[ aquarius records — Experimental ]

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Brand new 7" from one of our favorite soundmakers, Japan's Aube, whose modus operandi involves utilizing a single sound source for each record. In the past he's used water, fire, even pages being torn from a bible! This time it's not so easy to discern what the source material is. Not that it is really normally. But often the title or the artwork will hint at it, but here it's not so clear. A field of holes on a purple and red background. A drain? It sure sounds like that could be it, as the music is a muted burbling, a distant gurgle smeared into something softly percussive, a haunting underwater field of percolations and glitchy hum, going from barely there whisper to intense frenzy, to then what sounds like an airplane passing through the sky way off in the distance. A bit of research reveals that the source material here is actually some vintage synth, but even as obvious as that sounds, in the world of Aube it sounds more like processed field recordings of a drain than an actual synthesizer! The flipside betrays the sound source a bit more, as after a hushed start, the track transforms into a glitched out tangle of analog electronics, squiggly and chaotic, a flurry of bleeps and bloops and buzzes, glitch and hum, but all of that quickly fades into something much more tranquil, a warm static drone, bathed in an electronic rainfall, the preceding squall relegated to a place off in the distance, like sitting on an old rickety porch and watching a lighting storm dance in the sky. Nice. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, we only have a handful. Pressed on clear vinyl in full color sleeves...

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Yes, metal chains make the sound. Limited edition, might be gone by the time you read this sorry...

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SORRY. Two new recordings from one of Japan's best noise artists (Marc's favorite). Akifumi Nakajima uses a single sound source to craft his bizarre soundscapes, heartbeats in the case of "Cardiac Strain" and florescent lamps for "Dazzle Reflexion." The textures range from ambient drones to harsh noise, and are never as random-seeming as the work of many of his contemporaries.

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SORRY. More Good Alchemy - very extreme sounds from one of Japan's best, most conceptual noise artists.

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SORRY. The newest Aube project, this time using only a copy of The Bible as sound source material! Blasphemous crinklings and tearings? Yes, and he's mangaged to coax a sort of mechanical heartbeat out of it as well, among other noises. Of course without knowing already one could never guess that those sounds were coming from a book, let alone from the pages of The Greatest Story Ever Told--but that knowledge is an added bonus to this enjoyable listen.

Two disc set of remixes of Aube's 1999 disc "Pages From The Book", whose source material was solely an amplified Bible! Remixers of the Greatest Story Ever Told vary in extremes from the brutal aural assaults of Merzbow, Brume, Princess Dragonmom (Warn

Japanese noise / experimentalist Aube (aka Akifumi Nakajima) has made his career out of manipulating a single source material into swelling collages of textural sound and droning noise. Light bulbs, water, voice, voltage controlled oscillators, steel wires, his own somatic elements (brain waves, heart beats, and lungs), and here on "Seton", stone is the source material used. At first,

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SORRY. Continuing his single source material aesthetic, Aube pulls out a staple from his bag of tricks... glass. Looping samples culled from taps, cracks, and scrapes form a solid structuralist frame for closely amplified striations of glass. For the most part, Aube has left these sounds (aside from the sampled looping) alone, allowing the signature sound of glass to speak without too much external processing. Packaged in an oversized 6" x 9" paper envelope.

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Wow! An exceptional release from Akifumi Nakajima aka Aube! While most recordings by this highly prolific artist utilize unique sound sources (water, fluorescent lamps, heartbeat, or most notoriously - an amplified Bible!), "Timemind" is a more rhythmic, one

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SORRY. A Dutch import limited to 500 copies, this piece is constructed from recordings made of the 18 foot long corridor of the Chio-In Temple in Kyoto that squeeks when walked upon. The squeeking is supposed to prevent unexpected intrusions.

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SORRY. One of Japan's best (and most prolific) sound-sculptors, Aube here collects 20 tracks from various compilations and tapes, mostly on the noiser side of his ouevre. On the British label that last brought us Szeki Kurva.

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SORRY. More Good Alchemy - very extreme sounds from one of Japan's best, most conceptual noise artists.

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SORRY. This self-evident project come by way of the Swiss-born sound artist now living in Berlin, whose backyards, alleyways, and enclosed gardens are the source material for this extended acousmatic collage of environmental recordings. Much of Aubry's composition settles upon the grey din that is ubiquitous in any urban environment, but he take great care to extract various details out of those environments and amplify them with dynamic swells and repetitive phrasing. Aubry slowly moves through his reconstituted Berlin backyard, listening to the hum of ventilators, the rattle of a misaligned cooling duct, the rumble of a diesel engine, and the drips of rain splatting on cold concrete. For all of the man-made sources to Aubry's sound, there's very little intrusion of living people into his environment, with the occasional crank of car's engine and some clanging objects, rendering his backyard spaces virtually empty. For fans of Francisco Lopez, M. Behrens, Tarab, Jean-Francois Laporte, and Eric La Casa. Very nicely done.

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We've never carried anything from Winds Measure Recordings before now; but that will certainly be changing, as this is a label with an excellent ear for the finer points of dronesmear sound-art and an equally excellent eye for letterpressed packaging. And we'll start with the stellar manipulated field recording work from the Swiss-born / Berlin-based sound artist Gilles Aubry, who seems to have run a space in Berlin dedicated to experimental music called Stralau 68. The space had unfortunately closed in 2007, but it seemed to have been a nexus of activity for noise, aktionism, avant-rock, live-wire electronics, and whatnot. Perhaps as a final act within the emptied space, Aubry recorded the resonance of the room, capturing all sorts of resonant drones, tones, hums, and buzzes intrinsic to the space outside of its former use as a performance venue. The first of three pieces on this album centers on the rasping frequencies from the industrial air vents matching wind-blown recordings from within what sounds like a huge concrete structure. Here Aubry's work attains the acousmatic aesthetic that the finest Francisco Lopez pieces of minimalism seek. The second piece is far more dynamic, with thrumming rumble grounding an interwoven drone of pierced frequencies and jarring movements from creaking metal doors, bellowing hisses of infernal air, and scrabbling textures. It's unsettled and ominous, something of a hybrid between the end-times collages of Tarab and the late period bleakness of Lustmord. The final piece continues with the scraped abrasions and elongated drones of toxic environmental frequencies. Absolutely brilliant stuff! As we mentioned, Winds Measure's packaging is a thing of beauty, here with an elegant folio of letterpressed text on thick white paper with a set of abstracted smears printed precisely in a pale pale grey. Some of the finer letterpressed work we've seen! Put it all together in a small edition of just about 300 copies. Highly recommended!

We raved recently about Iron Forest, a one man band trafficking in gloriously bleak and blackened industrial noise, his disc a murky expanse of wasted beatscapes and zoner dub power electronics. Auditor is the same guy. Not sure if this record by Auditor signals the end of Iron Forest (we hope not), or if it's just another gnarled offshoot, either way, Form Destroyer (possibly named after the Skullflower record, which would make sense...), basically takes up where that last Iron Forest left off, unfurling a caustic sprawl of gristled dronemusic, grinding fields of electronic static, moaning heaving swaths of suffocating low end, dense roiling clouds of sinister chordal thrum, not to mention, glitched out sort-of rhythms, processed vokills, sheets of hiss and hum, and eventually, fragmented distorted beats, which comes together on the second track, a twisted bit of dance floor destruction, with a rhythm constructed from drum machines and jackhammers (literally we think), a sort of gnarled, blackened IDM, fractured industrial techno recast as grimly groovy lurch and lumber, which quickly (d)evolves into a harrowing black ambient epic, all grinding, pulses, crumbling rib cage rattling rumbles, staticky drum machines, and primitive programmed rhythms, straddling the line between dark and moody, and truly terrifying, ultimately, and seemingly impossibly fusing the two, into something heady and hypnotic, darkly hypnotic and strangely mesmerizing. The last two tracks change tack considerably, with "Betrayer Of Sleep" slipping into seriously blackened doom territory, a heaving slo-mo-crawl, with crumbling distortion, and oozing downtuned riffage, a lumbering deathmarch that is constantly on the verge of blurring into a blackdronedirge, while the nearly 15 minute long closer "I Can Never Be Far Enough From You", adds some female vocals, a keening, mewling cry off in the distance, over a swirling tangle of wild hiss and static drenched churn, almost like a disembodied Diamanda Galas torchsong, smeared into a bleary, blackened drift, the sound pulsing and dynamic, moments of crushing malevolence aside moments of delicate shimmer, a bit cinematic for sure, the blackness and grinding distortion eventually receding completely, leaving just some muted murk, buried melodies, distant rhythms, and that female voice repeating the title, everything eventually enveloped by soft noise and blurred buzz, for one final, almost shoegaze sounding coda, before it's just that voice, and that mantra, wreathed in effects. A haunting, and surprisingly delicate finale.

