[ aquarius records — Experimental ]

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

Showing results 8501 through 8550 of 9280.

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

SORRY. And we've also got the second of Alchemy's Night Gallery underground Japanese psych comps too, from earlier this year. Six bands this time (68 minutes, 11 tracks in all). Two of 'em have names only given in Japanese that we can't translate. The four with English names provided are She Brings The Rainbow (nice Can reference there), Magura Mozart, Subari, and Coa. Some contribute just one long track each (like the aptly-titled "Psych-Out" from Magura Mozart) others a few shorter cuts. The disc starts with a few tracks from one of the Japanese-name only bands, kinda Ghost-ly, or like Nagisa Ni te, all gentle and drifting and melancholy with female vocals. Then She Brings The Rainbow makes their contributions, way more shiny and uptempo, more female vocals but poppier I guess. Good stuff. That's followed by a long piece from Subari, a band consisting of Eddie and Bill (both girls, despite their names) from Coa plus one Keizo Suhara on vocals and guitar. It's a spacey one, quite nice. Eddie and Bill just the two of them then step up with another long track, the noisy, droney, heavy, dense clangor that is Coa's "Mirror To Mirror". That's tough to follow but the band known as Magura Mozart manage to do so with an epic of their own, starting off with ritualistic piano, percussion, and bells that gives way to pulsing drumming and waves of distorted guitar, coming closest on this comp to the Les Rallizes Denudes territory that LSD-march and Up-tight explored on the first Night Gallery (and on their own albums too of course). The last band on this collection is another whose name we don't know, and stick out as being almost more 'no-wave' than psych, very quirky and poppy and ramshackle and punky. So, the six bands here are sometimes a weird mix, but the highlights are many, and both volumes of the Night Gallery prove (if you weren't already aware) that there's a lot of interesting "psych" bands doin' their thing in Japan right now besides good ol' Acid Mothers Temple! [After we first posted this review, our customer Alan Cummings was kind enough to provide us with the following additional info: "the two bands you don't have the names for on Night Gallery 2 are Eddie Marcon (the gentle and melancholy one -- again Eddie and Bill from Coa), and the no-wavey one is Oshiripenpenzu. The title of the Eddie Marcon track you have streamed is 'Ikuyonoshitaku'."]

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Released last year, this first "Night Gallery" comp from Alchemy basically picks up where the PSF label left off with their classic Tokyo Flashback series (though I think these bands quite possibly from Osaka, where Alchemy is based, not Tokyo). But the "modern Japanese psychedelia" concept is the same. Freaked-out, heavy, spacey, drifting, dark, drugged...differing doses of each of those descriptors apply to each of the five bands found here, which include some names now much better known to us today than when this disc first came out. The line-up: LSD-march, Up-Tight, Miminokoto, Doodles and Chouzu. The first three of those have all had domestic US cd releases in recent months, and on this very list you'll also find both a great new disc featuring Doodles (a female duo) collaborating with Hijokaidan guitarist (and Alchemy label boss) Jojo Hiroshige and an awesome new Up-Tight full-length on Alchemy. So from lighter fare (the blissful Chouzu, for instance) to the heavier stuff (the disc ends with a punishing 13 minutes from Up-Tight) this ought to please most folks from most points on the psych geek/Japanophile spectrum. 66 minutes, 11 tracks total.

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The first in a series from Or exploring the nature of computer music. With Aphex Twin (contributing an odd piece for computerized congas beating erratically), Beautyon (from Irdial Records), cd_slopper (aka Hecker), General Magic (Mego's Ramon Bauer maintaining the digital glitch), Kevin Drumm, Stephen Travis Pope, Trevor Wishart (doing a nihilist sound collage for the 21st century), Ubik, and Zbigniew Karkowski & Kasper Toeplitz.

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

SORRY. 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. Unlike the other BBC Radiophonic Workshop disc (the '60s collection "BBC Radiophonic Music"), most of this was composed especially for this album, rather than taken from prior BBC productions. The musicians/technicans saw this as a chance to express themselves in ways not always possible in commissioned works (in stereo, for one thing, rather than the mono most broadcast work required), and certainly their experimental tendencies came to the fore. Pretty neat.

RealAudio clip: Brio
RealAudio clip: Nenuphar

Could there be a more aQuarius record? A compilation of recordings by various cults, including Ya Ho Wa 13, the Manson Family, the Aum Shinrikyo (we had a 7" by them a while back), the Hare Krishnas, as well as a bunch of others we had never heard of. But that's just the beginning. These recordings were supposedly recovered from beneath a compost heap behind the house of Peggy Luciene, who, during her life had followed a bunch of those cults and who eventually went missing. Assumed dead and buried, some assume she ascended or transformed, depending on which cult you believe. The truth is, this disc is part of an art project, which involves the fictional life and death of Peggy Luciene, the cults she was involved in, the people she knew...it's pretty immersive. The cd features a hidden track, that is the audio of the art project, a sort of guided tour through the Mission and Dolores Park, you can also listen on a walkman radio, tuned to 107.9. We've yet to do the actual walkthrough, but listening to the disc, we can almost visualize the various buildings and spots the mother and daughter visit over the course of the 17 minutes. It's pretty awesome. A huge project, beautifully realized, from the audio to the concept. And then there's the comp. Even without all that art angles, we would have flipped for this comp. Some awesome rarities, with each group / cult getting a little paragraph description. There's the awesome "Mechanical Man" by Charles Manson and the Family, some awesome outsider folk, with some very creepy lyrics, plus you can hear various other family members talking and laughing in the background. Then there's some awesome psychedelic rock courtesy of Father Yod and -his- family. But what about the Shiva Lillas, who we had never heard of? There track is a creepy piano ballad, with a child speaking over the top. Followed by Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo, whose folky hippy jam is pretty groovy, could be any seventies folkie, but of course these guys were obsessed with doomsday! The Hare Krishnas offer up an Indian influenced chant / raga, that again, if it was on some weird world comp, folks would be freaking out. The People's Temple, led by Jim Jones (although Jones wasn't part of the band as far as we know) deliver a joyous gospel celebration, while the All Saved Freak Band unfurl some gorgeously lush freaky Christian folk. Up next is Sun Ra, whose Interstellar Arkestra commune is about the uncultiest of these cults, but heck, Sun Ra is pretty inspirational, and if any one could convince us to sit in a field naked and wait for aliens it would definitely be him. The Bugotak Project is more modern, and do a sort of metallized throat singing rock, pretty trippy and far out, and would also probably be a big hit around here if it was some weird cd-r from who knows where, and finally, the Breatharian Institute Of America, whose members aspire to a state of ascension where they can exist without consuming food, their musical contribution is a creepy recitation over a sea of chimes and bells, really haunting, and super intense. A killer comp for sure, seemingly custom made for all you freaky folks into far out sounds and underground weirdness, an obsession with cults probably helps too, and the fact that it's all tangled up with the imagined life of a lost directionless young woman who spent her life looking for meaning in these sounds and with these groups, only makes it that much cooler. Definitely recommended, and for folks in the Bay Area, you should definitely lose yourself in the piece, throw some headphones on, and wander through another time and another world, right here in the Mission. Beautifully packaged, full color cover, with pictures and notes for each group / artist / cult, as well as liner notes pertaining to the art project.

