[ aquarius records — Experimental ]

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Showing results 8201 through 8250 of 9280.

The "Audiolounge" was held in the foyer of the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts as a deliberate attempt to avoid a concert hall or club experience. Instead, this night-long event was a combination of a hands-on workshop and audio / visual installation. This double CD audio document features musical selections from Robert Lippok (from To Rococo Rot), Console & Andreas Ammer (regular

Longtime supporter of the rights of Afghani women, AQ-customer Steven Tobin has produced benefit shows and now this double disc benefit cd -- and what a comp it is. The musical choices are all over the genre map yet it works nicely as a sit-down listen, and it will certainly introduce you to many groups you've never heard. Includes experimental indie rock (Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Deerhoof, Zmrzlina, The Intima), ethnicky female vocal theatrics (D'yara, Charming Hostess, Jou Jou, Samsara), avant electronics (Blevin Blectum, Bran, Planetsize, Zeek Sheck), quirky weirdness as only East Bay bands can do it (Spezza Rotto, Charming Hostess, Faun Fables, Mono Pause), world-class improvisers (Dave Slusser, Saadet Turkoz, Miya Masaoka), underground hip hop (DeepDickCollective), and much more. All proceeds benefit RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, an organization founded in 1977. Pick this up, feel great about it, and get a genuinely good listen to boot. MPEG Download: GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR "George Bush Cut Up While Talking" [/audio/azadigodspeed.mp3] MPEG Stream: GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR "George Bush Cut Up While Talking" [/audio/azadigodspeed.m3u] MPEG Download: THE INTIMA "The New Savage" [/audio/azadiintima.mp3]

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Back in 2011, Dark Entries released a great comp, vinyl-only, called BART: Bay Area Retrograde. All Dark Entries style stuff - vintage minimal wave / new wave / punk electronics - from the SF Bay area. (For those who don't live around here, BART also stands for Bay Area Rapid Transit, the local commuter train system.) Just today, we just got a 2nd volume of Bay Area Retrograde, on vinyl, which we'll review as soon as we can, AND also this, a compact disc containing both volumes, yay!! So, we're listing this cd now, though we can't say much yet about the stuff on here from Vol. 2, other than what we've heard spinning it so far has been great, and it seems maybe a bit more raw and punk and experimental, with tracks from the likes of Factrix, Chrome and Red Asphalt. So, more on that Vol. 2 when we get a chance to properly review it next time, but here's what we said before about Vol. 1, and by itself it means this cd is quite recommended: A few years back, Minimal Wave offered some choice crate digging collections of nearly forgotten darkwave and post-punk electronics through their Lost Tapes and Found Tapes collections, highlighting the differences between the European and American models of underground new wave. Dark Entries produced this anthology in that same tradition, focusing even more tightly on the geography of the Bay Area. As Johnny Ray Huston so rightly points out in the liner notes, San Francisco in the '80s had its own unique crucible of local events that shaped the Bay Area's particular sound (e.g. the assassination of Harvey Milk, the growing AIDS epidemic and the fear surrounding the disease, etc.). While there's none of the art-damaged abstraction filtered from The Residents, Snakefinger, or Tuxedomoon in an obvious lineage to the artists featured here, BART (named after the subway that connects Oakland, Berkeley, and other parts of the East Bay to San Francisco) is a great collection of quirky minimal wave electronics, with a fair amount of unreleased material from obscurant Bay Area new wave bands. Nomimal State opens the compilation and was from the suburban hamlet of Danville, recording this demo 1983 with a militantly uptempo drum machine and urgent synth lines. It's a track that easily fits next to the likes of The Units and Nervous Gender in terms of manic, punkish use of electronics. Speaking of The Units, they round out the compilation in contributing their sci-fi pop anthem "Mission," which is still bitchin' after all these years! Voice Farm is the other 'big name' to appear on this compilation, contributing a sinewy darkwave number from their 1982 album "The World We Live In." Batang State, Quiet Room, and Necropolis Of Love offer more Joy Division / Wire / Kraftwerk atmospheric post-punk number with considerable panache. The Wasp Women were a crossdressing trash-punk outfit, whose demo featured a wastoid lo-fi number and had appeared in the 1982 film "What Ever Happened To Susan Jane." Danny Boy & The Serious Party Gods offer a fabulously campy disco number with suitably over-the-top raunchy lyrics that ramble on and on against anthemic synths. If there's one track that you need to hear from this compilation it's this one! But the whole collection is very well done, and comes highly recommended as with everything that Dark Entries releases.

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Here's the vinyl of Volume Two from the BART: Bay Area Retrograde series, which was included with Volume One on a single cd we listed last time (and are relisting now, to add this info), also released on the inimitable Dark Entries. Like Volume One, this collects vintage minimal wave / new wave / punk electronics from the SF Bay Area. (For those who don't live around here, BART also stands for Bay Area Rapid Transit, the local commuter train system.) The line-up for the second installment includes some fantastic obscurities from Factrix, Chrome, Tuxedomoon, and Indoor Life; and there's plenty of great new discoveries of forgotten Bay Area outfits like Zru Vogue, Red Asphalt, Timmy Spence and more. The Factrix piece was taken from an old Subterranean compilation, with the trio entertaining more of a sprightly goth-synth vibe instead of their signature industrial murk through tinny drum machine patter and strangle-choked guitar riffs. Chrome's throbbing motorik synth-punk number "Meet You In The Subway" was taken from their 1979 album Subterranean Modern, released through the Residents' Ralph Records. Red Asphault is up next with a squalid torrent of No Wave inspired fire-alarm mania. Both Tuxedomoon and Indoor Life (the latter including Patrick Cowley on synths!) adopt a disjointed, art-damaged theatricality to their warped, all-thumbs tracks. Baby Buddha's "Little Things" proves to be one of the synth-wave gems on this comp, with its spiky electronic sequencing, haunted house chord progressions, and grimly monotone vocals, followed by the equally strong "Human Dub" by Human Being Men peddling streamlined electronic anxiety of minimal wave perfection. The dour "Nakweda Dream" with its chimingly Cure-ish guitars rounds out the comp, which is considerably darker than the first but is just as recommended!

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SORRY. Originally released in 1968, this disc brings together pieces composed during the first decade of the reknowned BBC Radiophonic Workshop, a groundbreaking sound laboratory that provided British radio listeners and TV viewers with avant-garde musique concrete interludes and wacky sound effects -- Dr. Who being their most well-known client. There's no Who here, but a broad range of other stuff, including music from a War of the Worlds dramatization, experimental radio plays, documentary soundtracks, and signature tunes for local radio stations. Back before computers and sampling, these recordings represent many hours of painstaking, clever work: 33 tracks composed by Workshop electronic music pioneers Delia Derbyshire, John Baker, and David Cain. Their heroic efforts are historically interesting, and a good listen to boot, which was always the intent. The cd booklet contains extensive liner notes and evocative photos of Workshop staffers amid their tape reels and sundry noise-making objects. The Workshop's second decade saw the introduction of synths, output explored on this disc's companion reissue, 1975's "The Radiophonic Workshop", reviewed elsewhere on this site/list.

