[ aquarius records — Experimental ]

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Showing results 8251 through 8300 of 9280.

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"Diffuse" is a collection of work produced by the graduates from the Media Arts Department of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia, under the guidance of noted Australian electro-glitch composer Philip Samartzis. It seems that Samartzis has clearly taught his students about a number of contemporary electronic manifestations of sound, but has impressed the neccessity for space and silence for sound to breath and move. Thus, none of his students have presented the claustrophobic assaults of noise culture, rather these are nano-technological movements that bridge the Raster / Ikeda purity of digital sound and the Surreal drama of French musique concrete. Artists include Troy Allan, Thembi Soddell, Andie Reynolds, Bruce Mowson, Camilla Hannan, G_S, James Celil, Sianna Lee, Phillip Pietruschka, 24k, and Haima. Heard of any of 'em? Neither have I, but hopefully they'll put out more work soon.

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SORRY. So lovely, a disc apiece from international drone-meisters Paul Schutze, Pauline Oliveros & Randy Raine-Reusch, Thomas Koner, and Nijiumu (Keiji Haino).

Drone Records is dead! Long live Drone Records! After the release of their 100th single (by the impeccable Japanese minimalist Spiracle), Drone Records will no longer be releasing 7" singles; instead, they have decided on a new format of presenting extracts from the wide range of drone-based compositions, by way of an LP with four artists each presenting about the same amount of material as could be held on a 7". As was the case for the singles, this platform makes for a great introduction to artists who we had otherwise been unaware of. Volume 1 features the Spanish sound artist Ubeboet, the Finnish occult practitioners Halo Manash, Erik Jarl in a more contemplative mood than his power electronics in IRM, and the Swiss mesmerist B-Tong. Ubeboet's two tracks focus on orchestral source material, elongated and extended into an impressionist ambience dappled with violin trills, dilated drones of monastic chanting, and plenty of reverberant haze to go around, very much sounding like those beautiful Mirror records from about 10 years ago (e.g. Front Row Centre, Nights, etc.). Halo Manash takes up various gongs, temple bells, and Tibetan horns to the ritualist end of dark ambient incantation, recalling Coil's early masterpiece How To Destroy Angels and Lustmord's Heresy. Jarl's scabrous drones and ominous screeches were all sourced from a zither, although much of what he conjures is of noxious tonal harmonics and dissonant textures. In B-Tong's timestretched vocal drones and heavily processed echoings of water texture, we are reminded of the Hafler Trio's swarmed accumulation of voice gliding into the surrealist aqueousness of irr. app. (ext.). Limited to 500 copies!

You pretty much know what you're gonna get with a compilation called Drone-Mind on a label called Drone Records. The vinyl series is the continuation of what the label started back in the early '90s, when Drone Records released some of the choicest slabs of obscurant dronemuzik, post-industrial occultations, and deep-down dark ambient tracks. Maeror Tri (whose Stefan Knappe is the man in charge of Drone Records), Aidan Baker, Francisco Lopez, Small Cruel Party, Murmer, and Spiracle rank as some of the more well-known projects to have graced the Drone Records imprint, with lots more enigmatic projects to emerge from the sewers of Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, and the former Soviet republics. Although the first artist to grace this compilation comes all the way from that foreign land known as Los Angeles, with this track being from Yann Novak, whose hauntological track is a deft recapitulation of the psychological ambient pieces by Clock DVA, crafted entirely from run-out grooves on pieces of vinyl. The drone diptych from the Slovakian outfit Strom Noir belies their name with a radiant, shimmering, graceful piece of golden ambience that aligns itself more with those cinematic, open-space constructs by Stars Of The Lid. Very lovely. Emme Ya -- a South American project with some connections to Cold Spring -- turns the album's mood definitely toward the darkside with a gloomy set of rumblings, disembodied voices, and catacomb echo. Playing the part of the contrarian is Karl Bosmann, a German sound-sculptor who has wowed us in the past with inventive electronics and uncompromising experiments. His atonal, radiophonic swells build up to a dramatic crescendo that snaps to some strange vocal incantation only to break into a gnarled, overblown rhythmic churn for the final four minutes of his 13 minute excursion that wouldn't be out of place next to Le Syndicat or Esplendor Geometrico. Pretty fucking rad stuff from all four artists!

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The Drone-Mind series continues into its third iteration, following the 100 seven-inch singles that the suitably named Drone Records began releasing some twenty years ago. Instead of the seven-inch format, it's now a full length lp on which Drone Records brings together four different artists who dedicate their craft to "drones of the world and drones of the mind." Given that Drone Records is embarking on these compilations annually, the Drone-Mind series could very turn into the underground equivalent to Kompakt's Pop Ambient series, albeit with teeth ripping through the drones, as a small showcase for this particular aesthetic of dour dronescaping and industrial meditation. The third volume is perhaps the most consistent and cohesive in the series so far, recalling actually much of the classic Drone Records singles from way back when, especially those brilliantly dark ambient, sound-sculpted vignettes produced by Maeror Tri, Kallabris, Yen Pox, Joe Colley, Inade, and Small Cruel Party. The first track comes courtesy of aQ's own Jim Haynes, who laces power-drones from a small arsenal of miniature turbines and tone generators that grind to a crumbling halt in the shadows of his menacing field recordings of those WWII era bunkers that dot the Northern California landscape before exploding with a very tactile, gravel tumbling bout of rough noise. The Muscovite sonic seance artist Exit In Grey continues to impress us with his looming atmospheric drones that channel the thrumming of all of the mosquitos from the Russian tundra in summertime into a darkly rich chorale fraught with a moody torpor and languid, subtle melodic phrases. Expansive cosmological metaphors pour from the churning cauldron of bleak, tempestuous ambience by Kshatriy, another great example of postindustrial sound art coming out of Russia these days. It's been quite a while since we've heard from Maninkari, a project of French twins who recorded a couple of great albums on Conspiracy around 2007/2008. Their two tracks venture down a twilight ritualized path of tribal rhythms and hurdy-gurdy harmonics on one hand and a spellbinding, post-classical miasma of stringed instruments on the other. Totally fantastic work all around!

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The idea behind this series through Tranquility Tapes is simple enough: present collaborative works from the far reaches of the cassette underworld of synthwranglers. For the most part, the resulting sounds are grimy, crystal-powered oceanic washes of deep listening synth churnings cast through the necessary filter of stoned tape hiss, slumped meanderings, and low-wattage recording techniques; and for the most part, all of these projects seem wholly obscure. There's no information other than a name like Cream Juice, Dozens, or Roped Off to go on; and cursory searches don't provide any clues whatsoever, although many of the projects have some affiliation in some way shape or form with the cassette imprint Orange Milk, which as of the posting of this review is as enigmatic as most everything on this tape. The one thing we do know about is Coyote Image Revisited, which is the collaboration of Rachel and Grant Evans of Hooker Vision fame and their numerous solo projects (Rachel's Motion Sickness Of Time Travel being the most well known), and who deliver a piano and tape fragment collage akin to any number of William Basinski's loop mantras. Other highlights include the tape-loop hypnosis of gong vibrations and Zoviet-France like tricks from Perspectives, the wheezing minimalism of Urkas and the weirdo radiophonic blorping from Cream Juice. Pro-duplicated edition of 150 copies on a 60 minute tape.

