[ 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 6751 through 6800 of 9280.

1996 uber-group recording featuring Tom Cora on Cello, Lux Ex on Bass, Phil Minton on Vocals and Michael Vatcher on drums. One of those rare and amazing efforts that continues to impress me every time I hear it. I guess it takes heavyweights such as these four, with broad backgrounds in music to produce such a unique album that is both completely out there skronk, and retaining catchy songlike membrane to every piece. Highly recommended. Includes a cover of Harry Partch's "The Letter."

A new cd-r from yet another mysterious New Zealand noise drone outift, the only thing we know for sure is that one of the Invaders was also at one time one of the Double Leopards! And it sounds like it. Two twenty something minute tracks of murky lowend explorations, wide expanses of barely there thrum, distorted fuzz, simple random percussive clomps, amp buzz, random guitar twang and pluck, occasional mournful melodies, simple strumming, and lots of random sonic clutter, voices and footsteps, shuffling and flitting about. Sounds a bit like the Dead C setting up, or Birchville Cat Motel breaking down. Drifting and meandering, haunting and intimate, creepy and weirdly pretty. SUPER LIMITED AS ALWAYS!! NOT SURE WE'LL BE ABLE TO GET MORE WHEN THESE ARE GONE!

MPEG stream: 28.02.04 None Gallery

This new vinyl (+cd) release from the consistently winning experimental label Utech comes from an artist we weren't previously familiar with, by the name of Frank Rosaly. We think he's based in Chicago, but aren't even sure about that. And it's a little hard to describe his music, as documented here, but we'll try, 'cause as soon as we heard this record, we could tell it was right up our alley. There's two long tracks here, about 15 minutes per side, apparently created/composed using a highly conceptual process, yet the results are much more than of academic interest, they're quite compelling and original, we think any adventurous listener will agree. Utech somewhat drily describes the genesis of Centering And Displacement thusly: "A body of improvised source material was collected, segmented and organized by a simple chance operation. These segments were then orchestrated into a sound program and arranged by order of the strict composed form. At times, the score also regulated post-recorded effects to manipulate the original material. As the material was edited, it was divided into six separate channels (three stereo tracks). Each pair of channels was transferred to a cd and each was played on three cd players simultaneously, creating a simple six-channel sound installation� the dense six-channel score was revised and reduced to two channels (one stereo track), which is now the final, preferred version." Ok, but what does it sound like? How about a gamelan (or a recording of one) that's been all crumpled up, then unfolded and stretched out? Or, less fancifully, like a one-man electro-acoustic improv session on drums, percussion, and electronics (which IS what this is), subjected to the operations described above, in such a way as to strike a balance between abrasive, abstract textures and more hypnotic, if unusual and damaged, quasi-rhythmic soundscapes. Like we said, right up our alley! It begins, on side one, with a low thunderous rumbling, like a magnified burst of record crackle. And such startling, ominous blown-out barrages of distortion continue intermittently throughout this first track, sounding like the breath of an expiring monster, sighing heavily amidst tinkling percussive jumble and crash, with pauses for silence� these tumbling spasms then steady and flow into what sound like masses of clattering chimes, a soundscape above which a recurring three-note motif (on synth? vibraphone?) is heard. That, in fact, reminded us of the incredible soundtrack to the 1971 movie Klute, sinister and suspenseful. There's electronics that sound like bird-twitter here too, and it's all very atmospheric, far from a mere experimental compositional exercise. The second side/track continues with that atmospheric vibe, being a twilight soundscape of distant airplane engine drones, with more up-front textural scraping and bell ringing tones, that eventually coalesces into a softly thrumming humming pulse, over which a very gentle clitter-clatter of percussion drifts. Quite lovely and mesmeric, it is. The clank and rattle builds towards the end, as does the pulsation, becoming more insistent and dramatic, but still relatively mild as such things could be imagined, before a sudden whistling finale. Inspired (we're merely guessing) equally by '60s/'70s out-there free improv (stuff on FMP, BYG) and also Industrial music's infamous "pipe-fighting" techniques, Rosaly's music has moments that may remind you of No Neck Blues Band, of Will Over Matter, of Supersilent, of Pierre-Yves Mace, of Aufgehoben, and other disparate and unusual and sometimes counter-intuitive but fascinating music-and-noise-makers. This is really pretty great. And, LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Note, the lp comes packaged with a compact disc version of the album as well, which is always a nice touch (much preferable to a mere download card, we think).

MPEG stream: Centering And Displacement part 1 (excerpt 1)
MPEG stream: Centering And Displacement part 1 (excerpt 2)
MPEG stream: Centering And Displacement part 2

As if we weren't totally blown away by their first release, Aja Rose and Gabriel Saloman (who is one half of the late Yellow Swans) have once again conjured up some of the most shimmery and gorgeous lo-fi ambience around. Two sides of live collaborations recorded last year in Portland, distant voices and guitar passages ring out, the faint sound of haunted bell towers ringing miles away, glowing horizons warm with evening's fading light. Really captivating stuff here, mysterious clanging and ominous reverbed hush, a band of ghost gypsies passing through the darkened woods. So good. Too bad it was LIMITED TO 50 COPIES. Of which we have about 8 left. Gorgeous handmade packaging you sort of have to see to believe. Each one hand numbered. Apparently this will be reissued on vinyl later this year, we'll relist it then and give it a bit more love and more of an extensive description, for now, quickest on the draw gets the prize...

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.

MPEG stream: Singing Tower
MPEG stream: ...The Dot And The Line...

We were quite lucky to have Jack Rose perform an instore last year, and it was amazing to see these steel string ragas performed live. We were all mesmerized by his unique take on Fahey-esque neo-Appalachia. It's unbelievable how in the right hands just a guitar can conjure up such a massive sound and so much emotion and Mr. Rose is definitely one of the finest examples currently practicin'. If you're familiar with the music of John Fahey you have a good idea of Rose's basic sound (he even covers Fahey's "Sunflower River Blues" here), but his years spent in the free drone group Pelt has definitely informed not only his guitar playing, but also his song writing. Some of the tracks on Kensington Blues are straight up stompers, sounding like they have to be standards, foot tapping hand clapping classic backwoods frontporch folk/blues. But others are dark and brooding, with intricate finger picking, producing all manner of buzzing overtones, and subtle harmonic coloring. Those are the tracks where Rose shines the most, when he digs deep, and explores the darker side of this music, and lets the notes stretch and buzz, sliding and scraping, letting notes drift and hover and eventually blur into shimmery drones and hypnotic stretches of cycle and repetition.

