[ aquarius records — Experimental ]

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Showing results 7801 through 7850 of 9280.

More one-man metal band madness. This time from Cleveland Ohio, and man is this stuff crazy. Instead of just playing all the instruments himself like a 'normal' one man band, he records the drums, the bass, the guitars, -and- the vocals, loads them into

RealAudio clip: Punctured
RealAudio clip: Trauma

We listed Therios' amazing "II" disc last time, and the response was so good that we just brought in a few of this older self-titled Therios release. Like "II", this recording is a studio/computer-assembled one man band project. It's constructed from

RealAudio clip: Components Of Lucifer Refraction
RealAudio clip: Cortex Implant

We've long been pretty into Thieves Like Us, whose M.O. had been a sort of eighties style electro pop, a vintage sounding new wave that fused the sounds of classic New Order to an icy futureworld beholden to sci-fi author Philip K. Dick, but then something strange happened on their last record, the band ditching vocals completely and transforming into something totally (okay, well, maybe not totally) different, conjuring up a sound much more cinematic and krautrocky, definitely shifting toward the current crop of Goblin worshipping John Carpenter wannabes, experimental, psychedelic, kosmische, so that's pretty much what we were expecting from this, their brand new full length, but it seems that brief bit of sonic dabbling, was indeed just that, and with Bleed Bleed Bleed, regardless of the very evocative album title, the band returns to that shimmery eighties synth pop sound, the opening title track, slow burning and sultry, with a percolating bassline underneath swirling synths, and icy dueling boy / girl vocals. "Stay Blue" sounds opens up with a brief bout of serious Kraftwerk worship, before blissing out into something much more swoonsome and ballady, sounding like some lost jam straight off eighties FM radio or classic era MTV, reminding us more of ABC or Thompson Twins or any of those bands, more than the krautrock forebears who the band also obviously count as influences. And so it goes, a hazy time machine trip back into vintage new wave electro pop, and while more modern moments reminds us of M83 at times, folks who flipped over the anomaly that was the band's krautrocky last record, Berlin Alex, might be a bit confused, and perhaps even disappointed, but for the rest of us, who were already digging their fuzzy retro sound, this definitely hits that same sweet spot.

MPEG stream: Bleed Bleed Bleed
MPEG stream: Stay Blue
MPEG stream: Still Life

Thighpaulsandra has recorded with Coil, Julian Cope, and Spiritualized. At times all of those bands have done some pretty amazing things... this album, on the other hand, will hopefully be forgotten as a bad mistake. Highlights include a song called "Home Butt

Thighpaulsandra has made his career out of being weird and making noodly electronic music. After working with Julian Cope (perhaps his only collaboration that really made sense) and Spirtitualized, he's joined Coil fulltime. And considering Coil's new direction; all lunar drones and breathy occultist polemics, this isn't a bad match. Working with Coil's John Balance and Hans Jurgen Rausch on this short EP, Thighpaulsandra merges alot of hallucinatory electronics into a seemless collage dominated by the synth knob twiddle found on the recent Coil release "Queens of the Circulating Library." Interspersed between the analogue synthesisis some early 80s 'Some Bizarre' arppegiated industrial and some space-age bachelor pad jazziness (like Dick Hyman without the great name).

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

SORRY. British improv electronics/reeds project, with Moore and Bailey guesting individually on different tracks. Features lovely color graphics and interesting liner notes telling of the Blood Yeti. [/cat/experimental177.html]

It would be nice to think that These Records have only been releasing the reissues of "Deceit" -- This Heat's second and final proper album -- every ten years after the original release of the album in 1981. The first CD pressings arrived on 1991, and this Almost all of the histories of UK avant-garde music have claim allegiances to This Heat, as Punk, New Wave, Industrial, Prog Rock, Jim O'Rourke, and even Electronica place the seminal outfit somewhere at the beginnings of their respective etymologies. To a certain extent all of these histories may be true, but then again the broad aesthetic and ideological contexts between all of those different styles may cross-each other out, leaving This Heat as one of the few artistic forces that truly exists all by itself. Just a trio comprised of Charles Hayward, Charles Bullen, and Gareth Williams, This Heat manifested an incredibly explosive sound that hybridized all of the countercultural fury of Punk and Situationism, within a sonic context informed by technological advances of musique concrete techniques and electro-acoustic synthesis. Musically speaking, This Heat did not espouse the three chord structures or the snarling postures of Punk, instead injecting the complex pop agendas of Brian Eno (which were purposefully seeking to conflict the archetypes of rock into a new aesthetic language) with nervous tension building up to dramatic cathartic releases. "Deceit" is a record that was so ahead of its time that it has taken twenty years for artists like Fennesz and Radiohead to articulate ideas with such intensity and attention to the play between musical creation and technological advances. So highly recommended.

Trying to explain why this band is so good is sort of like trying to explain why ice cream is so delicious. Or why Bush is such a terrible president. Or maybe it's kind of like writing an introduction for the new Pynchon novel. Or telling a few jokes before Richard Pryor comes on stage. Or throwing a couple quick passes before Joe Montana comes on the field. It's that daunting, that overwhelming, that impossible. The trio of Charles Hayward, Charles Bullen and Gareth Williams known collectively as This Heat were one of the few bands that literally changed people's lives. Changed the way folks thought about music. I (Andee) couldn't believe music like this actually existed. It was everything I wanted to listen to before I knew that THIS was exactly what I wanted to listen to. Hit It Or Quit It publisher / rock critic / indie scenestress Jessica Hopper once wrote that she literally pee'd her pants the first time she heard This Heat. And it's not hard to see why. Without This Heat, modern, alternative, avant-garde music as we know it would be a whole different beast. Post-rock, math-rock, avant rock are hugely indebted to the genre shattering experimentalism of This Heat. Tortoise, You Fantastic, Yona Kit, Brise Glace, Psychic Paramount, Laddio Bollocko, Radian, Village Of Savoonga, Larsen, Starfuckers, Circle, Salvatore, I Am Spoonbender -- none of those bands would even exist if it weren't for This Heat, or if they still did you can bet they would sound a whole lot different. And that's just off the top of our heads, AND that's -just- bands whose sound directly reflects the influence of This Heat. Imagine how many performers and artists were influenced by This Heat but who let that influence manifest itself in not so obvious ways. We once described This Heat as "Krautrock-ish hyper rhythmic tape-looped prog." Which comes close to succinctly describing the magical musical alchemy of This Heat, but still only scratches the surface. The sound of This Heat is rhythm and texture and dynamics. The recording studio as instrument. Every sound and every song is based on rhythm and texture. There are hooks, and melodies, but they exist to serve the rhythm and are often born from the deft manipulation of sound and tempo. Even the most static and repetitive parts manage to sound -musical-. There are vocals, but they are minimal and otherworldly, weary and sing songy and completely mesmerizing. A droning musical accompaniment to the haunting whirs and clanging percussion in the background. Their entire catalog has gone in and out of print over the years, mostly out, with all of these records pretty much completely unavailable for the last 7 or 8 years. Rumors of a complete box set began to circulate a few years back and it has finally surfaced and it's everything we could have hoped for and more. Every single release, remastered, repackaged in swank digipaks, including a bonus live disc, a huge booklet, amazing archival photos, extensive liner notes, all packed in a gorgeous box. It's a testament to the power this band holds over their fans that pretty much everyone who owns all of these records already will buy the box without a second thought. We're almost jealous of folks who have never even heard This Heat. The thought of entering into this box set completely blind, is almost frightening, as the world of This Heat is so singular, so powerful, it will be difficult to ever listen to music the same way again. This Heat's self titled debut, originally released in 1978 (which is almost impossible to believe, that people were making music this progressive, this intense, this fucked up and forward thinking) is such a totally immersive and strangely lovely musical environment. From the machinelike krautrock of "Horizontal Hold" to the dreamy contemplative "Twilight Furniture" with its simple chiming guitars, muted tribal percussion and keening vocals, to the bizarre affected drum workout of "24 Track Loop", it's like wandering through some alien musical world. A sky full of greys and blues, smeary drones floating gently by, haunting quavering vocals drifting below, like tendrils of smoke, the barren landscape littered with all manner of rhythmic outcroppings, harsh jagged crashes and booms, as well as low rolling thumps and stutters, off in the distance simple spare melodies float and hover, each note a glowing spot on the horizon. Absolutely and utterly overwhelmingly brilliant. The Health And Efficiency ep followed in early 1981 and took their sound in a strangely pop (for them at least) direction, sounding like some tweaked and twisted version of Wire, the title track all angular new wave guitars, monotone vocals, driving drums, strange convoluted arrangements and creepy background sound effects before the whole thing splinters into super abstract rhythmic experimentalism, looped grooves, played over and over, while sounds float and careen in the background, so incredibly hypnotic and repetitive. The second track on Health And Efficiency (which runs a brief twenty minutes) is "Graphic/Varispeed (45rpm)", a lengthy drone, a warm synth whir that surfaces within other This Heat tracks, recontextualized and often chopped up and reassembled, but here, it's a slow shifting slow motion single tone soundscape, with the tone occasionally being pitched up or down, very simple but quite haunting, and a cool glimpse at how This Heat managed to mix and match, use and reuse, without ever treading water. Later that same year came Deceit, with the band continuing to expand and explore. Deceit consisted of shorter songs, but that didn't mean their process, or disdain for convention was altered. If anything, they managed to subvert pop music in a way never thought possible. Imagine Brian Eno circa Taking Tiger Mountain, but filter that through some avant industrialism, angular new wave and hyper rhythmic krautrock and you'll begin to get the picture. The songs on Deceit are impossibly catchy, especially when examined closely. Abstract, obtuse, angular, convoluted, tangled up but without ever losing that thread, that melodic sensibility that grounded the songs, kept them from falling apart completely, instead, the perilous arrangements only added tension and emotion. An incredibly explosive sound that somehow hybridized all of the countercultural fury of punk and situationism, within a sonic context informed by the technological advances of musique concrete and electro-acoustic experimentation. The sound was definitely punk in its own way, but certainly wasn't expressed through three chord song structures or snarling postures, instead This Heat injected their own complex pop agendas with a jittery nervous tension always building to a dramatic and cathartic release. Deceit was sadly the band's final release disbanding soon after. In 1993, a disc of unearthed This Heat recordings was released and consisted of three lengthy tracks of tape loop experiments and random rhythmic explorations. Repeat has come to be This Heat's defining work even though it is essentially a record of outtakes and pieces meant to be incorporated into other songs. But it's hard to argue with the 20 minute title track, and endless, almost funky groove, punctuated by weird electronic swells, sprinkles of woodblock percussion and occasional handclaps but held together by one of the most amazing drum parts ever. A relentless pound and shuffle, drenched in effects, sound very dubby, but also very krautrock, a tripped out blissed out drone drenched rhythmic space jam never matched to this day. Every time this is played for a friend, musician or not, the listener is inevitably confused, perplexed and then quickly obsessed with hearing more. The second track, appropriately titled "Metal" is an abstract soundscape of, well, metal, clanging, clinking, like some ancient junkyard gamelan, almost like the previous piece transcribed for sheet metal, garbage can, metal pipe and dumpster. The metallic symphony shifts and sways, melodies surface, rhythms twist and turn, all very hypnotic and quite lovely. The final track revisits a song on Health and Efficiency, but slows it down a bit to become "Graphic/Varispeed (45rpm)", the same sort of slow, murky drone, just made even slower, so more tonal colors surface, and the subtle shit is much more noticeable, a gloriously dreamlike warm warbly whir. In 1996, This Heat's 1977 Peel Sessions were finally released and demonstrated once again that This Heat were untouchable, effortlessly unfurling a sound equal parts avant pop, krautrock, progrock, musique concrete and a handful of parts that defied easy classification. Every track here a jaw dropping, mind blowing performance. Especially the new version of "Horizontal Hold", one of This Heat's finest moments already, played here with much more verve and vigor and with a sound quality so much clearer, a recording so incredibly hot, that the song is reborn and completely confounds and amazes. The whole session is rhythmically dense, rife with bastardized pop, incredibly complex arrangements all rendered again in such a way that they are emotional and moving, instead of just intellectual musical exercises. And the sound is so crystal clear, that you can hear a band at the top of their game, taking over the BBC studio and using it like they would a second guitar or another drummer. The Peel Sessions also include a handful of songs that never made it onto records proper. All as good as anything on their official releases. The bonus disc included in the box is a compilation of live tracks recorded between 1980 and 1981 all over Europe and sequenced to resemble the set list the band used on tour in the eighties. Recorded using a single stereo mic, the sound is less that crystal clear, but captures the band in their element at the top of their game. The songs are amazing, it's awesome to hear the band recreate pieces that on record relied so heavily on the studio, more evidence as to the genius of This Heat. Our only complaint about this box was that there is definitely more This Heat material out there, and anyone picking up this box, would have gladly paid a few bucks more for one or two more discs of lost rare material. But then we spied this in the liner notes of the live cd: "Further CD's from other stages in This Heat's music to follow, including collaborations, improvisations and site-specific work as well as other live cds." We can hardly wait! There are plenty of places on the web and in magazines to read more about the history of the band, the band members, various versions, releases and re-releases and past reissues, but none of that ultimately matters as much as the sound. And oh the glorious sound. Just take a listen to the sound samples and no words will be necessary.

