[ aquarius records — Experimental ]

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 5801 through 5850 of 9280.

Any Nurse With Wound release on vinyl is most highly coveted. Always with gorgeous artwork to match the sonic artistry within. So this release is a welcome -- albeit mysterious -- vinyl re-issue by Streamline via Drag City of Nurse With Wound's 1992 companion album to Current 93's of the same name. Beautiful, darkly shimmering soundscapes as assembled by Steven Stapleton and co. [among

Now, for a limited time, we have this classic NWW recording on cassette! To The Quiet Men From A Tiny Girl was the second NWW album, originally released in 1980 and was credited to Steven Stapleton, John Fothergill, and Heman Pathak - the original trio which created the debut Chance Meeting On A Dissecting Table Of A Sewing Machine and An Umbrella. Garnering a dedication to the transgressive Viennese aktionist Rudolf Schwartzkogler, the album makes an erroneous claim that Schwartzkogler "killed himself in the name of art through successive acts of self mutilation." Schwartzkogler's performances amplified the experiences of pain and mutilation, often counterpointed with aesthetics of clinical purity and precision. A number of myths and urban legends came out of Schwartzkogler's very controversial work, including one that he killed himself after cutting off his own penis during a performance. His death was much more of a mystery as he tumbled out of a 4th floor window in 1969. Perhaps an accident? Perhaps not? Perhaps a leap bettering that of Yves Klein? The reasons for his death are a mystery; and this album's dedication probably exacerbated the myths around Schwartzkogler, given the cultural cache of Nurse With Wound. The two tracks are strange sets of action based residues and Fluxus constructions from found object manipulation. The resultant scrapes, squeals, knocks, and blurts pass through all manner of effects in various states of psychic clarity, hedging toward a setting that could be roughly labelled "fried on acid." Stapleton had roped in the French free-jazz iconoclast Jacques Berrocal to add his own trumpet skronk to the slender cacophony of the first track. Very much an extension of the ideas found on Chance Meeting On A Dissecting Table Of A Sewing Machine and An Umbrella.

MPEG stream: She Alone Hole And Open
MPEG stream: Ostranenie

"Two Shaves And A Shine" is one of those rare 'songs' penned by the lysergically inclinded Steven Stapleton, originally found on the Nurse With Wound album An Awkward Pause. The track's got a rolling bassline that would have made King Crimson very happy back in the day, a frantic backbeat supplying a spry rhythm, sparkplug guitar stutter, David Tibet screaching in rapidfire fashion, and all of those fucked-up Nurse With Wound idiosyncracies that make the track a distinctly Nurse With Wound track. A few years ago, Stapleton discovered that somebody had created a mash-up of this track with James Chance's "Contort Yourself" (or was it the James Black redux?), and out of this discovery came the idea for a NWW remix competition, with the best tracks to be released on a CD on Stapleton's United Dairies imprint. Well here's the result. We can't say that any of these bands are well known projects, with the Bay Area entries from Xambuca and Forms Of Things Unknown being the only ones we even recognize. Not surprisingly, it's a pretty diverse compendium of deliberate weirdness, Beefheart theatricality, and cranky audio collages, all of which are connected by the insistent bassline of the original tune. The highlights are the blurred shoegazing drone of Pepe Wismeer, Xambuca's human beat box grooves which brings Tones On Tail's "Slender Fungus" to mind, and the scattered fun-house collage of Coil-esque electronica and squiggled noise from Lithopedion. Other contributers include The Stomach Aches, James Hill, BB, Anemone in Toto, Balog, dell.tree, the Vivian Girls, Horst Jankowski's 21st Century Swingers, Crab Fisher, and Nelson Ford Templeton.

There was a time when all of the Nurse With Wound records were available all at the same time, although this feat was the work of the much scorned World Serpent label, who screwed over pretty much every artist on their roster and pressed up a bunch of cds that were susceptible to bit rot. So, even if those records were in fact around, they were in many cases unlistenable. Who Can I Turn To Stereo was spared the bit rot, but didn't fair well otherwise. This came out in 1996, marking one of the first collaborations that NWW maestro Steven Stapleton conducted with Colin Potter. Along with Rock 'N' Roll Station released a few years earlier, the 1996 album Who Can I Turn To Stereo could be seen as one of the few gateway albums into the hermetic sonic realm of Nurse With Wound. While Stapleton has made no bones about the albums that have influenced his project (and in many ways, the Nurse With Wound LIST of influences which was included in the first album has become a collector's checklist of terminally out-there kosmiche rock and psychedelic electronics), the combination of those influences have defined one of the most singularly unique voices in all of music history. So when it comes to a NWW album with 'crossover appeal,' don't expect Stapleton to make it easy on the ears. Who Can I Turn To Stereo found Stapleton deeply mired in his infatuation with bizarre exotica records and the mambo sounds of Perez Prado, resulting in a long-form collage of hypnotic rhythms interlaced within a rollercoaster of seasick electrical squiggling, haunted ballroom motifs (some 10 years before Kirby was doing it), and spectral vocalizations. This 2011 reissue is coupled with Stereo Wastelands - "a collection of musical debris from the original Who Can I Turn To Stereo session." The three lengthy cuts of "debris" from those sessions are thoroughly abstracted variations that occasionally ground themselves upon a bongo loop which had developed into a signature for NWW throughout the '90s. The tracks weave with eerie smoke and dopplereffected shadow. Jittery rhythms co-habitate alongside those bongo loops and march on one occasion with a jagged guitar whose spindly sounds harken all the way back to the NWW album A Chance Meeting Between An Umbrella And a Sewing Machine. Oh, there's a bonus track, "Eternity", not found on the original! Very nice to see this material back in stock once again, and as mentioned, this would make for a very good place to jump into the wild and wonderful world of Nurse With Wound.

MPEG stream: Yagga Blues
MPEG stream: Livin' Fear Of James Last
MPEG stream: Stereo Wastelands 1
MPEG stream: Stereo Wastelands 3

Now, on vinyl, for Record Store Day we were told, though they only just showed up... Graham Bowers is a name that you may have heard floating around in the mid '90s, perhaps by way of some choice reviews in The Wire. While the nature of those recordings escapes us, he claims an eclectic heritage of avant-garde practices that might gravitate towards the Chris Cutler side of progressive composition. In the smattering of interviews we've read, he comes off like a perpetual outsider with no interest in participating in any particular 'scene' of experimental music. Steven Stapleton (Nurse With Wound) met Bowers while both participated in a 2011 sound-art festival in Wales; the two then embarked on an ambitious collaborative project resulting in this unnerving, post-classical album attempting to articulate the inner workings of a human brain that had suffered a stroke and that has only a little over hour before death. The dominant 'voice' within Rupture is a cacophonous collage built upon orchestral samples, fixated mostly on bombastic horns and kettledrum crashes. While the origins of the sampling is unclear, Bowers and Stapleton make little attempt to obfuscate the sampled technology, with the symphonic samples played through the keyboard, discordant and portentous. Amidst these orchestral blurts, quintessential slashes and enigmatic drones indicate Stapleton's signature sound design, with warbling ballroom vocals from Victrola recordings, amplified heartbeats, and unanswered telephones ringing. The album's entire mood is one of panic that steadily fades to black, and hardly qualifies as easy listening.