Ok, so far this Relapse series has visited Brazil, Poland, Japan, the Czech Republic, and Sweden, and all of those comps were pretty great, solid purchases for any grind/death metal fan looking to do some armchair travel. So why make single out this Dutch entry as a highlight? Well we think that at least two of the four bands on here take extreme metal to extremes that maybe would appeal to not necessarily just metal fans. If you're the sort of AQ customer who revels in fucked up sonic fuckery, who digs silly weird noisy music of any variety, you should check this out. A band called Suppository start things off in righteous grindcore mode, blasting through ten tracks at a zillion kilometers per hour, pausing only occasionally for a humorous audio sample as per grindcore standard operating procedure. Good stuff. Then, Eindhoven's Last Days of Humanity take over with nine tracks of even faster and nastier grind, with titles like "Decrepitated Regurgitation In Foetal Leprosy". Wow, that's morbid and gross sounding, yes, but does it even make sense? Lyrics aside, what's really notable about this band are the amazing vocals. This singer may in fact have the most extreme, low-end, belching, vomitous voice we've ever heard. Incredible and inhuman, a rumbling drone instrument unto itself. And the band's music is as shreddingly-distorted to match. But then, when you think *that* was some crazy grind, comes band number three, S.M.E.S., who are all about silly drum-machine dance beats, and super grunty vocals. Vocals that I'd say are even more bowel-scraping that those of Last Days of Humanity, but it turns out it's the same guy. Apparently S.M.E.S. is the solo project of Last Days singer Erwin. S.M.E.S. sorta sounds like an electronic polka mixed with a Chris Watson field recording (lion, rhinoceros, and birds perhaps). A grind rave safari? Erwin must be taking the piss, but regardless these five totally cracked tracks are pretty freaking great. Batting clean-up, Inhume can't hope to compete with that sort of ridiculousness, so they just stick to providing four straight-forward tracks of killer grind. RRRRrrrrrrrragh!! So, Holland makes a strong showing here. If you're only gonna get one foreign four-way split grind comp this year, Dutch Assault maybe oughta be it!

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Compiled in part by Rob Young, editor for the exemplary UK magazine The Wire, "Early Modulations" tracks the historical birthing of electronics within the academic framework of European and American institutions. The scope of the compilation is not so much an analysis of the importance of these pieces but a celebration of contemporary electronica by looking to its past. And if you can handle the K-Tel musk of the project, this makes a pretty cool primer. Founders of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in the late 1940s, Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky found within the tape machine a means by which to scramble the structuralist codes of musical notation. Their 1953 piece "Incantation" processes multiple tape machines in which flutes, pianos, and gongs flicker in metaphorphic sonic swells. Similar experiments were made in France by Pierre Schaeffer, the inventor of musique concrete. His featured piece "�tude aux Chemins de Fer" (1948) stitches together tiny fragments of tape, collaging repeated signatures of chugging locomotives stopped in mid-stride by a variety of whistles, offering a new experiential sonic landscape of the familiar. The earliest and perhaps most breathtaking piece on the compilation is John Cage's "Imaginary Landscape No. 1" (1939). Pure tones bleep and modulate against an a prepared piano, whose internal organs are exposed and prodded to coax a secondary palette from the piano. While Iannis Xenakis, Morton Subotnik, and Luc Ferrari are also documented, the one glaring omission is Karlheinz Stockhausen (strange, 'cause he's so prominent in the historical parts of the "Modulations" film).

The presence of Edward Ka-Spel and Silverman will undoubtably cause the tiny pressing of this compilation to sell-out to the legions of Legendary Pink Dots fans. But even without them, "Electrically Induced Vibrations" makes for a pretty good listen, populated with an LPD-like aesthetic of dark grandeur, conceptually minded artfulness, idiosyncratic production, and arcane mythologies. Along with Ka-Spel and Silverman, there's Cylobe (featuring ex-Coil members Stephen Thrower and Steve Norris offering an abstraction of glitched electronics with downwardly spirally clarinet bleetings), Colin Potter (Ora and Nurse With Wound collaborator doing quiet dronework), Omit (AQ's favorite NZ misanthrope producing a restrained version of wooden loops and synthetic washes), and Mistress of Strands (mixing vibrato electronics with lifting female vocalizations that sounds very Projekt records), as well as Steve Thomsen, Arkkon, and Fibrillation. Anomalous pressed up a mere 428 copies of this album, so be quick. Housed in a nicely silkscreened Siwa cover.

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One of two new Medical Records releases on this week's New Arrivals list, this one the first ever Medical compilation, gathering up a collection of extremely rare singles in conjunction with the like minded Crispy Nuggets blog. Electroconvulsive Therapy gathers up five rare singles, both the A and B sides and tacks on two super obscure compilation tracks. Fans of Medical Records will no doubt be thrilled by these obscure gems, and like most Medical releases, we can safely say we'd never heard, or even heard OF any of these. Up first is The Electronic Circus, who hail from the UK and feature Chris Payne, who played on Gary Numan's Pleasure Principle. The sound here is much more synth poppy though, female vocals and swirling synths over pulsating rhythms and pulsing percussion, the B side though is much more strange, at least contextually, just stately solo piano, wreathed in reverb, and laced with subtle synthiness. Up next is Psychic Youth, from Boston, both sides of their only single, originally released in 1982, the sound is more cold wave, frosty female vocals over minimal synthwave, the B side featuring male vocals, but otherwise sonically similar, arpeggiated step sequenced synths and stripped down programmed rhythms. Then there's another UK band, this one going by the strange moniker Aaaah...!, their sound classic eighties synth pop, moody and minor key, with dramatic crooned vocals, the B side warped and woozy and squelchy, and definitely the more twisted of the two. Then there's Shazam, another obscurity, whose A side sounds a bit like Depeche Mode via Men Without Hats, swirling synths, and skittery programed rhythms, and a main melody that sounds lifted straight from another classic song you'll no doubt recognize, the B side more stripped down and spacey. Finally, the last complete single is from Claude Arto, he of another outfit recently reissued by Medical, Mathematiques Modernes, the A side another purloined classic melody, here wreathed in bleeps and bloops and squelchy synths, while the B side is all crunchy distorted synths and tangled melodies. The comp tracks come from N.A. Pop 2000, whose song is a moody slab of dark electro pop, complete with some really cool, weird female vocals, dramatic and affected, and Berliner Strasse from Yugoslavia, who adds some guitar jangle to woozy, bloop, bleep synths and some super icy, male vox, the whole thing fantastically woozy and warped. Fantastic stuff for sure. Medical Records obsessives will definitely want, as will anyone into rare synth pop and vintage cold / new / synth wave weirdness. Super deluxe packaging as always, the vinyl pressed on 180 gram paint splatter transparent green vinyl, housed in a heavy, full color jacket, and like most things on Medical, very, very limited!

