[ aquarius records — Experimental ]

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Showing results 7751 through 7800 of 9280.

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

SORRY. The last we heard from industrial black ambient terrorist Temple Of Not, was on a split with black metallers Nightbringer, which makes perfect sense as the man behind ToN, Alcameth, also fronts Nightbringer. But in ToN, Alcameth crafts gorgeously grim expanses of heaving blackened drones, and decaying industrial crumble, the tracks on the split with Nightbringer definitely bucked the black ambient trend by adding all manner of fucked up sound, noise and texture and samples, and on this new one, the method seems to be similar. In fact we were sort of expecting some shimmery black drift, but ToN offers up a sound much more corrosive and aggressive and creepy than typical black ambience, with thick streaks of howling horror, or crumbling distortion, alien voices, inhuman howls, pounded atonal piano, industrial creaks and groans, sounding more like the orchestral black doom weirdness of Gnaw Their Tongues. Sure there are stretches of hushed shimmer, and creeping black sprawl, but those are just brief respites between squalls of sonic crunch, stretches of undulating black terror, clouds of haunting ghostly voices and heaving slabs of blown out buzz. LIMITED TO ONLY 150 COPIES!!

MPEG stream: Maha Mamsa
MPEG stream: The Hands Of Cain

Temple of Tiermes is a side project of the Finnish noise/drone ensemble Tiermes (whose Jussi Saivo figures on old Circle and recent Ovalki material, but is not featured on this album). Far from sounding like the arctic hypno-rock of Circle, Temple of Tiermes generates a haunted swarm of overdriven guitar feedback and blustery noise crescendos that are filtered into statospheric shimmers. In the realm of "ambient industrial", not nearly as death obsessed as Brighter Death Now, but more malevolent than Maeror Tri.

Nice title! And, oooh. It's a very nice recording too. This debut album by electro-acoustic glitchtronica artist Mark Templeton should appeal to fans of Paul Wirkus, Mitchell Akiyama, Guiseppi Ielasi and others working in the experimental-but-beautiful, lowercase field of painterly abstraction, processed instruments, delicate drone, and (last but not least) ambient melodies. Mark Templeton's use of guitar, accordion, vibraphone, cymbals and especially banjo have us most closely comparing this to Geoff Mullen's wonderful thrtysxtrllnmnfstns, as Templeton is similarly submersing the notes played acoustically into a warm, electric bath of creaking staticky stuff, accompanied by murmuring field recordings and chirping digital glitch, like the pleasant but disintegrated soundtrack to some grainy super 8 footage, barely heard beneath the whirr of the film projector itself. Sweet swells of sound throb and drift, fracture and coalesce. It's all very lovely and mysterious, gentle caresses for curious ears.

MPEG stream: Pigeons Hurt
MPEG stream: Standing On A Hummingbird
MPEG stream: Pattern For A Pillow

Another amazing release from Spectrum Spools, the Editions Mego sublabel, who over the last few months has given us records from Mist, Bee Mask, Fabric and Forma, all of them fantastic, and this one is no different. A killer collection of hypnokraut synth psych, that purports to be vintage recordings from back in the day, but we're guessing is more likely the work of a modern music maker raised on a steady diet of Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze. The record slips back and forth between propulsive almost chaotic krautrock grooves, and more blissed out percolating kosmische synthscapes. Warped loops and swirling effects wrap around a motorik pulse, glistening electro grooves throb hypnotically amidst swirling streaks of blooping and bleeping effects, soft billowing swirls of arpeggiated synths blur into gauzy soundtacky stretches, sometimes splintering into dirgey IDM skitter, or still more noisy electronic pulses. Much of this actually sounds like Astral Social Club at their most electronic. Every song here is a warm glowing chunk of kosmische bliss out, whether it be a murky sprawl of synth burble and skeletal skitter wreathed in squiggles and chirps, or percolating melodies doused in bleary eared shimmer, all like the work of some sonic mad scientist, whose cauldron is a burbling concoction of classic krautrock, abstract electronica, and dreamy ambient minimalism. So good!

The return of UK based one man ritualistic doomdrone shamen Tenhornedbeast, and another collection of abject darkness, grim sonic mystery, folk flecked dronemusic and epic black ambience, and as in the past, things have definitely shifted during the extended period of silence between this new record and the last. The very first 10HB record we had heard, was recommended to us as "epic, sprawling primitive doom/drone" which at the time was all we needed to hear, and indeed, that's precisely what it was, but with each record, 10HB's sound mutated and morphed, into something new, not always super dramatic, more an ever evolving sonic darkness, definitely dronemusic, but not so much primitive, a more composed sort of doomy black ambience, a post industrial drift that definitely leaned more toward drone than doom, but also more toward industrial then metal, which makes sense that he's found a home on Cold Spring alongside Toroidh, Laibach, Nordvargr, Prurient, Von Thronstahl, Wicked King Wicker and the like. And in fact, the first track here, the evocatively titled "Reaching For The Stars We Blind The Sky", finds the sound of Tenhornedbeast definitely moving even further in a sort of industrial direction. It begins like we would have expected, dark and mysterious, spaced out and shimmery, with keening high end drifts, underpinned by deep rumbles, muted downtuned guitar buzz, feedback, all the sounds gauzy and grey, until about halfway through the guitars begin to grind the riffs crumbling and distorted and the drums kick in, not a straight rhythm, and not really free either, a bit martial here and there, but they seem to wander and drift, stumbling through a bleak field of stretched out tones and layered streaks of howling feedback, slipping from minimal and spare to chaotic and aggressive and back again, a little bit doomy, but more like some blackened neo-folk. A 12 minute jam that really could have stretched out to fill up the whole record. But instead, the rest of the disc drifts into deep, tranquil dronemusic, laced with birdsong and melancholic melodies drenched in reverb, downtuned bass thrum driven creeps, held aloft by skeletal percussion, and again swathed in blurred effects and layered drones, heavy sure, but more mesmerizing and trancelike, string laden neo-folk, with haunting slowed down samples and disembodied voices, clouds of cymbal shimmer, and grinding mechanical guitarscapes, with hypnotic machinelike rhythms, swirling minimal lullaby like interludes, and finally the 20 minute title track, slow glacial riffage pulled and stretched until the riffs becomes long layers of undulating low end, billowing distorted bass like some sort of sonic avalanche, everything washed out and almost shoegazey, instead of getting heavier and heavier, it gets more and more shimmery and fuzzy, booming gongs, swirling effects, all wound around a simple, downtuned bassline, a slowed down doomic anti-groove, that creeps and crawls and finally drifts into the ether. Gorgeous packaging, an exquisitely designed 6 panel digipack, all browns and golds and greys and metallic inks...