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The title of this compilation as well as the label name, not to mention the artists involved, should give you a pretty clear idea of what this comp is all about. Some serious deep listening, music on the Threshold Of Silence, featuring loads of AQ faves like Aidan Baker, Troum, Paul Bradley and others... Yep, this is a collection of inward looking outward seeking minimal ambient drone music, and it's all quite gorgeous. Seven groups, utilizing a fairly standard array of instrumentation, synths, voice, percussion, guitar, effects, strings, keyboards, cello, electronics, analog modular system and water (!) between them, each picking some tiny microscopic corner of the sonic universe to open up and explore. Deep resonant cavernous underwater drones, warm bleary eyed drift, muted melodies floating above crystalline shimmers, dense melodic blurs rippling with subtle tonal color, fragments of guitar loosed and allowed to hover amidst opaque swirls and glimmering streaks of sound, long drawn out notes, layers of synths piled atop warm swells, all sorts of drones, from bright and sparkling, to murky and muddy to blissfully blown out, this without a doubt has become THE late night drifting off lullaby record of choice for some of us.� 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.

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This long in the works compilation from the always reliable PseudoArcana label, is one of those comps that we barely need to describe. A list of the bands involved will have most of you frothing at the mouth: Blithe Sons, Peter Wright, CJA, Anla Courtis, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Antony Milton, Uton, Moglass, Neil Campbell, Birchville Cat Motel, The Skaters, Of, 1/3 Octave Band, My Cat Is An Alien and more!!! Holy crap! Two whole discs. And with a lineup like that, it would be a bit hard to describe all the tracks anyway. The sounds within though are all conceptually linked, but sonically all over the map. In a good way. The concept being the receent discovery of a galaxy cluster light years away that has been resonating in a steady B flat drone (although something like 57 octaves below the threshold of human hearing), so all these tracks are theoretically 'cover versions' of that mysterious galaxy's song!

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Here's one of those Good News, Bad News reviews. The good news is this 4cd box set is really fantastic, the bad news is that it's out of print and we only have 3 copies to sell. It actually came out over a year ago, but somehow we utterly missed out on it then, whoops! Too bad 'cause we probably would have made it Record(s) Of The Week! Sticking to the good news side of things, once we did finally find out out about it, despite it being already out of print, we fortunately were able to acquire a small handful of copies from Drag City, who as luck would have it had just received a few back in a return from a European distro. So, THREE of you out there are in luck. But might not know why, yet. What's the deal with the Total Groovy? Well, a while back, we reviewed what was then a vinyl-only Drag City reissue of an album called Strange Men In Sheds With Spanners, which appears as one of the discs in this box set. That lp of previously unreleased material came from the archives of Pete Shelley's own Groovy label, the Buzzcocks' singer's DIY outlet for the krautrock inspired, avant-garde experimentation of himself and his friends, and the other three discs in this box are reissues of Groovy's first three original lp releases, all from 1980. So, first off, here's more or less what we said about Strange Men In Sheds With Spanners back in 2011: Best band name ever? Definitely a contender. Never really thought that Pete Shelley of famed UK punks The Buzzcocks had anything like this in him, but this album is pretty damn good - almost living up to the ridiculous moniker! Strange Men In Sheds With Spanners was Shelley's oddball synth-wave project that began even before the Buzzcocks broke up in 1981. Back then, he took up the habit of inviting any number of unidentified 'guests' over to his studio to jam with anything and everything in the place; and these Strange Men In Sheds With Spanners recordings came from the many tapes that he made by these means circa 1980-1984. Who those guests in Shelley's studio might have been is anybody's guess. Ours? Maybe Eric Random, maybe Francis Cookson (who co-founded Groovy with Shelley), maybe Sally Timms from The Mekons. Regardless, the resultant recordings are an electronic-heavy art-punk with plenty of weirdo synth meanderings, Keith Levene sounding guitar splinterings, dub-inflected basslines, and scatterbrained effects. None of the punk-pop hooks of the Buzzcocks are found here, even when guitars, bass, and drums enter the picture; it's pretty much all about the studio as instrument with lots of effects swarming about the drum machine rhythms and bare-bones post-punk grooves. One could think of The Storm Bugs, Crawling Chaos, The Psyclones, or Jeff & Jane Hudson. Then there's the other three, equally confusional discs also found here: the oscillator insanity of Shelley's solo lp Sky Yen, 41+ minutes of delightful knob-twiddling distorted drone actually recorded in 1974; some shambling drone-rock and dadaistic vocals shenanigans from a soundtrack by Sally Smmit And Her Musicians (aka Sally Timms, Pete Shelley, and others); and a record with four untitled tracks of lo-fi industrial improvised (?) rock from a unit called Free Agents. All stuff for which the terms 'weird and wonderful' were doubtless invented! Each disc comes in its own cardboard sleeve reproducing the original album art, the Free Agents one complete with miniaturized insert advertising the Groovy catalog, and tip-on cover. Also inside this eye-catching, Op Art adorned box is a booklet containing an interview Drag City did with Shelley all about everything Groovy, talking about other related projects like The Tiller Boys, revealing various influences (Eno, Can, Ralph Records), etc. Totally great for anyone into the oddest of Messthetics tracks, NWW list stuff, or even the Boredoms' Super Roots series. Again, kicking ourselves for idiotically overlooking this when we could have gotten more, argh. So now it's first come, first served (and since we have so few, if you're mailordering this, it's always a good idea to pick an alternate as well). Good luck though - sorry to provide such a big review of something we probably won't be able to sell you!