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We hadn't heard of DIEM before, but the title - and the cover art of a couple dozen VU meters in action - whet our curiosity. Turned out to be an awesome collection, of just what it says, a curated selection of electronic music produced at the Danish Institute Of Electronic Music (originally the Danish Institute Of Electroacoustic Music), since its founding in 1987: everything from conceptual, computer processed droneworks to the skittery scribble scrobble of abstract IDM beatscapes. Some pieces hold to a more traditional, academic 'musique concrete' aesthetic; others venture into ambient, 'lower case' laptop electronica realms. Both old and new stuff flow together well (the tracks are arranged in alternating chronological order, going both forwards and backwards, so you get a piece from 1988 followed by one from 2012, then one from 1989, 2011, etc.), and all are pretty great, seeing as how they were able to chose some of the best from 25 years worth of avant-garde output. Almost all tracks are exclusive to this box, which is enjoyable for what it contains, while also serving as a sampler of sorts to the works of a host of hitherto unknown to us electronic musicians that we now may have to track down other releases by. We hadn't previously heard of most of these artists, though many are presumably well-known in academic circles and/or in the European electronic music scene - some in fact being award-winners in Scandinavia. $11.98 is certainly a "nice price" (perhaps subsidized by the Danish government?) for this, considering what you get - two cds in cardstock sleeves accompanied by a thick 30 page booklet, stuffed inside a hinged-lid cardboard box, a handsome little package indeed. The booklet contains several in-depth essays detailing the Institute's history, providing an account of all the (at the time) state-of-the-art recording equipment and computer music-making gear and software they acquired and discarded over the years, while pointing out the irony of how the rise of home PC recording rendered obsolete not only a lot of their studio's expensive machinery but also affected an aesthetic change in electronic music, where glitch and noise were to be valued rather than technologically scrubbed away. Many pages of the booklet are further devoted to providing information about each individual track and composer found on the discs. And there's photos too, some good retro gear porn for anyone into that sort of thing (you'll see the Otari MTR-90 24-track analog tape machine that was DIEM's pride and joy in 1987, and from where those VU meters on the cover come; and we're especially we're partial to the photo of the Macintosh Plus computer, circa 1988, hooked up to an Emulator SP-12 drum machine and Emulator II sampler). Rather than provide a list of unfamiliar names, we'll just mention a few favorites amongst the 20 tracks here. There's the constant-pitch drone of "Tunnel Vision" (1995) by DIEM director Wayne Siegel, the percussive onslaught and processed sound collage of Rasmus Lunding's "On Learning How To Kill" (2002), the playful mad scientist bleep and bloop mixed with sampled chamber strings of Fuzzy's "Electric Gardens And Their Surroundings" (1989), the amazing vocal experiments (from inhuman gutturals, to Yoko Ono or Bjork like babble) of Line Tjornhoj-Thomesen on her 13+ minute "Lauria" (1998), Puzzleweasel & Richard Devines's quite IDM-ish "Mad Bonce" (2008), the blissfully-blown-out whoosh of Vectral's "AC-3" (2007), the piercing, dramatic drones of Anker Fjeld Simonsen's "Octav III" (1988), the noisy/melodic mashup of Hans Hansen's "Passaics Monumenter" (1998) - and we could go on. Well worth picking up!

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SORRY. New Michigan based label with a strange name, and stranger music on this compilation--noise, electronic, & experimental sounds from some obscure and more-than-obsure artists (Crawl Unit, Rampoon, Tabata of Zeni Geva with Tatsuya Yoshida of Ruins, Totemplow and Brume being among the better-known). An excellent collection that causes us to look forward to more from this label (such as an upcoming Tabata solo disc).

No way around it, this is an amazing comp, culled from limited the singles Trensmat released over the last three years, just check out the lineup: Circle, White Hills, Telescopes, Bardo Pond, Cave, Heavy Winged, Astral Social Club, The Shining Path, Area C, Cheval Sombre, Mugstar, and Magnetize, probably couldn't assemble a more bad ass, or more aQ sounding comp if we tried! But, the bummer is, that this collects only ONE song from each single, which while keeping the 7"s special, and relevant, it is sort of a bummer, might have opted for a double disc with ALL the songs, plus a few of these tracks are taken from the series Trensmat did of bands covering Hawkwind, complete with killer Hawkwind style cover art, seems weird to pluck one or two at random, when that series was begging for a proper cd release with ALL the covers, but really, small complaints, once you dig into this comp, and niggling doubts will be quickly washed way by all the amazing tripped out sonics contained within. Some highlights include: The Telescopes deliver a droning, buzzing raga-like dreamscape, flitting bird-like flutes that swirl and float over a blackened drift of guitar rumble and pulled apart riffs, until the drums kick in, and then it's like you've been launched into space, a full on drug drenched, FX heavy psychedelic space rock jam, with a thick bassy organ groove, wild flutes and effects EVERYWHERE. Dirge-y and groovy and dreamlike. White Hills ditch much of their usual spaceiness for something a bit harder, and tackle Hawkwind's "Be Yourself" with crunchy chugging guitars, pounding drums, wild tangles of distortion drenched leads over the top, the band not so much covering the original, as transforming it into an endless psychedelic hard rock loop, the band churning and grinding out a steady stream of psychedelia over that endless main riff, before drifting off into a cloud of glittering soft psych shimmer. Mugstar's track is a super synth heavy, weird sort of post punk noise rock, almost kind of mathy, a bit like a supercharged, way more metallic Stereolab, which intensifies until it explodes into wild psychedelic squalls of acid fried synths and freaked out guitarnoise. Circle's track finds them at their most stripped down, the drums and guitars locked into a constant loop, the bass following right along, so mesmerizing and seemingly endless, the vocals a barely there whisper, while off in the distance lurk all manner of random clatter and mysterious percussive events. Right in the middle there's an awesome stumbling atonal guitar 'solo' before the band slips right back into that same groove. Bardo Pond add female vocals to their take on Hawkwind's "Lord Of Light", the vocals drifting ethereally, over a roiling black cloud of FX drenched guitars and some seriously pounding drums, even a bit of flute (we think), and maybe more than any of the others managing to meld the sound of the original with their own, plenty of wah wah guitar, loads of effects, most of the track spent drifting through space, cloaked in blown out super distorted psych guitar and shimmering outer space ambience. Surprisingly heavy and totally blissed out. Cave contribute "Machines & Muscles" with its Circle-like guitar groove, some hand drums, very tribal and looped sounding, suspended in a field of space streakings and smears of soft effects in the background, the drums get a little more obtuse, a bit busier, but that main riff stays LOCKED in, until it begins to get ALL tripped out, distorted, effects drenched, swinging from speaker to speaker, dizzyingly tripped out, and then finally, the drums kick in proper, and we're in total hynorock bliss, little bits of keyboard pepper, the stuttery rhythm, the main riff staying solid and unwavering, while all around it various other sounds swoop and shimmer. Astral Social Club surprised us with their jam, total minimal house music, sort of. The main beat a stripped down pulse and squelch, with synthy basslines, and some haunting disembodied piano drifting over the top, making for a truly creepy mash up. Maybe one of our favorite Astral tracks ever! The Shining Path's contribution is seriously rocking, the drums and bass locked into a motorik groove, while the guitar, super distorted and blown out, spits out riffs in sudden bursts, eventually coalescing into one constant stream of psychfuzz, pelted by fragments of super effected vocals, strange little squalls of FX, and then the bass gets all dubbed out, bouncing back and forth beneath the buzz and fuzz. We could go on, but why bother, this collection is pretty fucking kick ass, here's hoping they decide to do a second volume that gathers up the rest of those 7"s tracks, but hell, for now, this is definitely hitting the spot.

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Beautiful compilation of minimal / ambient / drone music. Exclusive tracks from AQ faves Troum, Dual, Ultrasound as well as tracks by a bunch of unknown-to-us-until-now artists including Moljebka Pvlse, Srmeixner, Cats Of Tel Aviv and Ure Thrall. Beautiful and serene, shimmery and dreamy. Fans of Hudak, Basinski, Coleclough, Troum and the like should definitely pick this up.

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From those same sonic jokers who brought us "Deconstructing Beck" comes this latest copyright infringement: manipulated snippets of movies (including "Titanic", "Wizard of Oz", "Gone with the Wind", and lots more). The concept is hilarious, but what makes the record really successful is the carefully constructed experimental music, some of it melodic, some intense, some way out there. It's simply LOVELY to listen to, especially the first track: an almost unrecognizable version of the Celine Dion "Titanic" tune that REALLY sounds like someone drowning. Worth the price of the disc for this piece alone!