RealAudio clip: Blue Veils And Golden Sands
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Super limited quadruple 10" set that compiles tracks from both the BBC Radiophonic Workshop records, up until now only available on cd. All the artists get one side, except Delia Derbyshire who gets a whole record to herself. Here's what we had to say about the cd versions: "BBC Radiophonic Music" Originally released in 1968, this compilation brings together pieces composed during the first decade of the reknowned BBC Radiophonic Workshop, a groundbreaking sound laboratory that provided British radio listeners and TV viewers with avant-garde musique concrete interludes and wacky sound effects -- Dr. Who being their most well-known client. There's no Who here, but a broad range of other stuff, including music from a War of the Worlds dramatization, experimental radio plays, documentary soundtracks, and signature tunes for local radio stations. Back before computers and sampling, these recordings represent many hours of painstaking, clever work: 33 tracks composed by Workshop electronic music pioneers Delia Derbyshire, John Baker, and David Cain. Their heroic efforts are historically interesting, and a good listen to boot, which was always the intent. "The Radiophonic Workshop" The classic 1975 album reissued, chock full o' quirky and/or moody cutting-edge compositions from the the madmen (and women) who inhabited the legendary BBC Radio Radiophonic Workshop in its heyday -- you know, the folks responsible for all the electronic music on the Dr. Who TV show. So, you get all the mysterious whooshes and percolating scifi bleepage you'd expect. Sound effects and music converge here, utilizing the most advanced synth technology of the day (such as the EMS Synthi 100 'Delaware' machine, described as "massive"), and a lot of imagination. Combining electronically-generated sounds with tape loops and live instruments, tracks here range from spritely, happy video arcade pop toons to spooky, creepy soundcapes (or the disturbing gastrointestinal ambience of "Major Bloodnok's Stomach", track 8). Clever montage, music box melodies, and assorted mad-computer sounds abound. Pretty neat.

Another glorious glimpse back at the long lost art of the Funerary Violin. A genre all but forgotten and lost, some say quashed by the Catholic Church, a gorgeous mournful body of work, solo violin pieces to be performed at funerals, sad and sorrowful, minor key and miserable, dense with dark emotions, perfectly transporting the listener back to an nineteenth century funeral, the procession, the mourners clad in black... Very beautiful and evocative. But it's not just the music, it's the tangled history of the players and the personalities, the musicians and the composers and the patrons responsible for much of the music. Oh, and the fact that it's all made up. That's right, these amazing scratchy wax cylinder recordings of simple melancholy violin pieces, and the text accompanying them have all been fabricated. Although sometimes it's tough to tell when hearing the genuinely creepy, crackly and realistically old timey sounding music, and reading the extensive tales of the composers and their tragic lives. Maybe it is all real? Who are we to say? Just because there is only one person in the entire world who knows everything, anything actually, about the mysterious Guild Of Funerary Violinists. And the fact that none of the performers or composers are mentioned anywhere, recorded, written, anecdotal, except within the pages of the book, the liner notes and the website of the genre's discoverer (perhaps creator). But like we mentioned in a past review of another Funerary disc, who cares? The music is dark and mysterious, emotional and creepy, and the text is fascinating, impossibly well researched considering none of it is real, and totally fun to read. This disc (supposedly) collects the work of three of the most important figures in the English School Of Funerary Violin. Babcotte, Sudbury and Eaton. All of these recording recovered from the extensive collection of Funerary relics kept by Gunter II, Prince of Schwatzburg-Sonderhausen, who in addition to the wax cylinders heard here, also counted among his prized possessions, the coffins of Goethe and Heine, as well as the death mask of Beethoven. The first Babcotte track here is thought to be performed by Gunter, himself an accomplished violinist, however the rest, the legendary "Funerary Suite # 4", due to their sound and performance are considered to be the work of Wilhelm Kleinbach (whose disc we reviewed a list or two back). The Eaton piece, a slow mournful, sometimes atonal dirge, is performed by the composer himself, captured on wax cylinder in 1913. And the final piece, "The Erroneous Dirge Of George Babcotte is performed and recorded by Maria Rotaru in 1975, a young Romanian violinist who tried to pass the work off as her own composition. When the truth came out, Rotaru disappeared mysteriously, and it was only after the collapse of the Soviet Union that this piece resurfaced. Or so we're told... Even without the fantastical backstory, the music is worth the price of admission. Each piece is wonderfully crafted and beautifully performed, all solo violin, keening mournfully, minor key melodies drifting dreamily in some, the scrape and sawing of the bow constructing miserablist dirges in others, all except the more recent bathed in a thick cloak of crackle and static, giving it that Jeck / Hecker fuzzy-blurry-dreamy vibe we can never seem to get enough of. The fact that this music is set amidst such a dense and complex, passionate world of intrigue and mystery, love and death, only makes it that much more exciting. And the fact that every single bit of it is made up, well, as far as we're concerned that just seals the deal. Recommended!

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Latest musician curated compilation on Arthur Magazine's Bastet imprint. Curated this time around by Ethan Miller of Comets on Fire, it of course features songs from both CoF and Comets off-shoots Colossal Yes, Six Organs of Admittance, and August Born. But there is also lots of other new and old noisy and folky weirdness from Albert Ayler, 7 Year Rabbit Cycle, Michael Yonkers, Ghost, and Brother JT among others. One of the most interesting tracks is by the mysterious Shit Spangled Banner, a band we couldn't find much information on because the page in the booklet is oddly missing (although a few AQ'ers have some old SSB tapes!). Beard, Bread & Bear's Prayers is of course equal parts noisy and folky, soft and harsh, given the penchants of Miller's musical dichotomy with Comet's noisy psych and seventies west coast rock. Sweet!

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"Between Two Points" is yet another compilation of electronic glitches and lowercase music. Disc one is more rhythmic in its nature with morse code bleeps and rhythmic sine wave modulations from Noto, Taylor Deupree, Sogar, Mikael Stavostrand, Komet, Dan Abrams, Kim Cascone, and Vend. Disc two is barely there with Bernhard Gunter providing the most activity of sound amongst the Please will somebody issue a moratorium on compilations as predictable as this one? I'll give you 20 bucks if you make it happen. Well, maybe just 10. But it's gotta happen.

A breast cancer research benefit compilation of experimental music ranging from beautiful droning ambience to all out noise. featuring Bran, John Wiese, Skin Crime, Negative Entropy, Josh Norton Cabal, and more. Proceeds donated to the Howard Brown Health Center's Cancer Quality of Life Study. Nice. And it's for a good cause!

From one of our favorite labels, France's Pandemonium (home of Hint, Guapo, and others) is born a new all electronic label called Bip Hop. Their first release (actually a series of releases) "The Bip Hop Generation" looks to be an interesting collection of experimental electronics, digital glitch worship, and IDM abstractions. The first in the series compiles tracks from Marumari, Schneider TM, Massimo, Goem, Phonem, and Ultra Milkmaids, and ranges from darkish, abstract, drum & bass to sinewave based techno minimalism to ticklish pop electronica. Really Nice.

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SORRY.