MPEG stream: Sky Yen Part 1
MPEG stream: Soundtrack To The Film Hangahar Part 1
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Oh man, how this takes us back. Canadian label D-Trash is definitely the new DHR, spawning a whole new scene of breakcore bruisers and digital hardcore crushers. Admittedly they owe a huge debt to Alec Empire, Atari Teenage Riot and that breakcore/metal hybrid sound those folks practically created. So here it is, years after the demise of ATR, Empire has moved on, DHR seems to have disappered, so what better time to remind folks how amazing that shit sounded then, and brutal and heavy and badass it still sounds today. So here's the whole D-Trash roster, each tackling a classic Atari Teenage Riot track, all our favorites for sure, "Start The Riot", "Into The Death", "Delete Yourself", "The Future Of War"� Most of the bands here do it pretty straight, if anything just making the guitars crunchier and heavier, the beats more distorted and blown out, but still the tracks are classic, and sound enough like the originals that from note one, we're already banging our heads wildly. A few folks mix it up, Untitus (whose reissued full length is listed elsewhere on this list) slows things down, unfurling a thick buzzing backdrop, letting the drums lurch in a grinding anti-funk, the vocals all sultry and slurred. Schizoid (who also has a full length reissue on this list) turns his ATR track into some howling ultradistorted blast of blackened breakcore, the drums a chaotic blur, the vocals a hateful howl, so intense and furious, so much so that it almost makes the original sound tame. Other highlights include the robotic electro of Evestus, the old school (digital) hardcore punk rock of DHC Meinhof, the skittery metallized jungle of CTRLer, the playful video game gabber of 64Revolt� It's all pretty amazing, we of course lean toward the heavier more brutal blasts of digital hardcore, but goddamn, this all still sounds so great. We've been going pretty nuts, immersing ourselves in all this amazing D-Trash stuff, it's like a nonstop breakcore dance party around here and we STILL can't get enough. Start the riot! Delete Yourself!

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Gorgeously packaged (a cd in a gold and black silkscreened 7" sleeve) ultra limited compilation featuring some of our favorite experimental drone based musicians, as well as a handful of lesser known, but equally sonically appealing folks. AQ faves Troum offer up one of their sweetest airiest pieces yet, a slowly drifting meditational blur and Steve Roden's piece is a hypnotic and dense, note heavy assemblage of thick drones and repetitive chimes. So good! This whole collection is a stunning listen. Other contributors include Toy Bizarre, Kallabris, Inade, Christian Renou and more!

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This is an awesome collection of early and way out of print 7"s from San Diego's The Way Out Sound label. A glance at the artists is all it will take to convince you how essential this really is. All exclusive tracks from: Merzbow, Muslimgauze, Skullflower, Truman's Water, Pure, The Silver Wizard, and Holland Skin Tunnel. Essential.

Here's something that we didn't think we would ever see resurface. Topyscan (The Scandinavian chapter of the Temple of Psychic Youth) originally released an LP showcasing the wares of Sweden's electronic, darkwave, and experimental scenes, with some of the earliest work we had encountered from Zbigniew Karkowski and Phauss (featuring CM von Hausswolff) as well as cuts from Eld-Omala (some of whom had worked with Wire's Graham Lewis on a handful of recording) and White Stains. As a piece of vinyl, it worked quite well with gloomy electronic work sharing one side and skeletal minimalist crackling on the other. On cd, there's a bit of a disconnect between the two aesthetics, but considering how good all four tracks are, it matters little. Eld-Omala opens the album with a minor-key piano melody hanging above a grim atmosphere of disembodied voices and dark ambient passages all set to heavy drums and distorted guitars that could easily be an out-take from Coil's Horse Rotovator. The White Stains piece is miles above anything else that this typically underwhelming project has ever done. Again Coil seems to be template, through a occultish ritualism built around a heartbeat pulse, wooden flutes soaked in reverb, and an excellent use of Shepherd tones (an auditory illusion created by several tones being layered in such a way as to give the impression the pitch is in constant descent). The scatter-shot minimalism of Phauss switches gears entirely through a wavering sci-fi tone smothered in electrical static treated with ring modulation and broken by some weird radio transmissions. Definitely a precursor to Hausswolff's recent work with radio, satellite, and EVP communication. The Karkowski piece again is one of the finer compositions that we've heard from him, although undoubtedly he would disagree 'cuz it's not punishing, violent, or masculine enough. The spiralling electronics and tight vibrations aspire to all of those attributes which Karkowski has been known for, but without the excess of distortion, his work has remarkable subtly and dynamism. Very nice!

MPEG stream: The Halidom / Oh My God
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MPEG stream: I Fell In Love With An Evil Witch...

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More of a collaborative project than a compilation, Three Locations began with the invitation for a group of artists to contribute three field recordings to a pool, which would then be shared amongst all parties involved for them to use for separate compositions. Nice idea, and it's a pretty great collection of experimental musicians present, including Toy Bizarre, Tarab, Els Viaene, Felicity Mangan, and Klimek, whose presence on the compilation came as a bit of a shock to us, since we've known him for his very digital ambience for Kompakt and Anticipate. The liner notes don't provide all of the details as to the origins of the field recordings. Harbors in Norway, Japanese mountains, and an underground tunnel in Australia are mentioned; but outside of those locales, the sounds that appear throughout the compilation show a wide range between the natural and the industrial. Toy Bizarre offers a diptych of a piece that at first swells to a dramatic crescendo of clattering, metallic rasping that collapses into a somber extended passage of windswept gestures set against a black backdrop. The Belgian sound artist Els Viaene shaped those field recordings into a series of slow-moving, repeating phrases in a Spartan almost Koner-like composition. The ever-impressive Tarab delivers a fantastic track, showcasing much more of a musique concrete strategy that comes across like a John Duncan take on Luc Ferrari. The washed-out noises and environmental dinscapes have been densely layered and spliced into a very active sound field laced with rupturing events. Something's lurking around the corners of Tarab's sound that cannot be qualified as benevolent. Australia's Felicity Mangan counters Tarab's frenzied collage with a delicate tapestry of croaking frogs and aquatic percolations. As for Klimek's contribution, it' bloody fantastic. A fluctuating dronescape of pop-ambient tones hovering out of the extracted field recordings for an elegant construction. Altogether a fantastic end to a great compilation. Limited stock.

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Be forewarned, we have very few of these (about 15 total) and once they're gone, they're gone for good. A massive collection of experimental Finnish music from the label that brought us the Avarus live cd-r a little while back. Hand decorated, this double cd-r has lots of familiar faces, Uton, Avarus, Ektroverde, Can Can Heads, Kroko but even more unfamiliar ones: Slaughterhouse Quintet, Kilometritehdas, Kvantti, Testicles, Sonic Temple Assassins, Skullpture, Short Eyes, Blubberheads, Du Hex, Plat Ypus, Brasptreet and tons more. The sound is stumbling, abstract free folk clatter, very reminiscent of Jewelled Antler at its folkiest, while sounding a bit like the abstract Acid Mothers Temple space jams at its free-est. A totally gorgeous and a surprisingly consistent listen, espcially for a comp with 46 bands/tracks! MPEG Stream: UTON "Vihrean Tuuman Hengitys" [/audio/tididiiuton.m3u]

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Kid606's label celebrates its second birthday with this double cd (for the price of one!) that compiles 44 tracks from the usual (and unusual) electronica suspects: Lesser, Blectum From Blechdom, Com.a, Dat Politics, Mikael Stavostrand, Wobbly, Pisstank,

RealAudio clip: sunjammer is my favorite pokemon trainer
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Great drone / psychedelic noise comp with Taurpis Tula, The Skaters, My Cat Is An Alien, Jim Haynes, and Number None.