MPEG stream: Horizontal Hold (Peel Session)
MPEG stream: Repeat
MPEG stream: Paper Hats
MPEG stream: Health And Efficiency

Trying to explain why this record is so good is sort of like trying to explain why ice cream is so delicious. Or why Bush is such a terrible president. Or maybe it's kind of like writing an introduction for the new Pynchon novel. Or telling a few jokes before Richard Pryor comes on stage. Or throwing a couple quick passes before Joe Montana comes on the field. It's that daunting, that overwhelming, that impossible. The trio of Charles Hayward, Charles Bullen, and Gareth Williams known collectively as This Heat were one of the few bands that literally changed people's lives. Changed the way folks thought about music. I (Andee) couldn't believe music like this actually existed. It was everything I wanted to listen to before I knew that THIS was exactly what I wanted to listen to. Hit It Or Quit It publisher / rock critic / indie scenstress Jessica Hopper once wrote that she literally pee'd her pants the first time she heard This Heat. And it's not hard to see why. Without This Heat, modern, alternative, avant garde music as we know it would be a whole different beast. Post rock, math rock, avant rock are hugely indebted to the genre shattering experimentalism of This Heat. Tortoise, You Fantastic, Yona Kit, Brise Glace, Psychic Paramount, Laddio Bollocko, Radian, Village Of Savoonga, Larsen, Starfuckers, Circle, Salvatore, I Am Spoonbender -- none of those bands would even exist if it weren't for This Heat, or if they still did you can bet they would sound a whole lot different. And that's just off the top of our heads, AND that's -just- bands whose sound directly reflects the influence of This Heat. Imagine how many performers and artists were influenced by This Heat but who let that influence manifest itself in not so obvious ways. We once described This Heat as "Krautrock-ish hyper rhythmic tape-looped prog." Which comes close to succinctly describing the magical musical alchemy of This Heat, but still only scratches the surface. This is their self titled debut, originally released in 1979 and reissued briefly in 1991, and manages over the course of about 50 minutes to redefine almost all music that had come before. The sound of This Heat is rhythm and texture and dynamics. The recording studio as instrument. Every sound and every song is based on rhythm and texture. There are hooks, and melodies, but they exist to serve the rhythm and are often born from the deft manipulation of sound and tempo. Even the most static and repetitive parts manage to sound -musical-. There are vocals, but they are minimal and otherworldly, weary and sing songy and completely mesmerizing. A droning musical accompaniment to the haunting whirs and clanging percussion in the background. This record is such a totally immersive and strangely lovely musical environment. From the machinelike Krautrock of "Horizontal Hold" to the dreamy contemplative "Twilight Furniture" with its simple chiming guitars, muted tribal percussion and keening vocals, to the bizarre affected drum workout of "24 Track Loop", it's like wandering through some alien musical world. As sky full of greys and blues, smeary drones floating gently by, haunting quavering vocals drifting below, like tendrils of smoke, the barren landscape littered with all manner of rhythmic outcroppings, harsh jagged crashes and booms, as well as low rolling thumps and stutters, off in the distance simple spare melodies float and hover, each note a glowing spot on the horizon. Absolutely and utterly overwhelmingly brilliant. There are plenty of places on the web and in magazines to read more about the history of the band, the band members, the various releases and reissues (see elsewhere on the AQ website for reviews of past editions of various TH recordings) but none of that ultimately matters as much as the sound. And oh the glorious sound. Just take a listen to the sound samples and no words will be necessary. This is arguably This Heat's finest moment, their debut record, finally available again after almost 15 years of being out of print. Be aware that there will be a 5cd box coming out in the (near?) future, containing EVERY SINGLE ONE of the band's releases, as well as a bonus disc of unreleased material and a huge book of photos and liner notes. And we would have made (maybe will make) THAT record of the week, and while we do believe EVERY music lover we know owes it to themselves to buy the upcoming box, we figured a single disc was plenty for most people to get hooked and obsessed.

MPEG stream: Horizontal Hold
MPEG stream: 24 Track Loop
MPEG stream: The Fall Of Saigon

Scott Cortez, he of shoegaze legends Lovesliescrushing, as well as the recently reviewed Astrobrite, teams up with Thisquietarmy, who we've heard from in the past via multiple collaborations with Nadja's Aidan Baker. Here these two create a gorgeous landscape of thick layered mesmeric guitardrone, playable at both 33rpm and 45rpm (of course we're always partial to the slower), the guitars rendered totally unguitarlike, more like sound generators, unfurling pulsing lush overlapping tones and chords, all blurred and smeared into bleary, druggy dreaminess. Hypnotic, with ever shifting overtones, subtle sonic colorations, abstract and ambient, but still dense and dreamily dark. Only got a few copies of this...