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SORRY. This is the second volume of extreme music on the Susan Lawly label, brought to us by William Bennett of Whitehouse infamy. Volume one focused on Japan, and featured all the obvious noise artists, which made sense since Whitehouse and Trevor Brown (Whitehouse's favorite cover artist, who on this release contributes some possibly problematic paintings of African women) seem to relate more to the Japanese, both culturally and musically (in fact Trevor Brown lives in Japan). Volume two isn't so obvious. No artist names are instantly recognizable. Which is maybe why initially we thought this had to be a fraud (but then, some of us think everything could be a fraud, the Conet Project, the Steps....). It's too perfect. All the bands combine what sounds like genuine African tribal music with Whitehouse style noise. What are the odds? But it could just be, that since Bennett was doing the collecting, it just so happened that he was moved by the music he loves the most, his own. Regardless, this collection is amazing. And much more listenable than volume one. Chanting and hand drums are buried in washes of hiss and white noise. Merzbow style blasts of crunchy feedback dissolve into tribal rhythms and explode again into shards of jagged buzz. Intense and aggressive and totally great.

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The first "extreme music" compilation from Susan Lawly, released in 1994. Along with collections like Come Again II (Vanilla / Furnace) and World Record (Alchemy), Extreme Music From Japan is an indispensible document of noise and power electronics from the

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SORRY.

Volume Three in Susan Lawly's (William Bennett of Whitehouse's label) extreme music series is sort of a surprise in a couple different ways. First, is the fact that it's all women, which is interesting because of the supposed misogyny of Whitehouse and

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We can't remember the last time a compilation so captivated everybody here, but this collection is really something else. A gorgeously compiled cd-r of tracks sourced from Japanese lps circa the years 1980-1986, featuring at least a few names we'd heard, like Yellow Magic Orchestra, Ryuchi Sakamoto, Inoyamo Land, but so so many we hadn't: Mkwaju Ensemble, Yasuaki Shimizu, Seigen Ono, Masahide Sakuma, Geinoh Yamashirogumi, Danceries, Dip In the Pool, we could go on, but we're guessing these are all new to you too. It's a single 74 minute continuous mix, that slips dreamily from synth and percussion minimalism, to mysterious electronic laced rhythms, from new agey krautrock to dreamy clouds of percussive melodies, from playful childlike toy piano melodies to synthy sci-fi drones, haunting electronic flecked Asian ballads to fluttery flute folk, from mesmerizing vibraphone melodies underpinned by haunting drones to loping jazzy almost prog, from hazy washed out kosmische electronics to lush layered chorales and on and on and on. The tracks are so perfectly combined, and so seamlessly mixed, it almost sounds like it could be the coolest, weirdest record ever by some impossibly brilliant single artist, who somehow crafted one epic sprawling sonic exploration, a series of sounds that manage to be at once warm and familiar, yet also strange and mysterious, strange looped birdsong lays atop distant choir like vocals, and a strangely mechanical rhythm peppered with strange symphonic bursts melts into soaring strings, chamber music devolves into some fantastically dada-ish assemblage of voices and sound effects, thick sitar like buzz underpins deep foghorn like melodies, the vibe strangely melancholic, deep, dense new age swirls hover above a super minimal dripping faucet rhythm, warm, muted melodies unfurl over distant bells and deep reverberating tones, vibraphone melodies are layered atop a groovy, almost jazzy rhythm, and a mournful brass melody before gradually disappearing in a washed out woozy sonic haze So fantastic, and so cheap too! Besides being just about the best mix/comp/collection we've heard in forever, odds are it'll have you trying to track down records by all the artists, which is always the sign of a good mix. The entire list of artists (some with more than one track): Yellow Magic Orchestra, Haruomi Hosono, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Mkwaju Ensemble, Mariah, Yasuaki Shimizu, Mkwaju Ensemble, Seigen Ono, Masahide Sakuma, Geinoh Yamashirogumi, Yasuaki Shimizu, Danceries, Yukihio Takahoshi, Dip in the Pool, YMO. So great! And so utterly and unequivocally and whole heartedly RECOMMENDED!! LIMITED TO JUST 100 COPIES. Each one hand numbered. Packaged with full color covers in plastic mini dvd-style sleeves. And nicely priced! We're one of only two places in the whole world where you can get these, and we're guessing they're gonna go fast, so grab one quick before they're gone.

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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. Fals.ch is Viennese label Mego's MP3 only online sublabel run by Florian Hecker and Oswald Berthold. This cute little 3"cd-rom contains hours of abraisive noise, subtle drones and clinical cuts from the best of the first twentyfour releases thus far. As this is a cd-rom, it will not be compatible with most consumer electronics, and is best experienced through a personal computer with an MP3 player (software is not included here) so as to view the accompanying notes and art provided in each artists' folders. Featuring the usual Mego and OR Records suspects: Pita, Karkowski, Haswell (with Masami Akita as Satans Tornade), Shirt Trax, Voice Crack, Pimmon, Oval, CD Slopper, Kim Cascone, Massimo, Christoph De Babalon, et al.

The second compilation of the Mego affiliated online audio/visual community Fals.ch. Compiled by Fals.ch heads Florian Hecker and Oswald Berthold, FB50 collects audio works by artists featured in the last 24 online "releases": Koji Asano, COH, cd_slopper, poire_z, Atau Tanaka, Ulf Bilting & Zbigniew Karkowski, *0, Pain Jerk, Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock, Martin Ng & Jim Denley, Frank Metzger and more! Also exclusive tracks by Mego artists General Magic, gcttcatt, Evol, J.O.K.E. and i.d. There are also a few multimedia goodies included in addition to MP3s: a Merzbow A/V loop, an excerpt of a Francisco Lopez performance and a cryptic file courtesy those Gescom pranksters. In fact, the Gescom file is an incredibly hilarious standalone application that makes your computer seem like it's being hijacked by glitch terrorists! Trick your friends and coworkers into believing your hard disk is being trashed right before your eyes! Fun as shit!

If you or someone you know has a penchant for percussion, holy smokes, have we got just the cd for you or him or her! Moe! Staiano (of Moe!kestra, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and formerly Idiot Flesh) brought these in for our drum delight. It's a double cd compilation containing 36 tracks by more dextrous drummers than you can shake a (drum)stick at! The second disc is particularly notable as it includes the stellar likes of William Winant (whose performed with John Zorn, Sonic Youth, Kronos String Quartet, Secret Chiefs 3, Mr. Bungle, Oingo Boingo to name just a few), Trey Spruance (of Asva, Secret Chiefs 3, Faxed Head, Mr. Bungle, etc), Ches Smith (Secret Chiefs 3, Trevor Dunn's Trio-Convulsant, 7 Year Rabbit Cycle among others), Karen Stackpole and Mr. Staiano himself. Released by Fever Pitch Music (which is also the label of DJ Jester and which is also a magazine from Wisconsin).

MPEG stream: Rain, Followed By Shadows
MPEG stream: Feather Dance Of The Deathless Lord

Most AQ regulars are well aware of the abundance of wonderful releases matched with thoughtful and pleasing packaging that have come out on Table Of The Elements over the last 13 years. This double cd compilation is not merely a label sampler, as many of the tracks included were previously unreleased. Not such a big deal for most comps but when you are talking about unreleased tracks by Rhys Chatham, Tony Conrad, Arnold Dreyblatt and Zeena Parkins, there is most definitely a reason to rejoice. You can always really judge how well a label understands the music it puts out when they release compilations. Because anyone can just throw a bunch of tracks together and say "hey look at all these cool people we've released record by" and pat themselves on the back. But when you listen to this comp the pacing and sequence on the first disc is perfectly thought out, while the second disc shows how the label has always given home to long adventurous pieces as it's dedicated to a disc long excerpt of Leif Inge's "9 Beet Stretch" Beethoven's 9th Symphony stretched to 24 hours with no pitch distortions. A field guide worth exploring for sure!

