding more like a slightly digital version of Philip Jeck.
- RealAudio clip: Herz
- RealAudio clip: Rose
NOW BACK IN PRINT! Similar to their relationship with Dutch radio station VPRO which resulted in the Mort Aux Vaches series, Staalplaat has begun a cooperation with the Dutch arts initiative Extrapool to release work from Extrapool's artist in residency program. The goal being to encourage strange and interesting combinations. In light of this program, Extrapool's choice of laptop glitch technicians Stephan Mathieu and Ekkehard Ehlers is almost too obvious, as both artists have developed similar styles, digitally recombining disfigured yet emotionally dynamic sounds. One of Mathieu's recent projects has been the Full Swing "Edits" 10"s of confounding remixes for Kit Clayton's Orthlorng Musork, and Ehlers too has been on the remix tip with his reconfigurations of Albert Aylers and Cassavettes.
What separates both Mathieu and Ehlers from the rest of the glitch electronica field is their wonderful fascination with antiquity and their maintaining of surface noise and grit within a technological setting that typically has an intrinsic aesthetic for cleanliness and sterility. The rich cracklings of surface noise and fuzzy static of an old tube-amp radio emerge throughout their "Heroin" collaboration. Mellotron organs form whimsical melodies before dissolving into warm pools of warbling timbres; a melodica offers playful tunes over a looped and glitched backing track of the same instrument. Occasionally, Mathieu and Ehlers produce something more in step with the purity of the Raster-Noton sound, but for the most part have constructed a beautiful (if mutant) remnant of pop sentimentality, sounding more like a slightly digital version of Philip Jeck.
Along with the "Heroin" album, Orthlorng Musork has commissioned a number of remixes from contemporary electronic artists Josef Suchy, Nobukazu Takemura, Kit Clayton, Frieband, Fennesz, Oren Ambarchi, Carmen Baier, and Akira Rabelais. Unfortunately, the track listing is slightly screwed up as the Frieband and Kit Clayton tracks are switched on the disc. Oops.
- RealAudio clip: Herz
- RealAudio clip: Rose
A previous Mutek release found the minimalist techno outfit Goem collaborating with a number of artists who simply stopped by Goem's hotel room during the 2001 Mutek festival. While Goem's record had all of the good natured intentions of warm comradery, it fell flat as a poor recapitulation of Goem's micro-techno. Fortunately, the second effort between artists collaborating in a hotel room during the 2002 Mutek festival is a much better offering. With none of the blunted hip-hop rhythms of Timeblind, none of Radboud Mens' fragile minimalist techno, and few slivers of Janek Schaefer's bleak sonic abstractions, the dominant aesthetic is that of Stephan Mathieu, which is totally fine by us! As a result, "Quality Hotel" is a delicate affair of fizzing digital ambience, with samples that flicker, twist, and bloom into sleepy drones cracked with miniscule glitches and glassine vibrations. It's a very subdued record, but is is just as good as any of Mathieu's previous outings.
This limited pressing 3" cd from local sound alchemists Matmos continues in the same conceptual vein as their last major release, The Rose Has Teeth In The Mouth Of The Beast, where each track was dedicated to a musical, philosophical or literary figure (Boyd McDonald, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Larry Levan, etc.). The material for this cd was originally commissioned by members of The Mathematical Sciences Research Institute and Matmos took the opportunity to create three pieces for one of their scientific heroes, Alan Turing. Who is Alan Turing, you ask? Well, Alan Turing was an English mathematician, logician, and cryptographer who became a pioeering figure in modern computing, and who contributed much to the debate about artificial intelligence and whether machines could ever develop consciousness and independently think (ever hear of the Turing Test?). But what makes Alan Turing an even more interesting and ultimately tragic figure for Matmos is the charges that were brought against him in the early fifties of "acts of gross indecency" for admitting to a sexual relationship with another man. After being put on probation and ordered to undergo hormone therapy, Turing ate an apple laced with cyanide. His death was ruled a suicide. Taking cues from Turing's work with cryptographic devices (otherwise known as the Enigma Machine) and his personal effects including postcards he sent to his lover before his suicide entitled Messages From The Unseen World, Matmos gained access to an actual Enigma machine and were able to use its sound for this recording. Enlisting help from David Tibet of Current 93, and Clodagh Simonds of Fovea Hex, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Matthew Curry and Mark Lightcap, Matmos have created three beautiful and touching pieces paying tribute this important and tragic figure. Limited to 1000 copies, and highly recommended!!!