MPEG stream: A Life As It Now Is
MPEG stream: And Never Will Be Again

Now, a limited time, we have this classic recording on cassette! It is a little unfortunate that we've never reviewed this album, although it has graced the aQuarius shelves from time to time. 150 Murderous Passions sometimes designates the name of the 'band' and sometimes, it's the name of the album penned by Steven Stapleton (aka Nurse With Wound) and William Bennett (aka Whitehouse) in 1981. Regardless of how anybody wants to qualify the album, there are two distinct variations on these recordings, with both producers offering up their own take on the original source material. Bennett scoffed that the version Stapleton produced lacks the in-the-red intensity he envisioned for the album; and to be blunt, Bennett is totally fucking wrong. Stapleton (who published his through his own United Dairies, with Bennett's getting a Come Productions make-over) definitely offers the superior version, with Bennett -- despite all of his infamy in the late 70s and early '80s -- really not coming into his own until some five or six years afterwards. Yes, power electronics do require some finesse. But that's not to say this is a walk in the park for a Nurse With Wound album; there's plenty of atonal metal screeches, echolocation rhythmic patterns of klanging noise, stabs of feedback, and unholy screams which get collaged into a very claustrophobic, demented composition. Anyway, all of the other versions of these recordings are totally out of print, with their future reissue probability being a big question mark. So, if you don't have this awesome album already, get the tape. Now.

MPEG stream: 150 Murderous Passions

Early in 2004, Steven Stapleton offered a taste of the Angry Eelectric Finger project in the form of a CD released through World Serpent on his United Dairies imprint. The intent was to offer a precursor to a massive 3LP / 3CD set in which Stapleton had commissioned reworkings of unpublished Nurse With Wound material from irr. app. (ext.), Cyclobe, and Jim O'Rourke. As World Serpent went out of business some six months after releasing this teaser to the Angry Eelectric Finger project (without paying Stapleton a dime for two years worth of royalties!!!), the 3LP / 3CD set fell into limbo. Fortunately, Beta-Lactam has picked up the slack where World Serpent failed miserably, and released the Angry Eelectric Finger project in its entirety. The Nurse With Wound source material for all of the Angry Eelectric Finger project includes interlocking varispeed warbles, prepared piano recordings, ominously seasick rhythms, and a variety of metallic crashes and slashing cymbals. Stapleton also gave the remixing artists recordings made with members of Krautrock icons Xhol Caravan as well as with David Tibet on "apocalyptic guitar." For the most part, this template of sounds is similar to the spacious, bleakness of his early Surrealist masterpiece Homotopy For Marie, although each of the remixing artists takes the material in a unique way reflecting both their own artistry as well as Stapleton's genius. Cyclobe's alchemy upon the source material is clearly the most extreme of the three reworkings, as very little of the Stapleton and Xhol source material emerges intact on this album. Comprised of former Coil member Stephen Thrower along with Ossian Brown, Cyclobe (not Cylob) has often paralleled the golden, decadent timbre's of Coil sidereal dronescaping. With sparse and eerie ambience ghosting throughout the stereofield, Cyclobe's contribution to the Angry Eelectric Finger is probably the best we've heard from them.

MPEG stream: Paraparaparallelogrammatica 1
MPEG stream: Paraparaparallelogrammatica 4

Early in 2004, Steven Stapleton offered a taste of the Angry Eelectric Finger project in the form of a CD published through World Serpent on his United Dairies imprint. The intent was to offer a precursor to a massive 3LP / 3CD set in which Stapleton had commissioned reworkings of unpublished Nurse With Wound material from irr. app. (ext.), Cyclobe, and Jim O'Rourke. As World Serpent went out of business some six months after releasing this teaser to the Angry Eelectric Finger project (without paying Stapleton a dime for two years worth of royalties!!!), the 3LP / 3CD set fell into limbo. Fortunately, Beta-Lactam has picked up the slack where World Serpent failed miserably, and released the Angry Eelectric Finger project in its entirety. The Nurse With Wound source material for all of the Angry Eelectric Finger project includes interlocking varispeed warbles, prepared piano recordings, ominously seasick rhythms, and a variety of metallic crashes and slashing cymbals. Stapleton also gave the remixing artists recordings made with members of Krautrock icons Xhol Caravan as well as with David Tibet on "apocalyptic guitar." For the most part, this template of sounds is similar to the spacious, bleakness of his early Surrealist masterpiece Homotopy For Marie, although each of the remixing artists takes the material in a unique way reflecting both their own artistry as well as Stapleton's genius. For my money, the irr. app. (ext.) is the best of the three. Much like the stunning NWW album Salt Marie Celeste, Waldron's album rumbles as a sustained droning mantra; this time, it's from a muffled funereal bell while broken springs, distant mechanical engines, and washboard scrapes bounce throughout the stereofield as an aggregate of sonic detritus suspended against a black hole of sound.

MPEG stream: Mute Bell Extinction Process I
MPEG stream: Mute Bell Extinction Process II

Early in 2004, Steven Stapleton offered a taste of the Angry Eelectric Finger project in the form of a CD published through World Serpent on his United Dairies imprint. The intent was to offer a precursor to a massive 3LP / 3CD set in which Stapleton had commissioned reworkings of unpublished Nurse With Wound material from irr. app. (ext.), Cyclobe, and Jim O'Rourke. As World Serpent went out of business some six months after releasing this teaser to the Angry Eelectric Finger project (without paying Stapleton a dime for two years worth of royalties!!!), the 3LP / 3CD set fell into limbo. Fortunately, Beta-Lactam has picked up the slack where World Serpent failed miserably, and released the Angry Eelectric Finger project in its entirety. The Nurse With Wound source material for all of the Angry Eelectric Finger project includes interlocking varispeed warbles, prepared piano recordings, ominously seasick rhythms, and a variety of metallic crashes and slashing cymbals. Stapleton also gave the remixing artists recordings made with members of Krautrock icons Xhol Caravan as well as with David Tibet on "apocalyptic guitar." For the most part, this template of sounds is similar to the spacious, bleakness of his early Surrealist masterpiece Homotopy For Marie, although each of the remixing artists takes the material in a unique way reflecting both their own artistry as well as Stapleton's genius. Jim O'Rourke offers a soft kaleidoscope of DSP-impacted organ drones which mutate into clanking industrial loops. The second track features much more of the aforementioned Xhol Caravan sessions of free-improv sax and flute solos. Kinda 'jazzy'.

MPEG stream: Tape Monkey Mooch I

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

SORRY. It's possible that "Santoor Lena Bicycle" will remain a super limited package, with a run of only 500 copies and the handmade artwork; but it's also possible that United Dairies will release this is a few years as a regular jewel case edition. Of course, we won't know until then... So for now, it's big bucks for the new Stapleton project. There is a fairly interesting story behind the artwork, as the deluxe hard board cases had been built out of large scale paintings done by Stapleton and Aranos which the two originally exhibited for one day in Town Hall Studio Galway Ireland and accompanied by the music found on this disc. After the exhibition, Stapleton and Aranos chopped down the paintings into 6" squares for the artwork of the album. The whole package comes with a large size foldout with images of all of the intact paintings, so you can try to figure out where that piece from the puzzle belongs. As larger pieces, the paintings seemed pretty cool somewhat amorphous like a really colorful Terry Winters; as small entities, merely appear as splattered afterthoughts outside the edges of a Jackson Pollock painting. Aranos and Stapleton have collaborated on a number of occasions, and I've never known why it is qualified Nurse With Wound and Aranos... and not just Nurse With Wound. All of the other collaborators with Stapleton don't seem to mind fitting under the NWW moniker, why should he? Aranos' gypsy folk violin *does* take center stage throughout the album of Dadaist drones and baffling improvisations, pushing Nurse With Wound occasionally into the clunky instrumentation of the Sun City Girls or even Tom Waits. Yet unexpectedly, a Disco Not Disco groove straight outta 1981 and a drunken vocal offering (sounding way too much like those stupid rants from SCG's Charles Gocher) spoil what charm the two had created. I've always been a bit of an apologist for Stapleton, but this one isn't all that good. Shame as it will be fetching $100 on eBay in a couple of months from now.