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There's not a band around these days that more embodies the concepts of LOUD, and NOISY than the UK's mighty Aufgehoben. But being loud and noisy is not enough on their own. If it were, we'd sure have a lot fewer shitty bands floating around. No, Aufgehoben (formerly Aufgehoben No Process) are masters of their craft. That craft being ear splitting, strangely rhythmic, massively overblown super distorted totally fucked up noise rock. This stuff is so amazing, and amazingly alien, it's hard to know how to describe it. It's sort of like free jazz, meets free noise, meets Krautrock. Maybe Laddio Bolocko covering Masonna. Or a handful of This Heat Records and a handful of Merzbow records run through a meat grinder and then performed by Sun Ra. Or Mainliner and God (the '90s British noise band, not the deity) going toe-to-toe. A mind bendingly perplexing polyphonous cacophony of zig zagging melodies, almost like someone dropped a handful of notes in a particle accelerator and let 'er rip. If you thought their previous two albums were head-smashers and ear-melters, you'll be blown away by this one. Featuring, as on their prior Magnetic Mountain opus, the guest "stereo guitar" of British improv maverick Gary Smith. Yes, as we've said of them before, "the Anaal Nathrakh of improv noise rock" are back and all pretenders should be running scared.

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Is it us, or is UK noise rock outfit Aufgehoben continually getting noisier and noisier? Is that even possible? We're beginning to think it is, even after the recent Messidor full length seemed to have reached a noise ceiling. But here we are, two splattery, speaker frying blasts of no wave, free jazz noise rock. Or something. Not sure what to call it, but we like it. A lot. It does require a strong stomach and some iron clad earholes, but if you think you've got the stuff, that hop right in. Two drummers, electronics, and very little else, are all these guys need to DESTROY. Side A begins with some rhythmic free jazz splatter before being swallowed alive by white hot bursts of crumbling distortion and swells of Merzbowian fury. The sheets of noise stuttering and almost 'skipping' into strange speaker shredding almost-rhythms, some otherworldly white noise pulse that bathes the rest of the song in a blinding and painfully loud glow. Side B is cut from the same cloth, beginning with some Derek Bailey-ish guitar scrabble before the band launch into a full-on free jazz noise rock assault, loads of buzzing feedback, charged sheets of skree, all blown out and super distorted and in the red, interrupted by brief bits of tranquility, peppered with moments of grinding guitar scrape and spastic drum sputter, always quickly obliterated by a massive super nova of pure noise. Fucking brutal and massively intense! Packaged in a plain black sleeve with some simple paste on art. Pressed on super thick vinyl, a gorgeous picture disc adorned with strange branch like patterns, like a fossil or some blurred winterscape. Nice!! LIMITED TO 524 COPIES!!!

Jeezus. Just when you thought that Aufgehoben couldn't get any noisier, the UK unit ups the ante with this terroristic slab of sonic annihilation, their sixth full-length and 3rd for Holy Mountain. Full of brutal feedback and blown out howl, crinkly glitch and sudden outbursts, this is loud miasmic 'music' that's maybe made with guitars and drums (2 kits worth) and electronics, but could just as easily be channeled direct from nightmare. There's broken rhythmic clank that garners them some This Heat and (early) Supersilent references, lashed to skree worthy of the Japanese heavyweights like Merzbow and Hijokaidan. Aufgehoben have long been one of our favorite noise acts, 'cause there's always a discernible method to their madness, if you will, enough 'rock' structure for your ears to hang on to (for dear life) to make it, ahem, listenable. But boy do they push that envelope! This is one for fans of their previous works of course, also for fans of certain Skullflower, Kevin Drumm, Wolf Eyes, Voice Crack, Borbetomagus, Shit & Shine... Really, recommended to all noiseniks! We wish it were on cd though, that's our preferred noise format. Who wants to get up and flip this when you're in its tender clutches?

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Pop quiz! Or not so "pop" really. Whom have we ever compared to Anaal Nathrakh -and- This Heat -and- High Rise -and- Merzbow?? Why Aufgehoben of course. Their name sounds German (it means something along the lines of "nullified" or "voided" in that language). And early on, their music did have krautrocky, rhythmic underpinning. Underpinning brutal ultra distorted NOISE rock that is. And that noise has gotten only noisier and noisier, believe it or not (disbelieve at your peril). Aufgehoben are in fact from England, and certainly fit in with the harsh n' heavy tradition of bands like Skullflower, God, Ramleh, and more recently, Shit And Shine, with whom they share the multiple drummers thing, though Aufgehoben manage to make do with just two of the species freaking out on their drum kits. They also utilize "bricks and metal" as well as the usual guitars and electronics. But if you had to guess, from just listening to 'em, you'd probably pick Japan as their country of origin. Again, 'cause of the sheer noisiness of this, but also 'cause of how the album's last, longest track "Jederfursich..." (26:57) is an epic, repetitively pounding psych guitar blow out (blow up?) that would have the combined forces of both Boris and Merzbow running for cover... whereas the tracks that precede it aren't quite as "rock", though no less noisy, maybe more so, in the vein of Wolf Eyes, who too might reach for the earplugs when confronted with this. Khora's first track "Ignorance Oblivion Contempt" is a vigorous splattering of utterly fried sounds, shrill shards of feedback and frantic trash-compacting percussion colliding and imploding and becoming one dense, writhing mass. That's followed by "Annex Organon", which features a more sparse sort of clatter, but you'd still better be careful about turning up the volume! Next, on "A Bastard Reasoning", we get over ten minutes of mayhem that begin with random meteor strikes of percussive, concussive distortion and then turn into a rumbling, tumbling skree-for-all. Damn. The relative rockiness n' riffiness of the aforementioned fourth and final track, even if the riffs sound like they're played with explosives rather than on guitars, is just a slightly more controlled sort of chaos, building and building and building... kinda like a Cadaver In Drag track -being- dragged, behind a tank, down a rocky road. No, Aufgehoben's brand of utterly destroyed instrumental improv has NOT been tamed at all on Khora, their 5th album, and 2nd for Holy Mountain, who quite rightly hail that ultimate track "Jederfursich..." as being "easily the most massive song of the year". Being obsessed with Les Rallizes Denudes and Keiji Haino, and putting out Blues Control and Wooden Shjips records, would lead you too to say things like that about Aufgehoben. Get this and see, we think you'll agree... This damage is definitely for fans of similar subversive sonic conspirators and AQ faves Shit And Shine.