MPEG stream: Inducting Lilly
MPEG stream: 100 Guitars
MPEG stream: 9 Beet Stretch (excerpt)

We know Lucky Kitchen as a kind of home-brew electronica label that's fascinated with things like childhood recordings, videogames, and other everyday sounds. This compilation is a sort of remix of their first ever release, featuring as participants the likes of Lucky Kitchen masterminds Alejandra and Underwood ("known for dynamic electronics and humorous anthropological explorations"), Pimmon, Sachiko M, To Rococo Rot, Jansky Noise, Matmos, and Hrvatski, among others. The idea? For these electronic artists to essentially do "cover versions" of field recordings! Interesting...

Crawlspace has been releasing very limited lathe cuts (from Peter King's famous press on the South Island) of "peripheral New Zealand music" for some time now. Collaborating with Drunken Fish, Crawlspace has collected the best tracks of sloppy free noise (Crude, Witcyst), atonal free jazz (Children's Television Workshop, Casagrante Apparatus), and droning din-scapes (Parmentier, Aesthetics).

Volume two in Crawlspace's compilation of New Zealand noisemakers. Just like volume one, the tracks here are culled from Crawlspace's Artist Series, which are all unique eight inch polycarbonate (as opposed to conventional vinyl) records individually handpressed at King Records in New Zealand. All original editions are long gone, but selections from series two are available

What first caught our attention about this international compilation of "space rock" bands was the presence of both utter AQ-faves Circle and equally fantastic (and Finnish) Circle-variant Ektroverde! Those band's tracks (both over nine minutes each, bookending

We've had this compilation on cd a few different times before but never on lp. As you may recall it went out of print, but then a few more were discovered a while back. Now it's available once again, only now on the long playing phonograph record format (we're still hoping that they'll work their way back to a 78 box set on this one.) The collection itself is a document of the music (and

Foglands is the follow up to the gorgeous and very well received compilation The Threshold Of Silence reviewed a while back, which featured a bunch of AQ faves: Aidan Baker, Troum, Paul Bradley and a bunch of others. A gorgeous collection of minimal dronemusick running the gamut from ominous Lustmordian darkness to glistening dreamlike ambience. Foglands is sonically similar, but features a lineup of groups for the most part unknown to us. Thankfully, all the bands involved are mining the same mysterious sonic soundworlds as our favorite soundmakers and dronelords. There's the slightly ominous, almost new wave blisss out of Seren Ffordd's "Haze", the rich lustrous whir and cavernous shimmer of Darkened Soul's "Visu", Mathias Grassow offers up a sprawling expanse of hazy glimmering soft focus hum in the form of "Deeper Purity", Netherworld's "Frostnetter" is an reverb drenched percussive soundscape, Eastern tinged and rife with bits of feedback, and strange clanks and clangs, dreamSTATE deliver "Fogbound", a lengthy dreamy drift of soaring cinematic strings and soft swirling swells, Oophoi's "Outremer" is a super abstract, stark soundscape of whirring winds and almost static stretches of slow shifting hushed blur, and finally Thomas Weiss closes the proceedings with "Isolation", an appropriately isolationist sprawl of whispered melodies, deep throbbing low end, and gently swaying bits of chordal glimmer. Fans of all things drone and ambient and dark ambient and black ambient and drifting and dreamlike, will definitely fall under the soporific spell of Foglands. Packaged in an oversized full plastic sleeve, with an oversized card, full color image on one side and liner notes on the other. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, each disc hand numbered.

MPEG stream: Visu
MPEG stream: Outremer

We're embarassed to say we were late in getting hip to the damaged druggy folk genius of Pearls Before Swine. But a recent spate of reissues, had us rushing back to catch up on all the stuff we missed. And apparently we were the only ones so sadly far behind the curve, as this Tom Rapp / Pearls Before Swine tribute, featuring loads of AQ favorites, is already on volume 2 and 3. Oh well, better late than never. So this double cd features a who's who of the underground indie free folk scene: Kemialliset Ystevat, The Olivetree (Glenn from Thuja, Blithe sons, etc...), Bardo Pond, Acid Mothers Temple's Kawabata Makoto, Thurston Moore, Mike Watt, Oren Ambarchi, Black Forest / Black Sea, Noxagt, Fursaxa, Alastair Galbraith, Dead Raven Choir and those are just the bands we're familiar with. There's a whole host of others including Marissa Nadler, Aquarium Poppers, Gentle Tasaday, Prydwyn, James Jackson Toth, Bevel, Ron Chelsvig, Cauldren, Mutter and a bunch more.

MPEG stream: Suojelusenkeli
MPEG stream: Uncle John
MPEG stream: Sail Away

Subtitled "A Collection of Music From Around the World", this compilation contains twenty-five tracks, all of which are 30 seconds apiece, from the likes of Faust, Skullflower's Stefan Jaworzyn, Merzbow, Incapacitants, Pickle Factory, Illusion of Safety, Nurse With Wound, Lee Ranaldo, and many others. We've had this on 10" vinyl before, but this is the first time it's been available on disc.

Of the hundred of Record Store Day special releases, we got as many copies of as many titles as we could, sold out of most of them, but a few we managed to get enough to list for out of town folks who might not have a local record store do visit on that oh so sacred of record nerd days, one of which is this, a super cool 5 track sampler, featuring new music from some names that most loyal aQ list readers will recognize right away: Blonde Redhead, Ariel Pink, Gang Gang Dance, The Big Pink, Tune Yards. Most of these tracks will show up on forthcoming full lengths from these groups, but 4 of the 5 are different versions, demos, rough early versions, definitely worth it for fans of any of these groups. It's weird enough that Ariel Pink is signed to 4AD, but with this first taste of the upcoming record, we hear a whole new side of AP and his gang, not nearly as lo-fi, or twisted, instead, loping, groovy, almost funky basslines, shuffling skeletal rhythms, reverbed guitars, and deep crooned almost gothic sounding vox, a sort of creepy broody ballad, but fear not, it does get pretty damaged by the end, all crumbling FX drenched psychedelic free-eak out meltdown, can't wait to hear more. Blonde Redhead offer up a demo for a song from their new record, their first music in 3+ years, lush, woozy, electronic, warm and organic, less indie sounding, way more 'adult', like the most accessible Bjork tracks, still really dark and mysterious and beautiful, shimmery and dreamy, just more restrained and mature. The Gang Gang Dance track, their first music for 4AD is awesome, a sprawling, super spare, stripped down dubscape, thick warbly bass, clipped samples, disembodied vocals, hazy and softly psychedelic, but really mesmerizing and beautiful. The Tune Yards track is super soulful world music sounding demo, groovy and lovely, with crunchy looped samples, shimmery blurred acoustic guitars, sweet vocals, gradually growing more and more distorted. Cool. And finally, a previously unreleased track from The Big Pink, all washed out and druggy, total Spacemen 3 / Jesus And Mary Chain vibe, buzzy guitars, buried barely there rhythms, reverbed and echoey and woozily hypnotic. We have a bunch of these left, but once they're gone we won't be able to get more, so grab one while you can...

