[ aquarius records — Experimental ]

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Showing results 6001 through 6050 of 9280.

The third installment in Ostertag's "Say No More" series, where he takes the improvisations of players like Mark Dresser (bass), Gerry Hemingway (drums), Phil Minton (voice), and computer-samples them into complex compositions that they then must learn and play. With this release, he has constructed new sampling compositions out of the live results of the last go-round! Both interesting and insane stuff.

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SORRY. S.F. samplerist Ostertag & Japanese turntable wizard Otomo (known for their live performances with Mr. Bungle's Mike Patton as the trio "House of Discipline") take the music of "parents" Chris Cutler, Yagi Michiyo, and Herb Robertson and create "twins": diverse sampled progeny from the same source. An interesting study in nature vs. nurture!

We have lots of friends who LOVE the Grateful Dead. When Andee was in Finland, aQ pal Jussi from Circle, even made him a mix of just the best jams. No "Truckin'" or any of that stuff, just endless spaced out psychedelic jammage, and we can safely say, that we can definitely get behind that side of the Dead. Really, it's almost like a mellower, more stoned Hawkwind, which definitely doesn't sound like a bad thing at all. Even so, we might still suggest Grayfolded as the only Grateful Dead record you really need to own. In part because it's only KIND OF a Grateful Dead record, well, it is ALL Grateful Dead, but it's multiple versions of the same song, "Dark Star", a bunch of different performances and recordings, all cut up and reassembled Plunderphonic style by John Oswald. So in a way, it's like a more experimental version of that mixtape Jussi made for Andee, and if you didn't know what this was all about, and weren't listening to it on headphones, you might just think it was a straight up psychedelic jam. The edits and the layering and the arrangement are pretty seamless, the multiple performances woven into a super cohesive, slow shifting, constantly mutating whole, spacey and laid back, drowsy, druggy and hypnotic, spidery guitar lines unwind, and tangle up with the same, slightly altered melodies from another performance, the multiple iterations almost ghostly the way they bleed into one another, like listening to the Dead in a carnival funhouse hall of mirrors, but if anything, that only makes it seem more psychedelic, yet all without losing the essence of the original track, which is no small feat. It's the sort of masterful editing that is almost too good, so much so that most folks listening to this won't appreciate the painstaking work that went into its creation. So in that way, headphone listening will be rewarded for sure, allowing the listener to sink deep into all of these many "Dark Star"s, and to not just appreciate the masterful skill of the musicians, but the new alien context they've been placed in after the fact. Psychedelic, plunderphonic genius!

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SORRY. John Oswald has been best known for his plunderphonic deconstruction of Michael Jackson, The Doors, and Metallica (to the ire of the major labels' legal departments). 'Greyfolded' has Oswald taking on the Greatful Dead's legenadry "Dark Star" live jams. While his previous work had taken on an irreverance to the orginal, Oswald's seamless collage is more or less an homage to the live track. Pretty much for Dead fans only.

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SORRY. John Oswald's piece de resistance. Twenty minutes of some of the most insane editing, cross-fading, beat matching, cultural name dropping and sampling. No other work even comes close to the intensity of Plexure. John Oswald proves he is a virtuoso of Pro Tools, over a thousand different artists edited, spliced and mixed together. Many of the sampled pieces are just long enough to be recognizeable and yet short enough that by the time you can consciously identify the track your ears have been pummled by another 15, and all matched up as seamlessly as humanly possible. One of the most beautiful and simultaneously insane and aggrovating experiences in audio ever produced. A must listen and a must have.

In 1989 Canadian audio artist John Oswald released his tour de force of sound appropriation "Plunderphonic", a cd that was never intended for sale, and found himself face to face with The Canadian Recording Industry Association and their lawyers. Whether they Despite its extremely limited release "Plunderphonic" (reasonably) became something of a holy grail of tape manipulation and champions of its artistic validity have been making it available by making cassette copies for a small fee and even more recently the cd has been uploaded -- sans artwork -- for anyone with a fast connection to download (I, myself spent three days downloading it on a 28.8 dial up three years ago... nerd.) Now, over eleven years after its creation, for the first time ever "Plunderphonic" is now available, in somewhat steady supply and hopefully without legal interruptions... for sale. Initially Oswald had intended to see this edition released "legitimately" (in the eyes of publishing companies and major record labels) by clearing all the samples, but quickly ran into problems with music industry bean counters who have little patience for fair use (especially now, I suppose, that the disc is being offered up for sale.) As a way of bypassing the authorization process Seeland Records has thankfully stepped in and "stolen" the disc for, err... *from* Oswald and produced it themselves. And yet, saying that this is merely a reissue of "Plunderphonic" would be an extreme misnomer. Although all of the original tracks from Plunderphonic are here on this collection, many have been reworked -- some slightly, and some greatly -- and sequenced differently than on the original album. So those of you that have cdr's of the original might not want to start using them as coasters just yet. Also included on this anthology is Oswald's 1991 commissioned work for Elektra Records' anniversary (and previously only released as a promotional item), the five song ep "Elektrax" (Elektra chose to rename it "Rubaiyat") in which Oswald was given free reign to plunder anything in Elektra's vaults. On top of all that are several tracks from Oswald's 1991 release "Discosphere" (released by ReR / Cuneiform and consisting of tracks commissioned for dance), several miscellaneous cuts and tracks made for compilations dating as far back as 1975 and excerpts from Oswald's 1993 piece de resistance "Plexure" (Avant, Japan), a 20 minute opus featuring over 1,000 sampled artists. Also included is a 46 page interview with John Oswald which alone is worth the cost of admission here. Along with going through all the tracks in the set and explaining the methodology behind each, Oswald details the events that led up to the cease and desist of the original cd. The two discs are packaged in a deluxe, hard bound long box and though the exterior artwork is much different than the original -- all of the original artwork is reproduced inside, along with additional plundervisuals by Oswald. As a final note, many of you are probably wondering what the legal status & future longevity is of this edition. Well here's the scoop: this pressing has already been exhausted, we have 30 copies left as of this writing. However, we have been assured that this is NOT going to disappear or be a limited edition item. There are already 10,000 books made waiting for more cds to fill them, but that will probably be a month or two before that happens. So if you want your Plunderphonics now you should place an order ASAP, otherwise you will need to wait for the next batch of discs to be pressed.

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One of four new releases from UK weirdo tape label The Tapeworm (three this list, the 4th on the next), and as always, a baffling selection of sounds, this one from an entity/artist known as Othon, and the label description makes it seem like we should know Othon, this is in fact the first we've heard, and it's hard to tell if this is indicative of his usual sound or not. The A side, as the title might suggest, is solo piano, and is quite lovely, the original is dramatic and dynamic, slipping from lilting and melancholy to bombastic and intense. The side finishes off with two interpretations of pieces by Chopin and Mendelssohn. The B side features Othon's oldest recordings, captured live during his final recital at London's Trinity College back in 2006, and features a super dramatic bit of operatic bombast, with Othon on the first track pounding away, unfurling dense flurries of notes on the piano, accompanied by fluttering flute, and all supporting some super intense operatic vocals, while the second track is more hushed and low key, but dramatic in its own way, but here you can hear the crowd, camera shutters clicking, feet shuffling, adding a strange bit of ambience to the very intense musical drama playing out before them. LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!