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Yer ears ready for a bit of a challenge? This, the fourth album from take-no-prisoners English instrumental noise-rock project Aufgehoben (nee Aufgehoben No Process) ought to be just the thing. Seven tracks, 45 minutes of crumpled, crinkly skree in the form of amp-frying distortion, chaotic falling-down-the-stairs song structures, and clattering pipe-fightin' percussion. It's "music" that's been brutally improvised and manipulated, coming out sounding something like Merzbow meets the Starfuckers. At its most extreme (which is very, and most of the time) this stuff's so in-the-red it's infrared. This time around we're hearing less of the krauty rhythmic pummel and snatches of near-melody that characterized their earlier releases (like their last one, 2004's Anno Fauve), and more just sheer blown-out, blow-it-up loud skronky noise, or threatening-to-be loud glitchscapes of brief silences, scrapery and FX. The "small print" in the cd booklet somehwhat puzzlingly specifies the instrumentation/methodology as "paper, stone, electronics, two drums, one mono GS" and "no bass, no overdubs, no no no process", along with the usual disclaimer that Aufgehoben "accept no responsibility for health or hardware". A smart lawyer they must have... Messidor is a seriously OTT session for fans of the likes of Wolf Eyes, Shit and Shine, and Skullflower.

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As promised in last list's review of this British avant-noise-rock band's juggernaut of a second album, we can now offer you copies of their debut, "The Violence Of Appropriation", which bears the alternate title "Cool Tastes In Heavy Sounds". Heavy Sounds indeed! While not *quite* as punishingly always-in-the-red as their follow-up album (which co-billed guitarist Gary Smith), this is still a distortion-fest with lots of guitar and massive rhythmic propulsion. Compared to that 2nd album, the beats here are perhaps "funkier", if that makes any sense in the context of this noisy-as-heck outfit, which employs a music-improvised-live-then-sampled-and-deconstructed methodology a la Phantomsmasher, Radian, and Pluramon. Imagine one of the loud, noisy, semi-industrial bands from the early '90s Pathological stable (God, Terminal Cheesecake) attempting some sort of instrumental modern-day take on experimental krautrock, with Merzbow doing the mixing! This quote from the cd booklet's literal small print gives both the recording details and a definite sense of their sonic overload aesthetic: "1 All sounds and musics utilised in this recording were produced via live and undirected improvisation involving the services of two drummers, a floating pool of guitarists, bass players, keyboard operators, string-scrapers, and non-and-quasi musicians. 2 No sounds extraneous to those original improvised sessions, recorded in Bethnal Green between November and December 1998, were employed in the final product. 3 Aufgehoben No Process accept no responsibility for damage caused by this recording to hi-fi, hearing, or aesthetic sensibilities. 4 Aufgehoben -- past participle of Aufheben, the sublation or simultaneous cancellation, preservation and suppression of terms, a process immanent to the object itself." Yep, whether part 4 of that makes sense to you or not, the rest of the quote gives a pretty clear picture of both their working methods and (part 3) the extremity of the results.

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Whoa... This, the second album from mysterious Brighton UK outfit Aufgehoben No Process, is some serious, distorted, noise-rock mayhem. And LOUD. Led by Wire scribe Stephen Robinson, and consisting of one, maybe two drummers plus sampler and other indisclosed instrumentation, the Aufgehoben boys (apologies if there's girls in the band, but I'd be surprised, this has a very definite male energy!) are teamed here with (against?) improvising "stereo guitarist" Gary Smith (whom you might know from his heavy "fusion" bands Mass and Powerfield, and most recently the Glass Cage match-up with Hugh Hopper and Shoji Hano, along with other solo and collaborative efforts) for thirteen tracks of high-density heaviness. They indeed scale "magnetic mountains" of riff and noise, venturing also into a few moody valleys of equally-distorted, but quieter, improv fuckery. Mostly, though, this is fully in-the-red sonic assault of utter devastation, full of martial drum pummel, Smith's swooping stereo guitar skree, and beyond-metal instrumental intensity, the likes of which the UK hasn't heard since the glory days of early Skullflower or Kevin Martin's God (and without God's dumb vocals) -- and even then this is taking it up a notch. Heck, even the scariest grindcore metal bands from the early Earache label roster would be sent crying home to Satan upon hearing this. Along with the old Pathological bands like God and 16/17, you could compare this to the best of the current Japanese scene -- imagine the noisiest Japanese psychrockers (Mainliner, Musica Transonic, High Rise, Boris) with a healthy dose of Merzbow added in! So it makes a lot of sense that Aufgehoben No Process enlisted Gary Smith, 'cause he's previously played with High Rise's Nanjo Ashahito, and the rhythm section of his band Mass are former members of God, as well. But this Aufgehoben disc is even louder and noisier than any of that, they're kinda of the Anaal Nathrakh of improv noise rock! We were very impressed, and glad we managed to track some of these down for the store (we'll get their first cd in eventually too).

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A split release between conceptual composer Sam Auinger and a collaboration by composers Robert Adrian and Rupert Huber. The Auinger piece is an awesome 40 minute digital manipulation of the sounds of jet engines, resembling flanging twin-blade flutter or amplified insects. The Adrian/Huber piece is a long, rhythmic collage of applause (clapping). Put that track on when you feel the need for a little positive re-inforcement!

We've long been fans of Canadian doom/drone/dirge outfit Aun. They shared a split with French ultra doomlords Habsyll (who also released a record on Andee's tUMULt label) and we made their most recent record, VII, a Record Of The Week a while back. Which makes perfect sense, as they traffic in a perfect blend of electronic dronemusic, abstract blackened buzz and downtuned glacial sludge that we just can't seem to get enough of. VII was peppered with black metalisms as well, and featured drumming from Voivod's Away, transforming Aun's drones into something way more metal, but on Black Pyramid, Aun move away from overtly metallic soundmaking, and instead focus on creating a collection of epically abject dronescapes, that capture the same sort of intensity and soul crushing heaviness, but using a distinctly different palette. And the results are incredible. Dark, and dreary, depressive and hauntingly beautiful. Each track here is a miniature epic, a bleak sprawl of smoldering sounds, deep shimming low end drifts beneath hazy fragmented melodies, everything blurred and smeared into slow shifting clouds of grim ambience, the tracks peppered with mysterious bits of random percussion, scrapes, creaks, chimes and buried rhythms. The sound occasionally blossoms into thick buzzing sheets of crumbling distortion, smoldering swaths of blown out thrum, or gorgeously dreamy streaks of shoegazey melody, but just as quickly settles back down into pulsing electronic swirls, or murky expanses of blackened drift. The record closes with the 9+ minute "Shining", which finds Aun taking that hushed minimal shimmer, and tethering it to a strange skeletal rhythm, a sort of disembodied techno throb, but more brittle and trebly, as the black swells beneath roil and churn, until eventually, thick throbbing droned out guitars, wreathed in swirling fuzz, are driven forward by a new, more propulsive, loping, lurching rhythm, the sound growing more and more intense and distorted, before finishing in a final squall of swirling FX and washed out distortion. So good. And while way less metal than the previous record, it's most definitely just as heavy, and dark, and intense. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES!!

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The term 'doom' gets bandied about quite a bit these days (by us, too, to be sure). It's gotten to the point that anything slow and low gets described as doom. There's a certain cool quotient attached to 'doom' it seems, and all sorts of music makers have been taking advantage of that by doing their best to infuse their music, be it metal or pop or drone or electronic, with some of that doomy magic. But as we all know, doom is more that playing slow, more than tuning way down, more than plodding lugubriously, it's about evoking a mood, creating an atmosphere of dread, of DOOM, using those sounds to paint a bleak and abject picture, rendered in shades of grey and black, especially black. We're not really that uppity when it comes to people branding themselves doom, but in the case of Aun it might be a bit misleading. Not to say Motorsleep is not a killer record, it is for sure, and it is plenty dark and dreary and rumbly and droney, and heavy, okay, a little bit doomy, but really only a bit. To these ears Aun sound way more like Machinefabriek or Jasper TX, with some Nadja or Jesu mixed in. There's not much riffing, it's not all that heavy, instead, it's mysterious and murky, blurred loops laced with buzz and crumble, are woven into haunting melodies, the songs all blend into one another, like one massive organic piece split into movements, and it does get heavier and louder, but more sort of like Sunroof! heavy, a sort of sun dappled upper register ur-drone, more than any sort of crushing pummel or churning pound. The music at its most minimal shimmers and glistens, spidery bits of crystalline sound set amidst deep rumbling tones and slow shifting textures, often building into almost orchestral swells, sometimes slipping into something murky and blurred and barely metallic, other times glimmering like and expanse of starry sky, not so much doomy as just dark and dolorous. This might well be too dreamy and drifty for troo doomlords, but for anyone into fuzzy distorted shimmer, Japer TX, Machinefabriek, Tim Hecker and that sort of washed out buzz flecked loveliness, then Aun will definitely hit the spot.