Anyone who shops for orignal library records can testify that it can be a grueling, expensive and oftentimes unrewarding quest. Even libraries with good track records like DeWolfe or KPM can fall short if the themes are uninteresting (like Casino Royale or British Fanfare). Separating the wheat from the chaff takes lots of knowledge and research, and more often than not the good music is only likely found through high end-collectors or a connection with the library archives itself. Thankfully we have this superb compilation that takes out a lot of the guesswork and delivers some incredible sounds to boot. Hailing from Toronto, the Parry Music library was founded in 1974 by John Parry and Chris Stone. Parry's connections with the great UK library Chappell Music helped bring him incredible talent including Nino Nardini and Johnny Hawksworth among a host of others. Selected from a 10 year period, this is an absolutely incredible and essential collection of warm electronic majesty in the form of music for unrealized industrial films, kids' TV shows, commercial spots, radio broadcasts and B-movie cinematic soundtracks. From avant-garde soundscapes to cosmic proto-Balearic disco, sublime choral pieces, blithe autumnal warp and woozy abstracted kinderlieder, a beautifully realized compilation of pure joy!

This compilation presents a striking visual effect, with a different Pantone color strip mounted on the front of each one (our initial copies display the yellow to ochre end of the color spectrum). Musically, "Tonalism" is a quiet affair of guitar and

RealAudio clip: Steede Bonnet (Flood Remix)
RealAudio clip: Open The Window And Let Me In

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

SORRY. While presented as a compilation, this is more of a collective in which each of the projects are various combinations of a rotating core of likeminded San Franicisco musicians. In the end, "Topography of Indefinite Impressions" enjoys a lush aesthetic link between the pastoral space-rock of Mirza, Stephen R. Smith, and Thuja with the alchemic dronolgy of id battery, L. Chasse, and Music For Tunnels (which happens to be the experimental / electronica pseudonym for Tim Green of The Champs). Limited to something like 300 copies and well worth it! And note, the obscure title is meant to poke fun at such titles, not to be understood...

Touch began in 1982 with the publication of Feature Mist, a cassette magazine which featured some very early New Order tracks, snippets from Shostakovich, a poem or two, and a couple of other obscure musical interludes. Over the next 25 years, Touch has developed into what every independent record label should be, an organization dedicated to their own agendas, ideologies, and aesthetics. During that time, Touch has been responsible for releasing records by some of the most influential electronic musicians and sound artists from the past few decades: Chris Watson, Christian Fennesz, Mika Vainio, BJ Nilsen, Biosphere, Ryoji Ikeda, and Philip Jeck. It must also be noted that the history of Touch is also inexorably linked to that of The Hafler Trio, although the two entities terminated their relationship with a particularly chilly separation. Needless to say, Jon Wozencroft and Mike Harding (the current proprietors of Touch) have always been fond of the compilation as a means of constructing a broader narrative about the current state of the label's aesthetics and philosophies. Touch 25 is the celebratory compilation, toasting Touch's silver anniversary, featuring 25 tracks from their current roster of artists with interludes of various field recordings. BJ Nilsen opens the compilation with a majestic field recordings of the Baltic Sea on a cold winter's night. This is followed by Oren Ambarchi's tense interplay between grizzled cable buzz and softly rounded guitar tones. Christian Fennezs pulls another gem of summer-has-gone abstraction from his whipsy guitar strum and DSP effects. Pan Sonic offers a rare bit of cacophony in this mostly sedate compilation with a crack of static and drum machine acceleration. We could prattle on, but it should be obvious that Touch again has produced another quality compilation. Wozencroft himself described Touch 25 thusly: "What seems to have taken place, is a sequence of 25 tracks (in itself an accident of numbers) that each in their own space are quite obscure and 'of a refined sense of taste,' but together, build a very emotional journey through the emotional conditions brought on by the lack of emotion in everyday life, and its replacement by extremities."

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MPEG stream: Slovakian Rauta
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Compilations are not usually things that warrant strong recommendations. The constant colon-blow of "United States of Trance, Ambient, Jungle, Techno, Techhouse, House, Deep House, Speed Garage, Divas, and / or Gabba" compilations from the electronica marketing majors make anybody with a critical ear a little uncertain when picking up that next item from the compilation section. However, Touch Records has now released 4 "Touch Samplers," all of them defying the usual ineptitude found on market glut of compilations. "Touch 00" - the fourth in this series from Touch - is a curatorial masterpiece that was fashioned entirely from exclusive tracks. If you're not familiar with but curious to learn about the mimialist electronica subgenres included here, this comp is a wonderfully accessible place to start. Bookended with the subatomic particle warbles from Ryoji Ikeda and Mika Vainio, the undisclosed narrative of the compilation hits a number of crucial signposts with Thomas Brinkmann's downer monophunk grooves, Locust's halcyon electronica, Hazard's dronological investigations into the Swedish forests, Philip Jeck's beautiful collages of vinyl antiquity, and the whimsy of People Like Us / The Jet Black Hair People / Wobbly. Field recordings of scanned celphone calls, air traffic control announcements, and passages from Chris Watson's worldly adventures break up the musical proceedings, but forge emotive connections throughout the whole album.

Comp of weird electronic/experimental stuff with Wobbly, People Like Us, the Jet Black Hair People, Monopause, etc... interestingly, released by the Etoy art-group folks who infamously got into a big hooha with the corporate internet bozos at eToys.com last year.

