[ aquarius records — Experimental ]

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Showing results 7001 through 7050 of 9280.

Montreal musician Shalabi (of his namesake Effect, Molasses and AQ-faves Silver Mt. Zion) tries his hand at (studio-aided) composition, getting a dozen local improv-oriented musicians to play with the tape rolling and then later assembling these pieces

RealAudio clip: Soot
RealAudio clip: The Wherewithall

It seems like maybe we're becoming a little predictable sometimes, letting the name of a band, or some insane cover art get us all gaga over a record before we even hear the music. But while it's only a theory, it seems like in most cases, the music is just as good as the artwork. Or the band name. For years, we've applied that theory to our record shopping and have rarely been disappointed. So here we are again. You obviously know where this is heading since we ARE reviewing this record, AND highlighting it, but a while back, it was just a name, Fantastikol Hole. How could we not be curious, if not utterly smitten. A band called Fantastikol Hole? C'mon. SO we tracked down every shred of recorded music from these guys and got just a little bit obsessed. But this is the first one we could track down enough of to list. Four bands, all amazing, all totally different, all French we think, a record so heavy and weird it took TEN labels to release it. And after all that talk of Fantastikol Hole, they only have three tracks here, but it's enough to get you as obsessed as we are. So what exactly are Fantastikol Hole all about? Super aggro, mathy, convoulted experimental heavy rock weirdness. Stop start stuttery arrangements, huge slabs of Neurosis-y sludge, bits of shimmer and drone-y ambience, wild tangled squiggly leads, angular atonal riffage, howled distorted vocals, long stretches of crumbling doomy buzz, and that's just the first song of three. The second is even more manic, a sort of proggy grind, with tons of space, and weird stops, jagged riffing, swirling dizzying bursts of buzzing fury, programmed drums, explosions of impossibly convoluted synth swathed hypergrind, shortwave radio interference. The third track is only two minutes, but they spend it plodding along doomily, a huge downtuned riff, wrapped around a simple percussive thud, the vocals processed and super distorted, so genius. Complex and confusional and mathy and heavy as fuck. We need to carry more Fantastikol Hole. We will remedy that as soon as humanly possible. But what about the other fantastikol bands here? Well, there's Shall Not Kill, who offer up three tracks of their own brand of heaviness, a groovy stoned, heavy as fuck plodding midtempo post punk sludgy doom, rife with harmonized lead guitars, yowled vocals, super psychedelic squalls of twisted tangled leads, busts of furious octopoidal drumming, some super fast Maiden style jams, some blissed out droney dirges, but always returning to some sort of cracked classic doom sound. Up next is Tekken, who are fast and fucked up and furious, a white hot metallic hardcore, bordering on grind, with weird samples, blasts of incendiary buzz, pounding chaotic drumming and snarling punk as fuck howled vocals. The last track finds their grinding punk chopped up and flipped backwards, slathered in static, turning it into some weird fuzzed out, stuttering soundscape of skipping punk rock cds and shortwave interference. And finally, comes the band Moon, whose three long tracks fall somewhere between ultra minimal dronemusic, and the slow motion sludge riffery of Old Earth or SUNNO))), nearly ambient the slow low rumbles eventually build into a lugubrious downtuned crawl, the buzz occasionally receding, and revealing a glimmering glistening shimmer beneath the rumble. A pretty weird combination, but a tough one to beat. We've found ourselves digging for more stuff from all four of these bands, although our heart still belongs to Fantastikol Hole. WAY recommended.

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After the last batch of releases on Hospital, you'd likely be expecting some sort of grim electronica, or downcast techno murk from this UK outfit, but the punky cover art is your first hint that this might just be a bit different. Which it most certainly is. Sure it's grim and murky, but instead of minimal beats and bleak atmospheres, this is classic old school death punk / crust, a la Amebix, Rudimentary Peni, Christian Death, etc. Filthy, fuzzy guitars, simple drum pound, total nihilistic leather jacketed, spikes and denim, backpatch crusty punk, gloomy and atmospheric, with some dark woozy passages, but otherwise a fierce blast of knuckle dragging smash-the-state ferocity, the sprawling B-side spending much of its time in a downtuned crust punk death march ballad, all echo drenched vocals, weird spluttery drumming, down tuned guitar-noise, streaks of feedback, all anchored by a simple, caveman beat, and eventually disappearing in a clouds of primitive electronics. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!

Some of you who were living in San Francisco a while back, might just remember these guys. Sharkbait. It's been a long time since we'd heard, or even really thought about these guys. The way we remember it, was they were a sort of industrial post punk rock band, maybe like a West Coast version of Cop Shoot Cop, all junkyard percussion, howled vocals, crunchy guitars, skeletal, noisy and slightly funky. And the truth is pretty close to that. So a customer of ours discovered a box of Sharkbait tapes, still sealed, stashed and covered in dust, and thought that since folks were digging cassettes so much lately around here, and that Sharkbait were a seminal eighties SF outfit, that he would bequeath them to us, so we could disseminate them to hungry ears that might want a little taste of what the SF scene was like back in 1988. For some of us, it was all about funk metal, bands like Mordred tearing it up, or thrash, but there was a whole 'nother thing going on in the underground. Bands like Bomb, Tragic Mulatto, the Skatenigs, and of course Sharkbait. And Sharkbait were indeed a sort of proto industrial punk rock band. Lots of samples. Lots of tribal percussion, some Cash Worship going on here and there, throbbing basslines, crunchy guitars, and howled sloganeering vocals, sort of political, definitely punk rock. It sounds dated sure, but it still sounds pretty cool. There's some art of Noise percussion, some weird spoken word, slabs of feedback, droning ambience, but all wrapped up in a pounding churning post punk caterwaul.

"Sharp's most eclectic album to date. Using guitars, saxophones, computers, analog synthesizers and kitchen sink, Sharp performs powerful scores for four films including Daddy & the Muscle Academy (a documentary on the life of pioneering gay fetish cartoonist Tom Of Finland) and The Salt Mines (a documentary about transvestite prostitutes living in salt warehouses in NYC). Sharp's music is as varied and eccentric as the films he writes for."

An intersection of the classical sounds of the Ictus Ensemble with Shea's ever-changing approach to sampling techniques.

Three newly arranged/performed pieces by sampling/turntable artist David Shea. Each focuses on the relationship between orchestrated live performance and the sampler as an instrument in its own right. "Sita's Walk of Fire" is based on the Ramayana cycle; "Satyricon 2000" is based on the Latin novel of the same name (a great read, by the way!; and "One Ride Pony" was composed

RealAudio clip: Sita's Walk Of Fire
RealAudio clip: One Ride Pony

We had never heard of Shed Dwellaz, but apparently these guys were a hip hop crew from Redwood City, active in the nineties, and NYC tape label Ormolycka has dug up these 4 track demos from back in the day, and folks who've been digging Ormolycka know the sort of fucked up taste they have in hip hop (Antwon, Juiceboxx, Lil Ugly Mane, Death Grips, etc.) so the sound of the Shed Dwellaz sounds right at home. Guessing most of these guys are white, it's got that sort of Beastie Boys via Anticon vibe too it, but it's much more lo-fi, DIY and old school, with some sick flows from the MC's and some pretty sweet tracks, swirling harps, stuttering chopped up vox, plenty off fuzz, distortion and static, weird samples. Hints of Wu-Tang of course, but also Sensational, even Hawd Gangstuh Rappaz Wid Gatz, some of this is goofy, but some of it's dark and sinister, shades of Gravediggaz for sure, but home brewed 4-track style. Killer stuff for sure. Housed in a sweet double cassette case, full color J-cards, and like lots of the Ormolycka jams, LIMITED!!!