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Part of the joy of music for us is seeing various genres stretched to the breaking point, testing the creativity of the music maker, whether it's electronic, black metal, indie rock, whatever, it's what really keeps music exciting for us. Not that we don't love us some buzzing blasting grim black metal, or perfectly poppy indie jangle, but sometimes all it takes is that black metal being twisted up a bit, or that pop music tweaked a little, or heck even better, combining the two into some impossible grim black indie jangle, to really get us going. One genre that seems to offer limitless possibilities is DOOM. We've had funereal doom, true doom, black doom, doom folk, doom pop, and within those various permutations, there are still more subsets, ultra doom can be abrasive and harsh and heavy, or washed out and dreamy, doomgaze anyone? But we have to say, we pretty much love most doom, all the various shades of slow and low, doooooooom, the more o's the merrier, the slower, the heavier, the prettier, the more abstract and minimal the better. Which brings us to Quebec's Aun, who to some ears might indeed sound like doom, and heck, certain elements of Aun's sound are most definitely doom-like, but Aun is a perfect example of the above mentioned experimentation. The tropes that define the sound remain the building blocks, but are approached as something malleable, able to be twisted into any shape, and it seems the shape Aun has chosen is something closer to the glacial crawl of SUNNO))) and the metalgaze drift of Nadja. Which is a pretty killer combo, especially in this case, as Aun manages to make that sound, sound pretty unique. The opening track of this new album is a slow motion sea of heaving black swells, downtuned and thunderous, but blurred into gritty streaks of low end, wreathed in glitch and crackle, underpinned by sheets of coruscating feedback, buried in the mix, offering a subtly melodic counterpoint to the mesmerizing glacial pulse of the thick crumbling near static riffage. The result is a totally mesmerizing, almost raga like doomdrone, that manages to be both tranquil and crushing, dreamlike and HEAVY AS FUCK. The second track begins hushed and shimmery, minimal and ethereal, while way off in the distance a churning riff begins to pulse and throb, eventually emerging as a thick pulsing wall of crumbling sound, very much like old Earth, but like the track before, crackling with electricity, and then the drums come in (courtesy of none other than Voivod's Away, wow!!), but not like a normal beat, they sputter and skitter, little explosive bursts, not fully kicking in, just peppering the black expanse with machine gun bursts of percussive crunch, before eventually locking into a rhythm, the track becoming a strange almost krautrocky groove, while all around those sheets of guitar undulate wrapping their blackened tendrils around the beat, shades of Aluk Todolo. The next track is more of the same, that motorik drum beat, but this time the guitars are muted and smoothed out, unfurling haunting melodies beneath the drums, epic and cinematic, and the cool thing is it never gets properly heavy, the guitars remain washed out and minimal, a little spacey, a little psychedelic, the production almost sounds like Xasthur, weirdly lo-fi and lush at the same time, before the track sort of splinters to pieces at the end, allowing the drums to sort of drift off, while those churning guitar drones slowly rev down. The 'final' track (more on that in a second), returns to the incendiary guitar crunch of the first few tracks, spreading out another dronescape of warm buzz, glimmering glitch, and blown out blurred melody, all hazy and super distorted, there's a brief bit of drum driven dirgery, before the track settles into some softly crackling shimmer. After the 'final track', there appears to be an unlisted extra track, sounds like maybe it could be live, hardly matters, it fits perfectly with the rest of the record, another expansive buzzscape, all layered ever shifting drones, truncated melodies, strange textures and timbres and overtones, the most abstract of the bunch, a swirling shimmering blackened drift, still heaving and heavy, but way more ethereal and space-y, the perfect final movement for sure. Equally recommended for doomlords, dronelords, and pretty much anyone who likes it slow, low, mysterious, heavy and BEAUTIFUL.

MPEG stream: Drainbow
MPEG stream: Broken Hill

People went nuts for the most recent record from local psychedelic space rockers 3 Leafs, and rightfully so, a primo clutch of tripped out, druggy drift. The Auricle finds one of those Leafs exploring another quadrant of the outer reaches, this time with a drastically different arsenal, violin, French horn, ukulele and sampler, sounds strange, but this trio makes it work, a healthy dollop of reverb, a little delay, the violin unfurling loooooong velvety ribbons of sound, the French horn moaning out melancholy melodies, the Ukulele spinning out little upper register trills, sent spiraling into the ether, the sampler... well, not sure what it's doing, probably just taking all of the rest of the sounds and subtly twisting and transforming, the end result is something that is definitely space-y, abstract and atmospheric, haunting, playful pizzicato melodies surface here and there, the violin sometimes drifting into more traditional sounds, making this sound like a chamber ensemble drifting through space, and that's just the first track. The rest of the record definitely branches out a little, from warped minimal sort-of-bluegrass, looped and hypnotic, to otherworldly music box like warble, to clattery almost industrial sounding machinemusic, to deep almost new age sounding ethereal ambience, to strangely drone-y old timey back porch blues, to slow spaced out slowcore lullabies, all tied together by the woozy washed out reverby production, and the strange and wonderful instrumentation.

MPEG stream: Fake Moisture
MPEG stream: Truth Gets Its Shoes On

From the same label that brought us the blackened atmospheric doom of Charnel House, the abstract doom-ed black metal of OS, the psychedelic industrial dronescapes of Agakus, the fuzzy, droney, cosmic weirdness of Sky Projection and the tranced out black metal minimalism of Avakr, comes this gorgeous collection of dreamy avant psych folk, from the oddly named Aurora Dorey Alice. But this is very likely not the psych folk you might have been expecting, which shouldn't surprise you considering the label it's on, it's not strummy or croony, it's WAY more abstract and minimal, skeletal percussion suspended in fields of barely there shimmer, lots of abstract sound, scrapes and creaks, mysterious percussion, rhythmic and murky, prismatic and crystalline, the sounds blurred and hazy and gauzey and washed out, the music is gorgeously lush, but somehow also druggy and minimal and abstract, the music is reminiscent of outfits like Avarus, and No-Neck Blues Band at times, but at others the sound is some alien electronica, all swirling and pulsing, ADA's voice throaty and powerful, at times fluttery and ethereal, wreathed in echo and delay, not always singing, sometimes blending into the sonic backdrop, all shimmery streaks of vocal sound, very haunting and psychedelic and lovely, but also strangely sinister. And when she does sing, it's gorgeous and powerful, transforming the experimental drifts, and glitched out distorted dronescapes, into dark, brooding gothic torch songs, albeit, far out, experimental, avant ones. Fans of Chelsea Wolfe, Zola Jesus, Marissa Nadler will find it easy to get lost in ADA's twisted subterranean electronic flecked goth-psych drone-folk soundworld. So great!!!

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

SORRY. A dirty, yet simmering atmosphere surrounds these free noise improvisations built out of lo-fi guitar feedback, siren like modulations of analog electronics, theremin, clarinet, accordion, organs, etc. Wouldn't be out of place on Ecstatic Peace or Siltbreeze.

