[ aquarius records — Experimental ]

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

Showing results 8151 through 8200 of 9280.

Another mysterious transmission from the heart of the Finnish forest. Dark and drone-y, haunting and lovely. A sonic treat for fans of Avarus, Anaksimandros, Kemialliset Ystavat and other practitioners of the folky arts of the forest.

Of all the freaky Finnish forest folk we hold so near and dear, Uton continue to be the most mysterious, musically for sure, but also, just in general, with far fewer releases than many of their countrymen, most of those releases containing little or no information, featuring bizarre abstract artwork, strange song titles, or no song titles at all, and a gorgeously twisted outsider music to match. On this latest, bizarrely titled, lp only release, the first strange thing we noticed was the grooves on the record when we slid it from the sleeve, both sides had a whole bunch of super short tracks, almost like how a record of locked grooves appears, and indeed, Straight Edge XXS is a series of about 30 short tracks, but listening straight through it doesn't necessarily sound that way. Fans of Uton need not fear, and Finnish music freeks will still feel right at home in Uton's warped and warbly avant folk free noise sound world. Little bits of abstract percussion, scrapes and rattles and bits of crunch and buzz, fluttery flute, strange warped loops, hand drums and chimes, chanted vocals, mysterious invocations, the sound slipping from muddy and murky to glimmering and sun dappled, extended stretches of woozy almost krautrock, fragmented bits of psych folk, haunting ritualistic invocations, layers of buzz and hiss, freaky falsetto crooning, fractured arrangements, all of these super short sonic mini landscapes, deftly woven into a super freaky, surprisingly cohesive, yet still distinctly and deliriously damaged whole. Amazing, super intricate collage cover, and of course LIMITED TO ONLY 500 COPIES!!!!

Live 2005 set from these mysterious Fiinish forest dwellers, a murky cacophony of drifting drones and stumbling primal primitivism. Creepy and lovely.

Okay Finnish forest freeks, we only got a few of these, and it's CRAZY limited anyway, only 55 copies made, so we'll make this brief, even though it's pretty dang rad. We're used to all kindsa craziness from Uton, from dark drones to wild fractured folk, from dirgey noise rock to pretty shimmery ambience, but the title should be your first clue that this is none of those. This is indeed some serious violin massage, in fact you might as well change violin to vioLENT as this is some serious wild and wooly scrape and skree. According to the label, "Nothing is used besides a violin, de-tuned, abused", which is pretty much what this sounds like, but whereas that makes it sound almost unlistenable, the truth is that the sound here is pretty hypnotic, weirdly atonal and brittle, indeed a bit harsh, but not really that far removed from the classic minimal violin freakouts of Henry Flynt, albeit a tad more fractured and primitive. But heck if you like those Flynt discs, with their relentlessly sawed violin and screech detuned and deconstructed avant bluegrass, then you might be just the candidate for an Uton Violin Massage! Nice printed sleeves, every one hand drawn and painted, every one different and each one hand numbered, LIMITED TO 55 COPIES!!!!

Once again, the very patient prevail. Or at least the folks who weren't lucky enough to catch any of these super limited cd-r's first time around. A massive triple disc collection that gathers about three hours of early releases from Finland's Uton. Sonically similar to their Finnish free folk brethren (Avarus, Anaksimandros, Kemialliset Ystavat, etc.), Uton specialize in wild and wooly, primitive free forest jams. Clattery rhythms, music box melodies, spaced out guitar echo, minimal vocalization, skronking horns and plenty of droning and rattling and scraping and thumping. Like a krautrock band that was left in the forest by it's parents and raised by wild woodland creatures. Epic and expansive sonic explorations, as spaced out as they are earthbound, soaring otherworldly freakouts collide with centuries old primal sound, to create a totally organic, totally alien wonderful world of sonic experimentation, sometimes percussive and propulsive, sometimes shimmery and dreamlike, sometimes crashing and pounding, sometimes gentle and mysterious but always completely mesmerizing and amazing! Quite possibly one of our Finnish faves! And that's saying a lot! This collection contains all of Taman Ganan Jalkeen (released on Haamumaa in 2002), all of Mika Kasvaa Maan Gisalla (released on Hammasratas in 2003), all of Ay Um Au Lam (released on Jewelled Antler also in 2003), five rare comp tracks and six previously unreleased tracks! A little side note: We have the same complaint with the Uton packaging as we had with the MCMS compilation (also on Last Visible Dog), a clear, three pocket plastic sleeve that holds the booklet (no tray card) and the three discs. Seems inevitable that the discs will get scratched, and they seem to stick to the plastic too, so if you, like us, want this music to last, it might be wise to transfer them to a proper jewel case, or at least put them in protective sleeves. Also, while this lists the original releases it doesn't provide any individual track listings!

MPEG stream: Disc One, Track One
MPEG stream: Disc One, Track Two
MPEG stream: Disc One, Track Three

The Jewelled Antler collective offers another record outside their immediate ranks of Thuja and company. Although they've had a couple of CD-R releases popping up from tiny labels around the globe, this is our introduction to Uton. This anonymous, acoustic-noise-drone band hails from Finland, although they seem far more at home within the New Zealand community of Birchville Cat Motel, Anthony Milton, and Handful of Dust. "Zwuiji" is the 7th in the continuously impressive "Library Series" of 3" CD-Rs from Jewelled Antler, but is a bit more grating than most from the collective which typically opiates themselves with hazy improvised psychedelia and obtuse folk renderings. Rather Uton revels in mistreating their electric gear in order to fill up the audio specturm with buzzing drones that swarm out of their amplifiers like angry wasps. Scratchy violins and atonally shifting wind instruments hover behind these gritty walls of vibrating feedback which comes across more as a misaligned engine block rattling all of those tones inside your head than as a typical trick with a couple of effects boxes. Certainly the fans of cd-r labels Celebrate Psi Phenomenon or PseudoArcana will want to pick this one up. MPEG Download: "Zwuiji 02" [/audio/utonzwuiji02.mp3] MPEG Stream: "Zwuiji 02" [/audio/utonzwuiji02.m3u]

MPEG stream: Zwuiji 02
MPEG stream: Zwuiji 03

Another gorgeous blast of clattery, murky, foresty free folk wonder from these Finnish weirdos. The latest cd-r in an insanely massive discography. We only got 5 copies, so cross your fingers when you click on that buy button...

We sure love us some ambient experimental drone metal, thick slow moving rivers of molten riffage, near static black downtuned drift, doom to the Nth degree, glacial, a massive crumbling low end creep, it's one of those sounds that we can never seem to get enough of, a sound that manages to be fierce and brutal, but also soothing and hypnotic. We're always on the lookout for more of that sort of stuff, and then one day a mysterious disc just showed up in the mail, a stark sleeve with just a skull, the band name, Utsuro Bune, and the album title, the maybe somewhat unfortunately punny The Drone Remains The Same. But that's definitely the only unfortunate thing about this dense black hole of a disc. A single guitar recorded live to two track tape, no overdubs, the sound is massive, and not at all static, the first track is a weird swirling black psychedelia, sort of Keiji Haino doing SUNNO))), the guitar buzzing and grinding and emitting massive gouts of blurred blackness, of pulsing crumbling heaviness, pulsing and throbbing, occasionally stuttering, before slipping back into a reverberating black cloud. The sort of obtuse abstract heaviness we could have dug for the length of the whole cd. But there's more, and it's all equally good. The second track is more serene and tranquil, harder to figure out how a single guitar with no overdubs worked here, a looped bit of swirling low end, fragmented melody, and a buzzing bit of looped percussion. Another track that is way too short. The disc continues on, first with a thick cloud of lush harmonious guitars, a rich chordal whir that seems to swing from speaker to speaker, a melodic counterpoint slowly building behind the raga like ur drone, gorgeous and epic and totally hypnotic, then, another bit of claustrophobic subterranean drift, deep billows of downtuned shimmer, of creeping metallic thrum and whirling muted melody, and finally, a lush washed out bit of processed shoegazey loopage, that sounds a bit like blackened pop ambience, whirling and softly warped and divinely dreamy. Super sweet stuff, Even sweeter that it showed up mysteriously just as we were hankering for more low end dronemusic and minimal metal drift. SUPER LIMITED cd-r, comes in a cool reversible vellum sleeve...