Thoabath is the solo project of Sutekh Hexen's A.C. Way - the barrel-chested vocalist and black magic specialist for Sutekh Hexen. His tranced-out incantations of heavily processed incantations work against the grain of black metal vocals, coming across like a highly chemically altered take on La Monte Young's extended vocal techniques. The method-acting trance-induction is no fucking joke for Way, who actively pursues those moments of out-of-body experience during performance. These vocals do work their way into the mix of his output as Thoabath, but with those pushed behind a series of drum machine explorations into industrial demolition and occult ritual hypnosis. The tinny replication of the electronic rhythm on the opening "On Her Smokey Chariot" builds from a micro-robot jig tapped on a shopping cart into a pounding march in the tradition of TG's "Discipline" all the while swarmed with diabolus in musica drones and insectoid electrical mayhem. The slinking breakbeat of the short programmed "T.'.T.'" has the overdriven torpor of some of those Clipping productions joined by some microphone swallowed vocals instead of tongue-twisted lyricism. Clocking in a hair under 30 minutes, Through Smoke and Feathers could be filed next to Dissecting Table, Contagious Orgasm, and Master/Slave Relationship for some sicktone references to chew on. Limited to 100 copies.

MPEG stream: On Her Smokey Chariot
MPEG stream: M.I.T.A.

While no information is present in the liner notes as to the origin of the strange clicks and whirls on this CD, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that Matthew Thomas is reprocessing shortwave radio static and noises into tentative structures that every once in a while give hint at melodies. A very poetic album that falls between Stockhausen's "Hymnen" and the shortwave radio experiments of John Duncan.

Had it not been for this LP re-issue, the obscure German project Thorax-Wach would have certainly disappeared forever, and been forever unknown to us. Thankfully, that didn't happen. That said, we still don't know about this group other than that we like 'em, and the basic biographical info that they were a Berlin-based duo who originally released "Die Euch Geht's Ja Noch Viel Zu Gut" as a cassette back in 1979. Everything else about the band is a mystery to us. Musically, they appeared to have been sympathetic with (if not comrades of) the Berlin punk community of 'destructive dilletantes' like Malaria!, Der Plan, Einstuerzende Neubauten, Sprung Aus Den Wolken, and especially Die Todliche Doris. Armed with two Korg synths and a chicken scratch guitar, Thorax-Wach build simple electronic arppegiations that alternate between abrasive Throbbing Gristle noise and sneering, synthetic noirish pop tunes matched with dueling German vocals about eating children, old people, the body, and German serial killers!! Much of the vocals play with pre-existing structures ("Happy Birthday" being of note) and take on much of Die Todliche Doris' dada / fluxist sense of the absurd. Definitely one for the retro-electro crowd. Vinyl only. Note: we got the half-dozen we have direct from the label, so they're relatively cheap. But when we run out, we'll have to get 'em from a distro, and the price will go up to $13.98 -- so, act fast!

RealAudio clip: Tango Fontanello
RealAudio clip: Sagblost2

Phaserprone returns with more of their bunker mentality for obscurant synth-punk noise and rhythms, here authored by Brooklyn's Thought Broadcast (although now living in SF), who had at least one release on the uber-hip Gel label. Phaserprone champions this release as a surefire trajectory out of the "rarified TB discography," which seems to be wholly enigmatic from what we can discern; not surprisingly, this is our first exposure to the project. Thought Broadcast offers up 4 short monosynth and rhythm box trax whose dark-minded minimalism splatter with the power-electronics vibe of the pre-Brighter Death Now project Lille Roger or some of Cabaret Voltaire's more zombified efforts circa 1978 and with a little bit of Dome thrown in for good measure through TB's effects scrambling vocals, blorping synth sequencing, and monotonous mechanoid plod exhumed from a tarpit of tape murk. Cut at 45, so you know we're also loving this at the wrong speed! Elegantly packaged with Phaserprone's heavily embossed letterpress artwork. Limited to just 175 copies!

The schizophonic erasing and minimalist-dub-industrial aktions of Thought Broadcast are strategies directly replicated from very obscure sources from a very specific time frame. One admitted source is the unheard catalogue of Vanity Records flexidiscs from Japan circa 1981. In positing the work as an outright forgery, Thought Broadcast's copies of copies of copies of copies engender a punk-situationist zenith of radically free appropriation as artform. Where Through Broadcast is taking its cues from Vanity; Vanity was obfuscating the work of Maurizio Bianchi (amongst others), who in turn took after Conrad Schnitzler (amongst others), who leapt into sound upon his tutelage from Joseph Beuys. The network of influences and detours and rhizomes through both time and space is never a linear one, always convoluted and morphing; and Thought Broadcast is very clearly aware that the simulacra of signifiers can be an exhausting, unending cycling of ideas. In the replication and variations on stolen, damaged goods, Thought Broadcast re-ignites an obsessive, psychological tension which speaks of VHS video nasties, conspiracy theories of subliminal messages coded in television static, and the liminal horror of sound being used a control mechanism. Yes, these were the ideas that were spawned out of the Industrial Culture Handbook (e.g. Burroughs, TG/PTV, Z'ev, etc.); and Throught Broadcast's distillation of synth-punk ideas and aesthetics through the variation upon the most minimal of means -- a flanging, noisy-as-fuck synth droning above a grittily-phased drum machine -- is undeniably perfect in it's reminiscence for a time when everything else was fucking boring and fucking horrible. Yeah, one of the best electronic records of year. 1981? 2014? It matters not.

MPEG stream: Anchorite
MPEG stream: Runaway Signal
MPEG stream: 07/13/2013

Quite the student of the obscure & forgotten histories of synth punk and industrial culture, Ravi Binning's Thought Broadcast firmly embraces the primitive technology and the vacated zeitgeist from 1979-1983. For Binning, the musical universe may have ceased to exist after SPK's major label dalliance on the unforgivably bad "Metal Dance," but he still carves out plenty of room to operate alongside The Units, Factrix, and Club Moral. As we heard last on the super limited Phaserprone 7" released earlier in 2012, Binning has at his disposal a collection of primitive monosynths and drum machines, possibly of vintage origin, possibly reverse engineered through modern technology, possibly new circuits designed to sound old. No matter what the means of production might be, his sound is decidedly primitive, with the simplest of minor-chord melodies, the most zombified of arpeggiations, and the tinniest of mechanical rhythms filtered from Conrad Schnitzler through TG and MB, all of it swamped with tape hiss and scabrous noise errors. How could Binning not record this on the shittiest of 4-tracks? Highly compressed, garbled vocals bark in distant monotone at erratic intervals, with crude tape-delay manipulation further obfuscating whatever apocalyptic, anti-social, damaged epithets Binning may be uttering. It's brilliant in its bleakness and its re-animatation of that peculiar hollowed-out industrial sound.

MPEG stream: Fortune Teller

Tripped out sci-fi groove-rockers from Austin, Thousand Foot Whale Claw make their vinyl debut, and it's even better than we hoped it would be! We sold through a bunch of their Holodeck tape, Lost In Those Dunes, which was typical of their tape releases, two long sides of heady space rock drift, explosive cosmic psych expansiveness and ambient nuance. But for their vinyl debut, they really take their sound to the next level in the rhythm section, adding more bass and drum groove into tracks that enter an almost psych-rave territory, as if Spacemen 3 and Fuck Buttons gave birth to a baby in the bleak vacuum of space. Like local hypno-rockers, Lumerians, TFWC take advantage of an arsenal of psychedelic styles that propel the momentum, but keep the energy fresh, exciting and interestingly unpredictable. A tremendous debut that comes highly recommended! Fans of Cave, Moon Duo, Carlton Melton, White Manna, and Wooden Shjips take note!

One of five new tapes from the awesome Austin based experimental tape label, Holodeck. Largely documenting the growing and diverse Texas underground scene of synth conjurers, drone lords, psych meditators, and classical folk devotionalists, each tape conceived as a unique listening experience with beautifully designed minimalist packaging. We listed tapes by Lumens, Smokey Emery and Thousand Foot Whale Claw awhile back, and this time around we have another tape from Thousand Foot Whale Claw as well as tapes by Survive, Amasa Gana, M. Geddes Gengra, and Silent Land Time Machine. Since we reviewed the last Thousand Foot Whale Claw tape, Lost In Those Dunes as well as their vinyl debut, Dope Moons Volume One, we've become huge fans of the group's long form exploratory psych excursions. Time Brothers is an artifact of the group's beginnings comprised of two 20+ minute tracks that are extended demo versions of songs from both the previous tape and the vinyl lp plus the shorter unreleased titular track from the Lost in Those Dunes sessions.These primodial demos showcase the more ambient side of this space-rock group. Employing psych waves of oceanic bliss that conjure up images of tranquil beaches on far-off planets, brewing acid guitars, synth washes and circular bass rhythms create elongated textures and build-ups that restrain themselves from full-on freak-outs and remain in an elongated holding pattern of raga-ish devotion. Limited to 100 copies!

