Recently we uncovered the lost thud-rock treasures of Dumb and The Ugly, an Australian ensemble from the early '90s that splattered heavy-duty riffs with sinister ambience and weirdo psychedelia. Since then, Dumb and the Ugly guitarist David Brown has plunged himself into the experimental community of Melbourne, with a number of interesting projects including Candlesnuffer, Lazy, and Western Grey. All of these are a far cry from Brown's musical infancy when he had a brief encounter with celebrity as the guitarist in AC/DC for about a month back in 1976!
Western Grey is the electro-acoustic improv trio involving Brown, Philip Samartzis, and Sean Baxter. The three rotate through their pallette of scrabbled guitar textures (Brown), electric hums, noises, & tones, (Samartzis), and improv jazz drum stutter (Baxter), highlighting the extreme contrasts of these sounds rather than attempting to synthesize them into a holistic, meditative sound as found on recent AMM releases for instance. Brown and Baxter take turns colliding into Samartzis' finely tuned electrocutionist drones, splattering the sound field with off-kilter squiggles and harrowing scrapes. The final 24 minutes of Glacial Erratic finds Western Grey accompanied by sample-based British improviser Kaffe Matthews; and the expanded quartet explore the dynamics of the drone much more than earlier on the record.
Latest from this post Raccoo-oo-oon duo, and like the records before, these two continue to confound, moving ever further away from the sonic chaos that was Raccoo-oo-oon, their sound a barrage of Dead C style noise rock melded to fractured outsider folk, all caustic and abrasive, freaked out and dementedly psychedelic, hell we even made one of their albums our Record Of The Week. And while we have dug most of the Wet Hair stuff, it never had the same impact that their old band did.
Sort of more meandery and jammy, which is not a bad thing at all, but at times, it definitely seems confusional, and a bit aimless, but on In Vogue Spirit, it sounds like these guys have finally figured out where this Wet Hair thing was meant to be going, and apparently it was meant to be some sort of trippy, psychedelic krautrock, all motorik rhythms, woozy dreamlike melodies, buried in the mix Spacemen 3 like vox, pulsing low slung basslines, all woven into long stretches of spacey, trippy hypnorock. The sort of thing that should definitely appeal to fans of Wooden Shjips, Spacemen 3, Cave, Circle, Silver Apples, Moon Duo, and various other space/psych rockers. There's plenty of Stereolab/Neu! worship happening too, but filtered through Wet Hair's decidedly cracked post-whatever sensibilities.
There is still plenty of schizophrenic weirdness, bizarre sonic detours, from skittery, echo drenched lo-fi outsider calypso exotica, circusy organ driven echoplexed ambience, lo-fi eighties style electro pop, squiggly effects drenched hazy blissouts, but even those strange moments don't sound as far removed as before, still droney and hypnotic in their own way, and thus tied to the core of Wet Hair's sound, which at least for now, is a fantastically spaced out, shimmery, droney, druggy spacekraut hypno rock. Awesome.
Another fine release of cancerous electronic drones from Monorail Trespassing, whose tapes have been consistently some of the best being released in recent years. Wether is the work of Delaware native Mike Haley, who has been amassing an Aaron Dilloway work ethic of numerous releases in tiny editions; and there's one picture floating around online that documents a live Wether gig with Haley hunched over a suitcase of pedals and a microphone with long-hair covering his face. Yup, sounds like a Wolf Eyes show; but at least on Human Parka, Wether is not entirely recapitulating Michigan noise. Maybe something like Demons with their coldwave synth drones, but that's as close as he gets. Anyway, the two steady arcs of lazer beam drones amass out of phase pattern saw tooth analog tones, oscillating filter sweeps, and downshifted vibrations keyed into tectonic plate movements. Some of the low-end frequencies can be pretty fucking headsplitting, especially when listening on headphones. As mentioned, very well constructed. Twenty minutes, limited to 125 copies.
The follow-up to the smash AQ-hit The Lobster Boys -- dozens upon dozens of copies sold here, and counting, no petite potatoes considering that the disc only sold 500 in all of Europe! -- is in fact a follow-up in the best sense. When doesn't return to the dark soundtrack stuff a decade ago that made earlier When albums so beloved of the black metal community. No, When gives us what we want -- sunshiney sike-pop n' electronica incorporating international ethnic sounds into a heavenly yet weird pop concoction. Pretty much The Lobster Boys part II, but with lyrical concepts taken from The Arabian Nights! Those fables and proverbs are rendered with gentle, even gently twee, self-harmonized vocals with a British accented lilt. You'll hear the Beatles, XTC, and some Bowie too. Combine that vocal-pop capability with sampled, shambling Middle Eastern bazaar musicks, jangling exotica and electronics, and you've got When's winning formula on Pearl-Harvest. It's a bit like Tipsy on a magic carpet ride with Andy Partridge doing the vocals. There's some darker, cartoon-wacky surreality thrown in that echoes old, disturbing When stuff, but that's almost a warped Disney element that works in perfect contrast to the pop-perfection of most of the songs.
If you're not already one of the many AQ customers to have acquired a copy of The Lobster Boys (or Psychedelic Wunderbaum, or WriterCakeBox, or...) then you maybe unaware of the who and what of When. It's the project of Norwegian Lars Pederson, an eclectic eccentric musical mastermind if there ever was one. Here he sings and plays almost all the instruments -- keys, zither, flute, xylophone, programming, etc. -- with a little help from friends making guest appearances on accordion and guitar. We've liked all his stuff in the past, but this sampledelic pop niche he's been exploring recently is most impressive, and certainly the most sweetly satisfying.
The band's name is When, but the question really is *What?* As in, what the hell is this? Totally amazing, for one thing, but beyond that...? One thing we can say about When is that we NEVER know what to expect from 'em. On this new album, the music is a
When is the brainchild of Norwegian musician/sampler artist Lars Pedersen; he's been at it since the early '80s (after quitting a new wave/Industrial band called Holy Toy) and has released 8+ albums that have ranged from ambient soundscapes to prog rock, yet have steadily grown more and more pop. When's previous full-length release, "Psychedelic Wunderbaum", dabbled in pop sounds, if you consider Carl Stalling cartoon music meets crazed electronica "pop"! But on The Lobster Boys, Lars really lets his Beatles / Beach Boys inspiration come to the fore. His British (not Norwegian) accented singing is placed into some far-from conventional settings -- over, say, an Ethiopiques sampled loop (really!), or over crazy wild drumming most pop songs never get to feature.
Lars and several friends handle sampling, organ, guitar, bass, xylophone, drums, vocals, melodica, viola, etc... all culminating in an utterly amazing final unlisted bonus track, 15+ minutes of trancey middle eastern samples and effects that build up into a distorted storm of loud electric guitar feedback skree, noisy and yet blissfully rhythmic throughout.
Lastly, we have to say: how weird is it that we can only get this album from heavy metal distributors? Because it's on the Norwegian label Jester, which is run by Garm from (former) black metal legends Ulver, some from the metal community have noticed the record, but we worry it may go under-recognized by other intrepid listeners (except for, of course, AQ and you!) Truly, we never imagined how much we'd come to love this decidedly non-metal, fantastic band.
(And if you want to catch up on When's previous work, we also stock "PW" and the When best of/rarities double cd compilation "The Unblessed World Of When: WriterCakeBox".)
When is the (mostly) one man project of one Lars Pederson, who has been recording as When for almost 20 years now. This two disc collection (released on Garm from Ulver's Jester label) gathers songs and pieces and parts spanning When's entire existence. From
Apparently sharing their name with a progressive metal 'djent' band from the Isle of Wight (ha, first mention of djent on the aQ list ever!), the When Prophecy Fails responsible for THIS tape is from right here in San Francisco, and is in a fact yet another project by our pal Monte Cimino (Burial Tree/Time Spent/Dark Matter Halo). Hopefully none of the djent band's fans will accidentally get this or they'd become very confused, possibly upset. 'Cause it's all cassette-dubbed, electronically processed, wind tunnel / vacuum cleaner noise style sonics. Think, the lighter side of Merzbow, basically. It's pretty noisy, but also it's noise that's pretty, 'cause in keeping with Monte's other projects, while (often) loud, it's got a soothing side to it. New Age Noise, perhaps? Drones with dynamics, sudden lulls and stretches of quiet beauty before the volume ramps up again.
The first side of the tape consists of two songs: the 14+ minute title track, made with cello (and copious electronics we infer), sounding a lot like noise guitar in the vein of Urthona or Sunroof. That's followed by an approximately 3 minute piece called "Hiding Under The Guise Of Religion", done with organ and drums. Side two features two tracks, each about 9 minutes long, given the great title "Life May Be Fleeting, But You're An Asshole, pt. I & II". Made with contact mics and "misc. surfaces", this detailed and abrasive droning also sounds like abstract feedback drenched guitar noise.