MPEG stream: Massive Atmospheres
MPEG stream: Raking The Cosmic Leaves

Another crazy and mysterious release from Mr. Ergo Phizmiz, introduced to us by our pals at WFMU and quickly becoming a favorite here at AQ. Supposedly this release is by someone named Uutske Buutske, but I'd bet anything that's just a pseudonym for Phizmiz himself. As the title proclaims, 5 of the 8 tracks here are indeed versions of songs by The The. Those tracks are less experimental than most of the Phizmiz stuff we've heard, and tend more towards the dreamy and pastoral, like a slowed down creepier Love And Rockets, or Magnetic Fields, with wispy female vocals, chimes and accordians, all dreamy and hypnotic. It's on the other tracks where things get a little bit weirder, with clattery clangy instrumental chaos a bit like those clattery percussive soundscapes on later period Tom Waits records. The sixth track is the real gem here though, a sweet and lovely perfect little pop song, with soaring strings and an angelic voice, both gracefully navigating a melancholy melody. So nice. Comes in a cool slipcover covered with negative photographic images of flowers.

MPEG stream: The Whisperers (Uutske Buutske Interpretation)
MPEG stream: Homoarachtus (extract)
MPEG stream: Feel Yr Dzeez

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

SORRY. Very high concept compilation, wherein each artist submitted a 1.8 second (!) loop to be used as a locked groove. The loops were then randomly paired up with other artists on the comp. The only limitation to what each artist could create was that their song would end with another artist's locked groove! Phew. The contributors are Taylor Deupree, Tim Hecker, Roel Meelkop, Duul_Drv, Richard Chartier, Mitchell Akiyama, Kim Cascone and 3x3is9. Glitchy and dreamy, noisy and skittery experimental electronic weirdness. Pretty cool. SUPER LIMITED to 500, hand numbered, on white vinyl and gorgeously creepy cover art.

Produced in conjunction with a sizeable festival held earlier this year in Belgium, this compilation features a number of exclusive / rare tracks from the artists in attendance, including Main, Oren Ambarchi, Ekkehard Ehlers, David Grubbs, Alog, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Benjamin Franklin, It & My Computer, Twine, Alog, Wio, Toss, and John David, V (who may be the same John from the AQ-favorite 26 project, and now spends his time in the new wave project Glass Candy). K-Raa-K - with their solid spectrum of avant-rock, hazy-improv, and electro-glitch etherealism - continues to be a really interesting label.

RealAudio clip: Dogdive
RealAudio clip: Maelstrom
RealAudio clip: Untitled / Sixth Movement 1997

This curiously titled compilation from Edition... doesn't want to make the process of uncovering its intentions and potential meanings an easy task, by obscuring the context of how this is to be heard, read, investigated, etc. Edition... has packaged this

RealAudio clip: 11 May 1998
RealAudio clip: kdi dctb 066b
RealAudio clip: Rotation Evident
RealAudio clip: Glacier

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

SORRY. The second compilation from Taylor Deupree's label of electronic glitch sterility features the now standard line up of Richard Chartier, *O, Tetsu Inoue, Kim Cascone, and Goem, with some fresh blood from Komet, Surge, Miki Yui, and Shuttle 358. Can't really say how this varies from last week's collection of "inaudible tones and ear-itching stereo tactics," but if you're into that sort of thing, like we are...

Inspired by past compilations of avant-garde guitar explorations assembled by John Fahey and Fred Frith, the Bay Area's own well-known guitar experimentalist Henry Kaiser has put together this collection of acoustic solos by many of today's most amazing guitar innovators, 19 of 'em in fact: Duck Baker, Stefan Basho-Junghans, Raoul Bjorkenheim, Jean-Paul Bourelly, Nels "AQ Loves Me" Cline, Janet Feder, Fred Frith, Michael Gulezian, Richard Leo Johnson, Mike Keneally, Peter Lang, Scott McGill, Shawn Persinger is Prester John, Rod Poole, Gyan Riley, Miroslav Tadic, Richard Thompson, U Tin, and Kaiser himself (hey, why no Eugene Chadbourne?). These guys (yeah, they're all guys except for Ms. Feder, but what can you do?) hail from around the world and have unique, personal approaches to playing. Moods here range from the pastoral idyll of Brit folkie Thompson to the minimalist soundscaping of Frith, from the faux-raga like slide work of Bjorkenheim to the authentically Robbie Basho-like exotica of U Tin, from the country pickin' of Lang to the percussive melodicism of Bourelly, from the scraping drone-folk of Feder (we want to hear more!) to the repetitive trance-induction of Rod Poole, from the sprightly, jazzish jingle of Persinger to the melancholic classical playing of Gyan Riley. The disc ends with Steffen Basho-Junghan's epic, experimental, fucked up but lovely sounding "Part 1 from the Virgin Orchestra No.1", a piece that Kaiser cites as the cornerstone of this comp. And it's the pretty great finale to this gorgeous, fascinating album. Kaiser intends "156 Strings" to highlight those carrying on the work of iconoclastic instrumental steel-string guitar pioneers like Fahey, Basho and Kottke, a tradition driven underground by the more commerical, less challenging New Age guitar genre those same folks helped create. Also, funnily enough, a portion of the proceeds from the sales of this comp go to benefit H.E.A.R. (Hearing Education and Awareness for Rockers). Don't worry, there's no need for earplugs with this one!

RealAudio clip: Eyes of Orion
RealAudio clip: Plook The Asbestos Lobster
RealAudio clip: Lightning Strikes
RealAudio clip: Part 1 from the Virgin Orchestra No.1

A joint release between new labels Airborne Virus and Mar/ino, an imprint of Michigan's Elsie and Jack label (they released an Aube cd and the Tabata solo record some time ago). Features tracks by 555 artists Empress, Steward and Halkyn as well as many

Yup, a well-curated compilation of abject sound poetry, discombobulated avant-turntablism, and thrumming noise decomposition from the German imprint Fragment Factory with contributions from some heavyweights like Leif Elggren and Aaron Dilloway, some stalwart sewer dwellers in AMK and GX Juppiter-Larsen, and a sampling from the global noise sub-underground. Joachim Montessuis hails from this latter camp, and opens the comp with a harrowing rendition of the Hugo Ball poem "Karawane", which was a piece of Dada nonsense from 1916 predating Schwitters' opus "Ursonnate" by a few years. This version is bellowed, gasped, and gargled not only through larynx acrobatics but also a scabrous array of sound obliterating devices and death-ray granular synthesis. Leif Elggren and Michael Barthel offer similar variations on the art-damaged madman, with Elggren channeling the neurotic dreams of dead queens and philosophers amidst a barrage of radio static, while Barthel takes a more classic sound poetry approach of chopped syllables and pained yelping. Of the more collage / noise / drone / fucked tracks, Krube's manipulation of rusted found objects, rocks, and bones is in a state of constant shattering, with eerie beds of crudely prepared piano drone all recalling the early creepfests from the NWW/C93 axis way back when. GX Juppiter-Larsen powers through grinding noise loops whose incessant rhythms achieve hypnosis through information overload. The Dilloway track is a bit surprising as a raw presentation of field recordings with radioactive tones and drones, with hardly any Frankensteinian overtures through lurching loops. It's a nice turn in Dilloway's aesthetic, and one that we would certainly welcome. AMK, Philip Marshall, Giuseppe Ielasi, Michael Muennich, and Michael Esposito round out this limited compendium, released in an edition of 300 copies.