That's Otomo Yoshihide, Keith Rowe and Taku Sugimoto. Recorded at LMCSound in London, the three iconoclastic guitarists team up for an excruciatingly patient exercise in restraint and controlled ferocity. High volume static crackle, lo-fi rumbles and anonymous shortwave radio transmissions (broadcasted in the trademark Rowe fashion through the pickups of his tabletop guitar) are situated against frail bowed strings resembling a grouping of fractured hurdy-gurdys. Pair that with subtle, minimalist textures unheard in much of guitar based music, very similar in texture to the muted piano characteristics of, say for example, Morton Feldman's works. Not for impatient ears, "Ajar" can be quite engaging for those adventurous enough...

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Avantgarde Japanese pop vocalists Jun Togawa and Phew join our favorite turntable experimentalist's jazz unit for their second release on John Zorn's Tzadik label. It's very different from the previous New Jazz Ensemble disc, and is really not readily identifiable as an Otomo Yoshihide album. Most of the tracks heavily feature singing, and it's only at the very end of the disc that the Ensemble breaks into any sort of "free jazz" cacophony. More of a Japanese vocal album then, than a jazz/electronic thing, so Otomo fans who aren't as eclectically adventurous as the man himself might want to pass on this one.

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The latest from Japanese turntable/guitar experimentalist, composer, and sometimes jazz musician Otomo Yoshihide (if he needs an introduction, this isn't the place to start). "Ensemble Cathode" is a beautifully packaged cd -- anyone who's seen the Improvised Music From Japan box set knows about their nice cardboard mini-lp style cd sleeves -- featuring the works "Cathode #3", "Cathode #4" and "Cathode #5", all lengthy (14 to 22 minute) pieces composed by Otomo but allowing for much improvisation from the musicians. Otomo's Tzadik releases "Cathode" and "Anode" have already explored this idea -- small groups of musicans, some playing traditional Japanese instruments (in a modern context, as with Nishi Yoko's "prepared 17-string koto"), some with jazz instruments, others with electronics: samplers, contact mics, and turntables, in a structured improv setting. This Ensemble Cathode disc is as gorgeous and adventurous as those others, full of rumbling percussion, bowed cymbal drone, ethnic coloration, crackling noise, and piercing sine wave tones... The latter courtesy of frequent Otomo Yoshihide collaborator Sachiko M. Also appearing are Taku Sugimoto (a wonderful, wonderful electric guitar abstractionist), percussionist Ichiraku Ysohimitsu (of the Acid Mothers Temple!), Andrea Neumann (playing "inside piano"), Akiyama Tetzui (who plays a turntable without records), and many others. A quiet, quite lovely listen, with many carefully wrought textures.

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SORRY. Two short sides of sound collage from Tokyo's masterful sample artist and leader of the late great Ground Zero. These pieces are made up of short sound samples of almost any instrument imaginable: saxophone blasts, cello strokes, short metallic chord bursts, single plucks of the guitar as well as the noises made by hand movements all set to a metronomic sampled drumbeat. Quite interesting, but not a fully realized work. If Otomo chooses to continue this process, it could potentially have wonderful results.

You'd almost like to think that with a title like Turntables and Computers, this would turn out to have been made with rocks and sticks. But no, the title is indeed a very literal labelling of this disc's musical contents. Otomo Yoshihide is one of Japan (and the world's) top turntable experimentalists, whilst his countryman Nobukazu Takemura is a laptop jockey of some reknown. Together they craft a humming, droning, pulsating, glitchy bleepathon. It sounds like a field recording from some sorta sci-fi birdhouse, with a radio on in the background. Voices from Otomo's vinyl records drift in and out of the mix, as if from persons lost amid the pleasantly noisy chaos being created. It's one long 46-minute track, the result of a live improv session. Apparently it was the first time these two had ever worked (or played) together. What they came up with is probably closer to the less pop, more abstract aspects of the Powerbook electronica that Nobukazu is known for, intersecting with the minimalist electronic rather than jazz side of Otomo's ouvre. By the end it gets into mindshredding noise territory, a real nice finale to a disc that visits much quiet beauty as well.

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SORRY. What serious jazz ensemble will you find playing versions of compositions by Wayne Shorter and Eric Dolphy, AND Otomo Yoshihide and Jim O'Rourke? Well, Otomo Yoshihide's own New Jazz Quintet of course. Far from the turntables-and-noise shock tactics of his seminal Ground Zero group, Otomo's New Jazz Quintet is much more on the "inside" of jazz tradition, and although you can expect some surprises, this disc, recorded live in Tokyo March 2002, is fairly straightforward compared to the Quintet's two previous releases on John Zorn's Tzadik label. No guest vocals from Phew, no electronics from Merzbow or Sachiko M. No, instrumentally this is indeed nothing but a jazz quintet: Otomo's on guitar, with four of the best and brightest from the Japanese underground jazz scene on saxophones, bass, and drums. The experimentation (with noise, with pop) of those two Tzadik albums gives way here to Otomo and co.'s abiding love for serious jazz, full of color, beauty, feeling, and powerful playing. Amid the two jazz standards assayed here, Otomo's compositions, and the O'Rourke piece, fare quite well. Otomo's twenty minute "Flutter" (from the Quintet's first Tzadik disc) is one of the disc's highlights, in fact, jumping off from its melodic, noirish motif into an electric build-up and blow-out of massive proportions. The Shorter and Dolphy pieces are handled with energy and respect, and then Otomo's NJQ winds up the disc with their 18 minute take on O'Rourke's "Eureka" -- achingly sad and pretty, reaching densely layered heights of group improv, then subsiding into a lonely finale. Very nice, actually!

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First ever collaboration between the long-running (since the '70s!) Swiss experimental duo Voice Crack and Japan's master of free-jazz turntablism, Otomo Yoshihide. Voice Crack specialize in the use of "cracked everyday electronics" (imagine raiding the local Radio Shack and turning your kitchen into a living nest of crackle and hum), and Otomo has been investigating minimalist electronic soundscapes of late. Together they've created a quiet, detailed sound-world of electro-acoustic improvisation. Quite nice, fans of both should be pleased.

The handful of folks who recently experienced the blown out rhythmic dronebliss joy that is Our Love Will Destroy the World (aka Campbell Kneale formerly of Birchville Cat Motel) when he was in SF recently performing on THE BUS, will not soon forget that show: a diminutive, bearded New Zealander, on his knees, cradling his guitar in front of a bank of effects, eyes closed, swaying back and forth in a trance, unleashing some of the heaviest, most mesmerizing freenoise we've heard. A neverending avalanche of layered sound, pulsing and throbbing and churning, rhythms surfacing, splintering and then disappearing, a monstrous, yet totally warm and inviting cloud of sound, a sound which is perfectly captured on this two track slab of buzz and crunch and hum and hiss. Guitars gurgle and grind, riffs pulled apart, a heaving swirl of constantly shifting layers, a chaotic cacophony that seems to slowly take shape, what was once noise becomes a sculpted soundscape, what was once a cloud of glitches and stutters, turns into rhythm, and the track sucks you in, totally entrancing, heavy, noisy, yeah, but completely and utterly hypnotic, little bits of melody pop up now and again, but are quickly subsumed by the moaning peals of downtuned crush, and once the rhythm locks in, you are powerless to resist. The B-side is a little less intense, a constantly shifting and evolving cloud of hiss, barely obscuring a symphony of mechanical creaks which slowly coalesce into a strange sort of rickety rhythm, while all around voices hover, melodies tinkle, and finally a wash of buzzing guitar drone cloaks the all the other elements in a patina of blurred shimmer. So nice. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!