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

Completely charming compilation of soundtracks to imaginary video games! Yes it is as good as it sounds, very intense yet harmless and fun at the same time. Besides the music, the best part of the package is the descriptions of the games, truly stuff worthy of Kool Keith's crazy brain, for example: "FAMILY TREE POLO: Bounce through time in your ambulance. Save your injury prone ancestors so you may eventually be born." For full game descriptions, see www.luckykitchen.com [http://www.luckykitchen.com/]. Features contributions from: Nick Birmingham & Daniel Beattie (UK, Hot Air/Spymania), V/VM (Manchester UK), Soundcard (UK, Spymania), Colongib, Egghatcher, Jake Mandell (Worm Interface), Personal Electronics, Tim Kotch, Marumari, Blitter vs. Hrvatski (Reckankreuzungsklankewerkzeuge), Flexible Products, Aerospace, Flatline Racing System, Stupid Lepton, Wheaton Research, Suetsu & Underwood, Underwood. Crucial underground electronic scenarios, charmingly packaged in a perversely non-video-game-aesthetic hand-sewn felt envelope. Limited to 746 numbered copies. A contender for "album of the week".

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SORRY. Compiled by Opprobrium's editor Nick Cain, this little gem of a 7" features some of the best often overlooked avant-noise / out-rock stuff from New Zealand, with Omit's lo-fi alien tape-loop dadaism, RST's humid blasts of guitar feedback, Sandoz Lab Technician's angular no-wave slop, and Surface of the Earth's breathtaking teutonic drones.

This is another one of those compilations that barely requires a description for several reasons. The first is the list of bands. Like an aQ customer's sonic wet dream: Tomutonttu (Jan Anderzen of Kemialliset Ystavat and Avarus), the Skaters, Ashtray Navigations, Zodiac Mountain, Wooden Wand And The Vanishing Voice, Brothers Of The Occult Sisterhood, Armpit, Fursaxa & Zaimph, Axolotl, Astral Social Club, Excepter, Uton, Anla Courtis, Wolfskull, United Bible Studies and Kyrgyz (featuring our very own mailorder maven Christine, along with Loren Chasse, Tom Carter and Robert Horton). Phew. And that's just the bands we know, include these new-to-us sonic treasures: Navy Black, Clixcx, Watersports, Pan To Scratch, Taikuri Tali, PW Best, White Dog and Maths Balance Volumes, and we're talking nearly 5 hours of strange sonic explorations. The other reason this might not need a typically expansive AQ description is the fact that this compilation is crazy limited, to only 500 copies. So odds are we're gonna run out mighty quick, and it's unclear whether we'll be able to get more... So what's it all about? Skulls Of Heaven sent out a call for artists to contribute their most challenging and bizarre recordings, the only stipulation that the track be between 6 and 13 minutes long. These 25 are the best of the contributions, and they are indeed challenging and bizarre, from a group of artists who traffic in the bizarre and challenging anyway.� The sounds are all over the map as you might imagine, processed vocals all tangled up in stumbling atonal guitar plink and reverbed swirls, mechanical barnyard symphonies, murky psych-drone crawls, muffled muted ragas, thick buzzy drones and drifting clouds of piano tinkle and creaking machine-like ambience, serpentine Eastern melodies draped over slow shifting sonic shimmers, ultra minimal glitchscapes peppered with haunting growls and alien transmissions, epic washes of roaring growling guitar and quavering theremins, thick sepia toned expanses of soft focus flutter and dark moody drift, mysterious vocal experiments, chanting howling, whispering, crooning, buzzing static drenched electronic fuckery, hiccuping childlike rhythms, primitive percussion, creepy landscapes of Goblin-esque organ and outer space FX and it goes on and on and on. A totally tripped out, mind melting sonic travelogue, from the forests of Finland, to dusty basements in abandoned buildings, to strange undersea caves dripping with reverb, to mysterious cities floating in the clouds to the farthest reaches of outer and inner space... These are REAL cd's. not cd-r's. Each disc in its own slipcase, both the discs and the sleeves featuring original artwork from Shayde Sartin (Flying Canyon, Giant Skyflower Band, Skygreen Leopards, Kelly Stoltz, Wooden Wand), held together by a thick textured paper cardstock obi, all tied up with a leather cord. Super striking. And again, limited to 500 copies...

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Brainwashed.com is an indispensible website dedicated to all sorts of musical arcana, publishing an insightful number of reviews and hosting the official domains for such diverse artists as Nurse With Wound, V/VM, Matmos, Mirror, Labradford, Trans Am, Hey, we're not claiming these to be right! Have fun with it yourself, we sure did! Where this compilation succeeds in its musical content, it royally fails in packaging: three loose cds in a metal tin which requires the booklets to be bent in order to fit, accompanied by a cheap keychain, a cloth patch, and a q-tip (???). All of this is wrapped with an unkempt piece of wire. Arrggg.

When Erik Hoffman of Ground Fault hand-delivered this monumental 10LP box crammed full of the most guttural noise, splattered improv damage, cosmic drone headcrack, and low-brow Dada absurdism that California has to offer, he threatened that he could have made this thing even bigger. Fuck. Bigger than 10LPs with 20 different bands abusing your turntable? Yeah, fuck is right! In alphabetical order, the California box features Amps For Christ, The Cherry Point, Joe Colley, Control, Gerritt, GX Jupitter-Larsen, Moth Drakula, Open City, Oscillating Innards, Damion Romero, Rubber O Cement, Sixes, The Skaters, Solid Eye, Spastic Colon, Tralphaz, John Wiese, Xome, R.H.Y. Yau, and Yellow Swans. Sure you may say, Yellow Swans currently hold residency in Portland, so why the hell are they on this compilation? Details, details, details... FYI, they were Californians until a few months back... You already know if you need this.

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SORRY.

"Chronologi" is a self-congratulatory compilation from the Brooklyn experimental / electronica label 12K, celebrating their first four years of operation. 12K is run by Taylor Deupree, who is in many ways the American doppleganger of Carsten Nicolai and 12k is the American version of his Raster-Noton collective. Both artists' labels specialize in positioning ultra-minimalist clicks and

Every once in a while something comes along that we KNOW we're gonna love, just from reading about it ahead of time. Here's a very good example, and now that we have heard it, we certainly DO love it. Heck, it pretty much had us with its subtitle - and also 'cause of the label it's on. From Jonny Trunk's ever reliable, nostalgic UK imprint specializing in all kinds of unusual vintage finds, comes this compilation of children's music - no, not music FOR children, but music BY children, made in British primary and secondary schools, as part of, well, classroom projects, between 1959 and 1981. All sourced from rare, mostly privately pressed vinyl (released by the schools themselves, for educational purposes or to commemorate an event), collected over the years by Trunk. The selections presented here encompass many, many sorts of the strange and the wonderful, brimming with youthful innocence and enthusiasm. There's lovely renditions of traditional folk songs, there's quaint classical pieces and instrumental improvisations, there's experimental stuff influenced by 20th century avant-garde composers like Stockhausen (via an enlightened teacher), there's an oddly amusing choral song about drunk driving, there's a cover of Art Garfunkel's "Bright Eyes" from the Watership Down soundtrack� Of the 25 tracks (19 on the vinyl), some of the standouts for sure are the creative efforts of a group/project called Sounds Of Silence, who contribute the track "Musique Concrete" among others, including the creepy "The Lyke-Wake Dirge". Also many of the folk/vocal numbers are quite gentle and quiet and lovely. Lots of charming tracks to treasure here, in other words. We imagine that Trunk had to sift through a lot of lesser material to find these gems. For sure for fans of the classic Langley Schools Music Project, as well those who liked a couple previous Trunk releases, namely Carl Orff & Gunild Keetman's Music For Children, and the album by Cults Percussion Ensemble. Naturally, the cd booklet and lp sleeve includes Trunk's informative liner notes and cover graphics from the original lps.