MPEG stream: Karawane (Hugo Ball 1916)
MPEG stream: Final Date With USS Urgo
MPEG stream: Wenn Ich Die Augen Schliesse, Sehe Ich Nichts Meh
MPEG stream: Twenty One Twenty Two

With a government that legitimately funds the arts, France has long been at the forefront of sound art, electronic music, and experimentation in general. This tradition began with the inception of INA GRM, a pioneering institution dedicated to advancements in sound experimentation. While the most lasting contribution INA GRM offers is the Musique Concrete experiments of Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henri, an impressive list of composers have passed through the INA GRM studios, including Eliane Radigue, Luc Ferrari, Bernard Parmegiani, and Michel Chion. However, the impact of INA GRM has been a blessing and a curse for French sound art, as its institutionality offers impeccable facilities and opportunities to those following the program, while marginalizing those who fall outside of its aesthetics and ideals. The historical splinters and fluctuations of French sound art has not gone unnoticed, as Laurent Dailleau organized the third co-presentation between 23five and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The result of Dailleau's efforts was a 10 hour listening room experience, presenting historical material dating back to the early 1950s. The CD compendium of 33 RPM celebrates the contemporary models that French composers have employed in response to the historical influences of INA GRM. The artists featured on 33 RPM include Kasper T. Toeplitz, Kristoff K. Roll, Jean-Claude Risset, Lionel Marchetti, Christophe Havel, Laurent Dailleau, Mathieu Chamagne, pizMO, Jean-Phillipe Gross, and Mimetic. Armed with current tools of DSP factories and Max-MSP patches, this selection of French artists tends to concentrate on the acousmatic ends of the electro-acoustic spectrum. As with the two previous 23five / SFMOMA presentations, 33 RPM is a great collection.

MPEG stream: PURR #2
MPEG stream: A Rebours
MPEG stream: Gris Epais

99 artists given 45 seconds to do as they wish. It's best to think of this like an audio equivalent of an Exquisite Corpse, the Surrealist parlor game in which a drawing or a sentence would be created by a group of people, who had concealed the nature of the preceding drawings or words, and thus often resulting in absurd creations that characterized the "unconscious reality of the personality of the group." Artists include: Safety Scissors, Stars As Eyes, Lali Puna, D84 (aka Blevin Blectum), Hood, John Tejada, Phthalocyanine, Languis, Sutekh, Tarentel, Martin Rev, Kim Cascone, Jan Jelinek, DJ Spooky, and dozens more. In case anybody cares, the Coelacanth found on this compilation is not the same Coelacanth comprised of Loren Chasse and AQ's Jim Haynes. Oh well.

This is a compilation of various interpretations / performances / covers of John Cage's infamous composition 4'33," by Keith Rowe, Artificial Memory Trace, Thurston Moore, Pauline Oliveros, Jio Shimizu, Voice Crack, Clive Graham, Toshiya Tsunoda, Alignment, and

RealAudio clip:
RealAudio clip:
RealAudio clip:

We have been dying for this. A double disc collection, gathering up all the bad ass-est 12" sides from the last 5 years, released on the Hyperdub label, who have pretty much single handedly transformed dubstep into something more than just a beat and a bassline, so much so, it's not entirely accurate to call this a dubstep comp, sure a lot of this will push all your dubstep buttons, that beat, the fuzzy synth basslines, but so many of these songs use those elements as a jumping off point, taking THAT sound in a million different directions. Check the list of artists, and that alone should probably have most of you reaching for that click to buy button: Kode9 & The Spaceape, Darkstar, Zomby, Burial, Flying Lotus, Martyn, Joker, The Bug, and loads more. But it's the sound, and the sounds happening on these 12"s, that have helped make Hyperdub, THE electronic label, and listening to these two discs, it's easy to see why. Dark, heavy, haunting, mysterious, stuttery, groovy, the interesting thing is how many of these jams are vocal driven, which in most cases would be a total turnoff, but instead, the vocals are seamlessly incorporated, sometimes being chopped and looped into rhythms, other times carrying the melody, in the case of Spaceape, offering a haunting dialogue, but those vocals add a pop element that make many of these songs crazy catchy. Sure, lots of the songs are stripped down dubbed out instrumentals, and those tracks do rule, but it's a measure of the label. and the artists that they've helped redefine a sound with fairly distinct parameters, and in doing so created some of the most far out and progressive electronic music we've heard in ages. From super skeletal stripped down dubstep, to skittery glitchstep, to warm languid pulsing minimalism, to block rocking big beated synth step, to loping electro future funk, to lush, almost indie sounding downtempo, to 8-bit Goblin-esque squiggle and glitch... it goes on and on. There are some serious classics, Kode9's "9 Samurai" is so evocative, like a dubstep DJ Shadow, "South London Burroughs" by Burial, is fierce and jagged and about as heavy as dubstep gets, we could probably go track by track, but you probably get the picture, this RULES. Easily the most essential electronic music / dubstep / whatever collection of the year! Comes in a cool mini, slimline dvd style case, with full color cover and printed full color booklet / insert / tracklisting.

MPEG stream: Time Patrol (Featuring Cha Cha)
MPEG stream: Roller Skates
MPEG stream: Purple Smoke
MPEG stream: Fostercare
MPEG stream: Sahara Michael

They don't make compilations like they used to; but this one from Elevator Bath is certainly an exception to that rule. A good percentage of the currently released compilations tend towards collections of impossible to find rarities (at best) or (at worst) a random assortment of tracks which never quite made it onto proper albums, so why not lump them all together on some disposable compilation with the good tracks just ending up on the iPod anyway. But there was a day when labels took the job of curating compilations very seriously with the artists rising to the task as well. One can think back to the Perspectives And Distortion comp from Cherry Red back in 1981, or the eccentric electronics on The Elephant Table Music Album, or those weird comps on United Dairies, or even 4AD's Lonely Is An Eyesore. Dare it be said that A Cleansing Ascension might be one of the few modern comps that even comes close to those seminal compilations of post-punk atmospherics and obscure experimentation. Elevator Bath was birthed in Texas, although relocated to Seattle in 2004; and this compilation marks the 10th anniversary of the label, which has quietly and consistently released an excellent body of deep drone construction, damaged plunderphonic collage, sound ecological research, and even a few things which are down right sublime. The heavy hitters on A Cleansing Ascension are LAFMS ring-leader Tom Recchion and the globe trotting field recordist Francisco Lopez (operating here in a more musique concrete guise), with plenty of Aquarius favorites as well: Keith Berry, Adam Pacione, Matt Shoemaker, and aQ's own Jim Haynes. Shoemaker opens the album with a synthetic soaking of midrange din and drone immaculated sculpted in a blur of mottled hiss. Pacione, Keith Berry, and label boss Colin Andrew Sheffield conjure the more lush moments of Eno's Music For Airports with remarkable flare for restraint through their smoke & mirrors. Haynes does his best Organum impersonation with a cranky motor rumbling beneath a hallowed gasp of refined long-form tones. Rick Reed moves from a Delia Derbyshire squiggle into a deep reverberant belllow. The vastly under-published Dale Lloyd generates a thick rumble dappled with bristled electronics and distant Andrew Chalk-ish half melodies. James Eck Rippie turns toward a clank and clamor of found objects scraping across the patina of vinyl surface noise and Phillip Jeck stabs at turntable manipulation. Tom Recchion's maudlin lullaby reconstitutes haunted melodies of ye olde carnival into a beguiling conclusion to the compilation. While each track is quite solid, the album also flows very well, with somber drones dominating the palette of sound although similar themes and complimentary sounds seem to return after small detours towards the heavy, the oblique, and the desolate. Highly recommended!