Eek! Rats! You can always count on the mischevious Matmos (Drew and Martin, SF's darling duo of experimental electronica, who you probably know not only for their own weird, wonderful releases but also their work with Bjork) to make the most of the strangest sound-sources. In this case, a rat they (humanely) trapped in their Tenderloin apartment! Why? Well this is one of Locust's "Met Life" releases...that's not an insurance company but rather a "location sound series" for which sound artists were asked to both provide field recordings of their urban environment as well as "respond" musically to that environment. This 30 minute cd consists of two tracks. Track one is just the poor rat giving a solo performance, of squeaks and screams. If you have a cat this might interest them greatly. On the second track Matmos join in, turning the rat's cage into a nightclub for Intelligent Dance Music, with beats ranging from the purely abstract to the downright groovy. The rat's squeaks remain the same, coming in as if on cue in breaks in the music as orchestrated by Matmos. The rat's no house diva that's for sure, and we like the effect. Matmos' dance grooves are totally dark, and rat-appropriate while other parts of this (and the rat's original performance) echo some avant-garde 20th century classical with its use of space and silence. A successful 'collaboration' indeed. And don't worry, I don't think they actually subjected the rat to this mix. Furthermore, in the liner notes Matmos explain that "the following morning we took the rat to a wealthy suburban neighborhood and set it free."
At long last, possibly our favorite Matmos record ever is back in print! The West is by far the most sprawling and highway ready record in their illustrious back catalog. With all the well deserved attention they've received over the years for their innovative methods and countless collaborations one thing that's often overlooked is how well their records tend to predict and predate what's about to come floating up from the musical underground. Recorded and released a few years before the big new weird America/freak folk movement took off and before everyone was using laptops to create folktronica, Matmos made this amazing album that perfectly melds their leftfield electronic roots with spacious and trance inducing guitar to create the kind of record you would imagine might have been made if Henry Flynt and Jim O'Rourke were to collaborate or if Christian Fennesz got to twist knobs while John Fahey was playing in one of his most exploratory moments. With a long list of guests including J. Lesser and David Pajo (Slint, Papa M) on board for the record, Drew & Martin once again demonstrate how great they are at letting others into their world and being open to where the sounds will take them while still maintaining a distinct vision.
The West is for sure one of our favorite roadtrip records of all time. "Sun on 5 at 152" really does sound exactly how it feels when the sun is blasting through your dirty windshield and you can't really see what's ahead but you keep your foot on the pedal and just follow the road to wherever it may lead you. While no two Matmos records are alike The West probably finds its most kindred spirit in The Civil War, another Matmos record that proves there is much more to these great music makers then simply synths and samples. No matter what they create, soul seeps richly through their fractured sounds and in our opinion The West may be their most soulful, satisfying and resonating release EVER. Highly recommended!
While the majority of the sound source of Kaffe Matthews' "Ann" album is the violin, her improvisational sampling prowess has subverted and treated the original source into constantly shifting digitally looped drones and abstract patterns. This is her first album in a series of releases alphabetically progressing through women's names.
The second album from Kaffe Matthews is a continuation of her realtime explorations of sampler manipulation within a particular live setting. With a (sometimes hidden) microphone capturing her Tony Conrad-esque violin drones incedental sounds, Matthews selects snippets of droning sound to be fed into her sampler for hypnotic, ever shifting abstractions of sound.
"Cecile" - Kaffe Matthews' third album - is quite similar in execution to her riveting live performance which recently took place here at Aquarius. Her method is to manipulate and layer samples of incidental sounds gathered from a singular context (meaning that no samples were brought into the context, and none were added later). While her previous two records had primarily improvised around violin, "Cecile" uses a lot of scratchy surface noise of vinyl as the source material, ending up sounding similar to Philip Jeck's collages.
Kaffe Matthews is a UK electronic artist specializing in live sampling techniques in which she pulls a variety of sounds from her performance space and transforms them into a variety of loops to be collaged in real time. Her previous recordings had often featured her playing violin and specifically manipulating that sounds; but as can be heard here on her fifth album, Matthews' is
This Hayley Newman person performs all sorts of weird actions, then electronic sound manipulator Kaffe Matthews processes the resultant audio. 67 minutes, all recorded live. Weird actions? Well, try wearing a velcro bodysuit with microphones sewn in, or dancing on a miked-up wooden box wearing stilleto shoes outfitted with motors in the heels...hmm. Anyway, knowing that Kaffe can make even the everyday sounds here at Aquarius Records quite interesting with her processing (as she demonstrated not long ago at an instore performance) you might expect that the material on "Pointy Stunt" couldn't fail. Unexpected sounds abound, with everything from some pleasing drone/hum on the "Shoes" track to cut up music and animal noises that result from Newman weighing different objects on digital scales that Matthews set up to trigger odd samples.