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Brand new track from Mr. Campbell Kneale, formerly known as Birchville Cat Motel, now working under the monicker Our Love Will Destroy The World, and like the last few OLWDTW records, Blondesummer Snowqueen is a gorgeous nearly half hour noisedrone blow out, which on the surface sounds pretty cacophonous, with streaks of feedback all over the place, everything grinding and crunching and buzzing and howling, and it is a pretty serious chunk of chaos, but as we've learned over Kneale's many releases, there's definitely a method to his madness, but don't bother trying to figure out what it is, cuz it IS madness, just sit back and let these sounds envelop you, headphones help, and get lost in this swirling whirling dervish of sound. Imagine a huge cement mixer, filled with notes and drones and feedback, and fractured riffage, and disembodied voices, and buzzing synths and crumbling distortion, and now imagine that huge drum rotating, the various elements colliding and careening, now imagine getting that drum to spin fast, REALLY fast, then opening up the hatch, and plunging your head inside. It's like that. Sort of. But all filtered through Kneale's flair for taking noise and cacophony and skree and twisting them all up into one twisted warped whole, and getting the whole thing to sound, well, fucking AWESOME. This is definitely on the difficult side, but fans of OLWDTW and Birchville, will feel right at home. On Kneale's Don't Fuck With Magic label, ultra limited, and mostly only available at aQ!

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Latest blast of blown out, looped and lysergic psychedelia from Mr. Campbell Kneale, previously of the legendary Birchville Cat Motel, currently of the soon to be just as legendary Our Love Will Destroy The World. And like previous OLWDTW releases, Kneale continues to expand his sonic scope, seemingly building one gigantic and utterly epic songsuite, every record seemingly capable of flowing into the next, but each unique enough to be utterly listenable on its own. Blue Eyes Are My Reward starts off with a bit of a curve ball, introducing some surprisingly tranquil soundscapery, dreamy looped percussion, the various bits of buzz and glitch smoothed and muted into rhythmic pulsations, very raga like, but sun dappled and laid back, very mediative and melodic, we were almost prepared for a new softer Kneale, when the second track swoops in with a kaleidoscopic explosion of upper register crunch, careening dramatically from speaker to speaker, grinding guitars, over pachinko machine percussion, and immediately we're again immersed in that sort of 'noise' only Kneale seems to conjure up, a distinctly UN-noisy noise, swirling and soothing, hypnotic and seriously tripped out. The rest of the record offers up more 'movements' in the Our Love songsuite, from super distorted strum laced drone, sounding like sixties folk woven into Skullflower skree, to glistening hazy folkdrone shimmer, lush and layered and so otherworldly, from muted percussion driven blurs, laced with snippets of voices chopped and reassembled into rhythms, to ritualistic cacophonies, glorious staring-straigh-at-the-sun FX-drenched high end next level drugdrone noise raga blowouts. As always, magical! Pressed on 180 gram vinyl, and yeah, LIMITED.

The second of two new releases from Mr. Campbell Kneale, formerly aka Birchville Cat Motel, now aka Our Love Will Destroy The World. And with more letters and words in the band name, comes more elements and instruments in the sounds, or so it sounds. Two live sets, one from New Zealand, one From Australia, both finding Kneale and his love in full frontal assault mode. Endless drones cobbled together from multiple layers of buzz and skree and shriek and grind, the sounds flutter and flicker and skitter and stutter, and howl and moan and whir and even shimmer here and there, but for the most part this is OLWDTW at it's most dense and most aggressive. The sounds are thick and dense, effects all over the place, melodies, they're there somewhere, usually wrapped around some other sound, the various elements twisting and thrashing and transforming, but these are no mere noise jams, these are jams constructed from noises sure, but beyond that those noises are sculpted into nuanced shapes, into mesmerizing textures, into Kneale's peculiar idea of songsmithery, blown out noise drenched dronescapes, and damn if our favorite part of the first set isn't cribbed from Bastro's "Shoot Me A Deer"! Needles to say, WAY recommended, whether noise is your thing or not. And equally needless to say, this is LIMITED!

This thing is SO cool, but super limited and insanely expensive, so we only got THREE copies. Thus, we shall be brief. By now most of you should know what to expect from Campbell Kneale's new project, like a trippier more blessed out noise drenched less drone-y Birchville Cat Motel or something? Whatever it is, it's awesome. This two sided monster features epic slabs of fragmented jangle, symphonies of transistor radios, looped whirs and liquid low end, thick drones and glistening shimmer, looped minimal rhythms and wheezing heaving ragas laced with delicate melodies, all woven into a dizzying expanse of tripped out sound. It's a custom made lathe cut picture disc, insanely thick (3 mm, like three records stacked on top of each other and glued together, cut one at a time by Peter King in New Zealand, which means they are each subtly unique, they wear down the more you play them, eventually sounding WAY different, they smell amazing, it's more than a record, it's an item, an artifact, a piece of soundart. Kneale freaks will definitely need these. We only have three, we might be able to get more, but since they only made 80 these puppies are scarce, so grab one while you can.

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Another blast of kandy kolored Kiwi krush from Mr. Campbell Kneale, who previously operated under the moniker Birchville Cat Motel, but who has been operating as OLWDTW for a while now. After a long stretch of near silence, Kneale is back with a bang, and not one, not two, but three consecutive psych-noise bangers. The first a punishing noise freakout under his own name, then the surprisingly lovely Hive Hum Golden Remorse, and now the awesomely titled Frigid Antichrist, which seems to split the difference, Kneale deftly balancing pulchritude with punishment, laying out what sounds like a delicate sprawl of hushed vocalizations, and swoonsome layered melodies, but burying them beneath a barrage of caustic buzz and grinding blacknoise howl. Like lots of Kneale's work, sans headphones this could very well sound like some obscure, damaged Japanoise squall, but dig deeper, and there's much beauty to be discovered, and strangely, much of that beauty lies in how it seeps through the seemingly impenetrable noise, like tufts of cotton candy drifting through tangles of barbed wire, pretty little wildflowers wending their way through thorny thickets, and once you let yourself get lost, it's almost as if the noisiness abates, the two disparate sides of Kneale's sonic palette, somehow bleeding into one, heaving, roiling, churning, throbbing wall of blissed out dream-noise sound. The first track here is downright shoegazey, sounding a bit like My Bloody Valentine crossed with Incapacitants, while the second longer track, gets seriously metallic, Like Birchville covering Gorgoroth, and sounding like it could burst into proper black metal riffage at any point, but instead, strands of glitchy electronic thrum, overdriven and doused in FX, unfurl into undulating sheets of blurry noise, disembodied riffs that buzz malevolently before splintering into shards of grinding noise, and that again, manage to transform into something weirdly pretty, albeit still PLENTY buzzy and blackened. A crushing sprawl of noise-gaze blacknoise bliss for sure. And as with all the new OLWDTW stuff, we're the only place in North America that has it, and it is indeed, VERY limited!