MPEG stream: Waning Ataraxia
MPEG stream: Like A Thief In The Night
MPEG stream: Our Morphosis
MPEG stream: Drift Tube

A sampling of New Zealand acoustic music, covering EVERY possible permutation of 'acoustic' you can imagine, from rumbles to shrieks to soundscapes to actual songs. Features a veritable who's who of AQ faves: Birchville Cat Motel, Antony Milton, Seht, 1/3 Octave Band, Sleep, Peter Wright, Pumice and a bunch more. A VERY liberal interpretation of acoustic, but all the more appealing for it! MPEG Download: BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL "Lithe Mansions" [/audio/lowtidesbirchvillelithe.mp3] MPEG Stream: BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL "Lithe Mansions" [/audio/lowtidesbirchvillelithe.m3u] MPEG Download: 1/3 OCTAVE BAND "Walk Towards The Moon" [/audio/lowtidesonethirdwalk.mp3]

MPEG stream: Lithe Mansions
MPEG stream: Walk Towards The Moon
MPEG stream: We Can Talk Quite Freely

This is definitely a strange compilation. Although all comps are sort of strange by their very nature. Gathering a bunch of different musicians to contribute one song each, usually relating to a theme. Well, the them here seems to be some sort of broadly defined psychedelic music. But the bands and the sounds are so all over the place, it seems to be a much less obviously definable thread that runs through the different artists (minus the fact that maybe they've all released something one Mind Expansion record label?). Regardless, this is a pretty killer comp. A good intro to lots of psychedelic space rock bands, droney hypno-rock bands, haunting slowcore pop bands, and anything in between. Sonically, all of these bands love FX, reverb, and delay and chorus and whatever other pedals they can get their hands on. Hence the psychrock angle. A lot of the bands on disc 2 lean toward some sort of Krautrock, minimal electronic vibe, but still with plenty of psychedelic overtones. A handful of these tracks are exclusive, the majority are not. But it functions quite well as a great psychrock / weird rock mix tape. Lots of AQ faves represented: Spacemen 3, Teenage Filmstars, Amp, Bardo Pond, Paik, Fuxa, Magnetaphone, Piano Magic, Landing, The Telescopes and more. But probably the most exciting part of this comp is how many bands there are we'd literally never heard of. We didn't necessarily love them all, but we did like most of 'em. And our ever growing list of bands to investigate further now includes Mazarin, Venture Lift, Elevator, LSD And The Search For God, Unknown Celebrities, Large Number, Kid Yahtzee and loads more!

MPEG stream: Transparent Radiation (Long)
MPEG stream: Fine Day
MPEG stream: Where The Sky Is Low
MPEG stream: Kiss Me

Thirteen tracks of tweaked out plunderphonic xmas madness from the twisted folks at Illegal Art and RTMark. Conceived and curated by NY sample artist Corporal Blossom (whose work has graced past Illegal Art collections, "Deconstructing Beck" and "Extracted

RealAudio clip: White Christmas
RealAudio clip: Silent Night

With a title like A Ride Across The Skies On A Knife Dipped In Blood, we had seriously high hopes for this compilation from UK microlabel Curor and we were not disappointed. A handful of familiar faces: Jazzfinger, Ben Reynolds, Number None, Peter Wright... but loads of groups new to us, most of which had is scrambling for our computers and hopping on the internet to track down more recordings by these weirdo noisemakers. Like all great comps. Ride Across functions simultaneously as a sort of mixtape sampler, as well as a surprisingly cohesive listen, considering how varied the sounds of these bands are.� Some of the highlights include�Atoms and their�little tinkling flurries of guitar glimmer that morph into a slow melodic crawl, all tentative guitar and strange scrapes and creaks.�Heidika, who unfurl warm soft tangles of finger picked acoustic guitar and minimal mournful strings, a laid back and wintry Appalachian folk with a subtle buzzing raga element. The super bizarre�Injury Chic, one of the noisiest bands on the comp, kicking up�dense swirls of harsh noise, laid atop simple percussive thump and clatter, with ultra distorted sung/spoken vocals, sounding like a modern co-ed Whitehouse. AQ faves�Jazzfinger with a gorgeous slab of sound, all�clattery clouds of looped piano, a strange mechanical rhythm laid over a murky, fuzzy seasick waltz, a bit like the the soundtrack to some strange Quay Brothers�style�animated film. Then there's the strangely named�Family Battle Snake who spew forth a�cavernous skreescrape of industrial whir and haunting alien FX. Maybe our favorite track on the record comes from�Raised By Wolves beginning with�militaristic martial snare,�bits of guitar clang, all intertwined with ominous high end synth drones, with the drums getting more and more spastic and complex, like some dreamy droney cd-r outfit backed up by a skittery free jazz drummer, eventually erupting into a chaotic distorted blown out near-noise jam. Wow!�Number None offer up their own bit of�creeping grinding slow motion ambience, rumbling and moaning atmospheres, muted melodies, and occasional bursts of blown out guitar fuzz and glistening streaks of feedback. and the disc finishes off with another AQ fave,�Peter Wright, who offers up another blissy expanse of serene drift, this time, heavy on the guitar, well, not 'heavy', but more guitar than usual for Wright, woven into dreamy cyclical melodies, all�floating over long stretches of distant drones and rumbling swells, and that's not all.� A killer comp and a whole bunch of new bands to get all obsessed with.�

MPEG stream: Noomed
MPEG stream: Crooked Horses Hinge
MPEG stream: Meandering

In the liner notes for this compilation, Saburo Teshigawara states that "the nothingness of immobility is an extraordinary energy with minus quality that functions dynamically." Teshigawara is the director of the Japanese dance ensemble Karas, which has been seeking out the beauty of the human essence within a manufactured environment. As the score to the ensembles' worldwide tour of As a whole, this compilation develops a simple yet effective narrative-like construction with a gentle revelation of sound that reaches a specific denoument and fades ultimately into silence. Biosphere and Zoviet France open up the album with some beautifully radiant drone work. Monolake and Hallucinator then kick things into gear with the archetypal Chain Reaction heroin house sound. Hazard and Gescom (who are surprisingly quiet!) round out the compilation with minimalist pieces more suited to the Trente Oiseaux label. Very nice work.