We were lucky enough to have the legendary Supreme Dicks play at our South By Southwest party earlier this year, and it was just as amazing as we had hoped, ramshackle and loose, the songs wild and psychedelic, and crazy catchy, and the performance itself was unexpected, with a woman sitting in front of the band, performing strange semaphore with various fruits, eventually eating the fruit and performing rituals with the peels. Then one member walked around the audience with a light activated theremin and a light up blinking child's toy. Afterwards, one of the The Dicks took us aside, and handed us this dvd, explaining that it was their psychedelic cable access show. We had no idea what to expect, and as insane as we might have imagined it would be, it's somehow even MORE! A two hour barrage of drugged out experimental imagery, with total ADD editing, the visuals the sort of thing that would possibly cause seizures, various goings on in the studio, and bizarre guests, overlaid with all manner of primitive digital effects, all set to a constantly shifting sonic collage of voices, and musical fragments, dizzying and confusional and nearly overwhelming in its sheer what-the-fuck-ness. We imagined that at some point the insanity would get dialed back so you could hear the guests, or maybe there would be a more straight ahead segment, but nope, you essentially never hear anything anyone says, unless it's doused in effects and tangled up with a million other voices. This is the sort of thing you can imagine some Butthole Surfers like band projecting while they perform, it's total eye popping, brain melting weirdness. The LA Weekly called Three Geniuses "The most intentionally psychedelic show on cable", which we have to say is a massive understatement. If you can dig through all the psychedelic imagery, you might get a glimpse of a transvestite body builder with Tourettes Syndrome, or the drummer from the Germs, or any number of amazing and bizarre looking characters, the whole thing apparently performed / broadcast live, letting things develop organically, and often fall apart completely, but the planned parts are so fucked up, not sure if anyone could even tell when things went wrong. Although some would argue everything about this is so so so wrong. Which is precisely what makes it so mesmerizingly demented and impossibly awesome. Probably best to be viewed while high as a kite, but even stone cold sober, this is some deliriously psychedelic stuff. Bonus jams include a live Three Geniuses performance at the AT&T center in 2009, in front of a very confused looking audience. And an Ariel Pink video directed by the Three Geniuses that basically looks like AP sounds!

Nope. It's not actually a choir, but rather the solo project of Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson, the enigmatic musician whose electronic sleights of hand steered the course for Throbbing Gristle and Coil as the charismatic frontmen for both ensembles proclaimed all things transgressive. Now that Sleazy has stepped into the spotlight on his own, it is apparent that his vocabularies for twisted nursery rhyme melodies, cross-pollinated electronic algorithms, and sinister soundscapes were as absolutely crucial to the development of Industrial Culture at large, with or without the presence of Genesis P-Orridge or Jhonn Balance. Nowadays, Christopherson resides in Thailand, far from his birthplace in Britain; but the sounds he crafts in Southeast Asia have all of the trappings of the English esoterica he's authored for nearly 30 years now. Christopherson digs into his bag of magical tricks for another fantastic album, which seamlessly follows from where Coil left off on their posthumous album The Ape Of Naples as well as The Remote Viewer and Black Antlers. Constantly ascending melodies mutate and fold on top of each other, fluid basslines counterpoint stochastic stabs of monotone arpeggiations, and the castrati boys who wailed at the conclusion of The Ape Of Naples return with their beatific innocence and darkly charged sexuality with their voices crooning over music box melodies playing just slightly faster than they are supposed to and thus appearing sharply atonal. While Christopherson has proven himself a deft engineer with all sorts of audio software, he intentionally gravitates towards the much simpler patterns generated by the Fairlight sampler, the machine which dominated so much of the early Coil records. These structurally evolving patterns and overlaid melodic repetitions result in a creeping hypnosis and seductively powerful atmosphere. It's no surprise that his Threshold Houseboys Choir successfully conjures the ghosts of Horse Rotovator, the masterful Coil album from 1986.

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The cover for Throbbing Gristle's 20 Jazz Funk Greats is a marvelous piece of subversive design. The four members of Throbbing Gristle look quite dapper, Genesis dolled up in a tailored white suit jacket, Cosey smiling happily in her pert miniskirt, and Chris & Sleazy both wearing rather conservative sweaters, but they had situated themselves on the cliffs of Beachy Head (a notorious suicide spot on the south coast of England) with a rented Range Rover in the distance and in a variation of this scene, a nude male body lies at their feet in the grass, presumably dead. This design (executed by Sleazy through his day job at Hipgnosis Design) was a sneering act of contempt for British society that failed to see the horrors and injustice which boiled just under the surfaces of congeniality and civility. Both Second Annual Report and D.o.A. were ostensibly compilations of recontextualized material both from the studio and extracts from live recordings, but 20 Jazz Funk Greats - the third proper album from Throbbing Gristle - feels like a conceived album from beginning to end, even with all of its dead-ends and contradictions. The album opens with the title track, where a slow-motion drum machine and synthesized bass tones strut with a mechanical swagger with Cosey's discordant cornet blurts in the distance and predatorily whispered vocal extracts of what could be some smooth jazz DJ trying to set the mood - with that mood being a sickening, menacing threat. Such is also the case, with the lugubrious "Tanith" whose atonal rolling basslines churn against strange electronic blorp and tinkling chimes, which leads into "Convincing People" - whose metronomic synth sequencing became the signature for nearly every 'industrial' band that claimed TG as an influence. The detuned and distorted guitar from Cosey smears the mechanical edges while Genesis wailed through the lyrical repetitiveness which articulated to the effect that if you say it enough, people will start believing you. A hammer might help too. The minimalist club hit "Hot On The Heels Of Love" is one of the most memorable TG songs, and for very good reason as TG offered a much-imitated disco frugality through their insistent drum machine, squiggling sequencing, and Cosey's whispered vocals. Immediately following this is a nightmarish narration of the aftermath of a night of partying too much in "Persuasion", as disembodied female yelps of sexualized horror sporadically punctuate a slithering Genesis donning the role of a low-rent pornographer. "What A Day" is another 'industrial' template with a corrosive loop of cybernetic thumps forming the only backdrop to Genesis barking as loud as he can in a diabolical take on a footballer's chant. The finale "Six Six Sixties" finds Cosey's monochord guitar awfully prescient of Sonic Youth and Bailter Space in the drone intensity through distortion and rhythm, with Genesis reciting a suitably bleak monologue above, rounding out what is arguably the best of the Throbbing Gristle albums. The cd version contains a bonus disc with live material extracted from the numerous live cassettes (and some of these versions apparently appear on the 24cd boxset of live TG material, although we've not cross referenced these facts yet). The two versions of "Discipline" (which were released as a 12" on Fetish Records in 1981) suitably conclude this disc, as that was the track that TG also performed at the end of their sets, with the heavy drum machines whipping the crowd into a frenzy and Genesis barking hysterically for some order. Such were the wonderful contradictions of Throbbing Gristle. About as a high a recommendation as we can give.

MPEG stream: 20 Jazz Funk Greats
MPEG stream: Persuasion
MPEG stream: What A Day!
MPEG stream: Discipline (Berlin)

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

SORRY.

Finally, the long rumored Gristleism soundbox from Throbbing Gristle is here, and it's just about as cool as we hoped. Regardless of your feelings on Throbbing Gristle as a band, Gristleism is another must have for music obsessives and weird gadget freaks, like FM3's Buddha Machine, Gristleism is a small compact battery powered soundbox that plays loops, it has a volume and a pitch control, and a button to switch between loops, but UNlike the Buddha Machine, which until recently came in the generic Asian packaging that all similar machines came packaged in (originally these boxes contained prayers and were used for mediation), and finally got a minimal but stylish upgrade, the Gristleism box is all about the packaging, in fact, we balked at the price before we saw these, but now that we've seen one and held one, WOW. Totally worth it. The outside sleeve is gorgeously printed shiny on matte on one side, elaborately diecut on the other, that immediately recognizable TG pattern, the bottom is printed in metallic silver ink. But that's just the outer slipcover. Once that is removed, the inside cover is revealed, again, shiny ink on matte paper, some of the details in shiny metallic silver, the credits, the tracklisting, then inside that is a small printed insert, on thick reflective paper, and then finally the soundbox itself, which even has the Throbbing Gristle logo pressed into the plastic. As an object, this thing is breathtaking, totally striking and even if you never listened to it, would look smashing on your shelf. But you WILL want to listen to it. Thirteen TG loops, the bulk of which seem to harken from the classic late '70s period of Throbbing Gristle, before the project split into Psychic TV, Chris & Cosey, and Coil. The low synthetic dirge of "Persuasion" (from 20 Jazz Funk Greats) is the first loop on the box, complete with those unsettling female vocalisations which may be screams of fear, ecstacy, horror, or somewhere in between. The seasick distorted swells and atonal melodica trilled with tremolo come next, culled from the TG classic "Hamburger Lady" (from D.o.A. The Third and Final Report), all that's needed is for you to fill in Genesis' vocals about encountering a charred human body still alive in a hospital ward. Similarly effective is the alien slow-motion grooviess of the title track from 20 Jazz Funk Greats, with Cosey's bleating trumpet hanging in the distance. The windswept eeriness and foghorn blurts on "Thank You Brian" seem to be a loop that's unique to the box, or at least we're not sure where it might have come from. But the proto-acid squiggliness and disembodied vocals of "Maggot Death" reprise a particularly great snippet from TG's Second Annual Report. The "Wimpy Bar" loop doesn't seem to come from one of TG's records either but is one that sounds really familiar with Cosey's knife-on-the-guitar-strings scraping and squiggled electronics, perhaps from one of the many live cassettes? The tenth loop reprises the darkly hallucinatory echoes and atonal blurts from "Heathen Earth". The shepherd tone crustiness of the "Industrial Intro" could have been an experiment that Chris and Sleazey worked out for Second Annual Report. Everything actually sounds pretty awesomely crappy through the little speaker, apparently the band worked quite hard to enhance the sound of these little boxes, according to their website, Gristleism has almost twice the frequency range of the original Buddha Machines, but it's definitely a pretty perfect encapsulation of the TG aesthetic. Low brow high art. We would have liked to have seen a chunk from United or the rhythm from Discipline added into the box, but hey save those for the next one. Please? The one bummer is that there's no output / headphone jack, so there's really no way to hook this up to an amp or your stereo. Unless... you go to the band's website, where they provide specs for certain mods, insert a jack, do a little circuit bending, so you can add your own twist to TG's Gristleism box. Needless to say, odds are you're probably gonna want one of these. Or two. If you loved the Buddha Machine, or the recent Black Box variation, then this one's gonna blow your mind. Available in black, red, and chrome (although, as of this moment, the chrome version is not available yet, it should be in a couple weeks). And be warned, these are super limited, we have a bunch, but we may not be able to get more, or if we can, it might not be all that many...