MPEG stream: Cross The North Fork
MPEG stream: Cathedral Et Chartres

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

SORRY.

BACK IN PRINT! Hard to know what to write about this record. It's just so personal and lovely, dark and mysterious, and darn near perfect. Appalachian guitar stretched into droning, dense ragas, steel strings that go from delicate melody to prickly nests of intertangled notes and buzzing overtones. Always completely hypnotic even at its most fierce, and always intense and compelling, even at its most ethereal. Rose (also a member of drone rockers Pelt) has definitely become one of our favorite guitarists and record after record he never fails to blow us away.

MPEG stream: Black Pearls From The River
MPEG stream: Tower Of Babel

A super duper limited 7" from one of our favorite new proponents of the post Fahey neo Appalachian sound. BUT, on this here 7" slab, Rose comes at us from a whole different angle. And we're digging it. This single finds Rose at his most dense and atonal. Each track is an angular tangle of buzzing steel strings, a swirl of non-melodies, dark and droney and super abstract. Sometimes the playing gets wilder and wilder and it almost sounds like some sort of steel string battle to the death, buzzing lengths of steel whipping wildly back and forth, a cloud of dense reverberations swallowing the fighters whole. Really haunting and a little bit difficult, but also strangely beautiful. Pressed on extra thick vinyl, housed in swank heavy duty sleeves. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, each single hand numbered.

By now, Mr, Jack Rose should need no introduction. Numerous releases on Eclipse, VHF, Tequila Sunrise, tons of amazing shows (including a killer instore right here at AQ) every performance totally spellbinding, with a repertoire that runs the gamut from classic bluegrass to drone drenched ragas to neo-Appalachia and probably to some styles of playing he just made up. In fact Rose was seemingly the first to not just ape the music and style of John Fahey, instead choosing to create his own sound and style, due in no small part we'd guess, to his continuing membership in drone-raga ensemble Pelt, and that raga vibe most certainly informs all of his playing, which just might explain why we find Rose so much more interesting than many of his contemporaries. This disc collects a handful of studio recordings recorded over the last year, featuring Rose exploring the slide guitar, and as always, it's positively divine. From twangy countrified bluegrass breakdowns, to dense tangles of elaborate finger picking, his slide so slipper and fluid, totally emotional and moving, every song so complex and technical, but at the same time so goddamn simple and beautiful. The highlight would have to be the 12+ minute "Spirits In The House", with its amazing harmonics over a warm backdrop of buzzing low end overtones. The main melody so completely captivating, shimmery and wavery, sounding very Eastern and very much like a sitar, the perfect blend of wistful bluegrass melancholia and buzzing Eastern style raga. So gorgeous. And as with pretty much every Rose record, absolutely essential. Limited to 1000 copies. Packaged in a gorgeous diecut letter press sleeve with an old photo inserted into the cover. So nice!

MPEG stream: Levee
MPEG stream: Revolt
MPEG stream: Sy Louis Blues

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

SORRY. Violinist/samplerist Rose teams up with turntablist/guitarist Otomo in a parody of consumer culture, the "Japan/China Point of Sales Tour". Guests include Sato Michihiro, DJ Mao, DJ Car House (Otomo), Hoppy Kamiyama, etc.

EM Records strikes again! This time, the always-interesting Japanese (mostly) reissue label brings us a disc of pioneering experimental electronic music (a la the Barton Smith set highlighted last list) that's both obscure and unusual. What do we mean by that in this case? Well the album's title isn't any sort of metaphor. Composer/performer David Rosenboom is credited with playing "piano and brainwaves" on several of these pieces. Actually they ALL feature brainwaves, not always piano. Real live brainwaves, captured and processed electronically. It's a '70s sorta hippy/new age/sci-fi musical concept brought to fruition: bio-feedback as a tool for making electronic music! A cool idea that Rosenboom has made work -- if you're a drone-head it's great listening!! Long wavering drones, spacey-synthy-sounding, shimmery beautifully, calm and just a bit spooky. Serene, blissed-out zwooshing electronic gurgle. The piano playing is in minimalist, pulsing style, and one of the track adds drifting vocal samples, almost like thoughts reconstituted from the brainwaves themselves. Three of the tracks here, pieces from 1971, '72, and '74, were originally released on vinyl by the Canadian label A.R.C. back in 1976. This 2006 compact disc edition adds an extra 17 minutes newly recorded just for this release. The one from '72 was recorded live at the International Carnival of Experimental Sound (ICES) in London, England, an event that must have been awesome from what little documentation we've seen or heard of it! From the cd booklet, here's the composer's statement about what he's up to with his Brainwave Music: "Metaphors about the concurrency and succession of events in undefined spaces and the spread of energetic phenomena throughout resonant fields operate heavily in this music. Perhaps, they may lead us forward in developing of untapped sensibilities still residing deep within us. Perhaps, we will be able to conceive of an idea of resonance unbounded by our limited views of time and space and expand our appreciation of the universality of music even more." Hmm. Something to think about. And as you're doing that, just imagine what sounds David Rosenboom could conjure if he had your brain hooked up to his bio-feedback machinery right now! This comes in a special, extra-thick Japanese jewel case to fit the 42 page booklet we suppose. Unfortunately for us Americans, only a couple of pages of the booklet are in English, but there are plenty of cool photos, graphics, schematics, and musical scores to look at. As with all the EM stuff we've stocked, totally recommended!

MPEG stream: Portable Gold And Philosopher's Stones (Music From Brains In Fours)
MPEG stream: Chilean Drought

It's been a while since these two have gotten together for some noisemaking. Not since the very popular around here Vintermusik (now sold out, sorry). But since then, both have been plenty busy, releasing a clutch of limited cd-r's as well as at least a proper full length or two. Most recently, the beautifully dark Black Sleep from Dag Rosenqvist, aka Jasper TX. So how much has changed since these two last teamed up? Thankfully not too much. The two work well together, which makes perfect sense considering they travel similar sonic paths on their own, so here the two sort of blend their sonic palletes, and the result, as has been the case in the past is not the sum of the parts, but more a minimal distillation of their two sounds. Not as lush as one might imagine, but also not as spare and academic. A gorgeous hushed minimalism, that is just spike enough to remain interesting and to keep just on this side of pure ambience, adding grit and texture and a sense of subtly ominous foreboding. Beginning with a soft, fuzzy drone, all smeared with tape hiss, the track gradually gathers low end, deep swells rising ever so gently from the abyss, while some sort of high end sine waves separate themselves from the sound, becoming prickly layers hovering far above the warm drift. The two halves, the low and the high, continue to transform independently, both gathering static and crackle as well, eventually, the low end sprawls into a glacial chordal whir, slowly spreading in slow motion, while the high end has become a sort of skittery sonar, offering up strange pulses and keening high end tones, those tones slowing down gradually, becoming less sharp, lower in fact, while the main melody also begins to fade, both eventually fading to nothing almost simultaneously. Quite nice. Fans of either will definitely dig. As will folks into abstract minimalism and all manner of drones and microsounds. Gorgeously packaged in a super complex folded origami sleeve, black spirographs and white text on green metallic paper. Super striking. And of course, super limited...