Love Is Real, the last record from warped lo-fi popsmith John Maus, is an all time aQ favorite, a dizzying trip into some alternate reality FM radio, where the Cure recorded on answering machines, OMD crafted pop hits on broken tape decks and malfunctioning 4 tracks, a cosmic beat laden dream pop drug trip that managed to be as catchy and irresistible as it was baffling and totally and insanely demented.
Needless to say, we were super excited to discover there was a new John Maus record, the strangely titled We Must Become The Pitiless Censors Of Ourselves, a record that got even stranger when we discovered there was a song called "Cop Killer" on it. Naturally we assumed it was a cover of Body Count's infamous banned jam, so we played that track first, and besides being surprised that it was in fact an original, we also ended up being totally blown away by what might be the sweetest, most dreamily twisted John Maus track EVER.
A broody, almost torch songy ballad, all woozy synths, and big eighties drums, Maus delivering the bizarrely provocative lyrics in his best warm velvety croon: "Cop killer, cop killer, Let's kill the cops tonight, kiiiiiiill them, cop killer, kill every cop in sight", and then the delirious refrain "Against the law" repeated over and over in a tangled storm of intense pulsing synths. The sound lush and explosive, thick and softly blown out, a serious shot across Ariel Pink's bow, a definite challenge for the warped lysergic lo-fi pop crown, a challenge that's gonna be tough to answer. Especially considering that the rest of the record, is just as good, if not as immediately catchy. But catchy it is. "Matter Of Fact" sounds like Maus channeling Devo through his cracked eighties FM pop filter, with some equally baffling lyrics ("Pussy is not the matter of fact"), and some gorgeous hazy synth ambience. "Streetlight" is total eighties new wave pop with the delay and echo effects cranked, the vocals careening wildly through dubbed out clouds of delay, while underneath synths pulse and rhythms groove. "Quantum Leap" is haunting and gorgeously gloomy, Maus the consummate crooner, his deep dramatic vocals bobbing atop thick bouncy basslines, handclap percussion, and lots of swirling sonic murk. "...And The Rain" is another darkly dramatic dream pop doom synth dirge, all rainy late night ambience, and again cloaked in thick swirls of soft focus distortion and blurred echoey shimmer, every track seeming to constantly grow more and more washed out and effects drenched, constantly on the verge of total collapse, but somehow, the more tripped out and damaged they sound, the more pretty and poppy and dreamy they become, a fantastically fractured collection of twisted outsider gloom pop that really has no equal. About as close to a perfect pop record as Maus is liable to get, assuming you like your pop buried in buzz and all blurry and druggy and woozy and warped. Which we most definitely DO.
The long overdue return of aQ faves The Mausoleums, whose last record was a confusional swirl of grim black buzz and weird jangle pop, blown out bliss and thick dense noise. A record we fell in love with, on the recommendation of an aQ customer, long before we discovered that The Mausoleums was in fact a he, and not a they, and just so happened to be a beloved aQ mailorder customer!
For this second record, the Mausoleums seem to have turned down the buzz (just a bit) and turned up the pop. That's right. POP. Not that there wasn't pop all over the last Mausoleums disc I Am The Mausoleum, but the opening track on Blackened Fawns Cleanse The Earth With Fire, "Livelihood", is a gorgeous organ drenched slab of crunchy distorted shoegaze jangle. And we're not talking about the new wave of "metalgaze" that so many metal bands seem to be glomming onto, this is just glorious and resplendent and soaring, shimmering blisspop nirvana, the guitars jangly but washed out and fierce, the melodies sprawling and sun drenched, the sound crumbling and gloriously distorted. In fact, one song in and we're thinking it well worth the price of admission.
But it doesn't take long for the band to dip back into their other true love, the next track, "The One Who Sees", finds the band returning to a furious blackened buzz, howled vocals, pounding drums, insect like riffage, but even then, the sound is still rife with disembodied pop jangle and soaring guitar buzz, an impossible hybrid that sounds way better than it should. The next track is neither, instead a dense processed soundscape of soaring guitar feedback, little curlicues of buzzing melody, looped stuttering drums, dizzying minor key strum, all tangled up in a gloriously seasick hypnotic whirl.