MPEG stream: Reaching For The Stars We Blind The Sky
MPEG stream: Hilnaric
MPEG stream: Father Of The Frosts

It's been quite a while since we've heard from Tenhornedbeast, one of our favorite purveyors of deep blackened ritualistic dronemusic, but as always, it was well worth the wait. Like past releases My Horns Are A Flame To Draw Down The Truth is grand is scope, unlike much of the ambient music and dronemusic we hear, the sounds here sound deliberate, the songs composed. We can only assume that the years between releases are due to a certain meticulousness, one can almost imagine Mr. THB as a mysterious cloaked figure, in his subterranean lair, hunched over a workbench of strange assemblage of electronics and burbling cauldrons, a lone alchemist working by torchlight, crafting these elegant dronescapes, equal part dark shimmer and caustic buzz, cinematic creep and smoldering sinister doom-ed minimalism. The opener is a softly cacophonous slow build of cavernous tones and groaning low end rumbles, but these sounds are not smooth at all but raw and rough around the edges, an organic thing, something musical, but removed from 'music' as we know it, a sort of synesthesia, like shadows flickering in firelight, THB deftly assembles layers of drone, and weaves together barely there melodies, into massive dreamy drifts of delicate ambience, that slowly shifts from grim shimmer to ethereal hush. The appropriately titled "My Horns..." takes what does indeed sound like a horn, and slows it way down, and loops it into a gorgeously textured hypnotic low end mantra, playing on and on and on, while all around, various other sonic shadings surface, and lilting melodies seem to peek from behind the heavy black shades of sound. The final track begins with distorted guitar, a riff slowed down to near stasis, a plodding doom rendered in a washed out muted blur, a doomdronedirge that builds to a soft roar, the whole time gradually letting the light swallow the dark, the heaviness and riffiness gradually receding, while the song begins to glimmer and shimmer and glow with an otherworldly warmth, as if emerging from some blackened captivity, but all of that is cut short, as the moaning groaning minor key melodies that opened the track return, swaddling the fading shimmer in their ominous embrace.

MPEG stream: Ruins Son
MPEG stream: Black Walls Rising/Black Stars Falling

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

SORRY.

It's been two long years we've been waiting to hear more from mysterious UK outfit Tenhornedbeast, after a mindblowing cd-r of�"epic sprawling primitive doom/drone" that was so limited it was gone in a flash.� This is THB's first proper full length, and just as we'd hoped and expected, it's epic and intense. Massive and cavernous, abject and utterly terrifying. Dark ambient, but so much heavier than that would lead one to believe.� From the very first track, the listener is sucked into some dark otherworld, a long sprawl of oozing black slither, chanted monk like vocals, crashing distant percussion, and crushing swells of deep rumbling blackness. It's a slow trawl through the bleakest pits of the underworld, filled with groaning melodies, creaking and threatening to crash to the ground like rotten timbers. The first of three ultra long tracks is "Our Lady Of The Lightning Bolt", a nearly twenty minute threnody of mournful strings draped over glacial slabs of slow shifting blacks and greys, streaks of feedback and shards of high end skree spread out over the top, the sound becoming more and more intense and distorted, like a rising tide of amp buzz and guitar rumble, peppered with haunting dynamics and strangely orchestral arrangements. "Strength Through Fear" is a brief respite from the black hole crush, a menacing melancholy string section, being performed in some underground cavern, the notes ringing out against the dripping black walls, eventually being smeared into an intense fuzzed out chordal wash that gradually swallows everything else whole.� The record's centerpiece seems to be the 22 minute "In The Teeth Of The Wolf", a terrifying guitarscape, that plays out like a harrowing journey through some bombed out razed landscape, nothing but smoldering blackness, distant thunder, ruins and chaos, a thick patina of corrosive guitar drone laid over everything like some warm wet blanket, a metal riff deconstructed and pulled apart, smeared and blurred, until it all coalesces into a slow motion pummel, an industrial plod beneath a monstrous guitar part, doom metal, abstracted and mechanized, stretched out over an army of hissing steam engines, of pounding martial drums, soaring triumphant melodies, nearly obscured by skies full of flame and black smoke, definitely one of the most intense pieces of music we've heard in ages.� The record unwinds with a gorgeous drawn out black veil of sound, a rib cage rattling thrum, densely layered swells of distorted low end throb, woven into a subtly melodic, almost static dirge, that churns relentlessly like an orchestra of fog horns, before drifting off in a fuzzy cloud of hissy shimmer.� Gorgeously packaged in a matte brown digipak, adorned with a haunting image of a shadowy figure holding an antlered skull aloft, beneath a strange symbol, printed in glossy reflective ink.

MPEG stream: Oppression
MPEG stream: Our Lady Of The Lightning Bolt
MPEG stream: Strength Through Fear

One day we got an email from one of our mailorder customers who mentioned he was currently listening to a band called Tenhornedbeast. Just the name had us frothing at the mouth. Then when we asked him what it sounded like, his response "epic sprawling primitive doom/drone" had us on the internet in seconds flat trying to track down copies for the store. Well, the good news is that we did manage to get some for the store. The bad news, as is often the case, is that it was incredibly limited, is already out of print, and we got the very last 20. So be prepared to be disappointed if you're not super quick on the buy button trigger. Okay, now that we got that out of the way, let's get to the heart of this beast. Tenhornedbeast, a band that does indeed traffic in an epic sprawling primitive doom / drone. The do have a drummer too, but he mostly offers up little cymbal flourishes here and there, a big snare splat every long once in a while, the meat of the beast though is obviously the churning squirm of downtuned guitars, riff upon riff, all dirty and scuzzy and lo-fi and gorgeously doomy and drone-y and dirge-y. That sound we can't seem to get enough of. And again, VERY LIMITED. WE HAVE 20 COPIES. ONCE THEY ARE GONE THEY ARE REALLY GONE FOR GOOD.

MPEG stream: Silver Horses Brought Us Here
MPEG stream: Come And Make Me Holy Again