It's hard to know exactly what to say about these guys, we have to fight our urge to just gush madly, and as you all probably realize by now, we can only put up so much of a fight... the last Austerity Program record was a bombastic homage to the drum machine fueled acerbic brutality of the late great Big Black, which we absolutely loved. But this record somehow manages to retain that sound (how could it not at least a little, especially considering the lineup is guitar, bass and drum machine?) while taking it so much further. Sure Big Black were amazing, as were the legion of drum machine driven behemoths that followed, but the Austerity Program are way more than the sum of their parts. Especially the drum machine part, which seems to define most bands that utilize one... The drum machine here doesn't always sound like a machine at all, which is the key, it's super tight, and precise, but could maybe be an actual drummer. Occasionally the band do take advantage of the machine's super human abilities, but for the most part, the drumming while crushing and brutal is also weirdly deft and subtle. The vocals also can't help but give a nod to Albini and Big Black, it's not a hellish howl or a guttural growl, it's more of an angry nerdy wail, a hyper literate, snarky rant delivered in a sung / spoken, regular guy shout. But the vocals are generally few and far between, which means it's mostly all about the bass and guitar... And fuck if these aren't some of the heaviest, and thickest guitar sounds ever. It helps that the riffs totally destroy, super catchy, weirdly melodic, soaring and epic as often as they are metallic and pummeling. Sometimes super affected, but just as often a straight forward chest caving crunch, the bass throbbing and pulsing right along, often offering up some super unlikely melodic counterpoint, never content to just be a low end presence, the bass grinds and growls as intensely as the guitars.� The overall sound ends up being some strange hybrid of Big Black (obviously), Harvey Milk, Jesu, a little bit of Fugazi and some hints here and there of black metal buzz, all tightly wound into an utterly intense crushing blast of beautiful brutality. From the first track, you'll be pretty much knocked the fuck out. It's a super complex mathy metallic workout, the guitars, swirl and soar, slither and shimmer, all the while pounding out some of the most bad ass riffs ever, and it's super dynamic, with the drums and guitar locked tight, stopping to emit little squalls of corrosive feedback before spiraling back into walls and washes of furious buzz. All the tracks are impossibly gorgeous and melodic, as well as being super ultra tight and clinical,�guitars are massive, roiling and thick, the riffs warm and dense, but jagged and razor sharp, and the arrangements are mindblowing, super complex, but not to the point of destroying the flow of the songs, just perfectly obtuse and tangled, so much so that it sounds like one of these guys must have gotten some sort of calculus degree just to program the drum machine. But it's not all pound and crush,�some tracks are slow and brooding, the guitars building and building, a haunting groovy�Fugazi like percussive chug, that eventually builds to a completely catchy, massive grinding guitar / pummeling percussion battle that manages to take the shape of a crazy catchy song at the same time.� We'd be remiss if we didn't mention the fact that these guys are also really fucking funny too. But in that all to rare way, where the music is absolutely NOT funny, the humor is subtle, and clever, and just a bit snarky, but it's all over the place, EVEN in the music, but subtly so. From the sticker and obi text on the outside, to the lyrics (especially the part where they scream�"Here is my favorite part" before, well, what just might be their favorite part), to some of the clever arrangements, some of the strangely almost recognizable melodies, right down to the WTF liner notes, a chunk of pseudo-scientific data analyzing the various songs on the album, based on things like "distinct drum patterns", "average tempo", "vocal references to death", "abrupt pauses" and more. There are graphs and charts, and lengthy descriptions of how the "Divergence Index Value" of each song was calculated. Even the cover art, various swaths of old lady plastic flowers... these guys just totally rule. They're heavy and ultra brutal, but don't take themselves too seriously, they're funny, but the music is not, the humor is smart and funny, and somehow perfectly compliments the sheer epic intensity of the music... They also had a contest celebrating the release of their new record with the grand prize being your very own customized song, and as if that weren't enough, have a peek at this amazing Austerity Program infomercial: http://pl.youtube.com/watch?v=1WcsV7hQ1V4 As if it weren't already painfully obvious, absolutely essential, totally recommended, one of our favorite new records, and a no brainer for record of the week!

MPEG stream: Song 12
MPEG stream: Song 17B
MPEG stream: Song 19

Very quiet electronic wisps, distant rumblings, and hushed drones mark the beginning of the second collaboration between Autechre and The Hafler Trio. Again, The Hafler Trio's Andrew McKenzie houses his work in a beautiful, if fragile folio, much like his previous releases on Phonometrography, whom McKenzie has inexplicably ceased doing business with. Why you might ask? Has he ever needed a reason for his actions? At least, Autechre has remained on good terms with McKenzie enough to complete this twin set of recordings. After almost 16 minutes of shrouded-in-secrecy wash and whir, a short segment of randomly splattered fizzing electro-static gives evidence to one of the few sounds on either compilation that clearly hints at Autechre's signature sound, harkening to their most recent recordings Confield and Draft 7.30, but without any of Autechre's already dwindling appreciation for rhythm. In other words, you'd certainly be excused for thinking this a Mego release of laptop noise. The clicks and cuts gradually dissolve across a sea of low end acousmatic rumblings and stretches of inactivity, bringing disc one to a close. The second disc features a considerable increase in audibility, as dense reverberating swells of electric sound (e.g. h3o's Exactly As I Say) snaps to an equally beautiful passage of post-Ligetti electronic chorale music. If you're a fan of the Hafler Trio, it almost goes without saying that you'll want to pick this up; but it must be said that if you're looking for more in the way of Autechre, you won't find much of it here. As with all Hafler Trio releases, no sound samples can be made available.

Last list we reviewed a dvd from a 'group' called Author & Punisher, a one man industrial doom band, whose sole member, Tristan Shone, designed and fabricated an incredible array of massive sound generators: a 300 pound spinning metal disc, a huge hydraulic handled chain driven (and seriously physical) drum machine, a motorized handled bass generator, a headgear with a multi mic'd mask, to transform vocals into different sounds and rhythms... We were mesmerized by the footage, the sound was amazing, heavy and crushing, totally intense, but watching this guy, physically create and trigger the sounds, is what sealed the deal, an brutal and exhausting 'performance', a sweat soaked, instrumental work out, way more interesting than the legion of boring floorcore laptoppers and effects jockeys. That said, most of us tend to not re-watch videos, whereas records we'll spin over and over again. So we figured it would definitely be worthwhile to track down a proper record from A&P, and here it is. The title says it all, Drone Machines, not to mention the front cover image of A&P maestro Shone, hunched over the huge spinning metal disc. So if you picked up the dvd, you know what sort of crushing sonic punishment you're in for, and if you missed out on that dvd completely somehow, then this is your chance to get introduced to A&P's churning, chugging, pummeling low end industrial doom crush. Purely sonically, these sounds could have been played by a band, or created on a computer, but just realizing that it's one guy, and his army of sound generators, definitely adds something to the listening experience. Plus there's also plenty of weird sonic manipulation that could NOT be played by a band, thick bass tones slow down like someone pressing their finger down on a record while it's playing, that would be that massive disc, the booming percussion, involves a slamming of the huge chain driven hydraulic handle, hearing this, picturing that, makes it sound that much heavier, but screw it, taken on music alone, the sound of Drone Machines is classic post industrial metal crunch, but twisted and a little warped, a more robotic and machine-like Godflesh maybe, the tone and timbre definitely owes much to Broadrick's industrial beast. But then the record will offer up some weird buzzing almost synthy sounding bass, and weird high end tangles, strange haunting melodies swirling around, a totally tripped out psychedelic swirl, and we're in some far out sonic sci-fi universe, before it gives way to another stretch of lurching lumbering Teutonic pound. The vocals, when there are vocals, are gruff and howled, again harkening back to Broadrick, and add some serious menace to the already sonically menacing proceedings. The best parts for us are the parts where the sound sources become obvious, or at least where you can tell something weird and special is going on, the swooping low end, constantly changing pitch, the various sounds becoming clipped or cut off, the grinding rumbling low end speeding up then slowing down, it makes the whole experience that much more warped and tripped out and psychedelic. The music becomes more than a chunk of industrial metal, it becomes a heaving metallic monster MADE from industrial metal, the various gears and servos emitting strange buzzes and whirrs, its thunderous footsteps the booming beat, the speaker rattling low end it's guttural growl, and the howling vox, the man that commands this beast, and instructs it to do his bidding, a futuristic steampunk, post industrial robotic doom metal dirge, that we just can't get enough of!