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Better act fast on this one, super limited, as in ONLY SEVENTY COPIES, and it's a pretty killer sampling of some of the best SF bands around, all exclusive tracks, from a bunch of our favorites, and a whole bunch of bands we'd never heard of before. Barn Owl, Lucky Dragons, Tussle, Pale Hoarse, Ascended Master, Snowblink, Drumz and so many more. Two discs, nearly 2 hours, of spaced out drone, groovy abstract rhythms, dark swilring ambience, woozy drum machine driven lo-fi pop, pounding low slung post rock, and lots of stops in between. All of the tracks were recorded live in the Fall of 2007, during Drew Bennett's collaborative Clouds Carved The Mountains Installation / Sound Series at the Triple Base Gallery, here in SF. Beaufiul hand assembled and hand silkscreened cover, with a printed insert, of the seventy copies we only got a handful, so grab one quick before they're gone...

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Something tells me that the Dutch experimental geniuses at Staalplaat wants this to be deemed an exotic album to be placed next to Martin Denny and Joe Meek. Well the first track - an odd big band arrangement of The KLF's "What Time Is Love" - may very well fit the bill, but the rest of the album features the Fluxus vocalizations of Jaap Blonk, the Icelandic minimalist weirdness from Stillupsteypa, the scraping noise of CoC Casper & Daniel Menche, and the digital bleeps of Pita & Mika Vainio (Mego / Sahko).

Do you like run away drum machines? Dubby echo? Danceable DIY '80s underground electronics? Homebrewed minimal electro pop? The Vox Populi! anthology we made a Record Of The Week last year? All the many cool synthwave reissues on Dark Entries? Then please give THIS your attention, you won't be sorry. The Color Tapes label - later known as Color Discs for the vinyl editions - was the cottage industry of UK art-rock synthesist Gary Ramon, who with the music documented on this collection, sort of comes across like a new wave doppleganger of Cleaners From Venus. And there actually was a split cassette release between Cleaners From Venus and Ramon's band Modern Art (who later morphed into psychrockers Sun Dial) from 1986 or so. Here was a prolific songwriter of coldly sequenced and somewhat quirky minimal wave albums, mostly all of which were released on cassette with a small audience that radiated outward from the coastal village of Waltham, England. He, along with a loose collective, recorded in a handful of interchangeable projects - Modern Art, Mystery Plane, and WeR7 being three with the largest discographies, each with at least a dozen albums recorded in a six to eight year period. The former two projects later warranted vinyl anthologies from Vinyl On Demand; and it seems that the interest in this material blossomed from there. Ramon and his cohorts were a talented bunch, following the rabbit-hole of darkly minded electronica. Think Factory, Sheffield, Industrial Records, Depeche Mode, Soft Cell, and all of those Wire side-projects and you'll be able to triangulate the sound of Color Tapes. There was a knack for the pop-hook and the death-disco backbeat present this material that makes all of this material age very well. The opening track to the comp is from Berserk In The Hayfields, with its clamorous electro-bongo fills girded to a taut techno pulse sounds very prescient of the Belgian EBM scene some five or six years later. Live Of Angels and The Lord were two non-Ramon projects and both peddled in weird-science blorp and effects-happy guitars above spry programming. But the strongest material is through the streamlined step sequences and deft rhythms that showcase Ramon's engineering prowess. The vinyl edition of this is almost all gone and out of print (we only have a few), but please note there are two bonus tracks on the cd not found on the wax.

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This is the third compilation from plunderphonic label Illegal Art. Where the first compilation ("Deconstructing Beck") featured artists using source material taken entirely from the music of Beck, and the second ("Extracted Celluloid") from film scores, this newest release takes radio and TV commercials to task. Maybe it's the nature of plunderphonia that makes the commercial such prime source material, or maybe it's that the artists on this disk just happened to be more succesful this time around, but this is far and away the best release from this label we've seen yet. Features tracks by Evolution Control Committee, Pimmon, Mr. Meridies, Big City Orchestra and much more.

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SORRY. Defining the Chain Reaction / Basic Channel sound to anyone not familiar with their specialized variant of techno is somewhat of a daunting task. Wholly self-referential. Intelligent in concept and execution, yet its functionality is located entirely within the physical. A perfection combination of Carl Craig's late-nite Detroit techno and Lee Perry production techniques of manipulation equalization and dubbing out tape hiss. With that said, an apt description has been offered unto us for the Chain Reaction sound: 'Heroin House.' Aside from that, this is a collection of some of the best singles to date from Scion, Erosion, Continuous Mode, Substance, Vainqueur, Pelon, Monolake, ridis, and Porter Rick's absolutely monolithic "Port of Transition".