Hmm, just the other day we got in a used copy of jazz guitarist Pat Metheny's notorious "noise" album from 1993, Zero Tolerance For Silence. After listening to this, we know just who we're gonna try to sell it to. If he doesn't already have it. Seriously, though, if you agree that "noise" can be good or can be bad, this is GOOD noise. We're not kidding, for noise stuff we like this a lot.
By the way, winning an award for most annoying packaging idea this week, the cassette case is full of loose leaf black tea. Argh!
A bit of archival noisiness from aQ pal Monte, who most of you might know as the man behind brooding twangy heavy drifters Burial Tree, as well as the more ambient projects Dark Matter Halo and Time Spent, but the sound of When Prophecy Fails is something else all together, recorded while Monte was still in graduate school, this chunk of blown out digital noise and dense black ambience was in fact inspired by a book about a cult from the fifties, their expectations of the impending apocalypse, and how they dealt with it all when the end of the world did not come to pass (sound familiar?). So if you're reading this, we can assume the most recent extinction event also didn't end up happening, so once again, a legion of doomsdayers are forced to deal with their (and everyone else's) continued existence. And what better way to represent the ever impending apocalypse and the frustration of a million mysterious and undecipherable end of world prophecies, than with clouds of grinding Merzbowian murk, screeching strings, machine gun analog stutter, heaving swirls of grit and grim and glitch, undulating tangles of sculpted hiss, fracture melodic fragments, mysterious samples, haunting stretches of muted electronic shimmer, pocked with jagged shards of digital errata, guitars and violins, doused in effects, the sounds pulled apart until they're fully removed from their sources. The sound chaotic and brutal for much of the disc, but often settling into haunting passages of serene drift, soft psychedelia blurred into crackling swells and muted smears of dense, tense buzz and howl. These brief respites are of course bookended by dizzying bursts of crunch and howl and skree, but even at it's most chaotic and freeform, there does seem to be a method to this musical madness, which comes into clearer focus on the final two tracks.
The first of which is based on recordings of a mentally ill woman (Monte works in the mental health field and captured these recordings with the woman's permission), her voice cracked and weary, the words garbled, but occasionally certain phrases stick out, "can you help me?" being the most disturbing, and they are looped and layered, subtly effected, some reversed, all tangled into a disturbing collage of pain and anguish, which is as fascinating as it is strangely compelling, and of course chilling. Which leads into the final track, which is downright lovely, albeit creepy and sinister and broodingly dark, as if this was in fact the moment of rapture, deep rumbling tones, lush layered droned, slowly shifting over an expanse of deep black nothingness, the instruments coming to the fore, what could be a bit of guitar drifts amidst this abject sprawl of groaning, moaning minimal ambient creep. The sound subtly glitchy, cavernous and dense, a dark strain of black ambient industrial shimmer, the soundtrack to a timelapse film of the end of the world, a cascade of slo-mo blackened churn, that plays out glacially as everything around it, and us, fades into oblivion.
Cool packaging too, printed cardstock inserts, in a stickered plastic sleeve, each disc accompanied by a doomsday fortune, predicting your end, and what you'll experience at the end, along with six unlucky numbers, all printed on a little fortune sized piece of vellum.
One of three new releases from UK tape label The Tapeworm, and yet another one we'd never heard of before. Where Is This, the project of one Mark Ward, is a seriously dense wall of sound, a heaving, crushing sprawl of blacknoise, power electronics, and blown out psychedelia. There's certainly an element of Merzbowian brutality, as in to the weak eared, this might come across as pure noise, but with headphones, and heck, even in places without, the sounds here are super nuanced, textured and dare we say melodic, with streaks of chordal color draped across churning expanses of white noise skree, arcs of feedback are sculpted into melodic fragments, and then woven into thick, dizzying swirls of crumbling distortion, and fried zoner drones, the whole tape is a constant squall, but once you're full immersed, the sounds surround you, and wrap you in mysteriously melodic bits of sound, a cascade of crunchy, buzzy, blistering shriek and howl, somehow tamped down and muted, and woven into some seriously mesmerizing psychedelic noise, the sort of thing, that somehow becomes more and more listenable and lovely, the longer you listen, all the while not shedding a bit of its searing sonic intensity. Noise is often a tough proposition for us, but when done right, it can be something impossibly brutal and beautiful, epic and majestic, and fantastically transcendent, and Ward really does do it just right!
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!!!
There's a weirdo theory in the realm of parapsychology (yes, the ultimate land of weirdo theories) that inanimate objects can absorb the psychic energy from the living, especially during that of extreme stress. This postulation is called the Stone Tape Theory, as stone (along with wood) is the most common media for this stored energy that can be replayed in the form of ghostly ectoplasm, disembodied knockings, and just bad vibes. While the peripatetic sound-artist Simon Whetham seems far too sensible a bloke to hold the Stone Tape Theory dear to his heart, we have to wonder if he was spooked at all during the recording sessions for From The Mouths Of Clay. The source material in question was a collection of prehistoric and contemporary South American burial urns. It's unclear if these urns were actually used for the intended purpose or if the remains had been removed during his recording sessions; but it's very clear that these objects can generate quite an ethereal tone. Whetham's tactile investigation of these objects divined a slippery, rasping drone within the ebb and flow of his subtle electronic augmentation (layering, pitchshifting, EQ, etc.). So pure are the harmonics that they have the feel of a glass harmonica - you know, the parlor trick of rubbing a wine glass with a wet finger. Whetham allows these tones to waft in elegant suspension, giving the impression that if they were the sounds from ghosts, then the spirits embrace an enlightened, transcendent, and celestial aloofness, avoiding the baseness of anything physical. At various times throughout the recordings, Whetham drags a contact microphone across the surface of those urns, amplifying prickly textures that scatter with an anarchnoid irregularity. It's an unnerving counterpoint of earthly abjection to offset the innervision luminosity and holy minimalism from Whetham's drones. Think Alan Lamb, Andrew Chalk, Eliane Radigue, Phill Niblock. Yeah, it's that good! Absolutely gorgeous work, and easily the best thing we've heard from Mr. Whetham.
The globe-trotting British sound artist Simon Whetham found himself in Shreveport, Louisiana in 2011 where he was commissioned to develop a body of work based on the defunct MacNeill Street Pumping Station. This artifact of the 19th Century was the last known steampowered water plant in the United States and has been a historical site for several decades now. He was one of many acclaimed artists asked to contribute to the seemingly inactive MacNeill Street Pumping Station New Music Festival, alongside Tim Hecker, Lawrence English, Mark Fell, Eli Kezler, and about a dozen other denizens of avant-garde soundcraft. It was a great idea to have all of these artists develop compositions, installations, and performances within such an interesting space; and we can hope that the festival is merely on temporary hiatus. Needless to say, here we have the stereo mix of Whetham's multichannel installation that he presented at the festival. His source material consists of drones from the huge metal pools and the network of pipes from that space, focusing mostly on the resonant frequencies of the ghostly drones and watery tones. Overlapping, sinewy electric vibrations tumble into a pool of isolationist dank at the beginning of the album before a reverberant flute utters a solitary bellow amidst the metallic klang reverb articulating two of the techniques of Whetham's sound-hunting - that of the contact microphone on sonorous objects and the open-air recordings of those reflective surfaces. Deep, low-end rattlings gird the bulk of Hydrotasic with wind-swept thrumming, agitated found objects, and plenty of nocturnal clutter being moved around by the ghosts that lurk in the sticky humidity of a Louisiana swamp, or at least that's what it sounds like. Brilliantly akin to the processed field recording work of Jonathan Coleclough, Thomas Koner, and BJ Nilsen.
One of two new singles on this week's list from UK label Trensmat, one by UK psychedelic spacekraut collective Gnod, and this one, from twisted soundscapers Whirling Hall Of Knives, and as always, already sold out at the label, and thus the copies we got are most likely the only ones we'll ever see.
We actually first discovered Whirling Hall Of Knives via a split 7" on Trensmat, with Tlaotlon, and even then, we were pretty into WHOK's looped and layered slow building psychedelia, which is still present here, but wrapped around some pounding hypnotic drumming, the sound a thick, almost corrosive buzz, churning and roiling and being pulled along in the wake of the aforementioned drum pound, a sort of droned out blackened krautmetal that is some of the raddest stuff we've heard, falling somewhere between the recent JK Flesh record and Necro Deathmort, but somehow more metal, or noise rock, whatever it is, it sounds like a real band, not a guy and his laptop, and it sounds like the kind of thing that would DESTROY live, a sort of heavy heavy drum driven ur-drone that we could imagine coming from the Shit And Shine camp. The flipside strips away the drums, and adds all sorts of extra melody and textures, creating something that while still plenty buzzy, is more space and almost Eastern sounding, heady and hypnotic and seriously blissed out. So good!