Beginning back in 2002, Framework is a radio show hosted by Patrick McGinley, who presents his listeners with an hour dedicated to field recordings and their use in composition. The first broadcasts appeared via Resonance FM in London, with syndication of the show expanding through various stations online and over-the-air in Belgium, Greece, and on occasion New York. The shows are stellar productions (even when streamed online) with McGinley often able to solicit exclusive field recordings from his numerous contacts around the globe. In celebration of the 250th broadcast and in support of his original host Resonance FM, McGinley has assembled this amazing 4cd document of exclusive compositions that in some way, shape, or form incorporate the art of field recording into the final piece. The list of contributors is quite large, and certainly acts as a who's who in the realm of avant-garde composition, featuring Phill Niblock, Asmus Tietchens, Peter Cusack, Steve Roden, Giancarlo Toniutti, and of course Chris Watson (arguably the pinnacle of sound ecology). But there's plenty of those who we here at aQuarius have long championed: Loren Chasse, Michael Northam, McGinley's own project Murmer, Jonathan Coleclough, Tarab, Keith Berry, John Grzinich, Eric Cordier, Richard Garet and our own Jim Haynes. With four discs, there's a lot to cover and a surprisingly large amount of high caliber material. So, here it goes... Wooden creaks, bell strikes, and distant bird calls slowly percolate to the surface of Jonathan Coleclough's collaboration with Ben Owen, who collectively augment those sounds with Feldman-like gestures of windswept tonal clusters. Stalwart concrete / sound artist Toy Bizarre offers a compacted mass of water sounds; and Mark Schrieber offers a composition of squeezed noise courtesy of a windshield wiper grating against a contact microphone. Jim Haynes scrapes slabs of slate together before transmitting a harmonic overdrive of clustered bell-n-shortwave tone-floatation. Toshiya Tsunoda's exquisite study in low-end vibration patterns originated from a rope lashed from a boat to pier in his native Japan. Seth Nehil turns the cacophony of a traffic jam into a meditative thrum punctuated by mechanical gestures, aerated hisses, and oblique moanings. Having set contact microphones upon several pieces of wood mounted to a small dam, Maksims Sentelevs captured a polyphony of chiming noises amidst the bubbling watery percolation that's quite unsettling. Eric Cordier's haunted ululations and distant squeals loop hypnotically, making allusions more to horror sound effects rather than typical field recording fodder, even if the material is probably the sound of a gull screeching just off the shoreline. Jeph Jerman's grey hiss of a field recording scrabbles with the sound of insects rummaging around bamboo, all the while sounding like an extract cassette from the bottom of a tarpit. Conducting something of a small ritual with objects around his apartment, Loren Chasse layers textural sounds into an enthralling, mysterious mass of hushed sound. Tarab's corroded drones and tactile spillages from pure field recordings are as captivating as ever, proving that he's one of the more under-recognized composers around today. Steve Roden's contemplative, lulling piece is beautifully composed from two notes on guitar quietly plucked against the hiss of a rainstorm recorded back in 1930s on a 78 as an early sound effects record. Keith Berry's hauntological ambience could easily give Leyland Kirby a run for his money. Industrial rumble and concrete bunker reverberation dominate the low-end frequencies of Jez Riley French's exceptional contribution, perfectly situated next to the obscurant documentation from Giancarlo Toniutti's rattlings of ironworks and deep environmental droning. Chris Watson makes no secrets as to the source on his recording "Ravens" who sound as ominous and cackling as you would expect. Phill Niblock's contribution was sourced from a field recording he made back in 1986 of church bells, but elongated digitally into a slightly atypical piece for the minimalist, as it's less than 6 minutes long! Whew! All of this and more. There's also the fact that this is limited to 250 copies. Actually, none of these discs were to be available in shops at all, but McGinley made one exception to this rule, allowing Aquarius to have a handful of these. We have less than a dozen, and it remains to be seen if we'll be able to get more. Yes, it's expensive, but it is worth it for the material at hand, plus the proceeds are going to support McGinley's production for Framework and Resonance FM.

MPEG stream: River Dam Performed
MPEG stream: Montchaibeaux
MPEG stream: Two Chambers
MPEG stream: Untitled Artefacts
MPEG stream: Six Small Storms
MPEG stream: Chooramuuk, Girasrum
MPEG stream: Bells And Timps

Patrick McGinley has been broadcasting his exemplary Framework Radio series since 2002, showcasing the wild and wooly uses of field recordings in composition with the occasional Finnish freak-folk tune (laced with bird song, of course!). He began Framework through the seminal London-based Resonance FM, gradually expanding his scope with stations licensing the series around the globe. In support of these productions, McGinley started a small cd-r imprint whose releases would only be available to the donors supporting Framework; but he's made one very kind exception to this, appointing aQuarius as his sole retail outlet. The first collection McGinley offered was a 4-disc set of exclusive tracks with some heavy hitters amongst the lot including Chris Watson, Phill Niblock, and Giancarlo Toniutti with plenty of AQ-favorites dotted in the nearly five hours worth of music. Here, McGinley begins what looks to be a quarterly cd-r series of exclusive material whose compositions feature field recordings in some way, shape, or form. At least for Issue #1, McGinley has picked an array of artists not featured on that aforementioned 4-disc set. Here, the artists include Marc Behrens, Ernst Karel, Gill Arno, Sebastiane Hegarty, Mark Peter Wright, Mecha/Orga, Paulo Raposo, Lee Patterson, and Joe Stevens. The swarming, buzzing drone of Sebastiane Hegarty's track is a magnificent piece of field recording, originating from a couple of contact microphones attached to a taut wire vibrated by stiff English winds. Eerie and beautiful in its harmonic humming as an Aeolian harp. The Marc Behrens track reworks the chaotic urban soundscape of Hong Kong into a complex musique concrete piece looking back to those early collages by Jim O'Rourke. The enveloping thrum of Mark Peter Wright's very impressive "Around And Within" originated from a network of decommissioned drain pipes that resonate with a thick, vibrating set of frequencies captured with open air microphones along with the drips from melting snow. Very nice. Lee Patterson's hydrophone recordings capture the rich chorus beneath the surface of various fish and water-borne insects, with a skittering almost electrified-sounding bed of staccato chatter and sferic arcs. Paolo Raposo also uses hydrophones, although he coaxes ringing tones and drones from those recordings in this brightened piece of minimalist shimmer. A brilliant collection through and through. Yes, the price is steep for a cd-r, but the offset folio packaging is quite nice and proceeds from this disc go to support Resonance FM!

MPEG stream: Resistance 4
MPEG stream: Yes, China
MPEG stream: Around And Within
MPEG stream: Planting A Tree Inside Water

Patrick McGinley's Framework radio show has been on the air for well over a decade now, sporting the tag line of "Phonography, field recordings, the art of sound hunting. Open your ears and listen." He began Framework through the seminal London-based Resonance FM, gradually expanding his scope with stations licensing the series around the globe. In support of these productions, McGinley (who also records under the moniker Murmer, fyi...) started a small cd-r imprint whose releases would only be available to the donors supporting Framework; but he's made one very kind exception to this, appointing aQuarius as his sole retail outlet. This is the second in the ongoing series of the semi-regular Framework Seasonal publications, featuring a fantastic array of sound artists using field recordings in composition. Most of the artists featured are making their aQ debuts, although we are well acquainted with the work of the aktionist performance artist Dave Phillips of the Schimpfluch Gruppe and the industrial clamor of Australian engineer Camilla Hannan. Phillips's piece, being a field recording, is not the overt aggression one would find in his bloodcurdling performances or his diabolical sound designs; but certainly holds true to his abject agenda. He managed to capture the sound of a very drugged out transvestite shrieking into the night sky, punctuated by metallic clanks presumably from Phillips banging on the rails of a stairwell. Whether the transvestite was responding to Phillips sporadic percussive klank or not is unknown, but it does make for a very strange, and very unsettling duet. The Lithuanian sound artist Sala constructs an equally creepy track called "Arboreal Burial" that draws inspiration from a dream he had about a group of trees which bid farewell to their fallen brothers and sisters by sending them down to the river. The field recordings of creaking trees and deep resonant windscapes amass into churning thickets of acoustic noise. Very unsettling. Situated next to Sala's mobile tree rituals, a sense of dread rubs off on James Wyness' "6 Listening Environments," a collection of rustic scrapes and springtime weather events from the English countryside. Both Camilla Hannan and Aymeric De Tapol draw from the ultrasound and thrumming resonance of ship engines, with vastly different results. The former focuses on the wheezing repetition of the chugging pistons; where the latter collects the massive drones diffused through large bodies of water. There's all of this plus tracks from JD Zazie, Anton Mobin, Pali Meursault, and Lass-Marc Reik. Another brilliant collection from Framework!