MPEG stream: Sand, Wind And Carcass
MPEG stream: Burrow Below
MPEG stream: Doppler
MPEG stream: Beginning Of End

We first discovered Author & Punisher via a super limited dvd, cuz really, as good as the music is, and it is amazing, you sort of have to see the music being made to understand just how fucking nuts this stuff, and this guy really is. A&P is one man, Tristan Shone, who builds his own instruments, which in and of itself is nothing new, but we're not talking cobbled together rickety speakers and Amps For Christ style plywood soundmachines (although we love that stuff), we're talking gorgeous, precision machined instruments, that look like modern art, huge smooth steel drums, strange handles that slide along metal rails, bizarre triggers and stainless steel mouthpieces fitted with multiple microphones, Author & Punisher's setup looks like some post modern Rube Goldbergian sonic mousetrap, all glimmering metals and smooth expanses of perfectly fitted machines, the live performance as physical as any normal instrumentalist if not more so, Shone spinning the huge metal; drum creating thick swells of rib cage rattling low end, slamming the strange handles along the steel rails producing booming bursts of percussion, the strange Cylon like microphone producing an inhuman alien bellow. Even sans sound, the performance is riveting. Mesmerizing. We were lucky enough to host an Author & Punisher instore, and besides being incredible to see up close, the sounds produced shook the old wooden building that houses aQ so hard, that our upstairs neighbors came down in a panic, explaining that the whole hose was vibrating, and things were falling off shelves and tables. Now imagine that sort of physical energy, converted into sound, but not just any sound, but totally mesmerizingly epic, crushing buzz drenched post industrial heaviness. A sound that falls somewhere between the industrial crush of Godflesh, and the blown out electronic buzz and glitch of Digital Hardcore, but all blurred into a sort of abject blackened industrial doom. All manner of low end pulsing and buzzing, rumbling and whirring, the beats skittery and stuttery one second, pounding and Teutonic the next, and then there's the bass generator, which we assume comes from that huge metal disc, cuz a sound that thick and intense should really come from a massive 300 pound hunk of spinning metal, that impossibly dense low end, weirdly woozy and almost liquid, the tones being adjusted on the fly, so much so that it sounds like the speed of the recording is being messed with, the sound warbly and woozy, warped and darkly damaged and druggy. While at the same time being heavy as fuck, and pretty much WAY more brutal that bands with real drummer and a phalanx of guitarists in front of rows of amps. It's amazing how much of the physicality is captured on the record, more so here than on past recordings, the sound managing the delicate balance between blown out amp destroying crush, and tightly wound, barely controlled chaos. The songs slipping from lumbering doomic lurch, to swoonsome skittery abstract dronemusic, from noisy metallic pummel, thick, sinewy digidub, and from thick almost metalgaze drift, to super spare haunting minimal skitter. Ursus Americanus is definitely the culmination of past recordings and live performances, managing the seemingly impossible task of creating something that stands on its own musically, but that captures a soundmaking method that you're unlikely to experience from anyone else. Totally incredible. And obviously, if you get the chance, see A&P live, and have your mind (and ears) blown.

MPEG stream: Terrorbird
MPEG stream: Lonely
MPEG stream: Mercy Dub

It's difficult to review records by Author & Punisher, cuz as longtime readers of the aQ list know, the music is only part of the equation. A&P is in fact Tristan Shone, who builds some of the most beautiful musical 'instruments' we've ever seen. Instruments that look more like pieces of art, or the guts of some super advanced aircraft, massive steel drums, weird science fiction style triggers attached to tracks, that slide along steel strips like some futuristic weapon. He sings through a mask that looks a little like that weird mouthpiece Bane wears in the Batman movies. And the act of making this music is extremely physical. Watching Shone play, he's spinning that massive metal drum, and slamming those weird triggers, sliding pieces of steel into other pieces of steel, there are huge dials and knobs, and chains, and cords, it's like he's in the cockpit of some alien spaceship, the act of flying said spaceship just so happens to produce the music of Author & Punisher, at least, that's how we envision it. And it's these gorgeous machines that while integral to the sound are inherently not present on the record. So if you've never seen the machines, or seen A&P play, then it's all about the music. Thankfully, the music is fucking awesome. Granted, it's a lot better listening to this stuff, and imagining those huge machines grinding away and spewing out these sounds, but even sans the visuals, this stuff kills. At times it's like an even more blown out, more machine like Godflesh. Although this time around, there's a lot more melody, which gives some parts a sort of dark gloomy rock vibe. We hear a little Deftones weirdly enough, and some of the post Godflesh outfits (Jesu, JK Flesh), there's definitely a serious dub vibe going on too, the vocals doused in effects, and looped and layered, the drums too, pretty dubby, and the bass, holy shit, the low end on this A&P record is unlike anything you've ever heard, like the rib cage rattling wobble of dubstep, but times ten, even more blown out and cranked up, noisy and thick, subsonic, corrosive and caustic. The sound will be heavy and churning, when suddenly, the bass drops, and it's like someone snuck in and spun your bass knob to ten. And cranked up the volume too. We can vouch for the extreme bassiness. We were lucky enough to host an Author & Punisher instore a while back, and one song in, our upstairs neighbors came rushing downstairs to see what the hell was going on, as EVERYTHING in their apartments was shaking and vibrating and sliding off shelves. THAT part of the A&P sound is pretty accurately represented here, the sound MASSIVE, and thick, and dense, and utterly CRUSHING. This time around Shone seems to have honed everything he was going for on past records. The production is huge, the bass is punishing, the arrangements are dense and intricate, the sound is equal parts dubbed out and electronic, super dynamic too, with long stretches of more skittery minimalism, the heaving slabs of skull smashing heaviness more spaced out, plenty of gothy and gloomy passages, the vocals slipping easily from effects heavy clean croon, to demonic distorted bellow, the beats flit from skittery to devastating pound and back again, the overall sound is more textural, more fully realized, heavy, and rhythmic, mesmerizing and seriously fucking brutal. Anyone into Godflesh, Necro Deathmort, JK Flesh, old Digital Hardcore, heavy dub, blown out beatscapery, and of course alien robotic metal-dub, this shit is unbeatable! Cool small world aQ crossover postscript: Longtime readers of the aQ list are no doubt familiar with the comic Wuvable Oaf, we've reviewed several issues, and raved about it like crazy, our very own Andee even appeared in one issue, as did aQ, lots of big hairy dudes, cats, strange sex and plenty of METAL. Anyway, one of the imaginary bands featured in the comic, Ejaculoid, who is in fact a 'real' imaginary band (featuring some aQ beloved hardcore luminaries!), were given the 'real' remix treatment by a handful of actual real bands, one of which was Author & Punisher, whose Ejaculoid remix is included here!