Pressed on milky swirled blue grey vinyl, and includes a link to downloads of both tracks as well as a bonus track NOT on the 7" (that's easily as good as either of the proper 7" tracks, dense and blackened, droney and HEAVY)!
So far we've only heard a couple of singles from these twisted psychedelic soundscapers, both on Trensmat, one a split with Tlaotlon, and what little we've heard from these guys, pretty much knocked our socks off. A sort of layered psychedelia, droned out hypnorock space-kraut, like a lot of the other bands on Trensmat, but WAY weirder and more tripped out, and that doesn't seem about to change on their first full length, which opens with a wild squall of gristled noise before settling into a serious sprawl of droned out space rock mesmer, all churning organ (processed guitar?), tribal drumming, swirling FX, the rhythms buried in the mix, so it almost sounds like a super distorted drone-prog, that almost gets metal for a second before collapsing into full on crumbling noise, transformed into a long stretch of distorted zoner drift. That track alone, most psychedelic space combos would kill for, but we're only getting started.
The 10+ minute "Alternate Devil (Dvaita)" sounds like Gnod with a heavy dub makeover, all lurching big beats, and swirling clouds of caustic buzz, heavy and heady and super tranced out, it almost sounds a bit like the Boredoms or Shit And Shine, super churning and rhythmic, a wild tribal rhythm pelted by sheets of roiling noise, the drums eventually dropping out, leaving just the noise, but that too recedes, leaving a hazy droned out noise-psych drift, all tangled synths and swirling FX, buried voices and stretched out guitar buzz. So good.
Nothing on the rest of the record is quite that sprawling and epic, but WHOK do manage to kick up a seriously collection of kick ass sonic skree, processed guitardrones, and swirling blown out psychedelia, gives way to noisy kraut-drone lumber, rife with weird almost choral vocals, whorls of white noise, and of course some seriously dense drumming. There's also plenty of minimal druggy drift, like an even more heavily sedated Spacemen 3, as well as some super blown out guitardrone buzz, washed out and woozy, and finally, the WHOK version of techno, a grinding noisescape of noise blasted beats wreathed in droned out guitarbuzz and crumbling in-the-red distortion, pulsing and throbbing malevolently, before splintering into a total trip out free form soft noise psychedelic coda. Cool!!!
Includes a link to a digital download of the whole record, and like all Trensmat releases, EXTREMELY LIMITED!!
WHISPERS: Pagan folk / viking metal, epic and black.
LIGHT: blistering chaotic psychedelic BM. Ferocious and introspective.
"So it was that three hundred electric moons cancelled the ancient green queen of loves with their blinding chalk rays..."
So concludes one of the obscure, occultic pieces of text excerpted in the cd booklet of this new disc (in this case the Futurist prose poem "Uccidiamo il chiaro di luna" by Filippo Marinetti) and is to us a suitably evocative and cryptic description of the beautiful, distorted drones conjured by White/Lichens, a collaborative project staffed by Rob Lowe (aka Lichens, who records for the Kranky label in his hometown of Chicago) and Matt Clark and Jeremy Lemos of the Chicago heavy ambient guitar duo White/Light (who have a cd on Rebis).
Lichens' previous disc The Psychic Nature Of Being on Kranky (lp version on Holy Mountain) we described as "delicate" and "crystalline", constructed mainly from electronically-treated live improv loopings of his own voice, abetted with guitar and percussion. But the scary dronescapes of White/Lichens are more dense than delicate, the added weight of Clark and Lemos' guitars "heavy-ing up" the Lichens sound. You'll hear rumbling low-end and keening highs in this most satisfying set of billowing electric drone, what distantly sounds like a Morse code transmission buried beneath the destroyed residue of 1,000 doomed violins... It's like the Vibracathedral Orchestra scoring an opium induced nightmare, or the organic decay of an claustrophobic early Kluster track exposed to alien moonlight for the past 40 years. There's five tracks here, the first and last being the longest (19 and 16 minutes apiece, approximately) with the middle three around four minutes each. At its most dense and distortion-filled, as on the final track "Bael", this could be a glitchless version of the murky Merzbowian Sheer Hellish Miasma stirred up by their pal Kevin Drumm. Or KTL's most Earth-y moments tempered by the homebrewed, gentle freeform folk-psych of a Jewelled Antler recording.
We don't doubt for an instant that if this was a limited edition cd-r from some mysterious Finnish forest dweller, or lathe cut 10" by a kid in New Zealand, we'd be assured of selling fistfuls of 'em. And therefore, since the well-respected Holy Mountain label judged this to be deserving of not-so-limited cd status, that should indicate it's even MORE worth picking up, than if there were just 50 copies made, intended solely for collectors...
Finally, this long long long out of print recording from these aQ space psych faves, originally released as a super limited tour only cd-r, is available again, repressed on vinyl, via the kind folks at Immune. Here's what we had to say about these jams when we first reviewed the cd-r version WAY back in 2007:
The return of White Hills, and their East Coast Hawkwind worshipping Stooges stomp FX blowouts. Every album so far has kicked our asses, each one exploring a different side of WH's spaced out psychedelic sound. From the swirling cosmic krautprog of No Game To Play, to the more straight ahead space rock of Glitter Glamour Atrocity to the collaboration with Bay Area noisemakers White Pee, a half hour blast of ambient spacenoize. Where does Abstractions And Mutations fall? It falls smack dab in between all of those, but it falls HARD and HEAVY. Easily one of THEE fiercest outings yet from Dave W. and his bearded and robed wizards of druggy sonic overload. Beginning with a seriously metallic riff, and some super effected vocals, the band pounds relentlessly, adding tons of melody and a wicked hook, and then a brief space-y shuffle, before the song explodes into three minutes of amp frying psychguitar destruction.
The 15 minute "Left Behind" begins by drifting through some Tangerine Dreamed outer space void, peppered with fluttering drum fills, abstract shards of guitar, and clouds of shimmering FX, before again, exploding into a relentless acid jam, the drums splattering and sputtering, pounding and thrashing, the guitars wailing and howling, everything wrapped in a dense haze of buzz and effects. The rest of the record strikes a balance between the two, the blissed out laid back haze, and the face melting psychedelic freakout, culminating in the super tripped out final track, a sort of disembodied Doors-y jam, slow and spare, vocals drifting, guitars burning in soft swells, the percussion doused in reverb, the pace seriously stoned, before the chaos rains down from above, an intense drum guitar duel, the reverb and delay joining in for good measure, a swirling head spinning blow out.
Includes a download coupon as well!!
In case you missed it on our Record Store Day "in-between list" last Friday... but these are going fast! At this rate, gone within the week, if not sooner...
Last year - or maybe it was the year before - we told ourselves, hey, Record Store Day is awesome and all, but what would make it even more awesome? Maybe if we had our OWN release for Record Store Day! Something that, then, we could make sure our devoted mailorder customers wouldn't miss out on, also something that we could be absolutely sure we'd have, utterly unique to our store, amidst the chaos and uncertainty of all the other RSD releases.
So, this year, we did it! With the help of our good friends, Brooklyn's psychedelic space rockers extraordinare, you know 'em, you love 'em, White Hills. As those of you who live here in San Francisco may remember, White Hills brought their spaced out sounds to aQuarius for a fantastic instore on October 1st, 2010. Actually, they performed under the somewhat obvious pseudonym Black Valleys ('cause the venue they were playing that same night didn't want them doing another show the same day). In any case, their "Black Valleys" set turned out to be quite a bit different than an "ordinary" White Hills performance, being a drumless, droned-out duo performance specifically tailored to our space, trying (though probably failing!) to keep the volume low enough not to disturb our neighbors... but still hypnotizing us all with their nonetheless heavy sounds. The show was recorded, and it turned out GREAT.
Over a half hour long, the first few minutes of which are filled with shimmering, pretty pulsations and subtle sonic textures, as if this was the White Hills' version of Pop Ambient. It's both mesmeric and miasmic... Eventually waves of grinding fuzz enter the scene, and this slow building sonic juggernaut of throb and drone and drift takes on more massive proportions, propelled by what we can only say are almost ghostly riffs, giving this something of an Earth 2 vibe. We could go on and on, but somehow don't think we need to, since we know what White Hills fans are like (and you're all White Hills fans, right?).