You'd have to have been living under a rock for the last year to not know about Konono No1, but for those of you who have been, let's recap shall we? Konono No.1 formed over 20 years ago in Kinshasa (the capital of Zaire) and have been performing their own version of Bazombo trance music, incoporating into their sound, more out of necessity than any avant garde aspirations, home built amps and microphones, hand made instruments, all assembled from old car parts and batteries, pieces of wood and various found bits of scrap material. Performing in the city and thus forced to compete with the din of cars and people and city sound, they built their own PA and speaker system, making their sound much louder but also lending it a buzzing distorted sound that became as much a part of the music as the insturments themselves. The main instrument though, and the one which defines their sound, is an amplified likembe, a sort of thumb piano, which when run through the homemade pickups and ramshackle PA speakers buzz and distort and the melodies end up sounding like some strange sixties psych fuzz guitar. So those distorted melodies atop a wild festive bed of tribal percussion, hand drums, whistles, call and response vocals, it's like African highlife music but infused with all manner of, well like the title suggests BUZZ and RUMBLE. But it would be naive to think a band like Konono No.1 developed in a complete vacuum. And one would assume that the music scene in Kinshasa would at least in some ways be like any place else, with loads of bands, all playing together, swapping members, that sort of thing, and this record demonstrates that for sure. While Konono No.1 ended up being the worldwide ambassadors for the Kinshasa sound, they are most definitely just one of many groups creating an amazingly vibrant scene. In fact some of the groups on Congotronics 2 take some of our favorite parts of Konono's sound and take them even further! All of the bands on Congotronics 2 sound at least similar, employing the same basic song structure and same basic instrumentation. Cyclical repetitive rhythms, bells and hand drums locked in dense pulsing frameworks, loose but definitely the backbone of the music, the vocals are festive and wild, a single voice joined by a chorus. Each track is typically one part, maybe two, repeated and repeated with subtle variations, being as that it is an offspring of trance music, this hypnotic quality definitely defining all of these bands, a buzzing looped joyful noise, the sort of music that makes people want to dance and sway and move, eyes closed, getting lost in the mesmerizing repetition. All of the bands also seem to employ the electric likembe as well to different effect. Sobanza Mimanisia up the distortion, their thumb pianos practically growl, super percussive and blown-out, definitely the heaviest band of the bunch. Whereas the Kasai Allstars employ their likembes as a swirling delicate percussive background, not at all distorted, gentle, liliting and pretty, sounding the most like traditional high life music. The one way in which many of the bands differ from Konono is their use of guitars, the interplay between a distorted thumb piano and a distorted guitar can be beautifully dizzying. While all the bands are different, those differences are subtle enough that this could very well be a record by a single, albeit quite varied band, almost as if Konono No.1 decided to expand and explore a little for record number two. If you loved Congotronics, then this will for sure hit the spot, and actually the more we listen the more we think this might be even better than the first one. Konono No.1 have a SOUND, and that sound is amazing and beautiful and practically perfect, but they truly traffic in trance music, every song a subtle variation of the song before, almost like they have ONE hour long song that just happens to be split into parts, which we love, like most droning repetitive music, if there was a way to have each track last for six hours we would, but by the same token, one has to be in the right frame of mind to bliss out and trance out. So while this collection is still most definitely trancey, it's a bit more varied, with more instrumentation (one group even incorporates accordion!) and thus ends up being a bit more engaging, especially to the casual listener. And as if another disc of buzzing rumbling joyful trance music wasn't enough, there is also a DVD featuring live footage of 6 of the bands, including Konono (so for those of you who missed their recent visit to the US, here's your chance to see what you missed). Each band performs live, surrounded by throngs of families and children, often performing in houses, on street corners, people dancing, smiling, embracing, this is truly happy joyful music. And the footage is amazing, allowing us a glimpse not only of these amazing bands, their individually customized instrumentation, sardine cans, milk crates, springs, lengths of PVC pipe, hubcaps, film canisters, wooden boards, tin cans, thier costumed and face painted dancers, their dramatic introductions to performances, but also a look at the people, and the city, and the houses, and the streets of Kinshasa, and the culture that inspired such an amazing music.

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Sent to us by the fellas in Infidel Castro, this Dutch compilation features 3 new-to-us bands and two new tracks from the always impressive IC. Infidel Castro start things off with two tracks, the first, a spacious almost Melvins/Harvey Milk-ish sludge, with stretched out guitars and almost-pulled-apart beats, but with Mr. Roboto style vocals and lots of glitched out mayhem and high-end splatter, verging on new wave/electro at moments. The second is a weird and rumbling, claustrophobic soundscape, with chiming guitars and warm waves of sound, again augmented with some strange production glitchery. Next up are the Dead Husbands with a beeping, clicking sort of whimsical elctronica goofiness, kind of like an instrumental People Like Us. The oddly named Pidpi are also mostly electronic, but keep things a bit more serious, with fuzzed out rumbling drones, abrasive scraping, swarms of crunchy white noise, strange voices, and chopped up weirdness. And finally we have De Fabriek, who follow in the same sort of elctronic, chop and glitch, weird and almost goofy collages of hooting owls, ringing phones, throbbing pulses, scratching sandpaper rhythms, childrens voices, foreign cartoons, and squelchy synths, but finishing off with a super distorted, almost Laddio Bolocko style rhythmic jam. Pretty cool stuff.

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MPEG stream: Waiting For The Revolution
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Students Of Decay, the label run by Alex Cobb aka Taiga Remains, seems unable to do anything wrong. Pretty much every release so far has been amazing, discs from Ghosting, Flash Lights, Jade Emperor, David Kirby, Heavy Winged, and of course a bunch of Taiga Remains discs, including the breathtaking Ribbons Of Dust series. Creeping Dawn is another Students Of Decay series, one so limited, the first two volumes came and went without us even noticing. But we jumped on volume three, and grabbed as many copies as we could of the criminally limited pressing (50 COPIES!!). We got about a third of all the copies made, but these won't be around for long so don't dawdle or you'll be sorry. A killer combo for sure, this quadruple 3" cd-r boxset collects a handful of luminaries from the underground free noise cd-r scene and gives each of em a disc to do with as they will. And the results are as good as we would have hoped. The first disc teams up the Nether Dawn (aka PseudoArcana head honcho Antony Milton) with Little Skull, otherwise known as Dean Brown. The two incorporate guitars, violins, clarinets, tape loops, feedback and vocals into their slow abstract ambient crawl. Guitars drift like wisps of smoke, everything is slightly off kilter and warbly as if the tape machine was slightly busted, dreamy, indistinct melodies hover and drift away, very sun baked and druggy. Like Loren Mazzacan Connors recorded on an old 4-track after way too many bong hits. Gloriously laid back and spaced out. The second disc features legendary Kiwi noisemaker Clayton Noone, who does his thing as CJA. Here, he takes his guitar, and wraps it in a thick layer of crumbling distortion, and proceeds to unfurl a dreamily lugubrious minor key jam, repetitive and hypnotic, a strummy folk bathed in fuzzy ambience. For track two, the guitar is supercharged and allowed to sort of sprawl out, into a thick pulsing layer of downtuned chug, sprinkled with little bits of random mechanical whir and little fragments of melody. The final track is another ultra murky stripped down jam, the guitar almost lost completely beneath the roiling surface, melodies getting all twisted up and tangled in the thick shards of guitar grrr. The third disc features the group Pefkin, who we had never heard of before, but who fits perfectly in this set, with long drawn out wheezing drones, haunting minor key melodies, the opening track almost sounds like a Parisian cafe in the midst of some sort of sonic storm. Disc two adds some killer backwards melodies (we love anything backwards) and some percussive steel string buzz, the rest of the disc meanders from warbly drone to blissy abstract Appalachia and back again. We definitely need to hear more from these guys. Finally, wrapping things up, is the ubiquitous duo of Bjerga / Iverson, who weight in with an epic 20 minute soundscape of speaker rattling low end, buzzing electronic glitch, thick fuzzy stretches of rumbling drone and muted melody, all whipped up into a glacial crawl, but rife with under-the-surface activity, plenty of weird little stuttery squiggles, layers of sound shifting and shimmering, all submerged beneath a rich resonant low end thrum. Four discs, all of them kick ass, and all exclusive to this release. Gorgeously packaged, each disc in a mini 3" jewel case, with full color artwork, housed in a little white box, with cool abstract green artwork affixed to the top, inside is an insert, with the liner notes, each one hand numbered. And again.. LIMITED TO 50 COPIES!!!! These will be gone in no time so if you want one, act fast...