Every once in a while, someone will release a record, and we can't help but feel like it was made specifically for us. And for you. Some records just perfectly speak to the aQ aesthetic, as undefinable as that seems to be. This is another one of those cases. Someone thought it would be a perfect combination to match up UK one man ambient drone outfit Tenhornedbeast, with UK slow motion doomlords Marzuraan. And it is perfect. And a fantastic idea, but just because something is a great idea, doesn't always mean someone thinks of it. And we're not saying we had been thinking someone should get these two bands together specifically, we're just glad they did, and we sort of wish we HAD thought of it. But that's neither here nor there. The important thing is that it happened, and now we can all luxuriate in the deep dark heaviness both of these bands explore. And while the bands are indeed different, their aesthetics are not all that far removed. The both exist in some blackened nether region, haunting sonic realms, where heaviness can be expressed in both utter darkness and extreme force, sometimes both, and once in awhile neither. Tenhornedbeast offer up a nearly 30 minute long sonic ritual, beginning as a bit of swirling black minimalism, but slowly building to a truly intense wall of doomdrone, the sound thick and textured, a churning cauldron of low end buzz and downtuned disembodied riffs, all brought to a boil and poured out in a viscous black torrent, left to flow like some subterranean river. But these deep drones are laced with melodies, and keening high end shards, allowed to shine forth occasionally, but often swallowed up before they can fill those caves with their unnatural light. The track continually changes shape, sound and timbre, various shades of grey and black, lightening and darkening as the landscape changes, a haunting journey through some lost world, where sound replaces sight, allowing us to navigate ever deeper. Marzuraan counter with what must be one of their prettiest tracks ever. It's still sludgey and doomy, but the notes ring out, the melodies almost soar, the sound fuzzy and glimmering, almost like these guys have caught the shoegaze bug as well. Washed out and blissy, super melodic and melancholy, but the coolest part is that the track seems to warble and waver, almost like someone is manually adjusting the tape speed, so the notes sound drunken and drugged, the track lurches and weaves drunkenly, only adding to the haunting and off kilter beauty. Part way through, the riffs get a little more riffy, and then the vocals come in, a moaning distant croon, and we're most definitely in serious Jesu territory, but that weird speed shifting hitch, keeps it from sounding too pretty, or two blissy. But if these guys keep heading in this direction, they could definitely give Jesu, and Nadja and other metallic shoegazers a run for their money. The packaging is super swank, a three panel gatefold, each of the front panels diecut with each band's symbol, printed inside and out, housed in a thick plastic sleeve with a sticker affixed to the front.

MPEG stream: Law Of The Needle
MPEG stream: Into Countless Battles

We might as well mention right up front, we only got 19 copies of this, so be prepared to leave empty handed. But if you are one of the lucky 19, you'll get the chance to fill your ears with that sweetly shimmery Skatery mumbled murky sonic gurgle. Which of course makes perfect sense since Teotihucan is the work of one half of Bay Area noisemakers the Skaters. This super limited tape, recorded "In Tijuana mexico and the desert outskirts of El Cajon California October-December 2004", is an expansive world of lo fi drones blurred into fuzzy slabs of indistinct melody, peppered with twinkling sonic sparkles and squeaking creaking feedback, buried loops of hypnotic disembodied vocals and strange instrumental smudges, all under layer after layer of buzz and rumble and hiss, then all washed out, like a chalk painting on the sidewalk after a rainstorm, a barely there swirl of soft focus color and blurry whirls of faint melody, a big beautiful colorful smear of sound. Packaged in super janky, beat up, dirty and old-price-tagged thrift store answering machine style cassettes, which leads us to a brief aside: While we totally support and celebrate DIY artists -- as seen/heard on the plethora of homespun cassettes and cd-rs we have in stock and that we seek out from all over the world -- we also heartily encourage said artists putting the same effort they put into music making into the presentation, the art and the packaging. Sure photocopied covers, recycled vintage record sleeves, handwritten liner notes are all parts of the aesthetic, but could you at least clean the old price tags and label adhesive off of your taped-over thrift store tapes and their cases before releasing them to your audience? C'mon, a little lighter fluid goes a long way towards makin' something look like it wasn't just dredged up from the bottom of a dumpster. Your art and your audience deserve it.

When we reviewed Halo's seminal Guattari (From the West Flows Grey Ash and Pestilence) album, we described them as "one of the heaviest, creepiest, most intense bands we have heard", we went on to compare them to Godflesh and Neurosis and Earth and Whitehouse and Cop Shoot Cop and Gore and Noisegate, holy shit, just writing that has us wanting to hear Halo again... Anyway, it's been at least 5 years since we've heard a peep out of Halo, but even back in the day, one of the Halo guys had a side project called Terminal Sound System, which at the time ditched the crushing industrial metallic pummel of Halo in favor of creepy dark ambience and skittery electronica. Well since then, it seems that Terminal Sound System has developed into a full time concern, and in the process TSS's sound has soaked up all kinds of electronic music along the way, from jungle to dubstep, while remaining creepy and heavy and super intense, and we are digging it big time. The record begins with some creepy pulsing ambience, the drums an almost jazzy skitter, until 'the drop', where the background sounds grow jagged and harsh, the drums exploding in a squall of rhythmic freakout, before it immediately simmers right back down. It almost sounds like a junglized Necks, long stretches of smokey dark shimmer, peppered with blown out blasts of grinding metallic dubstep rhythms and thick buzzing drones. But then the song shifts gears, and the drums pull way back, returning to their muted skitter, while over the top, Young Gods like guitar loops add a sort of carnivalesque prog element to the proceedings, growing ever more dramatic and tense, exploding in an incredible climax of massive rumbling bass, like some sort of doom dubstep. Fuck, I know we say this all the time, but that track alone is worth the price of admission. But moving forward, the title track, is a brooding chunk of old school tech-step jungle, with plenty of blackened droney ambience hovering beneath the still sort of jazzy programmed drum and bass stutter. "Year Of The Pig" is another fractured take on dubstep, the drums, chopped and hiccuppy, heavy with FX, careening from space-y shuffle to dense staccato pound, while all around the beat swirls minor key piano stabs, swooshing spaced out effects, shards of metallic buzz, the whole track freezing occasionally and locking into a super jagged stop start stutter. Again, somehow the sound is a bit jazzy, but so heavy and dark and aggressive... The rest of the record is all over the place, from subtly industrial post rock, complete with chiming guitars hook filled melodies, and strange effected vocals, sounding almost like a Jesu / Nadja sort of thing, to dark shimmery black ambience laced with super low bass buzz, and haunting minor key swells, to Eastern Muslimgauze style electronic drifts, to what can only be described as a sort of fractured dubstepped cabaret jazz, to fuzzy gauzy, reverb drenched Portishead-ish downtempo shimmer, to epic, ethereal blissed out post rock electronic drone, like Jesu meets Godspeed meets Asbestoscape, which is how the record finishes up. Seriously fucking awesome. Has us wanting to hear more Terminal Sound System, and has us hankering to go back and revisit Halo as well...

MPEG stream: In Your Planet
MPEG stream: Constructing Towers
MPEG stream: Year Of The Pig

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.