RealAudio clip: Mary Jane
RealAudio clip: Sunset Belly Mother

Now, for a limited time, we have this classic United Dairies recording on cassette!! Mi-Mort was originally released as a split cassette by Nurse With Wound and Current 93 in 1983; and by some accounts, this marked the very first release by David Tibet as C93. These were the days of Crowleyian tape loops in the background with Tibet ranting his apocalyptic proclamations about the death of Maldoror. While the time period of Current 93's bleak, pyre-ritual abstractions was considerably short (1983-1987), it located Current 93 firmly within the context of industrial culture before Tibet shifted his course radically to a Comus / Wicker Man inspired British folk sensibility. This 18 minute exegesis growls with the drug-induced and Thelemic demons in Tibet's head and still makes for a very terrifying listen. A couple of the tracks from Nurse With Wound's side had made the rounds on various compilations including "Fashioned To A Device Behind A Tree," on which a little German girl pleads for her father accompanied by an ever intensifying psychoacoustically challenging high frequency drone (muffled somewhat by the tape compression of this cassette release), and "I Was No Longer His Dominant" is an unsettling meditation of undulating metallic low-end feedback backing a muffled conversations which mysteriously expresses a psychological crack in the narrator. The other two tracks, on the other hand, are exclusive to Mi-Mort, both scraping on pieces of metal in see-saw grinds with suitably intense electronic sirens blaring about. Yup, it's a winner.

MPEG stream: Maldoror Est Mort
MPEG stream: I Was No Longer His Dominant
MPEG stream: Fashioned To A Device Behind A Tree
MPEG stream: A Snake In Your Abdomen

Another archival recording from the United Dairies catalogue, Nylon Coverin' Body Smotherin' is an unequal split release, with 5 of the six tracks authored by Nurse With Wound and just one from Current 93. Originally released in 1984, the opening NWW track is an early cover version of Brainticket's jawdroppingly lysgeric psych-funk-motorik centerpiece from Cottonwoodhill. Stapleton has brought along Roman Jugg of The Damned to play organs and roped in J.G. Thirlwell and Diana Rogerson to freak out on the vocals. Admittedly, this is probably not as good as the original; but that original set a very high bar. The Current 93 track hails from the Crowleyian loop / pre-menstrual music stage of Tibet's cracked apocalyptic vision. "The Great In The Small" features Tibet growling about the antichrist around those Crowleyian chants and arrhythmic / anti-schooled percussion sounding like it could come from the Crass commune. The finale "Well What D'Ya Know Henry" is one of the best tracks from Stapleton's early body of work, with these Bernard Hermann-esque slashes of orchestral wash, churning amidst Diana Rogerson's demented ululations and the deadpan sample of a minor chararcter in Eraserhead declaring "I've locked myself out of my apartment." Creepy as fuck is what it is.

MPEG stream: Nylon Coverin' Body Smotherin'
MPEG stream: Glory Hole
MPEG stream: Well What D'Ya Know Henry
MPEG stream: The Great In The Small

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

SORRY. Given the subtitle Spitch' Cock One, this first release in the Angry Eelectric Finger series of reworked Nurse With Wound material may or may not have anything in common with a forthcoming release also entitled Angry Eelectric Finger, which might be a triple disc set. Regardless of the ambigous status of any future releases, for this one Nurse With Wound's mad scientist Steven Stapleton solicited Cyclobe, irr. app. (ext), and Jim O'Rourke to rework what we've been told was "an entire album of material." Presumably these are not remixes of older NWW tracks, but something of a parlour game with new material. Stapleton himself produces the first track, interlocking varispeed warbles of some prepared piano recordings. Eventually, these settle into something of a seasick rhythm that is accompanied by a variety of metallic crashes and slashing cymbals, most of which are being played backwards. In the end, it sounds somewhat like a revisitation of the ideas found on Homotopie for Marie. Cyclobe, a World Serpent staple comprised of two former Coil members, offer a bunch of ominous synth tones that do better than the recent batch of Coil recordings but don't extend much beyond that. irr. app. (ext.) is AQ's beloved Matt Waldron, who contributes the best track on the album with an incredibly bleak take on the NWW vision of surrealism. Much like the stunning NWW album Salt Marie Celeste, Waldron's track rumbles with a sustained droning mantra; this time, it's from a muffled funereal bell while broken springs, distant mechanical engines, and washboard scrapes bounce throughout the stereofield as an aggregate of sonic detritus suspended against a black hole of sound. Jim O'Rourke offers a soft kaleidoscope of DSP-impacted organ drones upon which he sprinkles tiny bells and some of the same mechanical springiness that Waldron also used. Obviously this is a teaser for that supposed upcoming triple disc set which is rumored to also feature Xhol Caravan; but considering the possibility that some of this material may not be there, it's advisable that you consider picking it up. Either way, this is fantastic.

MPEG stream: Root Canal Splinter (Penetration Mix)
MPEG stream: Mute Bell Extinction Process

Originally released as a split LP, then later reissued on separate anthologies of each project, this is the cassette version of the classic Nurse With Wound / Organum split from 1986. The Nurse With Wound side is "A Missing Sense" which is a brilliant homage to the ultra-quiet /proto-lowercase composition "Automating Writing" by Robert Ashley, which is a very subtle composition of cut-up vocals and gasps with distant rumblings all of which flutter just at the event horizon at the edge of perceptibility. Stapleton's construction was originally designed as a private tape to which he could drop acid to, as everything in his huge record collection was far too shattering for his lysergic states. "A Missing Sense" like Automatic Writing is very quiet, with small vocalizations and sexualized gasps punctuating the muffled incidental sounds of what could very well be somebody vacuuming their carpet upstairs. Very subtle for sure, but there's plenty of room to take in the absolute strangeness of Stapleton's visionary work. Here's what we had to say about Organum's "Rasa" which was featured on the now out of print Volume One collection released through Robot Records: The timeless, acoustic drones that make up the music of Organum could have been made for the beginning of the world or for its final breath; yet Jackman has always avoided assigning any specific metaphors to his work. Instead, this is music that attempts to exist purely within its own context, unconcerned with anything beyond its self-defined borders. Grinding motorcycle engines, steel strung instruments, bowed metal, and Japanese flutes are the instruments that continuously reappear throughout Organum. However grim, Industrial, grating, dissonant, or punishing Organum could be with such instrumentations, Jackman always manages to arrange his work to emphasize the dynamic and often beautiful tonalities of those sounds.

MPEG stream: A Missing Sense
MPEG stream: Rasa

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

SORRY.

We're not sure who NVH are, but what have they done with Ben Chasney?! A while back we had a super limited cassette release from Six Organs Of Admittance's Ben Chasny and the mysterious NVH, with the same title oddly enough. Needless to say, we sold out of those tapes and left loads of people wanting, and while this lp only release has the same title, it is NOT the same music. One song from the tape is duplicated here, but other than that this is all new music. So what's this whole Chasny / NVH thing about anyway, well, you won't find any dreamy folky prettiness here. This lp is all about the noise. The noise a guitar and god knows what else can conjure up. This is some serious noiserock. Heck, there's no rock to speak of, this is just good ol' noise. But not really -just- noise, there's a whole lot going on. It's just all wrapped in some of the most corrosive seriously damaged skree we've heard in ages. Guitars careen everywhere, huge walls of crumbling distortion tumble onto blown out riffs, FX drenched squiggles are everywhere, angular melodies are twisted and tangled into psychedelic squalls, riffs are pulled apart into squealing keening roaring parts and hurled separately into the mix bouncing wildly off each other. Here and there the blown out rumbles coalesce into thick buzzing drones, and pretty melodies drift in and out, but are quickly overpowered. Imagine locking Keiji Haino and Kawabata Makoto in a a tiny room, armed with nothing but guitars, distortion pedals and a wall of amps each, dueling to the death, the results recorded and played back through a bank of busted effects. Wild and weird. And pretty fucking awesome. But definitely another one for the iron eared... Packaged in a super elaborate fold out sleeve, all black, with black printing, black inner sleeve, and the outer jacket unfolds into a massive (upside down?) crucifix!! Super limited too, so don't snooze on this one....