So, digging the recording, White Hills gave us the go-ahead to release it as a special limited edition cd, for Record Store Day this year. And boy are we stoked.
LIMITED TO 300 hand-numbered copies, packaged in slim, dvd-style cases, with cool Op-Art inspired cover graphics by our pal Nathan Berlinguette, printed in black on fancy silvery paper. NOT sold in stores - except for ours!
NYC's White Hills blew us away last year with a bunch of limited edition, Julian Cope-approved cd-r releases documenting their mesmeric, motorik, heavy, and very Hawkwindy space rock sound. We're now very pleased to have their new full-length album in stock -- and it's a real cd, even though the (cool-looking) digipack it's contained within appears hand-assembled.
This time around, we are initially given the impression that White Hills has decided to mix it up a little, branching off into a more musicianly, refined post-rock realm rather than sticking entirely to the amplification n' effects laden, cosmic droneout krautrockishness set-the-controls ROCK of their cd-rs. Certainly there's more dynamics here, more ambient/acoustic interludes, lots of really pretty, even poppy bits. But what about the heavy hypnotic headnodders? They're here too, don't worry! Fans of Hawkwind, Neu!, Braindonor, Spacemen Three, Comets On Fire, Kinski, Titan, Pharaoh Overlord, etc. will certainly dig the likes of "Love Serve Remember" (which weirdly reminds us of the Painteens) and the distorted, psychedelic, jamming excess of the nearly 15 minute long album-closing title track, among others here. This new White Hills is perhaps more nuanced in some ways than their prior output, but any newfound delicacy hasn't dimmed the drugged dementia of the louder portions of this disc and they've always had their wonderfully blissful side anyway, so we're quite happy with their "progress"!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Super limited cd-r, released to coincide with shows in the UK from this spaced out drug rock krautrocky combo. Featuring outtakes from No Game To Play as well as a couple tracks from the upcoming full length. SUPER LIMITED.
One of two new 7"s from the Trensmat label, this one from big time aQ faves, space rockers White Hills, who offer up two tracks of ambient drift, the A side, a swirly bit of abstract shimmer, a softly pulsing two note melody, subtly mesmerizing, surrounded on all sides by strange melodies, little bits of glitch, headphone listening reveals much going on in the background, a slow shifting sprawl of mysterious sounds, that seem to surface and fade, constantly changing shapes, while that pulse remains constant, the sort of jam that sounds like it must have been cut from a much bigger sonic cloth, it's the sort of sound that would be so easy to get lost it.
As is the B side, a more dirgey bit of ambience, thick churning guitars, roiling away in a cloud of hazy whir and deep rumble, loads of echo and delay and reverb, softly swirling, a gauzy and washed out expanse of slo-mo buzz and thrum, that seems to almost become riffs, before those riffs melt into the sounds around them, a gorgeously entrancing stretch of cyclical mesmer, in the form of downtuned spaced out crush.
ALREADY SOLD OUT AND OUT OF PRINT AT THE LABEL. We got a whole bunch, but odds are they won't be around for long, so don't dawdle, or risk being disappointed...
We'd been hearing good things about this band for ages. Someone we know was raving about 'em, and they also had the recommendation of Julian Cope... But we were having some difficulty tracking down the band, or a way to get their record for the store. Until an insane bit of coincidence / serendipity. In walked one Dave Weinberg, who a decade earlier had been Andee's boss at Holey Bagel in Noe Valley, across the street from the old aQuarius (back when Andee had time for two jobs). He had copies of a cd by his band, and what do you know? Dave's band just so happened to be White Hills! Wow. Thus we managed to get 30 or so copies of the second pressing of the No Game To Play cd-r (the first pressing is long out of print, as is the alternate version, which was drastically remixed, resequenced and retitled They've Got Blood Like We've Got Blood and released on Cope's Fuck Off And Di cd-r label) and it's just as good as we had hoped. In a word, SPACEROCK. Or if you prefer, two words. Either way, this is some seriously tripped out swirling cosmic proggy, krautrock flecked, keyboard drenched outer outer outer space rock. Think just the jams from all the best Hawkwind songs, or the dreamiest mellowest bits of your favorite Monster Magnet tracks. Mix in some Neu! and some Faust and even some Stereolab at times and you'll just be scratching the surface of White Hills' sound. The opening track is a grungy, lowslung garagey drug addled space rock stomp, think the Stooges dropping acid until they started drifting off and began to sound more like Hawkwind, a killer hypnotic riff, a simple shuffling drum beat, mumbled vocals buried in the mix, and a swirling squall of wigged out guitars and all manner of synthesizer squiggle and swoon. It sounds quite a bit like Circle too, that riff just repeating and repeating, mantra like, a super tranced out rock that you want to go on forever. The centerpiece of the record is definitely "They've Got Blood Like We've Got Blood", a near static synth swirl over a shuffling tribal rhythm, while guitars just sort of drift and float lazily amidst the whir and drone. Sounds a little bit like Brian Eno jamming with Crash Worship while somebody goes apeshit in the background on the synths. A gloriously mesmerizing hypnorock. Then a brief blast of straight up blown out, super distorted Neu! worship before the drifting ambient closer "Ulan", an abstract synthesizer soundscape that sounds like some lost Tangerine Dream jam. Blissy and totally dreamlike.
This is supposedly the final pressing, limited to 222 copies.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Synth psych kraut weirdness from NY. Julian Cope raved about it on his Head Heritage website. We have loads of the version the band released but Cope's remixed version is already out of print, and we only have a few copies left.
Previously only available as a double lp, this sprawling slab of blissed out space rock psychedelia is now available on cd, and with a SIXTEEN MINUTE bonus track, which, if you're obsessive like us, and we know lots of you are, makes this essential, even if you (we!) already have the vinyl version. More on the bonus track below, but first, here's what we had to say about the record proper:
Touted as the first 'official' teaming up of these two outfits, we're pretty sure this is definitely at least the second, maybe the now out of print Aquarian Downer cd-r is not being counted as properly official, but having freaked out over that a while back, we already knew these two were a good match. And on this collaboration, the two mesh seamlessly, White Hills seeming to let Gnod dial down the intensity and all out rocking, and crank up the shimmery washed out dreaminess, we mentioned Tangerine Dream in our review of the cd-r, and that sound is all over here, but so is Neu!, Wooden Shjips, all sorts of things, but WH and Gnod are clearly space rock masters, and these 4 sidelong tracks only further cement their placement in our personal space rock kraut drone pantheon (what, you don't have one?)!
So for this record, White Hills are a four piece, again featuring Oneida's Kid Millions on drums, and Gnod are a SEVEN piece, so you would think 11 rockers jamming out would be a crazy mess, but nope, these guys are so obviously sonic soulmates, which is evident from the first track, a slab of slow groovy krautrock, motorik (multiple drummer-ed?) drumming, smoldering minimal riffage, mantra like vocals, the Neu! / Stereolab vibe here is huge, woozy synths, tangled psychedelic leads, all glistening and sunshiney, never exploding into full bore heaviness, instead, just unwinding lazily and dreamily, drowsy druggy drift giving way to super spare spaced out smolder, before launching into a muscular Hawkwind sounding jam, all downtuned crunch, caveman pound, swirly psychedelic effects, churning and chugging relentlessly, the rhythm and groove LOCKED in, while the guitars and synths and effects swirl and whirl all around, finally unwinding with a cool muted bit of cinematic drift, haunting ghostlike melodies that almost sound like strings, all in a softly fuzzy dreamlike haze.
Which leads into another bit of druggy drift, all rhythmic and almost new agey, cool repetitive melodies, simple and stripped down drumming, all laid over a deep rumbling synth drone, everything washed out and otherworldly. Eventually that gives way to a throbbing fuzzy bassline, matched up with a rock solid rhythm, more effects are applied, as are some wild fragmented super distorted leads, some warped Manzarek style organ, that main groove never faltering, total low slung incendiary psychedelia.
And so like us, you were probably expecting the final closing jam to be the full on blow out we had all been waiting for, a free for all freak out of epic proportions, but instead, the band dial it WAY down, and offer up some super sprawling, ethereal atmospheric space folk driftscape bliss out, all spidery crystalline guitars, barely there hand drums, thick languid basslines, gauzy restrained effects, soft focus finger picked neo-Appalachia, totally dreamlike and mesmerizing, it almost sounds like the Alps covering Hawkwind, converting heart of the sun heaviness into something hushed and pastoral, subtly lysergic and utterly divine. So good.