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Any record that is an homage to Eric Dolphy and his (possibly imagined) interaction and fascination with birds is pretty much guaranteed to hit the spot. But when said record is wrapped in some of the most striking cd artwork we've seen in ages, and is in fact a strange sort of jazz drone collage constructed from samples of Dolphy records, field recordings and some added percussion, well, it's almost like they came to us and asked us what sort of record we wanted to hear, and we told them "Let's see, drones for sure, some field recordings, and heck, why not include some Dolphy..." The cover art is amazing. Like the illustrations for some childrens' book. A big eyed, horned, bat-bird-witch flying over a forest of angular trees, sitting in the clouds over a sea filled with ships manned by black headed rabbits with water pouring from their eyes, and spiriting away with a dry eyed black headed rabbit in his claws, while below, another rabbit fills a chalice with one eye, and the sea with the other. The artwork alone sets the bar pretty high. Dark and dreamy, playful but slightly ominous... Thankfully, the music is also all of those things. And then some. The brief opening track is a tangle of bass clarinet, smeared into a deep expanse of low end shimmer, while above, melodies and melodic fragments drift and splinter. Very evocative of a cloudy day, wet streets and soft sheets of rain. The second track introduces a simple motorik rhythm, that shuffles and skitters beneath a constant shifting drone woven from looped horns. Super hypnotic and dreamy. Almost like a stripped down, drone-y jazzy Pharaoh Overlord. As the drums peter out, the horns begin to bounce and dance, chirp and flutter, and suddenly the sky is clear and full of birds, or is it just Dolphy playing the sounds of birds? The final track is an epic, clocking in at almost 20 minutes, Dolphy's horns surface here and there, but most of the track has them stretched and smoothed out into ultra minimal low end drifts, warm swells of muted melody, a totally mesmerizing abstract drift. This is one of those records, that had we not known the story behind it, we probably wouldn't have necessarily made the Dolphy connection, or the bird connection for that matter, and actually the jazz element is subtle and quite minimal, but as a chunk of dreamy dark drone drift, it's really quite fantastic. And as far as we're concerned there can never be too much tribute paid to the late great Eric Dolphy!

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A 2005 release that somehow slipped through the cracks here, Colin Andrew Sheffield's First Thus is a magnificent, spectral drone album. Sheffield's day job is in the book industry, where the title of the book would hold some meaning in speaking of a first edition of a book that had been previously available but in a slightly different form. Sheffield applies this sensibility to his own appropriation of "other commercially available recordings." Of course, what those recording might be aren't made known through the radical disfiguration and obfuscation that Sheffield applies to these sounds. One can think back to Aphex Twin, and a remix he was commissioned to create for a band he despised, so he sped up an entire Jesus Jones track to a microsecond burst and used that bit of digital abrasion as an ancillary hi-hat in his polyrhythmic electronica. Whatever Sheffield may have thought of the original recordings has become irrelevant in the perpetually cascading streams of digital vibration and hypnotic ambience. Time-stretching is an obvious weapon within Sheffield's arsenal, but he's so heavily layered all of the cross-phasing patterns that massive washes of op-art inspired pulsations ripple through the protracted echoes and cavernous reverberations. His aerosolized sonic mist takes on a similarly ghostly patina found in the Leyland Kirby recordings and the frigid digital shimmer of the darker contributions to the Pop Ambient series. Pressed in a batch of only 330 copies, of which there can't be very many left in circulation.

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The veil of mediated sound hangs heavy upon the work of Colin Andrew Sheffield, a Texan born sound artist currently living in Seattle. His work is almost entirely based upon recontextualizing sounds from already released works, although unlike such plunderphonic artists like Christian Marclay, John Oswald, and Wobbly who allow for the samples to utter their origins, Sheffield obliterates almost all of the references into a field of static vibrations, densely compacted layerings, and hyper-stretched drones. Through his digital crucible, Sheffield extracts something almost completely different out of the sources that he puts into it. In running the ever impressive Elevator Bath label, Sheffield has found an outlet for a handful of his recordings, mostly as small run editions with the one exception being his outstanding First Thus cd. Signatures was commissioned by the San Francisco based label Invisible Birds, as the debut in what hopes to be a great catalogue of sound art composition that's somehow related to bird sounds and their environment. Keeping true to his working methods, Sheffield's contribution to Invisible Birds reclaims sounds from other records amidst what Sheffield claims to be field recordings of water and birds. The results have been so heavily obfuscated through the process that it's hard to hear any twitter of birdsong. The thunderous low-end repetition on the last track is purported to be the flapping of a bird's wing, but it's hard to discern. All of this said, Sheffield's results are gorgeous. At first, the album has almost an ominous feel, as a shimmering, arctic hush is shot forth from the speakers with layer upon layer of sympathetic vibrations interweaving into a hypnotic, if cybernetic sound. It sounds sort of like the classic Chain Reaction artists like Porter Ricks or Hallucinator with all of the techno extracted, and only a cold, cold drone of digitality left behind. By the end of the album, Sheffield brightens things into a stunning crescendo of church organ-like chords suspended in time and space with glints of vinyl crackle hanging like sunflecked dust floating in air. Here, Sheffield gives the impression of William Basinski reclaiming a Ligetti choral piece. Very highly recommended. INSANELY LIMITED. Already out of print. This is the super deluxe version which comes housed in a quite nice box, the disc wrapped in fabric, and includes a booklet and a bonus 3" cd-r!!

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We only got in a handful of this album by this English electronic artist, who has released The Measuring Of Moments (which may be his debut?) through Ian Holloway's cd-r imprint Quiet World. Holloway's own deep drone smear had so impressed us on his collaborative album with Darren Tate and Bailey Banks, and even more so on his A Lonely Place solo production, that we have been investigating his affiliated recordings; hence, we've got this album to review and list. Shenton is less inclined toward the all consuming drone evocation, and more about steering Eno's ambient strategies into territories with a bit more drama incorporating plenty of light and shadow into this particularly autumnal album. At his darkest and perhaps most compelling, Shenton works unsettled punctuations of ominous strings into his sustained tones, half formed melodies caught in reverb cascades, and clusters of electronic shimmer. He also revisits some Tubular Bell motifs around soft arppegiations of synthesized chiming, not only bringing Mike Oldfield into the mix but also some of John Carpenter's incidental scores and sound design. Limited to 50 copies!

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So many cd-r's come our way on what seems like a daily basis, but it isn't often that one of them immediately stops us in our tracks on first listen. These seven tracks by Aaron Sheppard have done just that. Haunting psychedelic solo guitar that manages to be both meditative, spacey, and focused all at the same time. We had no idea who Sheppard was when this first showed up, but his playing won us over immediately. Like Roy Montgomery and James Blackshaw conjuring up a soundtrack for a dazed afternoon, Leverage also has moments that make us think of vintage Robert Fripp, the beauty of Heldon's second album Allez Teia, as well as the recent mind blowing output of Matt Baldwin that we've raved about in the last year. Alternating between more grounded finger-picking tracks to more melting and stretched out sounds, this is by far one of the most engaging and rewarding solo guitar records we've heard in so long. We actually want to go and on about how much this record has been moving us, but the cd-r is limited to 50 copies, so we should probably stop talking now and give you the chance to grab one of these before they are gone for good...

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

SORRY. Picture disc, elderly ladies playing improv guitar -- that's what this is! But chopped and mixed enough so the source material is pretty much unrecognizable. Actually we'd almost have preferred to hear the original recordings of the ladies playing guitar!

Sheriff is the Swedish duo Magnus Granberg (vocals, piano, guitar) and Henrik Olsson (percussion), and this is their second release. They are not men of many words. Absolute barebones, intimate, slow and resonant. A piano's keys are struck, the notes allowed to linger languidly. After a few moments they're joined by a deep, very present male voice sing-speaking a handful of lyrics. Each word joins the notes in the air hanging like amber pendants. The following four tracks offer much the same but the piano is occasionally replaced or joined by low plucked guitar strings and strikes of percussion and bowls. An example of just how Spartan the proceedings are: the third song is titled "Stay, Stay" and that word repeated solemnly over and over again forms the better part of the song's lyrics. Brings to mind the most minimal moments of Slint. Hushed and meditative, Sail, Sail Away is an exercise in utter restraint. Super limited, and soon gone, as we only were able to get a handful...

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Another mysterious collection of droning wonder from Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, this time from off-duty electrician Mike Shiflet whose 5 pieces on The City Is All In Your Head are excerts from a 12 hour performance which accompanied a sonic sculpture installation. Drone is the order of the day here, and these five tracks are all gorgeously rendered explorations of the vast and varied ambient drone spectrum. From warm fuzzy, warbly organ drones that sound like a surprisingly sonorous vaccuum cleaner rife with shimmering overtones, to a caustic dental drill, to hollow mouthed reverb grinding thrum all pulsing and throbbing, to a crystalline outerspace drone - a static upper register cluster of sound with shifting fuzzy soinc shhhh's underneath and huge fist-to-the-side-of-an-empty-dumpster percussion. All gathered reverentially around the record's centerpiece, a thirty minute slab of massive earth shaking low end rumble, so nice! SUPER LIMITED AS ALWAYS!! NOT SURE WE'LL BE ABLE TO GET MORE WHEN THESE ARE GONE!