First black, then red, now CHROME (ok, chrome colored plastic)! Ooh, shiny! Finally, the long rumored Gristleism soundbox from Throbbing Gristle is here, and it's just about as cool as we hoped. Regardless of your feelings on Throbbing Gristle as a band, Gristleism is another must have for music obsessives and weird gadget freaks, like FM3's Buddha Machine, Gristleism is a small compact battery powered soundbox that plays loops, it has a volume and a pitch control, and a button to switch between loops, but UNlike the Buddha Machine, which until recently came in the generic Asian packaging that all similar machines came packaged in (originally these boxes contained prayers and were used for mediation), and finally got a minimal but stylish upgrade, the Gristleism box is all about the packaging, in fact, we balked at the price before we saw these, but now that we've seen one and held one, WOW. Totally worth it. The outside sleeve is shiny chrome, gorgeously embossed, or debossed, on one side, elaborately diecut on the other, that immediately recognizable TG pattern, the bottom lettering is debossed into the silver, with the word Gristleism printed in black. But that's just the outer slipcover. Once that is removed, the inside cover is revealed, again, shiny chrome, the credits, the tracklisting, debossed into the silver then inside that is a small printed insert, black ink on thick black paper, and then finally the soundbox itself, which even has the Throbbing Gristle logo pressed into the shiny reflective chrome finished plastic. As an object, this thing is breathtaking, totally striking and even if you never listened to it, would look smashing on your shelf. But you WILL want to listen to it. Thirteen TG loops, the bulk of which seem to harken from the classic late '70s period of Throbbing Gristle, before the project split into Psychic TV, Chris & Cosey, and Coil. The low synthetic dirge of "Persuasion" (from 20 Jazz Funk Greats) is the first loop on the box, complete with those unsettling female vocalisations which may be screams of fear, ecstasy, horror, or somewhere in between. The seasick distorted swells and atonal melodica trilled with tremolo come next, culled from the TG classic "Hamburger Lady" (from D.o.A. The Third and Final Report), all that's needed is for you to fill in Genesis' vocals about encountering a charred human body still alive in a hospital ward. Similarly effective is the alien slow-motion grooviess of the title track from 20 Jazz Funk Greats, with Cosey's bleating trumpet hanging in the distance. The windswept eeriness and foghorn blurts on "Thank You Brian" seem to be a loop that's unique to the box, or at least we're not sure where it might have come from. But the proto-acid squiggliness and disembodied vocals of "Maggot Death" reprise a particularly great snippet from TG's Second Annual Report. The "Wimpy Bar" loop doesn't seem to come from one of TG's records either but is one that sounds really familiar with Cosey's knife-on-the-guitar-strings scraping and squiggled electronics, perhaps from one of the many live cassettes? The tenth loop reprises the darkly hallucinatory echoes and atonal blurts from "Heathen Earth". The shepherd tone crustiness of the "Industrial Intro" could have been an experiment that Chris and Sleazey worked out for Second Annual Report. Everything actually sounds pretty awesomely crappy through the little speaker, apparently the band worked quite hard to enhance the sound of these little boxes, according to their website, Gristleism has almost twice the frequency range of the original Buddha Machines, but it's definitely a pretty perfect encapsulation of the TG aesthetic. Low brow high art. We would have liked to have seen a chunk from United or the rhythm from Discipline added into the box, but hey save those for the next one. Please? The one bummer is that there's no output / headphone jack, so there's really no way to hook this up to an amp or your stereo. Unless... you go to the band's website, where they provide specs for certain mods, insert a jack, do a little circuit bending, so you can add your own twist to TG's Gristleism box. Needless to say, odds are you're probably gonna want one of these. Or two. If you loved the Buddha Machine, or the recent Black Box variation, then this one's gonna blow your mind. Available in black, red, and now chrome. And be warned, these are super limited, we have a bunch, but we may not be able to get more, or if we can, it might not be all that many...

Finally, the long rumored Gristleism soundbox from Throbbing Gristle is here, and it's just about as cool as we hoped. Regardless of your feelings on Throbbing Gristle as a band, Gristleism is another must have for music obsessives and weird gadget freaks, like FM3's Buddha Machine, Gristleism is a small compact battery powered soundbox that plays loops, it has a volume and a pitch control, and a button to switch between loops, but UNlike the Buddha Machine, which until recently came in the generic Asian packaging that all similar machines came packaged in (originally these boxes contained prayers and were used for mediation), and finally got a minimal but stylish upgrade, the Gristleism box is all about the packaging, in fact, we balked at the price before we saw these, but now that we've seen one and held one, WOW. Totally worth it. The outside sleeve is gorgeously printed shiny on matte on one side, elaborately diecut on the other, that immediately recognizable TG pattern, the bottom is printed in shiny black ink. But that's just the outer slipcover. Once that is removed, the inside cover is revealed, again, shiny ink on matte paper, some of the details in shiny black ink, the credits, the tracklisting, then inside that is a small printed insert, on thick reflective paper, and then finally the soundbox itself, which even has the Throbbing Gristle logo pressed into the plastic. As an object, this thing is breathtaking, totally striking and even if you never listened to it, would look smashing on your shelf. But you WILL want to listen to it. Thirteen TG loops, the bulk of which seem to harken from the classic late '70s period of Throbbing Gristle, before the project split into Psychic TV, Chris & Cosey, and Coil. The low synthetic dirge of "Persuasion" (from 20 Jazz Funk Greats) is the first loop on the box, complete with those unsettling female vocalisations which may be screams of fear, ecstasy, horror, or somewhere in between. The seasick distorted swells and atonal melodica trilled with tremolo come next, culled from the TG classic "Hamburger Lady" (from D.o.A. The Third and Final Report), all that's needed is for you to fill in Genesis' vocals about encountering a charred human body still alive in a hospital ward. Similarly effective is the alien slow-motion grooviess of the title track from 20 Jazz Funk Greats, with Cosey's bleating trumpet hanging in the distance. The windswept eeriness and foghorn blurts on "Thank You Brian" seem to be a loop that's unique to the box, or at least we're not sure where it might have come from. But the proto-acid squiggliness and disembodied vocals of "Maggot Death" reprise a particularly great snippet from TG's Second Annual Report. The "Wimpy Bar" loop doesn't seem to come from one of TG's records either but is one that sounds really familiar with Cosey's knife-on-the-guitar-strings scraping and squiggled electronics, perhaps from one of the many live cassettes? The tenth loop reprises the darkly hallucinatory echoes and atonal blurts from "Heathen Earth". The shepherd tone crustiness of the "Industrial Intro" could have been an experiment that Chris and Sleazey worked out for Second Annual Report. Everything actually sounds pretty awesomely crappy through the little speaker, apparently the band worked quite hard to enhance the sound of these little boxes, according to their website, Gristleism has almost twice the frequency range of the original Buddha Machines, but it's definitely a pretty perfect encapsulation of the TG aesthetic. Low brow high art. We would have liked to have seen a chunk from United or the rhythm from Discipline added into the box, but hey save those for the next one. Please? The one bummer is that there's no output / headphone jack, so there's really no way to hook this up to an amp or your stereo. Unless... you go to the band's website, where they provide specs for certain mods, insert a jack, do a little circuit bending, so you can add your own twist to TG's Gristleism box. Needless to say, odds are you're probably gonna want one of these. Or two. If you loved the Buddha Machine, or the recent Black Box variation, then this one's gonna blow your mind. Available in black, red, and chrome (although, as of this moment, the chrome version is not available yet). And be warned, these are super limited, we have a bunch, but we may not be able to get more, or if we can, it might not be all that many...