Now, here's one hell of a good collaboration! These are two incredible abstractionists of the song in their own right, both known for their protracted dronesmear pocked with eerie melodies and ghost-echo structures. Rosenqvist is the man behind the Jasper TX project with tons of incredible records of blackened murk, nocturnal ambience, and the tactile grit of antiquity, while Scott may be best known as the former drummer of Slowdive, although he's released a couple of stunning shoegaze instrumental records over the past couple of years. This album is ostensibly a soundtrack to a short film directed by Juriaan Booij. The film itself is just about 20 minutes long, but the soundtrack is nearly twice that in length. There seemed to have been a number of complications with production that caused innumerable delays for Booij, but this worked to the advantage of Rosenqvist (the original choice of Booij) as he was able to take his time with the concept that the filmmaker had presented to him and in turn consult his confidante Simon Scott about a possible collaboration. Without much of a deadline or even the indication that the film would be completed (in fact, it was and has screened at various film festivals around the globe), Rosenqvist and Scott composed an incredible album of luminous sound that glows through an endless bank of sonic fog. A rasped buzz emerges from an oceanic current of tonal guitar swell as the intro to Conformists. A collage of cracked ether, electrical static, and crunched surface noises from what could be from old 78s amass into a small crescendo of noise that collapses just as gracefully as it emerges. Out of this, Scott and Rosenqvist follow up with gasping set of radiator drones which swirl around cavernous swells, all dark, metallic, and ominous. A more enveloping, less threatening drone develops next, with somber flickers of a melody buried somewhere in the mix only to succumb to another passage of prolonged shadow and desolation. It's all very haunting and very evocative. The flipside takes up a beautiful set of twin guitar drones with subtle half-melodies barely flickering within their mutual undulations, gradually overtaken by a soft buzz of distant distortion and bass-heavy thrum, transitioning toward the glacial centerpiece of this side of the record, a track called "Monuments." Here, a slow electrical pulse repeats ad infinitum, almost like an old ringback tone on a telephone with nobody on the other end picking up, laden with glacial bursts oversaturated chiming guitar noise that flood the soundfield like high-beam headlights cutting through a wintery darkness. The album descends and fades away into another beautiful crushed velvet drone. Epic!

The debut double disc from long time aQ metallic post rock faves Rosetta, was a massive dose of high concept heaviness. A disc of proper songs, all churning heaviness and doom drenched math rock blow outs, and a second disc, a companion of sorts, more ambient and abstract, it was unclear whether the two were meant to be played simultaneously, of if they merely complimented each other, two sides of Rosetta's sound. Not sure it mattered. Both discs were amazing, both sounded great on their own or played in tandem. We originally assumed that this disc was a companion to the newly released Wake/Lift (reviewed elsewhere on this list), but on closer examination, and after repeated listens, it seems to be something entirely different. The liner notes explain that this disc is made up of EVERY sample the band collected or manipulated over the course of the last 7 years or so, with the final declaration "I Am Starting Over". It's hard to tell if these sounds were indeed actually used on the records proper, or if this disc is merely a clearing house for cool left over and unused sounds, but it hardly matters, as these 4 extended sound collages function just fine on their own, as their own record, and it's the sort of sound that most cd-r noise bands would kill for. Dense and dark, evocative and atmospheric, crumbling and chaotic, dreamy and droney, layered and rife with fuzzy buzzy texture. Rhythms surface from strange looped sounds, melodies buried beneath constantly shifting walls of sound, massive chunks of super distorted heaviness, streaks of glitch and hiss, wild dubbed out drumming, mysterious voices and samples, an expansive organic whole, the four tracks functioning as one epic, seamlessly woven together, slipping one track to the next, the track markers seemingly arbitrary, as it all sort of bleeds into one massive textured slow motion abstract doomdrone. So divine. If this was a limited cd-r released on some super cool underground microlabel, limited to 100 copies, people would lose their living shit. So don't let the fact that it's a real cd released on a real label keep you from checking it out. Fans of stuff like Acre, Tunnels, Expo '70, Birchville, Axolotl, Black Boned Angel and other purveyors of buzz and murk and drone, should absolutely check this out.

MPEG stream: Untitled 3

Andrew Douglas Rothbard, the self-taught keyboardist, bassist and vocalist formerly of potent (and elusive) aural conjurers Pleasure Forever, Slaves and The VSS, has returned with his first solo album. On Abandoned Meander, Mr. Rothbard seems unconcerned with... no, make that completely detached from trends and popularity contests, and his openness to reinvention results in music which flows forth so naturally it seems effortless. While passages of Abandoned Meander are fleetingly reminiscent of early T-Rex, Zoso-era Zep or more recent artists such as Devendra Banhart and Ariel Pink, these generally lo-fi but ultra textural and weirdly 'orchestrated' creative forces exist in a realm far outside and beyond the current crowd of experimental psych-folk artists. Time is just another word in the as above / so below matrix of this release, with the I-ching derived musical concepts and astrological / musical conjunctions aligning just in time for us to hit 'repeat play' and reenter Abandoned Meander's audio alchemy. It's swirling strangeness also has the good sense to leave behind the faux eccentricities and posturing of mere mortals, with each hazy number crafted from an open palette of conventional and more unorthodox instrumentation. New and different but not wholly unfamiliar, Abandoned Meander may initially conjure a neo-psychedelic folk impression, but just as swiftly an altogether distinct and personal delirium takes over... and it's not one that we want to escape from anytime soon. Need we say? Highly recommended!