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We've been going kinda crazy lately for super dark, ultra minimal, abstract techno, the darker and murkier the better, records by Shed and Terrence Dixon, as well as the whole Hospital Records axis (Silent Servant, Vatican Shadow, etc.). We also just discovered Marcel Dettmann, whose latest we'll review on an upcoming list, not to mention recent reissues from Fluxion and Monoton, and then there's this, the first we've heard from Shifted, who delivers exactly what we've been hankering for, super spare, crackly, skeletal, avant techno murk, all clicks and pulses, some sort of spaced out electro dub ultra minimalism that had us in its thrall from the very first few seconds. Equal parts clinical Raster-Noton style electronic abstraction, and Chain Reaction heroin house, the sound of Shifted is gorgeously hypnotic, and utterly mesmerizing, the opening intro a spaced out sort of dronescape, with distorted smears of what sounds like guitar, blurred into a drifty atmospheric haze, laced with strange industrial crunch, the whole thing getting more and more distorted and dirty as it progresses, which had us expecting something a bit more blown out and noisy, but instead, in swoops "Chrome, Canopy & Bursting Heart", a delicate crystalline arrangement of hiss and static, throb, and thrum and pulse, underpinned by a distant rumbling low end, and laced with strange bits of clatter, and softly reverbed texture, another one of those cases, that if the record had simply been a 70 minute version of THIS song, we'd be just as into it. Instead, the sound of Under A Single Banner moves in al sorts of different directions, but never deviating too much from the hushed and clipped minimalism that makes it so hypnotic. "Suspended Inside" is all high end sizzle and skitter, laced with distant rhythmic flurries, peppered with barely there bleeps, and draped over a backdrop of what sounds like crickets, while the title track is an ominous bit of crunchy abstract stutter, this time driven by deep, distorted bass pulsations, and woozy, groovy rhythm, a sort of ghost electro, that's haunting, and subtly harrowing at the same time. "Burning Tyres" is heavy on the reverb and echo drenched, and could be some obscure Hospital Records B side, being spun is a massive cave, the beats ricocheting all over the place, the melodies blurred and smeared, the whole thing a gauze-y fantastically garbled field of blackened and blurred space-house, which leads directly into the much more controlled "Pulse Incomplete", which loops what sounds like a human breath, and links it to percolating rhythms, and subtly blooping and bleeping cascades of muted melody, the beat frantic and frenzied, but somehow also subdued and dialed way back. "Contract 0", makes us think of a Kompakt record stripped of every non essential element, almost like the opposite of Pop Ambience, all the fuzzy, dreamy melodic driftiness pulled back, leaving just the barebones rhythm, and some strange distant glitchery, and fragmented static. Finally, "Story of Aurea" is all droned out mystery, a burbling, softly undulating low end swell, laced with tiny upper register trills, and barely audible dog whistle sonar sine waves, which leads directly into the closer, "Wash Over Me", which begins as some abstract minimal electro dub, just rhythm, and a distant chordal thrum, before the rhythm is joined by some soft billowing clouds of synthy shimmer, the sound transformed into a dreamy bit of new agey soft focus skitter, which again, we would dig a WHOLE record of. So good! One of our new favorite electronic / minimal techno records for sure, our current going to sleep music (which as you all know, is probably THEE highest recommendation we can give to this sort of record), and very likely to end up on some of our top ten lists (cuz list making time is coming up!!)...

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Shifts is the work of Frans de Waard (Goem, Beequeen, and the proprietor of Staalplaat). "8 Lines" features two lengthy buzzing ambient soundscapes constructed mostly through the bouncing / doubling of tracks on an 8 track. One piece is a glistening drone of soft guitar wash, and the other is an eerie manipulation of the perenially avoided 60 cycle hum.

One of the joys of working at record stores and doing college radio shows is how much access you end up getting to amazing records that otherwise you might not ever get to come across. And the cool thing about both radio and record stores, is that you're then in a position to share that music with everyone! One such record was by an Australian band called The Hungry Ghosts who released one full length album in 1999 called Alone, Alone. One of those records whose beauty strikes you on first listen and continues to move you a hundred listens down the line. Hungry Ghosts utilized an approach similar to their Australian cohorts, The Dirty Three, yet somehow managed to make their sound maybe even more gorgeous and heartbreaking. I (Irwin) remember playing it for the first time back when I had a show on KSPC in southern California and instantly falling in love. Sadly they seemed to disappear after that record. No trace of them anywhere. I even tried writing them and never heard back. Turns out I wasn't the only one who couldn't find them. John Brooks who was a founding member of the group is said to have entered a black hole of sorts. Later to be found at the Tara institute, a Tibetan Buddhist meditation center in Melbourne. It's there that he went back to his surname of Shilo and with a four-track donated by a fellow resident he began to record music often by candlelight and the results are this absolutely stunning record. You can feel the solitude, the still, the searching and the moments of transcendence. Musical sketches that evoke such a moody elegance. Kind of like if Do Make Say Think and the GYBE camp were forced to trade in all their outbursts and grandiose climaxes and instead go deep within to find the essence of their sound. Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth knew he had to put this out when he finally got the tapes from Shilo and we're so happy he did. Every time we play this in the store someone comes up to see what it is and usually leaves with a copy for themselves. A timeless and totally beautiful record!

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Holy heck. This is some serious over the top "blackjazz" indeed. No, not "black" jazz like, in the African American sense (which would be rather redundant anyway), but more like, "blackened" in the metal sense. 'Cause this band is from Norway, y'know. And none other than that modern day Viking, Grutle from Enslaved, makes a cameo vocal appearance on one track. One could argue that this "blackjazz" is not really jazz at all. Unless your idea of jazz comes entirely from the works of John Zorn! And he'd be the first to tell you it shouldn't. But if you like John Zorn and Mike Patton and others of that ilk, you'll probably dig this. Likewise if you're already a fan of Shining, of course. We've certainly enjoyed their previous albums as well - notice now that they're not on jazz/experimental label Rune Grammofon, but on a metal label, albeit a fairly adventurous one, whose last release highlighted here was by Japanese weirdos Sigh, fans of whom just might be able to wrap their heads around this too. If you haven't yet heard Shining, this album will pull no punches in the matter of acquainting you with their unique sound. Jazz IS a part of it (including saxophone... though there's sax in Sigh too and they're not jazz) but there's more, lots more. The first track is a hyper spazzed, fuzzed out almost industrial metal onslaught (interestingly, they do it again later in the record in a more abstract, atmospheric fashion). And they just descend from there further into skronky, complex, heavy prog madness, laced with ADD electronic weirdness and improvisatory jamming, played with both metal and jazz chops. Speaking of which, the squealing saxes come to the fore on "Healter Skelter" (which is not a misspelled Beatles cover), a track that actually gives Japan's Koenjihyakkei ensemble a run for their money!!! Then there's "Blackjazz Deathtrance", perhaps the album's centerpiece, the longest track anyway, nearly 11 minutes of utter, uh, blackjazz deathtrance indeed: spasming percussive assault, sampled screaming crowd noise, frenzied sax blat, shuddering fuzz riffs, spiraling into energetic disassembly, diving into droned-out depths, throbbing with electronic menace. It's kinda like 16-17 meets Fantomas. And that holds for much of the rest of the record too. You could also compare this to the likes of Guapo and Naked City, with some Jazkamer thrown in for good measure. The disc ends with a cover of the oft-covered "21st Century Schizoid Man" but they do it really well (that's the one w/ Grutle on vox). And that particular King Crimson classic is perfect for Shining, being prog pioneers King Crimson's most metal composition (really one of the earliest metal songs ever) as well as one that's a natural launchpad for hyperchaotic free jazz freakouts too. In a word, when it (and this album) is over: whew!