RealAudio clip: Superfluid
RealAudio clip: frost
RealAudio clip: sifr

Earlier in 2007, the San Francisco based sound-art organization 23five held their annual Activating The Medium festival at The Exploratorium, a science / art museum housed within a converted aircraft hanger. In the past 23five had always hosted some pretty impressive events, collaborating with such esteemed institutions as SFMOMA, the San Francisco Art Institute, SF Cinematheque, and Recombinant Media Labs; but the two nights held at The Exploratorium probably showcased their best programming to date. Field recordings were the general theme, and the international cast of characters brought an exemplary variety of strategies in how to utilize the field recording in modern composition. The first night featured Aaron Ximm, Camilla Hannan, Tarab, and BJ Nilsen. San Francisco's Aaron Ximm (aka Quiet American) has long been a proponent of the field recording, having hosted the seminal Field Effects series at his 964 Natoma loft several years back. Ximm grounded his field recordings of street vendors and competing popsicle carts with an evolving chorus of low frequency sine waves for a captivatingly quiet piece. Australia's Camilla Hannan offered an explosive set of de-contextualized factory sounds and construction site noise, which perfectly counterpointed Ximm's comtemplative piece. Fellow Australian Tarab presented an earthen kaleidoscope of crunching soil, wind-swept aridity, and sympathetic dronescaping. BJ Nilsen concluded the night with a slow building crescendo of his post-Niblock church organ drones that erupted with oceanic field recordings from the same sessions for his collaboration with Chris Watson. Immaculately recorded, smartly packaged, and extremely limited.

Everyone has a specific music they're especially fond of. And sure we're all pretty omnivorous when it comes to the music we love, but there's always that one sound or style you find yourself returning to again and again, that one thing on your iPod that gets played over and over like crazy, around here, folks tend to be partial to jangly pop, blackened metal, abstract noise, seventies proto metal, field recordings, sixties psych, Warped Tour emo metal, techno, or dubstep, among other things. But one thing everything here can agree on, is the importance of 'sleeping' music. Those blissed out sounds that are perfect for late nights, for that moment when your consciousness begins to drift, where for a moment, you get just a glimpse of the other side, before the curtain parts and your incorporeal self slips past, and doesn't return until the next morning. The soundtrack for that crossover is also very personal, some folks listen to buzzing black metal to drift off, others the mesmerizing thump of minimal techno, but there is a certain strain of ambient music that everyone here is equally enamored of. Minimal techno label Kompakt has coined the phrase Pop Ambient for this strain of electronic music, one that is not so much standard ambient music, or even new age, but more an electronica/techno with the beats removed, leaving just the ethereal ephemera, that at one time was a backdrop for the beats, but sans rhythms, those sounds become the focus, and are loosed from any sort of proper structure, allowed to flow and drift, to swirl and shimmer, this new music that is indeed ambient, and perhaps even a little new agey, but is ultimately something much more evocative and experimental, songs and sounds that acts as mysterious soundtracks for sleep, music that simultaneously serves as background ambience, but can also invoke active listening, allowing the listener to immerse themselves in the sound, to travel sonically to these otherworlds, to explore, and to get gloriously lost. This double disc collects some of the current crop of ambient alchemists, a handful who are already aQ faves including Leyland Kirby, Klimek, Biosphere, Oneohtrix Point Never, Atlas Sound, Wolfgang Voigt, Markus Guentner, and Maps And Diagrams (whose cd on Time Released sound we reviewed recently), but even more that are brand new discoveries, all of whom are poised to become new favorites for sure, and pretty much instantly, this comp became out go-to late night listening collection. The first disc is heavier on the new discoveries, opening up with a track by Orla Wren, who weaves a glitchy stretch of crystalline skitter, that reminds us a bit of Oval, all warm and liquid, hushed and delicate, but which soon blossoms into a lush thick swirl of layered buzz and softly swirling shimmer, laced with chiming melodies, and hazy bell like tones, one track in, and we already find ourselves wanting to hear more, which happens again minutes later when Rafael Anton Irisarri's track begins, a warm, swirling cinematic thrum, a very Caretaker-sounding sprawl of murky muddy strings, of looped string section shimmer, all blurred into something hazy and drifty, wreathed in soft hiss and warm record crackle, looped and lovely and hauntingly mesmerizing. The oddly named Let's Go Outside continue with their own brand of dreamy drift, a blissed out dreamdrone raga of metallic buzz and lush layered loveliness. Bvdub (aka Brock Van Wey, one of the curators of this collection) offers his own bit of looped and layered swirl, all effected steel strings, a sort of folky flutter smeared into lush string like swells, the lengthy track peppered with epic majestic bursts of heaving high end buzz, again all blurred into something more more ethereal, and so it goes, this is one of those rare comps, that not only plays like a proper album, but that doesn't slip up once, every single track here is gorgeous, and is woven deftly into the sonic fabric of the whole. The second disc is where most of the more familiar names can be found, many of those Pop Ambient veterans, Klimek (who even released a record called Music To Fall Asleep), starts things off with a field recording flecked slow burn drone, very darkly dramatic and ethereal, which leads directly into a track by Andrew Thomas (the other curator of this collection), his number a moody chunk of shimmery slowcore, all twangy Earth-like guitars over a hushed hazy backdrop of warm strings and glistening analog crackle, sounding almost like a Pop Ambient Barn Owl. Oneohtrix delivers some very minimal and dreamy celestial kosmische, while Biosphere weaves a gorgeous bit of orchestral thrum, all deep swirling strings, pizzicato melodies and mysterious percussion, while Markus Guenter finally introduces a beat, a murky minimal pulse, beneath another gorgeous sprawl of glistening droned out shimmer, and again, so it goes for the rest of the second disc as well. ANYone who loves the Pop Ambient series will flip for this, as will fans of all things darkly dreamy, be it minimal electronica, abstract krautdrone, cinematic ambience or anywhere in between.

MPEG stream: Flowstone
MPEG stream: Hold Still Without Me
MPEG stream: Tried So Hard
MPEG stream: Ice Storm (Prelude To A Fratricide)
MPEG stream: Black Sky Bright Sun
MPEG stream: Departure

We made the first Air Texture compilation our Record Of The Week, back in November of 2011, a fantastic, and fantastically blissed out collection of ambient soundscapery from some of our favorite audio alchemists, running the gamut from dreamy Pop Ambience to abstract ethereal drone music, from modern classical minimalism to hushed softly psychedelic shimmer, and the many many variations in between. This is the second volume in what now appears to be an ongoing series, and once again features a lineup that reads as if it was curated by someone at aQ, as well as featuring a number of artists who contributed to the first compilation. Most folks will probably just need a list of the folks involved: Brian McBride of Stars Of The Lid, Loscil, Pan American, Mitchell Akiyama, Bvdub, Kyle Bobby Dunn, Simon Scott, Lawrence English, Marcus Fjellstrom, Rafael Anton Irisarri and loads more. And like the best compilations, it doesn't feel like a compilation, it plays like an album proper, or perhaps the perfect mix tape for late night chill out / drift off. Brian McBride starts things off with a track that does not sound that far removed from recent Stars Of The Lid, huge sweeping swells of lush chordal shimmer and swoonsome strings, orchestral and symphonic and achingly majestic, dappled with pointilist piano and soft focus swirls, that blossom into radiant expanses of prismatic gauzy drift. Marcus Fischer weaves muted rhythms into a swirling sea of guitar twang and distant melodies, the sound washed out and rainswept, Loscil unfurls billows of blurred electronics, darkly dynamic, sounding like a slightly more sinister Oval, while Chris Herbert lays out a super minimal sprawl of softly staticky hiss and ephemeral thrum. We could go track by track, but the great thing is how all the songs share attributes that weave all of these disparate pieces together, while each track remaining wholly unique, the listener is carried along by this constantly subtly shifting collection of sounds, lost utterly within each, the songs bleeding into one another, offering a bit of sonic familiarity, before revealing something unique to that track, a constant voyage of sonic discovery, which rewards close listening, but is equally effective as background ambience. Music that conforms to its surroundings like some strange sonic fog, hovering and drifting weightlessly in the distance, becoming something else entirely as we draw closer, and lose ourselves within. Gorgeous, gorgeous stuff. And most definitely the perfect soundtrack for late nights, lost afternoons, rainy days, deep black nights, and drifting into oblivion.