MPEG stream: A Dog's Hair Reverie
MPEG stream: Ich Lieb
MPEG stream: The Other Room
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French label Crier dans les Mus�es hits the ground running as it unleashes its first release, Cris et Chuchotements (in English, Cries and Whispers). On here, you can expect to find 14 tracks that range from hippie-psych freakouts to pure, brutal, fucked up noise chants. Although there are a few familiar names - White Rainbow, Valerio Cosi, and Aaron Martin among them - the comp offers a handful of less-known, more obscure artists. One of those projects is Enfer Boreal, the solo project of Crier dans les Mus�es! label owner Maxime Primault. Primault's space on the record is a faithful replication of the aesthetics of early industrial music, which means that if you like anything by SPK or Robert Rental you will be completely and totally pumped. Another notable presence is that of Ravi Padmanabha, whose music can be described as the bastard child of Hella and Sun Ra on both valium and acid. Still, the good ol' stand-bys on this record don't fail to deliver either. Valerio Cosi kicks things off with a Droney raga piece - "Music for Flying Carpets" - that could have been made any number of ways, with any number of pedals, but all we know is that it sounds perfect. This is like La Monte Young and Brian Eno sitting down and giving us a five minute snippet of some supra-celestial jam session, especially the Eno thing when you consider the title. Not too long ago we were jammin' that Aaron Martin and Machinefabriek collaboration. Well, Cris has just a little more Aaron Martin for you before his solo debut comes out, and this track convinces us that it will be worth the wait. Just imagine if Vangelis had been commissioned to write the Lone Wolf and Cub soundtrack with only a windchime and one synth. One of the greatest heights is when Black Forest/Black Sea invokes the spirit of the blackest Black metal with a piece that sounds like a room of PA speakers performing some pissed-off Satanic ritual. A solid release for a fledgling label, definitely recommended!

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From the same folks who brought us that amazing Invisible Pyramid six-cd compilation of the free/drone/folk/cdr/etc. underground, comes another dose of the same, this time "just" a double cd (but apparently the first in a series?). The international array of artists include: The Free Players, The North Sea, Western Automatic, Ilya Monosov and Preston Swirnoff, Andrea Belfi, Paper Wings (Antony Milton and Anthony Guerra), Northern Cross (Geoff Mullens and Kris Lapke), Brasil & The Gallowbrothers Band, Sunken (Antony Milton again, and Stephen "Pumice" Neville), Kawaguchi Masami's New Rock Syndicate and Oaxacan. Everything from ritualistic rumbling drone ceremony from New Zealand to lumbering distorto Tokyo psych rock! It's all sorta dark and dreamy, there's plenty of instrumental mellow droning bliss and pensive folk guitar picking, mysterious field recordings and electronic shimmer. You can pretty much trust that this would be gritty and gorgeous and evocative and everything you'd want a comp from these farflung, dusty corners of the "New Weird" to be. Immersion in the contents of these two discs ought to both relieve stress, and make you want to hear more from any and all of these folks...

MPEG stream: Albino Deer Transmissions
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A document of the SF experimental noise underground answer to Burning Man that took place this past August. Featuring Satosonic, Symplx and Planet-Size: Clit. Plenty of tangled wires, creative circuitry, and fire hazards.

How can you not love a drone compilation whose tagline is "A musical journey that transports the listener into glacial and unexplored lands where icebergs collide and where everything is frozen?" If you're anything like us (and we think that you are) then the answer is YOU CAN'T!!! Can't NOT love it that is. This limited cd-r compilation is the first release on the Glacial Movements label, an entirely appropriate monicker if you hadn't figured that out for yourself. Some of the names are familiar, Troum, Aidan Baker, some aren't, Tho-So-Aa, Lightwave, Tuu, but they all explore similar barren landscapes of sound, some are frosty and desolate, some are more warm and dark, but this comp is an isolationist drone freak dream come true. Closing The Eternity (who recently released a 7" on Drone Records) start things off with a brooding and buzzing expanse of glistening dark ambience crafted from vibraphone, icewater sounds (!) and hundreds of bells and chimes. Those bells and chimes drift across wide stretches of rumbling shimmer, very evocative of some frozen wasteland. Northaunt are up next with a piece for processed piano, a whirring soundscape of fuzz and hiss and shhhhhhhhhhh, very warm and dreamy, a lot like a more ambient M83, super soft and billowy but with a slightly ominous undercurrent. Tho-So Aa's track is so quiet, it almost sounds like a field recording of a walk through some abandoned city, distant sounds drift in and out of earshot, subtle shuffles and various found sounds surface, about halfway through the music overtakes the natural ambience, deep cavernous rumbles, a softly beeping sonar like tone, all wrapped in delay and echo, like walking through a seaside town thick with nighttime fog. Lightwave chime in with a mix of electronics and "atmospherics" which ends up sounding like a drifting exploration of some murky undersea world, muted and darkly sparkling. Tuu give us seven minutes of slow shifting minimalism, a single note/tone that seems to twist and squirm until it breaks apart into glistening shards of high end shimmer. Next up is AQ faves Troum, with a 12 minute drift through some lost land, a soundscape rife with all sorts of non musical sounds, creaks and groans, clatter and thump, super dark and menacing, a little bit reminiscent of Nurse With Wound's Salt Marie Celeste, a similar feeling of drifting lost across the sea. Up next is another AQ fave Aidan Baker (Nadja, Arc, etc.) whose track is maybe the dreamiest and warmest on the comp. His track almost should have been last as it sounds like the clouds parting, the sun finally breaking through, after a long and harrowing journey through darkness, a rich swirl of dreamy drones and softly shifting melodies. But it's right back into the pit with Netherworld, an ultra minimal soundscape constructed from field recordings, old gates (!), synths and samples. Like traveling through some mysterious cave, no light, only sound and touch to guide you, so pretty, but so haunting. Finally a long slow trudge to the end of the disc from Oophoi, a wash of rich rumbling synths, a lonely sorrowful sound, rife with darkness and isolation. A glacial expanse of frozen sound. Essential for the drone inclines among you as well as fans of all things dark and ambient.

MPEG stream: Crocker Land
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If there's one unifying theme or sonic characteristic present in all the music we love, even if it's not always obvious, it would surely have to be the 'drone'. Whether it's in lugubrious campfire crackle and hum, furious blasting black metal buzz, jagged fuzz and hiss drenched noisepop, skeletal slow motion low end ambience or motorik rhythmic hypno-rock, there is always the drone. Infusing each note with its pervasive sound, its palpable feel. A force as much as a sound. To be felt as much as heard. For us, the core, the heart of all music. The sound of the stars dying, the sound of planets being born, the sound of cells splitting, the sound of our bodies growing and decaying, the sound of life and especially death. Whether heard or felt, it is there, in, of and around all sound. Otherworldly and transcendent. Soothing and relaxing. But NOT easy listening. Not easy at all. The drone can be as bleak and foreboding as it is warm and soft, as moody and malefic as it is sweet and shimmery. Subtle for sure, but with a power and energy unlike any other sound in the universe. So it would of course make perfect sense that we would be completely obsessed with a label, created for the sole purpose of recording and releasing dronemusic. A label appropriately named Drone Records. Run by Stefan Knappe of the group Troum (and formerly of the group Maeor Tri), Drone Records is a vinyl only label focusing on, in the label's words, "atmospheric music that has a certain 'mind-challenging' character, thus supporting the sensibility of the human senses. DRONE RECORDS RELEASES MUSIC FOR THE RIGHT SIDE OF YOUR BRAIN... music for the unconscious, irrational mind, creating an emotional communication without language." We couldn't have said it better ourselves. For the last 15 plus years, Drone has been releasing ultra-limited vinyl only ep's each one hand designed and assembled by the artist, and each one a gorgeous slab of unique and individualistic drone music. This two disc set, released by our own Andee's tUMULt label, collects some of the best tracks from many of the earliest, long out of print 7"s and makes them available on cd for the first time ever. The artists featured include Maeror Tri, Alio Die, Dual, Ultra United, Delphium, Inade, Aube, Vance Orchestra, Osso Exotico, Klood, Vir, Reynols, Spear, Dronaement, Toy Bizarre, Tarkatak, Francisco Lopez, Kallabris, Yen Pox and Die Feinen Trinkers Bei Pinkels Daheim. Two discs, over two hours, a completely mesmerizing collection of droning drifting bliss. From barely there minimal ambience to thick clouds of whirring fuzz, to glistening expanses of ghost like melody. Essential for all drone lovers. And of course recommended for fans of Colelcough, Chalk, Aidan Baker, Tim Hecker, Fennesz, Tiermes, Noisegate, William Basinski, Philip Jeck, and the whole current crop of minimal cd-r soundmakers. While most of the music we love is in some way drone-y, these singles give us a chance to gaze upon the drone unadorned. Feel its warmth, its mystery, its sublime beauty. Like staring into the sun. Or into the void... One of the most potent and pervasive sounds in the world, in our lives, our bodies, in music, the industrial world and in nature. All hail the drone... Packaged in a gorgeous mini cd gatefold, with a fold out poster, liner notes on one side, reproductions of all the 7" covers on the other. So gorgeous!