MPEG stream: Arboreal Burial, Pt. 2
MPEG stream: You Don't Have To Pretend To Be What You Are
MPEG stream: Straddie

Framework is a radio broadcast wholly dedicated to field-recording, and its use in composition. The tagline to the show is "Field-recording, phonography, the art of sound-hunting; open your ears and listen!" Each quarter, the show's producer and host, Patrick McGinley (aka Murmer) has been commissioning composers, sound ecologists, dronologists, and noise technicians for work to be included in a parallel series of limited edition cd-rs for subscribers to the show. None of these discs have been made available to any shops, except for aQuarius; and now, McGinley offers us the fourth installment in that series. As before, McGinley offers some heavy hitters intermixed with some emerging artists. Here, the former includes Francisco Lopez, Yannick Dauby, and Maile Colbert; with the latter including Terje Paulson, Flavien Gillie, and Luis Antero. These recordings demonstrate considerable manipulation of the sounds and / or engagement with the environment, even if that's just through the deliberate choices of context. Flavien Gillie's placid recordings of the winter birds from a nature reserve in Brussels speak to the contextualization approach, while Yannick Dauby & Olivier Feraud's manhandling of a fallen tree trunk, render its fibers all of the squiggliness of a theremin. Stefan Paulus' collage of farm-built bells that jangle from the necks of meandering cows and deep thrumming subharmonics from nearby shipping docks makes for one of the more compelling compositions from this edition. France Jobim's liquid drones were sourced from surreptitious recordings made at the Morongo Casino in Southern California, with the racket of the slot machines and the controlled carnavalesque cacophony inverted into ephemeral wisps of minimalism. Francisco Lopez proves once again why he's been one of the most respected artists using environmental sounds over the past two decades. His eerie reverberant tones and elongated slashes of razor sharp frequencies bend and curve along an amorphous surface that is both organic and synthetic, akin to the latter day works from The Hafler Trio. Maile Colbert laces her ecological portraits with a series of slow, maudlin melodies that points to the grandiose, dreamtime pieces of Stars of the Lid. Really beautiful!

MPEG stream: Liminal Drift
MPEG stream: Untitled#293
MPEG stream: Helen's Hands

Thank God for the nerds! The Framework Seasonal series continues with an amazing set of archival recordings from the Derby Tape Recording Club and the Leicester Tape Recording Club. Yeah, you read that right. Tape Recording Clubs! These represented two regional clubs which operated in this little known phenomenon that reached a peak in the late '60s and early '70s with commercial grade technology becoming readily available. Many of these clubs would actually record onto reel-to-reel tape, organizing outings upon which the participants would pool resources in order to collect primitive field recordings of motorcycle races, the howler monkeys from the Paignton Zoo, bowling tournaments, a guided tour from a power turbine... and yeah, there's a recorded example of trainspotting with a young man reading off the line and make of a particular train to the heart of England. Many of these recordings show their age with lots of tape hiss, compressed frequencies, clunky hard-stop edits, and a few bits of blown-out microphone distortion; but, really when is that a criticism here at aQuarius? But the charms of these recordings are not just found in the patina of crackle and flutter; the documented sounds themselves are often accompanied by narration from the various club members. One of our favorite field recordings is the bicycle ride of Leicester's John Buckler, who huffs and puffs his way through traffic noting the fish and chips shop to his left and how out of shape he is from a two minute bike ride uphill. There's a couple extracts from the Derby club's Christmas Party including a spirited round of musical chairs; and another gem is the radio advertisement from the Derby club complete with Derbyshire-ish bleepity electronics and an earnest call to join the club. Library Music enthusiasts will be rapt with joy over these antiquated sounds! What a gem of an album! As we've noted before, the proceeds from the Framework Seasonal discs go to support the Framework Radio series of broadcasts dedicated to field recordings and their use in composition. Hence, the price.

MPEG stream: Derby Tape Recording Club Advert
MPEG stream: Trainspotting
MPEG stream: Birdland, Bourton On The Water
MPEG stream: Bicycle Ride
MPEG stream: Pre-Rec Message

Here's the sixth in the ongoing cd series from Framework, the weekly radio series hosted by Patrick McGinley (aka Murmer) who defines the broadcasts as a "show consecrated to field-recording and its use in composition. Field-recording, phonography, the art of sound-hunting. Open your ears and listen!" All of these recordings found on the Framework Seasonal series are exclusive tracks, and as on the radio series, McGinley actively seeks out and encourages many emerging sound artists by including their work alongside some of more well known phonographers and sound ecologists. Mathieu Ruhlmann's exemplary piece of tactile slithering only cites amplified medical equipment and debris, with the hushed white noise of rumpled textures reflecting similar sounds from Small Cruel Party and Loren Chasse. One the finest composers of phonography Eric La Casa does not disappoint with his concrete-styled piece of clanging metal, military-installation rumblings conjoined with ominous bursts of thunder and seemingly indifferent field recordings to the tectonic shifts occurring throughout. Chris Whitehead's expressive chemical reactions emerge as small skittering events with echoing reverberations across plates of metal; but with the small interludes from what sounds like a muffled guitar, the piece almost recalls a super stripped down / subdued version of a Michael Morley / Gate track. Kim Walker's slow psychographical collage traces the various sites of sonic interest from the ancient kingdom of Moray located in what is now Scotland. Seafaring birds, oceanic roar, and the sounds of urban din lace this sunny sounding recording. Artificial Memory Trace, Sawako and David Velez take very hands off approaches to their straight field recordings - with AMT & Sawako recording the din of insects in the forest and Velez setting up a microphone inside an empty metal oil drum being struck by branches in the wind. These Seasonal Issues are super limited, and the proceeds of each issue goes towards the continued production of the Framework radio series.

MPEG stream: Mormaerdom
MPEG stream: Pathetic Germination
MPEG stream: Short Cuts From A Grammar For Listening
MPEG stream: Phragmocone

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

SORRY. A quick look at the listing of groups on this super limited triple cd-r collection of songs from France, or about France, or with some sort of French angle, should have most weird music fans freaking out bigtime. All exclusive tracks from tons of AQ faves, including: The Shitty Listener, Quetzolcoatl, Brothers Of The Occult Sisterhood, Silvester Anfang, Heavy Winged, Tom Carter, The North Sea, Taiga Remains, Ashtray Navigations, Uton, The Futurians, Mike Tamburo, Tanakh, Black Forest Black Sea, Ben Reynolds, Volcano The Bear, 6majik9, CJA, The Stumps, Gregg Kowalsky, Fursaxa, Seht, Valerio Cosi, Fabi Orsi, Birds Of Delay, Bjerga / Iverson, Robert Horton and more more more. 3+ hours of strange and magical sounds from all over the world, but all centered around France. From the ultra lo-fi barely audible pop genius of The Shitty Listener, the gorgeous mournful steel string Appalachian folk of The North Sea, the washed out murky drift of Quetzolcoatl, some super spare solo electric guitar drift from Tom Carter, a bit of haunting high end tribal buzz from Brothers Of The Occult Sisterhood, some gorgeous shuffle and twang, slither and creep from Silvester Anfang, an epic druggy slowburning NZ-style krautrockish jam from The Stumps, some whispered crystalline shimmer from Fursaxa and we could go on and on. Varied and expansive, from folk to drone to noise to pound to swirl to buzz to twang... As with all RuralFaune stuff, meticulously packaged, each one hand assembled, three spray painted discs, rouge, blanc and bleu (the colors of the French flag), housed in a cool textured red and orange wallpaper cover, in a thick vinyl sleeve, with a sticker on the front. Inside is a huge fold out, 2 sided poster insert, with liner notes on one side and a painting on the other, as well as a bunch of other inserts, stickers, a tiny square of paper hand numbered and a "piece of blotting paper impregnated with red wine"! LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. We will NOT be able to get more...