We didn't know anything about this band, until we heard Handmade Birds was gonna put out a tape, and then sorta randomly the band showed up at aQ with tapes, and having known nothing about the band, we probably would have ordered a bunch anyway, since A. They're on Handmade Birds. And B. They're called Terminator 2, which is either the most genius name for a band, or the dumbest. Maybe both! And finally C. The packaging is CRAZY, a cool color tape in a full color J-card featuring what looks like a Bosch painting, the whole thing wrapped in a black oversized slipcover, with both the name of the band and the label lazer cut, the slipcover oversized so that on one side a little scroll could be inserted, the tiny scroll featuring lyrics and liner notes. Wow. Thankfully, the music inside, more than lived up to the promise of A,B and C! A duo we think, noise guys from what we could figure out, from Denton Texas, and they kick up a pretty sick skree, all low slung bass buzz, jagged blown out guitars, swirls and squalls of analog synth, huge bashing drum damage, the drums mic'ed super hot, so they peg the meters with every hit, the sound slipping from murky, detuned churn, to grinding metallic doom drenched bombast, to super stripped down post rock lope, beyond the main instrumentation of bass and drums (and maybe guitar), there's a lot of other noise going on, even the most minimal stretches, are barraged on all sides by blasts of buzz, and weird sci-fi squiggles of FX, all sorts of textures and treatments, but at it's core, the sound here is pure minimal slo-mo black-doom crush, and when the vocals do come in, it's a throat shredding yowl, giving the sound a vibe somewhere between epic Neurosis-y doom, super lo-fi sludge metal creep, and blown out ultra distorted noise rock. We're definitely hearing Harvey Milk, Thrones, Prizehog, recent aQ faves [[[Altar-Thron]]], and other like minded purveyors of bellowing, lurching, doomy noise rock sludge. Cool! As mentioned above, super insane packaging AND OF COURSE EXTREMELY LIMITED!!!

MPEG stream: Revival
MPEG stream: Hollow Earth
MPEG stream: Melodic & Serpentine

MPEG stream: Car Fumes
MPEG stream: The Sailor

Evil Avenger has to be one of the weirdest and demented and most original sonic alchemists in black metal. Besides being the mastermind behind 'wooden metal' horde Varghkogarghasmal, and playing in Front Beast, Necroslaughter, Szarlem, Witchslaughter, Angel Of Damnation, Black Priest of Satan, and about a million others, he also is the psychotic genius behind one man blackened grind metal 'combo' Terrorazor, which just might be the weirdest of the bunch. Ultra chaotic, murky, muddy, noise drenched blackened free metal. Or something like that. This stuff is really far out, and difficult to describe. Disintegrating riffs, splattery free jazz rhythms that only occasionally coalesce into beats, blast and otherwise, guitars swirl and grind and buzz beneath grunted inhuman vox, imagine a black metal Faxed Head, or even a more avant, free jazz Abruptum, or some sick combination of both! As if Terrorazor wasn't enough madness, the flipside comes from electronic metal weirdos H418ov21.C, named for a record by Finnish metal gods Beherit, but don't be expecting anything like Beherit, or really like anything you've ever heard. The music of H418ov21.C is a totally bizarre blown out tangle of impossibly distorted drum machine and low slung, throbbing free-form downer doom bass. Like Joy Division basslines were stripped from their original songs, and layered over a cacophony of ancient drum machines gone totally haywire and run through a bank of distortion pedals with dying batteries. So fucking bizarre and so amazing. LIMITED TO ONLY 150 COPIES. Housed in a plain gold sleeve with a printed transparent front cover. Cool.

A few weeks ago we got a killer batch of 'metal' tapes from Hospital Productions, two of which we reviewed, the 2nd album from Vegas Martyrs, and the debut from death-obsessed doom flecked black metal weirdos Curved Blade, both of which sold out and went out of print crazy quick. In the same batch we also got two other releases, twisted lo-fi outsider sci-fi death metal weirdness from a band called Time Crypt, and super blown out noise metal damage from Terrorism. The bummer is that we intended to check these out, and then order more to review, but before we knew it, both of these were sold out and out of print as well. But we do still have THREE copies of each, they're both bizarre and baffling and perfect for folks into fucked up confusional metal, so at least a few folks will get to check them out... Terrorism traffic in some seriously terrifying sounds, totally blasted out, in-the-red, screechy, caustic, harsh and hellish noise drenched black metal, think Bone Awl or Akitsa, Ancestors, Malveillance, that sort of raw primitive pound, but then bury it beneath squalls of harsh high end skree, wild chaotic drum splatter, malfunctioning electronics, moaning low end bellows, a crashing, careening, noise metal juggernaut, the sound slipping from total abstract free noise howl, to murky ploddy drift, to brittle blown out black metal blast, to industrial power electronics and back again. Seriously brutal, but pretty dang great. Too bad we only have 3 copies... Twisted, shrill, harsh, hateful,

A tremendous cassette only release from the Terrors, an unknown project presumably based out of Los Angeles who offers up some totally desolate, bedroom recordings for cheap synths, guitar, voice, and -- because it's on Monorail Trespassing - snippets of noise. The first track has this creepy, nocturnal repeating motif of minor key melody that is trying to be a Rhodes keyboard but is probably something much more disposable, but that melody could be something easily found on a Labradford album or even a Bohren and Der Club of Gore track, but run through William Basinski's tape machinations. Ghostly splashes of droning guitar ebb and flow around that melodic passage, furthering the darkened gloom which settles around the track. This alone is worth the price of admission! The next track and a few fragmented moments on the other side feature vocals from the Terrors. It's a painfully lonely voice singing into a crappy microphone, which accentuates the melancholy vocal melody wrapped with plenty of tape hiss and an occasional downer strum on an acoustic guitar. These songs appear as a cross between Devendra and Grouper, as these roughly hewn takes on whatever was at hand with the pure emotion coming through the songs, cast in a hue that is profoundly depressed for the Terrors. The last track on this cassette ends with a arcing wash of white noise, that almost sounds like Terrors set up his recording under the flight path of LAX, just to get the rush of a plane taking off to conclude this track. It's a C-30 tape, and limited to 125 copies. Really great!

The latest batch from Utech is all excellent stuff (as usual), we're reviewing three this list, including the Locrian double disc (one of our Records Of The Week), the new Gog, and this, from Japan's Tetragrammaton. The first thing one of the AQ Overlords here said when he heard this one is, if not entirely accurate, a good starting point for a description: "Sounds like a black metal Taj Mahal Travellers!" While it's NOT black metal, there's a menacing, mesmeric vibe here that some black metallers might appreciate. Possibly also some Buddhist monks, too. Part freeform psychedelic rock exploration, part dronological soundscapery, Tetragrammaton's Points Of Convergence is a beautiful and frightening trip into the void-dark expanses... that this trio is Tokyo-based is no surprise, seems like if Utech hadn't put this out, PSF should have. Band members TOMO, Cal Lyall, and Nobunaga Ken utilize a wide array of instruments to conjure up intense music that's both detailed and active, and droningly atmospheric: hurdy-gurdy, guitar, saxophone, crystal bowls, percussion, voices, Rhodes piano, hydrophone, gongs, drums, bells, bowls, taisho-koto... Track one, "Disjecta Membra", begins as if recorded inside of a giant cauldron; echoing, haunting, with mysterious scrapings and billowing distortion, it builds up and up, over the course of 14+ minutes, spiralling into dense hypnotic drones, before a climax that takes the form of a free improv freakout, an electric tangle of guitar, sax, percussion... As quick as that erupts, it subsides, and track two, "Portrait Of Turab (Part I)" starts in with sustained bell tones, shimmering in the cauldron-blackness. Later still, the textural drones of "Sol de Paula" evoke all the awe of the 2001: A Space Odyssey monolith! And elsewhere watery textures and strange pipe-fighting percussion take center stage. This unit's previous release, a double disc, was one of Julian Cope's Records Of The Month some time ago (btw, whatever happened to his Record Of The Month? the Head Heritage site hasn't been updated with one since the summer). If there's enough interest in this (which there should be!), perhaps we can import some of those, too. The usual Utech packaging, nicely designed, slim sleeve, oversized. Lots of black.