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Another explosive slab of world destroying sonic love from Campbell Kneale and his new one man wrecking machine known as Our Love Will Destroy The World. Taking up right where the now defunct Birchville Cat Motel left off, Kneale is a master of constructing impossible dense assemblages of sound and noise and rhythm, layer upon layer upon layer, a one man band that sounds like 5 or 6 bands playing at once. Infusing a droney drift, with industrial rhythms, metallic riffs, textural buzz, blown out crunch, all manner of hum and howl and skree and clatter and clang, which like many things, in the hands of someone less deft, could be and most likely would be a massive sonic clusterfuck, but Kneale, like some insane sonic juggler, manages to herd all these sounds into a constantly evolving shape, not that it's not a struggle, part of the joy comes from listening to the various sounds and elements and layers do battle, the magic happens when what sounds like pure noise, suddenly reveals itself as a lumbering doomic drone, or a weirdly melodic drift, what sounds like random bits of crunch, suddenly take shape and become rhythm, what sounds like a wall of heaving low end, becomes melodic, and suddenly things seem strangely songlike, and dare we say, sort of pretty. Fucking Dracula Clouds is the perfect representation of what Kneale can do seemingly so easily, and so many others find difficult bordering on impossible, turning noise into music, but without losing any of the noise, creating sounds that are caustic and abrasive, but weaving them together into something that is neither, like building a warm roaring fire out of shards of ice, or assembling a warm secure shelter out of wet leaves and cold mud, it's some kind of magic for sure, and we are definitely under its spell.

Finally, a full length (sort of) from Campbell Kneale's post Birchville Cat Motel outfit Our Love Will Destroy The World. Limited to 50 copies, exclusively available direct from Kneale, or right here at aQ. A single 40 minute jam, it's been a bit hard to figure out just where Birchville ended and Our Love began, there was after all a kick as Birchville disc TITLED Our Love Will Destroy The World. The biggest difference seems to be rhythm, where as BCM was loose and free and amorphous, so far everything we've heard from Our Love, while still plenty free, has featured some sort of rhythm. Verging on the dance-able, but not regular old dance-able, we're talking twisted psychedelic alien disco sort of dance music, imagine only droning tones, undulating and pulsing and wrapped around strange motorik grooves and some fractured anti-funk, that's basically how this disc starts off, it's gorgeously blissed out and mesmerizing, but then right when you lock into the groove, losing yourself in Kneale's looped noisescape, the song explodes in a cacophony of ACTUAL explosions, breaking glass, barking dogs, total and utter chaos, it's like a field recording of the end of the world, but then you notice some tablas surfacing from beneath this crazy disasterscape, then some jagged shards of feedback, the whole sound growing more caustic and abrasive by the second, the tablas eventually buried beneath a million pounds of hiss and buzz and rumble and skree, a weirdly rhythmic slab of pink noise psychedelia, relentless and nearly overpowering. As the track progresses though, the sound begins to smooth out, gradually, until all the noise drops out, leaving just the drums, surrounded by all sorts of haunting sounds, a bit like a more out-there Muslimgauze. Then things shift back to more familiar territory, roiling warm buzzing shimmer, over strange lopped and stuttering rhythms, barely audible through the woozy swirling heaviness, various buzzes and glitches coalescing into still more layers of sound, everything getting louder and heavier and more chaotic, a sort of Total / BCM / Skullflower mashup, soaring epic ur-drone majesty, before all the low end drops out suddenly, leaving just some brittle shimmer, some buried riffage, and some looped melody buried in the mix, a gorgeously hypnotic tangle that ends way too soon, even though it goes on for 5 minutes or so, wouldn't have minded an hour of just that one part, but then it finally fades out, and it's over. Pretty intense, and epic, a multi movement soft noise symphony, which besides filling our ears with honey, has us hankering for more more MORE! LIMITED TO 50 COPIES, we got 30, grab 'em while you can.

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After a brief spell of relative musical inactivity, or so it seemed, Mr. Campbell Kneale is back. Most recently with a solo cd-r we reviewed right here a few lists back (we still have a few copies just ask) and now with another new jam, this one from his alter ego Our Love Will Destroy The World, who dials back some of the sonic onslaught of his recent solo outing, and sculpts something much more hauntingly majestic and noisily raga-like, a deliriously Sunroof-like ur-drone, wavery and woozy, wreathed in dense sheets of undulating noise, and underpinned by an ominous, almost doom-like creep, loping and lumbering, the sound in constant flux, strangely melancholy, but dreamily sun-dappled, even when smothered by grinding static and heaving chordal thrum. Some of the buried melodies sound almost like wordless vox, giving it a strange, almost Amps For Christ like vibe, at times like some noise drenched alien sea shanty, and at others like a twisted remix of some lost Hermann Nitsch aktion. Headphones are most definitely required, and allow you to sink deep into Kneale's wildly psychedelic noise-world, which just might be the prettiest/best thing we've heard from him in a while. WAY recommended, for noise nerds, dronelords, and raga revellers alike! Super duper limited as always, we're maybe the only place in the US that's got 'em, and in the usual fancy Don't Fuck With Magic packaging, an oversized full color sleeve, adorned with original Kneale artwork.

MPEG stream: Hive Hum Golden Remorse

Latest sonic missive from Mr. Campbell Kneale, he formerly of Birchville Cat Motel, now of the much wordier Our Love Will Destroy The World. Released on Kneale's own Don't Fuck With Magic label, Limbless Soldiers Flight offers up another epic half hour plus of Kneale's dizzying kitchen sink composition, assuming Kneale's kitchen sink comes equipped with electric sitars, and malfunctioning distortion pedals, and twisted tape loops, and various mixers and soundmakers and well, you get the picture. We've seen OLWDTW and not only do we have no idea how he makes this stuff, we have no idea what that stuff is he uses to make it. It hardly matter, cuz like all the best sounds, their provenance, while entertaining, and often baffling, are trumped by the pure physical (and spiritual) pleasure of the sounds themselves, letting the music wash over you, and carry you off. And Kneale has proven himself most adept at conjuring up those sorts of sounds, which he does again here, although much of Limbless Soldiers Flight is surprisingly subdued, percussive and rhythmic, almost like the track was constructed from a malfunctioning cd player spinning cracked Muslimgauze discs, that same sort of almost-ethnic sounding rhythmic base, tribal and skittery, looped and hypnotic, those rhythmic tangles are then doused in long streaks of high end skree and percolating sci-fi FX, the whole first ten minutes is super meditative and while certainly a wee bit noisy, more a soft noise. But soon enough the surrounding sounds are cranked up, and the percussion becomes more chaotic, the sound dense and chaotic and noisy, and if we're not mistaken, some fractured metal riffing seems to surface here and there, albeit heavily effected and quickly all twisted up, the sound seems to gradually fracture and blur, the various sounds bleeding into one another, and an underpinning rhythmic stutter / electronic skitter, battling for control, eventually taking over completely with a few minutes remaining, transformed into a strange droned out symphony of cicada like buzz, blown out synth thrum, keening distant high end, and buried percussive skitter, the last minute or two a fantastic and fantastically thick electronic synth drone/dirge/buzz that could/should have gone on for another half hour. Awesome stuff as always. And as always, super limited, we're the only place in the US selling these, and while we got a BUNCH, if past OLWDTW's are any indication, they won't be around for long.