MPEG stream: Rabbit Hole
MPEG stream: Tempeste

Since their one and only swan song "Rivers Without Roads" found on their debut "A Negative For Francis" the bass centred Rothko has been far more interested in mood engineering than the joys of songsmithery. This project has long reveled in an overcast gloom typically created by wrapping each sound and note in sheets of cathedral reverb. Mark Beazley, the only remaining member of Rothko, has retained those sentiments for this collaboration with Blk W/Bear, the chosen moniker for Washington DC based artist and AQ pal JS Adams, who offers a description of his work as "concurrent transgressions and turntable deconstructions, recordings of failed communication and decomposed transmission, archival reconstructionism." Implicit to the allegories in the work of both Beazley and Adams is the pathos of antiquity -- which is far more physical in Adams case with his mechanical devices producing a creakiness similar to Philip Jeck or Saule, where Beazley's atmospheres emote their sadness through space and spartan melody. Thus, these two artists work very well together, often alternating between each other's signature styles. Thunder cracks of shortwave boom with echoing reverb, lugubrious fingerpicking recalls the empathic notes of Loren Mazzacane Connors, and requiems for piano evoke their lilting melodies. "Wish For A World Without Hurt" is a very beautiful recording. That said, I could do without the information that this record is a dedication to 9/11. The realization of any musical connections to the tragedies of September 11 are a little shaky; but like the other elegy for 9/11, William Basinski's epic "Disintegration Loops," the music transcends the earthly confines of that specific event and bears witness to the universal fear and awe of the sublime.

MPEG stream: Wish For A World Without Hurt
MPEG stream: I Feel Lost Without You
MPEG stream: Dropped From Clouds

The first we heard from weirdo Italian blackened industrial noiseniks Rotorvator was via a collaboration with one man black metal band Rhuith, the two groups a perfect match up, each with their own peculiar take on black metal, with Rotorvator seemingly the weirder of the two, adding some tortured, twisted WTF-ness to Rhuith's sound, and if there was ever any doubt, this new full length most definitely goes a long way to demonstrating that Rotorvator are indeed masters of seriously damaged outsider avant industrial black metal weirdness. Or something. For a thumbnail descriptor, "damaged outsider avant industrial black metal weirdness" definitely works, the sound here all over the map, and not just the black metal map either, noise, industrial, psychedelia, electronica, it's all tangled up into a wild, warped, ever shifting, sonic sprawl, machine like rhythms, underpin dreamy almost shoegazey guitar buzz, howled demonic vokills, gnarled and dissonant, the sound slipping into a churning buzz drenched blackness, before exploding into a weird galloping blast, that sounds like some demented robotic black metal, the song slipping from blackened lope, to dense noise drenched howl, to furious blasting crush, to tranced out guitardrone. And that's just the first song. After that the sound shifts into a weirdly ominous, sort of cinematic drift, all weird hand clappy rhythms, minor key guitar, skeletal drumming, weird high end guitar skree, more howled vokills, the vibe sort of droney and dirgey and psychedelic, a little bit electronic too, laced with pulses and pulsations, at one point interrupted by a blast of white noise static, and weird moaning voices, before slipping right back into it. The follow up is some spaced out minimal electronic skitter, some carnivalesque looped mesmer, that gives way to some super lo-fi black buzz, again, programmed beats drive the furious riffing, which is muted and muffled, the vocals WAY up in the mix, the song stuttering and lurching, the sounds panned super hard so they swoop from speaker to speaker, druggy and dizzying. The sound shifts dramatically at that point into some seriously pretty heaviness, some blown out shoegazey dirginess, that could have gone one of two ways, and of course, it's Rotorvator, so instead of staying melodic and darkly lovely, it splinters into some noisy, churning, screeching blackness, but that stuff is draped over the pretty melodic guitar buzz, and it's a killer combo. The next track is more of the same, all swoonsome soaring synths and shoegazey black buzz, sounding a bit like a black metal M83, before crumbling into a gnarled lumbering creep, but again, even then, it's weirdly pretty, haunting and harrowing, but still pretty, with some seriously metallic riffing, some robotic drum pound, swirls of dense effects, and some gorgeous melodies, culminating in a weird final stretch of processed vox, ticking clock drum machine rhythm, and gristly swirls if staticky buzz. And finally, the record finishes with a dark, twang flecked dirge, drifting through clouds of melting FX, echo drenched guitar clang, pounding rhythms, swirling strings, haunting and like much of the record weirdly pretty. LIMITED TO 400 COPIES!!! Housed in a DVD style case, with full color artwork/insert, and inside a set of heavy cardstock, two sided, printed cards, bound by a silkscreened black on black obi.

MPEG stream: I. Ad Sanctos
MPEG stream: II. Domenica
MPEG stream: IV. I Morti
MPEG stream: VII. Humming Bones

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

SORRY. Guitar experimentalist Keith Rowe (of famed British drone-improv collective AMM), with a rather self-explanatory cd title. His second solo disc ever, over an hour long, three tracks ("Quite", "Very", and "Extremely") focused on the concept of "harshness". Not so much the harshness of the sounds produced by the guitar, although they are far from melodic, but rather about the harshness of the world at large... Humming drone and string scraping sounds make one imagine Rowe's guitar as a living creature, aching and stretching after some unpleasant slumber. Recorded live in Cologne, Germany by Markus "Pluramon" Schmickler. The cd booklet explains with colorful cartoon graphics Rowe's particular guitar preparations, and purpose of the drawings themselves (the acceptance of cartoons vs. the denial of harsh guitar music...) is discussed in a Q and A with Rowe, by Rowe. His ideas and sounds both are interesting.

Pianist John Tilbury and guitarist/shortwave manipulator Keith Rowe are two-thirds of the classic British improvising institution known as AMM. This wonderful, droney double cd (approx. 130 minutes!) is their first ever duo recording, and it's a doozy. We asked AQ pal Loren Chasse -- a long-time AMM admirer -- to pen some words about it, as follows: "This sonic eulogy for John Tilbury's mother, Doris, is yet another reason why AMM music could be considered the primer for all 'experimental' music. What makes their music seem so timeless is the degree to which they are succesfully 'listening', so present with one another as listeners during performance that you can only imagine that their ears must extend far into the reaches of the music culture at any given time -- spanning the years since 1966 with the release of the first AMM record -- always sounding like the 'latest thing'. Despite AMM percussionist Eddie Prevost's absence on this recording, the mysteries of the music are no less dynamic and evocative. There is no pretense that this is not a piano being played, but bred with the crusty electronic palette of Keith Rowe's tabletop guitar laboratory, the image of a piano gives way to one of sonic apparitions that flutter, moan and dissolve, wholly obscuring their origins in the hands and instruments of two English gentlemen. Maybe it is because of some basic craft here of objects being manipulated, of a microphone strategically amplifying the long decay of tones in a piano's guts while the hum of an amplifier is expertly finessed, of a monumental physicality, that makes Duos for Doris seem so much more essential and exciting than its already 'dated' contemporaries stuck in the middle of a drone waiting for software updates." In other words, quite recommended! MPEG Download: "Cathnor" [/audio/rowetilburydoris.mp3]