MPEG stream: Women & Children
MPEG stream: In Remorse
MPEG stream: Melee
MPEG stream: Fearce

First off, if you don't know the comic Wuvable Oaf, go track down whatever you can. Right now. There's a forthcoming compendium, which should gather up most everything, but the individual issues (some of which we still have in stock, just ask) come with all kinds of extras, hand drawn covers, scratch and sniff pages, guitar picks, stickers, paper dolls and even records! By the imaginary bands in the comic!! basically, it's all about a big hairy guy named Oaf, his failed attempts at finding love, his crazy cats, and his weirdo friends, the comic is silly, and funny, and clever, and hairy and pretty gay, and has lots of music stuff in it too (our own Andee is featured in one issue, as is "Aquarium Records"!!) One of the bands in the comic is the awesomely monikered Ejaculoid, and we're obviously not the only ones a little bit obsessed with Ejaculoid, as two aQ faves, LA black metal trio Harassor and mad scientist industrial metal instrument builder Author & Punisher, have stepped up to offer their own takes on the Ejaculoid classic "Fearce" (recorded by members of Limp Wrist!), which originally accompanied the Oafanthology collection, but now available on its own... Author & Punisher transform it into what is essentially an A&P track, a churning industrial pound, processed vocals, thick, grinding rib cage rattling bass, sounding like some weird hybrid of Nine Inch Nails, Ministry and robotic gabber, but slowed down into something malevolent, maniacal and darkly doomy. While Harassor turn the track into a lo-fi grim blast of grunted black buzz, furious blast beats and insectoid riffing, laced with some weird electronic squiggles, and breaking down part way through into a swaggery doomic stomp. So rad! On maroon/grey swirled vinyl, with bad ass Ed Luce artwork, includes a download!

MPEG stream: Fearce
MPEG stream: Fearce

Our first thoughts on finding out just who was in this new band Autistic Daughters were that it was our dream of a glitch-drone rock supergroup! Yup, we're pretty keen the line-up of Autistic Daughters on their debut release for Kranky (LP on Staubgold): New Zealand's Dean Roberts + Viennese improv scenesters Werner Dafeldecker and Martin Brandlmayr. Guitarist Roberts we know from his old bands Thela and White Winged Moth, not to mention his fine solo recordings like Be Mine Tonight (also on Kranky) and And The Black Moths Play The Grand Cinema (recently reissued on Staubgold, and raved about here a few weeks ago!). Meanwhile drummer and vibraphonist Martin Brandlmayr has been an integral part of several AQ-fave recordings, playing in various post-rock/glitch/jazz groupings, among them Radian and Trapist. Bassist Dafeldecker we've also encountered playing in numerous interesting situations. So what have they all got up to together here? Again, the common thread of all three members previous projects is the combination of live playing with electronics and processing in the studio, and that's the modus operandi here. Like the Roberts records mention above, this is in a slow-moving, mopey, mellow vein, full of hazy, droning textures, fragmented melodies, and shuffling, sorta This Heat-ish percussion. Roberts sings (and, in addition to guitar, plays harmonium and harmonica), and his gentle vocals guide this towards being a sort of indie-pop Radian, something fans of, say, Village Of Savoonga will probably like. And there's a Kinks cover: "Rainy Day In June", that fits right in and goes some way to suggest that Roberts and co. see what they're doing as much in the rock/pop tradition as being about electro-acoustic experimention. Quite nice!

MPEG stream: The Glasshouse and the Gift-Horse
MPEG stream: Spend It On The Enemy (While It Was Raining)

Teeter-tottering betwixt morose indie-rock songishness and purely textural, experimental soundscapery, this avant garde and all together moody international trio, consisting of Dean Roberts (Thela, White Winged Moth), Werner Dafeldecker and Martin Brandlmayr (Radian, Trapist) brings us their second album for Kranky, following up 2004's Jealousy & Diamond. Slow and steady and suffused with low-key drama, Uneasy Flowers should satisfy anyone's yen for (again) an uneasy-feeling yet smoothly executed mix of New Zealand indie-murk free noise and European glitch-drone laptoppery. The album is pleasingly bathed in a glow of wavering distortion/feedback (shortwave static style), scattered with This Heatish percussive patterns (from Brandlmayr) and fragile vocals (from Roberts). Nice!!

MPEG stream: Uneasy Flowers
MPEG stream: Liquid And Starch

Autodigest might be best known around these parts for their confusing, and amusing, and to many wholly irritating record A Compressed History of Everything Ever Recorded, Vol. 2: Ubiquitous Eternal Live, which was essentially an entire record of applause, the cheering and clapping and whooping and hollering, from before and after various performances, all woven into an hour long 'piece'. In some weird way, the concept did actually become something almost listenable, a sort of strangely textured and dynamic bit of weirdo dronemusic. So we were pretty excited to hear this latest in Autodigest's Compressed History series, this one purporting to contain "Every Bootleg Ever Recorded"! The liner notes on the tape elaborates: "The Music on this cassette spans over 40 years and was originally recorded on analogue and digital equipment. We have attempted to distance ourselves as much as possible from the sound of the original recordings. Autodigest Volume 4 is an attempt to reveal all limitations of the source tapes." And so what we initially imagined as some insane plunderphonic cacophony of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Bob Seger and the Doobie Brothers and Hall & Oates reveals itself as something more akin to their applause record, or even more appropriately, Reynols' Blank Tapes record. As Autodigest have collected what sounds like the leaders, and the almost blank spaces between songs, the left over tape at the end of recordings, and woven them into a swirling abstract wash of hiss and whir, laced with little fragments of actual music, buried voices, muffled melodies, layered barely there rhythms, everything seems to be way off in the distance, and while there does seem to be full on rocking going on here and there, it's rendered nearly unrecognizable, buried beneath a haze of crackle and buzz, layer after layer after layer of tape hiss. The 'music' in this Compressed History definitely benefits from headphones. In the store or on the stereo, these sounds might tend to bleed and dissipate, blend into the sounds of daily life, but with headphones, it's a total minimal psychedelic abstract spectral sound headtrip, until the very end of side one, when the murky sonic clouds clear and a voice calls out from the stage "Awwww, for fuck's sake, stop letting off fireworks and shouting and screaming, I'm trying to sing a song..." The flip side begins with a flurry of shouting, and caterwauling from the stage, which begins crystal clear but quickly dissolves into another hissy buzzy swirl of abstraction and absence, a gorgeously textured sprawl consisting of the sounds that lurk between the sounds, not just tape hiss this time, recordings of muted muffled rocking, recorded from what sounds like the dressing room beneath the stage, the B-side much more dense and dark and noisy, like some fucked up field recording (which it pretty much is), but still shot through with random voices, shards of music, bits of sirens, distant shouts, and all the other mostly non musical detritus of a surreptitiously captured live recording. Quite cool, if not entirely musical enough for most folks, but most aQuarians into far out found sounds will definitely dig this. For some reason this one is limited to ONLY 100 COPIES!!! So grab one while you can...

Applause. And clapping. And...um cheering. Some whooping. And some stomping too. And, well that's basically it. In AQ's rich history of presenting you with unlikely sounds: hot rod races, life support machines, melting ice, barking dogs, frogs, zambonis, we can now add to the list crowds. Yep. One full hour of crowds, before thes songs start, after they finish, ovations, the whole deal, all seamlessly edited into one hour of cheering. There is some meta-interpretation and of course some uber concept, but ultimately this is nothing but clapping. Which is not to say we don't like it. We do. Although we've only made it all the way through once. On closer listening however, about halfway through, the crowd sounds are joined by an ominous whir / drone way way down in the mix, that unless you are listening really close or on headphones you might not even notice. And it seem to serve no real purpose except to perhaps help the crowd sounds blur into a fuzzy whole that is of course obviously the sounds of cheering, but at the same time indistinct enough that it becomes a weird scratchy, very un-smooth drone. Sort of. A little like when you say the same word over and over until it starts to sound like a made up word with no meaning. Interpret away, or just sit back and let the adulation roll over you, congratulating you with an hour long ovation, for everything you accomplished today!