This cd version tacks on a final track, a NEW final track, a sprawling 16+ minute slow burn epic, that like the previous 'final' jam doesn't explode or freak out, instead offering up another gorgeous gauzy expanse of swirling psychedelia, loping woozy basslines, muted minimal drumming, soft swirling effects, and plenty of dreamily tangled melodies, sitar like buzz, tinkling chimes, synthy shimmer, all spread out into a blurred, head tripping, Eastern tinged, chunk of glorious smoldering dream psych. Awesome. And maybe just worth buying again...
Even though it wasn't all that long ago that we were served with the serious space rock wallop of White Hills' most recent full length Glitter Glamour Atrocity, it was only a matter of moments before we were already jonesing for more. And while this is not a proper WH record per se, it is at least another heaping helping of that spaced out sound we can't get enough of.
Here, White Hills team up with SF noise outfit White Pee for a nearly 30 minute single track of space-y, druggy, krautdrone ambient noise. And it's a killer. Never heard of White Pee before, and because this disc is so abstract and sort of shapeless, it's hard to put a finger on what exactly they bring to the table, but these two groups together sound like one. The noise is relegated to brief bursts here and there, for the most part, this is gloriously tranquil blissed out dronescapes. Long expanses of slow flowing Tangerine Dream and Popol Vuh synth sprawl, the FX are muted but wrap their shimmery tendrils around everything.
Here and there, the meditative shimmer is disrupted by dense gnarled squalls of gritty guitar growl, arranged into strange almost-rhythms, a stretched out lurching throb plodding along over long ominous streaks of sci fi synth. The synths got from ethereal and whispery, to throbbing and fuzzy, from dreamy and barely there, to pulsing and propulsive, almost like some disembodied Gary Numan rhythm track.
The second half of the disc is wide open and spare, shades of Tim Hecker and Machinefabriek and that sort of buzzy blurred soundscapes, guitars ebb and flow, keening high end melodies drift WAY off in the distance, dense washes of distorted guitar crumble bathe everything in grit and buzz, plaintive piano drifts in and out like some unearthly transmission, all hazy and indistinct, darkly dramatic and so lovely.
This is a SUPER limited edition, except for the copies the band kept, these are ONLY available from aQuarius. LIMITED TO 85 COPIES!! The first 50 in hand made wooden sleeves, the other 35 in jewel cases, but also hand made and each one unique. We got about 30 copies of the wooden sleeved version, and a handful of the jewel cased version. While supplies last, you'll get the wood ones, but once those are gone, you'll get the jewel case version. Needless to say these will be gone in a flash...
We reviewed the super limited wooden cover version of this disc on the last list and sold out immediately. So here's the even more limited jewel case version, still with hand made covers, only this time housed in, you guessed it, a jewel case. There were only 85 copies made in total, 50 of the wood ones, and 35 of the jewel case version. We're the only store in the world to carry these, and we have about 25 of the jewel case version in stock. Once these are gone, they are gone for good, so this is probably your last chance to pick this up...
Even though it wasn't all that long ago that we were served with the serious space rock wallop of White Hills' most recent full length Glitter Glamour Atrocity, it was only a matter of moments before we were already jonesing for more. And while this is not a proper WH record per se, it is at least another heaping helping of that spaced out sound we can't get enough of.
Here, White Hills team up with SF noise outfit White Pee for a nearly 30 minute single track of space-y, druggy, krautdrone ambient noise. And it's a killer. Never heard of White Pee before, and because this disc is so abstract and sort of shapeless, it's hard to put a finger on what exactly they bring to the table, but these two groups together sound like one. The noise is relegated to brief bursts here and there, for the most part, this is gloriously tranquil blissed out dronescapes. Long expanses of slow flowing Tangerine Dream and Popol Vuh synth sprawl, the FX are muted but wrap their shimmery tendrils around everything.
Here and there, the meditative shimmer is disrupted by dense gnarled squalls of gritty guitar growl, arranged into strange almost-rhythms, a stretched out lurching throb plodding along over long ominous streaks of sci fi synth. The synths got from ethereal and whispery, to throbbing and fuzzy, from dreamy and barely there, to pulsing and propulsive, almost like some disembodied Gary Numan rhythm track.
The second half of the disc is wide open and spare, shades of Tim Hecker and Machinefabriek and that sort of buzzy blurred soundscapes, guitars ebb and flow, keening high end melodies drift WAY off in the distance, dense washes of distorted guitar crumble bathe everything in grit and buzz, plaintive piano drifts in and out like some unearthly transmission, all hazy and indistinct, darkly dramatic and so lovely.
This is a SUPER limited edition, except for the copies the band kept, these are ONLY available from aQuarius. LIMITED TO 85 COPIES!! The first 50 in hand made wooden sleeves, the other 35 (these) in jewel cases, but also hand made and each one unique.
A shortlived project of Japanese industrial noise / power electronics, White Hospital was the duo of Jun Konagaya and Tomo Kuwahara - the former better known for his work as the janus-faced Grim and the latter fronting the industrial-mantra project Vasilisk. Holocaust was their only album, released in 1984 on Eskimo Records, an imprint that has released both the work of Grim and Vasilisk over the years. Presumably, there was a political content to the White Hospital project; but any declaration of political intent is relatively opaque behind the discordant rhythmic noise and feral vocal masochism. It is pretty damn safe to say that White Hospital was nihilistic in their outlook, screaming violently at Japanese society and collapsing the hyperactive anxiety of modernity through a decentralized aesthetic of brute force, Lovecraftian tape collages, strangely pretty organ impressionism, and an incendiary live presence which could be the missing link between Les Rallizes Denudes and Skullflower.
Holocaust has finally been reissued after 30 years with some choice bonus material including un-festive material from their "We Wish You A Merry Christmas / White Christmas" 7" - with both tracks grinding and grating with monomaniacal rhythms on junked metal and grunt-fuck utterances of lobotomized primal energies. As impressive as the pre-Missing Foundation industrial jams from Holocaust are, the live tracks are downright amazing. Joined by Yukio Nagoshi on guitar, White Hospital transforms themselves into an X-ray shedding black hole of a rock trio with Kuwahara and Konagaya laying down a monstrous trudge with plenty of megaphone barked vocals slashing through Nahoshi's incendiary guitar work that's eerily prescient of what Matthew Bower and Gary Mundy would deliver in Skullflower and Ramleh respectively. It's a safe bet that Zeni Geva got their start by emulating what White Hospital was doing live. Damn straight.
Well it's got Jim O'Rourke on it, and that's really all that matters, right? But if you need to know more, this is the second album from improv group White Out, consisting of downtown NYC avant-musicians Lin Culbertson (analog synth, etc.) and Tom Surgal (drums/percussion). For this disc, they've invited maestro O'Rourke to sit in with his guitar and Powerbook. The result ranges from the spacey to the noisy, the crazed to the kinda quite lovely. Recorded in one take with no overdubs or studio effects, so there. For fans of experimental free non-jazz non-rock stuff...
The latest from this local psychedelic / experimental / drone / noise collective (featuring members of psychedelic space rockers 3 Leafs) comes in the form of an old school VHS tape, no cd, no download code, just that super familiar big square shaped tape, so all you cutting edge, latest gadget having, iPod/iPad toting digi-nerds, unless you have a dusty VCR tucked away in your pad, you're shit out of luck, which would be a shame, cuz this 35 minute slow burn psych-noise epic is a doozy. It captures these guys live on the radio, at KZSU, for their annual Day Of Noise, and while it's most definitely noisy, it's not necessarily 'noise'. It's a thick morass of synthy squelch, of churning droned out rumbles, of long tones tangled into knotty sprawls of feedback drenched undulations, buried beneath are strange staticky rhythms, fractured and free form, there's lots of space too, long stretches of hushed shimmer, of super abstract drift, with distant moans, and keening melodies, of sputtering machine sounds, eventually smoothing out into a weird muted murk, a sea of chordal swells and blackened shimmer, eventually splintering into some seriously caustic crunch, shards of feedback, blurts of white noise static, but draped over a creepy detuned melody, giving the whole thing a sort of lumbering, druggy vibe, that melody nearly obliterated by squeaky balloon melodies, and spaced out synth pulsations.
The track settles into dark brooding drifts throughout, at one point, a long stretch midsong, sounding almost like a field recording of some deep swamp or bayou, the insects represented by fluttering FX, and glitchy sonic fragments, haunting and mysterious, a creeping sonic fog, that is soon joined by woozy synth melodies and sheets of gristly static, disappearing in clouds of malfunctioning interference, weird Conet Project like sputter, smears of shortwave fuzz that almost coalesce into some weird almost-rhythm, before a final squall of psychedelic heaviness, gives way to a slowly unwinding, creepy, crumbling coda.