MPEG stream: More Now Girl
MPEG stream: Le Dieu Cerf
MPEG stream: Reynardine
MPEG stream: I Dive For Secrets In The Gorge Du Verdon

This is another limited cd-r from the mighty VHF, and once again they do it up right. No chintzy photocopied, thrown together bullshit. This cd-r comes in a gorgeous cardboard gatefold with full color images (of a whimsical frog) pasted on the front and

RealAudio clip: Pillow Made Of Stereo
RealAudio clip: Live Glasgow July 28 2000

"Frequencies [HZ]" is a musical compendium of an exhibition of sound art curated by the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, Germany, and acts as a Readers Digest / K-Tel anthology of the "who's who" in the current global community of experimental / noise / minimal / glitch music. Here, you get 28 two-minute tracks from a ton of artists including Achim Wollscheid, Marc Behrens, Alva Noto, Christophe Charles, C.M. von Hausswolff, Cyclo, Ekkehard Ehlers, Errorsmith, Farmers Manual, Frank Bretschneider, Hecker, Mainpal Inv., Marcus Schmickler, Merzbow, Monolake, Opiate, Pan Sonic, Pita, Pomassl, Random Industries, Richard Chartier, Ryoji Ikeda, Senking, SND, Steinbráchel, Stephan Mathieu, Thomas Koner, and Ultra-Red. Limited to 1000 copies, and packaged in an artful styrofoam package designed by Carsten Nicolai.

MPEG stream: Neulich
MPEG stream: Over Puilo

The second volume to Black Horizons' tribute arrangements for the films of Ingmar Bergman sports the same oversized jewel case as the first. So, we'll reiterate what we mentioned about the packaging on the first volume: Black Horizons has packaged this in an extra-large oversized plastic clamshell that fits all three cassettes comfortably inside. Yeah, it looks really sharp, but the problem with this plastic housing is that if you break this case, you will NEVER find a replacement. Onto the musical program, Black Horizons has commissioned a number of artists to score particular scenes from Bergman films, which are annotated with the specific time from said films so you could scrub through Passion Of Anna or The Seventh Seal and sync up the tape. Nope, we're not going to do that... instead we'll dig into the tapes themselves. Micromelancolie & Sindre Berje are sporadic collaborators from the Northern regions of Europe, offering an industrial meditation of grey din and emptiness pocked with incidental squalor and threatening avian calls. The Southern Californian outfit German Army churns a hypnotic set of voodoo rhythms and esoteric chants. L'Acephale seems to actually use the Swedish dialogue from The Seventh Seal alongside a melancholy neo-folk strum that slips from one depressive motif to another before launching into a burst of wintery black metal for one of the highlights on this compilation. We're gonna have to assume that the hauntological / grimly cinematic cello thrum of Head Dress is an entirely different project than the one who crafted acid-fried excess for No Quarter and Mexican Summer. Nice stuff, though! The enigmatic Spettro Family swirls synths, spells, and spooky FX that have much more of giallo / Goblin feel than anything else on these tapes. And the final entry comes from Night Worship, a thoroughly unknown drone project that grafts luminous tones from voice and trombone to bunker quality drones and rumble. Limited to 150 copies!

First things first. If you buy this, by all means protect the clamshell casing with your LIFE! Black Horizons has packaged this in an extra-large oversized plastic clamshell that fits all three cassettes comfortably inside. Yeah, it looks really sharp, but the problem with this plastic housing is that if you break this case, you will NEVER find a replacement. We'll take great care to enshroud this boxset in plenty of packing material for all shipments outside these doors; but the fragility of such a plastic case speaks to the benefits of modular design (e.g. the standard jewel case and the standard clamshell). That said, Black Horizons presents a ponderous collection of doom-laden electronics, crusty dirge-metal, and ash-smeared drones all done as musical arrangements for the films of Ingmar Bergman, with contributions from Persistence In Mourning, Fear Konstruktor, Swamp Horse, Terence Hannum, Ryan Unks, and King Dude. Persistence In Mourning opens proceedings with a creaky, crusty neo-folk passage whose waltzing melodies across acoustic instruments lashes plenty of scabrous scrapes across the violins that's much more Alastair Galbraith than Tony Wakeford, before the outfit settles into a lo-fi apocalyptic doom dirge laced with piano and compressed feedback. The Russian dark ambient outfit Fear Konstruktor follows the snaking shadows that Cranioclast proposed as the cryptic soundtracks to private rituals. Josh Lay is one of the characters creating the blackened minimalism and wild-eyed stasis for Swamp Horse, very much akin to the recent KTL recordings. Locrian's cofounder Terence Hannum takes up the flip of this cassette with two slow-burning black ambient crescendos rising out of elegiac melodies and thickened downtuned walls of crumbled distortion. Ryan Unks, formerly of the grindcore band Creation Is Crucifixion and the pummelingly malevolent Human Quena Orchestra, dials into the spooky synth vein with a numbing drone setting the stage for serialist / radiophonic tone clusters. King Dude rounds out the compilation, loosening up for something far more shambolic in his doom-folk oeuvre, with sweeping atmospheres, wintry pagan drones, wordless chants, and a melancholy acoustic guitar strum girding the proceedings. Not quite Douglas P meets Elvis P (as is the formula for his previous albums), but this long form suite serves King Dude very well. LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!! All three tapes housed in the aforementioned triple cassette case, and wrapped in a super striking, black and silver ink-ed oversized J-card.

What the hell am I listening to? That's the reaction to a few minutes spent with this comp in the cd player. It's a very weird mix of stuff! Fujirekodsu is a new label set up by Tokyo's Cha-Bashira and Cologne's A-Musik labels to release unknown and unusual music from Japan and Europe (and all the artists on here, Japanese or not, either live or have spent time in Japan). This new label/project has received some assistance from the Tokyo record shop Los Apson, who some might recall released a bizarre compilation of their own back in '96 or so. We are told that this is sort of part II of that, and it is equally crazed. Don't get the idea that this is your typical Japanese noise thing, as it's not particularily noisy in the Merzbow sense; rather, there's a lot of different musical styles on here, including electronic groove, installation sounds, "actionism", lo-fi pop, and odd glitch-works. Nothing remotely ordinary however. Some of the names involved (a few that folks might know, but not many!): Why Sheep?, Smurf Otoko Gumi, Susumu Yokota, Christophe Charles/Brandon Labelle/Steve Roden, Q of Q, Noise Ramones (Eye and Yoshimi of Boredoms), Evil Moisture, Hair Stylistics, AOA, Rudolpf Eb.er, Nagata Kazunao, Tennessees, American Cherry, Tapes Klar!, L?K?O?, Vagamoron, many more. There's 29 tracks of this insanity. Pretty cool!