We won't go into too much detail with this one. Another instance of something being way too limited, and us getting way fewer copies than we asked for. LIMITED TO 250 COPIES, and of that we got 10. Just ten. And it's the first in a series of 3, so if you manage to snag one of these, and want in on the other two in the series, best hit us up to preorder you one NOW. And odds are you're probably gonna want this (and perhaps the other two), a 40 minute recording, captured back in 2006, related to O'Malley's Table Of The Elements 12" and his record on iDEAL, and for all of O'Malley's dabblings in various permutations of ambience and minimalism and guitar manipulation, Cocon & Oiseau De Nuit finds him doing what he does best, that sort of SUNNO))) guitar creep, thick swaths of pulsing rumbles, of crumbling distorted crunch, heaving slow motion melodies, wrapped in gauzy sheets of amp buzz, blissed out low end whirs, super saturated glacial heaviness, blurred and smeared into washed out blackened dronemusic of the highest order. Hypnotic and gorgeously grim. Nice full color tape covers, with massive booklet (all the pages are black/blank, just adding to the overall blackness), and again, we only have 10 copies, and those will no doubt be gone in a flash. Sorry...

This is the one everybody's been waiting for. We sold out of these some months ago, before we even had a chance to list them, and have been waiting and waiting for them to press more, and finally here it is, Stephen O'Malley of SUNNO))), Khanate, KTL, Aethenor, Thorr's Hammer, Ginnungagap, etc... with his contribution to Table Of The Elements' 'Guitar' series. And we're happy to report it's quite lovely, just acoustic guitar and oscillator, O'Malley weaves a gorgeous thrum of steel string shimmer, a softly swirling almost static stretch of deep surprisingly lush hum, very Niblock sounding for sure, a rich layered expanse of tones and overtones, subtly beating against each other, the steel strings emitting little clouds of almost-melody here and there, while throughout, subtle rhythms emerge from the miasma but just as quickly dissipate and drift off. It's almost like an acoustic, and largely riff-less SUNNO))), the same sort of expansive sonic sprawl, building a thick epic drone, that manages to sound dense and ominous, but also delicate and crystalline, soft focus and dreamy, exactly the sort of thing, that we could listen to for hours and hours. Even at it's most intense, the sound still manages to be soothing and hypnotic, the whole thing a gorgeous, languorous soundscape of ethereal buzz and drift. Pressed on orange swirl vinyl, one sided, the other side with an awesome etching by Savage Pencil, housed in a thick PVC sleeve, and of course, as always, VERY LIMITED!

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

SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY. Latest in the Tapeworm series of super limited cassette releases, the first two were from Philip Jeck (now sold out) and Jean Baudrillard (not really Baudrillard, but a reading of his work), but this one might be the most anticipated, which makes the fact that we were only able to get only 10 copies even that much more of a bummer. So yeah, a tiny handful of you will get lucky and will snag one of these, a gorgeous sidelong dronescape from Stephen O'Malley (of SUNNO))), KTL, Gravetemple, Aethenor, Ginnungagap, Lotus Eaters, Khanate, Burning Witch, Thorr's Hammer among others), buzzing rumbling guitars, throbbing low end, delicate shimmer, haunting field recordings, music from an art installation, gorgeous stuff, without even noticing, we listened to it 4 or 5 times in a row, the tape flipping over and over, and we could have listened to it 5 more times! Again apologies for the tiny number of copies, but often we don't have any control over stuff like that... LIMITED TO 250 COPIES, cool cover art by Savage Pencil.

SUNNO))) freeks, heads up! This here is a super limited recording, of a piece used in an art show by Banks Violette. You might remember Violette from a dvd we carry featuring an installation he did Norwegian black metal outfit Thorns supplying the sounds. We'd like to tell you more about what this piece is all about, but the description of the art, and the music, is in that insanely convoluted artspeak, so we'll just try to go it alone. Originally recorded in 2001, this piece features Stephen O'Malley (SUNNO))) et al) playing a Travis Bean guitar through a Fender Twin Reverb amplifier, and Hungarian vocalist Attila Csihar (Mayhem, Aborym, SUNNO))), Tormentor), this recording is a portion of the original lengthy recording and finds the two crafting some sort of blackened sinister liturgical ceremony. O'Malley's guitar is used mostly to make creaks and rumbles, piercing shards of feedback, crashing chordal fragments, but mostly it works as a tone generator, various bits of feedback allowed to stretch out and slowly shift, creating strange tonal variations and layered expanses of extreme sonics and minimal ambience. Csihar contributes vocals, haunting and mesmerizing, delivered in a deep monk like chant. Lots of reverb and natural delay, the result sounds ancient, like some middle ages church ceremony. Those two elements O'Malley's tones, and Csihar's vocals combined, sound a bit like Ryoji Ikeda jamming along to vespers. Not at all an easy listen, but definitely creepy and mysterious. Cool oversized sleeve with photos of Violette's art as well as band photos, and the lyrics printed in both English and Hungarian. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES.

MPEG stream: 6�F Skyquake

A stunning sun-dappled daydream of a record from Tara Jane O'Neil, whose last album, A Ways Away made us finally fall completely head over heels in love with her hushed and hauntingly lovely sound... Continuing on that upward trajectory, Where Shine New Lights fits right at home on the Kranky label. The production even more hazy and somnolently gorgeous, a reverent stillness gently unfolding as morning breaks, with a subdued kaleidoscopic reach into a foresty brightness of sound. The opener after the intro. "Wordless In Woods" pivots on a fender Rhodes groove reminiscent of Brightblack Morning Light, leading into the next track, "This Morning Glory", a lilting paean to awakening that is so lush and pretty, an angelic lullaby floating under a morning mist. Elsewhere, resonant meditations of sound unfurl through slow ritual percussion and brooding grounding tones that anchor O'Neil's gossamer vocal treatment. On some level this is the more subdued introspective counterpoint to the soulful vibrancy of Laura Mvula's Sing To The Moon, both sharing a dreamy Arcadian vibe with a natural sun-soaked reverie. Our favorite Tara Jane O'Neil record. So beautiful!

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This disc is another big mystery, but one we're thoroughly enjoying as we try to work it out. A copy was sent to us ages ago, and on first glance it looked like some disc of classic Irish music. An old sepia toned photo on the front, an Irish looking font with the text "An Evening With Danny O'Really". Hmmm. So we sort of ignored it for a while, but the photo on the front was sort of haunting, and finally we realized the man's eyes were sort of fucked up, green and alien. Bug eyed. Staring out creepily. So we had another look, and noticed the legend "Music For Unusual People". The we flipped it over to find a huge flat topped swirly eyed green demon with a forked tongue, ripping the front cover in half. Interesting. Inside a worried looking woman holding the very record we're reviewing, and then a gatefold inside, a blurred photo of a man wielding a guitar, head to the sky, hands held high. Okay, definitely weird enough to merit further investigation, so we threw it on and were totally blown away. Not at all what we expected, but not sure what we were expecting at all. At this point we're not sure if Danny O'Really is a man or a band, or if it's a made up name or what the fuck is going on at all!! What we do know, is that this is an awesome collection of manipulated sound, of transformed guitars. It's sort of a drone record, sort of a processed guitar record, a fucked up glitched out electronic record, sort of all three of those tangled up into one chaotic whole. The opener, sounds a bit like some sort of SUNNO))) / Fear Falls Burning style guitar experiment, but instead of murky sludge, or blissed out hum, it's an ADD explosion of skipping textures, of blown out buzz, chopped and spliced into little snippets of sound, then sewn back together into a strange grinding industrial metallic drone patchwork. Lots of hiss and shimmer, bursts of damaged crumble, aggressive and tripped out, and pretty amazing. The second track is a tangle of skittery drums and buzzing steel strings, ringing out in clouds of metallic shimmer, bits of percussion drifting in and out, very free and abstract, eventually locking into a propulsive but unhinged buzzing blowout. The third track, the longest at 23 minutes, is a Niblockian drone, various high end tones, sine waves, processed chords, all drawn out and stretched into slowly decaying streaks, until eventually exploding into some sort of alien jam, the guitars snarling and heaving and twisting, the drums more little bursts of hiss, the whole thing gradually growing more and more muted and gnarled, almost like the tape is decaying, the tape player's batteries dying, the speed changing, the whole song crumbling. The last three tracks are variations on a theme, bits of high end, fragments of atonal guitar, swirls of effects, graduations of buzz and whir, disjointed melodies buried beneath, billows of metallic grind and shimmer, all spread out into a drifting cloud of soft noise. Might be a bit much for the dronedoomdirge crowd, but definitely heady listening for free noise addicts and lovers of abstract ambience and weird dronemusic.