The accompanying visuals are pretty freaky as well, super blown out, oversaturated super 8 images of jellyfish, bizarre film snippets, tripped out static, swirling psychedelic patterns, blinking seizure inducing flashing lights, groovy textures, old couples dancing, some shots of the band performing live spliced in here and there, glowing orbs, UFO's, uncalibrated video, goofy video loops, horror movies, fountains of blood, birds at birdfeeders, haircuts, hippy home movies, primitive video effects, pink clad people freaking out and screaming hysterically, women being hypnotized, old guys playing the harp, dive bombing seabirds, smoking evil fountains, squirrels, exotic fish, glowing faces, warriors, all of these images flitting one to the next, like it's a recording of someone's seriously fucked up subconsciousness, but it works surprisingly well with the accompanying sounds!
LIMITED TO 50 COPIES!!! (And psst, actually, somewhere in the packaging is actually hidden a dvd-r version of the VHS, so you out there sans VCRs, it's your lucky day!)...
Whoo hoo! Kranky cranks out another colorful psychedelic dose of nu new age dream-hop from Portland's Adam Forkner, aka White Rainbow.� Considering Mr. Forkner has been at the forefront of the pysch-pop new agey dream drone thing for awhile now, its no wonder he's perfected his trance dance, acid bathed tribal ambient shtick into a polished slab of catchy tunes, that fit somewhere between Cluster, Cocteau Twins and the golden gate park drum circle. Wavering angelic vocals soar across space and time, trails of colors fall to the ground as sprawling nebulous rhythms come in one ear and out the other. Definitely one of those records where listening on headphones uncovers all kinds of details and special secrets. Dreamy, fuzzed-out rainbow riffs gazing over pitter-patter percussion and waves of ambient wash, the doors of infinity are open, are your chakras aligned??
Where past White Rainbow releases might have been more guitar and vocal driven, New Clouds seems to offer much more awesome synthesizer wizardry, which we dig. But compared to Prism of Eternal Now, it seems New Clouds offers less variation and is more one dimensional, maintaining a steady sonic thickness that may be very satisfying to some, but a bit monotonous for others. Any way you look at it, New Clouds is a fantastic edition to the Kranky catalogue and a perfect soundtrack for your next out of body experience!
If there's any justice in this world, it should be anytime now that Adam Forkner becomes a household name, well at least in houses that care about awesome underground music. His past bands, Yume Bitsu, Surface Of Eceyon and the ambitious project [[[[VVRSSNN]]]] all had amazing moments that swept us away, but we think it's in his newest incarnation as White Rainbow that he's truly tapped into some serious musical magic.
Much like his recent collaboration with Honey Owens for the limited cd-r by their duo World, Forkner has found a way to stretch out his sounds and tap into something transcendent. With it's Dr. Brommers inspired manic packaging, and it's equally metaphysical title, this is a record whose sounds are well able to back up the mysterious belief system its entire aura points at. Channeling the living spirit of folks like Terry Riley and LaMonte Young, Prism Of Eternal Now is not merely just a tribute to those icons but living proof of how their influence has touched and inspired a younger generation of musicians aiming to create dense, enchanting, and alive sounds.
The album reveals many different shades of Forkner's musical explorations. From the dreamy, subdued and shoegazey side to the active, relentless and spacious. This is music to get lost in, lost to and lost with. The kind of record you put on and that immediately has you drifting off in a million different directions. Forkner has made his own brilliant Rainbow In Curved Air for a new generation. Highly recommended!
More mysterious crude noise murk coming out of rural Georgia. There's virtually no information provided by esoteric noise imprint Vaald beyond a return address that lands well outside the urban city center of Atlanta; but that's not to say that everything coming from Vaald is spawned from the soil of the south. White Resin is a suitably anonymous project that captures the blank-stare, vaguely rhymthmicist, mostly rumbling churn of scabbed-over power electronics that pays homage (intentionally or otherwise) to some of the more obscure practitioners of early '80s noise construction, somewhere between the unheard-yet-valorized catalogue of Vanity Records (e.g. Tolerance, Normal Brain, Sympathy Nervous, etc.) and the doom-laden Italians who recorded at one time or another for Broken Flag (e.g. Mauthausen Orchestra, MB, Giancarlo Toniutti, etc.). Tone-generated signals amass into phase patterns, spiked with acidic grit and dislocating corrosives on the A-side, with occasional twitching detours that epileptically twist away from the linear march towards the guttural noise dirge. The B-side is a more dynamic piece as White Resin drags disembodied rhythms through a sea of gravel, where whatever vehicle of use is perpetually sinking and spinning its wheels through a quicksand morass of tiny pieces of rock that gradually overtake said vehicle and bury it in black sand. An erratic pulsar detonation of synth tones concludes the piece with plenty of overdriven distortions and super lo-fi grittiness. Ain't no wall of noise here. Limited to just 20 copies! Seriously, just 20.
White Ring are another witch house outfit who manage to gain a serious amount of notoriety, with very few proper releases, relying more on YouTube videos and limited cd-r's, as well as downloads and filesharing, but of the many groups of that ilk, they were definitely one of our favorites, so it's not that big a surprise that they would end up on Handmade Birds, even less so once you get an earful of their amazing cover of Neil Young's "Hey Hey My My", which transforms the original into a hazy ethereal bliss out, that is until the drop, when the drums come in, and the buzzing synths, very reminiscent of Salem obviously, but it's a sound we're still not tired of, Southern crunk style hip hop skitter, over fuzzed out low end, everything wreathed in a dense cloud of dreampop haze, the vocals an almost wordless croon, which soar skyward along with the synths/beats, only to bliss out once again in between. We've listened to that track so many times it was ages before we even made it to the flipside, but it's a good one too, much more downtempo and dark, woozy and wondrously warped, the track building to epic soaring Salem like crescendos, reminding us of the blissed out shoegaze of M83, but then retuning to the murky skitter that is so much a hallmark of witch house / drag. Fans of Salem, and all the other witch house we've reviewed are probably gonna want this, and everyone into shoegaze and dream pop, who have yet to check out anything like this, White Ring might just be your gateway... Sorry if we run out though; couldn't get very many of this limited release.
We've had this here for ages, but somehow, with all of records we have to review every couple weeks we only got around to listening to this a few days ago, and now that we have, we're really not sure how it slipped by us, being as we, like a lot of you, certainly do enjoy our daily dose of NWOUSFD. For those of you who don't know what that is, which would most likely be ALL of you since I just made it up, NWOUSFD stands for New Wave Of U.S. Free Drone and counts among it's main practitioners the Double Leopards, Skaters, Davenport, GHQ, Yellow Swans, Mouthus and the like. White Rock just so happen to be 2 parts Double Leopards and 2 parts Mouthus, the result being what you might imagine would be the perfect mix of the two. And truth be told, it's one of the best drone records we've heard in ages. But this isn't that sort of clinical ultra minimal drone, or even that organic slow moving pristine drone, no this is a ramshackle late night druggy abstract sort of drone, the kind of drone that could only come from your favorite Skullflower tape or Vibracathedral Orchestra tape or that very special tenth generation Hototogisu cassette you've had forever, left on the dash of your car in the hot sun for weeks and weeks, then left in the back pocket of your pants or in your bag or in the pocket of your jacket for the entirety of a three week road trip, during which time it gets wet, wrinkled and covered in sand only to be discoverd on your return home, where as you immediately throw it into your beat up old hand me down boombox, the one with the dying batteries and the blown speakers, you push play, using a piece of duct tape to hold down the button, and the sound that comes out is a gloriously gurgling murky morass of fuzzy, rumbling sludgy, crumbling drone. Two twenty plus minute tracks of instrumental ambience, with guitar grime spread like a thick paste over a rickety background of swirls and squalls, a foggy grey haze draped over streaks of subterranean gloom, bits of percussion surface, but it's as if they have corroded or melted to the point of being dull and worn and rounded smooth, a series of thumps and mumbles, angular but with all the jagged edges rubbed away, each beat and shuffle held under water, the rhythm bubbling up as a barely audible muted thrum, clang and clatter as heard through ears full of wet cotton. So delicate and beautiful but so ominous and creepy. There's a harsh grinding industrial edge, but it's being brodcast from a mile away, heard as echoes and reflections, each sound beginning to fray and distort as it travels over hills and through trees, obscured by clouds and falling ever so gradually earthward, each more and more indistinct, the sound dissipating into a late night soporific throb and whir, a sweetly suffocating stretch of thick nebulous sound that lays atop you like a warm wet blanket. So so nice.