We managed to get a small handful of these from a distributor, they're priced super cheap, as the label has since folded, so these are the very last copies we'll ever be able to get, and we have only TWO of these, so be quick� Like many of the other releases we've been featuring from the now defunct Small Voices label, there seems to be very little in the way of NON academic descriptions of this stuff for lay people, folks like us who might just be interested in the sound, and don't need a lecture on sonic semiotics or whatever. So we'll skip the confusional history, and the academic jargon, what we could glean is that this is a cd reissue of tape release from 1982, called TRAX, and maybe this is the one place we should quote the label who describes TRAX thusly: "This is the first in a series of reprint programme of the most representative titles from the TRAX catalogue, one for each letter of the name: T for Traxman, the comics series created for Frigidaire magazine by Massimo Giacon and Vittore Baroni; R for Rednight, a collective homage to the work of William S. Burroughs; A for Anthems, alternative national hymns for real and imaginary countries; X for Xtra, audio works composed at distance through a process of crossed interferences" Not sure if that helped or not, but it's definitely interesting. This reprint comes in a huge oversized magazine style packaging, with liner notes in Italian and English, as well as tons of cool illustrations and graphics. Culled from what we can tell was some sort of zine or art project? Anyway, the first disc here is the actual 1982 tape, a compilation of noise/experimental/avant sonic art from a whole bunch of different artists and musicians from all over the world, it's a pretty fantastic listen, strange field recordings, industrial clatter, reverbed piano accompanied by strange mechancical buzz, swirly deconstructed drone pop, processed vocal loops, effects drenched sci-fi spoken word, noisy abstract avant electro-jazz, collaged porn soundtracks, strange detuned folk mash ups, primitive electronics, static drenched music box lullabies, splattery rhythmic improv, and so much more. All presented as one seamless hour long track, it's a heady, psychedelic listen for sure, definitely academic, but sonically more naive sounding, there's a distinctive joy in sound making on display, which is pretty refreshing, and for every chunk of atonal skree, there's another stretch of melodic loveliness. The second disc, is a new recording from composer / soundscaper / audio alchemist / modern minimalist Gianluca Becuzzi, whose Memory Makes Noise disc we review elsewhere on this week's list, and whose Kinetix double disc we listed a while back. At first we were under the impression that Becuzzi's pieces was a reworking of the first disc, but on closer listening, and a closer reading of the confusing liner notes, it seems that maybe it was INSPIRED by, as sonically it's quite different, opening with a strange spoken word, delivered over a hazy industrial thrum, a fuzzy distant drone, laced with deep distant low end bellows, and like everything we've heard from Becuzzi, his pieces constantly shifting, here flitting from ominous cinematic drone punctuated by bursts of static and random clang and clatter, to warm softly whirling subterranean warble, and from strange circus like garble, to hazy, glitchy crumble, before returning to the opening spoken word drone, further testament to Becuzzi's penchant for panlindromic composition.

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Hardcore noise mashup featuring a strange mix of contributions from Melt-Banana, Christoph De Babalon, Merzbow, Shizuo (& Chris), Stilluppsteypa, Patric Catani, Brezel Goring (of Stereo Total), as well as many others. Dunno if these artists have actually

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First in a proposed series of limited edition "abstract folk compilations" from Missouri's Mental Telemetry label. This "Trighplane" (i.e. three-way) split between Magic Carpathians, the Six Organs of Admittance, and Vibracathedral Orchestra isn't a bad start! From Poland, California, and the UK respectively, these are all AQ-fave outfits, with perfect "Terra" credentials, Ptolemaic-style. The opening two tracks from the Magic Carpathians are kinda scary, with off-kilter strings and Anna Nacher's haunting voice. They do a song from their last album, "Ethnocore 3" but perhaps it's a different version. Then Six Organs takes over with a long, gently droning piece with an old-timey folk vibe. Last up is Neil Campbell & Co's Vibracathedral Orchestra, bowing away at their oven racks, electric guitars and whatnot for five tracks of satisfying improv drone clatter, perhaps the most abstract (if not most folky) stuff on here. Though it IS folk in the sense of homebrewed, primitive music-making, just how we like it. All of this in a nice letter-pressed package (designed by AQ pal Nemo who runs Time-Lag Records), limited to 1000 -- what are you waiting for?

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This comp is sort of an advertisement, a promotional item, which would normally turn us right off, but this disc killer, and it just so happens to be promoting a line of hand crafted 'caveman' effects, created by none other than Nelson from Man Is The Bastard, Sleestak and Geronimo. Wondering where those fucked up sounds were coming from? The damaged electronics on the Geronimo record? Well, most likely it was a Trogotronic device helping to create that racket. They look beautiful and sound even better. Check it out: http://www.thumbprintpress.com/trogotronic.htm So this here comp features a who's who of noise artists who apparently endorse Trogotronic. But you know what? Even if you had no clue what the hell Trogotronic was, this comp would still stomp your ass. Check out the lineup: Geronimo, Unicorn, Sickness, Drunk On Blood, Mike Shiflet, Torso, Bastard Noise and more and more. The sleeve even lets you know which Trogotronic device was used in each specific track. We can't tell you how close we've come to blowing our paychecks on some of these noisemakers. But for now, we're happy to make do with this disc. First off, an unreleased Geronimo track, worth it right there. An awesomely creepy electronic krautrocky crawl, all crumbling and distorted, low end crunch beneath, squealing high end siren like skree. Sounds like an outtake from their full length, which it probably is, and which of course means it's awesome! Drunk On Blood, another Man Is The Bastard side project, offers up a symphony of electronic jackhammering, pounding and pulsing, almost musically, percussive and relentless, and weirdly listenable. The Sickness track is a heaving wall of analog fury, crumbling and crunchy, the Bastard Noise track is downright pretty, a sea of squelches and a distant beastlike howling, Torso unfurl some seriously creeped out hissy dronemusic, Unicorn offer up a weird symphony of shrieks and stumbling percussive clatter, Astrogenic Hallucinating spits out some fucked up, horror movie analog video game music, we could go on and on and on. All the tracks here are pretty amazing, some textural and drone-y, others blown out and white hot, still others, rhythmic and abstract, at the very least, you'll probably listen to this like crazy and do some serious damage to your speakers, worst case though, you'll end up like us, freaking out and NEEDING some of these noisemakers for yourself, then you can do some REAL damage! Beautifully packaged in a fold over, silkscreened sleeve.

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Fflint Central is a U.K. label run by two extraordinarily nice guys and darn fine hosts (good enough to befriend a sick and bedraggled on-tour Andee and buy him Cokes). Fflint specializes in experimental electronics and harsh abstract noise. One would think that there's enough, or too much of both, but the men from Fflint have that something special (fuck-you attitude? undefinable sound? sense of humor?) that makes these records way better and way more interesting than the majority of the 'electronica' we hear these days. Fans of VV/M, Lesser and other 'troublesome' electonica will dig this stuff. Affordable CD-Rs. Go ahead and take a chance. You may regret it... Here is the ubiquitous 'label sampler', but in this case, it's almost better to treat it like its own release, since there is so much overlap/incest among the Fflint stable of artists. All unreleased stuff form almost everyone on the label. From ear-splitting noise to soothing drones to pounding distorted beats to hypnotic pulses. From calculated compositions to all out mayhem. A good overview of an awesome new label.

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Plastic Crimewave along with the ever so busy Arthur Magazine curated this great fest in Chicago which took place earlier this year. A fest with AQ faves all over it. And this comp of bands who performed at the fest is a nice consolation for those of us who couldn't be there. Festival or no, this is simply one badass compilation! With everyone from Mountains to Josephine Foster, Tony Conrad to Hototogisu, No Neck Blues Band to Jack Rose, you can tell this was a fest put together with great taste and a sense of how important varied sounds is to keep folks' attention. None of the bands sound exactly the same, but there is a definite stylistic thread that runs throughout. Maybe we'll make it to the next Two Million Tongues Fest...until then we'll be hanging out right here with this.