While cataloged as the 'fourth and final' studio recording of Throbbing Gristle, Heathen Earth documents TG in a live context, as TG invited a couple dozen friends and hangers-on into the Industrial Records studio to witness the band in an intimate setting, while recording the proceedings to 8-track tape. Much of the slashing noise, atonal cornet blurts, and discordant oscillations from TG's live persona is front and center, but such brute noises are thrust against the clarity of sound from TG's step sequencing and electronic rhythms. Throbbing Gristle rework some tracks from the back catalogue, as the apocalyptic guitar drone of "Six Six Sixties" becomes all the more distorted and menacing in its new guise "The Old Man Smiled;" and some of that self same sequencing that went into the Schniztler-esque track "Dead On Arrival" re-emerges on "The Worlds Is A War Film." Presumably, a version of "After Cease to Exist" surfaces in the morass of murky noise that TG delves into, but it's hard to tell where that emerges as this track was such a gnarled abstraction to begin with. The cold electronic rhythms of "Don't Do As Your Told, Do As You Think" mirrors the jackbooted intensity that TG produced in their live-only cut "Discipline." As with all of the other remastered versions of the cd, Heathen Earth comes with a bonus disc of live materials with a single at the end. Strangely enough, a track entitled "Heathen Earth" is featured in the live material, but was not included in the "live-in-the-studio" album. It's quite an incendiary number with pounding heartbeat drum machine grounding Genesis' tortured vocals and piercing feedback tones. A subterranean creepiness befits the track "Auschwitz" with bellowing cornet and distant drone sound design, prescient of pretty much every dark ambient / death industrial act to follow over the next three decades. The live material follows this trend up to the finale in the utterly haunting "We Said No," rounding out what is probably the best live material that TG has presented in this series of reissues. The finale seven inch is "Subhuman / Adrenalin" - the former being a throat-burning tirade from Genesis above a smoldering backdrop of electric noise, while the latter centers on the mechanoid sequencing of Sleazy and Chris Carter. The vinyl version comes sans bonus disc, and is limited to 2000 copies!

MPEG stream: The Old Man Smiled
MPEG stream: Don't Do As You're Told, Do As You Think
MPEG stream: Heathen Earth
MPEG stream: We Said No

After twenty plus years since they terminated their mission, Throbbing Gristle have reformed. This collaborative reunion originally was to be just a one off live gig; then it became a second weekend long festival that had to be canceled; and it's quite probable that these four pioneers of Industrial Culture just shrugged their collective shoulders and decided, "what the hell, let's record an album!" So, here it is Part Two The Endless Not; and while no one is ever going to mistake this album for the follow-up to the primitive electronic constructions of DOA or Second Annual Report, this is a truly compelling album that successfully reintegrates the divergent aesthetics that evolved out of Throbbing Gristle. The erotically charged pulse streams of Chris & Cosey and the polyglot electric psychedelia of Coil combine perfectly as the shattered mirror sonic arrangements for Genesis P-Orridge's half-sung sermons, which continue along the same Burroughsian cut-up principles that have been his signature sound throughout the herky-jerky career of Psychic TV. It's still somewhat amusing that Genesis has chosen not to learn to sing, but his warbled slurring vocals still have a peculiar charisma that no one else could ever pull off. Musically, Part Two The Endless Not seems to have much more in common with the posthumous Coil releases, with melancholy marimba and slickly polished synthesized structures harboring funereal melodies and whirling data-crunched rhythms; and it causes one to ask if Sleazy Christopherson was in fact the man behind most of the brilliance of Throbbing Gristle's earlier work. Admittedly, Part Two The Endless Not exhibits a considerable cleanliness and palatability which couldn't have been a part of the early TG sound; but this is nonetheless a great record from four great musicians.

MPEG stream: Vow Of Silence
MPEG stream: Almost A Kiss
MPEG stream: Greasy Spoon

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.

A five knuckle shuffle on my throbbing gristle! Yup, it's a crass reference to masturbation uttered by one of the associates of Coum Transmissions, the mid-'70s, British transgressive performance art ensemble whose happenings involved extreme rituals of sex, vomit, and blood, causing quiet a stir in the press, art world, and beyond. By 1976, the principle members of Coum - Genesis P-Orridge, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Chris Carter, and Peter Christopherson - rechristened themselves Throbbing Gristle, as a musical outfit creating a confounding, bleak electronic parallel to the trajectory of punk. Over the next four years, TG released a handful of albums and toured constantly, always attuned to a coy semantic juxtaposition of gruesome, pornographic, or morbid imagery next to that which was cheeky and absurdly comical. Monte Cazazza's catch phrase "industrial music for industrial people" spoke not only the mechanical, de-humanizing mirror that TG was holding up to western culture, but also to the band's downright British industriousness. As such, the band's in-house label, Industrial Records, addressed all of this and more. The Second Annual Report was actually the first release for Throbbing Gristle and Industrial Records in 1976, with the deliberately confusing title and catalogue number (IR 0002) alluding to then non-existent First Annual Report (which was recorded in 1975, although shelved by the band at the time and released as semi-official and un-official bootlegs from the '80s onward). The album is a collection of live recordings, showing the variations on two tracks - "Slug Bait" and "Maggot Death." The former is an unsettled, murky, barely formed set of lumbering tones with grim guitar drones and spluttering electronics, with Genesis caterwauling as he has done for close to four decades now. Sampled interviews with a child molester and a murderer dot the charred soundscape from the recording made in Brighton, marking a common application of appropriated 'true crime' objects which litter so much of the Industrial Culture which came after TG. "Maggot Death" is just as amorphous as "Slug Bait" with a morass of monochromatic bass-distortion and blurting electronics. The side-long "After Cease To Exist" rounded out the B-side of the original LP, and was a suitably disfigured soundscape of scraping violin, atonal guitar bursts, and dark electronic excursions. While each of these tracks is rudimentary in form and function, they lay the foundation for what would come next in TG's career. The cd version contains a bonus disc with live material extracted from the numerous live cassettes (and some of these versions do appear on the 24cd boxset of live TG material), as well as the deliciously counterpointing single "United / Zyklon B Zombie." Aside from the perky Kraftwerkian percolation of "United", the second disc is overloaded with cacophonic dive-bomb squalls of noise with slashed vibrations of electronics, madman barked vocals, flanging guitar distortion, and decentered Burroughs-inspired collages of spoken texts, fitting with the cruel delirium of what's found on The Second Annual Report proper. Difficult listening for sure, but after all, "Entertainment Through Pain" was Throbbing Gristle's motto!

MPEG stream: Maggot Death
MPEG stream: After Cease To Exist
MPEG stream: Tesco Disco (Live)
MPEG stream: United

Sometime in the early '80s, a bunch of young Dutchmen formed a couple of post-punk bands that nobody remembers anymore; but on one Thursday that happened to be the 20th of some month, one of those bands abandoned their rhythms entirely and splattered out a drone-tape and synth-noise set that had the audience freaking out. The punk structures were scrapped entirely and THU20 was stuck onto this project as the new name. Get it? The Dutchmen of THU20 included Jac Van Bussel, Peter Duimelinks, Roel Meelkop, Jos Smolders, and Guido Doesborg (later replaced by the ubiquitous Frans De Waard). The mid to late '80s proved to be a highly prolific time for THU20, although the project continues on to this day at a much more restrained pace. The ideas that went into THU20 transitioned from Joy Division into Cabaret Voltaire & Throbbing Gristle quickly arriving at a DIY punk form of musique concrete and electro-acoustic experimentation. Such was a similar trajectory for the German ensemble P16.D4, albeit towards even more unconventional goals. In the studio, THU20's work could be austere and brutalist in the obfuscated collages and disjointed slabs of noise; but the live version of THU20 proved to be far more shambolic, dynamically expressive, and rewardingly chaotic. Vroeg Werk is a diverse collection that spans both of these modes of operation, with the second of these two discs being entirely live recordings and the first culling from the dustbin of the cassette culture. The studio material found on disc one has some semblances of the more abstracted tape work found on Einsturzende Neubauten's Drawings Of O.T sans Blixa, with the opening track "5720" being particularly choice. But, the live material is really where THU20 shine, grafting gritty electro-acoustic noise sourced from voice, tape, synth, feedback, pedals, shortwave, power tools, scrap metal, and who knows what else onto thin rhythmic spines of morse code blips, overblown tape loops, and primitive drum machinations. Effectively, THU20 would land somewhere between the panzer bleakness of MB and the viral shredding of Nocturnal Emissions. Not a bad place to be...

MPEG stream: 5720
MPEG stream: Human Interface
MPEG stream: Rotterdam 2 (Live)
MPEG stream: Winterswijk 5 (Live)

Thuja, beautiful Thuja. While around here (San Francisco) this group of quiet, psychedelic improvisors doesn't get quite the attention we feel they deserve, they do have a devoted, international following of fans. Fans who will be thrilled with these two new releases: a new full-length cd (their third for the Emperor Jones label after one on tUMULt) and a cute lil' 3" cd-r installment in their own Jewelled Antler "Library Series". All Strange Beasts Of The Past, the full-length, is also a record that should make Thuja some new fans if only folks get exposed to it. It's certainly their most acoustic instrument based, melodic, and folky sounding record to date, veering close to the territory explored by Thuja member Steven R. Smith on his Hala Strana releases. Not that they've abandoned their sticks and stones and drone, in fact you'll find that the last track -- they're all untitled as usual -- is entirely full of ambient grit and rattle and clank and the abstract drone sounds of undisclosed detritus found in the woods. This mellow, maybe menacing, dark forest epic takes up almost half of the disc's running time, and could easily have stood as a fine 3" release on its own. But it makes a great finale, after the shorter, more musically 'conventional' (by Thuja standards) instrumentals that preceeded it. It's as if they finally reached the dragon's lair suggested by the album's title (and wonderful cover photo and other graphics). They're creeping about, exploring a hopefully uninhabited cave, littered with strange glittering treasures and terrible old bones.