MPEG stream: Limbless Soldiers Flight (excerpt 1)
MPEG stream: Limbless Soldiers Flight (excerpt 2)

For those of you who haven't heard, Birchville Cat Motel is no more. Similarly, BCM mainman Campbell Kneale has also decided to close up shop on his long running Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label. But fear not, 'tis not the end, merely a new beginning. Taking on the name of a recent Birchville record, Kneale will be henceforth known as Our Love Will Destroy The World. Quite emo actually, but then BCM was always pretty emo stuff, especially in the drone / dirge / noise field. And if you throw on the B side of this the debut offering from the newly christened OLWDTW, it may seem to you like has changed. Another glorious BCM style sprawl of looped guitars and processed melodies, layered textures, swooping backwards pulsations, tangled bits of guitar and fragmented chunks of soft noise all blurred and smeared into a gorgeous woozy dreamy expanse of soft focus free noise bliss, would have fit just fine on any of the recent BCM records, if anything, it's slightly more pretty. But flip the record over, and you'll see that maybe everything has changed after all. A weird nineties style Warp Records groove, all skittery robotic funk, with warped gurgly basslines, but also some weirdly out of place strummed acoustic guitars, all buried beneath constantly shifting layers of looped and processed sounds. A bizarre mashup of blissy free folk and alien dancefloor groove that sort of works. Will definitely hit the spot for folks who have been digging the dancier sounds coming out of the Astral Social Club camp. Curious to hear where Kneale takes his Love next. And as is the case with many a 7" single, no indication as to whether it's meant to be played on 33 rpm or 45, we're going with 33, sound a bit more 'right' that way, but you never know, at 45, one side gets all high end and Sunroof!-y, while the other gets manic and spastic and almost skweee-like. Pick your poison.

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

SORRY. One of four new super limited releases from Campbell Kneale's post Birchville Cat Motel Combo, Our Love Will Destroy The World, released on his own Don't Fuck With Magic label, and limited to a mere 50 copies. We're the only source for these in the US, and we got 20 of those 50, which means that most likely these will disappear pretty dang quick. You know what that means if you want one. Ships Cloud Mascara is a half hour psychedelic loopscape, lush and layered, gorgeously textured and subtly melodic, the opening salvo here is a swirling cloud of insectoid buzz, chiming shimmer, fragmented industrial crunch, all manner of mechanical whir and buzz, woven into a softly undulating organic swirl, the sort of thing that we could definitely listen to forever, but the various layers begin to fade away, leaving just a couple, a spare sparkling stretch of glimmery drift, which is quickly swallowed up by thick black buzz, and spread out over a simple plonked piano, and some strange deep voiced mumblings, the black buzz remains super active, constantly shifting and morphing and transforming, changing tone and timbre, drenched in feedback, it swirls around that sonorous voice and that spare piano, before eventually changing shape again, becoming more glitchy, the piano/voice now accompanied by a strange shuffling rhythm, and that squelchy black buzz, haunting and darkly mysterious, mesmerizing and hypnotic, before shifting once more into a lush shimmering dronescape of soft focus layered tones, muted percussion and buried tinkling chimes, all blurred and smeared into a washed out whorl of dreamlike sound. So great. And again, LIMITED TO 50 COPIES, we have 20, and once those are gone, that's really it... Oh, and we do have the other three titles in stock (to be reviewed on upcoming lists): Greychant Glitter Seven, Dogstar White Ka-pow!, and Blanket Universe Duo, so if you want to purchase any of those too, just let us know, they're in the "instock, not yet reviewed" section of this week's list...

MPEG stream: Ships Cloud Mascara

The first proper cd (non cd-r) release from Campbell Kneale's post Birchville Cat Motel project Our Love Will Destroy The World, after a whole mess of lps, 7"s and cd-r's, comes in the form of this sprawling two disc collection on Handmade Birds, and it's precisely the sort of format that best suits Kneale's longform compositions, with any one of these tracks capable of being stretched out into a whole record proper, but instead, Thousands Raised To The Sixth, is more like a sampler, as if every one of these tracks was an edit, culled from a much longer piece, with the tracks lurching into action, as if someone just happened to push record on the machine capturing a bit of whatever perpetual sound making machine Kneale had cooked up, and set running. Like past OLWDTW records, the sounds here find Kneale melding the noisy freeform bliss out ur-drone of his Birchville project, with something decidedly more rhythmic. Not necessarily rhythmic in the standard sense, but more using rhythms to create layers and textures, whether it's the tabla like splatter on "Calculate Unknown Angels", skittering beneath a sky full of groaning buzz and grinding clouds of thrum and whir, or the almost tribal sounding looped drums on "Early Scrawl Like Fuck Academy", that sounds like old school hip hop via African folk, all wreathed in a cloud of glitchy static, and wound around an almost funky looped bassline, and if you stick around, the song eventually transforms into a sort of blissed out krautgaze new age, all propulsive skitter and soaring ur-drone shimmer. "Lime Glacier" is a heady slab of looped and layered almost industrial sounding machinemusic, that manages to make a robotic insect symphony into a dreamlike swirl, while "Forgotten Stormbringer" seems to merge time stretched black metal creep and soaring super distorted shoegaze drift into something simultaneously heavy and psychedelic, a birdsong wreathed sprawl of muted crunch and gristly bliss. "Blindness Black Battalion" pairs martial drumming buried way in the mix with swirling clouds of insectoid buzz, and squelchy electronic skitter, "Ice Reptile Swastikas" slices and dices sounds and samples and piles them atop one another into some sort of super drugged out, weirdly mesmerizing slab of fluttering almost orchestral sounding freeform dreamnoise, and "Cloud Water Assembly mixes dreamlike dolorous piano with thick swaths of heavily flanged and phased white noise, as well as a strange deep voice, and some chittering percussion into what might be the most stately and hauntingly lovely track of the bunch. And that's only a sampling. Odds are if you're already a fan, of OLWDTW or Birchville, you're gonna dig/want this big time. And if somehow, you've been reading the aQ list all this time and managed to avoid Kneale and his glorious din, well, you are in for a treat.

MPEG stream: Calculate Uknown Angels
MPEG stream: Early Scrawl Like Fuck Academy
MPEG stream: Icy Reptile Swastikas
MPEG stream: Cloud Water Assembly

Elsewhere on this week's list you'll find two other releases on Campbell Kneale's Don't Fuck With Magic label (born of the late great and aQ beloved Celebrate Psi Phenomenon), an incredible archival release from the defunct Kneale one man project Birchville Cat Motel, as well as a crushingly noisy new Kneale project, called Tmpls. Then there's this one, which finds Kneale, in his new guise as Our Love Will Destroy The World, teaming up with weirdo Finnish noisemakers Tomutonttu, the one man band of Jan Anderzen, a member of aQ Finnish faves Avarus, Anaksimandros, Kemialliset Ystavat among others. This collaboration is a fantastically hazy bit of tripped out kosmische drift, all long droning tones, strange electronics that sound like alien field recordings, effects simulating a burbling brook (unless that is indeed an actual brook burbling), a lush layered dronescape, druggy and dreamy and hypnotic, but that's only the first few minutes. The track that splinters into something much more distinctly Tomutonttu, a jagged bit of buzz drenched tribalism, processed vox, tangled buzzy melodies, distorted percussion, very ritualistic and dreamily damaged, all wreathed in pulsing feedback and confuisonal clouds of swirling sonic squiggles. The hazy backdrop gradually moves to the foreground, burying the rhythm beneath a wash of groaning melodic buzz, the percussion transformed into a muted industrial crunch, all fading out to a bizarre bit of percolating electronic bloopage, haunting lopped melodies fractured into a dizzying array of swoon and sway, the bloops and bleeps sounding almost like some alien language, all underpinned by constantly shifting whirs and shimmers, only to finally ditch the skree and bloop and transform into a thick droned out drift, all pulsing partial riffage, woozy synths, barely there rhythmic skitter, washed out high end and weird buried sonic mystery, a murky and muddy final movement, gorgeously tranquil and strangely meditative... EXTREMELY LIMITED. We're the only US source for these, and we took fully HALF the pressing, of which we sold HALF before even reviewing/listing, which means we have a bunch of these left, but they will undoubtedly be gone before you know it, which means grab one while you can.