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NOW ON VINYL! Not one but two albums by this weird sorta jazz electronica group on Rune G. Here's a review cobbled together from our write-ups of the cd versions of the relevant records... In The Kingdom Of Kitsch You Will Be A Monster was the 2005 debut of Shining, from Norway (not to be confused with the black metal Shining from Sweden). What be they if not black metal? Hmm, let's listen...good grief, dunno the genre for this even...it's jazz we guess...of sorts. Powerful and freaky and technological. Lead by Jorgen Munkby (ex-Jaga Jazzist, as is the Shining's keyboardist) who plays (on here) everything from sax to accordion to church organ to guitar to mellotron to synths, and does drum programming too. But Shining is a five-piece band so as multi-instrumental as Jorgen is, he's doesn't have to do it all at once. And they leave the tubular bells to a guest musician. So, you get the idea that there's potentially a lot going on. The requiste Kim Hiorthoy cover art, which kinda looks like a blown-to-bits website, implies as much. The ten tracks here veer from booming bombast to melodic moodiness. Energetic ADD explosions of horns and percussion are calmed with weird wordless vocal parts, rhythmic frenzies give way to eerie grooves, and the players' jazz chops are chopped up. There's plenty of tension, and release, let's say! Just imagine some hotshot jazz guys gone on a dark, cinematic bender, unhealthily obsessed with Carl Stalling cartoon scores and arty prog rock and all possibilities of modern electronics. Your ears will feel fully exercised (and dare we say delighted) after a session with Shining. Very cool. Then in 2007, Grindstone came out. Compared to the debut, it seemed quite a bit harder and heavier than we remember! Some of this is almost industrial-metal, seriously. Herky-jerky rhythms one moment, sheer droning heaviness the next, with moody male and female vox amidst the instrumental/electronic onslaught. This has a sinister circusiness that makes you think that Mike Patton (Fantomas/Faith No More/etc.) must somehow be involved, though of course he's not. Doubtless he'd like how spunky, brassy, swirly, and dark this is, and that Shining haven't lost their any of their intense cinematic Morricone-ish sensibility. A handsome gatefold package, limited to 500 copies.

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MPEG stream: Fight Dusk With Dawn

Killer vinyl reissue of a long out of print cassette from the Shining Path, aka Ilya Monosov and Preston Swirnoff, brother of our very own Irwin. Originally released on T.B.T.D and now long gone. Sort of taking off from where Shining Path's first Holy Mountain release left off, these guys take synths, vocals, organs, hurdy gurdy, drum machine and guitar and whip them into a blown out krautrock, wild noise space rock frenzy, some baffling mix of Can, Hawkwind, High Rise and Suicide, that sounds perfect together, a confusionally brilliant wild eyed blowout. Total WTF? free psych heaven! From the opening burst of blown out heart-of-the-sun psychrock meltdown, to a stretch of spacious drifting, mesmerizing motorik fuzzstomp, to the final chunk of weird drum machine driven, electronic krautdrone, these guys are absolutely melt minds and destroy speakers, and we can't get enough. The flipside is another burst of furious dubbed out druggy psych, this batch of tuneage recorded live in Brooklyn in 2006 with guests Little Howlin' Wolf and Peter Barry. Recommended of course.

Latest release from Holy Mountain, a new 12" from The Shining Path, the duo of Ilya Monosov, and Preston Swirnoff. We've dug pretty much everything we've gotten our hands on so far, and this 12" is no different. Well, actually it is, sort of. And no we don't mean it's different as in we don't dig it, but no, as in it sounds WAY different than other SP releases. Where as other records were overdriven dubbed out druggy psych rock, Chocolate Gasoline has a bit of, well, a sort of calypso vibe mixed into their usual psychedelic stew. It's really strange, sort of sleazy sounding, WAY tripped out, but we still love it. Stripped down percussion, moaning reverbed guitar, blown out FX drenched leads, strange vocals, that almost sound like Jamaican style toasting, and that calypso vibe. It continues on through most of the record, occasionally interrupted by dubbed out rhythms, clouds of electronic glitch, all dizzy and druggy, it actually sounds a bit like this: imagine the house band in some dark dingy calypso bar, a bar you just stumbled into after being heavily dosed with LSD, everything spinning and twisting into freaky shapes, the band jamming in the corner, begins to lift off the ground, their sounds becoming colors, the bar fading until just you and the band are standing on some other planet, watching the Earth melt in the background while the band jams on, and the little rock you're on drifts closer and closer to the sun. Packaged in an eye popping 12" style sleeve, all reds and blues and yellows, just begging for some 3-D glasses!

The Shining Path is the psych rock alter ego minimalist experimental duo Ilya Monosov and Preston Swirnoff, and in the past we've raved about their blown out kraut flecked space rock. This new 7" captures the group live in 2005, two tracks from one of their very rare live performances. The opener is a deep slow burning dirge, glistening and glowing, the sound of a planet slowly drifting into the orbit of a collapsing sun, guitars swirl and soar, grind and growl, effulgent and resplendent. This is drone rock rendered almost static, the riffs crawl, the bass throbs, the whole track creeps, or more appropriately, floats weightless, in a cloud of layered red hot psych guitar, spit out in thick glowing gouts, shot through with feedback, it's like High Rise covering Stars Of The Lid! The second track is a bit more rocking, the drums and bass locked into a motorik groove, while the guitar, still super distorted and blown out, spits out riffs in sudden bursts, eventually coalescing into one constant stream of psychfuzz, pelted by fragments of super effected vocals, strange little squalls of FX, and then the bass gets all dubbed out, bouncing back and forth beneath the buzz and fuzz. Like all Trensmat 7"s, the vinyl comes bundled with a bonus cd-r, this one featuring an extra live track, a heavy rocker, with some serious riffing and harmonica (!), as well as four live videos from various performances, nicely filmed, cool effects, tripped out lighting, and most importantly, more awesome music, with bleated sax, moaning horns, droney raga-like buzz, chanted vocals, creepy ambience, thick walls of guitars, rumbling throbbing bass, all woven into some seriously spaced out psychedelic dronerock. Pressed on white vinyl and of course, VERY LIMITED!

MPEG stream: Live At The Voltaire Commune
MPEG stream: Lonely Hearts

While most of the imaginary filmscores follow Barry Adamson's approach: psychologically involved, noirish atmospheres with plenty of spy thriller references, Darrin Verhagen takes the imaginary filmscore to the realm of medieval epics for wizards, ghouls, and dragons. These dark post-classical compositions (which are entirely sampler based, rather than orchestrated) are reminiscent of the Cold Meat Industries aesthetic of bombastic Wagnerian elements and dark Industrial references to In Slaughter Natives. This marks the final installment to the Witch Trilogy after "The Witch Hammer" and "The Witch Hunter".

RealAudio clip: Witches' Ladder
RealAudio clip: Spores Of Death

You could argue that EVERY record from these Texas via UK via Texas noise rock weirdos is sort of a 'dance' record. Every one rife with rhythms and grooves, hypnotic and repetitive, tranced out and yeah a little bit groovy. Although most of that was countered by blown out distorted bass buzz, squealing noise made by squeezing air from balloons, thick swaths of analog synth blurt, crushing down tuned bass buzz, multi drummers, bizarre and ultra creepy costumes, but really, at the core of $&$, was rhythm. And as the band has shed its revolving phalanx of multiple drummers, and slimmed down its ranks to what is essentially just one man, $&$ mastermind Craig Clouse, the sound has changed as well, with Clouse pushing the music of his previously bombastic noise rock juggernaut into something more electronic, the entity that is now Shit & Shine, instead of being some weirdo noise rockers, are in fact some twisted, avant, and yeah, still noisy and WTF version of electronic music, one that's not strictly electronic, just to muddy the waters just a little more. In fact, right from the get go, the sound is akin to the Butthole Surfers recording for Warp, or some extremely bastardized version of that new slo-mo soul sound. Opener "Hiss" sounds like Burila or How To Dress Well, but all drugged up and doused in FX, at least for a minute or two, then in comes some proper guitar some synths, and the 'band' sound like an actual band, a cleaner, more streamlined, more 'danceable' Buttholes perhaps, but in the history of $&$, it doesn't sound all that out of place, even though it is a lot different than most of what's come before. But we dig it, a noisy, rock groove, peppered with swirls of squelch and gristle, some buried progged out synths, FX that send sounds stuttering into cloud of dizzying psych, but al wedded to that unwavering groove. And that's just the beginning, with Clouse utilizing his kitchen sink approach, but in this case, the kitchen sink in question is a dirty rusty sink in an old abandoned meth lab on an empty lot somewhere in bumfuck Texas, but that only adds to the WTF of Clouse's 'electronica' and doesn't prevent him from conjuring up squelchy little bas driven synth heavy grooves like "You Can't", which sounds like some warped version of Neu!, or the ultra minimal glitchy electro skitter static of 'Pearl Drop", or the big bass, block rockin' "PG 13" that takes a super funky groove, adds some metallic vokill screech, some distort blasts of psych noise, all of which eventually devolves into a sort of eighties soundtrack groove. From there on out, there's the demented James Brown-ish "Blowhannon', which sounds like his back up band was either Earth Wind And Fire or Rusted Shut or BOTH. "Who's Your Waitress", is a shittier shinier take on FM radio yacht rock, a smooth groove, laced with just enough subtle WTF-ness to keep it confusional, "Value" is all big beat bombast, sounding like it could be some lost DHR b-side or another Meat Beat style cruncher. There's more of course, from low spun, creeps wrapped around rubbery bass billows, and dubbed out drum splatter, and some pounding 4 on the floor acid house, albeit equally acid fried, and wreathed in some creepy John Carpenter synthiness. And if you're lucky, and remain a cd person, the aluminum version has bonus tracks from the last $&$ 12", one a cool collaged rhythmic groove, replete with mangled vocal samples, skipping bass blurt, some gurgled cookie monster vox, even some guitar crunch, one is a full on disco blowout, albeit a bit distorted and twisted, and FX heavy, especially toward the end, where it seems to melt into a sort of Butthole Surfers megamix, and one is a murky skitter, that slowly builds to a sort of warbly dubbed out funk-murk electro dirge, that is about as danceable as it is weird. Which is 'very' on both counts.