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Meanwhile, Thuja have also released a new 3" cd-r as we mentioned above: Fable. It's #10 in the series of twelve, getting close to the end, about time for these guys to finally make an appearance (unless you count the almost-Thuja Tomes entry). 20 or so minutes, 2 tracks. Again, the Thujans (Loren Chasse, Rob Reger, Steven R. Smith, and Glenn Donaldson) make some of the most beautiful and mysterious abstract instrumental improv we've heard. All we're told is that Fable was "recorded at night in the Garden of Kains, August 30, 2003". There could have been weird old hippies sitting in, or magical woodland beasts (of the past), or academic dronologists gone a bit strange on natural pharmacueticals...but probably it was just Thuja, and their music is conjuring these imaginary visitors not the other way around. Get this one.

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A far cry from the elaborate packaging of their previous releases, such as the charming homebrewed "Thuja Museum" treasure-boxes produced by their own Jewelled Antler label, Thuja's third full-length album suffers from the dodgy packaging aesthetic of Last Visible Dog, who've rendered the cover art as a high contrast black-and-white photocopy. Fortunately, Thuja's music redeems the packaging, with another fantastic album of their signature organically evolving improvizations haunted with the ghosts of folk and psychedelia. This quartet -- whose Rob Reger, Loren Chasse, and Glenn Donaldson reside in San Francisco while Steven R. Smith calls Los Angeles his home -- strives to evoke the emotional tenor of an environment. Cramming themselves and their instruments amidst exotic plants, ready made constructions of urban refuse, seascape dioramas, and Reger's collection of thrift store 'bad art,' Thuja often steps away from the traditional instrumentation of drums, guitar, etc. to tinker with a rusted bicycle wheel, to slash a pile of sticks with a violin bow, or to rummage through a trough of gravel (which Chasse later discovered was cat litter). Such textural details beautifully illuminate their sustained organ drones, spluttering duets for dulcimer and oud, tinkling of bells 'n' chimes, and impressionistic piano plinkings, opening the psychedelic window into an abstracted, imaginary space. As Thuja's cyclical fluidity of sounds and deep plunking reverberations offer possible readings of ancient seafaring tales, "Hills" isn't so much a description of the place, but a vantage point from which the ocean can be seen. All of Thuja's recordings come highly recommended, and "Hills" is no exception!

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Ah, Thuja, the mothership if you will of the Jewelled Antler armada. Featuring names that by now should be quite familiar to AQ customers: Loren Chasse, Steven R. Smith, Glenn Donaldson and Rob Reger. Between them, these four are responsible for fifty records at least, under twenty or more different monickers. All of them great, and all of them loosely based in one way or another on nature, or natural sounds, or the way music and found sounds interact with the spaces they are performed in. There are instruments like guitars, drums, bass, but more often than not, you'll find sticks and stones, found objects, junk, all sorts of industrial and natural detritus, recorded, re-broadcast, and recorded again. Utilizing natural reverb, the sounds of certain spaces, ambient sounds as well as making the act of making music, music in itself. Wow. So what does Pine Cone Temples sound like? It's wide open and expansive. Ambient perhaps, but there's too much going on for it to be strictly ambient. It's more a sort of abstract soundscape, the sort of soundscape the requires close listening, active listening, in order to understand, and feel the sounds, not just hear them. The rustle of leaves, crickets maybe, running water, or are those sounds manufactured by the band in an attempt to pay homage to the music of nature? Does it matter. Maybe its both, the sound of running water accompanied by Thuja emulating the sound of running water. Clicks and creaks, and little bits of clatter, a simple melody played on a recorder, warm organ warble, whipsering wind, toy xylophone notes released and left to drift in the slowly shifting breeze, distant bird calls, reverbed piano, dark cavernous rumbles, shimmering single notes stretched perilously across a sound field dotted with the echo of dripping water and the buzz of vibrating guitar strings. This isn't so much music as it is simply sound, sound that has been lovingly shaped and guided, observed and interacted with, recorded in its element. As if Thuja were just recordists, who use their own sounds to lure the sounds of nature to come just a little closer, in order to capture them raw and natural, and incorporate them into the sun dappled cloak of their jewelled nature-folk. The sounds of music can be smooth and soothing, or raw and primitive, as can the music of sound, and thus Thuja, whose music of sound is pure, and organic, lush and lustrous, and breathtakingly beautiful.

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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. The newest release on our Andee's tUMULt label takes a trip to the sonic opium den of San Francisco's Thuja, a new band that consists of two former members of the hazy psychedelic outfit Mirza (Stephen R. Smith and Glenn Donaldson), pianist Rob Reger, and noted sound artist Loren Chasse (of Id Battery). Their debut release, "The Deer Lay Down Their Bones," drifts through passages of improvisations for washed out guitars, tinkling piano, drums, and a pile of stones & branches. Thuja's lovely sound embraces the same freely meandering lack of structure as the No Neck Blues Band but with the dark shimmering colors of Eyeless in Gaza or Dif Juz, harking back also to gentle krautrock a la Popul Vuh or something. As beautiful as the piece of marbled wood veneer that serves as the cover to this unique and gorgeous package. By the way, please don't suspect (if you do) that a form of nepotism or favoritism has anything to do with us selecting yet another tUMULt release for Album of the Week honors--honestly, it's rather the case that Andee's taste mirrors that of the store enough that we don't think he would release something on his label that wouldn't at least be considered for the AQ-List top spot! Really.

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In an interview for The Wire not long ago, Thuja's Loren Chasse joked that he wanted the upcoming Thuja album to just be a log with some lichen on it. Well... Chasse's wish almost comes true with this, the first volume of what they call "Thuja Museum", as the band has enclosed a small lichen encrusted stick in the cardboard box with each of these incredibly limited 3" CD-Rs. While all of the rest of the Jewelled Antler catalogue is available as made-to-order CD-Rs, "Thuja Museum #1" is strictly limited to 50 numbered copies. In addition to the disc and the twig, each tiny "Thuja Museum #1" box also includes a woodcut print by Thuja's Steven R. Smith, a leaf rubbing by Chasse, and a small square of wood. Thus, each of these boxes is a unique item of artwork. As for the actual music found on the 20 minute long, green spraypainted cd-r, it's a sprawling piece of psychedelic drone improvisation, their least structured recording to date. The quartet of Chasse, Glenn Donaldson, Stephen R. Smith, and Rob Reger playfully meanders through scraped violin passages, melancholic organ drones, mandolin pluckery, sustained oud bowing, and non-specific textural clatter that could just be a pile of metal and branches dragged across the floor. Hazy and beautiful, this is a very nice mini-album both in its wonderful packaging and in its sound.

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The second (and possibly final?) of the "Thuja Museum" releases is strictly limited to 50 copies, and is well on its way to being sold out like the first. While that initial Thuja Museum was a forest themed production, this one is centered on oceanic themes. Again packaged in a little jewelry box (get it?), Thuja Museum #2, in addition to the 3" cd-r itself, comes with an assortment of artwork from all of the members: Steven R. Smith offers a woodcut, Rob Reger an etching, Glenn Donaldson a collage, and Loren Chasse some found objects from the beach (crab claws, shells, bits of coral, etc.). So each one is unique and suitably aquatic. Musically, this finds these local experimental psychedelic nature boys at their best as an improv ensemble focusing their collective attention upon the construction of an imaginary soundtrack for the ocean. These twenty minutes represent a mere fraction of the extended sessions they recorded for this project, coaxing resonant drones and quiet, nonspecific hums from their instruments and beachcombed objects. Occasionally, percussive items are scraped, a piano is gently stroked, and stringed instruments are plucked, to punctuate the magical spell of their drones. Nice -- get it while you can, and go for a swim in the sea of Thuja.

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A brand new vinyl only full length from aQ beloved ambient improvised free rock explorers Thuja. The core group is all present, Loren Chasse, Glenn Donaldson, Steven R. Smith and Rob Reger, joined for these sessions by Thuja satellite members: Greg Bianchini, Keith Evans, Bryan DeRoo and former aQ mailorder mistress Christine Boepple. Collected from various live performances, these tracks find Thuja setting up in various venues around the Bay Area, and transforming each location, at least briefly, into a forest glade, or a darkened wood, or a fog shrouded seashore, using traditional instruments as well as sticks and stones and other found objects to conjure up ghostlike soundscapes , each track, every performance, a slow burning sprawl of humid and humming minimalism. Almost the entirety of the A side is taken up by an epic stretch of alchemical minimalism, a muted series of washed out melodies, of gentle scrapes and distant shimmers, various notes and chords expressed in long streaks, the guitar lines unfurling lazily, the band eventually coalesce into a glistening high end crescendo, suddenly reminding us of Sunroof! with their upper register ur-drone skree, but here that skree is more muted and muddied, a mournful keening, before the band elves back into a more minimal moonlit crawl. Disembodied slowed down riffs are draped over whispered whirs, while the band lurk in the shadows, letting tiny bits of light spill out, creating barely there sonic patterns, and dusty dreamlike song skeletons. The B side is even more understated, each track a brief soundscape, exploring dark dusty corners, shuffling through a blanket of dead leaves, the band barely there at all. Almost like they set up their instruments and just stood there, letting the wind and the wildlife create the sounds. When the music does materialize, and take more solid form, the guitars weave themselves into delicate little tangles, drifting over deep resonant swells, all around sounds betray the environment, but become inexorable parts of the organic sound being created, snippets of conversation, voices, footsteps, alongside subtle bits of percussive thump, warbly distant melodies, a deep dark ambience, a gorgeously subtle sound that manages to be quietly propulsive even as it seems to hover motionless. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!

