[ aquarius records — Experimental ]

IMPORTANT (Please read to avoid confusion): Some items below may be tagged with a bold, red, all-caps OUT OF PRINT/UNAVAILABLE notice. This does NOT mean that all other items not so tagged are, in fact, in stock — or for that matter, in print and available, though there's a good chance they are. Some folks get confused on this point, and we can see why, so please read this for further clarification and other important before-you-order information. Unlike some mailorder websites, we don't have an electronic inventory system linked to our site, so you can't be sure of what we actually have or don't have in stock at any given moment without asking us — please email our mailorder department for availability status — or better yet, just go ahead and place your order using our shopping cart function and we'll get back to you with the status of each item. If you have general non-mailorder questions, email the store.

Showing results 6551 through 6600 of 9280.

More pastoral beauty from this UK outfit, two discs this time, one of originals, record live and in rehearsal, the other discs, remixes and reinterpretations by Robert Horton, Keith Berry, Gregg Kowalsky and Neil Campbell. The originals disc is maybe the breeziest and airiest to date, guitars are wreathed in reverb, releasing glimmering notes like blowing the white fluff off dandelions, the notes swirling and drifting, hovering over smooth glassy landscapes of warm whir, smeared synth buzz, minimal muted melodies, warm fuzzy pop ambient style drifts, like some free folk band covering The Orb, lilting free folk, the musical equivalent of dewy grass, autumn leaves falling through from a grey sky, sun dappled hillsides, soft slow shifting clouds, the day's first light, the sun making the moist grass sparkle like diamonds, viewing everything through a frosty pane of glass, rendering everything blurred and dreamily indistinct. Well worth the price of admission for that disc alone, but there's a whole 'nother record, four long tracks, each of the above mentioned artists re-envisioning the originals. Robert Horton begins with a sprinkle of angelic high end, before bringing in the lows, a series of warm overlapping tones, barely shifting, all intertwined, into one slow organic swell, a near static melody unwinding in slow motion, over the course of nearly 8 minutes. Keith Berry's take is much more gritty, a gentle whirl of fuzzy streaks, muted into dreamlike murmurs, floating within a delicate landscape of glacial lowend and buried melody. Gregg Kowalsky turns his Rameses III source material into something jubilant and majestic, a sort of softened Sunroof!, all bells and chimes and bell-like tones, a glorious cacophony transformed into something less noisy and chaotic and more dense and layered, almost like the sound of a thousand orchestras tuning up stretched into some strange sunlit raga. And finally, Astral Social Clubber Neil Campbell stretches out Rameses III into some blissed out spacedrone, rife with distorted guitars, long drones, high end squalls of feedback, druggy effects, all slithering and squirming just below the surface, a surface which is a seemingly endless Niblock-like drone, the notes and layers beating against one another creating all sorts of subtle rhythms and strange harmonies, simultaneously static and in motion, a roiling writhing inner space ritual.

MPEG stream: Basilica (Keith Berry Remix)
MPEG stream: Tigers In The Snake Pit (Neil Campbell Remix)

An archival release from UK bliss folk drone combo Rameses III, released way back in, well, a long time ago, apparently long before the band started experimenting with tripped out production and field recordings, hazy washes of distortion and delay, and long sprawling dronescapes. Just like the title suggests, these are indeed Folk Hymns, very intimate and hushed, whispery and stripped down, often just acoustic guitar and voice. Plaintive and melancholy, the guitars lazy and sun dappled, the melodies relaxed and gentle, the vocals a bit raspy, definitely world weary, some of the songs are embellished with bits of extra guitar, slide, super subtle atmospherics, distant buzz and the like, but for the most part this is a gorgeously minimal modern folk record. Rameses III fans should still dig, but folks into stuff like Palace, Bonnie Prince Billy, Iron And Wine, Appendix Out, Songs:Ohia, Supreme Dicks, Alasdair Roberts, Sufjan Stevens and the like should definitely check out. Might be a gateway record to trippier and blissier things. We can hope... We only got a handful of these direct from the band, so no telling how long this will be around.

MPEG stream: Where The River Flows
MPEG stream: Leave It All Behind

Such pastoral bliss is on display within the cozy confines of this ep by the UK's Rameses III. One of the prettier discs we've heard all year, these mostly instrumental tracks (there is some hushed vocals on a couple songs) glisten with glimmering guitar ambiance that had us thinking of a slightly twangier Robin Guthrie or Durruti Column or even the wonderful instrumental guitar albums of Tom Verlaine. Timeless and mellow like a late summer sunrise. Makes so much sense that this was music recorded for a film, as it's so easy to close your eyes and visualize wide open landscapes of long winding roads, huge blue skies and fields of shimmering wet green grass. So so nice...

MPEG stream: Theme 1
MPEG stream: Theme 2
MPEG stream: Theme 3

South London's daydreaming guitar trio are back with a brand new offering of gorgeous electric guitar wash and hazy ambient epiphany, this time on everyone's favorite big time of the small time label, Type. I Could Not Love You More finds Rameses III perfecting their regal, monolithic sound, and we couldn't be more thrilled! Majestic chords and metallic shimmer rise from the blurring horizon, heart-wrenching melody and cinematic richness pour into the sky with a radiant ooze. Pastoral soundtracks stretched out and slowed down into time-lapsed images of rising tides and exploding stars, blissfully huge and epic while always grasping on to a forward moving narrative, through quiet grasslands of fingerpicked, Takoma style acoustic guitar to swelling waves of glistening tones that grow and radiate on the verge of feedback. While even some of our favorite modern ambient music relies on layers and layers of digital processing, Rameses III maintains a certain acoustic integrity by layering strictly live instruments. Electric guitars, electric pianos, and mellotrons produce a warm, ethereal wash that brings an otherworldly depth to their sound, a depth that digital processing could never recreate. Ghostly and melodic, mysterious and heavy, ambient and thoughtful, I Could Not Love You More is no doubt the trio's finest work and a perfect addition to the Type catalogue, highly recommended!

MPEG stream: We Shall Never Sing of Sorrow
MPEG stream: No Water, No Moon
MPEG stream: I Could Not Love You More

You know something is fishy when limited cd-r's start getting reissued as... LIMITED CD-R'S!!! What the heck?! Once makes sense, nothing wrong with a limited cd-r, but reissuing an out of print cd-r on cd-r AGAIN just makes us wonder why the heck it wasn't a real cd in the first place. Especially if it's so good that it requires multiple reissues. That said, at least we can be thankful that this gorgeous gem is still available at all. Originally released in 2004 on Campbell Kneale's Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label Jozepha is a practically perfect suite of songs, glistening and delicate, sweet and melancholy, steel string acoustic guitars, simple slide, even some subtle harmonica, lovely melodies drifting and intertwining, meandering lazily, soft sunlight filtered through the leaves and branches overhead, a cool breeze. A little bit country, a little bit pop, but mostly a totally timeless, dreamy instrumental journey with no particular destination, just floating along like big soft clouds, warm chords swirling like autumn leaves, simple melodies, dropping one note at a time, like raindrops on a sunny day. Quite possibly the sweetest, dreamiest, driftiest, swooniest record we've heard in ages. And frustratingly, this is again EXTREMELY LIMITED. Comes packaged quite smartly in an exquisitely embroidered sleeve!