MPEG stream: Hiss
MPEG stream: You Can't
MPEG stream: Pearl Drop
MPEG stream: PG 13
MPEG stream: Blowhannon

When we first heard / heard about Shit And Shine, a mysterious noise rock collective from the UK, they definitely seemed custom made for aQ, multiple drummers, multiple bass players, someone playing lawnmower, a sound equal parts vintage Butthole Surfers, classic Hawkwind, and modern kraut-psych-drone-rock a la Circle and Pharaoh Overlord and Cave and the like, not to mention the garish, sometimes offensive album, art, the hilarious and usually offensive song titles, we were sold, smitten, totally obsessed. And thankfully, in the several years since that very first 12", very little has changed, almost all of the aforementioned essentials are still part and parcel of the Shit And Shine experience (minus the lawnmowers, but then the more we've come to understand these jokers, the more we realize that probably a lot of the 'facts' circulating about S&S is total bullshit, so odds are there never was any lawnmowers, sigh), and if anything, they've managed the impossible, getting tighter and more polished, more rocking, with better and somewhat proper 'songs', while simultaneously getting more and more fucked up and far out, taking super minimal elements and combining them into something massive and bewitching and baffling and heavy as fuck, but sounding literally unlike anything we've ever heard. Sure there are elements of plenty of stuff we love, but the way these guys twist those elements and cram them into whatever shape THIS is, just blows our minds, and eardrums. So yeah, garish pink on white cover, masked lady with one of her breasts out on the front, a weird long necked headless super hero lady on the back, inside an awesome scary photo of two little girls, long hair obscuring their faces, standing hand in hand in front of a massive wall of amps, and song titles: "Have You Really Thought About Your Presentation?", "Goodbye And Good Gardening", "Girls Against Shit", "20 Years Of Caring For The Nations Eyes", "The Cusp Of Innocence, Prettily", "I'm Making My Lunch", " People Like You... REALLY!" and on and on, but none of that would mean shit if there wasn't a head spinning gut churning din to back it up, and holy shit do these guys bring the noise this time around. The opening track, "Have Your Really Thought About Your Presentation" is equal parts Brainbombs and last list's Record Of The Weekers Rusted Shut, but with a little bit of krautish hypnorock mixed in, so what you get is a crushing, super distorted mega main RIFF, a pounding mesmerizing drum beat, everything super hot and blown out and in the red, looped and locked and pounding away over and over and over and over, but with some weird stuff going on, buried vocals, strange bits of glitch and crunch, and the weirdest part of all, seems impossible to play, but every few measures, it sounds like the band skips a beat, almost like the record skips, but it's super subtle, like a weird stutter step, that just makes it all the more weird, but no less trancelike and heavy, and it only gets weirder from there on out. All the songs here are based on rhythms, which comes with the territory when you have multiple drummers, the second track begins all skittery, an almost drum machine sounding shuffle, which slips into a looped dubbed out pound, while all around the rhythms is buffeted by swirling FX, jagged shards of jangle guitar, and super distorted wild over-saturated leads and weird voices buried in the mix. The next track explodes in a tangle of twisted string buzz and fractured electronics, before those sounds coalesce into a crazy noise drenched rock racket, rife with angular guitars and layer upon layer of drones and voices and feedback and sonic chaos. "USA / Mexico" is some Buttholes gone black metal weirdness, super murky muddy riffage, pounding blast beats, start stop rhythms, bizarre vokills and crazy electronics all over the place. The crushing stop start chug of "The Cusp Of Innocence, Prettily", almost makes the record for us, with a killer main riff, and an increasingly distorted guitar tone, until a sample of some cheesy European sounding folk song comes in, and like magic, the crunch and chug and pound lock in and fit perfectly with that lilting little ditty, turning it into something nasty and scary and AWESOME. It's only a second, but it's sooooo good. The abstract dub of the title track, the main rhythm made out of what sounds like someone writing on a chalkboard, some super effected tripped out dubby bursts, random spoken words, thick sheets of warm washed out guitars, until the track gets all Circle-y, but filtered through some fractured nineties industrial, like Pharaoh Overlord jamming Meat Beat Manifesto, but with strangled metal guitars and vrooming motorcycle sounds. There's some dance-y almost house sounding throb and pulse, but it's butted up right against a twisted angular noise rock / electro mashup, that is so distorted it's dabbling in Merzbow territory. The other looooong track "Roberts Church Problem" sounds like it was recorded live, ad thus sounds like vintage S&S in full on unhinged Buttholes mode, multiple pounding drummers, wall of buzz, fuzzed out heaviness, repetitive and looped and seemingly never ending (we wish!). "Friseur Nelson is another good one, all very Circle, distorted and murky, a killer tribal rhythm, crumbling fuzz bass, and a muted chugging low end, some weird haunting chiming minor key melodies, another one that could have been stretched out to the end of the record and we would have been perfectly happy. We could go on and on and on (even more than we already have), but why bother? Every song here rules, they're all super strange and heavy and hooky and groovy and noisy, and somehow, for being so disparate, they all manage to sound like part of a proper record. Well, certainly not a PROPER record, but you know what we mean. And while the rest of the songs are just as tripped out, and what-the-fuck and holy shit! as the ones we already described, odds are by now you probably got the feel for whether this is your cup of blown out rhythmic heaviness or not. The sound of Shit And Shine is like some constantly twisting and transforming, bloody and mangled wreckage, equal parts This Heat, Aluk Todolo, Geronimo, Butthole Surfers, Rusted Shut, Brainbombs, Merzbow, Terminal Cheesecake, Strangulated Beatoffs, Faust, Laddio Bollocko, all pulled apart and reassembled into some damaged Frankenhooker noiserock drum circle spacejam. And odds are if you like any or all of those bands, you're gonna LOVE this...

MPEG stream: Have You Really Thought About Your Presentation?
MPEG stream: USA / Mexico
MPEG stream: The Cusp Of Innocence. Prettily
MPEG stream: Girls Against Shit
MPEG stream: Friseur Nelson

They pretty much had us at "dubstep Shit And Shine". Yep, UK mysterious masked multi drummer-ed noise rock weirdos, who recently destroyed at SXSW, and did a fair bit of damage in the Bay Area recently as well, return with their own take on dubstep, and it's just as fucked up and freaked out as we might have imagined (or hoped), and we have to say it's pretty much how we wish ALL dubstep sounded, heavy and super distorted, blown out, the beats pounding, the bass fuzzed out and crushing, a lurching hypnotic groove, surrounded on all sides by crumbling FX, distorted howls, a dizzying swirl of demented sounds, it's like the Butthole Surfers remixed by Burial, or Kode9 covering Rusted Shut. The B-side is the blissier of the two, but only just barely, with deep undulating bass, a locked and looped main groove, weird grunts, and blurred voices, little bits of melody, twisted and tweaked, but weirdly tranquil and hypnotic. Some DJ somewhere is gonna whip this out midset and either utterly destroy the dancefloor, or seriously freak folks the fuck out. Much more likely the latter. Best dubstep jam of the year? Quite possibly...