"Thief" begins as straight up pop, like some super distorted Pavement outtake, or lost Sebadoh jam, all fuzzy jangle and simple propulsive drumming, until the vocals come in, a super distorted black metal shriek, bringing with it another layer of buzzing blown out distortion.
And so it goes for the rest of the record, careening from glorious shoegaze distortion drenched buzz pop, to in-the-red lo-fi black metal crunch, but with those two various sonic strains constantly bleeding and leeching into the other, resulting in the record's finest moments, the impossibly dense, epic, majestic guitar drone shoegaze blowout of "Old Woman In The Woods", impossibly heavy, yet gorgeously melodic at the same time, the strange distorted folky raga buzz of "His Reward", the frenetic ultra distorted surfy twang of "Skeletal" and finally the brief closer, "The Bees", a lovely chunk of overdriven steel string Appalachia that near the end explodes into a brief blown out buzz-drenched burst of looped digital fuzz.
Be warned, these are hand made, each and every one. And by hand made, we mean, made by hand, with scissors, and glue, and perhaps not a ruler anywhere in site. Each copy is different, most of them strangely fitted together, a paper gatefold, some slightly smaller than others, some seriously skewed, the color varied from copy to copy, some slightly wrinkled, some almost normal looking, others like maybe they were made as an arts and crafts project at a grade school. But heck, that just adds to the coolness, and makes each one TRULY unique. Cool cover image (but one that has been used before, several times, sadly) and a full color thick paper stapled insert. And probably limited as most things like this usually are...
A customer turned us on to the Mausoleums, a super distorted buzz drenched experimental 'black metal' combo, which we later discovered was in fact an aQuarius mailorder customer! Small world for sure. But even if we had no idea who the heck this was, we would still be suitably blown away.�
You think Wold and Velvet Cacoon know a thing or two about buzz and distortion, well, those guys have nothing on the Mausoleums...
It's hard to even quantify how blown out and buzzy the sound is here, it might make more sense to reference Japanese noise music cuz this almost sounds like straight up super distorted speaker melting N.O.I.S.E., on the surface at least. Until you notice a roiling whirlpool of blackened riffing and howled vocalizing, just beneath all that harsh hiss and brutal buzz. It's almost like Ildjarn or Beherit recorded by Masonna and produced by Merzbow. Blasting and relentless, face melting fury, guitars so distorted they sound like they might crumble into jagged shards, drums that sound like bursts of white noise, but all deftly shaped into riffs and songs and chunks of seriously scalding blackened metal.�
But then the band will unleash something like "Cicada", a gorgeous�loping slowcore jam, again doused with delay�and buried under a layer of distorted grit, but strangely lovely, with a bit of melancholy twang mixed in.�
Or the freaked out blackpsych blast of "Joan Of Arc" a track that sounds like a dense slab of pure black buzz and howl, until suddenly a�gorgeous chunk of indie jangle surfaces, still dripping with distorted buzz, but so goddamn dreamy and melodic, like an even more distorted damaged My Bloody Valentine,�the drums and cymbals so corroded and decayed, they balance out the dreamy jangle. Elsewhere, riffs are dipped in molten hellfire and pushed all the way�into the red, crumbling distortion is draped over lilting minor key guitar, strange Greg Ginn-ish angular guitars are twisted and melted down into more black buzz...
And while the majority of the record is some of the filthiest, blackest buzzingest metal you'll ever hear, the buzzing blackness is split up by all sorts of unlikely and not that black jams, the strangely skeletal Stereolab-ish post rock of "Lenin Not Lennon", the creepy black electro (replete with strangely Beatles-esque guitar) of "Insignificance", the metalized buzz wrapped Neu!-isms of "Running Through The Reeds", the warbly organ flecked garage stomp of "I Guess I'm Like A Prince, Maybe" and the Spacemen 3 like druggy drone of "Like A Prince", all seemingly out of place, but when listened to as a whole, seem to perfectly balance the extreme brutal buzz of the rest of the disc.�
Maybe too fucked up and far out for most metal heads, but folks into super damaged heaviness, and freaked out whatthefuck metal will dig this BIG TIME.�
Another discovery via aQ pal / black metal weirdo Cloak Of Displacement, this one a super obscure collection of dark ambient sound collage from the mysterious Estonian soundscaper known as Mavra (who is in fact Veiko Rebane, live vocalist for CoD), all created from audio samples from films, old records and a delay pedal. A very primitive sort of Philip Jeck in a way, the sounds barely recognizable, instead transformed into woozy looped rhythmscapes, or layered into shimmery drones, the vibe is propulsive and a litrle bit krauty, but definitely very primitive and ritualistic, lo-fi and home brewed.