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Latest in Touch's 7" series, this one folks have been clamoring for, comes from Mr. Jim O'Rourke, a name that should no doubt be familiar to most folks by now! Brise Glace, Gastr Del Sol, SONIC YOUTH, as well as about a million more, not to mention a vast body of solo work. Well before O'Rourke was an in demand producer, a guest guitarist, dabbling in noise rock and Appalachia, he was a master of the drone, and this 2 part single track 7" harkens back to those days, with an amazing and beautiful arrangement of buzz and whir, of excited strings and resonating metal. It's almost a shame the track had to be split up on a 7" as the two parts flow so perfectly into each other. Beginning with a deep resonant buzz, sounds like a guitar, but could be a harmonium, wheezing and whirring, warm and thick and lustrous, bits of feedback lace the blurred drift, over the top delicate high end melodies, float and shimmer, becoming more and more active until they seem to be driving the piece, the whole thing strangely looped and weirdly melancholy, beneath the track, deep rumbling swells pulse and throb. By the second side, the sound has gotten more abrasive, much more scraping and metal buzz, electronic streaks, the sound tangled and constantly shifting, managing to sprawl into an expanse of beautifully noisy dronemusic. As always beautiful cover by Touch head honcho Jon Wozencroft, and like the rest in the series, probably limited.

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

SORRY.

NOW BACK IN PRINT WITH A BONUS DISC!!! Promoted as O'Rourke's electronic glitch album back in 2001, I'm Happy, And I'm Singing, And A 1, 2, 3, 4 is finally available again, and instead of being on Mego, it's now on Editions Mego, essentially the same label, but a new revitalized version. Just like Mego's uber talented Christian Fennesz, Jim O'Rourke fuses elements of antique melodic signatures within a Powerbook generated disfiguration into complex networks of sound that retain the timbre and colour of the original sounds in spite of the digital glitch manifestation. Initially, this album is nothing more than another pleasantly playful recombination of the millenial glitch aesthetic. He applies digital treatment to an accordion to dislocate the source material with a fluctuating system of interlocking repetitive samples sounding like a digitized update of Frippertronics or even Terry Riley's time lag generator. Nice, but it's completely overwhelmed by the same idea found on the Keith Fullerton Whitman album "21:30 For Acoustic Guitar" He follows this up with some fey dinner jazz piano lines and summertime guitar picking run through gossamer digitalized syncopations. Again, nice but nothing that Stephan Mathieu, Ekkhard Ehlers, or Fennesz haven't done better. *However* if you were to stop listening to these two tracks, before getting to the 20-plus minute finale, you would miss out on one of O'Rourke's finest moments alongside the criminally overlooked Disengage and slowly antagonistic Happy Days. "And A 1, 2, 3, 4" (it appears that the song titles are just fragments of the album's title) is a beautiful digital threnody with sombre violins passing through a Feldman like alternation through a harmonic series of notes. The second disc begins and ends with some polite digital renderings of cutie-pie pixel pointing that erupt (on the first track) in a very Mego sounding blast of digital noise and Max/MSP irritation. The first cut is a track that only lasts for about 4 minutes before the highlight of the second disc begins. "Getting The Vapors" is a gaseous 40 minute, tonal excursion of long-form digitally agitated drones that cross-pollinate the Pop Ambient ethos with the arcing structures of Charlemagne Palestine.

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There are those of us at this fine institution who wish to declare open season on Jim O'Rourke, and start blasting shotgun shells at him, his bunny suit, his 'post-irony' (whatever the fuck that is), and his chameleon-like approach towards all forms of music. Promoted as his electronic glitch album, "I'm Happy, And I'm Singing, And A 1, 2, 3, 4" has been conveniently released on the Austrian electronic glitch label Mego. Just like Mego's uber talented Christian Fennesz, O'Rourke fuses elements of antique melodic signatures within a Powerbook generated disfiguration into complex networks of sound that retain the timbre and colour of the original sounds in spite of the digital glitch manifestation. Initially, this album is nothing more than another pleasantly playful recombination of the current glitch aesthetic. He applies the Supercollider treatment to an accordion to dislocate the souce material with a fluctuating system of interlocking repetitive samples sounding like a digitized update of Frippertronics or even Terry Riley's time lag generator. Nice, but is completely overwhelmed by the same idea found on the Keith Fullerton Whitman album "21:30 For Acoustic Guitar" He follows this up with some fey dinner jazz piano lines and summertime guitar picking run through gossamer digitalized syncopations. Again, nice but nothing that Stephan Mathieu, Ekkhard Ehlers, or Fennesz haven't done better. *However* if you were to stop listening to these two tracks, before getting to the 20-plus minute finale, you would have missed one of O'Rourke's finest moments alongside the criminally overlooked "Disengage" and slowly antagonistic "Happy Days." "And A 1, 2, 3, 4" (it appears that the song titles are just fragments of the album's title) is beautiful digital threnody with sombre violins passing through a Feldman like alternation through a harmonic series of notes. While it could be said that O'Rourke is *again* mimicking another artist, he does apply an ample amount of digtal signal processing (lots of warbled tremolo, granular dispersion, etc.) offering that which I've rarely heard from Jim O'Rourke: something "new."

RealAudio clip: I'm Happy
RealAudio clip: And I'm Singing
RealAudio clip: And A 1,2,3,4

If you're looking for the smarty-pants Mayo Thompson meets Van Dyke Parks meta-pop of albums like Insignificance or Halfway To A Threeway, you will not find it on Tamper. This album dates back to 1991, when a young Jim O'Rourke was emerging as a tremendously talented avant-garde composer bridging minimalist strategies with post-industrial intensity. At the time of this release, O'Rourke's name was always linked to his work in Chicago's stalwart ensemble Illusion Of Safety. His involvement with IOS lasted for a couple of years, having worked on two of the best Illusion Of Safety albums, Probe and Water Seeks Its Own Level. Throughout his chameleon-like career, O'Rourke has always worn his influences on his sleeve. Tamper is no exception, hedging itself between the electro-acoustics of Luc Ferrari, the grand minimalism of Phill Niblock, and the techgnosis of The Hafler Trio. The three long form pieces are exquisite exercises in synthesizing electronics with long-form tonal clusters from acoustic instruments, where the goal is a dynamic compaction of frequency and timber into a unsettling drone very much like those sounds from Niblock and the Hafler Trio. Even after almost 20 years, Tamper still sounds very impressive, making us wonder if O'Rourke would ever return to style. The only downside, the record's been repackaged with some stupid squiggly artwork.

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You probably can't find a musician with a wider breadth of sound, or more sonically varied releases, than Mr. Jim O'Rourke. During his vast career he's made everything from harsh noise to delightful pop, was part of one of the more influential groups of the last few decades, Gastr Del Sol, collaborated with Nurse With Wound, became a member of Sonic Youth, was at the forefront of the '90s experimental electronic renaissance, made some crunchy rock albums with his Wilco pal Jeff Tweedy, and the list just goes on and on. These days O'Rourke has slowed down his output considerably so a new release is both much more anticipated as well as a total unknown as to which side of Jim O'Rourke will be on display. With The Visitor, O'Rourke emerges with his first new full length in many years and wow the wait was worth it! The Visitor is one long track clocking in at around 37 minutes but it almost serves as some kind of early morning daydream song cycle with a spectrum of nuanced sounds that make us think of Van Dyke Parks arranging a John Fahey album or what a more restrained James Blackshaw record might sound like. The record starts with very hushed noodling guitar and as the piece goes on the sounds expand in richness as extra flourishes of bells, piano and other lushness flesh out O'Rourke's delicate guitar playing. Hard to avoid this clich�, but The Visitor really is a total journey, at first you don't really know where it's going and you're not sure if you necessarily want to follow but as the piece evolves it completely grabs a hold of your attention until you are lost in its slowly unfurling sonic voyage. Highly recommended!