MPEG stream: At A Loss
MPEG stream: A Fifth Season
MPEG stream: Else
MPEG stream: Naimina

Another 'remix' album of the processed electromagnetic radio waves released by Disinformation (the first was the Antiphony 2cd). The central analogy of these 'remixes' by Evan Parker, Jim O'Rourke, Lawrence Casserley, Mechos, Tactile, Simon Fisher Turner, and T:unk Systems is of an underground publication by 9th Century mathmetician Abu Ja'Far Muhammad Ibn Musa, who proposed the ideas of mathematical fractions to the rest of the world. Conceptually the remixes stand as 'surgical reunifications' in which broadcast data noise are transformed into pulsing drones and electrical melodies. The stand out contribution is clearly the Evan Parker remix in which is staccato blurts of multi tracked saxophone work brilliantly next to the noxious hypnosis of Disinformation's original.

This is really gorgeous and it's taking a lot of self control to keep us from all taking one of these home. And as Christmas draws near, self control seems to matter less and less. Whether it's a gift for some music freak you love, or a sneaky gift for yourself amidst the rest of your shopping, you couldn't do much better than this. A super fancy, slip cased box set documenting the 2000 Erstwhile festival in Tokyo, put on annually by the label of the same name. Seven discs of some of the best improv/abstract/free jazz/noise you'll ever hear. Most of the recordings are from the actual festival, but two discs are from club shows around the actual festival, while one disc is a performance by an all-star guitar septet made up of Keith Rowe, Tetuzi Akiyama, Oren Ambarchi, Toshimaru Nakamura, Otomo Yoshihide, Burkhard Stangl and Taku Sugimoto and another is a studio recording by the duo of Gánter Máller and Toshimaru Nakamura. Wow! There's also a DVD document of the festival by filmmaker Jonas Leddington and a huge booklet with photos and twenty essays! Ready to buy it now? Well here's the track listing: CD 1 (outside festival shows): 1. Thomas Lehn/Toshimaru Nakamura, 2. Gánter Máller/Tetuzi Akiyama/Nakamura, 3. Christof Kurzmann/Nakamura, 4. Lehn/Nakamura/Taku Sugimoto. CD 2 (studio sessions): Gánter Máller/Toshimaru Nakamura-tint. CD 3 (festival): 1. Cosmos (Sachiko M/Ami Yoshida), 2. Keith Rowe/Lehn/Marcus Schmickler. CD 4 (festival): 1. Máller/Otomo Yoshihide, 2. Lehn/Schmickler. CD 5 (festival): 1. Burkhard Stangl/Kurzmann/Sugimoto, 2. Rowe/Nakamura. CD 6 (festival): 1. Stangl/Máller, 2. Nakamura/Sachiko. CD 7: (seven guitars): 1. seven guitarists: Rowe/Akiyama/Oren Ambarchi/Nakamura/Otomo/Stangl/Sugimoto (Cornelius Cardew-Treatise, pp. 82-84), 2. seven guitarists (improvisation). Okay, how about now?!?!? C'mon...you know you want it. I sure do!! No sound samples cuz we're all still trying to fight the need to own this so we haven't even cracked one open yet!

Sub Rosa, in claiming to present this compilation within the context that "history needs constant re-evaluation because, like music, history cannot be read as a fixed entity" has unfortunately released an anthology that offers no new insights or previously unknown factors in the inception of noise and electronic musics. Rather, the artists featured are the often-name dropped art stars used within institutional texts for the Whitney Biennial or Documenta to legitimize sound art or some connection between institutional forces and underground activity. A good number of the artists - like Luigi Russolo, Pierre Schaefer, Sonic Youth, Xenakis, Pauline Oliveros, Edgard Varese, John Cage, Ryoji Ikeda, and Einsturzende Neubauten - are undoubtedly important; but is it really necessary to sing their praises yet again? While there's certainly something to be said for introducing new audiences to a lot of the amazing music on this compilation, Sub Rosa should call a spade a spade and fess up to curating a K-Tel compilation for the avant-garde.

The curators of the fourth volume of the seven part series of Anthologies of Noise & Electronic Music are correct when they point to the fact that the history of the avant-garde is a messy one with tangled connections between competing factions, ideologies, methods, and personalities. The Sub Rosa compilations are dotted with a who's who of the electro-acoustic avant-garde from the past century, tossed in with a smorgasborg of previously unknown (and often very interesting) artists as well as contemporary musicians who are well on their way to establishing themselves within the canons of the institutional avant-garde. Sub Rosa has gone out of its way to compile a collection to scramble one's notions of the taxonomic rhetoric that may influence the perception of any of the artists present; hence you'll find Les Rallizes Denudes (already you can tell this series is not very reverential of the academic definition of experimental electronics music, with the inclusion of this incendiary Japanese psych band) next to Vibracathedral Orchestra followed by one-time Blind Idiot God guitarist Andy Hawkins then Alvin Lucier. Sub Rosa boasts that more than 75 percent of the album is unreleased material, which is all the more impressive considering that the compilation features the likes of Gyorgy Ligetti, Oliver Messiaen, William S. Burroughs, Milan Knizak, Steve Reich, Halim el-Dabh, Jean-Claude Risset, Stephen Vitiello, Laurie Spiegel, and many others. To top it all off, it's surprisingly pleasing to listen to. What that says about the state of 'noise' music may be another question.

MPEG stream: Seafood
MPEG stream: Fucked Up and Naked
MPEG stream: Wire Recorder

The current glut of mediocre compilations from the computer glitch faction of experimental music demands that the compiler of any collection should hold greater standards than, "I'm selling yet another compilation featuring Kid 606. Please buy my product." Simple curatorial questions such as: why these artists? Why these tracks? What is the thematic connection? What is to be learned Thus, Anomalous should be commended first for not recycling the mimetic electro-glitch roster on their "An Uncommon Nature" and second for putting some thought into the production of the compilation. This vinyl only album documents discrete physical actions which address the age old dichotomy between humanity and nature. Erik Lanzillota -- the curator of this album and founder of Anomalous -- has for the most part succeeded in creating a near seamless aural flow between the long thin wire striations of Jonathan Coleclough and the muffled thunderstorm field recordings of David Knott. The one snag is the annoying nasal blurt from Agog, but the wonderous drones from Mirror and the rich texural rubbings form Jeph Jerman keep this compilation from sinking like so many others.

Despite the oversized package and the dedication to the amazing Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, this is not a DVD. Rather this is a collection of sound artists and archivists who were comissioned to create a piece inspired by the work of Tarkovsky. The majority of the artists in question have composed their pieces as an homage to Tarkovsky's slow, but revelatory pacing of the narrative. The atmospheres of the sublime, the psychologically horrific, and the melancholic -- which all run through Tarkovsky's work -- speak boldly with Another Kind of Language as thick dronescapes molded from various field recordings of rain, wind, and surf. There isn't anything overt about this comp that screams out "TARKOVSKY!" with no obvious samples or quotations to be found within; rather, this is a humble dronological tribute to the Russian filmmaker's amazing sensibilities. The contributing artists run the gamut, from familiar AQ faves Mnortham, John Hudak and Kiyoshi Mizutani, to lesser-knowns/unknowns Jon Tulchin, Yannick Dauby, Dale Lloyd, , Rsudin, V.V., Madali Babin, Duul_Drv, Josh Russell, Philip Pietruschka, Sawako, and Logoplasm.