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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. [/cat/compilationsplit81.html]

Parallelism is the London based imprint run by Matador head /Air Traffic Controllers guitarist Gerard Cosloy. Portland, OR based Tom Greenwood and Josh Stevenson (of Jackie-O Motherfucker and Cast Exotic Archives, respectively), collect recordings documenting

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Wow. This is one amazing boxset, visually, sonically, and for a limited time we're selling em, taking preorders now in fact, so if you want one, by all means order away, cuz you are probably gonna want one. Our pal Keith Utech offered to let us sell these special fancy box sets that were otherwise only available via the Utech website; no other store has 'em! (Thanks, Keith!). So, what's this all about? Well over the past couple of years, Utech put out a series of handsomely packaged cds featuring artwork by Stephen Kasner, discs by Skullflower, Heavensore, Runhild Gammelsaeter, The Stargazer's Assistant, Klangmutationen Schwarzhagel, RST, Final, Aluk Todolo, and Blood Fountains. This box contains all 9 of those releases, PLUS an exclusive remix cd featuring one track apiece from each of those artists. Those ten discs, which come in a very nice custom engraved, matte black box, are accompanied by a folded booklet featuring text by Kasner and Jenks Miller. In addition, you get a folder, also black, signed and decorated in silver ink, containing nine cards of Kasner's art. Each set is numbered out of 90, signed, and no two are completely identical. We've reviewed most, if not all of the releases within this fantastical box, so you can look elsewhere on our site for the write ups, though we imagine you probably already know if this is something you want or not. (And might be kicking yourself if you already bought all nine cds separately, yeah, we know...). Basically, very special packaging for a collection of some really great, dark, experimental, heavy, weird cds!! If you want one, let us know, Utech will get 'em to us really quickly. But we probably won't hold your order for it, we'll either ship it separately when it comes in, or if you're a regular orderer, we can just inlcude it in your next order!!

Another ear shredding, lung collapsing, skull crushing, hair raising, gut wrenching, ass kicking, soul soothing, spiritually devastating missive from out pals at Fflint (supplying us with some of the best experimental electronica in the world!) to tide you over until the results due from the even more unholy alliance between Berkowitz, Lake and Dahmer and our own Andee's tUMULt label. This here 'Unholy Trinity' collects tracks from Fflint regulars Berkowitz, Lake and Dahmer and Cousin Silas as well as newcomer The Gideon Leeches. The 'Leeches start things off with some shimmery ambience, underpinned by a shuffling jazzy snare and lots of crystalline burbling and what sounds like the theme from the Partfridge Family, slowed down and transmitted from the bottom of a swamp. Track two finds the Leeches in more of a noisy mood, weaving together synth pulses, timestretched buzz and clattery mahinery into a drizzly doomy soundscape. Cool stuff. Look forward to more in the future. Tracks 3 and 4 come courtesy of Cousin Silas, who has one Fflint full length under his belt. Track three is a gently dreamy ambient wash of soothing tones and warm thrum. Track four is SCARY. Creepy castle ambience, with drones, and distant clanks and skittering insects in your headphones, threatening to find their way into your dark warm brain. Berkowitz, Lake and Dahmer close things out with two tracks of ominous doom and gloom. Like the soundtrack to an Argento or Fulci film, this stuff is SINISTER to the nth degree. Gloomy ambient drones and ghoulish wails swirl through the abyss while people chant what sounds like 'Do it!' in the distance. Huge throbbing bass notes punctuate the grim atmosphere and the anguished (and heavily reverbed) voices of disembodied spirits reach from beyond the grave. By the final track, a thick granular drone is introduced adding tension to the already frightening proceedings, while Keith Emerson keyboards are dismantled and slowed down and spread in a thick paste over the whole damn thing until the whole thing finishes in a cacaphonous burst of desiccated samples and dismantled melodies. Another awesome release from the mighty Fflint central!

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A totally mind blowing collection of artists, representing the state of 'noise' today. 55 bands, 3 cds, totally elaborate over the top packaging, a project so epic it took three labels to make it happen, but now that it's done, it was so worth the wait. So utterly gorgeous. And while we'd be the first to admit that we were a bit scared by the idea of a triple cd noise compilation, the actual state of 'noise' is actually that much of it is quite beautiful, almost all of it is surprisingly listenable, and a lot of it is downright lovely. It's not just hissing jets of white noise these days. Textural and moody, rhythmic and abstract, it might be more fair to describe this as an experimental comp rather than a noise one, but to be fair, many of these tracks are noisy in their own way. And like any comp, it's the bands you know and love that suck you in:�Burning Star Core, Guilty Connector, Dead Machines, Thurston Moore, Strotter Inst., Leslie Keffer, Earwicker, Destructo Swarmbots, Mike Shiflet, Hum Of The Druid, Sword Heaven, The Cherry Point, Herpes O Deluxe, Travis Ryan (from Cattle Decapitation), Panicsville, Gerritt & John Wiese, but what keeps you in, and earns repeat listens, is the chance to discover new weird music from bands you've never heard before: OP Rechts, Bet Hell, Josh Lay, Cotton Museum, Big China & Little Trouble, Forbes Graham, Small Life, Lovae, The Heirs Of Rockafeller, Perfect Teeth, Tonight Golden Curls, Black Meat, Door, Noveller, Jason Zeh, Teeth Collection, tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE, Skullcaster, Steve Bradley, Wether, Mermaids, Wet Hearts, Magicicada, Oblong Box, Aughra, Donna Parker, Robert Inhuman, Yellow Tears, 1thousand Holy Shards, Back From Iraq, Sick III Cell, Scutopus, Ben S. Jacobs, Blango, Decimation Blvd., Ultra//Vires, Darsombra, Subterrane. Phew. We've yet to make it through all three discs, but what we've heard so far is awesome. So much so that every time we listen to this, someone comes up to see what we're listening to, after almost every song. In fact just while this review was being written, Allan asked what was playing 3 or 4 times. The tracks are that varied, and that good. It might be a bit daunting to do a track by track description, just know that we've listened to almost the whole thing, and loved pretty much all of it, even the noisiest tracks. And it's incredibly well sequenced too, the tracks are matched and segue into each other as if it were and album proper, not a compilation. So good. Our faith in noise may have been restored! And we haven't even discussed the packaging yet. A sturdy rectangular box with a removable lid, held together by a thick textured paper obi, gold metallic ink on red, inside, 4 thick cardstock inserts, each with unique red and gold art on one side, while on the other, one contains liner notes, the other three the track listings and band info, with the cds affixed to the center, and each cd is adorned with unique and different art. Wow. It truly is gorgeous looking, so much so that it's hard to believe it's only sixteen bucks. But we're not complaining. Not sure how limited this is, but something this nice and labor intensive, we're guessing they won't be around for long. Essential listening for lovers of modern music, noise and otherwise, and recommended especially for even the most noise-phobic among you...