MPEG stream: Cathnor

Fortunately this is not another laptop improvisation thingy that is endemic of the European 'new music' scene, Oren Ambarchi and AMM's Keith Rowe have improvised with comparitively traditional instrumentation, the prepared guitar, for their collaborative album "Flypaper." The results don't offer any new tricks or surprises to either guitarists' predelictions for the gestural drone and gritty, impressionistic textures; but on the other hand, they certainly won't disappoint the fans of either musician. From wheezing motorized clatterings to electrically charged hums to Rowe's shortwave filtering through heterodyned signals and gray static washes to Ambarchi's softened eBow reverberations, the two transition from one sound to another with a controlled subtlety and deliberate pacing. In the end, this shares more in common with the drone haziness that's been endorsed by Corpus Hermeticum (i.e. Surface of the Earth, RST, and of course late period Dead C).

RealAudio clip: Flypaper 1
RealAudio clip: Flypaper 4

Guitarist Keith Rowe is a busy guy. He still plays with British improvising legends AMM, and he also leads the Euro laptop improv conglom MIMEO, plus he's had a bunch of other collaborative and solo releases as of late. Here he teams up with Japanese "onkyo"

RealAudio clip: Weather Sky #2

Really beautiful improv by Keith Rowe (AMM), G�nter M�ller and Taku Sugimoto recorded live at Les Infants Chavires in October 1999. All three musicians are masters of restraint and here create a delicate and rich world of sound, Rowe and M�ller building the perfect context around Sugimoto's minimal guitar reflections. Recommended.

For the potential disaster of free-improv cacophonic sound that these five could have produced, "Thumb" is remarkably restrained and almost contemplative in its singleminded pursuit of the tiniest of details. Recorded live at the Parisian club, Instants Chavires on May 29, 2001, Rowe, Ambarchi, Sachiko M, Yoshihide, and Avenaim focus their activity on the buzzing of amplifiers and the shimmer of close-looped feedback, which they have resampled, tweaked, and modulated into a fluttering drone that is too irritable to be seductive or meditative, but is remains an understated constant. Delicate scrapings and small electrical disturbances occasionally make themselves evident, but mostly these five remain very calm. It's such a restrained effort that at the end of the brief 30 minute program the environmental din outside of Aquarius made for a nice complement to the sounds on "Thumb." How Cageian of them.

RealAudio clip: Thumb

Folks who lived in San Francisco in the nineties may remember the band rRope, but odds are probably no one anywhere else does. A fairly obscure, but super awesome band who was part of a seriously ruling scene. Bakamono, Nitre Pit (pre-Deerhoof), Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, Caroliner, Henry's Dress, A Minor Forest, Fibulator, Lowercase, Trackstar, Hickey, so many great shows happening all the time, touring bands, loads of cool clubs and weird places to play, and so many bands that seemed destined for bigger and better things. One of which was most definitely rRope, a quartet who built their own amps and fused jagged Sonic Youth like noisiness to blissed out My Bloody Valentine like shoegaze, their songs a barrage of intricate tangled progged out post punk rhythms wrapped around chiming jangly melodies and dense chaotic drumming. Crazy catchy hooks doused in wild squalls of noise rock freakouts, glitched out experimental ambience coalesce into loping post rock mesmer. And some truly unique expressive vocals, that added a whole 'nother art rock dimension to the proceedings. The band never shied away from weird sonic experimentation either, whether it was twang flecked Tortoise-y grooves or free form avant rock meander, Jon Wayne styled garbled cowpunk or woozy math rock weirdness, often in the same song (check out "Pocket Song"), noisy blissed out drone-punk or spaced out desert-y drift, their entire sound would change from record to record, even from song to song, but there was definitely a distinctive, if ineffable something that held it all together, but just barely. One of those amazing bands that sounded impossibly tight and constantly on the verge of collapse at the same time. This sprawling triple lp collects everything the band ever recorded, including albums, 7"s, demos, and live tracks, specifically a set from 1998, right before the band broke up, opening for Sonic Youth at the Fillmore, a performance that reportedly has SY inviting them to tour the US, a tour that would sadly never happen, as the band would hang it up not long afterwards. A totally mind blowing nostalgia trip for those of who were there, and an insanely exciting discovery for everyone else who wasn't� LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!

MPEG stream: Step Right Up
MPEG stream: Mercury
MPEG stream: Ok Nic
MPEG stream: Jingle Jangle
MPEG stream: Pocket Song

More mysterious six string sonic explorations from New Zealand guitar alchemist Andrew Moon, but unlike the last release (the triple cd-r Other Machines) a grinding thick heavy smear of SUNNO))) like low end rumble and Fear Falls Burning-ish smoldering amplified intensity, the sounds on Axes is pretty much exactly the opposite of what you might expect a record called Axes to sound like. Dark, dreamy, tranquil and contemplative. Where other RST releases tended toward the minimal, the static Niblockian drone, the guitar against the amp rumble, Axes features fluttering melodies, chiming harmonics, bits of simple strum. All appropriately nestled amidst distant whirs and soft shimmers. There are some heavier moments, the ultra brief "The Gate Of The Sun" is a minute plus of corrosive distorted crawl, and "Adrift" is an extended throbbing dirge of amp buzz and guitar distortion, melodies carved out of grinding buzz, beneath a sky filled with streaks of feedback, gorgeous for sure, but also heavy and dark. The rest of the record though, while peppered with bits of guitardrone and crumbling distortion, does definitely tend toward the dreamy, and while we love us some glacial heaviness, we're pretty into the softer side of RST: long drawn out swirls of druggy sound, sounding a bit like a more abstract Spacemen 3 at points, while at others, the sound is delicate and mysterious, a barely there hum, glistening cricket like high end, all wound into tense cinematic ambience. Some tracks explore insectoid ragas, muted buzzing woven into expansive slow shifting soundscapes, others fall in more with the modern free folk, abstract soundscape movement, like the opener, the appropriately titled "Crystalline", a slowed down lullaby of chiming guitars and distant blurred whirs. All of Axes is gorgeous, even at it's heaviest, the sounds are still imbued with some mysterious beauty, some otherworldly magic...

MPEG stream: Crystalline
MPEG stream: Lords Of Space
MPEG stream: L.A.S.E.R.