MPEG stream: For Elsie (Cherry Blossom Falls)
MPEG stream: The Silent Union Goes To War

First proper actual cd full length from this blissy UK free folk crew, after a clutch of (now out of print) cd-r's and a collaborative disc with the North Sea. Matanuska begins as a gloriously blissful late afternoon, sunshiney slab of fuzzy, buzzy, muted pop ambience, sparkling and glimmering, there are guitars, but they aren't plucked or strummed so much as spread like a thick glaze over the speakers. Within this gorgeous sun dappled soundfield, are tangled up bits of found sounds, distant ringing bells, rumbling thunder, as well as subtle layers of drone and shimmer adding mystery and depth to each track. The rest of the record however is not so sunshiney, the mood is much more dark and shadowy, lit by moonlight, rumbles and whirs swirled into lush late night crawls, acoustic guitars draped over slow serene swells of sound, the buzz of steel strings muted and drawn out into simple shimmering ragas, the vibe is definitely sorrowful, melancholy, with minor key melodies drifting through intricate webs of abstract Appalachia, wheezing layered drones spread out like a late afternoon fog, amidst chirping birds and distant bits of conversation, a slowly shifting bit of minimal dreamdrone that brightens subtly as it works its way though the disc. The record finishes up with the sun peeking out from behind the clouds, like that glorious first day of Spring, the birds once again singing, the shimmering sounds soaking up the sunlight, a drifting drone, warm and glowing, a hopeful dreamy sound that blossoms like a flower after a rainstorm, the hushed buzz growing fuzzier and fuzzier, almost like a fading memory. So nice.

MPEG stream: Before The Rains Fall (For Ed Cooke)
MPEG stream: The Great Campaigner

As frustrating as superlimited cd-r's can be, you really can complain when faced with music this dark and mysteriously lovely. You can wish that someone would have the foresight to know when a record was amazing, and thus might press more than 130 copies, but again, we're happy that 130 more people get a chance to hear this record. The UK three piece known as Rameses III have been quietly laboring away for 5 or 6 years now, having released cd-r's on Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, 267 Lattajjaa and handful of others. Their sound is hushed, a whispery drone, disembodied guitars, the sounds of running water and bird calls, bowed strings, shimmering ambience, a slow melodic churn through dark mysteries and warm soft soundscapes. Parsimonia was originally released on Foxy Digitalis way back in 2004, this reissue adds some spiffy new artwork and like we said, gives 130 more people the chance to enjoy some gorgeous late night drone and shimmer. Which actually means 30 AQ customers as this is frustratingly already out of print and we took all the copies the label had left. The sound on Parsominia is just more of what we've come to love about Rameses III, soft subtle soundscapes cobbled together from natural sounds and delicately crafted drones, never better exemplified than on the title track, a nearly 12 minute track of warm melodic swells, broadcast across a spring meadow, birds chirp, families laugh and talk, the wind rustles the leaves, all the while a huge shimmery cloud of muted rumble and soft focused sonic swirl drifts dreamlike through the trees. The rest of Parsimonia is equally drifty and dreamy, incorporating chiming bells, gentle finger picked steel string guitar and mumbly murky feedback into sweet sweet swells of mystical and transcendental sound. LIMITED TO 130 COPIES, OF WHICH WE GOT 30. IT'S ALREADY OUT OF PRINT SO ONCE THESE ARE GONE THEY ARE GONE FOR GOOD (or until some other cd-r label decides to press up 100 more, arghh!)

MPEG stream: When The Bomb Drops, Hold Me Close
MPEG stream: Three Ghosts (U.F.O.)

Most folks probably know Ramleh mostly for their connection to sonic contemporaries and brothers in noise Skullflower, both having emerged from the same scene and both having released records on the infamous Broken Flag label (run by Gary Mundy, the main man of Ramleh). But Ramleh was always its own unique beast, a constantly evolving sonic terror, beginning life as a power electronics combo, before blossoming into something more in line with what might be called noise rock. But the line that marked that shift was never clearly delineated, with elements of pre- and post- bleeding both ways, infusing the group's sound with strange elements that definitely made Ramleh stand out amongst their noisy contemporaries. Hole In The Heart was originally released on Broken Flag as a super limited cassette, in 1987, and is here fleshed out with extra sounds culled from a cassette release called Nerve released the same year, and listening to this again now, we're reminded how ridiculously prescient the sound of Ramleh was, predicting sounds that are all the rage now, from glacial downtuned dirgery a la SUNNO))), to tripped out druggy ambient free noise (about a million floorcore bands), strange post industrial dirgescapes (Wolf Eyes?), to blown out industrial metallic crunch (about a million more bands), it's a sound that is definitely of its time, but also sounds like it could be some super limited microlabel cd-r release of today. Opener "Bite The Bolster", is all slow smoldering drones, distant shimmer, processed ghostly vocals, lo-fi for sure but lush and strangely dramatic and lovely, leading straight into "Do Not Come Near" that does SUNNO))) better than SUNNO))) themselves twenty-odd years earlier, a heaving, grinding crumbling mass of gnarled buzz, laced with streaks of feedback, buried melodies, muted pulses, fractured almost-rhythms, some of it sounds downright dubby, albeit blown out and noise drenched, hypnotic and washed out and crushing. Which is then followed by the epic 25 minute, 6 part "Redcap", a sprawling multi movement noise jam, which begins with a weird bleated doomic plod, only to explode into a squall of swirling whirling hiss and buzz, distorted vox, and wild tangled feedback, not that far removed from Our Love Will Destroy The World or Birchville Cat Motel. Loops, and haunting melodies, the track lurches and lumbers, slipping from all out assault, to dark stuttery drift and back again. Part three is a massive slowed down metallic dirge, processed vocals stretched out into a grinding drone, while the (surprisingly catchy) main riff pulses in the background, eventually splintering into angular loops, topped by a soaring super distorted psych guitar wail. The next part falls somewhere between Godflesh and Wolf Eyes, a crushing synth flecked distortion drenched plod, with billows of echoey vox, a motorik pulse at its core, doomy, but also sort of blissed out. A brief burst of twisted tweaked riffage and what wounds like pipe fights and broken glass, opens up into the final part, beginning with a churning muted loop, and shards of effected feedback, sounding a bit like an industrial WOLD, this muddy musicbox sort of looped melody happening way down in the mix, while a soft cacophony of high end and swooping distorted vox careen and collide in the space above, at first it sounds like a sort of abstract free noise freakout, but the vocals get more and more melodic, and the song takes a new shape a twisted bit of depressive noise pop, a bit like the Dead C, before blinking out. "Spear Flowers" begins as a gnarled tangle of super distorted riffs, again weirdly melodic, swirling and collapsing inward, eventually transforming into a looped hypnotic drug jam, repeated mantra like vocals, crunching grinding electronics, buzz all over the place, loads of feedback, totally mesmerizing, and again, sounding like it could be from today. "Hole In The Heart" is total in-the-red ramshackle pop infused noise rock, like a heavier, more lush Dead C, the main melody sweet and catchy, but slowed down and buried in hiss and buzz, lilting and dreamy for all its abject aggression. "Product Of Fear" is a gorgeous guitarscape, layered buzz, washed out glimmering warmth, humid and haunting, and really really pretty, which leads you softly into "Grazing On Fear 2" which is also pretty, in its own way", but is also a cacophonous blow out, twisted atonal organ, and churning distorted white noise, eventually lurching into a cool skipping, stuttery outro. And finally, the nearly 25 minute "True Religion", an expansive soundscape of processed guitars that again is strangely pretty, very much in the vein of Jesu or Nadja, the guitars blown way out, but the melody is lilting and melancholy, a sort of soft doom, but wrapped in muted crunch and crumbling buzz, before slipping into a strange fractured interlude, before emerging on the other side some sort of slow motion noise pop dirge, epic and triumphant, finishing off in an explosion of grinding white hot / black hole skree. Absolutely essential for pretty much everybody, but specifically, folks into Nadja and Jesu and SUNNO))) and Wolf Eyes and Skullflower, and anybody who likes super heavy droned out noise, pop infused shoegaze industrial metal bliss out, and crushing power electronic dreamdronedirge. Reissue of the year so far, hands down.