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"Variable Resistance" was the second 'listening room' event co-sponsored by SF sound art organization 23five, Incorporated and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Where the first collaboration between 23five and the Museum centered on Japanese experimental music, this one takes a southern route to Australia, which has enjoyed a healthy explosion of adventurous musicians exporting their wares across the globe. Assembled by noted sound artist Philip Samartzis, "Variable Resistance" is a title that encapsulates the tone and extent of the work on hand, referencing not only the electronic gizmo (the variable resistor) as key to many of the featured homespun constructions, but also as an applicable non-definition of those artists who "offer variable resistance in how they are defined and the positions they occupy in a broader cultural context, fragmented, and dispersed among remote cities and divided by enormous physical and psychological space." That said, Samartzis attempts to breakdown the Australian aesthetic into a number of sub-genres: Microphonics, Metallic Plates & Resonating Strings, Residue, Flutter & Flux, Malfunction & Resistance, Improvised Composition, Suspended Time & Expanding Space, Electrical Impulses & Variable Flow, Soundhackers, and Microwaves, Collisions, & Noise. While each of these subgenres do offer some help in interpreting the work of these artists, those featuring on this cd (a condensed version of the SFMOMA event) are pretty good at resisting any imposed characterization. Much of the work on "Variable Resistance" is based upon live improvisation filtered through a number of DSP techniques (with obvious exceptions and detours) with tracks from Oren Ambarchi, Robbie Avenaim, Philip Samartzis, David Brown, Xonk, Thembi Soddell, Darrin Verhagen, Pimmon, and Delire.

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Found one copy of this stashed in the closet, figured someone would probably want it, first order gets it... The premiere issue in this amazing sound art magazine box series. Each issue comes in beautiful printed box, and contains a cd and a series of full color cards printed on thick card stock. Very nice. Published twice a year by a team of artists and journalists in France, Vibro is, as it says on the box, "A cross between an art piece and a specialized magazine. A sonic object, a chronicle of electroacoustic and lo-fi experiments." Indeed! Includes music from David Toop, Mika Vainio, Chris Watson and more.

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

SORRY.

Just dug up THREE copies of this cool art box / audio mag, once these are gone, they're gone for good... Latest issue in this amazing sound art magazine box series. Each issue comes in beautiful printed box, and contains a cd and a series of full color cards printed on thick card stock. Very nice. Published twice a year by a team of artists and journalists in France, Vibro is, as it says on the box, "A cross between an art piece and a specialized magazine. A sonic object, a chronicle of electroacoustic and lo-fi experiments." Indeed! This issue contains pieces by Stephen Vitiello, Kinglet, Joan Schuman, Mark Vernon, Eva Sjuve, Christian Zanesi, Zoe Irvine, Aland Dunn & Jeff Young, Tonic Train, Pete Stollery, SI_COM and Tereza Neuma and features a full color card for each artist, with a full color reproduction of the artist's original artwork on one side, and on the other a description of the artist, a description of the piece, and assorted other information about the artist and their work. The tracks on this issue's cd are really amazing, beautifully haunting music concrete crafted from the sounds of waterfalls, snatches of conversations, brief snatches of music, warm rich drones, strange chopped up soundscapes, haunting intercepted phone calls, creaking machinery, buzzing insects, chimes, crickets, short wave radio, mutated speech, footsteps, passing cars, piano, sine waves and tone generators, synthesizers, radio broadcasts and all manner of found sound.

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Holy shit! The first of two box sets, paying tribute to one of the most adventurous noise projects, The New Blockaders. Despite having collaborated with Andrew Chalk during his '80s noise days, David Jackman, and more recently with Thurston Moore, The New Blockaders have steered clear of something resembling a public profile; yet at the same time, their incendiary abrasions of junkyard noise and sonic obliteration have had a huge impact on the global community of noise musicians. In listening to all of these tributes to The New Blockaders, it's easy for us to convince ourselves that we're actually hearing the Rupenus brothers (the principle authors for TNB). You'll find Z'ev's splattered / slashed metals and aggressive frequency modulation, Oren Ambarchi's twisted steel collage, Emil Beaulieau's typical onslaught of hellish noise, Prurient's blackened power electronics, the white hot psychoacoustic squallor of Jason Kahn, a return to brutish devastation from Controlled Bleeding, V/VM in kick-ass drummachinegun attack mode, Thurston Moore embraces his noise bag for sick tone excretions, as well as tracks from Scanner, KK Null, The Haters, Daniel Menche, Nocturnal Emissions, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Asmus Tietchens, Zbigniew Karkowski, Ashtray Navigations, John Wiese, MSBR, Vortex Campaign, and many many more. This is very limited, very beautifully packaged, and very recommended for any one interested in noise culture!

Well if you're going to get the first volume paying tribute to one of the most adventurous noise projects ever, The New Blockaders, there's no excuse not to get the second! This one has Merzbow offering a fitting bit of incendiary psycho-noise, Sudden Infant gargling into shitty condenser mics and pounding heavily on slabs of wood along turgid grinding noise, sunken feedback miasma from Withdrawal Method, a mindblowing session of industrial ritualism for scraping metal and cavernous reverb from Giancarlo Toniutti, retardo squeak & squiggle from RLW, chopped digital splatter from Achim Wollscheid reminiscent of his SBOTHI days, a very Organum-like acoustic drone piece from Brandon Walls, Violent Onsen Geisha being Violent Onsen Geisha (i.e. REALLY FUCKING LOUD AND PIERCING!), Damion Romero offering a snarling blast of junked speaker abuse, Spiracle transforming a seering noise into something almost hallowed in its shimmer, and Wolf Eyes just shit something out on an old cassette. Plus nasty bits of noise Jim O' Rourke, Dave Phillips, Aube, Cheapmachines, Courtis, Christian Renou, AMK, Aaron Dilloway, the Incapacitants, and many many more!