MPEG stream: Untitled (excerpt 1)
MPEG stream: Untitled (excerpt 2)

One of two new mini-missives from Our Love Will Destroy The World, the project of ex-Birchville Cat Motel kingpin Campbell Kneale, who it seems might be positioning his OLWDTW project to eventually be as prolific as the sadly defunct BCM. Elsewhere on this list you'll find a new tape from Our Love, but this 7" matches up Kneale with Bark Haze, the duo of Gown's Andrew McGregor and Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth. The Bark Haze side is pretty fantastic, noisy, but soft noise, and more drone-y than anything, warm processed guitars, looped and layered, thick and textured, wrapped in warped and warbly effects, pretty mesmerizing and dreamlike, at least until the very end, where the duo shut it down with a bit of high end tangled psych guitar skree. Our Love Will Destroy The World have crafted a sound, that takes the divine ur-drone of Birchville, and tosses in more of everything, a maximal swirling assemblage of sound upon sound upon sound, drone-y and noisy, but also space-y and groovy, and tripped out and psychedelic. The track begins with buzzing backwards sitars, stuttering acoustic guitars, keening high end riffage, plenty of muted crunch, a super spare abstract 'beat', definitely employing OLWDTW's more is more compositional strategy, adding layer after layer, which in other hands might end up being too much, but the cacophony is softened by Kneale's deft arrangement. The result is like sticking your hand in a sonic supercollider, your ears being bombarded by a million musical particles, an atomic shower of shards and fragments of amps and guitars and samples and synths and effects. So good!

The impressive Spectrum Spools imprint has been churning out a fantastic array of progressive electronics both modern and vintage, tracing a similar aesthetic thread regardless of time-period. We have John Elliott to thank for all of this expert sound selection. In years past, he might have been best known for his membership in the brilliant kosmische trio Emeralds, but that project has inexplicably been dormant since their 2010 masterpiece Does It Look Like I'm Here. For the previous 18 releases on Spectrum Spools, Elliott himself has been conspicuously absent from his own curatorial vision for the label. That is, until now. Outer Space was once a solo moniker for Elliott to work out various synthmusik permutations that might have detoured from the Emeralds general vibe. Sometimes that detour has been pretty radical (the glorping velocity of an eponymous album on Arbor), others less so (the sprawling zoner trax of Lightyear Demonstrations); and here, Elliott is proudly bellowing "EMERALDS!" in the synth arpeggiation and nebula extrapolation of Akashic Record. Elliott has also roped in a few like-minded types under the Outer Space banner, including Drew McDowell (a former satellite member of Coil!), Philip Whiteside, and Jeff Hatfield. While much of the album tends towards the kirlian glow of the Schulze / Schnitzler axis, the dark-minded chords and arpeggiations found on "October 27, 1989: Bay Village, Ohio" is much more indebted to the Carpenter / Goblin models of '80s horror soundtrack design. This date and place refers to the kidnapping and subsequent murder of a 10-year old girl in Elliott's hometown, warranting the much more bleak vibe of the Outer Space sound. The album's finale "February 8th, 1990: Ashland, Ohio" refers to the time and place that girl's body was later found. Throughout the album, Elliott and crew are in fine form, making this pretty much required listening, especially for those of you who who were smitten by that aforementioned Emeralds record Does It Look Like I'm Here.

MPEG stream: Ellipse
MPEG stream: The Fifth Column
MPEG stream: October 27th, 1989 - Bay Village, Ohio

If you didn't know already, Emeralds synth-advocate John Elliott is one hell of a busy man. Yeah, there's a ton of Emeralds cd-r's and tapes that disappear before we even know about them, and the same goes for a bunch of Elliott's side projects. Outer Space is one of those projects, which has been hailed at times as a solo venture of Elliott's, but sometimes he's wrangling fellow Cleveland jammers to zone out on the electronics with him. Needless to say, this double cassette from Deception Island is the first time we've heard the sounds of Elliott's Outer Space, but it's certainly a very different animal from his Mist project, whose eponymous LP we've managed to stock from time to time. Where the Mist recordings tend toward the airy, effervescent, brighter end of the kosmische electronic spectrum, Outer Space swings toward the darker, grey smears of industrial din through electronic means. Long filter sweeps push the spectral tones and static laced synthesis towards a leaden oblivion via a turgid application of twin Moogs (with Elliott being joined by Jeff Hatfield). Smartly packaged in a jumbo double cassette case... but be careful with it, we have no idea where you'd be able to find another, if it were to slip out of your hand and smash upon the floor. Super limited to 200 copies, and destined to be out of print shortly after we type these words.

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

SORRY.

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

SORRY.

In the same limited (to 150 copies) edition series as the Kawabata Makoto disc reviewed last list, comes this improvised psychedelic excursion by Gravitar guitarist Geoff Walker and friends. It was recorded live "in 'The Roosevelt National Forest' on a beautiful sunny day under the influence of abnormally high amounts of hallucinogens", or so we're told -- certainly the drug

RealAudio clip: Side Show

Another Of, or rather, Ov album from AQ fave/friend Loren Chasse, known to most of you as one of main movers in the Jewelled Antler cd-r psych folk scene. His solo project Of has turned into Ov now that he's been joined by his wife, who is also probably known to a lot of you as Christine, the person in charge of all the mailorder shenanigans here at Aquarius! Small world, eh? She also has long-time Jewelled Antler credentials, was formerly a member of Skygreen Leopards, and currently jams with Whysp. And like we said in our review of the debut Ov cd-r that came out on Jewelled Antler last year, if you're a mailorder customer it couldn't hurt to make her happy by ordering one of these... just kidding, really she's very professional. But, we DO recommend it anyway to all you folks into droning, drifting, field recording/psych/improv stuff in the Jewelled Antler vein, of course. Noctilucent Valleys carries on the slowly-moving kinetic sculpture sound of its predecessor The Moon Is Down, sleepy, darkly dreamy, glimmering (that's the radiated, glow-in-the-dark "noctilucent" part) and chiming and rumbling. Some moments achieve a disorienting dissonance that brings to mind some old Simon Wickham-Smith / Richard Youngs collaborations... which one of this couple gets to be RY and which is SW-S we wonder? Or maybe we shouldn't. And as well, Loren Chasse admits to indulging in some heavy Fripp/Eno worship here, and indeed we can hear the entrancement of Evening Star as filtered through the lo-fi, home-recorded, Jewelled Antler aesthetic on some of these nine tracks... so nice, if you're in the mood for these moody abstract glacial instrumental (what instruments??) lullabies. Kudos to Soft Abuse for putting this out (so it didn't have to be a cd-r like the debut) but we must make one minor complaint: the one page cd "booklet" (not a booklet), though adorned with nice artwork, is just a bit flimsy, y'know. Whereas this music is much more substantial in nature.