MPEG stream: Bite The Bolster
MPEG stream: Do Not Come Near
MPEG stream: Redcap Part II

Much has been written here about the recent work of Matthew Bower and his beautiful improv skree in Sunroof (paralleling the massive proliferation of likeminded acts Vibracathedral Orchestra and Birchville Cat Motel); but people often overlook the fact that he began making music in the early '80s as a part of the "Broken Flag" camp - a loose collective of British power electronics technicians and noise rockers, that recorded under the monikers Skullflower, Total, and Ramleh. While Bower was principally the 'figurehead' of the first two and fellow Broken Flag waver Gary Mundy took hold of Ramleh, most of the recording was done with a revolving door membership. Between Skullflower and Ramleh, the Broken Flag camp had produced a noxious arsenal of sludgy noise rock with grim guitar pyrotechnics, crashing upon pummelling rhythm sections, village-idiot basslines and thuggish percussive blasts. These days, the awe-inspiring Skullflower albums "Form Destroyer" and "Birthdeath" are virtually extinct (even, the CD compendium "Ruins" is impossible to find); but fortunately, the old Ramleh stuff is finally available again via this collection of singles. Hopefully this will help keep Broken Flag from dissappearing in the dustbins of musical history. The formulas for Ramleh (and Skullflower for that matter) were incredibly simple: hammer out a basic rhythm as heavy and as loud as possible, then layer on the angriest and most dissonant blasts of post-Blue Cheer psychedelic freaks outs. Throughout the '80s, Ramleh and Skullflower were pigeonholed as a part of Industrial Culture -- due to their power electronics side projects and associations with Whitehouse; yet as "Too Many Miles" now indicates, this work has much more parallels with the explosive dirges of Neurosis or the incendiary stoner rock of Boris. Really fantastic stuff.

RealAudio clip: Eightball Corner Pocket
RealAudio clip: Welcome
RealAudio clip: Black Moby Dick

It should be noted that the British label Second Layer released a Skullflower album entitled Malediction only to be followed up by a Ramleh album with the title Valediction. Given the cross pollination of ideas / band members / history between these two seminal ensembles of drugged-out, bleakly rendered psychedelic noise / anti-rock, it's hard to read the similarities of these titles as a mere coincidence. The good news about Valediction is that this in NO WAY resembles the regrettable 10" that Ramleh produced in 2009, even as this album is technically the first full album by Gary Mundy and Anthony DiFranco since 1997 (the Ramleh we made a Record Of The Week last time was a reissue of a couple '80s era cassettes). Valediction qualifies as a return to their power electronics aesthetic that they built around the likes of Whitehouse and helped promote through their Broken Flag label, originating back in the early '80s. Here, squalls of hiss, noise, distortion, and compressed low-end rumbles blast forth with a hurricane fury, exhibiting the same misanthropic disdain for humanity as found in the early recordings but coupled with an oozing psychedelic panache that could only emerge from the many years of exacting the heavy psych noise-rock of albums like Works III or Boeing. "Valediction VI" is much more a propulsive track, with a punk bassline chugging through a thick wall of churning distortion while Mundy issues a chanting vocal stream of indecipherable words through a guitar pickup (or maybe it's a megaphone, who really knows with how wonderfully shitty it sounds), ending with a searing chunk of Merzbow-like noise. Awesome.

MPEG stream: Valediction II
MPEG stream: Valediction VI

Another in Table Of The Elements' new series of one sided etched 12"s. A series focusing on the electric guitar. Last time we had Oren Ambarchi, this time we have Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, who starts out his 12" sounding quite a bit like Sonic Youth in fact. Noisy crashing chords, chaotic and off kilter, over a super high pitched sonar like beep, weirdly hypnotic until it explodes into a full on psychedelic skreekout. The second track begins with an amazing tripped out, warbly warped guitar groove, which gives way to a weird high end drone doused in fucked up effects, so woozy it almost makes you dizzy just listening, and reminds us a bit of a fucked up set of bagpipes. The final track begins with an echo-y almost-industrial space-y surfy riff, that shifts suddenly in pitch, creating mysterious melodies, super haunting and hypnotic, but this track too soon gives way to a massive amp blowing, speaker melting chunk of freaked out Japanese style noise-psych. Whew. Pressed on opaque swirled turquoise vinyl. One sided, the other side with a super bad ass etching by Savage Pencil, housed in a thick vinyl sleeve, and of course, as always LIMITED!

It had to happen. It probably already has happened actually, but we love the weird, and the random, and we figured you probably would too. This is a Japanese import, not sure exactly who the artist is, but it's 99 tracks, each a rich lustrous tone, some deep and bell like, some soft and sonorous, some high pitched like a sine wave. All you have to do is set your cd player on random and away we go. A soft, subtle ambient journey, that ends up sounding a bit like Morton Feldman's Rothko Chapel, only a bit though. It also sort of sounds like Tibetan bowls, or chiming bells, or soft ambient Japanese music (which I guess it is). Soft and lovely, and most importantly RANDOM. 99 seperate tones means the number of possible songs is an astronomical 9.33262154 x 10 to the 155th! And that's if you only let each tone play once... So even though the disc is actually only about 8 minutes long, set to shuffle it turns into 8 million billion trillion minutes! Or more! Anyway, this seems to work best if you import the disc to iTunes, set to shuffle and with a decent crossfade, then just sit back and drift off, let the gorgeously soft and shimmery, sweet and serene ambience wash over you.

MPEG stream: One

Stephan Meissner is a mainstay of the Mille Plateaux clicks 'n cuts crew via his work in Autopoesies and his solo projects Random Industries and Random Inc. "Jerusalem" is his latest work, the resulti of four years of gathering and editting sound material, specifically related to the complex and often volatile relationship between Jews and Palestinians in Jerusalem. Meissner's

RealAudio clip: Untitled Track 20
RealAudio clip: Untitled Track 6

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

SORRY. Random Industries is the work of Sebastian Meissner (ex-Autopoieses). For "Selected Random Works," Meissner has constructed 99 very short digitally sharp pieces - mostly of crystalline glitches and stochastic / erratic rhythms, but others have incidental melodies that inconsequentially pass through soap operas. As you can probably guess, the idea is to set your cd player to random and let the machine construct new patterns each time you hear it. There are some post-digital / post-structuralist ideas mentioned in the liner notes about creating non-linear space and the subversion of interactivity through indeterminancy... all fine ideas, but ones that can not possibly be found on this disc. First of all, the random function of the cd player will simply collate the 99 pieces into different patterns... not reconstruct the fluidity of time. A cd player is not a time machine, no matter how many drugs you take. Second, all of the 99 pieces have a very similar timbre (quite charming and glistening), making it impossible to not listen to it as mere fragments of a larger whole. Pay no attention to the theoretical silliness, as this is a fine collection of powerbook glitch fuckery.

As many of the various lysergic pop weirdos and lo-fi audio alchemists move toward poppier and less fucked up sonic climes, it's nice to know we can count on Rangers, aka Joe Knight, to keep the warped alternate dimension FM radio druggy eighties retro pop whathefuck fire burning bright, this latest record another collection of glammy lo-fi pop that in some other world would/could/should have been all over classic rock radio in the future. The opener, in different hands, could very well have been a dreamy bit of blissy pop, if say Big Troubles in their current incarnation had a god, we can picture it all shimmery and crystalline, but here, it's raw, and fuzzy, murky and lo-fi, the sounds careening from speaker to speaker, the effects in-the-red, the sound crumbling and distorted, swaths of swirly synth drifting alongside the buried reverby croon, but all the noise and damaged 4-track malfunctioning can't disguises that Knight definitely knows his way around a pop song. But just so you don't get too comfortable, he follows it up with the 13 minute long ADD short attention span "Zeke's Dream", which does start out all James Ferraro style drug pop weirdness, but then it keeps getting weirder, swirling distorted vocals, the guitars getting crunchier, and then it's almost like someone switched the channel on the radio, the song transforming into more of a slow jam, this one peppered with strange sci-fi streaks, and blown out echoey vox, and then it happens again, and becomes a gloomy dirgey ballad, that sounds like it's melting inside the speakers, or Knight has 6 different people gradually detuning each string on his guitar, and then it happens again, the song becomes a John Carpenter synthscape, that morphs into a bit of krautrock style kosmische musik, but there are voices and electronic squiggles everywhere, but it's not over yet, some police sirens signal the shift to the final movement (?), a warped lounge-y bit of fuzzy groove, that ends in a gorgeous bit of psychedelic tangle. And we're only two songs into the record. But that gives you an idea of what's to come, more twisted druggy pop, more warped home brewed psychedelia, and whatever it is that is born of merging the two. Most definitely recommended for fans of James Ferraro, Ariel Pink, John Maus, and all the other similarly warped lysergic pop alchemists out there...