The welcome return of New Zealand minimal drone guitar wrangler Andrew Moon, the man who is RST. We recently managed to get a handful of his amazing Corpus Hermeticum release Warm Planes (sorry, all gone now) direct from the man himself, after years of being out of print, and it reminded us how much we loved and missed his dark abstract guitarscapes. And what do you know, hot on the heels of that reminder, BAM. A new record. And not just a new record, a new TRIPLE cd-r, which if anything, is essential for the sorts of sounds Moon creates, his expansive worlds of glacial guitar need all the space they can get, the beauty lies in the sounds of the journey, the sound of the guitar unfurling its sonic mysteries. We would have been just as happy with 6 discs, or 12, but we'll make do with three. Other Machines is three discs, three tracks, each 45 minutes plus, titled "Worlds", "Ages" and "Earth", titles that certainly sound epic and timeless, but which perfectly suit the sounds within. Each track is one looooooong piece. Ultra minimal. A single guitar, allowed to slowly uncoil, to sprawl like some planet swallowing black cloud, the guitar loosing a single note, or maybe a single chord, either way, that sound drifts from the speaker like it could go on forever. And it feels like it does. Or it should. But this is no static drone, no, the guitar is always changing, pulsing and throbbing, shifting and shimmering, floating from downtuned thrum to metallic hum to drifting high end whir and back again. Always muted and minimal, not heavy so much as intense and dense. A strangely cyclic and mesmerizing expanse of never ending guitar buzz. We could listen to this stuff nonstop (and some of us do!). You like SUNNO))), Fear Falls Burning, Phill Niblock, Vulture Club, you definitely need to hear RST. Epic, intense, super minimal, strangely melodic, and so totally gorgeous....

MPEG stream: Worlds
MPEG stream: Ages

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

SORRY. Sitting in a pooly ventilated barn behind his house outside of Auckland, New Zealand during one particularly hot winter, Andrew Moon struggled with his guitar to produce these humid noise drones layered with peculiar chord based structures. One of the best albums to come out of 'free noise' school of New Zealand in years!

Latest disc of dronemusic from aQ customer and master dronelord Andrew Moon, his first for Utech, and definitely one of his heaviest. From the opening few seconds, this is some seriously distorter metallic static heaviness, a massive crumbling wall of slow moving fuzz guitar, gorgeously layered so it's not just some guitar-against-the-amp bullshit, no, this is some serious minimal dronemusic, just instead of tones, or sinewaves, Moon has opted for BIG amps and slow glacial chords. The sound pulses and throbs like it was alive, and it sort of is really, with all manner of metallic buzz and grinding shards of feedback drifting beneath and within the humid cloud of warm whirring thickness. Moon is a master of maximizing minimalism, and this track is the perfect example, both understated and pretty, but thick and corrosive and heavy enough that some dronedirgedoom obsessive could get really into it. And it's the sort of sound we can never get enough of, and one that could have stretched the length of the cd and we would have been perfectly pleased. But there's more to Moon and Tomorrow's Void than just heavy buzz, the second track is much murkier affair, moaning deep tones gradually spread out and grow more and more melodic, even as feedback adds another layer to the proceedings. But 10 minutes later and the guitars come growling back, unfurling an avalanche of crumbling fuzz and blown out minimal anti-metal. There are 3 or 4 tracks over the remainder of the record that dip into much more muted minimal dronescaping, some offering streaks of high end with their rumbling whirring drift, but the majority of the record is spent with distortion pedals on, filling rooms and speakers and headphones with billowing clouds of warm buzz and ever expanding slow motion guitadrones, each one in its own way powerful and dark, but to our ears trancelike and dreamy, the exact sort of heaviness that has us entranced and drifting off to the other side.

MPEG stream: Radiant
MPEG stream: Constellation Drive
MPEG stream: Eternal City Ruins

Not long ago, we discovered that one of our loyal AQ customers just so happened to be the man behind one of our favorite groups, RST, and who released two mind blowing discs, R136a which came out on Ecstatic Peace! and this one, Warm Planes, released on Corpus Hermeticum. After discussing a mutual love of all things Skullflower and Terminal Cheesecake, Mr. RST informed us that he had some new actions planned for the near future and just so happened to have a stash of this WAY out of print disc, which he want to be available again, in anticipation of some upcoming new material. We obviously jumped at the chance and grabbed a whole mess of these, just in case some of you somehow missed out on this the first time around. Whereas the Ecstatic Peace! disc was a dense assemblage of claustrophobic humid distortion, Warm Planes is much more of a drone based disc, downright dreamy at times, an amazing collection of dynamic tectonic guitar-drone rumble, very prescient considering the current love of all things doomdronedirge. And holy shit does this stuff hold up. Dense and thick and viscous, these tracks move at a crawl, slowly and completely engulfing everything it their path, filling your ears with a murky black buzz. Some of the tracks dial back the grrrrr a bit, offering up soft ripples of muted feedback, and shimmering swells of amp buzz, while others are expansive sheets of crystalline shimmer, but the majority, are thick and snarling beasts, steel strings reverberating through big black speakers, and wrapping us up in thick tendrils of guitar growl. A doomdirgedrone classic, before there even was such a thing. Fans of SUNNO))), Fear Falls Burning, Vulture Club, Earth, you got some catching up to do. Start here...

MPEG stream: Black Sand
MPEG stream: Transform
MPEG stream: The Brothers

Killer split from these two bands, RST most AQ folks should know by now, New Zealand guitarist Andrew Moon, who delivers another fantastic chunk of dark, dense, humid guitardrone, darkly meditative, but surprisingly active, the swirling blackened churn alive with buried melodies, and ever shifting textures, spaced out and psychedelic for sure, but more a softly swirling bit of layered mesmer, rife with muted feedback, and jagged shards of fragmented melody buried in the mix, kinda wish this was a 12" and this track was waaaay longer. The flipside comes from US outfit Insect Factory, who we had never heard before, but who apparently played the Terrastock festival back in 2008, this being their first recording since. Good stuff, and a nice contrast to RST's darker drift. Insect Factory are a much noisier proposition, a warped psychedelic collage, muted percussive loops, all woozy and warbly, wheezing melodies, layered textures, softly distorted and dreamily chaotic, it sounds a lot like a more dreamy drifty Our Love Will Destroy The World, with a similarly skewed kitchen sink style, all the sounds blurred into something more washed out and melodic, druggy and hypnotic.