While it's been noted that White Stains began in the mid-'80s as a garage band out of Sweden, the earliest known recordings of the group were inextricably linked to Genesis P-Orridge, as a couple of the White Stains members had founded a Swedish chapter of P-Orridge's Temple of Psychick Youth. By 1994, White Stains had decided to call it quits, leaving behind a series of dark electronic eccentricities over the course of 5 albums, including one album in the legendary Anckarstrom series which included exceptional releases from The Hafler Trio, John Duncan, Arcane Device, Zbigniew Karkowski, Phauss, and the Sons of God. Exploratorium is a collection of their more esoteric and abstract recordings, many of which had originated as soundtracks to experimental films and a couple of tracks from that Anckarstrom album. White Stains infuse an absurdly darkened glee to their synthesizer driven tunes, resembling the clunky fumble of Hans Edler or Keuhkot with plenty of Teutonic militant Der Blutharsch-esque overtones.
Record number two from Australian doom dirge juggernaut Whitehorse. And whaddaya know? It's another live record! But so what!?!? If they sound this heavy and this brutal live, why even bother going in the studio? In fact, we're sort of afraid of what might happen if these guys actually did make it into a studio. Not sure we could handle it! This is intense stuff. Massively heavy, so slow and plodding it's almost ambient, with huge stretches of near silence, while the crumbling remnants of the last riff drift earthward before the next riff comes crashing down. Shrieked inhuman screams, and plodding drum beats set at least a mile apart, moans and drifting guitars and cymbal sizzle drift like tendrils of black smoke between each Teutonic crush. Hell they even have a guy in the band credited with just "Rumblings." Fuck yeah! Think Khanate, Bunkur, Corrupted, Eyehategod. So so so good! Packaged in a beautifully printed oversized cardboard sleeve. And as always SUPER LIMITED!!!!
Our pals at Conspiracy Records, a label/distro based in Belgium, who in the past have brought us records by Boris, Jesu, Shora and more, are this year celebrating their 10 year anniversary. A decade of amazing music. From a bedroom based punk rock label, to one of Europe's most important and influential labels and distros, all we can say is HURRAY! And HUZZAH! It's always so exciting, when a bunch of folks get together to spread the word about great music, great WEIRD music, and survive, even thrive. Such is the case with Conspiracy. And as if that weren't already enough, just knowing that some great people were selling some amazing music, those sweeties at Conspiracy have decided to share the love with us. And you.
To celebrate their 10th anniversary, they've decided to do a super limited subscription series, 12 records over 12 months, each limited to somewhere between 200-500 copies, ONLY available to series subscribers. EXCEPT, they've decided to let AQ have 20 copies of each, we're the only store with copies of these subscriber only lps, and for a brief moment, we can offer them to you, our loyal AQ customers. Needless to say we are thrilled, as the series lineup reads like a who's who of AQ faves, as well as including a handful of lesser knowns. All pressed on super thick vinyl, and packaged in killer hand screened original art sleeves. But be warned, we only got 20 of each, and we will run out fast and we will not be able to get more. When we do run out, there is a chance you can still get one from Conspiracy direct, but what that means is act fast and prepare to leave empty handed.
Australia's masters of monstrous sludge return with an actual studio recording. Their first if we're not mistaken. After multiple live recordings, these guys finally made it into a studio and the result is much as we imagined. These guys are seriously heavy and frighteningly brutal! One side long epic, a massive slow build, like an apocalyptic metal tinged Godspeed, swirling cymbals, keening guitars, thick drifts of distorted fuzz, underneath gargled demonic vocals struggle to be heard above the swirling din, super abstract and nearly ambient, it takes almost half the side before the song kicks in properly and then you're done for. A slow motion math metal sludge jam of unprecedented proportions. Stumbling and crushing, swathed in space rock FX, sounding very Corrupted like, Whitehorse are an unstoppable dirge, with some wild off kilter drumming and strange arrangements, so strange in fact, that occasionally, the band bursts into spastic chaotic almost 'free' sonic freakouts, like Neurosis doing free jazz. Nicely compliments their unstoppable glacier like brutality. WOW.
Amazing cover art too, angular, black and gold metallic patterns, the same patterns are also silkscreened on the B side of the lp. Quite striking! ----* ----* Black Metal Tape Mania!!! : ----*
Falling somewhere between the ultra doom of Khanate, the metallic post rock pummel of Isis, and the shrieking feedback / bowel-loosening dirge of Earth / Sunn O))), Whitehorse kick up a serious racket. Rumbling ambient drones slip into screaming feedback which in turn become huge unstoppable walls of noise, occasionally interrupted by beautiful mellowed out melodic interludes. Crashing drums all over the place, high end guitar melodies shriek like sirens, and of course the howled hyper intense vocals add another layer of sonic skree to the mix. Recorded live, with a totally blown out, super distorted mix, that while losing a lot of the finer details, definitely makes the whole thing sound that much more aggro and chaotic and on the verge of total collapse. Seriously noisy and fierce as fuck. Can't wait to hear a studio record from these guys. But for now, this white hot blast of live fury will do just nicely. Packaged in a beautifully printed oversized cardboard sleeve, with some deranged apocalyptic liner note ramblings from artist Seldon Hunt.
Yes, the notorious Whitehouse are still at it after twenty years. Love them or hate them, you've probably got a strong opinion about Whitehouse. While we at Aquarius do not necessarily agree with the lyrical content of past Whitehouse releases, some of us
Whitehouse have always seemed to position themselves in close proximity to the artworld (while at the same time alienating themselves from the music world), and in doing so, may be positioning themselves closer to the accepted forms of transgressive art such as Vito Acconchi's public masturbation or Jeff Koon's airbrushed pornography. Whatever you may think about Whitehouse (i.e. if they are or are not 'art'), that which lies underneathe the packaging is certainly not going to change your mind about them. You probably know already if you need to own this. However, Whitehouse does change things up a bit on 'Cruise', taking their normally ear shredding shrieks, and lowering the ultra high frequencies to a more gritty mid-range analogue noise. ----* ----* Printed Matter : ----* GIANT ROBOT #21 magazine 3.95 Art-focused issue of one of our favorite magazines, celebrating Asian Pop Culture and Beyond. Wong Kar-Wai, Asian haircuts, Superflat Murakami, Seattle grunge photog Charles Peterson's photos of Vietnam, Hong Kong hiphoppers Lazmuthafucka, Katsushige Nakahashi who makes stunning huge sculptures out of polaroids, Tony Leung, qi gong and its psychic potential, etc. ----* ----* In Stock, No Time to Review : ----* BERTHOLO, RENE "Um Argentino no Deserto" (SIRR.ecords) cd 14.98 CAGE, JOHN / DAVID TUDOR "Music of Change" (Hat Hut) cd 16.98 CRAWL UNIT "Stop Listening" (Ground Fault) cd 9.98 CRAWL UNIT "The Future In Reverse" (Povertech Industries) cd 9.98 CRAWL UNIT "Trans History - Works 95-99" (Ignis) cd 9.98 CRAWL UNIT "Vs. Silence" (Povertech Industries) cd 9.98 FAMOUS BOYFRIEND "s/t" (555) cd 14.98 GORILLAZ (the singer from Blur and members of Deltron 3030!) "s/t" (EMI UK) cd 25.00 ITS ALL MEAT "s/t" (Hallucinations) cd 14.98 MUM "Yesterday Was Dramatic - Toady Is OK" (TMT / Thule Music) cd 17.98 PHONOPHANI "Genetic Engineering" (Rune Grammofon) cd 16.98 PINK & BROWN "Final Foods" (Toyo) cd 10.98 ROXY MUSIC "Vintage" (Burning Airlines) cd 12.98 VITRIOL "Randonee 0.06" (SIRR.ecords) cd 14.98 WARWICK, HENRY "Keraunograph" (Kether Music) cd 11.98 _______________________________________________________________________ KOJI ASANO INSTORE APRIL 29th SUNDAY -- 4 pm Experimental musician Koji Asano (who makes his home in Barcelona, Spain, although he's originally from Japan) will be in town at the end of the month, on his first-ever US tour (West Coast, anyway), after playing shows in Italy and Slovenia. He's been a long-time favorite