MPEG stream: Zombies (Day)
MPEG stream: Zeke's Dream
MPEG stream: Sacred Cows
MPEG stream: John Is The Last Of A Dying Breed

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

SORRY. :D-Lem: is a documentation of the live performance Rapoon (aka Robin Storey) gave during the 1999 LFM Festival in Barcelona, and is the closest that he has come to sounding like :Zoviet France: since Storey left the anonymous collective. This dark looping hypnodrone with post-industrial clatter that could easily fit on :ZF:'s "Mohnomishce" or "Just An Illusion" (titles that highlight the best work from :ZF:, just so you know).

Even though it's been a decade since Robin Storey left the seminal post-industrial ensemble :Zoviet*France:, he hasn't really extended himself beyond his last few outings with :Z*F: (including "Just An Illusion" and possibly "Shouting At The Ground"). In

RealAudio clip: Fuck The Wire

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

SORRY.

An album previously available as download, now gets reissued with Robin Storey (aka Rapoon, ex-Zoviet France) revisiting and reshaping the album for cd. Known for his hypnotic productions through tape-loop technology and their digital equivalents, Storey produces some wonderfully dreamy ambient tracks many of which are dappled with a Terry Riley-esque piano minimalism that in turn gets washed out in deep currents of reverb and sonic decay. He also includes a very Zoviet France sounding track in "Dust Rattle" with a recording of a breathy flute that sounds like it was buried in the sand for decades with its haunted notes hovering above a static line of electrical hum, all draped with a gauzy atmosphere. Heartbeat rhythms, eerily manipulated tapes, and hand-percussive ritualism situate themselves amidst the looping ambience, all of which locates Disappeared Redux with the realm of the otherworldly.

MPEG stream: Dust Rattle
MPEG stream: The Outside Shadow
MPEG stream: The Declining Of Lace

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

SORRY. Robin Storey, founding member of :Zoviet*France: and sole proprietor of Rapoon, finds the source material for his mesmeric drone music in the tones emaneted from tablas, Egyptian reeds, digeridoos, and a plethora of ethnic instruments. From the dots of sound he pulls from the instruments, Storey (like his predecent work in :Z*F:) builds lulling compositions with hypnotic rhythmic patterns and rich textures of drifting sound. "Fires of the Borderlands" is one of his most somnambulant pieces and is quite good.

While the Essence Music press release doesn't make this proclamation, any self-respecting :zoviet*france: fan will be able to recognize the source material for Rapoon's From Shadow Sleep. Essentially this album is a remix of the source material taken from two of the finest :zoviet*france: recordings of all times -- the diptych centerpiece of "Ascend The Fall" and "Caught In The Square" found on the album Just An Illusion. That 1990 :zoviet*france: album was essentially a solo record by Robin Storey, who later split from :zoviet*france: rather acrimoniously and formed Rapoon, a project whose work has been fairly hit or miss. True to the old adage: when Rapoon has been good, he's been very very good; but when he's been bad, he's horrid. From Shadows Sleep find Storey in top form, partially because the source material is so exquisite -- back from when he was dealing with convoluted tape loop machines, time-lag accumulators, and the best non-Dub use of delay pedals of all time. These aerated sounds tinged with metallic resonance cobble together swelling masses of hypnotic drift, underscored by a brooding atmosphere. Sonorous pings and aggregates of swirling tape hiss spackle Rapoon's mighty drone which ends up being both unsettling and transcendent at the same time. Given how many are dabbling in the fine art of grizzled dronescaping, the back catalogue of :zoviet*france: should be required listening. But given that nearly all of those recordings of alchemical ritualism are out of print (thanks to that unfortunate acrimony mentioned above), this Rapoon album is the next best thing. Very highly recommended.

The oversized beautiful first edition of Rapoon's "Navigating By Colour" features a dozen oversized postcards of Robin Storey's paintings (imagine Diebenkorn infused with a fictional tribal symbolism), but it's the sound which makes this album perhaps his best work since working with Zoviet France. Not nearly as tinted with pseudo-ethnic percussive elements as his other records, fragments of electronica (a particularly nice deconstruction of LTJ Bukem's archetypal "Amen" junglist break into something nothing not at all drum'n'bass-esque) and medieval chants join Storey's masterful useage of ever shifting dark passages of looping drones.

Robin Storey has always been a very prolific composer, certainly being the engine that pushed Zoviet France to produce so many titles in the '80s. When he left ZF in the early '90s, that work ethic continued on in his solo project Rapoon, which in many ways was a natural outgrowth of the tape-loop errata, the dark ritualism, the grim raga drones, and the ethnomusicological decenteredness of Zoviet France, although with some occasional, perhaps unwise, forays into contemporary electronica. The slippages, echoes, mirages, and reflections of sound through Storey's tape-loop and sampling contraptions have the potential for some truly inspired sidereal atmospherics, with the rhythms being almost inconsequential to the hypnosis that Storey could produce. As we mentioned, Storey has kept up an impressive work ethic over the years but the results have not always been as good as what he was able to do within the confines of Zoviet France. But when Storey is on, his stuff is fantastic; and this collection proves just how good he can be. The first disc on this collection culls from the numerous compilation tracks, oddities, seven inch singles, and outtakes that date to the best period for Rapoon right after his departure from ZF from 1993-1999, with the second disc being a super rare cd-r release from 1997 entitled Messianic Ghosts that was only issued in an edition of 50. As great as many of the compilation tracks are on the first disc, Messianic Ghosts is one of the highlights in his catalogue, drifting along a placid oceanic current somewhere in the North Atlantic while gazing up at the aurora borealis late at night with satellites raking across the summer night sky. The radiant mysteriousness to all of the hypnogogic patterns and echoes is offset by the warm dust of antiquated magnetic tape that collects within all of Storey's loops. Downright beautiful dronemuzik. Limited stock of this Polish import.

MPEG stream: Birethen
MPEG stream: Dust Of Faith
MPEG stream: Messianic Ghosts
MPEG stream: Babel's Tongue

Here's the second volume of reissued rarities from the post-industrial mesmerist Rapoon, mined from the period of 2000 to 2003. At his best, Robin Storey finds himself entrenched in a confluence of tape loops, time-lag accumulation systems, and dub tricknology, which he developed in the early '80s through his work in the pioneering collective :zoviet*france: and continued with as a solo artist under the moniker Rapoon. Since his time in :zoviet*france:, he's often incorporated newer forms of technologies such as drum machines, soft-synth programming, and digital sampling processes. Admittedly, these explorations of newer technologies can appear stilted, in contrast with the fluid cascades from his analogue signal transmission. The bulk of Rapoon's research on Seeds In The Tide Volume 2 hedges toward an analogue sound, with only a few instances where the digital forms dominate the proceedings. The first disc is comprised of compilation tracks, almost all of which were originally released on obscure European compilations that probably didn't have much in the way of US distribution to begin with. The best track is probably the unpublished "Trace Area", which lilts across a liquid-uranium drone of nuclear-decayed sparkle with a plethora of ghostly-dub emissions from some unknown dimension via EVP. The diaphanous dub-ambient networks of echo patterns continue throughout the subterranean murk of "Ep Et Vee" and the quite pop-ambient blur of "Zoom Extract 2". The second disc is a live Rapoon set recorded back in 2000 in Vienna, which was originally a cassette released by Klanggalerie. Here, Storey glides through less of the ambient explorations and more of the rhythmic excursion that veers deep into a cybernetic electronica due to a remix that Rapoon did for the Clock DVA-esque project Black Faction. Super limited stock on this Polish import.