The first time we heard from the UK's bass and drum (not to be confused with drum and bass) ensemble Shit And Shine, we were already predisposed to love them. Seeing as they featured multiple bass players, a stage full of drummers, and most importantly, at least to us, several lawnmowers. Fuck. Yeah. Over the course of the last three or four years, these guys have continually pummeled us within an inch of our lives, with their throbbing tribal Butthole Surfers style onslaught, a furious blown out in the red drug drenched psych rock, but only the loosest approximation of rock. More like some sort of government drug experiment, where various deviants and ne'er do wells, criminals and sociopaths, were incarcerated, dosed with all manner of experimental psychotropics, then let loose in a concrete bunker filled with drums and amps and busted up old bass guitars, everything recorded for posterity, until someone started leaking the tapes, code name: SHIT AND SHINE. This was the most wacked shit we'd heard since Terminal Cheesecake or the Strangulate Beatoffs. And every record drifted further and further out, as the band became more and more unhinged, and now there's this, Cherry, a massive double lp that while still demonstrating the kind of physical and psychic damage Shit And Shine can do, also reveals a whole new world of fucked up sound these guys have tapped into. In fact, when we first threw this on, we weren't even sure it was the same band. The record opens with a simple percussive drum jam, all toms, sort of tribal, beneath a series of samples, and film clips, a little weird, reminiscent of old industrial, until the next track obliterates the first with a blast of awesome processed metallic riffing, almost like some heavily FX-ed Iron Maiden leads, draped over some shitty shiney sludge, then suddenly guitars flip backwards, the sound becoming some freaked out psych damage, lurching into some killer stop / start dynamics, a churning what-the-fuck sort-of metal jam. Oh yeah, there's also a long long track of old school proto disco, groovy, druggy dancefloor shit, unexpected, but it sort of works in S+S's tweaked sound world. And all of that stuff is peppered with brief super short tracks of classic Shit And Shine tribal drugpsych pummel, but it always slips back into something� curious. Side three is a single side long track, a gorgeous chunk of layered drone, guitars buzz and rumble, basses throb and pulse, there are probably some synths in there too, the various layers churning and shifting, drifting and shimmering, super hypnotic but still subtly fucked up and creepy. And finally, for those folks who were put off by all this weirdness, meaning even more weirdness than normal, all of side 4 is taken up by a full on, head crushing Shit And Shine blow out. Doped up and spaced out, huge loping rhythms, pounding multiple drumkits, the basses and guitars a chaotic tangle of crumbling riffs and throbbing distortion, everything locked into relentless looped churning crush. So completely filthy and crusty and damaged that it sounds constantly on the verge of falling to pieces, but it's this continuous chaos and impending doom, that makes S+S's freaky jams so intense and so fucking awesome! Need we say, TRES RECOMMENDED! More totally and hilariously garish cover art. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES! We got a bunch but AQ folks seem especially partial to Shit -AND- Shine, so these will probably go pretty quick. You have been warned.

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

SORRY. We thought UK noiseniks Shit & Shine couldn't get any more brutal or abrasive or, well, noisy, but of course we were dead wrong� This two track monstrosity lets us hear us two very different sides of the multi headed S+S beast. The A side finds the band kicking up an absolutely ear shredding din, so noisy and blown out that it's almost impossible to hear the actual band. There are multiple drummers, and multiple bass players, but here it sounds like they're all armed with white noise machines and sine wave generators. Layers of in-the-red buzz and high end hiss, super distorted vocals and a murky rhythmic throb. It almost sounds like what we wished Merzbow sounded like, a fierce super dynamic heavy as fuck white noise juggernaut. But then there's the unexpected B side, which is downright tranquil, a carnivalesque loop warbling beneath children's voices, tons of delay and reverb, a dizzying blur of funhouse ambience. Weird as fuck, but somehow a good balance for the chaotic skree on the flipside. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Each one hand numbered.

"Cunts With Roses" doesn't really seem like such a surprising name for�a Shit And Shine record when you cast you mind back a few months to their equally problematically titled "Toilet Door Tits" lp on Conspiracy. But then why should a band with such a brilliantly problematic sound, not follow suit with their song titles, album titles and artwork? (Oh, did we mention the cover of�"Cunts With Roses" features a close up of a booty being extricated from a thong, with the band name printed in fancy metallic gold leaf? Yep.) So here we have a crushing archival recording from these UK noisemakers, captured live in a rehearsal studio, preparing for a show opening for the mighty Laibach. Supposedly this is the first recording EVER of the live Shit And Shine experience, and it's a bloody earful for sure. TWO SIDES, ONE RIFF. That's right, just one. But one's really all you need, any more than that and you're basically a prog band, right? A relentless pounding pulverizing repetitive crush, a looped tribal brick to the forehead, churning over and over and over and over and over, it would be quite lulling and soothing if it weren't so fucking skull crushing.� The sound is almost industrial and machinelike, an army of zombie drummers pounding away amidst roiling coils of vacuum cleaner ambience, shouted vocals are sucked under, the bass is slung waaaaay loooow, not so much rocking as churning and throbbing, everything wrapped in a thick crumbling coat of crusty sonic filth. Think Aufgehoben, Swans, Butthole Surfers -- maybe if you took all three, lobotomized them, locked them in a dank cellar with nothing but drums and amps and a tape recorder, and dosed them with PCP, until the whole lot of them went completely berserk, a moldy basement full of convulsing noise rockers pounding and howling and droning as they slowly rot and fall to pieces and lose their minds completely. In other words, WAY recommended.� Ultra limited of course, and a bit pricey cuz of the crap exchange� rate and the weight of vinyl shipped overseas. But well worth it for those of you who need a good sonic bashing, which we'd guess is most of you.

Return of the mighty Shit And Shine, a massive sprawling noise rock collective from the UK. Multiple drummers, LOTS of guitars, even some lawnmowers and other noisemakers. This new disc takes their caustic freaked out psych-noise in a whole new direction, channeling their energy into blissed out sort-of krautrocky grooves, albeit still drenched in thick grinding crumbling grit with the needle ALL the way in the red. In fact -most- of the tracks here are some sort of hypnotic stripped down rhythm, just completely damaged and dinged up and pelted with thick slabs of hissy fuzz. Vocals struggly desperately to be heard, even the drums keep getting sucked under the massive swells of acidic sound, swirls of buzzing glitch and super blown out melodies are all draped over the endlessly propulsive rhythms, as they struggle to keep moving forward with layer after layer after layer of dense prickly buzz and drone piled atop them. A gloriously cacophonous caterwaul of rhythmic chaos. Imagine the Psychic Paramount filtered through a Merzbow production and mastered by Masonna, pressed onto a lathe cut, then played a thousand times until the grooves all began to run together, then play it on a turntable made from an old microwave using a rusty nail as a stylus, and broadcast it through the blown out speakers in that junked car that's been sitting in your neighbor's yard for the last ten years. The record THAT sound, and broadcast it through a HUGE tuba shaped loud speaker with your head stuck all the way into the horn. Kinda like that. Imagine some Aufgehoben No Process, some Laddio Bolocko, some Wolf Eyes, some Butthole Surfers, even some Whitehouse and eighties no wave, but mix in a serious dose of Can and Faust and then douse it in thick swaths of noise, freeze it and shatter it into a million pieces. It all comes together on the album's 30 minute centerpiece "Practicing To Be A Doctor", a simple rock and roll drum beat, a million pounds of grinding low end, some grungy sludgy garage rock riffing, some buried mumbled vocals, and set the whole thing to just sort of lazily unfurl over the course of a lurching, druggy, damaged half hour. Suddenly we're also hearing some Brainbombs, some Terminal Cheesecake, even a bit of the Melvins, all wrapped up into endlessly motorik spaced out tribal sludge rock nirvana. For a limited time, Jealous Of Shit And Shine also includes an extra cd, which contains their long out of print 12" "You're Lucky To Have Friends Like Us" on cd for the first (and last) time! Here's what we had to say about the 12" when we listed it way back in 2004: You might want to keep an old rag next to your turntable for this one, to wipe the grit and grime and goo off your needle when you're done listening to this slab of sonic what-the-fuck. A confusional mix of buzzy, damaged psych rock spaceout, Buttholes style tribal weirdness, straight up icepick in the ear noise rock, speaker melting sludge and some very unlikely pop filigree. Instrumentation includes multiple drummers, multiple lawnmowers (?) and lots of guitar all melded into a pummelling wall of grindsludgepopnoisepsych.