MPEG stream: Bone Of The Bone Scholar / Moon Of The Moon Scholar
MPEG stream: Soul Of Swan

This is a monumental occasion, the return of Jewelled Antler, after a seriously lengthy hiatus. This is the first Jewelled Antler cd since the last Of record, The Quartz Pond, way back at the beginning of 2005. It also marks the debut of newly married duo Ov, which just so happens to be sound artist Loren Chasse (Thuja, Blithe Sons, Child Readers, Coelacanth, Of, etc.) , and our very own Christine Boepple (Whysp, Skygreen Leopards Skyband, Kyrgyz, etc.). You know that whole 'beautiful music together' thing, but wow is that the case with The Moon Is Down. The first two tracks are lengthy abstract soundscapes of bells and chimes and gongs and percussion. The amazing thing is that the final result doesn't necessarily sound all that percussive, instead Chasse and Boepple manage to smooth the sounds into a dreamy billowy fog, with tinkling bells, reverberating chimes, it's like floating through a slowed down sculpture garden, huge pieces of metal slowly swinging, and gently rubbing up against each other, sending soft ringing tones to float softly across the gauzy landscape like dry leaves on a summer breeze, underpinned by slow low end pulses, smears of glistening shimmer and a constellation of glimmering tinkles. There are lilting guitars too, but plucked and strummed so sparely, they almost just sound like more chimes. The record shifts gears after that, drifting from one dreamlike sound to another, a rich and exotic tribal landscape, huge swells of crystalline fuzz beneath fluttering flute melodies, primitive shakers and hand drums, and what sounds like forest sounds, drifting in and out of the mix, a world of alien lullabies, super distorted melodies over warm warbling woodwinds and textural percussion that sounds more like the crinkle of plastic, a gentle stream of fuzzy organ, buzzing harmonica, plink plonk guitar melody, pocket full of coins jangle, all bathed in a soft focus shimmer and some Eno-esque melodic ambience constructed from a dense assemblage of notes and tones, rich and oversaturated with tonal color, delicate minimal guitar strum and a mesmerizingly reedy hypnotic high end flute melody hovering in the background. The final track is mostly made up of field recordings when the pair were on a trip to Germany, they were strolling through the quiet streets when suddenly the town's church bells began ringing, more and more, from every direction, a glorious cacophony, here there is a brief interlude part way through, a wheezing organ breathing out a fuzzy melancholy melody, but it quickly drifts away, leaving the record to fade out with just the distant pealing of bells. Wow! Packaged in a beautiful hand printed sleeve, a strange angular crystalscape on the front, a mysterious symbol on the back, each sleeve with a different color ink and different colored paper. Includes an insert with liner notes and an image of some mysterious multi horned instrument on the other. As with most things like this, SUPER LIMITED!!!

MPEG stream: The Chambers Of The Hand
MPEG stream: Spiritual Magnetism
MPEG stream: Devoted Realms

Just months after Oval's recent Oh 12", Markus Popp's first release in more than a decade, comes this, the similarly titled O, a sprawling, nearly sixty track, double disc, which continues on right where Oh left off. In fact, listening to O now, it sounds like most likely all of these tracks were recorded during the same session. They certainly have the same feel. A strange hybrid of past and present Oval, the cd skipping liquid glitchery of classic records like Diskont and Systemisch, and the new, more organic, 'real instrument' Oval. The main instrument sounds like a steel string guitar, sampled and chopped up and fed into the computer and spit out in strange gnarled glitchy shards. When we reviewed the 12", we mentioned that the new Oval sounded a bit like Michael Hedges or Derek Bailey all chopped up and computerized, which still holds true, but that's probably a bit reductionist. As Popp obviously has a keen ear and a deft hand at assembling digital errata into weirdly dreamy popmusik. The opening suite of songs perfectly encapsulates the new Oval sound, while setting the stage for the two discs to come. In "Panorama", over soft shimmery, warm and languid melodic swells, Popp flings flurries of grinding glitched melody, little spurts of melodic tangles, jagged and looped, their echoes and ripples allowed to ring out, as the first track progresses, the background shimmer seems to dissipate as the foreground glitchery becomes more and more clipped, the shimmer only returning briefly alongside the glitch, like a hazy shadow. "Ah!" is a loping bit of looped guitar tapping, while all around, soft steaks of gauzy electronics drift and swirl and swoop, and then in come real drums, another new addition, less present than on the 12", but here, evoking the same sort of post rock vibe, a little bit Tortoise, a little Stereolab, especially with its little swaths of melody and female vocal sounding "Ah"s. On the surface, it's a sweet bit of electronic post rock confection, but there's always so much going on, layer upon layer, little bits of glitch, little shards of melody, mysterious effects, but all perfectly placed. The result, some modern electro space pop, that sounds incredible. "Shhh" takes the same sort of approach but instead crafts the same elements into a hushed lullaby, the tones muted, the track laced with bits of keening metallic high end, drifting over a softly looped bit of mesmer. "Glossy" is another bit of electronic post rock, the big booming drums, shuffling beneath a cloud of constantly shifting notes and tones, clipped and skittery and stuttery, a scattershot spray of electronic sound draped over a minimal rhythmic backdrop. And so it goes, for nearly 60 more songs, most 2 minutes or shorter, many clocking in closer to 30 seconds, all sounding like they were cut from the same sonic cloth, or maybe more accurately, they all sound like micro-movements of the much larger, sprawling epic whole, the electronic post rock symphony that is O, separated into tiny parts, miniature separate segments, every one its own little fragment of electronic avant pop, but all of those parts (maybe not so) loosely connected into Popp's grand masterwork, a whole that is perhaps easier to absorb broken down into its constituent parts, or perhaps not, maybe this is in fact a collection of mini-tracks, the sounds broken down into commercial length segments designed for the modern attention span, but who really knows the method to Popp's madness, all we really know is that O is deliriously delightful, mysterious and playful, and totally fantastic. The vinyl includes extra tracks NOT on the cd (as well as a digital download of all the cd version tracks).