MPEG stream: Your Cheating Lies
MPEG stream: Trace Area
MPEG stream: Zoom Extract
MPEG stream: Live At Klanggalerie

In the wake of so many dreadfully digital concoctions of insipid ambient music from the mid to late '90s, a good Rapoon album was a breath of fresh air. The warmth of his analog processes, tape-loop and delay mechanics, and some good-old cassette grit thrown in for good measure was a gnostic beacon to the days of a post-industrial zeitgeist from a previous decade, or century, or millennium for that matter when it came to the best albums from Rapoon. Any sense of timeloss and historical displacement would be considered a victory for most artists; but for Robin Storey and his long-standing Rapoon project, that's been a common parlance from his work. The Fires Of The Borderlands may be Rapoon's best known album, as it was put out originally through the Relapse subsidiary Release back in 1998. It's long been out of print; and it also ranks as one of his better releases. Here, we've got the Polish 2cd reissue of that album, fleshed out with a remastering job from the original tapes and a bonus disc featuring an hour long performance on KFJC down in Silicon Valley. The album is flush with slow-motion billowings, night-ocean tidal wash, and sibilant blurs, all crafted from Storey's refined use of tape-loops and delay pedals. There's nary a reference to anything infernal or hellish to the hypnogogic cascade of Rapoon despite the album's title. At times, Storey engorges his reverb-drenched loops into a galvanized thrum of drone portent equivalent to the bunker hermeticism of Maeror Tri. But as with most of Storey's work he transcends a gothic nihilism through his application of ghostly dub reflections that could harken to the echoes of some pneumatic lung wheezing in the corner or a derelict monk chanting to a long-forgotten deity. Beautiful stuff. The live in the studio session is equally as good with Storey lining the wash with distant tribal rhythms and wooden flute gestures thrown in for good measure.

MPEG stream: Hollow Flight
MPEG stream: Cires Divam
MPEG stream: Looking... Not Finding

The amount of material that Robin Storey (aka Rapoon) has on the cutting room floor must be huge, even more so than William Basinski who continues to mine his trove of tape loops. Time-Loop Anomalies is another recontextualization of material, some of which was commissioned for several dance performances, with other tracks sprinkled from that pile of tape loops at his feet in an attempt to unify the tracks as a whole. While Storey's post-industrial looping methods are well used throughout the album, there are some truly anomalous moments such as the space-jazz synthesis of the Sputnik remix complete with sullen double-bass lines and Vangelis-like synthetic trumpet notes. The shortwave radio noise collage of "Hybrid Identities" also do away with the hypnotic patterning, but are more in keeping with the radioactive smoldering which haunted much of Rapoon's best work as well as Zoviet France. But of course, Storey is at his best when he sticks to what he does so well: the post-industrial ritualist miasma of disembodied sounds spiralling against its neighbors.

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

SORRY. "What Do You Suppose?" is a conceptual departure from the curatorial duties of Rapoon's Robin Storey (ex-Zoviet France) whose previous releases have been anthropological collections of looping drones culled from fictional non-Western cultures. Sampling heavily from a symposium on the nature of alien lifeforms, Rapoon's previous ambiguity has been anchored heavily in conspiracy theory, but retains his musical expertise in delay happy percussive drones.

Another disc we've been meaning to list for ages. The first release from Rashomon, the new project of Matt Thompson, former and founding member of UK prog combo Guapo. Rashomon incorporates much of what drove the music of Guapo, avant prog, psychedelic rock, soundtrack music, even metal into their sound. But Thompson is approaching this new music from more of a filmic angle, the sounds much more cinematic, which should have been obvious from the name of the project, the record's title, and even the songs, each bearing the name of a classic film. Might be a bit pretentious in other hands, but this is the guy who founded Guapo, his prog cred is solid as a rock, as is his instrumental prowess, and it's obvious listening to these songs. How the music here relates to the various films, is a bit tough for us to comment on since, we're embarrassed to say, we've seen only 2 of the 8 films referenced, but we're certainly excited to check the rest of them out now. The opening track is a dark brooding convoluted space prog workout, channeling Goblin, as well as John Carpenter, into an intense creepscape, all minor key and darkly ominous, with long stretches of haunted house synth and wheezing harmoniums, the drums complex, skittering amidst a winding droneprog jam, heavy on the low-end and the tension building shimmer. The second track is all smokey and jazzy, a minimal shuffle beneath some atonal scrabbly Derek Bailey like guitars, the track soon morphing into creepy sepia tone music box melodies. Over the course of the rest of the record, as the tracks slip from film to film director to director, Bresson to Suzuki, Starewicz to Shindo, Branded To Kill, Lancelot Du Lac, Onibaba, The Mascot, the songs follow suit, shifting from mood to mood, sound to sound, soaring strings, ballroom jazz, bursts of acid fried synth blow outs, tribal almost African sounding drumming, gypsy folk violins, super intense spastic freaked out avant metal damage, deep shimmering drones, long stretches of creaking industrial ambience, haunting bagpipe like melodies, moody abstract drifts, gently strummed guitars clouds of cymbal shimmer, a constantly shifting world of sound, deep and layered, expansive and indeed, so cinematic. Fans of Guapo will want this for sure, but anyone into far out soundtracks, experimental soundscapes or avant prog should definitely check this out as well. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!

MPEG stream: Onibaba
MPEG stream: Blast Of Silence
MPEG stream: A Quiet Week In The House

Raudive's A System Of Objects plays like some lost musique concrete classic, albeit modernized in such a way, that it sounds like it could just as easily be some weirdo noisemaker with a new limited lp on Pan. It's tough one to describe, and as frustrating as that is, it also generally means the music in question is truly unique. And holy shit is this stuff unique. Imagine a latticework of ping-ponging rhythms, built from squelchy synths, echo drenched percussion, garbled voices, various samples, conversations, birdsong, then stir in some Logan's Run style sci-fi bloops and bleeps, all underpinned by softly swirling shimmers, and often driven by pulsing kraut-house rhythms, and you'd only be getting sort of close, but if that sounds at all good to you, how this actually sounds is probably even cooler. It's no accident that this is on the same label that also gave us the warped avant techno of Stefan Goldmann, as well as multiple records of LIVE 'electronica' from Elektro Guzzi. Raudive, aka Oliver Ho, also exists in some strange sonic nether region, the music ostensible techno, or house, or at least electronica, but constructed from unlikely elements, and often shaped into something that most definitely doesn't conform to typical dance music. Check out "Ruins" which sounds like a warped housier avant garde take on Yello's "Oh Yeah", or the horn flecked groovy almost Latin sounding "Visitor", which is laced with what sounds like Japanese voices, and lazer blast blurts. There's the free jazz / fragmented techno weirdness of "Furniture", the sci-fi future-dub of "Carcass", and the spaced out 20th century alien classical weirdness of "Blood And Hair", and the woozy electro of "Summoning". Some of the tracks sound like they could be on Kompakt, others sound like they could be on Hyperdub, but in both cases, that sound is warped and weird, and transformed into something that couldn't possibly end up on either, whether it's clouds of swirling chirping high end skitter, or strange female robotic voices, gristly tarpit rhythms, or prepared piano and sloooooowed down vocals, every track here is a serious chunk of avant electronic weirdness, seemingly designed for some druggy alternate universe dancefloor. So cool!