MPEG stream: When Inaccessible
MPEG stream: Mnemonic Cartography

The Come Organisation was the brainchild of Whitehouse's William Bennett, whose notions of punk rock veered far from the comparatively palatable sounds of The Sex Pistols or The Damned. Where the Rotten / McLaren axis made a very calaculated attack on Come was a gritty punk band that Bennett formed after a brief stint in Essential Logic, if I'm not mistaken. With warbling synth attacks, pounding drum, and slashing three chord guitar churns, Come sounded much closer to the muddled art-rock of Snakefinger than his more decidedly punk compatriots Warsaw or Suicide. Whitehouse does exactly what every other Whitehouse track does: emit incredibly painful high frequencies and Bennett's megaphone yell of his, um, lyrics. The Nurse With Wound track features Jimbo 'Foetus' Thirwell in the construction of a wild display of dozens of tape machines going awry much like early Merzbow. Bennett also included his 'official' mix of the Nurse With Wound / Whitehouse collaborative album "150 Murderous Passions" - which sounds just like Whitehouse, and pales in comparison to the 'unofficial' mix that Stapleton released on United Dairies. The compilation concludes with a very strange field recording made in the Bradford Red Light District: something conceptually very disturbing, but in actuality just sounding like a guy walking down a busy street with a tape deck in his pocket. All of Bennett's productions have been meant to offend, or at least provoke, and this one is certainly no different.

Along with Throbbing Gristle's Industrial Records, William Bennett's Come Organisation was one of the seminal publishing entities for transgressive British art in the late '70s and early '80s, mostly for his own projects Come and Whitehouse, but also a few For the Come album "I'm Jack," Bennett had worked with Foetus' Jim Thirwell to create two very odd pieces of primitive anti-punk. On one track Bennett took up the drums, with Thirlwell on guitar, electronics, and vocal duties; and the other track found the two switching yet performing similar pieces. Starting off with the sludgy guitar feedback that has since become the staple for bands like Earth, the Melvins, and Harvey Milk, Come sporadically drop in unstructured double kick drum beats before unleashing a belligerent feedback / synth noise. Ilse Koch was the wife of the commandant at the Buchenwald concentration camp during Nazi era Germany, and had developed an unsavory fashion aesthetic of furnishing her lampshades with the skin from dead prisoners. Obviously the material from the Come Organisation compilation that is dedicated to her is certainly not for the squeamish. The anonymously produced tracks from Musique Concrete and Etat Brut both employ similar methods of media appropriation into bizarre collages with lots of Jim Jones references. But it is the Nurse With Wound track "Fashioned To A Device Behind A Tree" that is the highlight to both "Fur Ilse Koch" and "Anthology 2" on which a little German girl pleads for her father accompanied by an ever intensifying psychoacoustically irritating high frequency drone. Very creepy. The MB tracks are also quite impressive, with his signature aesthetic of sinister electronic dirges that are continuously collapsing under the weight of an existential gloom. Bennett indicated in the liner notes the possibility of reissuing "Fur Ilse Koch" at a later date, pretty much all that is missing from that compilation and these highlights are the shock tactic insertions of Nazi speeches, Manson gibberish, and the Japanese Imperial War anthem. The tracks featured here do well enough to frighten and horrify without such obvious references.

RealAudio clip: Fashioned To A Device Behind A Tree
RealAudio clip: President, Your Prick's Stiff
RealAudio clip: Endoradiaion

"In the northern hemisphere from the southwest, a wind that blows steadily in the opposite direction to the trade-wind" reads the definition to the 'antitrade' on the disc itself. Aside from this oddly placed text, there are very little clues to the reading of this baffling pseudo-concept record from Ash International (R.I.P.). Collecting fragments of disembodied voices, VLF radio noise, and field recordings of fireworks for Guy Fawkes Day, the artists on this compilation manifest an aural purity of simple drones to assimilate the disparate noises in a surprisingly cohesive whole. It is a little hard to believe that this is a compilation as Bruce Gilbert (Wire), S.E.T.I. (aka Andrew Lagowski), Disinformation, Hazard (who I believe recorded as Morthound on Cold Meat Industries many moons ago), Lief Elggren (Ghost Orchid), Aer, and hhh contribute on this album. An excellent piece from the click and drone school.

Welcome to the Frans De Waard show starring Frans De Waard! 5 of the 7 tracks on this compilation feature Mr. De Waard in various guises as the "borrowed" project Freiband covering a King Crimson song, as the ambient drone guitar project Shifts, in the ultra-minimal techno / microsound project Goem, and in the musique concrete ensemble Kapotte Musiek. Roel Meelkop (who works with De Waard in Goem and Kapotte Muziek) contributes a solo track of minimalist scraping. The last track throws off the symmetry of the Frans De Waard connection with a duet between Boston's Jason Talbot and Howard Stelzer on turntables and tape constructions. Limited to 300 CD-Rs.

RealAudio clip: Braun Mix
RealAudio clip: Fuzzy
RealAudio clip: Dream Illusion

An impressive survey of the curatorial aesthetic from the Russian imprint Observatoire, which has grown in leaps and bounds over the past couple of years with some great releases of cracked dronology and mangled field recordings. The concepts on Archaic Variations slant toward crude electro-acoustics, psychogeography, obsolete technologies, and improbable strategies all mapping out tactile soundfields with variable degrees of manipulation and deconstruction. The first handful of tracks (Emmanuel Mieville, Richard Garet, and Takanobu Noshino) are relatively hushed compositions of shadowy drones, distant vocalizations, and raw field recordings lending an air of clinical detachment. Chris Whitehead's elegaic piano and field recording piece addresses a rural British ceremony that dates back to the 12th Century, recalling the piano laced impressionism of Andrew Chalk and Cindytalk. The latter half of the disc tends toward claustrophobia and decay, introduced by none other than our own Jim Haynes, whose chainsaw drones and swarming radio bursts transmit through thickets of scabrous noise dialing up comparisons to Kevin Drumm's more noxious facets. The Russian artist Radioson maintains the shortwave theme with an paranoiac set of hypnotic melodies revolving around repeating beacon tones and gray masses of static. Gonna have to dig into this project more for sure. The compilation concludes on a very bleak note with a track from Francisco Meirino, the brilliant, if under-recognized electro-acoustic tactician here jettisoning razor-sharp errata of EMF interference across pierced feedback shards, and the finale from another Russian artist Dasein, compacting distorted synths and tortured vocals into a more nuanced take on the early Whitehouse / Ramleh axis. 300 copies, only.

MPEG stream: R.O.U / Tristan Narvaja - Villa Biarritz
MPEG stream: Iodine
MPEG stream: Life Of Neron
MPEG stream: What Remains Of All That Misery

Originally released as a bonus cd for subscribers to the Wire magazine, this sampler is a perfect introduction to the super clinical, ultra minimal Raster-Noton sound featuring a who's who of the avant / minimalist / techno / experimental world: William Basinski, Signal, Senking, Bytone, Komet Noto, M. Akiyama, Pixel and more. Also worth picking up if you're already into this stuff as some of the tracks here are out of print, rare or previously unreleased. A gorgeously bleak, sometimes lush world of clicks and beeps and whirs and drones and crackle and whir and hum and rumble. Awesome!