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Plastic Palace Alice? Let's hear it for Scott Walker, first of all; but the mad genius of baroque pop has nothing in common with the long-form stupor and granular synthesis that these stalwarts of the avant-garde produced way back in 1991. At that time, O'Rourke was a recent graduate of music school with a head full of knowledge about vangarde composition, the whole Luc Ferrari back catalogue, and an standing invitation to perform / record within Chicago's preeminent postindustrial ensemble Illusion Of Safety; and Heemann was in the process of dissolving his seminal dada-montage project H.N.A.S. The two began a correspondence that led to him travelling to Germany where they jumped into a heady collaboration in Heemann's studio. Why none of these recordings have yet to see the light of day is anybody's guess, but here's what may be the first in a series of archival recordings produced by O'Rourke and Heemann. A buzzsaw drone gradually introduces the first of three long-form pieces of stratified minimalism. As the piece grows and blossoms, an uneasy set of harmonic overtones dominates the stage, holding a firm grasp on the psychoacoustic properties that an epic Eliane Radigue or Phill Niblock piece can achieve. The track collapses through a weird gurgling of electronics only to swell back again with a chorus of LaMonte Young inspired drone-vocalization rasped through electronics and / or coupled with sympathetic drones from a guitar, only to mutate into a spasmodic explosion of electronic granularity and sine-tone modulation. Really amazing stuff, for sure! The second track, picks up with what we'll assume to be O'Rourke's buzzing guitar drones giving way to a devilish montage of vocalized growling, suffocating gaspings for air, and other grim sound poetics that look forward simultaneously to the lupine babbling of Sudden Infant and the tortured incidental black-metal ambience of Spektr. The profound spookiness of the second track dissolves into the pools of shimmered tone and radiant beauty of the third, as something of a harbinger of where Heemann would direct the Mirror project with Andrew Chalk almost a decade later. So nice! Again, we have to wonder why the hell did it take so long for these recordings to come out? They are simply too good to have been sitting dormant on some shelf!

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Jim O'Rourke (who is almost as talented as he is ubiquitous) in one corner, with his "guitar & junk". Swedish reedsman Mats Gustafsson in the other, brandishing tenor sax, flute, and "fluteophone". Released on Derek Bailey's free improv Incus label. The track titles bear mentioning: "Paging Cyndi", "Faxing Stina", "Calling Patti", "Telexing Jun", and, best of all, "Smoke Signalling Polly Jean"!

Working with AMM's percusionist Eddie Prevost and eccentic improviser Michael Prime (Morphogenesis, Organum), the ubiquitous and chameleon-like Jim O'Rourke plays the part of AMM's Keith Rowe quite adequately offering various electro-acoustic scrapes,

Third EP in the self-released series. This is another instrumental work that is more similar to the second stretched out EP than the melodic first. Bonus: all text in Esperanto.

One of two new releases on Sige Records, the new imprint run by Aaron Turner of Hydra Head / Isis fame, the other is the formerly on cd House Of Low Culture / Mamiffer split, and this, another Mamiffer split, this time teamed up with mysterious power electronics ambient drone trio Oakeater. Oakeater, whose Molech lp on Nihilist we dug big time, return again, with their usual UNusually arsenal of noisemaking devices: guitar, voice, percussion, tapes, modular synthesizers, feedback, electric piano and oscillators. Here they take their ritualistic dronescaping even further, ditching their noiserock background/pedigree almost entirely (Oakeater is members of the Coughs and Panicsville), to delve deeeeeeep into dark drifting drones and sprawling expanses of cinematic shift and shimmer. Slow and smoldering, lushly layered, hushed muted whirs and high end chimes, haunting melodies, all very dramatic and soundtracky sounding, before slipping into something else entirely, a long stretch of shimmering cymbals, lots of space, streaks of feedback, a weirdly meditative, subtly rhythmic, metallic dronescape, which is quickly subsumed by SUPER distorted synths, fuzzy and buzzy and blown out, the sort of low tones some dubstepper would KILL for, transforming the track completely into something way more spacey and tripped out. Mamiffer counters with one of the heaviest, noisiest tracks we've heard from her (aka Faith Coloccia), using just guitars, pianos, tapes and apparently jars, Coloccia weaves together and chaotic but strangely lovely bit of heavy, abstract guitar noise, some strange mix of SUNNO))) and Skullflower, chugging churning looped guitars, swooping backwards production, a thick corrosive buzz, a sort of static riffage, but those stretches of glacial buzz and howl and keen are stretched out into more avant drone directions, loads of overtones, subtle rhythmic shadings, still buzzy and heavy and metallic for sure, but wrangled into something impossibly melodic and meditative and downright pretty. There's hiss and static and crunch and buzz, and on the surface it's noisy and quite chaotic, but Colaccia manages to shape it all into a soft tangled swirl of psychedelic guitar noise, that is easily as entrancing as it is abrasive. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Each one hand numbered, packaged in super swank, ultra heavy silk screened sleeves.

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

SORRY.

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We should probably stop being surprised when we discover records we dig and groups we love are in fact made by or made up of long time aQuarius customers. It makes sense after all. People who are obsessed with cool weird music are often the same ones who make it. We should also probably stop marvelling about what a small world it is, similar to the above sentiment, it makes sense that people into the same sort of weird shit would gravitate toward each other. So thus, it makes perfect sense, that The Observatory, who hail from Singapore, count at least one long time aQ mailorder customer as a member, and thus it should also make perfect sense, that The Observatory's eye popping, ultra deluxe hardcover silver inked book packaging was designed by none other than Justin Bartlett, another aQ customer, and the man responsible for the first bad ass installment in our Artist Edition t-shirt series. So now that we're no longer surprised, and all finished marvelling, we can get to the music. The Observatory are difficult to describe. Their sound is lush, and dark, and mysterious, woozy and softly psychedelic. The core traditional band instruments are augmented by what sounds like a whole mess of other random instruments. The songs sprawl, the seem to ooze and creep and drift. Mark Ribot like angular guitars are draped over a Bohren like dirge, sunshiney almost Beach Boys harmonies are woven into a slowly swirling synthscape, drums are minimal and spare, the songs shift into soft mysterious dreampop, with Theremins, steel string guitars, and hushed crooned vocals, more of those glorious harmonies, before drifting back into something more croonsome, until some crunchy guitars come in, and the song splinter into a dizzying grinding circus gone haywire sort of psychedelic freakout, finally slipping back into something much more tranquil and soft and poppy. At their core, these guys (and gals) are definitely a pop band, but their tendencies definitely lean toward something much more avant and out. Jangly, shimmery, poppy, and folky for sure, in fact, this is most definitely 'dark folke', but it's informed by much more than just folk music. Dramatic strings sing and soar, ethereal female vocals drift over spidery strum and buzz, strange bits of shortwave interference, reverbed piano plinks, all draped over the band's lush dark folky almost chamber pop, so dreamy and divine. Did we mention the packaging? WOW. A 7" x 7" black clothbound hardcover book. The front and back printed in metallic silver ink, inside 14 pages of lyrics and Justin Bartlett's gorgeously creepy pen and ink drawings, like some nightmarish children's book, so over the top and deluxe, not sure how they manage to sell it for so cheap, needless to say, grab one quick before they realize they can't and the price goes way up, or more likely, they sell out!!