MPEG stream: Feral
MPEG stream: Slowing Time
MPEG stream: African Wig
MPEG stream: Ruins

We had copies of the first pressing of this for like a nanosecond last year, sold out almost immediately, before we could review it, and then it went out of print... typical Grouper-related release behavior! But, thankfully, it's been repressed, as a new white vinyl/white cover version, and so now, finally, we DO have enough to get it up on the list, so if you've missed out on nabbing one of these so far, now's your chance, albeit most likely a very brief one. So what's the hubub? Well, this is in fact the first release from Raum, a collaborative project between Liz Harris of Grouper, and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma of Tarentel, the two crafting a gorgeous ethereal songsuite, that most definitely sounds like the perfect combination of both sounds. Lush and languorous, slowly unfurling Cocteau Twins like guitar figures, buried beneath soft shimmery billows, what sounds like vocals or maybe flute, drifting weightlessly in the ether, the whole thing gauzey and grainy, softly distorted, opener "In Stellar Orbit" does in fact sound like the soundtrack to drifting aimlessly though the cosmos, a hushed ambient komsische, that gradually fades to a muted drift, before a gorgeous, haunting coda, all high end melodies, fluttering psychedelically in a field of smeared static. So lovely. Another one of those instances where this could have ben the only track, spread out over both sides, and we would have been perfectly happy. The rest of the tracks are shorter, but still feel darkly immersive, and definitely find the duo pushing sonic boundaries. "Blood Moon", is distorted and blown out, the sounds crumbling and chaotic, but still wrapped in softly shimmering sheets of blissed out thrum, distant vocals are spectral and dreamily prismatic, a softly coruscating dirge, heady and hypnotic and weirdly heavy. The title track is a brief interlude, all that noisiness peeled away, leaving just piano and soft vocal drift, haunting and barely there ambience, a sort of moonlit pastoral chamber folk, performed beneath the stars, which morphs gently into "In Held Company", which sounds like it could be a Grouper track proper, the piano still the main melody, those ghostly vocals hovering above, the second half of the track slipping into some moody murkiness, reminiscent of an even more abstract ambient Caretaker or Tim Hecker, before finishing off with "Blood Loss", which manages to sound even MORE ethereal, all weightless hushed sonic whispers, and cooed angelic murmurings, softly smeared into gorgeously indistinct washed of dolorous dreamlike sound. Beautiful. We do have enough to list, but as mentioned above, odds are these will disappear fast, so grab one quick before they're gone, and as with all super limited stuff, one per customer please!

MPEG stream: In Stellar Orbit
MPEG stream: Blood Moon

We discovered this strange split lp via the always amazing WFMU in New Jersey, a freeform radio station we've collaborated with on numerous occasions in the past, most notably we shared a couple showcases at the South By Southwest music conference in Texas, which by the way was no coincidence, and it wasn't just because we're pals, it's also because WFMU constantly and consistently play the most amazing shit. We think we know about the craziest, most underground music, and then we tune into WFMU and routinely have our minds blown. And yeah, we blow their minds once in a while too, with stuff we recommend on our list, but pretty much every time we listen to WFMU, we have to have a pen and paper handy to jot down all the amazing things we need to track down, which happened recently with this here record. One track was all it took to know this was some serious aQ-worthy weirdness, dark and psychedelic, tripped out and bizarre and beautiful, on a label we love too, with a background story as cool and weird as the music itself. So we got as many as we could (it's limited to 300 copies!) but odds are they won't last, so grab one of these quick cuz once we describe it to you, we're pretty sure you're not gonna be able to live without one... The oddly named Razen are a duo, who grew tired of the traditional rock band instrumentation, and decided to each pick a new instrument, one they had no idea how to play, which is how they ended up with a detuned santoor (like an Indian hammered dulcimer) and a drumset assembled from metal plates. And thus was born Razen. They've expanded their instrumentation to include still more instruments they don't know how to play (bouzouki, keyboards, horns), and have invited a handful of guests to contribute an even more impressive and bizarre arsenal of noisemakers, including bagpipe, chalumeau (a classical style recorder), sopranino (one of the smallest horns in the saxophone family), bass recorder, duduk (a Middle Eastern woodwind) and shenai (a North Indian oboe), and this is the result: a glorious, mysterious take on world music, dark and haunting, heavily percussive, cinematic, abstract and dramatic, the label mentions Moondog and Bohren & Der Club Of Gore and David Lynch, but we also hear some Sun City Girls, some martial industrial music, while at the same time the sounds dip into African folk music and Indian style ragas, all rife with drone and buzz and strange melodies, lush textures, frantic rhythms, all filtered through Razen's distinctively non-world music perspective. "Rammelaargong" begins with hypnotic tribal hand drumming, deep low end thrum, fluttering woodwinds, and haunting steel string shimmer, eventually building to a frenzy of howling horns, and frantic drumming, infused with plenty of drone and buzz, and a strangely motorik rhythmic pulse, with everything eventually dropping out, finishing off with a brief flurry of lo-fi percussion. "Razen Zand" begins with a thick undulating raga like drone, rendered in glitchy electronics, before the drums kick in, and then the horns, and the sound is almost like a marching band playing some abstract African folk music, the drums and horns locked into staccato bursts, while in between those bursts, wild melodies are unfurled from buzzing steel strings, the sound manages to be epic, and majestic and HEAVY. "Richel" is all low end blur, and woozy snake charmer melodies, shimmery spidery buzzing strings, a sun baked sprawling raga-like drift, the vibe dark and emotional and intense, very cinematic, wild fluttering woodwinds flit above that mournful snake charmer cry, the track laced with sharp percussive strikes, and thick low end thrums, hummed chantlike vox, and swirls of metallic shimmer. "Rode Hond" too, begins with a deep metallic buzz, layered and lush, and those exotic intense snake charmer melodies, the percussion, spare and skeletal, but propulsive and rhythmic, the song growing more and more intense the drums more frenetic, the horns and woodwinds more tense, soaring and singing out, all the instruments slipping into a hypnotic groove, that we could listen to forever, and fades out way too soon. So incredible, it's only 4 tracks, but they're so intense and detailed and blossom a little more with every listen, you might as well set your turntable to send the needle right back to the beginning, and let it play all night. And that's just the Razen side. The flipside is taken up entirely by a single track from Sheldon Siegel, which is not in fact a person, but rather a group, a Belgian abstract free jazz outfit, made up of cello, drums, percussion, sax, vocals, tapes and music box, and don't be expecting regular old free jazz, they are after all teamed up with Razen for a reason, and not because they're both from Belgium, it's more likely, that like Razen, the guys in Sheldon Siegel approach their music similarly, looking to subvert the old, and invent something new, to create a music that while made up of free jazz elements, is more than free jazz, and what they've come up with does definitely strike out from the confines of free jazz, sure, a quick listen will sound like free jazz on the surface, but as you dig deeper, and the song develops, thick grinding cello drones ground the sound, a thick undulating textural buzz, underpinning, stuttery skronk and little flurries of percussive skitter, beneath clouds of cymbal shimmer. Over the course of the side's 25 minutes, the group shift gears dramatically, slipping into a seriously twisted dirge, with the horns super processed and sounding almost electronic, blissing out, and letting blurts of feedback and spurts of rhythmic sputter spar over mournful cello melodies, sounding super dramatic and intense, after some bursts of almost traditional sounding avant jazz, the sound winds way down, the tapes warble and whir, the other instruments are muffled and muted, a strange landscape of scrapes and thumps, of fragmented melodies, and abstract ambience, before finishing off with a strange stretch of stumbling loping jazz flecked skitter, and swirling droned out weirdness. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!

MPEG stream: Rammelaargong
MPEG stream: Razend Zand
MPEG stream: Drie Mannen Stappen Aan Boord... (excerpt 1)
MPEG stream: Drie Mannen Stappen Aan Boord... (excerpt 2)

MPEG stream: Power Outage

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

SORRY. Hand painted, 30 minutes, lo-fi, member of Sword and Sandals.

This isn't that much different than the Tsurubami disc also just released by Strange Attractors, in large part because it's another two long tracks of spacey psych guitar jamming featuring Kawabata Makoto of Acid Mothers Temple! So get 'em both, is what we're saying. Compared to the Tsurubami though, this is more late-night and eerie. Rebel Powers sees Kawabata joined by guitarist David Keenan of Telstar Ponies (whom you may also know from his rock criticism in The Wire). Also in the band is AMT vocalist/synthethist Cotton Casino and original AMT drummer Koizumi Hajime. They went into a London studio back in '98 during an AMT UK tour, and now these black pools of sound they created finally seep into view, with further touring/recording promised. Rebel Powers is all about nightmarish and indistinct psychscapes, Keenan adding some more insistent, nay sinister, bent-metal guitar figure repetition, while Cotton's voice wordlessly haunts the Rebel Powers chapel. Their improvised droning is enhanced by Kawabata's occasional sarangi bowing. As with Tsurubami's new one, we can't help but add Rebel Powers to the ever-growing pile of AMT-related successes.