MPEG stream: Burn Out
MPEG stream: Reflective Chrome Waves

A while back we had a little gift certificate giveaway to help raise money for aQ pal Stephen Kasner, an artist you no doubt know, his art has adorned records by Aluk Todolo, Skullflower, Lotus Eaters, Subarachnoid Space, Blood Fountains, Khlyst, Aun, Habsyll, and loads more, we used to carry his amazing art book too, anyway, he was recently diagnosed with a serious illness, and of course like many artists/musicians, he does not have health insurance, and was faced with impossible medical bills, so the underground community has been doing everything they can to help raise money so Kasner can get the treatment he needs and get better. This here split cd-r is another benefit, all proceeds from the sale of these discs will go directly to Kasner, and in addition to helping out a super nice, and ultra talented guy, you get two gorgeous, massive slabs of dark, thick. layered droned out ambience. Most of you probably already know RST, aka Andrew Moon, a killer NZ guitarist, here he shares a disc with Rahmane, who are/is new to us, but who offers up a pretty stellar bit of droned out psychedelic ambient drift, beginning with a bit of abstract shimmer, some minimal percussion, and finally some wheezing organ, haunting and cinematic, minor key and moody, the whirring organ soon gives way to a tangle of horns, wild squalls drifting over the now distant low end thrum, a sort of abstract dronejazz, which quickly erupts into a blast of noisy chaos, of gnarled electronics, twisted effects and processed vocals, a sound that gradually crumbles leaving just the sounds of a burbling brook, and a hazy layer of metallic drones, and soaring string like melodies drifting over the top. Quite nice. RST follows up with a sprawling expanse of humid guitar drone, a thick all of muted and distorted heaviness, no forward momentum, instead, the sounds themselves churn and roil, buried melodies shifting and tangling, streaks of sizzling cymbals, chordal fragments, all drift within a corrosive, glacial swells, throbbing and pulsing but somehow remaining nearly static, a gorgeous washed out almost Tim Heckerish expanse of gauzy soft noise, underpinned by bits of guitar strum, and deep rumbling low end. Gorgeous as always. And well worth the price of admission, even mores knowing that it's for a good cause. LIMITED TO 70 COPIES. Features original Stephen Kasner artwork, ALL proceeds go to the Kasner Fund.

MPEG stream: The Martyr's Finger, II. Kashf al-Asr?r, III. Santariyyah (Return) (Excerpt)
MPEG stream: Tropic Of Hull (Excerpt)

Another batch of tapes from our pal Jason's Ormolycka label means another batch of HOLY WTF!!! Starting with this, the first we've heard from / heard of Rubbed Raw, even an internet search revealed nothing but a bare bones Tumblr, talking about the tape on Ormolycka, which is a rarity in the age of everything everywhere at your fingertips, but you'd be surprised how often that happens with stuff on Ormolycka. So we have nothing to offer in the way of background, no idea who these guys are, where they're from, if it's even guys (although a couple are picture on the cover). What we can tell you, is this was originally recorded in 2008, when some guy we never heard of, who probably had something to do with the band disappeared, and it remained unreleased until now. Although that could be bullshit, hardly matters though, cuz what does matter is that this is a stone cold killer slab of twisted lo-fi, beat driven electronic weirdness. The first track along should seal the deal, weird fragmented vocals over spare electronics, that soon blossom into what is maybe the noisiest heaviest blast of electronic music we've heard in ages, a fat fuzzy bassline, big bombastic drumming, and sky full of wild squiggles and tangled feedback drenched skree, it almost sounds like the home brewed electronic version of one of the psych rock bands that everyone digs so much these days, total drugged out megajam, but just electronic, and sort of damaged and WTF. It's hard to explain, but it RULES, and we jammed the first track maybe ten times before we dug any deeper, and as unlikely as it might seem, even after that first track, it just kept getting better, blown out noisy outsider electro, colliding with mad scientist 8-bit noise drenched techno, and weirdo lo-fi dub, all blendered into the sort of thing you might imagine blasting from the speakers in a clown car shaped like a giant skull, being driven by the scariest mother fucker you've ever seen, just cruising up and down the street, top down, system booming, or rather buzzing and howling and skittering and droning and feeding back, while he trolls for his next victim. Holy shit this rules! And of course is crazy limited, so don't blow it...

Following their compilation release with Pink & Brown, The Lowdown and Lozenge (also on Toyo), SF's cardboard and tin foil superheroes Rubber O Cement are back with twenty-three more tracks of comical lo-fi power electronic action. Rumors (which are

RealAudio clip: Raman Effect On Nucleon Electroscope

A quiet composer of the remnant, forgotten sounds of the everyday, Mathieu Ruhlmann has crafted a small if impressive body of work that parallels the soundart of Loren Chasse, Richard Chartier, Steve Roden, and even the likes of Luc Ferrari minus all the sex talk. This Star Teaches Bending is a sober album that was constructed during the final six months before Ruhlmann's mother succumbed to a rare lung disease to which there was no available cure. The title itself is a reference to one of the final painting by Paul Klee, who had also suffered from a protracted illness with no known treatment at that time. Ruhlmann's pace is slow and deliberate in his compositional placement of his variable scratches and squigglings, which he's collected through contact microphones investigating the medical equipment that surround his dying mother with voltage bursts, tactile abrasions, and blankly humming electricity being much of what he gathers, although there is what sounds like a racoon rummaging about in one of the tracks. In the hands of a Joe Colley or a Francisco Meirino, these sources would exist in volatile crucible of psychological tension, but Ruhlmann frames his work with an existential resignation about the finality of his mother's inevitable fate. It's not easy for sure, but there is an underlying poetry of loneliness, sorrow, and grief found within. Nicely packaged in a die-cut sleeve with a professionally printed insert and a pro-duplicated cd-r.