Shit And Shine sure have come a long way from the multiple-drummer-ed Neanderthal noise rock rock pummel that was their M.O. for years. Recent recordings and performances have run the gamut from warped noise drenched dubstep to pounding psych rock laced with balloon squeak solos, so every live show and ever new record is a total unknown, and even once you get into a new record, every track ends up being a warped surprise. But really we wouldn't have it any other way. This new lp Jream Baby Jream pretty much continues right where the sprawling Le Grand Larance Prix triple lp left off, a handful of warped jams that end up going in whatever fucked up direction the $&$ guys want them too. Which requires a quick run through of all the songs... The A side starts off the 10+ minute "Dinner With My Girlfriend" which couples alien vocoder-ed and auto-tuned vox to some dirgey, blown out super distorted beats, the whole track sounds like it's at the wrong speed, the sounds filthy and crumbling, swirling FX and all manner of weirdness going on beneath the surface, a stunted electro-drug groove that should have some dancefloor bumping, just not one where normal folks congregate. "Mermuda Triangle" is a blast of electronic weirdness, pitch shifted buzzes and constantly shifting layered drones, all over stuttery beats and weird ominously spoken vox, the whole thing laced with weird eighties melodies, which makes the track sound like Faxed Head covering some obscure eighties pop song. The A side closes with the title track, which is the weirdest of the bunch, mostly for being the least weird. It's a straight slow jam rock tune, all stripped down guitar and shuffling rhythm, the weirdest part being the mush mouthed vox, but otherwise it sounds like some warped slow jam high school dance ballad, playing in a gym in bumfuck, nowhere. The B side starts off with "Woodpecker", a short blast of heavy No U-Turn style dubstep / jungle, all stripped down and pounding, but plenty fractured and fucked up, noisy and rife with all manner of glitches and squelches, before leading into the 10 minute "Rodeo Girls", a woozy, psychedelic slab of looped weirdly distorted kraut-funk, the sound shifting constantly, getting blown out, murky and muddy one second, brittle and crunchy the next, strange melodies surfacing throughout, all the while the main loop remains maniacally mesmerizing. And finally, "Youth Led Worship" is a dark minimal coda, all murky and pulsing, a dirgey droned out drift, with haunting processed vox, and a field of deep moaning buzz, a blurred blackened sprawl of hushed sinister creep. Weird as fuck, of course, but bafflingly brilliant too. LIMITED TO 400 COPIES! On either green or orange vinyl! Already sold out at the label and out of print. These are the last copies we'll be able to get!!!

Ahhh, Shit And Shine, even the name give us the warm fuzzies. That's because multiple drummer-ed lawn mower bass tribal drug jams often do. And no one does it better, or quite like the UK's Shit And Shine. With a constantly shifting lineup that often swells to double digits, including as many drummers as they can pack into a room. And a wall of amplifiers that makes SUNNO))) seem like they're playing through practice amps, several bass players, often just a phalanx of shitty Casio keyboards, howling vocals, all tangled up into a heaving mass of post-Butthole Surfers drug psych heaviness. Much like the cd reissue of Cherry (last week's Record Of The Week), Kuss Mich, Meine Liebe is not entirely brand new, the two longest tracks we've had before on a super limited, crazy expensive lp, but here on cd for the very first time. Along with one other loooooooong jam, and a handful of shorter, but no less appealing chunks of what-the-fuck tribal psych-out heaviness. Let's cover the tracks we've heard before. "Biggest Cock In Christendom" is an in-the-red tribal workout, like a more metallic and way more distorted and druggy No Neck Blues Band. Or a WAY heavier Chain Reaction disc. Thick pulses of low end drift beneath streaks of super distorted amp damage, all very krautrock sounding, but filtered through a bank of effects pedals, all broken or with dying batteries. Definitely blissed out and mesmerizing, but so ominous and creepy. This is the shit musical dreams are made of. 15 minutes of this stuff is not nearly enough. Set it to repeat, drink a bottle of Nyquil and let yourself get sucked under. The other track from the 12", "Toilet Door Tits", is an endless rhythmic jam, with ultra blown out drums, sounding a bit like some Butthole Surfers / Laddio Bolocko hybrid, albeit WAY more distorted and damaged. The sound is completely fried, the whole track sounding like it's crumbling through your speakers, strangled vocals drift amidst the tribal pummel, as do weird alien sounding squiggly leads that squirm and slither from speaker to speaker giving the whole track a super disorienting effect. The other long track on Kuss Mich is the epic and drowsily sprawling "Preventions Arise", 10 minutes of muted almost industrial sounding rhythms, way more moody and washed out than the other tracks, an endless muddy murky rhythmic jam, pulsing and throbbing, a propulsive groove beneath a very noir spoken word. Strange but a good balance to the sheer brutality of the other tracks. Scattered all around these three massive jams are jagged little chunks of shiny shit, blasts of noise and crunch and buzz and pound, from brief flurries of machine like grind, furious blast beats, and stuttering off kilter rhythms, to total Buttholes worship, pounding tribal rhythm, buzzing fuzz guitar, hypnotic and intense, to tripped out abstract skitter, all warbly distorted bass, and processed vox, to huge blown out chug and churn, heavy and epic and massively distorted and blown out. Once again, more proof that these guys (and gals) are the current reigning kings and queens of crushing chaotic drugged out drone drenched drum corps psych-doom heaviness. Killer packaging, very simple and cryptic, shit brown paper and metallic gold ink shine!

MPEG stream: Biggest Cock In Christendom
MPEG stream: The Germans Call It A Swimming Head
MPEG stream: Kuss Miche, Meine Liebe

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

SORRY. These Latitudes cds have beeen a bitch to get. Thanks to everyone for beeing so patient. They are super limited and only a handful even make it to the states, and of that handful we have to fight tooth and nail to get enough to list. We only now managed to get 20 copies of the inaugural Latitudes dics, number ONE, from the UK's Shit And Shine, a gore soaked, bloody nosed, sweat stained knee to the groin. Multiple drummers, lots of guitars, a toy keyboard and one mighty riff. Think prime era Butthole Surfers, add some Stooges stomp and some Hawkwind spaciness, an unstoppable wall of crushing churning psychedelic crunch, thick sludgy basslines, fuzzy filthy guitars, grunted shouted vocals, all in a druggy swirl of effects, random noises and full on brain frying weirdness. A glorious forty minute pummelling. Comes packaged in a super intricate hand screened die cut fold over sleeve with a full color insert. Each copy hand stamped and numbered. Limited to 1000 copies worldwide, 500 of which made it to the United States, only 20 of which made it here. So you know what that means!

MPEG stream: Ladybird (Excerpt)

One of our favorite in Southern's Latitudes series, available on super duper limited vinyl!!!! We got 30 copies and will never be able to get more. So jump on these quick... Full on, over the top, freaked out psychedelic, drum drenched guitarnoise from this massive UK ensemble Shit And Shine, a a gore soaked, bloody nosed, sweat stained sonic knee to the groin. Multiple drummers, lots of guitars, a toy keyboard and one mighty riff. Think prime era Butthole Surfers, add some Stooges stomp and some Hawkwind spaciness, an unstoppable wall of crushing churning psychedelic crunch, thick sludgy basslines, fuzzy filthy guitars, grunted shouted vocals, all in a druggy swirl of effects, random noises and full on brain frying weirdness. A glorious forty minute pummeling. Comes packaged in a cool diecut sleeve, a variation on the immediately recognizable Latitudes cd packaging, although this time, white on black instead of white on brown. Includes the same insert as the cd. Pressed on bright red vinyl. And of course, SUPER SUPER LIMITED!!!