Some of the tracks are downright pretty, and sound a bit like Boards Of Canada, albeit a slightly more abrasive, more evil version, the melodies a bit off kilter, a little atonal, the tracks laced with shards of crunch and glitch, all drifting atop warm sinister swells of chordal thrum, the second track here in different hands could have been a sweet bit of dreamy IDM, but instead is a bit more raw and moody. Elsewhere the sound shifts into almost soundtrack territory, heaving bits of organ swirl underpin tense high end tones, and cascading avalanches of primitive electronics, but all masterfully woven into a strangely mesmerizing sort of lo-fi electronic ambience.
The final three tracks offer up variations on the electronica versus black ambience versus droney drift, the sound flitting between the three, noisy and chaotic one second, swirly and sci-fi the next, and finally, dark and dolorous, haunting and hypnotic, which is how the record unwinds in its final moments. So good.
LIMITED TO 20 COPIES!! That's it. We got 15 and once they are gone we won't be able to get more!
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The Universal Consciousness label returns with another batch of tapes, following the Moon Knight and Lord Time cassettes we reviewed a few lists back. There's another amazing Lord Time release, and this one the debut from this mysterious outsider ambient doom one man band (whose sole member also does time in Lightning Swords Of Death and Endless Blizzard). The label describes the sound as funereal and majestic and it most definitely is, the guitars soaring, epic and melodic, the drums minimal, super echoey, like this was recorded in some black cavern, the strange mix of off kilter percussion and the super mournful melodic guitars makes this sound almost psychedelic. Eventually the sound shifts into more classically doomy plod, but even then, the echoey drum pound is all dubbed out, and the guitars chug and churn, often unfurling long stretches of droney buzz, before slipping right back into those majestic melodies. The sound spends as much time drifting ominously as it does plodding and lumbering, those ambient stretches are hauntingly beautiful, not just your typical metal synth interludes, instead, it's a sort of blackened kosmische, lush and layered, infused with streaks of feedback, and grinding muted industrial thrum, all blurred into dark passages of sinister rumble and buzz, the sound of which seems to ooze into the doom proper, making the creep and crunch a bit more abstract and psychedelic, mysterious and otherworldly. This is the sort of rare 'doom', that could very well appeal to non metal folks into strange dark sounds and more abstract avant heaviness. And it may be a bit too out there for your typical metalhead, but if you like your doom twisted, tripped out and drone drenched, then this will definitely hit the spot.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Packaged in super deluxe, embossed, heavy textured metallic paper J-cards, each one hand numbered and sealed with a sticker.
A split release between Richard Maxfield and Harold Budd (known for his collaborations with Eno) showcasing their 1960's experiments in electronics and free jazz. Maxfield's work ranges from synthetic 60s concrete / electronic pieces to narrated poetry over uptempo Ornette Coleman style free jazz. Budd's "The Oak of the Golden Dreams" is the highlight - a gritty piece of Steve Reich / Angus MacLise inspired minimalism of persistantly droning chords and loopy flanging notes making the whole piece sound like an electronic bagpipe.
After years of silence, Zbigniew Karkowski (former Hafler Trio collaborator) joins Masami Akita (of Merzbow, who knows nothing about years of silence) for 55 minutes of signature Merzbow noise processed into heavy chugging pulses and brutal psycho-acoustic drones...not for the faint of heart.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Looking back at the manic output of Maurizio Bianchi (MB) with dozens of private edition LPs and cassettes from 1979 - 1984, it is arguable that his catalogue of 'pre-apocalyptic' industrialisms is an aural diary of psychological distress on par with someone like Jandek. Bianchi's work reveals the existential crisis of a frustrated nihilist whose explorations of cultural, religious, and semiotic collapse brought him closer to God.