MPEG stream: Wrstwhile Cannibal Man-Eater
MPEG stream: The Hour Before One Night
MPEG stream: Whence? Where? Whither

This is the latest disc of dark ritualistic drone music from Ruhr Hunter, aka Chet Scott, the man who runs the Glass Throat label, who in the past have brought us amazing music from Beneath The Lake And Elemental Chrysalis as well as his own Ruhr Hunter. A handful of copies of this disc (made for friends of the band only) came packaged in a box filled with ocean stones, dirt, pebbles, crow feathers, mink bones & teeth, insects, branches & White Birch bark collected from the forests of Maine, a box of death, and earth, sky and water, transition and rebirth, symbols for the musical world of Ruhr Hunter. Sounds born of nature. A true forest folk music, dark ritualistic soundscapes, primal, tribal, shamanic. Lovely and dreamlike. The sound of wind in leaves, the sound of rain falling through trees, rendered in swirls of acoustic guitar, distant shimmering drones, hushed whispered vocals, as well as actual sounds of the wild, animals, and nature, woven into Ruhr Hunter's dense sonic tapestry. A moody and melancholy missive from the heart of a dark forest, a mysterious figure cloaked in a constantly shifting swirl of low end rumble, sits before a black cauldron suspended above a crackling fire, shadows dance wildly on the canopy above, into the pot the figure places a Jewelled Antler, a Dead Raven, blades of grass, a handful of Lichens, a pine cone and a Wooden Wand, a glorious sound drifts from the murky brew, like tendrils of smoke, drifting heavenward, tangled up in the branches overhead, shifting amongst the shadows, filling our ears with a soft warm otherworldly fire. As with everything on Glass Throat, breathtaking packaging. An oversized brown textured six panel sleeve with the text and imagery embossed in a darker brown, the cover, the instantly recognizable Ruhr Hunter raven talon logo. So nice.

MPEG stream: Antlers In The Fog, To Will The Spirit Of Transit
MPEG stream: An Owl's Gift

Chet Scott's dark ambient project Ruhr Hunter takes its name from the case studies of a German serial killer from the 1950s named Joachim Kroll who had been dubbed the "Ruhr Hunter" by the local authorities due to a concentration of his crimes taking place along the Ruhr River. Such fascinations with transgressive themes and Scott's calls for human cleansing (even if it may be metaphoric) lend themselves for placing Ruhr Hunter in the true-crime pulp elements of industrial culture as well as a giving him the obvious crossover appeal with black metal mythology. Yet, this does little to embody the rich instrumentation that Scott puts into Ruhr Hunter, as those gaping Lustmordian drones so common within the dark ambient oeuvre are matched with smatterings of extended song fragments with acoustic guitars, ghostly harmonicas, tubular bells, delicate piano melodies, and a number of handcrafted stringed instruments. As good if not better than the atavistic, pseudo-pagan ambient works of Tribes of Neurot.

RealAudio clip: Wounded By My Own Blade
RealAudio clip: The Sower and The Sown

It's been a while, but finally a new record from AQ fave DJ /Rupture. Unlike his previous releases, which were essentially mix tapes, this is a bonafide record of original tracks produced and arranged by Rupture with all sorts of guest vocalists and musicians. Now obviously it would be hard to create a record that stood up to your past releases, when they are all culled from the cream of your record collection, but Rupture makes a go of it and fares pretty well. The tone on Special Gunpowder is much more laid back and mellow that previous releases, and way less experimental. While your need for weird might not be fully satisfied, this is definitely much easier listening. A smooth mix of reggae and dancehall, as well as muted Eastern rhythmic ambience ala Muslimgauze. The dancehall tracks are awesome, but not at all aggressive like the Bug. Wicked Act, Junior Cat, Wayne Lonesome and a handful of others toast over darkly delerious, pulsing dancehall rhythms, nestled in Rupture's unique sonic stew. There are a few missteps, the opening spoken word bit is a little cringeworthy, and Eugene from Oxbow (who can do no wrong in our eyes) pops up smack dab in the middle of the record, mewling and howling over a creepy musical backdrop, and while we can never get enough Eugene, it definitely feels out of place and disrupts the flow. Other than a few hiccups, Special Gunpowder is a prety cool spin, and it's definitely cool that Rupture chose to write and record a record instead of cruising along on his impeccably hip record collection.

MPEG stream: Little More Oil ft. Sister Nancy
MPEG stream: Leech Wisdom
MPEG stream: No Heathen ft. Wicked Act (Blacksmith Mix)

With this one track from 1986, Arthur Russell clearly set his sights for the future of dance music and pretty much became the godfather of chillwave, balearic house and other modern day pop forms dedicated to all that's the sun-kissed, blissful and breezy. This newly remastered version features three dubs of the song (Gulf Stream, Puppy Surf, and Coastal, the last one mixed by the legendary Walter Gibbons!) and a previously unreleased track called "Make 1.2 (Gem Spa Dub)", that has a more funk oriented vibe, but still as left-field as can be. There have been rumors that Arthur Russell had made 96 separate mixes of "Let's Go Swimming", and the versions here don't sound exactly like previously released versions on other compilations like Strut's Disco Not Disco 2 or Soul Jazz's The World of Arthur Russell, which felt more orientated to the dancefloor and could have been stripped down mixes by Gibbons and others. The Gulf Stream Dub may be the truest of the three mixes here to Russell's original vision of the song, a submerged percolating paean to the return to innocence of summertimes past. But the three mixes here are like one extended jam of the song going into a more balearic house mode on the Puppy Surf Dub then into Gibbons' more economic and percussive but mind-bending and body shaking Coastal Dub. Essential!

MPEG stream: Let's Go Swimming (Gulf Stream Dub)
MPEG stream: Make 1.2 (Gem Spa Dub)

Ultra limited collection of tape works from the last ten years, composed and performed by Mr. Dead C himself, Bruce Russell! Five lengthy tracks, all super dense and heavily layered, some noisier than others, but all reflecting the sonic sensibilities of one of the men responsible for some of the most moving noise rock of the last 20 years. But don't be expecting any sort of Dead C action, although some of the sounds and arrangements sure could have found their way into some wild Dead C mash up. Instead, these tracks are serious experiments with sound, but surprisingly listenable ones. Strange cricket like trills over stuttering distorted grit, to shimmering high end glimmers draped over helicopter like chugs, bits of vocals slightly processed, some clattery room noise (which does in fact sound a bit like some Dead C outtake), murky expanses of moaning creaking ambience, reverb drenched samples scattered throughout, massive low end reverberations wrapped in glistening streaks of distant skree, squalls of shortwave interference, ear piercing electronic squiggles, scribbled guitar lines all tangled up into messy splatters, looped tones and strange hiccuping rhythms, angular guitar fragments, mechanical squeaks and fuzzed out tape hiss, crumbling bits of crackle and whir slowly modulating and emitting random chunks of muted rhythm and more more more... A gorgeously expansive sonic exploration, equal parts tranquil drone, blown out free noise, and all stops in between. SUPER LIMITED!! Packaged in hand assembled digipacks, with full color photos affixed to the front and the inside, with extensive liner notes and in depth notes on the genesis and realization of each track.

MPEG stream: Sonatas For Toy Fire Engine And Tape Delay
MPEG stream: For Laurie Penney