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

SORRY.

Oceans Of Silver And Blood is an awesomely unexpected collaboration between Joachim Nordwall and Mark Wastell. The Swedish half (i.e. Nordwall) is one of the members of The Skull Defekts and the Alvars Orchestra; he also runs the exceptional label Ideal Recordings. The Englishman (Wastell) is a preeminent improviser of longform tones and disgorged acoustic drones; and he runs the highly impressive Sound 323 shop / label out of London. With Nordwall on a modular synth and Wastell on his 32" gong (I guess it's technically a tam-tam), the two broadcast sheets of heavy, heavy deep-wave minimalism. At first, Nordwall's synth produces an ominous throb of dark oscillating electrical pulses, matched with thrumbing acoustic drones from that massive gong of Wastell. Their trajectory glides into a hushed din echoing with Wastell's slow and rhythmic chiming of his gong, but gradually they couple the paranoiac sound design of analogue synthesis with the reflective, yet dark shimmer of the gong. When Wastell drops what seems to be a small motor onto the surface of his gong, the darkened drone explodes with an metallic squeal. Imagine the Jean-Francois Laporte vibration studies of what we thought to be a Zamboni remixed by Deathprod. Great stuff and limited to 200 copies!

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Winsome pop melodies that gently caress the ear, relaxed and lovely--WHOOPS. N-n-n-n-nnoo, wrong review. Anybody familiar with insectoid, techy guitar playing of Mick Barr (of Ocrilim, Orthrelm, Octis, and Crom Tech fame) knows that we had to be pulling your collective leg with the beginning of this paragraph. Not a chance in heck that Ocrilim's latest release, on Hydra Head, would be anything less than a completely nerve-wracking, possibly aggravating, virtuoso six string mindfuck. And is it ever. Unique as well, 'cause nothin' else sounds quite like this. It's insane ear candy for those of us who like the concept (put forth in a previous Mick Barr review on the AQ site) of Ygnwie playing Metal Machine Music! Divvyed up into seven parts, the all-instrumental Annwn is a tour-de-force of repetitive yet complex high-end trill, incorporating spiralling sixteenth note fretboard frenzies that burrow into your skull like a trepanist's drill. These trance-inducing pieces are all long ones, upwards of ten minutes or more, most of 'em, and take that time to build into truly grandiose symphonics, that (if the listener can, um, hear the forest for the trees) are indeed melodic, if not poppy. Never before has anything so trebly also sounded so majestic! Barr's swarming sounds somehow hint at John Williams' Star Wars/Death Star theme music... and very much makes us think, Black Metal. It's not, but comes pretty close indeed. And in fact, if this WAS a black metal band, we'd be all, "best/most fucked black metal of the year so far." Albeit one that's all-guitar (consisting entirely of the notes, noise, and drone that Barr can call forth from his mystic, multitracked axe), no vocals or drums or drum machine or nothin'.... and owes as much to no-wave and minimalism and 20th c. classical.

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Latest sprawling collection of next level avant guitar shreddery from Mr. Mick Barr, he of black metal horde Krallice, spazzed out angular mathcore duo Crom-Tech, his sometime drum machine driven solo project Octis, and of course our beloved Ocrilim, another solo vehicle for multi tracked solo guitar, and whose sound is positioned somewhere between maddeningly repetitive Reichian/Riley-ian experimental guitarscapery, and black metal riffery sans everything but the guitar, which ultimately amounts to almost the same thing, soaring, epic, frenzied, tangled guitar insanity. And as much as we love all of Barr's various projects, we find ourselves returning to Ocrilim the most, and while, as we've mentioned in other reviews, most folks find much of Barr's output difficult, bordering on unlistenable, Ocrilim is fantastically mesmerizing, hypnotically rhythmic, lushly textured, intensely frantic, but somehow weirdly listenable, so much so that we find ourselves constantly pushing repeat, even though the majority of these songs are 20-30 minutes long. It's so easy to get lost in Barr's dense dizzying guitarscapes, and the tracks here function both as background music, a swirling psychedelic blur, that bleeds into a buzzing backdrop to whatever you're doing, and as rich fodder for active listening, an impossible intricate collection of modern maximalism composition, one that pushes the listener's limits in terms of sonic endurance, but also in an understanding of the music's varied complexities. The fact that a frantic sprawl of rapid fire notes can blossom into a soaring swirl of black metal style buzz and vice versa only makes it that much cooler, and perhaps even demonstrates the innate avant elements in black metal. A sequel of sorts to the first Annwn release, which came out on Hydra Head, these tracks were recorded back in 2007, and have not been released until now. Barr put this out on his own label, and of course the cover features Barr's distinctive sci-fi line-drawing art, and as you might imagine, there aren't too many of these, it's LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!!

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Ol' Crazy Fingers (not really what they call him) Mick Barr is baaack. He of Orthrelm, Octis, Crom Tech, etcetera fame, a true fretboard wizard for the punkish underground avant-core set. If Lightning Bolt were Metallica, Mick Barr'd be Yngwie. Or something like that... y'know, it's hard to make a lot of sense when your brain is being subjected to the bumblebee chamber metal sounds of Ocrilm, so cut us a break. This latest Mick Barr masterpiece is a solo project, all three of its overdubbed Gibson SG guitar tracks laid down by Mick hisself in a maddening density of notes and harmonies, droning sheets and shards of sound. This is massive, and maniacal. Anoint is a seven-part composition for excited strings, a one-man Glenn Branca-esque guitar symphony done shred style. A beautiful, beautiful thing... though you can imagine it being recorded, and listened to, in the confines of a padded cell!

MPEG stream: Anoint pt. 1
MPEG stream: Anoint pt. 7

Any one familiar with Mick Barr, most likely knows all about his dense, insane shredding axework and super obtuse metalisms in groups like Crom-Tech, Orthrelm, Octis, Krallice and of course Ocrilim. This super deluxe, super limited boxset collects three out of print cd-r's, and presents them on vinyl, and all three taken as a single body of work might just comprise the most listenable stuff we've ever heard from Barr. Annothrith Hymns is the prettiest of the bunch, a collection of short form solo guitarscapes, ostensibly black metal, but just the guitars, loosed from any griminty and instead allowed to soar majestically, layered and lush and lyrical, the sounds pulse and undulating, the tremolo picked riffs blurred into sweet soaring ur-drone epicness. Somehow buzzy and metal but still ethereal and mesmerizingly dreamy, even the Xasthur cover is transformed into something more crystalline and lovely. Ixoltion immediately sounds like some epic, Norwegian style black metal, until you realize, that once again, it's just guitar, and the sound is not so much buzzy, so much as again, like the first lp, soaring and majestic, single riffs expanded to fill up a whole side, sprawling riffscapes that manage to remain black metal, while becoming something completely other, some sort of mesmerizing, looped, minimal blackened riffdronebuzz bliss out. Heavy sure, maybe, but more hypnotic and trancelike. Finally, Sacreth, which complete the trilogy, and in some weird way, sounds like the first two combined, this is actual black metal, blasting and buzzing, but still minimal, the programmed beats proggy and intricate, matching the unlikely riffing, super hypnotic, the arrangements quite strange as well, lots of stop/starts, super mathy and complex, but still remaining epic and majestic, and weirdest of all, seriously melodic and poppy. It's almost like the three records are a slow build to Sacreth's black metal, but each part functioning fantastically on its own. So good. And even those of you who might have been put off in the past by Barr's gnarled noisy metallic tangle, this might surprise you as much as it did us. LIMITED TO 200 COPIES. Hand screened, hand glued silkscreened sleeves in a silk screened cardboard box, the records pressed on 180 gram vinyl, with a silkscreened insert, handnumbered.