MPEG stream: These Tears Will Cristallize
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MPEG stream: 10,000 Chickens' Symphony Part I
MPEG stream: The Names - Low Frequency Silence
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Dada is nearly 100 years old; yet the ideals of Dada which adamantly insisted on the negation of its own aesthetics and an espousal of transgressive irrationality still resonate with elements of contemporary culture. Due to the volatility of Dada and its resistance to grounding aesthetics, Dada has proven to be a very difficult movement to document; hence, the collection Dada et la Musique reads as a historical document that only sporadically taps into the agitation and provocation that Dada intended. There's no doubting the historical importance of Erik Satie in the development of 20th century composition; but Satie's playful and impressionistic piano works hardly engender the ideas of Dada. The same should be said for Authur Honegger and Francis Poulenc; yet all of these composers feature prominently on Dada et la Musique. After listening to Nurse With Wound, Luc Ferrari, R.H.Y. Yau, and Merzbow whose work may not be true Dada but comes closer to its lunacy, noise, abjection, and irrationality, we may be comparing apples and oranges. Yet the underlying question remains, are the musical entries on Dada et la Musique actually Dada? Probably not. Even the frenzied cacacophony of the semi-automated "Ballet Mechanique" by Georges Anthiel from 1917 engages a whimsy that could be mistaken for Carl Stalling's cartoon scores. So what makes this collection Dada is not really the music, but the sound poetry from Kurt Schwitters (e.g. the ever-baffling glossalia of Ursonate) certainly does qualify as Dada. There's plenty of sound poems from Raoul Haussmann, Richard Huelsenbeck, Jean Arp, Hugo Ball, and Tristan Tzara, many of which have conetmporary recitations and reinforce the fact that we need to learn French.

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Latest comp of genius dubstep and bass heavy grooves, and it's SO goddamn good, it's been hard to listen to anything else since we got this in. Avid readers of the aQ list no doubt know by now, how much we love dubstep, especially the harder, darker, bassier strains, which is precisely what you get here, two discs of some of the heaviest buzzing low end bass heavy jams of the last few years, the thread that connects them is not just a label, but a UK studio as well, where all these tracks were produced, before being released on various labels, and on various 12"s between 2004 and 2009. Folks already way into dubstep will probably see the artists included and be sold: Vex'd, Joker, Skream, 2562, Pinch, Loefah, Cyrus and a bunch more, but anyone who's been digging the recent series of Soul Jazz dubstep collections, or like us, is always on the lookout for some seriously dense and heavy buzzy dubstep bliss, well then, this is definitely gonna hit the spot. Both discs start off with killer jams from Vex'd, whose Cloud Seed record was our Record Of The Week a while back, and of course, these tracks rule just as hard, thick fuzzy bass, distorted synthy squelch, distorted toasting style vocals, lurching stuttery beats, the perfect way to kick off both discs for sure. Drop the needle anywhere though (yeah, we know, or the LASER or whatever), and you're bound to land on some seriously deliriously kick ass buzz and stutter, warble and crunch, Joker & Ginz's skwee-like "Purple City", Pinch & P Duddy's lumbering super blown out bass skitter anthem "War Dub", Circuit Breaker's super hypnotic low end pounding repeto-groove "Phonque", Joker's cinematic epic "Stuck In The System", with its moody string like melodies, and insanely thick bass warble and cool synth pulses, Cyrus's warbly Eastern tinged "Indian Stomp", October's super spare, dubbed out minimal "Euro Dance Hit" which is anything but, Loefah's clattery dubdronescape "System", not to mention a whole bunch of minimal Pole style digidub jams on disc 2. Absolute bass bliss, and divine dubstep dreaminess, although not so much dreamy as dark, but still, WAY WAY recommended. Definitely one of our new favorite electronica comps, dubstep or otherwise...

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Under the curatorial vision of Phil Mouldycliff, 13 artists embarked on a sound-art exhibition at the Bolton Museum, Art Gallery and Aquarium, whereby (to the best of our understanding) the artists were given access to the Museum's collections of natural artifacts to use within the installations and as sound making devices. In turn these installations (which also involved paintings, drawings, prints, sound, and sculptures fabricated by the exhibiting artists) became something of what Mouldycliff qualified as an "accumulation of fragments." The participating artists included Colin Potter, Loren Chasse, Keith Rowe, Max Eastley, Russell Mills, Julian Lees, Peter Oakley, Tom Phillips, Colin Fallows, Hugh Davies, Glenda Lees, Paul Mason, and Phil Mouldycliff. As none of us had the good fortune of experiencing the exhibition, we can only comment on the catalogue (which artfully presents the numerous ideas behind all of the contributing artists) and the accompanying CD which features a mix of material produced for the catalogue by Colin Potter of various sounds produced by Rowe, Chasse, Mouldycliff and himself. As the disc begins, it's apparent who is the creator of those first sounds: AQ-fav sound artist Loren Chasse as he presents a delicate crackling of natural tactility above a rarified drone of accumulated environmental ambience (i.e. surf and wind), very much sounding like those heard on his The Air In The Sand release. The ominous shadows and oceanic rumbles which Potter has employed so successfully in Nurse With Wound, Monos, and Ora act as the glue holding the entire composition together, with Keith Rowe's small yet growling machines and vibrating strings only occasionally emerging from the din. Mouldycliff's contributions are a little harder to pinpoint, as we're honestly not all that familiar with his work (sorry Phil!). The disc itself is a wonderful listen, and certainly continues along what Mouldycliff intends, as "pathways through the assembled clutter as if exploring a debris field on the bottom of the sea."

MPEG stream: Debris Field Pt 1
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Third in Ash's three-part series of international sound sculpture/drone/electronic comps, this installment features European artists like AQ-fave Panacea, Mego's Fennesz, Noto, Francisco Lopez, and more. Abstract techno rubs goatees with minimalist noise.