In 1984, Maurizio Bianchi released his last album and dropped out of sight. From what little contact he kept with his musical past, a myth circulated that he became a Jehovah's Witness, which appeared to be an absurd fate for this practitioner of negativity. However, this myth revealed itself as fact when he resurfaced in 1998 to release two ephemeral yet wholly uninteresting new age records filled with gilded spiritual imagery. At this time, Bianchi began remastering his earliest work and reissuing these albums through Alga Marghan. "Archeo MB 2" is the second set of reissues from the MB archives, collected as a 5cd set with the albums "Das Testament," "Endometrio," "Carcinosi," and "The Plain Truth," and "Armaghedon." Where the first set is a violent display of neurotic vibrations and deadly electronics, the second is relatively dreamy, albeit retaining the sonic qualities of erratic vertigo and shadowy hallucinations. His suffocating experiments with primitive synths, delay pedals, turntables, and tape machines collapsed in on themselves with an electrocuted obliteration of sound. Out of the ashes of such early albums as "Symphony for a Genocide" and "Neuro Habitat," Bianchi allowed for a structuralism with tentative rhythms and melodies to rise out of the blackened grit on the work found in "Archeo MB 2." Each of the albums found on this box set are available individually; however, the box set features extra artwork (including a really dorky photograph of Bianchi in a red sweater), and a handful of Bianchi's cryptic music critiques. Of all of the dronescapes, noise attacks, and electronic warbles that Aquarius has lavished with critical hyperbole, MB remains at the top of the list in terms of innovation and actualization of metaphor and intent.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
"The end of parabolic absurdity..." is the final quote from the encyclopaedic set of MB (Maurizio Bianchi) reissues. "Armaghedon" was the soundtrack to a film produced / directed by Bianchi. Although Bianchi released this as one of his private edition LPs, "Armaghedon" found limited distribution; furthermore, the majority of the pressings were destroyed for "obscure reasons," leaving only about 100 copies in existance.
In Bianchi's take on the final epistomological battle of good and evil, the remnant material world is very cold place shivering beneath a thick ever growing chunk of ice with only slivers of heavenly light penetrating the frigid mass. In this metaphoric environment, Bianchi's electronics warble within the multiple delay attacks that dominate his preceeding albums, but with a coloring that resembles a glistening blue / green rather than the coal blacks / greys that came before. "Armaghedon" is also the only album to feature Bianchi's voice and could draw connections to the eerier drone work of Angus MacLise.
There's a novel concept behind this 3"cd-r series released by Taalem: they make 'em to order and they keep 'em in print as long as people want 'em. Wow! Not limited?!? Who woulda thunk?! This French label has produced a couple dozen of these releases, with the first to come across our plate being by Maurizio Bianchi (aka MB). This Italian industrial pioneer had been in hibernation for well over a decade, after his initial infamy was solidified in the early '80s by his ghastly recordings of frozen power electronics augmented by nightmarish allegorical references to genocide, cancer, and Armageddon. Since 2003 or 2004, he's returned to this style of noise sculpting with extraordinary results and an equally impressive work ethic, releasing countless numbers of collaborations, MP3 only albums, and albums of all lengths and sizes. For Bacterie, he's crammed this 3" CD with an impressive blast of noxious vibrations blackened through densely layering and unwell intentions. He's returned to the form last heard on the Endometrio / Carcinosi diptych. Brilliant.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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If there is one MB record to own, it's "Carcinosi" - the synthesis of the divebomb synth squallor found on his early work like "Symphony for a Genocide" and the frigid drone exasperation of his finale "Armaghedon." Originally released in 1983 as a private edition of 400 copies, "Carcinosi" is part two of his dyptic of "bionic music" along side "Endometrio." The metaphors of cancer mutating within a technologized body parallel a text in which Bianchi refer to this work as a warning of another Auschwitz. Bianchi's "Carcinosi" masterfully actualizes his grim metaphors with a mesmeric carousel of dark fractures of muted noise and disorienting synthetic pulsations smothered in a heavily satuated wall of delay.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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MB (Maurizio Bianchi) originally released "Das Testament" as a private edition of 300 copies in 1983. Bianchi starts off this album with cold black chops of tape splices and gritty electronic squeals that discharge in a mass of delay. These bleak bursts of noise retain the raw negative energy of MB's first recordings, but gradually an accumulated drone engulfs the primitive musique conrete techniques with an oppressive numbness. Bianchi also included an 30 minute excerpt from his first and only MB concert. With his own abstract verbage, Bianchi describes this album as "knowledge culminating in a deconsecration of germinative interrelation - to remember reddish scientific thaw. External cyclotron frequency is washing the minaturization of wavemeter pestilence." Scientific thaw and wavemeter pestilence, indeed!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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"Endometrio" was originally issued as a private edition of 400 copies in 1983 and presents what MB (Maurizio Bianchi) qualified as "bionic music" which shifted MB further from the contemporary industrial bruitism of SPK and Whitehouse. Though primitive electronics and tape synthesis, MB sets up a metaphoric arena for biological warfare on a microscopic level upon which "Endometrio" bares witness to millions of death rattles from bacteria massacred by viral panzer divisions. To anthropomorphize the basic life of these single-celled bodies is to elicit horrific apocalyptic metaphors, which he elaborated as "volatility of thalassochemistry removal to dishevel the faculty of reason's aggravation." Doom & gloom aside, this is the pinnacle of MB's obsessive mastery of electronic de-composition.