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

SORRY. Who would have thought that the man behind the club destroying thud rock of now defunct Pink And Brown, the sweaty, hyper chaotic garage stomp of the also now defunt Coachwhips, the minimal metallic crush of the long buried Dig That Body Up It's Alive and the no longer with us hardcore faux-homo-house of Zeigenbock Kopf actually had a soft and sensitive acoustic-y side?? Well, he does, or did, and chose to drop all the above mentioned musical endeavors to focus all of his musical energy on the mysteriously monickered OCS (which would later eventually transform into the fuzzier garage poppier Thee Oh Sees!) The ubiquitous John Dwyer, for it is he, offers up two discs of home recorded madness, culled from random tapes/performances from way back when, and damn if this isn't an unexpected surprise. Vascillating wildy between introspective, spaced out downer folk and gritty, hissing free noise crunch, OCS is a massive and unpredicatable ride through one man's damaged musical psyche. Disc One, 34 Reasons Why Life Goes On Without You, or the "acoustic disc" as we like to call it, is made up mostly of solo guitar, recorded in random locations around San Francisco, so the gentle strumming and dexterous fingerpicking is often barely obscuring passing cars, slamming doors, hollered instructions to other players, and noisy housemates, adding another sonic layer to the already thick brew. Think: a seriously fucked up Fahey, armed with a four track, a casio, and an old beat up guitar. Think: an old Folkways 45 being played on a Fisher Price turntable and run through a bank of cheap effects. Gorgeous and shambolic, meandering and lovely, dark and unpredictable. The acoustic passages are constantly doing battle with an array of sonic intrusions, random snippets of found sound, bursts of angry buzz, tape drop out, random ambient happenings, malfunctioning casios, and distorted crooning. Mysteriously compelling. Disc two, 18 Reasons To Love Your Hater To Death, or the "noise disc" as we like to call it, is a much more challenging affair, channelling the spirts of Borbetamagus, Skullflower, Albert Ayler, Throbbing Gristle and 100 years of NOISE into a shifting sonic noisescape of harsh squealing feedback, gorgeously gauzy and shimmery drones, ear piercing sine waves, distorted low end rumbles, huge washes of effected guitars, rhythmic pulses, darkly muted ambience, subtle barely-there melodies, inhuman vocalisations, massive Merzbow-ian walls of pummel, hyper minimal music concrete, alien lullabies and dreamy stretches of stygian gloom punctuated by bursts of hiss and hum. Intensely beautiful and challenging. Ah, the many moods of John Dwyer, stepping outside the realm of costume rock and drunken sweaty swagger to lay bare a sensitive, if still sometimes quite noisy, soul.

MPEG stream: Reason 1 Why Life Goes On Without You
MPEG stream: Reason 2 Why Life Goes On Without You
MPEG stream: Reason 1 To Love Your Hater To Death
MPEG stream: Reason 2 To Love Your Hater To Death

Ocsid is a performative collective between Swedish residents C.M. von Hausswolff, Jean-Louis Huhta, and Graham Lewis (from Wire -- no, he's not Swedish, but he does live there, hence the resident qualification). Anyway, this recording is the first 75 minutes from a performance recorded late 1999 in Bavaria. The beginning of the album starts with gritty deep drones that sound like they were culled from various air ducts, water pipes, or furnaces, sounding very much like Phauss -- the early, underappreciated outfit for von Hausswolff. "Opening Sweep" moves through some misfired CD players before getting to a collage of Mika Vainio, SND, and what sounds like excerpts from Raymond Scott's "Manhattan Research Inc."

Around here at aQ we live for the moments of musical discovery that seem to appear out of nowhere. On a rare occasion those moments are created by an artifact dropped off in the store by the creator himself. In our age of internet buzz and blogosphere strip mining, it's exciting and refreshing to be floored by a piece of proper wax passed on in person, without us knowing a damn thing about it beforehand. This record represents one of these moments, and Laws, the brand new lp from LA's William Marshall, aka Octavius, is really blowing our minds right now, so much so that we absolutely had to jump on the chance to make it record of the week! A dizzying assemblage of fucked up outsider post witch house, damaged and deranged avant industrial and whispered, hiss-wreathed melancholic brooding downer experi-techno-pop! Laws is a multidimensional excursion through the depths of urban isolationism. The dead dreams of metropolis living and lifelong plans falling apart seem to be woven into the sonic fabric. You're all alone in this burned out city, and it's a dark, dark time. The sound is grinding, buzzing, thumping and industrial. The beats are constructed with rusted rebar shards, rattling about the charnel house floor, like some subwoofer-shook bones long forgotten. Octavius' caustic and restrained sound world creates an intensely claustrophobic mood. On tracks like "Apartments" and "Of Mask and Money", the sounds of sharpening knives and blistering white noise blasts commingle with a tense, gasping for breath vocal delivery. As the songs flow onward, layer upon layer of noisy mechanical skree stack up against beautifully stark and forlorn melodies. Haunting, discordant synth stabs add subtle harmonic depth to the tunes, as the vocals, seemingly hacked to bits, syllables left out or cut short, writhe to the beat. The sounds are abrasive and damaged and robotic, but there is never too much going on at one time and everything sits in the mix in such a way that the songs really breathe. It's got that hypnotic sonic subtlety of Berlin era Bowie mixed with the pulsating noisy gnash of Throbbing Gristle. Speaking of Bowie, one of the raddest moments on Laws comes in the form of a "cover" of "Breaking Glass". The low slung, heroin sheen funk of the original is replaced by a fiercely mechanical drum machine stomp, some heavy as fuck JK Flesh-like digitally distorted guitar chugs bashing with the beat, while cascading doppler blips and scraping synths swirl around the stereo field. The only recognizable element are the lyrics, although delivered in the by now signature manner in which Octavius uses his voice, and that is to say fractured and corrosive, hissing hypnosis. Totally bent and completely AMAZING! There are moments of dark meditation, such as "CCC CCC" and "331 155". Moody, drifting soundscapes of splintered metallic klang, ping-ponging singing bowls, bolstered with aphotic, creepy crawly Carpenter-like synth drones. Beautifully oscillating cinematic ambience laid over what sounds like a far off string section unfurling some somber, elegiac melody. Psychic TV's "Silver and Gold" comes to mind, except with a mechanical bass drum throb twisting beneath the surface. These hazy, murky moments of sonic darkness serve as tension builders. Haunting and anxious and mesmerizing respites from the churning corrosive elements that make up the bulk of Laws. "Liars & Thieves" is definitely the centerpiece of Laws. Abusive electro-psychosis, uncomfortable and polluted with an industrialized cacophony, and scrap metal pounding rhythms, Octavius allows his reflections on failure and anonymity to unravel in a harrowing, stream of conscious cypher. Imagine Tricky rapping over Coil's "Fire Of The Green Dragon". Paranoid and demented, the noise and words melding to create a bleak miasma of isolation. Moody and tense and wholly original. Laws pushes all the right buttons for us. It references the WAVES (minimal/NO/cold/synth), without getting mired in any particular sub-genre. It's noisy and abrasive and grim, reminding us of the gnarlier moments of Coil and TG, but produced in such a subtle manner that new layers of sound present themselves with each listen. It's got enough Suicide like swagger as not to get totally bogged down in its mechanized, vitriol pummel. Hypnotic and tensely mesmerizing, the album as a whole is so consistent in its vibe, we find ourselves listening to it over and over and over again, just to get lost, deeper and deeper, in its seedy sonic underbelly. Packaged lovingly in a minimalist, silver embossed white card stock sleeve, with a beautiful 16 page book of lyrics as well as some killer collage work by Brooklyn based artist Justin Sloane. Do yourself a favor and snatch this twisted gem up quick, really some of the most mind fuckingly special and original music we've heard around here in a long time!

MPEG stream: Apartments
MPEG stream: Of Mask And Money
MPEG stream: Liars & Thieves
MPEG stream: 331 155
MPEG stream: O, How I Have Sinned

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

SORRY. Punishing split. One half insane technical freakout, one half chaotic noise damage. You figure out which is which...