Here's the cd version of volume two of My Cat Is An Alien's split series with artists they like. This time that Italian drone duo shares disc space with a band we really like as well, our pals Thuja. A good match for sure. Thuja's track "The Magma Is The Brother Of The Stone" (great title guys!) is an 18 minute improv that segues almost imperceptably into MCIAA's equally lengthy "When The Earth Whispered Your Name". Both are narcotic and nocturnal-sounding, with Thuja's seeming closer to the Earth while MCIAA's drones down from space. Highly recommended to fans of either band!!

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For any one who's been keeping track, this is record number four from the mad genius behind the damaged brilliance of Xynfonica, Shevalreq and Gluttony. The master of the most important modern musical instrument, THE GUITAR SYNTH. Whose records are either twisted inspiration, or fractured insanity, most likely both. Music to some folks ears, utter garbage to others'. You know where we stand. And if you don't, read on... The concept behind not just this record, but everything this guy does, is to take a guitar synth and jam out, with the sound of the guitar synth all weirdly atonal and creepy. Then wrap those creepy atonal jams around some high falutin' concept, Vikings, the Roman Empire or something like that, and then the piece de resistance, add some intense growling metal vocals over the top. Sounds insane, and it IS insane, but it's so twisted that we just can't get enough. And we can't be alone since the mysterious man behind the guitar synth keeps churning them out! Xynfonica was meant to be orchestral, Shevalreq was 'world music', and Gluttony was 'jazz', this time the sound is based on Asian and Eastern instruments, not the real instruments obviously, but the settings on the guitar synth, so stuff like kotos and sitars, but synthesized! The lyrical concept this time around is based on the travels of a group of Danes, as they brave the Arctic Ocean to reach the kingdom of Jotunheim. There are plenty of lyrics, and liner notes so you can understand what's going on, as well as pictures of the synthesized instruments, a guitar, a sitar, lutes. The cover is pretty fantastic too, a giant gold statue, and some Viking archers, squaring off atop big Indian drums! Yep. We're not sure we get it either, but we love it. So what does it sound like? Well actually, it sounds almost exactly like the other discs. Which is not a bad thing at all. More more more, we always want more. If anything it's even more insane and twisted sounding. The chords warble, the notes are uneven, the tempos shift and stutter, crunchy distorted electric guitars collide with synthesized sitars, long stretches of warped wah wah, the vocals raspy and demonic, the sound often morphing mid phrase into some murky orchestral sprawl, or some tangled freaked out synthpsychdrone weirdness. Way recommended, essential for keepers of the first three keys (Xynfonica, Shevelreq, Gluttony) obviously, but equally essential for lovers of the weird and the obscure, the freaky and the fucked.

MPEG stream: Escape From The Doomed City
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We could think up better ways to market this record that what Table Of The Elements came up with. They *could* have shrouded this album in mystery, saying: "Truly hypnotic, vangarde turntablism and cut-up audio collage by unknown sound artist Ted Conrad, circa 1973- '74 -- predating Christian Marclay and Boyd Rice!" Or they could have said what is probably the truth: "Legendary minimalist Tony Conrad smoked a lot of pot in the early '70s while stuck in Ohio. Instead of making films or composing abrasive minimalist music, he made recordings of his young son playing around his toy Fisher-Price record player. Indeed, he probably was playing with the turntable himself." But Table Of The Elements chose instead to present this album with such hyperbole as: "Is it fair to argue that a precocious Ted [Conrad -- Tony's at the time infant son], the once and future Thuunderboy, anticipated in these excursions of the early '70s everything from the rise of turntablism and hip-hop to the creative strategies of such disparate entertainers and / or conceptualists as Fatboy Slim, Christian Marclay, and that erstwhile Savior of Pop (circa 1997), Beck? Or, rather does it affirm some unerringly democratic quality inherent in the very act of scratching and spinning, that a toddler could create hypnotic loops and decontruct pop banalities into perversely humorous after-the-fact commentaries on the star-making machinery?" Arghhhh. So lame. Rant aside, the Thuunderboy recordings -- regardless of whether it was Tony Conrad or the toddler Ted Conrad making these sounds -- is a pretty amazing album of locked grooves worn into Donny Osmond 45s, played back at the wrong speed. If anything, it should be appreciated for what it is, a humble peek into the lives of Tony Conrad -- the minimalist trying his hand at fatherhood -- and young Ted Conrad -- the two year old kid who put up with a dad who kept playing with all of his toys.

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No, this is not the soundtrack to the George Lucas film THX1138; this is a project called THX113 which presumably is a quartet of unknown characters who issued a private pressing of nocturnally painted quasi-songs and tape-loop driven abstractions back in 1980. There's no documentation of the existence of the private pressing in question, nor are any citations that we can find of the members of THX113 doing anything hither or yon. So, we'll state our skepticism and agnosticism as to the plausibility of this actually being of the era. Eh, there are worse problems to have. If we are to believe the backstory, then we could easily imagine this quartet developing in the late '70s from an electronic music class at some sodden community college in the cornfields of Iowa where the earnest and bearded professor proclaimed Steve Reich's It's Gonna Rain as the pinnacle of achievement for tape music with Morton Subotnik's Silver Apples On The Moon holding the same title in terms of pure electronic composition. The advent of punk, new wave, and no wave may have been irrelevant to this imagined professor; but to the young men of THX113, the Promethean spark of DIY recording and raw expressionism was already lit inside their collective heads. Armed with a primitive knowledge of electronics, tape loop techniques, and even a small ability to play guitar and bass, THX113 crafted nine untitled tracks of ghostly loops for jangled 12-string guitar, sonar-pulse synth tones, sunbleached electronics that allude to an Ash Ra Tempel album degraded over multiple generations of home copies upon copies, and even some of the hand-percussion hippie-dom of Woo. A weird one for sure! Limited to 100 copies!!!!

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While these two have been collaborating in their two outfits (Current 93 and Nurse With Wound) for nearly two decades, conjuring up "menstrual minstrals" for Current 93 and nightmarish dadaism for Nurse With Wound, the duo occasionally records outside of the agendas of their groups. This is the third such collaboration, with two tracks of blistering noise devolving into throbbing drones and two tracks of mutant psychedelia with some help from Nick Soloman (Bevis Frond).

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

SORRY. Finland's Jussi Saivo (who is in Ovalki with Jussi from Circle) builds atmospheric milky drones into slow rhythmic circles. Released by Stephen O'Malley, graphic designer of the metal underground and publisher of the awesome Descent magazine, this cd-R is limited to 100 copies and comes packaged with a five inch square of rusted metal.

It's been several years since we last heard from Finland's mysterious drone ensemble Tiermes, and even then it was an ultra limited (100 copies) cd-r packaged with a sheet of rusted metal. So odds are a lot of folks have yet to discover the mystickal black drone beauty of Tiermes. So a last here we have their only actual in-print cd release and it's nothing short of astounding. Again lovingly hand packaged, this time the cd is housed in a thick cardstock sleeve, wrapped in an unbelievably gorgeous two sided poster (so ultra detailed and intense, very reminiscent of Nick Blinko's artwork for Rudimentary Peni), the whole thing wrapped in thick black paper and tied up with twine. A dark and mysterious package that perfectly reflects the music within. Three lengthy tracks, the first, a glistening shimmer of minimal drone, like delicate layers made up of the overtones of struck bells or Tibetan bowls, a slowly radiating reverberation, that drifts and fades, like ripples in a black pond. The second track hints at Tiermes mainman Jussi Saivo's Finnish rock pedigree (an early member of Circle and a member of Ovalki with the -other- Jussi from Circle) with ten minutes of ultra distorted electric bass, and a strange minimal squelchy rhythm, very Circular and hypnotic, the same figure repeated over and over. a gorgeous ultra simple meditation in dirge drone. Might hit the spot for adventurous SUNNO))) / Earth / Boris / Corrupted fans. The final track is a massive 40 minute track, or shimmering crystalline drone, very similar in makeup to the first track, but stretched even further out, with even more overtones and distant drones added to the mix as well as some strange minimal percussion. A truly otherworldly ambience, darkly dreamy and absolutely lovely. As beautiful and breathtaking as anything by Chalk, Coleclough, Basinski, Mirror, Monos, Ora or any of our other favorite dronologists.

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