The fifth the series of re-issues of the long out-of-print MB records that appeared with considerable regularity in the early 80s, before MB (aka Maurizio Bianchi) dropped out of the nightmare culture along with Nurse With Wound, Whitehouse, and Coil to become a monk (really!). "Mectpyo Bacterium" is MB's most solid arrangement as his 'protonic' electronic synthesis of shivering noise, decomposing Frankensteinian rhythms, and oppressive drones coalesce into an effectively bleak funeral dirge. Recommended power electronics!
Since around 2004, the Italian industrial composer Maurizio Bianchi has unleashed an impossible stream of recordings, often in collaboration with electronics musicians all over the world but unfortunately with spotty results. There are plenty of reasons why any label and / or artist would jump at the chance to release and / or record something, anything by Mr. Bianchi; and this 10cd boxset of his seminal recordings from the early '80s defines them all. This actually marks the second reissue campaign for these recordings, some of which originally appeared on Sterile Records and Broken Flag; but many of which had been self-published on Bianchi's own imprint. Bianchi - who simply recorded at the time as MB - had infamously been released through William Bennett's Come Organisation, who had recontextualized Bianchi's recordings of grim mechanoid drones with Nazi speeches spliced on top and changed his nom de plume to Leibstandarte SS MB... all without Bianchi's consent. Numerous cassettes, plenty of compilation appearances, and 10 lps marked this very prolific period in the early '80s for Bianchi, whereby he issued forth brutal, hallucinatory blasts of electronic noise and grinding rhythms of hand-cut tape noise and overblown synthetic distortion. These were the blackened, nihilist version of Conrad Schnitzler, Cluster, and Klaus Schulze as filtered through the industrial ethos of Throbbing Gristle and Whitehouse.
But by 1984, Bianchi just stopped. There were innumerable rumors about his departure from the music community. Some said, he had become a monk. Some said, he was crippled in an accident. But the truth of the matter was that he dedicated himself to his faith as a Jehovah's Witness. His distance only heightened the mythology about this artist and increased the cultural cache of those early recordings. Hence, the necessity for this boxset.
Here, you will find those ten LPs - Symphony For A Genocide, Menses, Neuro Habitat / Moerter Under Uns, Regel, Mectpyo Bakterium, Das Testament, Endometrio, Carcinosi, The Plain Truth, and Armagheddon - each released with plenty of bonus tracks from any number of those various compilation tracks. And for those of you who had picked up the two 5lp anthologies of MB's work on Vinyl On Demand, we don't think there's any overlap between this box set and those collections.
The first records are violent display of neurotic vibrations and deadly electronics, the second is relatively dreamy, albeit retaining the sonic qualities of erratic vertigo and shadowy hallucinations. His suffocating experiments with primitive synths, delay pedals, turntables, and tape machines collapsed in on themselves with an electrocuted obliteration of sound. Out of the ashes of such early albums as Symphony for a Genocide and Neuro Habitat, Bianchi allowed for a structuralism with tentative rhythms and melodies to rise out of the blackened grit on the work found on Endometrio and The Plain Truth. Each of the albums found on this box set are available individually; however, the box set features additional artwork, plenty of bonus tracks not on the original lps (but still the same from the first reissue campaign), and a handful of Bianchi's cryptic music critiques. Of all of the dronescapes, noise attacks, and electronic warbles that Aquarius has lavished with critical hyperbole, MB remains at the top of the list in terms of innovation and actualization of metaphor and intent.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
In the liner notes, a smug Maurizio Bianchi (aka MB) included a quote from Genesis P-Orridge who described MB's early 80's industrial noise records as 'boring, meaningless, pathetic'. I'd agree with MB in claiming that Gen was jealous, as MB was able to construct brutal hallucinatory recordings of electronic noise that offer metaphors of microscopic anyeurisms which collapse the body from within. Bleak chilling drones that are reminiscent of Conrad Schnitzler's most neurotic, Nurse With Wound's most droning, and Whitehouse's least annoying. MB's very prolific career in the early 80's with a more than a dozen records was cut short in 1984 at which time he joined a monastary.