MPEG stream: Panorama
MPEG stream: Ah!
MPEG stream: Shhh
MPEG stream: I Love Musik
MPEG stream: Dynamo
MPEG stream: Emocor

It's hard to believe it's been 10 years since the last Oval record, even longer since Oval's Diskont record, which was and always will be an all time aQ favorite, with its gorgeously languid underwater ambience, burbling dreamily, washed out and so totally mesmerizing, all created from skipping cds, and Oval mastermind Markuss Popp's meticulously handcrafted soft AND hardware. But Oh is a whole other musical beast entirely. Right out of the gate, it sounds more like a band like Tortoise than Oval, big loud, REAL drums, spread out over what sounds like guitar harmonics, as well as a very Oval sounding lush landscape of shimmer and whir in the background, but the point is, it sounds like a band, some kind of electronic avant post rock band. And it's not just the sound, it's the process that has changed, gone are the days of expensive computers and one of a kind plug-ins and software, all of Oh, and the forthcoming double cd, was created on a stock cheapo PC computer, using regular old software anyone could buy, with Popp playing all the instruments, and creating, in his own words, 'real' music for the first time, after years of dissecting and pulling apart sounds, and the results are pretty incredible. Folks looking for more of that classic Oval sound might definitely be disappointed, but will more likely be pleasantly surprised. Imagine Tortoise, or maybe Battles, fed into a computer, and then reprogrammed, the drums still propulsive, but more scattered and skittery and abstract, almost like post rock free jazz, while guitars aren't strummed so much as allowed to ring out, chime, and all around, various bits of electronics and strange processing transform this new 'rock' Oval into something as unique and original as the Oval we've always loved. The A-side is made up of longer, more song-like tracks, while the B-side is a bunch of super short snippets, but short and long alike, these songs are all about melody, and rhythm, and harmony, where as old Oval was more about mood and texture, for as abstract as these new tracks are, they are definitely more 'musical', the A-side playing out like some super far out post rock band, the B-side more like some avant solo guitarist, whose guitar is super processed and transformed into something beautifully alien, and subtly electronic, without losing the sense of the organic, the sound of a proper instrument. The shorter tracks, while melodic, are also very percussive and buzzy, almost like a computerized Michael Hedges / Derek Bailey hybrid, effortlessly slipping from tangled scrape and crunch to softly hazy fuzz to heavily processed almost-folk. It's all definitely a big change for sure, but those old Oval records are pretty much perfect, and impossible to improve upon we think, and these new sounds, these new SONGS, are just as exciting, albeit in their own, obtuse and idiosyncratic, 2010, post 'rock', post glitch, post-Oval fashion. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES, cool fancy jackets with a paste on front image (featuring a still from that birds and guitars installation at the Tate Museum in London), and comes with a download coupon as well...

Oval's 94Diskont still ranks as one of the most gorgeous, emotional and lush and lovely electronic music records we've ever heard. Oval mainman Markus Popp arranging a symphony of glitches and skipping digital sound into something impossibly organic and beautiful. For whatever reason, around the turn of the century, Popp seemingly hung it up, only to return almost a decade later with a new record, and a new sound. With this first new release, an ep called Oh, Popp offered up something that sounded like a proper rock band, gone was the pure glitch and experimental electronic collage, and in its place was something that sounded more like some strange post rock / free jazz hybrid, which weirdly enough sounded more like something that should be on Thrill Jockey. Still rife with glitch and jagged edits, but definitely a strange new direction. Next came O, which positioned itself as the perfect meeting point of this new band-like Oval, and the Oval of old, and we have to say we dug it quite a bit. And now it seems like Popp must be re-energized cuz here we are not more than a year later, with a whole new full length, and yet again, the sound has shifted, in one respect, more toward the warm liquid soundscaping of those early records, but with hint of nineties IDM in the mix, the result is a record that shifts from swirling contemplative glitched out drift, to stuttery, propulsive groove, albeit those grooves assembled from the same strange elements, resulting in a bastardized electronica, that even in that more 'groovy' state, could be no one but Oval. Popp's new sound palette continues to amaze as well, a veritable symphony of clicks and chitters, of creaks and bleeps, strange synth sounds, and what sounds like heavily processed, but proper recorded drums, warm chordal whirs, haunting melodies, lush textures, the sound brittle and crunchy one second, hushed and lush the next, with an attention to detail that's staggering, yet even as meticulously crafter and deftly assembled, the music sounds alive, and emotional, and the more we listen to it, on headphones especially, the more we're sucked in, and utterly transported. Accompanying the cd is a second disc, a DVD, but not to be played in a DVD player, instead, loaded with extras, including videos, a ton of bonus tracks, a TV special, extensive liner notes (which are also in the booklet) from David Toop, Atsushi Sasaki, Minoru Hatanaka as well as Popp himself, not to mention a whole library of Oval sounds, which one can use to make your own OvalMusic, and there's a link in the packaging to the Shitkatapult site, where you can download OvalDNA software as well!

MPEG stream: Quiro (Oval Post-Ovalcommers)
MPEG stream: Kasino (Pre-O)
MPEG stream: Tweakk (Pre_Commers)
MPEG stream: Australasia (Pre-O)
MPEG stream: Credit Line (Post-O)

In the honored tradition of giving credit where credit is due, we must mention that regular AQ customer Richard Ross was apparently instrumental in designing the software that is the basis of Markus Popp's multi-media installation as well as the new Oval record. "Ovalprocess" repesents the innovative software design of Ross and Popp as well as the basis of Oval's new 'Ovalprocess' sound installations. The installation invites the public to manipulate sound terminals in the "Ovalprocess" application, rendering the exhibit a customizable workstation, which Popp will reportedly be taking on tour. The sample-set utilized by Popp has a harsher grit and a more difficult agenda than some of Oval's recent output. Gone are the burbling underwater murmurs, and in their place, scratchy grit and stuttery clicks and cuts. This is actually the Japanese import version of "Ovalprocess" which features 4 tracks not to be found on the upcoming Thrill Jockey release (June 20).

An odd matchup indeed. We weren't sure whether this was a joining of convenience, since both bands are now labelmates, or if it went deeper than that, considering the two groups are sort of iconoclasts, Markus Popp and his Oval project constantly reinventing himself and following his own idiosyncratic path, and Liturgy, whose 'transcendental black metal' has been known to ruffle a few feathers, and whose frontman Hunter Hunt-Hendrix has been outspoken in his academic/spiritual approach to black metal, which seems to be at odds with the true grim hordes, not to mention his distinctly UN black metal pretty boy appearance. Regardless, these two definitely make a good team, at least in terms of splitting a record. We were secretly hoping this was in fact a collaboration, but this is the next best thing. Popp's Oval has definitely moved on from those beloved skipping cd underwater dronescapes we love so much, his return heralded a move toward manipulating acoustic instrumentation, and the tracks here continue in that direction. The main song here is a sort of glitchy electronic flecked post rock, sounding a bit like a more warped and abstract Tortoise, all manner of squiggles and squelches tangled up into the loping rhythm and melancholic strum, the result blissed out and melodic. The following three tracks are brief bits of experimentation, solo guitar it seems, processed buzz, transformed into distinct melodies that sound less like guitars and more like thumb piano or gamelan. Liturgy subvert all expectations and come out with some seriously chugging churning math rock, repetitive and droney, looped and mesmerizing, it's pretty compelling, a sound we love, and these guys nail it, it's not until about halfway through that any black metal riffing comes in, but instead of launching into it, the track slips into something way more minimal, a haunting, pulsing electronic ambience, so gorgeous and hushed, until FINALLY, the song does explode into that soaring and majestic transcendental black metal we love so much, but even here, the blasting is kept to a minimum, the rhythms more midtempo, seemingly a sonic extension of the math rock opening. Great stuff. Definitely has us chomping at the bit for the new full length, and hoping for more of this transcendental math rock! This too was a Record Store Day release, and thus was extremely limited, so not sure if we can get more once this batch sells out. Includes a download coupon as well.

MPEG stream: Kreak
MPEG stream: Untitled