MPEG stream: Disjecta Membra
MPEG stream: Portrait Of Turab (Part I)
MPEG stream: Sol de Paula

Jason Kahn has come a long way, now a respected sound artists and minimalist composer, it's still a little hard to believe he played in bands like the Leaving Trains, Trotsky Icepick and the Universal Congress Of, and normally, this is where we would say, but actually you can hear much of those past groups in his new sound, but actually you can't. Not at all. Kahn's new work is world's removed, and we've come to love that stuff nearly as much as we love(d) the late great Leaving Trains. Which brings us to Tetras, a trio featuring Kahn, whose sound is a sprawling rhythmic abstraction that touches on everything from This Heat (especially This Heat!) to Aussie minimalist jazz combo the Necks, exploring the same sort of stretched out propulsive mesmer and textured dronescaping, each of the four side long tracks here a totally mesmerizing sprawl of layered buzz and deftly arranged melody, but with the rhythmic element really holding it all together. The songs, for as minimal and abstract as they are, not at all static, alive and full of energy, with a barely contained momentum, that makes the tracks seethe and thrum. The Necks vibe is huge, especially on the opener, which takes the cyclical slow build of that group and gives it a sort of avant / post industrial makeover, the drums a skittery shuffle, the bass loping and looping, all beneath layers of blurred organ chords, static wreathed melodies, and all manner of constantly shifting textures. The other three tracks follow suit, subtly altering the equation, part two is much more droned out and noisy, the clouds of hiss and static ebbing and flowing, over a buried jazzy shuffle, the bass bowed unfurling long moaning tones, everything wreathed in an insectoid buzz, the result hazy and hypnotic. Part three opens up with a wall of crumbling chaotic white noise, a squall of warped blown out psychedelia, which gives way to some hushed shimmer, which is soon overtaken by some weirdly gorgeous feedback drenched melodies and distorted dynamics which soon explode into some awesomely blown out jazziness that reminds us of Laddio Bolocko or the Psychic Paramount, but so in-the-red, the tones blossom and expand transforming the sound into some strange heavy psychedelia. And finally, part four finishes things off with something a bit more dialed back, a scattering of tribal drum splutter, more bowed strings, and moaning melodies, this time under weird digitally processed guitar skree and crumbling distorted drones, eventually slipping into something slightly more straight forwardly jazzy, which also eventually morphs into a weirdly abstract but druggily dreamy electronic noise drenched jazziness. Housed in a super thick, ultra deluxe, hand screened heavy cardboard jacket, and includes a download coupon as well.

MPEG stream: Pareidolia I
MPEG stream: Pareidolia II

First in a planned trilogy of live recordings from this turntablist duo's Europe 2003 tour. Grrr 'cause it's noisy.

More turntable strangulation from two masters of that very avant-garde (even today!) art form. Quebec's Martin Tetreault and Japan's Otomo Yoshihide (the latter of which, at least, should need no introduction to most AQ customers, known as he is far and wee for various projects, among them his famed Ground Zero band) have tangled before, and right away get down to business here, in a selection of live duo performances recorded on their tour of Europe in the Spring of 2003. Together they manifest an intriguing sound-world, liberating from old LPs variously sandpaper textures, helicoptering drone, and spluttering screams. Volume 2 of a planned trilogy, 2. Tok concentrates on their most "fragmented" improvs of the tour. We didn't review it, but we do also have the first volume, 1. Grr, so-named as it's devoted to what the duo deemed their noisiest material.

MPEG stream: Nijmegen No. 4a
MPEG stream: Lyon No. 3

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

SORRY. "An electromechanic meeting around turntables. 21 improvisational settings dealing with science fiction, education, jungle, cartoons and 17 other surprising themes!" says the top-obi. From Quebec and Japan, respectively, Tetreault and Yoshihide (of Ground Zero fame among other things), certainly don't sound like conventional DJs as they positively torture the vinyl on their turntables.

By now, most readers of the aQ list know just how much we love the turntable, and all the non musical sounds associated with it, hiss and crackle and pop, skips and scrapes, we've reviewed records featuring turntables without records, recordings of ONLY the surface noise of lps, we love it. So of course we love folks like Philip Jeck, Martin Tetreault and Strotter Inst., who have truly stretched the boundaries of turntable as instrument, but our first exposure to what could be done with a turntable, as was probably lots of folks', was via hip hop and DJs. aQ used to be the source for all things turntablism, Qbert, Invisbl Skratch Piklz, and especially Kid Koala, who had amazing DJ skills, but gave them his own distinct spin (remember the Charlie Brown "I gotta rock" jam?, Or the warbly record player horn solos?). For whatever reason, that stuff seemed to fade back into the underground, or the more under, underground, whatever happened, we hadn't heard a peep from Kid Koala in almost 3 years. But what a return! Two masters of the turntable, both approaching it from different backgrounds and with different influences, a dizzying mash up of textures and beats, of loops and song fragments, a live multiple turntable jam session captured on tape, and holy shit is it good. Scratchy old jazz records begin to skip before morphing into big booming low end rhythms, wild drum solos are looped and layered, strange voices surface and then fade away, scratches are transformed into bird calls, blurred streaks of melody, crackle everywhere like rainfall, gorgeous sheets of low end buzz underpin skittery squiggles and jagged shards of hiss, effects drenched scratching unfurls like wild spaced out psychedelic freakouts, groovy fractured funk assembled from strange voices, nature records, and who knows what else, left to drift through a sea of haunting rumbles and mysterious grinding noise, finishing off with a wild assemblage of manipulated voices, super minimal click and thump beats, deformed music box melodies, and a symphony of scrapes and scratches and pops and clicks. Really amazing stuff. Weird and dark and playful and wild. Turntable freaks will dig this big time.

MPEG stream: Drum-o-scope
MPEG stream: Pluto attack (la revanche des exclus)
MPEG stream: The DJ Factory turn crazy

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

SORRY. A collection of solos and duets for turntables and samplers from these four vangardists, incorporating a distinct rhythmic edge previously alien to the Fluxus / electro-acoustic improvisational schools.