We have no reason not to trust Paradigms. Since their inception, this UK label has bestowed upon us slab after slab of weird and wonderful music. From the Stooges-meets-Hawkwind krautrock jams of Titan, to the massive glacial beauty of the Angelic Process, to the tripped out prog of Blueprint Human Being, to the grim blackness of Throne Of Katarsis, to the mysterious moodiness of Amber Asylum, to the epic sun baked sludge of Hjarnidaudi to the classic Pagan grimness of Utlagr. We've yet to be disappointed, and are beginning to consider Duncan who runs Paradigms an auxiliary aQuarian. How could we not? His label seems to perfectly reflect the AQ aesthetic, or will as soon as he puts out a killer power pop record and some wicked grime (haha), but for the most part, Paradigms has been batting 100% as far as we're concerned. So we were pretty excited to receive the newest Paradigms release, a compilation of drone, dark ambient, slow core, tripped out glacial prog, sludge metal, ambient doom and all of the indescribable genre nooks and crannies in between. Band name will most likely mean nothing to you, as we haven't heard of a single one of these bands: And Machine Said... Behold:, Catonium, Selaxon Lutberg, Escape The Day, Throne Of Glaktus, Paul Mercer, Monarch, Le' Rue Delashay, The Victim's Shudder, The Walking Cold, Vulf Sentient, Annastatsea and The Visions, but the music on this comp, holy shit! If there was ever a more AQ sounding compilation, we sure as shit haven't heard it. The opening track is a sort-of-industrial dirge, huge Teutonic beats, with haunting minor key melodies and super distorted low end piano, circling the crushing rhythm like vultures circling some dead and desiccated carcass. Like a stripped down instrumental Swans track. Beautiful and brutal. And that pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the record. Each track a different shade of black, from warm muted greys to pitch fucking black: from haunting elegiac piano dirges, wrapped in creeped out ominous atmosphere, an expansive cinematic ambience, so cold and washed out and utterly epic, it sounds like Basinski if he had scored a film consisting of one slowly panning shot of some arctic tundra, to creeping Codeine worship, with slowly unfurling minor key guitar and softly crooned sadboy vocals, from massive murky soundscapes of keening glistening ambience and throbbing moaning low end, to super blown out dirgey sludgy Swans-like grooves, with haunting angelic vocals and strange skittery percussion, from creepy reverb drenched chamber music, operatic vocals and moaning strings, to hellish black ambience woven from deep resonant metallic shimmers, and guttural low end rumblings... Definitely for fans of SUNNO))), Earth, Boris, Corrupted, MZ 412, Nordvargr, Codeine, Nadja, Fear Falls Burning, Hwyl Nofio, Andrew Chalk, Jonathan Coleclough, Earth, Khanate, Catacombs or any one into musicks dark and dirgey, dreamy and droney, dense and doomy. So fucking good. This is the first Paradigms release to not be packaged in hand printed paper sleeves, instead it's housed in a white DVD case, with a gorgeous black and white photograph cover. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!

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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 myriad of intriguing San Francisco experimental sound artists are features on this expansive double lp. The cast of characters includes Subarachnoid Space, Not Breathing, Earwicker, Dead Air Supply, Mystery School, Content Provider, Property Of Thieves, and Kimosciotic. Runs the gamut of texture and atmosphere. Organic and synthetic. Skitterish rhythms and claustrophonic drones. Looming thuds and brittle shimmers. If you dig the artists on the Schematic label, you might wanna check this out too (especially the Dead Air Supply tracks on side A and the Not Breathing track on Side D). For a slower, gentler mood the space rock of SubArachnoid Space meld grooves with COntent Provider followed by Kimosciotic's vaporous, almost insectile layers (side B). The second disc begins with Earwicker's lightly abrasive repetitive beats, squeals and bleeps. Conversely Mystery School take us on a much more linear voyage, sticking with a rhythm and/or sample briefly before proceeding onwards. And the final side offers the aforementioned icy liquid electronics of Not Breathing followed by the dreamily drifting aquatic chimes and echoes from Property Of Thieves. Each side is beautifully self-contained, but all four together make for a very pleasing compilation. File under: tactile sound... very nice!

Killer intercontinental compilation from Israeli label Heart & Crossbone, who in the past have brought us equally killer releases from black thrash duo Barbara, weird noise metal combo Cadaver Eyes, ultra noisemakers Lietterschpich, blown out avant noise rockers Grave In The Sky, one-man experimental grind band Mildew, and most recently, the mysterious field recording-ed skitter and clang of Lagan Tapes. Not a bad track record at all! For this comp, curiously called What Pleasing The Lord Looks Like Marriage, they've gathered up 8 of their favorite extreme noise and metal bands, 4 from Israel, 4 from Japan, some mentioned above, all pretty kick ass. First up is Ryokuchi, a bass and drums doom duo from Japan, who start out with some shakuhachi and tribal drumming, before launching into a crushing, lurching sludge, dense downtuned heaviness, tons of shrieking feedback, chugging crunch, and bellowed vox. Cadaver Eyes are up next, their track begins with a thick caustic slab of undulating drone, all buzzing overtones, and layered rumbles, eventually the drums kick in, and a Khanate-like pace, the vocals tortured and harsh, the backdrop a low end slow motion doom, definitely for the ultramegadoomlords out there. Back to Japan for Zenocide, who also offer up their own sludge-y slowness, with some incredible, monstrous vocals, WAY up in the mix, the music a stripped down sort of stonery doom, think Church Of Misery crossed with Corrupted, but those vocals, holy shit, SCARY. Not sure why Lietterschpich appended 'diet' to their name, this doesn't sound any lighter or less heavy than past outings, instead, more super abstract percussive freakouts, shimmery soft noise and dubbed out doom, a swirling skree or chopped and processed sounds, all layered over a wall of buzzing crumbling sound, and those chaotic drums. MONEYISGOD from Japan are another band new to us, but again, we have to say HOLY SHIT, these guys are fucked up and heavy and awesome! Buzzing glitchy layers of noise, super blown out heavy percussion, and the occasional vocal blurt, like a way more ominous angry Boredoms, quickly giving way to a cloud of caustic white noise, all the while those drums keep pounding away. Poochlatz are another longtime aQ fave from Israel, and here they get their Whitehouse on big time, although it's like a muddy, murky, muted Whitehouse, another squall of swirling noisiness, of fuzz and buzz and hiss, peppered with strangled super processed vox, the whole thing stuttering and skittering and constantly pulsing and throbbing, almost like a Buttholes Surfer noise mix! The comp finishes off with two more new-to-us combos, first up Remesh, from Israel, who are also plenty noise, there noise expelled in great big blown out gouts, industrial, heaving, hissing, effects drenched vocals bellowing beneath that undulating sea of harsh sound, but not so harsh that it isn't listenable, although certainly harsh enough to keep away all but the very iron eared. And finally, Japan's Nerveless, mistakenly credited as Neverless, who close things out with a massive 20 minute noisedoom freakout. There is a riff, a massive crumbling super distorted bassy one, that lurches glacially, while all around it swirls dense sheets of low end throb, and a symphony of what sounds like that wind-on-microphone crackle and crunch. It's like Corrupted and Boris filtered through a blown Merzbow subwoofer. Noisy, but strangely hypnotic and heavy. Like all good comps, this will definitely leave you wanting more from most, if not all of these outfits, another noisy heavy winner from Heart & Crossbone!

MPEG stream: Miezarumon No Kage
MPEG stream: BaHoref Karrr
MPEG stream: Par Avion Ramblin

Not sure about the whole story, something about ceramic pigs and blowdryers. But basically, a bunch of found sounds recorded on a minidisc were sent out to numerous underground electronic/experimental musicians (some well-known, some not-so), and traded and