MPEG stream: We Are For The Dark

You gotta love Tom Recchion. What a totally unique and idiosyncratic music maker. One of the founding members of the Los Angeles Free Music Society, Recchion takes his music quite seriously, but seems to have an incredibly goofy sense of humor, that most definitely informs his music, but without turing everything into a joke. Recchion's music is fun and playful, goofy and garrulous but at the same time just a little bit dark and creepy. I Love My Organ, even though it's only being officially released now, was actually recorded in the mid eighties (with some more recent remixing and a couple contributions from David Toop!), and is a dizzying hodge-podge of carnivalesque lounge music, bleeping blooping exotica, dreamy droning Krautrock style ambience and all sorts of abstract synthesized sounds, weird throbbing rumbles, ping pong like minimal percussion, goofy Wooly Bully meets Benny Hill horns and some sublimely gorgeous droney shimmer and chordal drift. A look in the booklet offers up more of Recchion's bizarre musical and non musical world view, songs dedicated to Terry Riley, Ferrante And Teicher, Brian Eno, William Basinski, even Jad Fair, a list of ten easy to make sound effects, complete with the items you'll need and directions to follow, and then quotes from Mr. Rogers and Herman Munster! Not many folks can balance the silly with the serious, at least not without one or the other being robbed of its effectiveness, but Recchion manages quite nicely. A truly weird and wonderful record.

MPEG stream: I Love My Organ
MPEG stream: Terry Riley In Rome

Tom Recchion has been making weird and wonderful sounds since the 1970s as one of the leading figures in the Los Angeles Free Music Society. In a constant rotation of projects and bands, he cranked out ear-damaging skree, zonked tape collages, anti-musical comedies, and all sorts of other illogical strategies for making fucked-up sound. Compared to pretty much everything he's done previously, Proscenium - his first record in nearly seven years - is downright sensible; and one that fits neatly alongside all of the other releases from Elevator Bath, a label which specializes in rarified dronemuzik and oblique ambience (e.g. Keith Berry, Matt Shoemaker, Rick Reed and even our own Jim Haynes). The album began as the musical accompaniment to Janie Geiser's play "Invisible Glass" itself an adaptation of an Edgar Allan Poe short story, with Recchion attempting to craft a moody atmosphere that slowly creeps into the audience's unconsciousness. Strange melodies emerge through a shimmering hum at the onset of the record, sounding like an underwater version of Aphex Twins' Selected Ambient Works Volume II. Recchion smudges everything beyond recognition, although the thrumming of a piano does seem to peek from behind the veil of his aqueous mystery. Dense applications of reverb are common throughout, as is a strange echoing ripple that has a funhouse, helter-skelter vibe - probably the only commonality with anything from LAMFS! Whatever melodic phrases Recchion might have started out with have blurred into oceanic swells of nocturnal droning that by the end of side two morphs into an algae bloom of dread. The tracks on the seven inch are somewhat different from what's found on the lp, with a Dada-inspired splatter of haptic rhythms on one side; and a slow-crawling calliope slashed with sporadic gasps of noise on the other. While the seven inch follows Recchion anti-aesthetic through LAFMS, the ambient horror of the lp tracks are the true prize of the set. Think Basinski. Think Koner. Think Nurse With Wound. And, then you're getting close to where Recchion might be coming from.

MPEG stream: The Mesmerized Chair

Full length number two from epic post rock soundscapers the Red Sparowes. Sharing members with Isis, these guys tread similar sonic ground, although where Isis take their sound in a decidedly sludgy more metallic direction, The Sparowes move in their own, toward a much mathier, almost prog rock sound. Each track is massive in scope and composition, lengthy almost krautrock grooves lead into spacey ambience which lead into heavy crunchy "choruses". Riffs repeat and loop and slowly transform, multiple guitars weave in and out of the minor key melodies, creating dense harmonies, and strange rhythmic counterpoints to the motorik rhythms. Red Sparowes are another band where it's hard to pinpoint just exactly what it is that makes them sound different or special, but that something is most definitely there. Sure it's slightly metallic, it's most definitely math rock or post rock. It's big and brooding, minor key and slightly melancholy, the guitars are big and thick, the drums simple but propulsive, but each one of those parts is transformed by the way they are assembled, the arrangements, the songwriting, imbue each of those elements with extra emotion, extra power. Which makes the heavy parts that much more riffage, the ambient parts that much more spacey and drifty, the sad parts that much darker. Obviously if you're into Isis and Aereogramme and Mogwai and all of that sort of stuff you'll for sure love this. But even folks who haven't been blown away by those bands should check these guys out. Super emotional, incredibly epic and grand, instrumental rock of the highest order. Like a more metallized Sigur Ros or like a dreamier dronier, WAY less metal Neurosis. MPEG Stream: "The Great Leap Foward Poured Down Upon Us One Day Like A Mighty Storm, Suddenly And Furiously Blinding Our Senses." [/audio/redsparerhgreat.m3u] MPEG Stream: "We Stood Transfixed In Blank Devotion As Our Leader Spoke To Us, Looking Down On Our Mute Faces With A Great, Raging, And Unseeing Eye." [/audio/redsparerhstood.m3u] MPEG Stream: "Like The Howling Glory Of The Darkest Winds, This Voice Was Thunderous And The Words Holy, Tangling Their Way Around Our Hearts And Clutching Our Innocent Awe." [/audio/redsparerhhowling.m3u]

A killer slab of ultra minimal, low end soundscapes, from this LA noisemaker. Tangled shadowy shapes twist and slither, stretch and contort, a constantly shifting lowercase world of speaker destroying rumble and strangely sibilant buzz. This is thick and crunch and heavy and will probably cause damage to your speakers, but it's all muter and muffled, dragged down into the dark, so instead of being an all out noise assault, it's a beautiful and serene crawl through some black sonic underworld, ambient, but subtly harsh, dreamlike, but ominous and mysteriously fucked up. The sound can be cavernous one second, machinelike the next. Imagine the still warm corpse of Wolf Eyes, laid out on the slab, sliced wide open, all manner of microscopes and imaging devices trained on the various, still pulsing inner workings of the beast, well, the sound being picked up by the most sensitive of microphones, placed delicately within the carcass, are picking up the very sounds captured here. Packaged in gorgeous chipboard sleeves, one side with a pasted on image, the front adorned with a simple symbol in metallic silver ink. Each one different. Really striking. Pressed on super thick vinyl, with a full color printed insert. LIMITED TO 330 COPIES!

Oh man, does this hit the spot. Total old school, abject, cold and clinical, noise drenched industrial, a symphony of rusty old machines, the cranks and levers operated by rotting corpses, this crumbling sound factory situated upon a blackened expanse of charred remains and ruined cities, the voice a reverb drenched howl, a totally hypnotic rhythmic clatter creates the skeletal framework, while all around, clouds of hiss and buzz are woven into slow shifting almost-riffs, lumbering, stumbling, dark and dour, shot through with barely there streaks of melody, a brief bit of cinematic apocalyptica, the flip side, features another lurching steam punked Skinny Puppied rhythm track, this time pelted by bits of glitch and fuzzed out sine waves, a female voice speaks over the top, telling tales of violence and mayhem, in a calm measured tone, a strange contrast to the looped decaying sprawl of Redrot's harrowing soundscapery. Deep processed vocals are morphed into thick undulating tones, fragmented electronics wrapped around a frizzled underwater pulse, a swirling backdrop of creak and crunch and whir, the motorik lo-fi robotic beat in lockstep with a growling alien commentary. Awesome stuff for sure. So awesome in fact, that we just listened to this like 3 times in a row, and we're only really stopping now because we have other reviews to write... LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!!