MPEG stream: Mikro Makro
MPEG stream: Stand
MPEG stream: Oacis

When our Andee was away on his vacation to Finland last year he got turned on to this compilation of early ('60s/'70s) Finnish experimental music. It also has been getting a good deal of airplay on our favorite radio station, New Jersey's wonderful WFMU (www.wfmu.org, tune in!). So, now we're real happy to have finally gotten this in stock, and felt it deserved Record Of The Week status for several reasons: it's Finnish, it's fucked, and it's also of historical import. Mainly, though, it's just fucked. In that fun way we at AQ totally dig. Sure, "Arktien Hysteria" (translation: Arctic Hysteria, if you couldn't guess) is all experimental and avantgarde but definitely not super serious -- heck, it starts out with a veritable symphony of burps, and one of the best artists on here is known as The Sperm. These tracks tend to feature (one or more of the following): early "sampling" cut-ups, druggy proto-punk psychedelic rock freedom, free jazz noise, groovy oddball electronics n' drone, conceptual flux, and vocal derangement. Arktien hysteria indeed! The freakouts on here should prove that none of the art-punk noiseniks of today can make a noise that hasn't been made already. Such as the turkey gobbling style sax and maniacal percussion of Jouni Kesti & Seppo I. Laine's "Analysis of Revolution". Not that it's all zany hijinks, there's abstract soundscape stuff on here too, some of it really dark and weird. Quite a few home-built instruments/machines/synths feature here, along with tape loops galore. Thougth some folks make do though with just sheer frenzied performance gusto. All tracks were taken, we believe, from rare LPs originially released circa 1967-1970 by the legendary Finnish label Love Records. Actually, one cut even dates from as far back as 1961. The cd booklet's got photos and (thankfully) some liner notes in English, though there's more text in Finnish, oh well. Pan sonic and Circle and Keuhkot and Kemialliset Ystavat and all the rest of Finland's current avant/underground scene start to make a lot more sense when you hear what their aunts and uncles were up to a few decades back, makin' noise at live happenings, or constructing tracks in primitive DIY studios built in their sauna huts. Damn, what a cool compilation. Insane, and arguably essential. MPEG Download: BLUES SECTION "Shivers Of Pleasure" [/audio/arktinenblues.mp3] MPEG Stream: BLUES SECTION "Shivers Of Pleasure" [/audio/arktinenblues.m3u] MPEG Download: JUKKA RUOHOMAKI "Mika Aika On" [/audio/arktinenjukka.mp3] MPEG Stream: JUKKA RUOHOMAKI "Mika Aika On" [/audio/arktinenjukka.m3u]

MPEG stream: Shivers Of Pleasure
MPEG stream: Mika Aika On
MPEG stream: Vallankumouksen Analyysi
MPEG stream: 3rd Erection

What would you expect from a label called Aryan Asshole run by one of the guys from Wolf Eyes and a pal? Big loud ugly noise right? Well, that's exactly what you get on this compilation, Aryan Asshole Compilation Vol. 1. A collection of out of print tracks (previously released as super limited lathe cuts) from Wolf Eyes, Aaron Dilloway of Wolf Eyes, Dead Machines, Burning Star Core, Hive Mind, Religious Knives (half of Double Leopards), Damion Romero as well as Bloodyminded, Graveyards, The Moonlanding, Failing Lights, Charlie Draheim and Raven Strain. The sound runs the noise rock gamut: primitive Whitehouse shriek with ear piercing sinewaves and squealing feedback with shouted megaphone vocals, clouds of high end skree, kitchen sink clatter and blown out electronic glitch and gzzzt, full on detuned distorted metal guitar riffage, tweaked and twisted, skipping and pitchshifted into some hiccupping plunderphonic metalstorm, super spare ambience, Jandek-ish guitar, random room clatter, footsteps, chairs sliding against the floor, plink plonk percussion all space-y and abstract, rumbling SUNNO)))-like dirges but way more malevolent and lo-fi, crumbling electronic buzz and splatter and... well, you get the idea. A pretty killer comp of modern noise (rock) of the meaner and weirder and more fucked up persuasion. The cover art features reproductions of all the long out of print square shaped lathe cut picture discs gathered within! Cool. ----* ----* New DVD's : ----*

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 a while, but finally, the return of Frequency Thirteen, and TRUE SHEFFIELD BLACK PSYCHEDELIA!! Yep, in the past we've championed killer discs from Black Vomit, Ice Bound Majesty, Trolskull, Dukkha and Rape Rack, all offering up a truly twisted take on blackened heaviness, and ever since we've been dying to hear more, so this pretty much hits the spot, a massive sprawling double disc compilation, featuring tracks from most of the Frequency Thirteen roster, and as far as we know, all the tracks here are EXCLUSIVE. So if you're already a fan, and snap up F13 cd-r's whenever you see them, then you obviously need this, exclusive new music from Skultroll, Dukkha and Ice Bound Majesty, as well as a whole mess of others. But for those new to Frequency Thirteen, it's tough to imagine a better introduction to True Sheffield Black Psychedelia. Which is a bit of a misnomer, as much of this is not from Sheffield, much of this is not necessarily black, although it's ALL psychedelic, and it's all TROOOOOOO. Beadle, who we had never heard of before, open up the first disc with a crushing chunk of looped riffage that reminds us of a more blackened Gore, a lurching, lumbering, hypnotic crush. Which perfectly gives way to a new Dukkha jam, that sounds like classic nineties style noise rock, heavy and crunchy and weirdly melodic, with some awesomely twisted melodies and arrangements, and some wild freaked out guitaring. Brobdingnagian who you might remember from their ep on Rusty Axe spews out some noise drenched black filth, like some sort of Ildjarn Merzbow mash up. And so it goes, the whole disc a twisted, convoluted, buzzy, blasting, psychedelic sonic travelogue, with some surprises along the way. Trolskull, slow things down with their murky heroin house minimalism, buried voices, a muted pulse, swirling swaths of synth. Ice Bound Majesty offer up their fiercest filthiest blow out yet, furious and frantic, doused in effects, with programmed drums so fast it almost sounds like a chest rattling drone. Charles Dexter Ward crafts a weird sort of Dan Higgs sounding bit of ritualistic sea shanty style guitar drone, albeit crunchy and distorted, and War Ethic does some weird super murky grindy thrash, but with some skittery almost jazzy sound blastbeats, and there's more more more more. And that's just the first disc! The second disc starts out with some super minimal sinewave shimmer courtesy of a band called Syn, before Dukkha kick shit into gear with the most awesome hypnotic looped psych jam, that would make Circle or Cave proud. In fact, it sort of sounds like a mix of the two, but with a bit more metal drumming, and some convoluted tangled arrangements, but always slipping back into super mesmerizing hypno-rock. KPTMichigan unfurl some gorgeous hazy woozy Tim Hecker like gauzy dronemusic, while Scum Also Rises (awesome name) so some strange post industrial mathy groove rock, that sounds WAY better than that description makes it sound, fat fuzzy bass, weird skittery electronics, all fuzzy and blown out. Sluglord stir up some sort of unholy blackened orchestral doom, all dense tones and deep shimmers, and the Disobedients do a sort of super minimal bedroom doom pop, and Trolskull return with some murky abstract rhythmic weirdness, that sounds a bit like a less loose Avarus, a bit more sinister and haunting and a bit krautrock too. And of course again here, there's more more more! Easily one of our favorite labels, with a roster that should make most other labels bow their heads in shame. And this is definitely one of the few comps where you literally want to hear more from every single band. Fancy packaging too, a fold out die cut full color sleeve, jam packed with about a million inserts, liner notes, an obi... hell, just buy it, you won't be sorry. And odds are, like us, soon you too will find yourself obsessed with TRUE SHEFFIELD BLACK PSYCHEDELIA!!

MPEG stream: You, You Smell Like Death
MPEG stream: Unutterable Hideousness
MPEG stream: Deu!
MPEG stream: Praeternational Light