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

SORRY. Another volume in Table Of The Element's amazing Lanthinides series of silkscreened single sided 12"s. This is the first offical release from Text Of Light, a loose ensemble made up of Lee Ranaldo, Alan Licht, DJ Olive, Christian Marclay and Uli Krieger. Originally formed to improvise to the silent films of Stan Brakhage (Brakhage's film Text Of Light is the band's namesake), Text Of Light rumble and drone and meander through a dark and moody sonic soundscape, littered with the detritus of music concrete, avant turntablism, dronology and dark ambience. Dark and minimal and quite beautiful. And it's got an unfinished Christmas ornament designed by Harry Smith is silkscreened in glow in the dark ink on the non-playing side. And in response to the complaints of folks who bought any of the first eight 12"s and experienced the brittle / easy-cracking plastic sleeves, these new 12"s come in an improved sleeve, much softer, and way less fragile.

Live document of a TOL performance recorded at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in January of 2005. This rotating collective of improvisers, which this time around include Alan Licht and Lee Ranaldo on guitars, DJ Olive on turntables, Tim Barnes on percussion and Ulrich Krieger on sax, continue their practice of performing to the films of Stan Brakhage and other members of the avant-garde cinema of the fifties and sixties. While only 20 minutes long, each musician is allowed their moment to shine before the piece culminates in an otherworldly full band racket. Although, it would be nice to see the film with the music meant to accompany it, the overall piece works well without the aid of visuals, and is a good introduction to anyone curious about this organic collective of experienced free-players.

MPEG stream: Rotterdam 1 (excerpt)

MPEG stream: 052901 Tonic 5/4/6
MPEG stream: 052901 Tonic 1
MPEG stream: 05291 Tonic 7

This is the first full length release (after a 12" on Table Of The Elements) by the group Text Of Light, named for a 1974 Stan Brakhage film and made up of Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo, Alan Licht, DJ Olive, Christian Marclay and Uli Krieger. Originally Text Of Light was formed to perform along with Brakhage films, and while Brakhage was an inspiration for these recordings they are not "potential Brakhage soundtracks". Text Of Light weave spare soundscapes of clatter and creak, enviornmental sounds, free jazz splatter, No Neck Blues Band style hippy rock-brut, avant turntablism, deep drones and abstract ambience.

MPEG stream: Knitting Factory (Quartet)

Another mysterious little noisy sonic gem from the Small Doses label, one of our new favorite small labels, due in part to the cool shit they put out, but also the fact that no matter how limited a release is, the packaging is super deluxe. We won't go into too much detail with this one, as it's limited to only 77 copies. We got a handful, but as with most of these things, they will probably go pretty fast. tH. is the work of a guy named Taylor Holdgraf, and Afflux is a strange composition for glitch and static and feedback and basically all the parts of music that aren't traditionally music. On the surface, Afflux sounds a bit like someone dragging a needle across an lp, or changing radio stations while driving through a tunnel, but it's arranged and structured into strange little microrhythms, drawn out expanses of super minimal drone, high end sine waves waver and shimmer, chunks of white noise are chopped into stuttering sort-of grooves, bits of feedback transform into what sounds like chirping crickets, some parts the hiss and glitch and crackle are smoothed into thick whirring textures, while other parts the grind and crunch are unfettered, allowing for little jagged bursts of super dynamic buzz and speaker rattling bzzzt. Very noisy for sure, but structured and arranged in a surprisingly listenable, and surprisingly musical way. As always, gorgeous packaging, a miniature three panel two sided full color vellum sleeve. And again LIMITED TO 77 COPIES.

We managed to get a small handful of these from a distributor, they're priced super cheap, as the label has since folded, so these are the very last copies we'll ever be able to get, and we have only THREE of these... We reviewed a handful of releases from Italian post-industrial / dark pop combo T.A.C., all part of this batch of Small Voices releases, along with those albums proper, came this, TH25, a project of T.A.C. member Simone Balestrazzi, which the label describes as: "Hard electro-core, pure rhythmic & synthetic EBM sounds, rumoristic experiments & great filtered vocals." Not sure what 'rumoristic experiments' are, but the rest is pretty spot on. Super pulsing, pounding minimal electronics, skittery and stuttery, with darkly crooned vocals, occasionally sung/spoken, for those of us without deep roots in electronic music culture, it's difficult to make any sort of sonic cultural references, but much of this sounds to us like a more gothic/gloomy Meat Beat Manifesto, if that makes any sense, there's also some references to old Ministry, which is never a bad thing, it's that sort of industrial pound, fused to dark minor key synths, and deep vocals, creating a sort of beat heavy gloom pop if you will, the vibe in many places more new wave or cold wave, minus those step sequenced synths and pulsing beats, but the vibe is definitely dark enough, that this would probably appeal to folks into the whole new wave of dark pop and cold wave electro. We're actually digging this quite a lot!

MPEG stream: TV Germs
MPEG stream: The Enemy Inside
MPEG stream: Second Skin

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

SORRY. Kraftwerk songs "interpreted" on the piano, with extensive liner notes explaining Thaemlitz's approach. Quite beautiful, although the Kraftwerk component is not always immediately obvious. One of several now domestically-priced releases from the European electronica label of the moment, Mille Plateaux.

The third in trangressive experimental musican Terre Thaemlitz's series of unlikely piano recitals... Previously he's turned the melodies of both Kraftwerk and Gary Numan into gorgeous, sort-of-ambient piano meditations. Here, completing a twisted trinity of