Some of my favourite 'noise' records that have been gratefully reissued, thus sparing me from shelling out the $120.00 that I've seen the vinyl editions of these records going for!
Italian industrial pioneer Maurizio Bianchi released Nervo / Hydra as a private edition cassette back in 1981; and the tape was subsequently bootlegged a number of times always with the incorrect title "NH/HN." With Vinyl On Demand's thorough exhumation of Bianchi's impossible to find cassettes spanning a couple of 5lp boxsets, the material from Nervo / Hydra did get an official reissue and an impressive remastering job as well. As with most everything on Vinyl On Demand, however, those two MB boxsets went out of print, necessitating yet another reissue of Bianchi's work.
In 1981, Bianchi unleashed his first major work through Sterile Records in Symphony For A Genocide; and Nervo / Hydra churns through the trademarked MB carcinogenic electronics minus the death-march drum machine of that aforementioned album. Fibrillations of grimy electronics and electro-shock dronings crawl ominously through endlessly cycling variations, punctuated with frigid divebomb squeals and slabs of flickering melodies erupting from Bianchi's abused Korg synth. Expect deadly, corrosive atmospheres on this impressive album!
We must point out that the material on this cd was taken straight from the LP of one of those Vinyl On Demand boxsets, as the album pops and hisses with a few choice bits of vinyl crackle. It certainly sounds *way* better than the crappy bootlegs from the original cassette, and we always like a little crackle and hiss on our records anyway, but in case that sort of thing concerns you... Also, we have limited stock on this item.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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The third in the series of cd re-issues of MB's (aka Maurizio Bianchi) long out of print albums. MB's sound of endless harsh hypnosis bridges the electronic noodling of Kluster or Conrad Schnitzler with the doom 'n' gloom aesthetics of early 80's industrial culture. In 1982, MB described this album as "the innatural and crude report about the molecular misfortunes of a life close to the bounds ('Neuro Habitat') or the revealed asynchronism of the organized murder ('Morder Unter Uns'). Behind the bloody glass window of decomposing dynamics... it's the setting of the friable pre-apocalyptic fossilization, the supreme lapidation of meanness which creates myth." For such a dense metaphor, MB aptly describes how chilling this album is. Recommended as with all of the 80s MB recordings.
A reissue of a private cassette Maurizio Bianchi made in 1981, whose ghastly noises would become the foundation for Endometrio, one of Bianchi's undisputed masterpieces of grim powerdrone electronics. Endometrio was a self-released LP from 1982 that formed a diptych with Carcinosi, which explored Bianchi's self-described 'bionic' music, and which metaphorically described the encroachment of technology within the human body as a form of self-annihilation by way of cancer. The heavy drones of thick vibration seemed to be a magnification of cancerous cells growing within bone tissue. Yeah, Bianchi's work is fucking bleak.
Oitr Emo-Dne features many of those spectral vibrations, slumping drones, and frigid noises that would later form the monolithic wall of sound Bianchi would deliver on Endometrio; but this tape is far more composed than most of Bianchi's proper albums, which pretty much begin and end with rough edits and hardly anything as subtle as fade-out. Instead of a relentless torrent of sound, Bianchi allows his sounds to ebb and flow with various cracklings (possibly left over from his early turntable experiments as Sacher-Pelz), sounding very prescient of Nurse With Wound's Soliloquy For Lilith and especially the NWW track "No Longer His Dominant" with its arrangement for swelling low-end feedback. This tape is pretty limited itself, with just 216 copies of this edition, although the tape and the inserts are professional grade. An exceptional artifact of early '80s noise culture!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
In the liner notes, a smug Maurizio Bianchi (aka MB) included a quote from Genesis P-Orridge who described MB's early 80's industrial noise records as 'boring, meaningless, pathetic'. I'd agree with MB in claiming that Gen was jealous, as MB was able to construct brutal hallucinatory recordings of electronic noise that offer metaphors of microscopic anyeurisms which collapse the body from within. Bleak chilling drones that are reminiscent of Conrad Schnitzler's most neurotic, Nurse With Wound's most droning, and Whitehouse's least annoying. MB's very prolific career in the early 80's with a more than a dozen records was cut short in 1984 at which time he joined a monastary.
Some of my favourite 'noise' records that have been gratefully reissued, thus sparing me from shelling out the $120.00 that I've seen the vinyl editions of these records going for!