Thanks to Nick at Addicted To Noise www.addictedtonoise.com [http://www.addictedtonoise.com] for turning us on to this hilarious cd packaged in plain white cardboard box. Will Beck sue? Here are 13 artists such as the Evolution Control Committee, Corporal Blossom, and Steev Hise messing with the boy wonder. We do not know of any other stores that are carrying this yet, as it is mainly available at the Illegal Art website [http://detritus.net/illegalart]:

We were super excited by the sudden re-activation of the Shock label. Run by Stefan Jaworzyn (Skullflower, Ascension) and home to some of THEE most amazing industrial / power electronics / noise rock of the last several decades. Seriously, a list of releases on Shock reads like an aQ dream team: Skullflower, Ascension, the Dead C, Cul De Sac, Cosmonauts Hail Satan, Drunks With Guns, Coil, Current 93, Nurse With Wound, Ramleh, we could go on. Needless to say, the legacy of Shock looms large over pretty much all of the weird noisy heavy music we dig today. We recently reviewed the White Trash Motherfuckers comp, which was reissued recently along with two Ascension records and this comp right here, although we still think Jaworzyn just found a bunch of boxes of unsold cds from back in the day, out in his shed, but fuck it, either way, it's amazing to have these available again. For folks who may have missed out the first time, but also for a whole generation of music nerds who might not have even been around back in the day. Deep Funnels Of Entry collects some of the best tracks (from singles and comps) from some of our favorite bands on the Twisted Village label. And while sonically, Twisted Village tended more toward tripped out psych, there is definitely still a sonic connection between groups like Vermonster and Skullflower, who in their early days, would have been right at home on Twisted Village. So yeah, check out the lineup, folks already into Twisted Village will be drooling, and folks not familiar, well the band names alone should give you a clue: Vermonster, Bongloads Of Righteous Boo (best band name ever?), Luxurious Bags, Crystallized Movements, The Garbage And The Flowers, Wormdoom (second best band name ever?), Tono Bungay, Bimbo Shrineheads, and Brother JT appearing here as simply JT. A quick earful of Vermonster's "Black Crack Boogie" should give you an idea of what you're in for, endless heavy psych space jams, dirgey, loose, chaotic, freaked out and WASTED. Total next level zoner psychedelia of the highest order. Classic psych super charged and dosed on mescaline and PCP, and captured in endless basement jams. Each track here sounds like it was yanked from an hours long jam, these little snippets our glimpse into whatever drug fueled sonic bacchanalia produced all of this glorious psychedelic noise. Bongloads Of Righteous Boo deliver a similar track, that is until the INSANE vocals come in, a WTF falsetto, that has to be a joke? Or does it? BoRB are sort of a classic rock, melted down into something much more warped and woozy, the vocals, seemingly the only remnant, otherwise the sound seems bound for the heart of the sun, arriving there by way of lots and lots and LOTS of drugs. Luxurious Bags would later morph into more of a noisy pop band, and some of that is present here, but the lilting sad boy vocals, and indie jangle is buried beneath gouts of crumbling distortion, and blown out drum damage. Crystallized Moments fuse their heavy psych to a slowcore moodiness, sounding like a supercharged Low, before they explode into their own squall of dizzying psych damage. NZ noise poppers the Garbage And The Flowers are the most traditionally song oriented here, their sound buzzy and droney, but still darkly poppy, but fear not, it doesn't take long for Wormdoom to obliterate that poppiness, and explode in a frenzy of primal, primitive psych-noise bliss, with some of the most amazingly distorted crumbling guitar buzz EVER. Bimbo Shrineheads who we never heard outside of this comp are also on the poppy side, but darkly frenetic and post punky, enough that they don't even seem like that much of an outlier here. JT delivers some woozy freeform psychedelic drift, while Tono-Bungay is all hard rock by way of cosmic psych, churning and riffy, with some wild endless shredding. And after that, Luxurious Bags, Bongloads Of Righteous Boo, Crystallized Movements, Vermonster and The Garbage And The Flowers all get another go! But it hardly matters, by this point, your grey matter is all melted down into a prismatic puddle on the floor, your smoking headphones telling you this is essential damaged outsider psych, and you NEED it.

MPEG stream: Black Crack Boogie (Remix)
MPEG stream: Jimi (Remix)
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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.

A few months ago, we presented the debut quartet of releases from AQ-pal Drew(cifer) Webster's new record label Dielectric. Four stylishly packaged 12" vinyl eps from four diverse, mostly-unknown but excellent sonic architects. Now those four are back, together on this cd, each contributing four tracks apiece -- a total of ten new cuts along with one or two tracks per artist that already appeared on the eps. The disc starts of with Akta Ebtekar aka Sote, who prior to his Dielectric release had already gained some attention with a disc on Warp. Actually two of Sote's cuts are credited to Virgox, Ebtekar's collaboration with Safar Bake. Sote/Virgox produce crunching, stuttering beats and computer melodies -- it's like dance music constructed from the sampled sounds of a mad scientist's laboratory. Definitely in the vein of much Warp/Rephlex/Tigerbeat6/Ambush label material. Next up is wunderkind Carson Day, operating in an electonica realm not far from that of Sote, but more mysterious, mellow, and pretty -- less house, more home (with headphones). His broken beats, distorted melodies, and digital fuckery meet up with some hiphop flavor on the standout track "Get Hurt" which makes good use of a vocal sample repeating the title phrase. On the evidence of Carson's four cuts here (only one comes from his 12"), he's a match for the likes of Chris Clark, Matmos, and Lesser... The next four tracks are from Die Elektrischen, the man we know better as Drewcifer. Sure it's his record label, but his music dispels all ideas of a vanity production. It's good stuff. Like Sote and Carson, he brings the beats too, but is much more on the percussive-distorto-drone-extreme side of things. Crinkle, crackle, crumple. There's hints of Merzbow beneath the surface, yet this remains quite musical. Early Scorn meets Philip Jeck meets DJ Scud? Well deserving of his nifty black metal styled Die Elektrishen logo designed by Wrest of AQ black metal faves Leviathan. Last up is Karen Stackpole, perhaps the most left field entry of these four -- she's no laptop or turntable jockey. Her first track is entitled "Gong and Cello #2" which will give you an idea of the sound: percussion and string drone. We could throw around some descriptive catagories like experimental, Mills College, academic, 20th century avant garde, improv... or we can just say that her stuff is really, really nice. Creepy yet lovely. Basically, this a great comp, programmed perfectly -- Stackpole's tracks make for fine wind-down at the end after all the electronic/elektrik tracks. If you've already got the vinyl eps you need this too for all the new cuts. If you don't have the 12" records, get this, and if you like what you hear and you have a turntable, then you'll know what to do! We're definitely looking forward to hearing more from these artists -- are full lengths in the offing? -- and to future Dielectric discoveries as well. And we're definitely not saying all this just 'cause Drew's our friend, he'd be the first to tell you that'd be unlikely. Recommended!

MPEG stream: Get Hurt
MPEG stream: Kurenai
MPEG stream: Yummy
MPEG stream: Gong and Cello #2