RealAudio clip: Jocko Homo
RealAudio clip: Whip It

First it was Frogs of North America invading our record bins, then it was Antarctic Seals and Penguins, followed by Insects in Stored Foodstuffs... now it's Elephants from Thailand! Brilliant recordings by non-human, um, sound-artists that we just can't get enough of here at Aquarius. In this case, the elephants are not just making their natural noises, they are indeed playing instruments! You may have read about this project in the New York Times -- when we found out about it we immediately contacted the label and ordered a whole bunch (based also on the on-line sample we heard at www.mulatta.org) and now here they are. These are elephants from a elephant preseve in Thailand who have been trained to play specially-built instruments (many marimba-like instruments similar to the traditional Thai renat, as well as such things as harmonicas, drums, and even a stringed "electric bass"), but they haven't been trained *what* to play, it's all improvised with minimal human guidance! Yet it's definitely music. It was kind of an experiment to find out how the creatures might express themselves, and we'd say it was very successful indeed. If we didn't know these were elephants, we'd think this was a strange No Neck Blues Band recording or something. Imagine a stumbling, primitive hippy folk jam on gamelan instruments, but not one that's random or erratic. The elephants play steady beats, the struck gongs or chimes interspersed with their vocalizations as well. With no overdubs and few edits this is certainly a very impressive recording! The Thai Elephant Orchestra was dreamed up, and this disc produced, by David Soldier (New York musician and academic) and Richard Lair (American expatriate elephant expert, who advises the Thai Elephant Conservation Center where this project goes on). The two came up with the idea that elephants, being social animals, might enjoy playing music together, and proceeded to investigate... Happily, not only did the elephants enjoy playing, they were good at it, demonstrating that they were able to decide what sounded good (to them) and what didn't. The booklet features photos and detailed, fascinating liner notes by both men. Here is what Soldier says the criteria was for the construction of the instruments, which were made by New York instrument builder Ken Butler (of "Gravikords, Whirligigs..." fame): "1. The instruments must be suitable to the elephant's anatomy, which means large instruments operated by the trunk. "2. The instruments must withstand jungle heat, humidity -- and the elephants. "3. The instruments should require minimum upkeep. "4. The instruments should have a Thai sound, because the regular daily audience is Thai, the mahouts would enjoy the music more, and the elephants have heard Thai music all their lives." Some more great tid-bits from the notes: "The elephants took easily to the harmonica, which sparked the first elephant music fad: one morning I arrived to hear the sound of harmonicas from all over -- from the hills and from the river. The elephants were walking in from the forest playing harmonicas, which they hold easily in the tip of their trunks." "The elephants didn't seem interested in the bells or theremin. At first they were spooked by the synthesizer keyboard, but later two animals were entranced by it. They disliked playing Ken's reed instruments with a large mouthpiece, or rather, trunkpiece. A mahout told me they were afraid that a snake might jump into their nostrils!" As sort of bonus tracks, in addition to the forty-plus minutes of elephant improv, there's also some non-instrumental elephant field recordings, several tracks of humans and elephants playing together, and even a few traditional Thai songs played by humans, about elephants. Sure there's a bit of simple amusement to be found here just from the concept alone, but in actual fact the music these elephants make is, to our ears at least, quite beautiful. We could go on and philosophize about how this project speaks to the relationship between man and animals in this world, but we'll leave those thoughts for you to explore if you chose to check out this album, which we highly recommend! Amazing and wonderful.

RealAudio clip: Jojo
RealAudio clip: Duo For Renats
RealAudio clip: Harmonica Music
RealAudio clip: Heavy Logs

Expectations are set pretty high when your band is compared to This Heat, Swell Maps and The Ex, but for Baltimore math rockers Thank You, the comparison is pretty apt. Over the course of six songs and about 30 minutes, the band unfurl some seriously intricate and dense sonic workouts, forgoing traditional song structure, and instead trafficking in tension and release, repetition and texture, whipping up super repetitive cyclical jams, the guitars alternately jangly and crunchy, the vocals yelped and anthemic, the record opener sounding like a post punk no-wave take on Animal Collective, with long stretches of frantic drumming and swirling droned out guitar. The rest of the record spreads out, dipping into blissed out tribal psychedelia, motorik minimal krautrock, angular jagged punkish crunch and manic super intense mathiness. Chiming guitars swell and soar over avalanche like rhythms, laced with playful flurries of tinkling melodies, occasionally getting super abstract and dubbed out, just as often slipping into something more gnarled and chaotic, but when the vocals come in, all high and harmonious, the transform whatever is going on into some unlikely psychedelic pop. Crunchy indie rock explodes into something much more frenetic and frenzied, before slipping into a slithery buzz drenched bit of woozy swirl, only launch into some organ driven psychedelia, noisy and loose, and again the vocals grounding the sound, while the organs and drums do the best to drag everything heavenward, and finally, the record closes with maybe the poppiest of the bunch, the guitars and drums locked in a rollicking tumble beneath the soaring vox, again the Animal Collective comparisons are unavoidable, but those vocals coupled with a sound more angular and jagged and noisy, make this a sort of avant post punk psych pop, that should appeal to modern pop kids, as well as folks who lean more toward sounds with prefixes like post and kraut...

MPEG stream: 1-2-3 Bad
MPEG stream: Birth Reunion
MPEG stream: Can't / Can

We first heard from Canadian harsh noiseniks The Rita, when they teamed up with local primitive lo-fi black metallers Bone Awl on a cassette a few months ago. Not so much a split as a weird collaboration, the two bands switching back and forth, Bone Awl's black buzz perfectly complimenting The Rita's brutal noise squall crunch, so much so that it was kind of tough sometimes to tell who was who. No such problem here, Thousands Of Dead Gods is nothing but The Rita and their huge caustic cloud of churning, roiling psychedelic white hot white noise! This is definitely one for noise freaks only. One hour long track of relentlessly brutal N.O.I.S.E. Nothing subtle, no buried melodies, no shimmery atmospherics. Just a grinding, grit drenched, buzzy, prickly, poisonous Merzbowian blast of pure noise. The coolest part is that all of the sounds are sourced from a Great White Shark diving cage, recorded underwater and from the deck of the boat. Hence the dead shark on the cover. But there is a turbulent underwater feel to this noise, like dunking your head in super violent rapids, or the churning wake of a boat, or in the ocean amidst wildly thrashing sharks going in for the kill. Brutal.

MPEG stream: Thousands Of Dead Gods (excerpt 1)
MPEG stream: Thousands Of Dead Gods (excerpt 2)

We like Skull Defekts, but this collab isn't the one to start with.

It's like Christmas around here (we know, it is ACTUALLY like Christmas around here right now), whenever we get a new batch of tapes from Auris Apothecary, not only is it bound to sonically all over the map, without fail the packaging is totally stellar, often high (or low) concept, meticulously hand assembled, often involving organic matter, or broken glass, or sponges, or scrolls, or who knows what else. Needless to say, every AA release is special, and is often as much a work of sonic art, as it is a piece of music. Thee Open Sex is apparently, according to the label, "a psychedelic supergroup of mammoth proportions" from the label's hometown of Bloomington, Indiana. We sense a bit of tongue in cheekiness there, but this is most definitely a primo slab of droned out mysterious psychedelia, with long tones layered into thick undulating drones, buzzing synths, plenty of buzz and hum, some bowed metal, a slow ominous build, buried melodies drifting in viscous swells of rumble and whir, laced with saxophone blurts, and eventually driven by pounding tribal percussion, the sound super druggy and gauzy and abstract, but with a strange internal propulsion, that adds tension and intensity, this is the sort of stuff that would most definitely appeal to fans of Avarus and No Neck Blues Band and Sunburned Hand Of The Man, the same sort of abstract sonic ritualism, totally mesmerizing, and per the above description, the sort of thing most aQ-ers, especially the psych-kraut-space-drone inclined, will flip over. Includes members of aQ faves Dylan Ettinger, Circuit De Yeux along with a bunch of other Indiana psych rockers. LIMITED TO 150 HAND STAMPED COPIES. The tapes are housed in anti-static ziplock bags stamped on the front with some strange pink symbol, and stickered on the back, inside a thick printed cardstock insert, the tapes featuring hand-printed paper labels, each stickered bag numbered/stamped in red.