MPEG stream: Ladybird (Excerpt)

Originally released on the Rock Is Hell label as a super limited triple lp, this twisted chunk of sprawling rhythmic whatthefuck weirdness from these Texas-by-way-of-the-UK-by-way-of-Texas-again multiple drummer-ed noiseniks is now finally available on cd, also super limited, originally only orderable direct from the label, we're the only store in the US to have these, and they won't last long, so grab one before they're gone... Le Grand Larance Prix just might be Shit And Shine's most ambitious and most over the top record yet, which is saying a lot, considering pretty much everything these guys do pretty goddamn over the top. But this one really takes the cake, pushing their sound in a whole different direction. We might have imagined them going even noiser, more drum heavy, but no, instead, $&$ offer up a bunch of epic jams, looped out and tranced out, that tend toward the super minimal, the mesmerizingly rhythmic, ultra repetitive and hypnotic, but not in the usual bombastic heavy $&$ way, no these are like alternative universe minimal dancefloor chillout jams. Or something. Probably best to just go through em one at a time... "Flirtations At A Cocktail Party", pretty much sets the template, looped tribal drumming, a revving engine, loping low slung bassline, all blurred and looped into a sort of abstract rhythmic mesmer, laced with strange robotic vox, like some sort of alien lo-fi electro, the track gradually growing more and more blown out, finally becoming extra melodic and dense right near the end. That's the most typically Shit & Shine track of the bunch, cuz the next one, "Frankies Theme" dials everything back, loopy and minimal, with muted melodies, a sort of circular slow motion groove, motorik and locked in, while around it sounds swirl and shimmer, distant melodic swells ebb and flow, it's sidelong but it's the sort of thing that sounds like it could have gone on forever. "Switching 2 Nite Mode" definitely lives up to its title by swiping the main part of the Rolling Stones' "Emotional Rescue" and looping it into a jumbled psychedelic freakout, adding swirls of processed vox (even some sliced and diced Jagger falsetto), dubbed out production, some deep ominous vocals all slowed down, before the song transforms into a slo-mo creep, all weirdly muted and creepily sexy. Which leads right into "Frenchys Automotive", another super minimal loop-jam, a main melody repeated rhythmically, pulsing hypnotically, the vibe almost kosmische, but more sort of murky and mesmerizing, that main figure looped and looped, while all around it, random sounds swirl and shimmer druggily. The home stretch starts off with "How To Rattle A White Tailed Buck", which unfurls a brittle looped melody, peppered with occasional rib cage rattling boomin' system low end bass thumps, the whole thing sort of blurpy and lumbering, a stuttery groove that shuffles through clouds of staticky hiss, which bleeds right into the final track, "Klipp", which is most definitely the most high fidelity of the bunch, super heavy, repetitive, Circle like hypno-rock, but a bit more minimal, the main guitar riff and shuffling rhythm totally in sync, while all around it sounds swirl and decay, shards of melodies and and crumbling FX, processed vocals and constantly shifting layers wreathe the hypno-rock in a buzzy, blurry, noisy gauze. Fuck yeah. The cd version comes in a green minimal digipak style sleeve that sort of apes the original lp packaging. And as mentioned above, SUPER limited, we have about 25 copies, and then that's probably IT!! Packaged in a 6 panel hand screened triple gatefold jacket!

MPEG stream: Flirtations At A Cocktail Party
MPEG stream: Switching 2 Nite Mode
MPEG stream: Klipp

Back in print/stock, now in a red sleeve with black printing, these came in the mail slightly damaged, so anal record nerds steer clear, but for everyone else, these are seriously discounted, so if slightly bumped corners and less than perfect sleeves don't bug you, snap one of these up before they're gone... Latest sprawling rhythmic whatthefuck epic from these Texas-by-way-of-the-UK-by-way-of-Texas-again multiple drummer-ed weirdos, and it's maybe their most ambitious and most over the top yet, which is saying a lot, considering pretty much everything these guys do pretty goddamn over the top. But this triple lp takes their sound in a whole different direction. We might have imagined them going even noiser, more drum heavy, but no, instead, $&$ offer up six sidelong jams, looped out and tranced out, that tend toward the super minimal, the mesmerizingly rhythmic, ultra repetitive and hypnotic, but not in the usual bombastic heavy $&$ way, no these are like alternative universe minimal dancefloor chillout jams. Or something. Probably best to just go through em one at a time... Side A, "Flirtations At A Cocktail Party", pretty much sets the template, looped tribal drumming, a revving engine, loping low slung bassline, all blurred and looped into a sort of abstract rhythmic mesmer, laced with strange robotic vox, like some sort of alien lo-fi electro, the track gradually growing more and more blown out, finally becoming extra melodic and dense right near the end. That's the most typically Shit & Shine track of the bunch, cuz the next one, "Frankies Theme" dials everything back, loopy and minimal, with muted melodies, a sort of circular slow motion groove, motorik and locked in, while around it sounds swirl and shimmer, distant melodic swells ebb and flow, it's sidelong but it's the sort of thing that sounds like it could have gone on forever. The second lp starts with "Switching 2 Nite Mode", which lives up to its title by swiping the main part of the Rolling Stones' "Emotional Rescue" and looping it into a jumbled psychedelic freakout, adding swirls of processed vox (even some sliced and diced Jagger falsetto), dubbed out production, some deep ominous vocals all slowed down, before the song transforms into a slo-mo creep, all weirdly muted and creepily sexy. The flipside, "Frenchys Automotive", is another super minimal loop-jam, a main melody repeated rhythmically, pulsing hypnotically, the vibe almost kosmische, but more sort of murky and mesmerizing, that main figure looped and looped, while all around it, random sounds swirl and shimmer druggily. The final lp starts off with "How To Rattle A White Tailed Buck", which unfurls a brittle looped melody, peppered with occasional rib cage rattling boomin' system low end bass thumps, the whole thing sort of blurpy and lumbering, a stuttery groove that shuffles through clouds of staticky hiss, which finally leads to the final side / track, "Klipp", which is most definitely the most high fidelity of the bunch, super heavy, repetitive, Circle like hypno-rock, but a bit more minimal, the main guitar riff and shuffling rhythm totally in sync, while all around it sounds swirl and decay, shards of melodies and and crumbling FX, processed vocals and constantly shifting layers wreathe the hypno-rock in a buzzy, blurry, noisy gauze. Packaged in a 6 panel hand screened triple gatefold jacket!

MPEG stream: Flirtations At A Cocktail Party
MPEG stream: Switching 2 Nite Mode
MPEG stream: Klipp

Last year's aQuarius / WFMU South By Southwest showcase was pretty tough to beat, if we do say so ourselves. An entire night of aQ faves, every single one kicking huge amounts of ass, and basically blowing us away over and over again. Just check out the lineup: Speedwolf, Iron Man, Moon Duo, Pierced Arrows, Dengue Fever, Epileptinomicon, Todd, True Widow, Sonny & The Sunsets, Headdress, Home Blitz, Drunkdriver, and Shit And Shine. We'd be hard pressed to pick a favorite set of the night, but lots of folks, ourselves included, might find ourselves leaning toward the rhythmic chaotic cacophony of Shit And Shine, a UK based multi-drummer drone-psych-noise unit who once called Texas home. And who, besides kicking up a glorious drum heavy racket, managed to keep the crowd riveted for their whole set, the members clad in strange costumes, a bunny suit, creepy plastic masks, furry animal heads, all while manning multiple drumkits and constantly switching instruments, and creating a glorious wall of pulsing, pounding, hypnotic sound. Luckily, the whole thing was captured on tape. And while maybe something is lost without the visuals, the music holds up surprisingly well on its own, the group's single song set spread out over two sides, right out of the gate, the band lock into a rhythm and don't let up. The sound is blown out and in the red, helping make it sound exactly like being there (and like you forgot your earplugs), the legion of drummers, pounding out a rhythm in perfect unison, while the rest of the $+$ crew do their thing, their thing in this case being super distorted fuzzed out bass, processed alien vocals, blasts of screeching feedback, squalls of psychedelic white noise buzz, a sound that is basically krautrock writ NOISY and BLOWN OUT and HEAD CAVINGLY LOUD! By the time the second half (side) rolls around, the buzz and pound are interrupted by thick shards of almost poppy melody, streaks of almost shogazey looped fragmented noise, until finally the jam switches gears, just a bit, and we get the $+$ version of 'bringing it down', a churning Circle like sludgekraut hypnorock groove that plays out until the record settles into a locked groove, which if you're not paying attention, will have you listening to that single groove for EVER, before realizing something is up. And hell, we actually listened to it for 5 or 6 minutes, and probably would have let it keep on playing... (and the first side ends with a locked groove too, so be prepared to be mesmerized, endlessly there too!)... Heavy and hypnotic, the perfect sonic souvenir if you were there, an even more perfect slab of crushing corrosive rhythmic noise rock weirdness if you weren't. Housed in a full color sleeve, an Austin backyard on one side, one of the $+$-ers on the other. Includes a Xeroxed insert, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, each one hand numbered. ----* ----* Highlights : ----*