Redrot is one of the psycho-electronic projects of midwestern malcontent Ryan Oppermann who graced us with the bleakly industrial music of Klinikal Skum in the recent past. Previous Redrot recordings have gaped with a death-industrial pall, thrumming with macabre noise and oppressive atmosphere. On Drowning amplifies those bad moods with much of the rhythmic structure that Oppermann delivered on the Klinikal Skum tapes. The tinny drum machines, power electronic styled throat clearing vocalizations, and deliberately atonal phrases of synth blorp may bring thoughs of Wolf Eyes. And it's certainly true that Oppermann pecks his notes with a similar ear to Maurizio Bianchi in setting down discomforting juxtapositions of seering synth tones. But the pace is far mor manic and propulsive, presenting a cybernetic brittleness to what Oppermann has crafted and lending much more of cracked mirror comparison to Youth Code's recapitulation of the more aggressive parts of Front 242 and Skinny Puppy from say 1985. On Drowning is quite a harrowing piece of retro-garde electronics and bad intentions. Super limited pressing, and it already appears to have been discontinued at the label. Restocks are unlikely, we're afraid.

MPEG stream: On Drowning
MPEG stream: Serpentine

We had to remember one of the most important rules we learned as kids when it came to this record. Don't judge a book by its cover. Man, was it hard not to. When we first heard that Lou Reed made a record for meditation that was mostly being sold and marketed at new age stores it got lots of eyes rolling and lots of jokes flying around here. But then we tried to listen without prejudice, per the above mentioned rule, and guess what? Truth be told, this is really pretty damn good! Once you get past the packaging and non-musical baggage that comes with this disc of "New Age" music, you remember that if anyone has the right to make a record of drones it's someone who was in the goddamn Velvet Underground, as they were one of the first bands to really introduce the drone into (semi)mainstream rock and pop. Originally recorded by Reed for his own meditation and Tai Chi practice, many of his friends heard it and asked him to make copies for them. Much like David Bowie's instrumental work in the '70s mostly given to friends, it's easy to hear that these are sounds coming from a place that has nothing to do with wanting to make a hit record, but instead come from a deeper place. And that's a very good thing considering he hasn't made much music in recent years that we've been too excited about. If this record came to us as a mysterious cd-r with stark packaging and a cultish name (like many AQ favorites do!) we probably would have been lauding its meditative drones and intense ambience. This could be something you could almost imagine coming out on Yarn Lazer or Root Strata or Faraway Press. Even when the music seems peaceful there is still sonic tension underneath, which really does set this apart from most meditation music. In the end it's just a really good record filled with deep drones that allow the listener to close their eyes and ignore the outside world and go to a different state. So nice.

MPEG stream: Move Your Heart
MPEG stream: Find Your Note
MPEG stream: Wind Coda

Once again this reissue has fallen into our hands. Recorded in 1975, Lou Reed created some of the most brutal, blistering guitar noise and feedback ever heard. A four track sonic, subversive assault. The best and/or worst record in the history of rock & roll. Of course it depends on who you ask... we find it rather beautiful. Then again, several of us also own Merzboxes. And this probably *inspired* Merzbow. As well as pissing off legions of Reed/VU fans.

MPEG stream: Metal Machine Music, Part I
MPEG stream: Metal Machine Music, Part IV

Rick Reed isn't really doing himself any favors by calling this anthology of his electronic compositions 'Celestial Mudpie', but if you have the opportunity to sit down with the man for a drink (and you really should!), the title suits his personality perfectly. A Texas gentleman with a bawdy side to match his ever charming demeanor, Rick Reed does not exude the bookish reclusiveness one might attribute to an avid consumer and composer of delirious if occasionally claustrophobic smears of analogue electronics fashioned after the likes of Klaus Schulze, Arcane Device, and Conrad Schnitzler. It's a little strange that Reed has been off the radar here at Aquarius for all these years, as he's released a handful of recordings through Ecstatic Peace, Elevator Bath, and Beta-Lactam Ring. He's also developed a close working relationship with the avant-garde filmmaker Ken Jacobs, having scored several soundtracks. As relative newcomers to his work, we were flabbergasted at how good Reed has been over the years thanks to this fantastic compendium of works that date back from the past 2 decades. His primary instruments are Moog, sine-wave generator, and shortwave radio which must go through innumerable analogue treatments and filters before entering the domain of the digital workstation. Rarified atmospherics and spectral transmissions dominate his compositions which can start as hypnotizing electronic meditations on the music of the spheres before accelerating to a dramatic crescendo of blistered vibration, gaping drones, and some Broken Flag teeth gnashing menace found on the earlier works. He's included both tracks from a recent picture disc LP released on Elevator Bath (for those not inclined to vinyl), as well as several of those excerpted soundtracks for Ken Jacobs, plus some works dating back as far as 1986. Each of the three discs come with a hand-painted piece of artwork of densely sprayed paint, that somehow does not reek of petrochemicals. Kudos to Reed for not stinking up the joint. And kudos to Reed for such impressive work.

MPEG stream: Dreamz
MPEG stream: Hidden Voices Part 1
MPEG stream: Vermillion

Somehow, we missed this one when it came out a few years back; but with Rick Reed's recent self-release from his archives dating back some 25 years, we figured you might also be as intrigued as we are in some of the other work that didn't make it onto Reed's massive and brilliant compendium Celestial Mudpie reviewed here a couple lists back. Reed hails from Texas, where he has been tinkering around with Moogs, shortwave radio, tone generators, and field recordings to construct his weighty drones. The title track on Dark Skies At Noon is an alternate version to a soundtrack that Reed composed for Ken Jacobs' film Seeing Is Believing. Jacobs, who has worked with Reed on numerous occasions over the past decade, had also used this same score for his Mountaineer Spinning film as well. The piece itself is grounded upon an industrial strength hum, the kind you would expect to hear in a nuclear power plant or some giant particle accelerator. Pierced tones, scabrous noises, and pure frequencies that have set up some unsettling standing waves here in the weirdo architecture of Aquarius all elegantly wax and wane across the surface of Reed's droning subtrata. Seeming infinite in slow-boiling currents of electricity and strangely psychedelic at times, somewhat like a cross between Emeralds and Troum. The second piece is a collaboration with former AMM member Keith Rowe, dialing in his shortwave to gather bits of static and garbled transmissions set against Reed's crawling set of analogue electronic drones. For all of Rowe's dynamic interplay of texture and noise, this is clearly a piece driven by Reed's sensibility. The finale to the album is the aptly named "Ghosts Of Energy" with its tone-bending vibrations, eerie wails of Forbidden Planet-esque electronics, and moire-patterns of sound grafted from dissonant frequencies. Altogether, this makes for an excellent collection! Elevator Bath tells us this is limited to just a hair over 300 copies.

MPEG stream: Dark Skies At Noon
MPEG stream: Ceremony
MPEG stream: Ghosts Of Energy

In recent weeks, we've ballyhooed the career of Rick Reed, the Austin based composer of grimly psychedelic electronics; and now we've gotten a hold of a few copies of the picture disc he produced for Elevator Bath. Both of these track appeared on Reed's Celestial Mudpie anthology, just so you don't end up buying the same two great pieces of lazer-tone emissions... unless of course, you want to. As we've mentioned before, primary instruments are Moog, sine-wave generator, and shortwave radio which must go through innumerable analogue treatments and filters before entering the domain of the digital workstation. Rarified atmospherics and spectral transmissions dominate his compositions which can start as hypnotizing electronic meditations on the music of the spheres before accelerating to a dramatic crescendo of blistered vibration and gasping drones. Both "Dreamz" and "Blue Polz" find Reed at his best, somewhere between Emeralds steamrollered into a tectonic rumble, that Omit / K-Group collaboration of rasping analogue synths achieving LaMonte Young mantra status, and the classic ambient psyche-drone smear of Conrad Schnitzler and Cluster. Nice!

MPEG stream: Dreamz
MPEG stream: Blue Polz