The second of two releases this year from black ambient alchemist Theologian, the other, Finding Comfort In Overwhelming Negativity, released on Handmade Birds and reviewed here recently, and now this one, The Chasms Of My Heart, released on Crucial Blast. Like Finding Comfort (and The Further I Get before that), Chasms is another stunning collection of grim, industrial wastescapes, all bleak drones and industrial percussive crunch, although Chasms does start out on a remarkably 'musical' note, opener "Abandon All Hope" weds actual singing to tense layered keening tones, and churning machinelike rhythms, the vocals mantra like, wreathed in static and crackle, drift atop a dense droned out thrum, driven by that relentless rhythm, eventually the vocals and drums drop out, leaving some seriously serene sonic shimmer and softly sweeping cinematic ambience. The second track makes up for the melody in the first, unleashing a heaving onslaught of power electronics and blacknoise skree, which eventually blurs, and is melted down into a thick morass of crumbling low end that gradually becomes a hushed blackened drift. But it does seem that melody will be a recurring theme on Chasms, as "My Body Is Made Of Ash, I Live As Ash" begins as a series of thick thick distorted synth swells, which rapidly blossom into something much more melodic, soaring and cinematic, like M83 via the Swans, but even slower and meaner, and then the beats come in, and you can add Muslimgauze to the mix. Weird combo, but it works, hypnotic and tranced out, until the hammer falls, and the song explodes into full on face melting noise, but if you listen close, within that caustic cloud of noise, the rhythm continues to churn, vocals wail, and melodies drift and shimmer, it's the sort of hard noise, that softens a bit the more you listen, and seems to transform before your ears into something weirdly, and impossibly catchy. The rest of the record reveals more of Theologian's bleeding black sonic heart, the stuttering, almost 'danceable' "We Can't All Be Victims", the processed vocal driven blackened power electronics skitter of "I Don't Exist", the blown out noisebliss of "Bed Of Maggots, the almost house music-y pulsating noisescape title track, and finally, the sprawling 13 minute, haunting, grinding cinematic ambient noisescape closer. Comes packaged in a super striking, full color, oversized dvd style, six panel digipak.

MPEG stream: Abandon All Hope
MPEG stream: Starvation Is A Legitimate Weapon Of War
MPEG stream: My Body Is Made Of Ash... I Live As Ash
MPEG stream: The Chasms Of My Heart

We had never actually heard much from NYC power electronics / black ambient / dark industrial / synthdrone outfit Navicon Torture Technologies, but we were definitely intrigued by this latest installment of blackened sound from NTT mainman Leech, under the name Theologian. Even before hearing it. It's on Crucial Blast, and if anyone knows their way around grim, bleak, black heaviness, it's CB. Then there's the gorgeous oversized cover, a long haired figure holding her head, underneath a strange sigil and surrounded by a decahedron and a field of pure black, and then the record title, The Further I Get From Your Star, The Less Light I Feel On My Face, and the accompanying song titles: "In Times Of Need, We All Go Against Our Natures", "The Fragility Of The Male Ego", "Bearing Bitter Fruit", and the packaging folding out to reveal more mysterious shapes and strange shadowy nudes, a pretty compelling chunk of art, even before we get to the sounds within. And if anything, the sounds inside more than live up to that promise, the opening track "Zero" begins the proceedings, and we expectantly wait for some serious harsh noise, or some grim black ambience, and while there is a little of both, it's molded into something much more, well, lovely for lack of a better word, 5 minutes of crumbling black beauty, gorgeous plaintive melodies buried in a thick morass of buzz and blur and swirling hiss and whir, like a way more ominous and blackened Philip Jeck or Tim Hecker, gorgeous, and gorgeously harrowing. "In Times Of Need, We All Go Against Our Natures" is 24 minutes long, the majority of which is spent drifting through some nightmarish landscape of hushed minimal rumbles and post industrial grit, again, far more 'pretty' than we might have expected, a smoldering chunk of subterranean blackness, a roiling murky surface than offers brief glimpses of melodies and voices below, unsettling but gloriously grim, and in case we find the proceedings too soothing, the last few minutes find those sounds expanding and exploding into thick crumbling swells of blown out synths and fractured black electronics, underpinning some seriously anguished super distorted vokills. The record continues in a similar fashion, creating blackened shades of beauty out of elements harsh and hateful, abject and bleak, the sound almost shoegazey at times, hints of Nadja for sure abound, but a Nadja stripped to its essence, the tracks creep, and crawl, and drift, thrumming and pulsing softly, wreathed in sheets of grit and grime, but always glowing from within, the melodies like buried black secrets. Occasionally, like on "The Fragility Of The Male Ego", the sound becomes super blown out and corrosive, an ultradistorted blacknoise, that for all it's corrosive clamor, remains somehow, if not lovely, at least haunting and mysterious, while other tracks, like "It's All Gone", take unlikely elements, and again, weave them into something strangely beautiful, but still undeniably pitch black. Dark and mysterious and troublingly lovely, some seriously intense power electronics flecked black ambience, most definitely recommended for fans of Lustmord, MZ412, Nordvargr, Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, Wicked King Wicker, Locrian, Wraiths, Wolf Eyes, etc... Incredible packaging, 6 panel dvd sized digipak, black and spare on the outside, full color on the inside.

MPEG stream: Zero
MPEG stream: Unfamiliar Skies
MPEG stream: The Further I Get From Your Star, The Less Light I Feel On My Face

We've actually been sitting on these for a while now, another victim of the too many records to review and not enough time problem we seem to perpetually have. There Goes Neutro! is the project of aQ customer John Ira Thomas, and the minute we first heard about his Organelle record, we knew we had to hear it. One of those discs that we liked based on the description alone, having yet to hear a single note. C'mon, here's what it's all about (from the liner notes): "Thomas cut the advance frame noise from an old filmstrip record about the life of Jesus Christ, cut it into about 400 pieces, and with the magic of computers made something new out of it." Exactly. Jesus, chopped up records, noise, we knew it had to be good, or at the very least, interesting, lucky for us, it's both. Obvious references would be Jeck and Tetreault and Basinski, especially since the main component is record crackle, and damaged vinyl, and the arrangement is a looped assemblage of stuttering chopped up bits, like a rougher more raw Oval. But it's not just hiss and crackle, the first few seconds of music are also captured, sounding a bit circusy, even more so once they get looped up and tangled. Four long tracks, all movements in one epic and fractured soundscape. Woozy, trippy, warped and warbly and definitely a bit psychedelic. Super cool!

MPEG stream: Untitled 1
MPEG stream: Untitled 2