MPEG stream: A Compressed History of Everything Ever Recorded, Vol. 2: Ubiquitous Eternal Live

Of the four new Tapeworm tapes on this week's list, this might just be the weirdest. The label describes this recording very graphically, as a post coital nude woman draped over a piano, languidly brushing her hands on the keys, but in reality, it sounds more like many hands pounding wildly on a wooden box, contact mic'ed and submerged in water. Woozy and percussive, wreathed in a thick cloud of tape hiss, and a super lo-fi production, it's easier to imagine a strange assemblage of automatons, running on rubber bands and rusty springs, each set before a mysterious box, then wound and let loose, their flailing implements producing an erratic, but strangely mesmerizing tattoo of thumps and thwacks, ever one trailing a strange bit of FX drenched static behind it, sound at times like blunted, blurred, muted firecrackers, and at other like some primitive monochromatic drum circle. The flipside is a whole 'nother thing altogether, but again about as far as you can get from the nude woman on the piano, instead, it's a slow building swell of crumbling caustic noise, that builds to thick billowing blackened clouds, before sprawling out into a darkly hypnotic expanse of blunted blacknoise shimmer, still wrapped in a gauzy layer of crunch and buzz, but the near melodic thrum beneath transforming it into something haunting and hypnotic, but still plenty noisy and distorted. The liner notes also offer a special thanks to "a loud, short, fat, hairy-assed, umbrella-carrying American", which doesn't clear up any of the tape's mystery, at all.

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

SORRY. Autopoesies live album was recorded during the Mille Plateaux tour that skittered across Europe in late 1999. The success of this album (in direct contrast to the rather boring debut) unwittingly calls into question the role of the 'artist' in front of his / her laptop. This record (and thus the live performance) could have simply been made by inputing abstract images into Metasynth (a program that translates visual files into sound files - perfect for manufacturing Ovalesque clickiness), while 'the artist' could be playing Tetris or downloading internet porn or walking off the stage to get a beer. Sure, Roland Barthes' 'Death of The Author' becomes an easy conceptual basis to justify such a live show, but so is 'I couldn't think of anything else to do, so I'll act like Markus Popp snapping my gum and looking bored." Maybe this rant is without merit, and maybe Autoposies had a kick ass live show. Maybe. And maybe Andee will get that helper monkey he wants so badly for the store. With all of this said, "Live A Noir" is an exceptional album of subatomic digital glitches and white hot crackle, turbulent sonic swells and terse glacial scrape. Fits just right with your Stilluppsteypa and Noto.

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

SORRY. Will our love affair with Finland never end?!?! I sure hope not. And there doesn't seem to be any reason to worry. Certainly not with what seems to be more and more undiscovered AMAZING music cropping up all the time. First we discovered Circle and Mieskuoro Huutajaat and Keuhkot and Aavikko and the baffling and completely awesome Bad Vugum label. Then we learned of the dreamy clattery folk of Kemialliset Ystavat and their hippy percussion jam side project Anaksimandros. And let's not forget drone-doom lords Skepticism and Rapture and Tiermes. And now we have discovered Avarus and the adventurous Lal Lal Lal label. Avarus and Kemiallisett and Anaksimandros all share at least one member and definitely share an aesthetic, combining folk and Krautrock and free jazz and modern noise ala the Dead C into a totally mesmerising modern noise/folk. Avarus, while less percussive/clattery than Anaksimandros, is also less folk than Kemialliset, situating them in a unique musical position, unfurling lengthy meandering almost funereal jams, desolate and mournful, but dreamy and pastoral, motorik and hypnotic at the same time. Strummed acoustic guitars frame distant throbbing caveman percussion, dreamy soundscapes are punctuated by occasional clang and clatter, all swaddled in the warm drone of amp buzz and ambient hum. Wander into their dark forest and join the tribe. A warning: as with their prior 3" cd-r release, this is a SUPER LIMITED EDITION CD-R. We may not be able to keep these in stock for long, so if you want one don't dawdle. Sorry, you'd think that because they're cd-rs they *wouldn't* really be limited 'cause they could just burn more, and xerox more covers, but apparently not. Oh well.

RealAudio clip: Mars On Paljastanut Salaisuutensa
RealAudio clip: Feeniks-lintu Valitti Muista Enemman
RealAudio clip: Filipplinien Henkikirurgit
RealAudio clip: Eno Muista Mua

What else can we really say about Finnish forest folk freaks Avarus that we haven't already said a million times? Maybe the most exciting free music ensemble out there. And by out there we mean really really out there. On the lp-only II, Avarus twist their usually shambolic free folk into a bizarre and druggy demented cartoon music from another dimension, a dizzying swirl of pitch shifted tape loops, manipulated sound samples, snippets of jazzy big band horns chopped and doused in outerspace FX, guitars scraping and scrabbling. feedback swooping and squealing, clattery percussion, strings being sawed and plucked, some sort of primitive DJ scratching, the whole thing King Tubbied into a dubbed out brain melting free-for-all. Over the course of these two sidelong tracks, Avarus take brief excursions into loping abstract post rock, tripped out psychedelic krautrock, dreamy droney ambient soundscape, and full on pummeling free rock, but it's like they got a new bandmate, THE STUDIO, as every bit of this disc is tweaked, or twisted, or affected or fucked with. Speeds slow down and speed up, parts are flipped backwards, different songs are spliced and butted up against each other creating short attention span collage like rhythms. But somehow, II still retains all the stuff about Avarus we already loved, just makes it a little bit more druggy and fucked up. And who can argue with that? Packaged in a full color sleeve, with printed color insert. SUPER LIMITED as always. We got a whole bunch but they probably won't last.

Yet another release from one of our favorite Finnish psych-drone-free-rock ensembles (and yes, there are enough for us to have favorites). Thankfully this lp-only release, while still limited, is not nearly as limited as many of their previous cd-r/7"/tape releases. III starts off with a lo-fi, rambling, ramshackle blues jam that mutates into wildly propulsive psych-folk with intensely strummed guitars and far-away flute melodies. And from there on out, Avarus dip their toes into whatever variant of their unique 'sound' that strikes their fancy. From atonal Jandek-ian campfire hippy hoedowns, to wild jams with spastic hand drums and sing-songy melodies plucked out on beat up, out of tune guitars, to wild clattery bursts of percussion splattered haphazardly over a Skullflower-ish skree, to stripped down, jangly hyperactive psychedelic rock to loose ambient soundscapes of whir and buzz and twang, with slithery, sitar-like guitars. Gorgeous as always.

After years of desperately trying to track down every cd-r and 7" and lathe cut lp by these underground Finnish forest psych folk weirdos, we're all about to be in Avarus heaven. Not only will Andee's tUMULt label be releasing a double cd compilation collecting all of those rare and impossible to find sonic artifacts next month, but right here we have a brand spanking new full length as good as anything these guys have ever done. So fans of all things clattery and pagan, foresty and folky, psychedelic and droney, krautrocky and hypnotic, DIG IN! Unlike the sometimes spare and sparse early recordings, that reminded us quite a bit of No Neck Blues Band, Sunburned Hand Of The Man and other like minded hippy pagan outsider free-folk tribes, this Avarus is definitely the most rocking. Intensely propulsive, fuzzy and murky, Finnish "krautrock" (huh) of the highest order. But fear not, all the misty mystery is still present. it's still like being lost in a Scandanavian forest, and stumbling across a strange pagan ritual, in some lost darkend glade. It's just that this ritual sometimes erupts into some serious rumbling drone rock. The muddy grooves, motorik rhythms, and creepy ambience definitely remind us of the recent AQ record of the week German Oak, so what else do you need? Finnish! NNCK! SHOTM! Krautrock! German Oak! C'mon!! Features members of other Finnish underground rock luminaries Kemialliset Ystevat and Anaksimandros.

MPEG stream: Donkkaavarappaava Kaalikoira
MPEG stream: Iso Laakelaiva