of ours, so we're very pleased to announce that he'll be doing a free in-store performance here at Aquarius! His work has always been super creative and eclectic, so we're really excited to hear what his stuff is going to sound like in person. His recent recordings have focused on computer-assisted electroacoustic drones, full of beautiful feedback and dark mystery. But we'll see what he does here at Aquarius -- be here Sunday April 29th at 4pm to find out! Koji's other Bay Area shows are on these evenings: April 26th -- The Luggage Store, SF April 27th -- Capp Street Community Center / Moving Target Series, SF April 29th -- Tuva Space / Acme Observatory Series, Oakland -->another AQ-fave, LOREN CHASSE (of id battery / Thuja) will also be performing at this show! From our review of his last work, a four-part set called "The Last Shade of Evening Falls": "Japanese composer/experimentalist (and AQ fave sound artist) Koji Asano is known not only for the quality of his work (almost always quite excellent) but for the sheer quantity of his releases over the last few years -- sixteen of 'em as of today, more if you count limited edition cd-rs -- which run the creative gamut from gorgeous piano meditiations, to computer noise, to chamber music, to rock guitar improv." _______________________________________________________________________ RAWA BENEFIT "To prevent music... In shops, hotels, vehicles and rickshaws cassettes and music are prohibited... If any music cassette found in a shop, the shopkeeper should be imprisoned and the shop locked. If cassette found in the vehicle, the vehicle and the driver will be imprisoned. "To prevent music and dances in wedding parties. In the case of violation the head of the family will be arrested and punished. "To prevent the playing of music drum. The prohibition of this should be announced. If anybody does this then the religious elders can decide about it." -- Taliban edicts regarding music Fire Museum is proud to present a benefit concert for the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) at the Stork Club, 2330 Telegraph Avenue in Oakland, featuring the following fine artists (in reverse order of appearance): BLECTUM FROM BLECHDOM THE BRAN (...) POS + PLANETSIZE DEEP DICKOLLECTIVE CONE, featuring members of Zmrzlina SPEZZO ROTTA Saturday, May 5th 2001 The Stork Club (2330 Telegraph Avenue, cross Street 23rd Avenue, near 19th Avenue BART) Oakland doors 7:00 p.m. / $6-$10 sliding scale / 21+ concert website: http://www.geocities.com/tomato_gazelle/Fire_Museum.html _______________________________________________________________________ UPCOMING RELEASES ----> should be here any minute, if not in already! v/a "Clicks & Cuts 2" 3cd (members of) Add N to (X) / Stereolab / Hairy Butter "Alternative 3" soundtrack cd v/a "Bip Hop Generation vol. 2" cd Hazard / Fennesz / Biosphere "Light" tour cd on Touch Hazard "Wind" cd on Ash ----> April 24th (crazy new release day!) Mouse On Mars "Idiology" cd/lp on Thrill Jockey Bardo Pond "Dilate" cd/2lp on Matador Kammerflimmer Kollektief "Maander" cd on Temporary Residence Modest Mouse "Sad Sappy Sucker" cd/lp on K unreleased 1994 recordings + other rarities Vic Chesnutt "Left To His Own Devices" cd on SpinArt (rarities and demos) Mogwai "Rock Action" lp/cd The Ex "Dizzy Spells" cd on Touch And Go US Maple "Acre Thrills" cd/lp on Drag City Steven R. Smith "Tableland" cd on Emperor Jones Paul Burch "Last Of My Kind" cd on Merge Portastatic "Looking For Leonard" cd on Merge The Clientele "Suburban Light" cd on Merge, domestic Nels Cline "Destroy All Nels Cline" cd on Atavistic Raging Slab "s/t" cd reissue on Spitfire Terrie Ex & Han Bennink "The Laughing Owl" cd on Atavistic Danielson Famile "Fetch the Compass Kids" cd/lp on Secretly Canadian Of Montreal "Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies" cd/2lp on Secretly Canadian Vivian Sisters s/t cd on Avant Mekons reissues (Rock 'n' Roll, Curse of, Fun '90) Red Allen "The Folkways Years 1964-83" cd on Smithsonian Folkways The Country Gentlemen "On The Road (And More) cd on Smithsonian Folkways John Zorn "Love, Madness and Mysticism" cd on Tzadik Rothko "In The Pulse Of An Artery" cd on Instinct Destroyer "Streethawk: A Seduction" cd on Misra Ryoji Ikeda & Carsten Nicolai "Cyclo" cd on Raster-Noton ----> May 8 To Rococo Rot "Music is a Hungry Ghost" (Mute) Burning Airlines "Identikit" cd ----> May 15 Autechre "Confield" cd/2lp on Warp Neu! "Neu! 1", "Neu! 2", and "Neu! '75" all legitimately reissued on cd and lp, on Astralwerks! Sonna "We Sing Loud Sing Soft Tonight" cd/lp on Temporary Residence Cannibal Ox "The Cold Vein" lp/cd on Def Jux Borthwick/hollAnd "helene" CD on Temporary Residence Tool "Laterus" new studio album ----> May 22 Absu "Tara" cd on Osmose Otomo Yoshihide's New Jazz Quintet "Flutter" cd on Tzadik Abigor "Satanized" on Napalm Mammoth Volume "a single book�" cd on TMC Mark Eitzel "The Invisible Man" cd/lp on Matador ----> May 29 Spirit Caravan "Elusive Truth" cd/lp on Tolotta Plaid "Double Feature" cd/2lp on Warp Karaboudjan "Sbrodj" on Relapse EyeHateGod "10 Years of Abuse and Still Broke" live cd on Century Media ----> also in May Destiny's Child "Independent Women" Oval "Commers" cd/lp on Thrill Jockey Gram Parsons "Anthology" 2cd on Rhino Whiskeytown "Pneumonia" Missy Elliot "Miss E...So Addictive" Mira Calix "Prickle" cdep/12" on Warp Squarepusher "My Red Hot Car" cdep/12" on Warp Zeni Geva "10,000 Light Years" cd on Neurot Candiria "300 Percent Density" cd on Century Media MF Doom "Operation: Doomsday" cd on Sub Verse Ex-Girl "Back To Mono Kero" on Ipecac Deltron 3030 "Tron 3030 (The Instrumentals)" cd/2lp on 75Ark (delayed from way back) ----> June 18 Summer Hymns "A Celebratory Arm Gesture" cd/lp on Misra Jeff Mangum "Live At Jittery Joe's" cd on Orange Twin Bonny Billy (Will Oldham) "More Revery" cdep on Temporary Residence Ltd. Orange Twin Fieldwork (Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel) "Volume 1" on Orange Twin ----> also in June Lucinda Williams "Essence" R.E.M. "Reveal" ----> July 23rd Neutral Milk Hotel "Everything Is" cdep reissue on Orange Twin ----> July Bjork "tba" _______________________________________________________________________ The Aquarius Records New Arrivals list has 5163 subscribers. If you like our list, please buy your records from Aquarius; we produce this list just for you and it's a lot of work! "The first record was pretty much stories about my drugged out childhood plus a little bit of Spinal Tap on top -'I'm gonna rule the world with my leather penis!' or whatever. And then all that stuff started coming true..." --Monster Magnet's Dave Wyndorf on fame, from Terrorizer #86. "I met an undercurrent of peopel that were into severe behavior, weird mind games and weird physical games- Dungeons, high faluting lawyer women who were having these massive fuckin' orgies, with slaves- and in the middle of it all I remember looking out of a hotel room in L.A. smoking a cigarette. The sun was coming up and I just remember thinking 'Who am I? What am I doing?'. And there was this girl lying there that had just applauded me for performing the appropriate torture on her- 'You were a master at it,' and I'm like 'What the fuck am I doing?'" --Monster Magnet's Dave Wyndorf on the influences that shaped the sound of the new album. From Terrorizer #86 Love, Windy Cup Byram Andee Jim Allan and Jeff
Repress of the 1995 headsplitter from the masters of extreme electronic music. "Quality Time", their fourteenth (by my count) record, is a massive subsonic masterpiece that transcends the majority of Whitehouse's early work. Along with the prior "Halogen",
Maybe it's the encroaching autumn, but lately we can't get enough of solo piano music. Especially when it's all minimal clusters of wistful passages, lilting progressions and sustained overtones. While this isn't a solo piano record per se, the liquid piano playing of Italian classical composer, Ludovico Einaudi, collaborating with electronic artists Robert and Ronald Lippok (To Rococo Rot, Tarwater), is at the heart of every track here. The group works fluidly together as a single unit (they recorded this live, together in one room) with the electronic nuances and occasional, but never overpowering, rhythms interlocking with Einaudi's playfully lyrical compositions. It's a lovely album that reminds us of the Rune Grammofon label's prettiest releases, and is fast becoming one of our favorite late night / early morning records. Highly Recommended!
You know him as Hrvatski (Boston-based electronica maverick fond of long German words and 'Amen' breaks), we know him as Keith, our friendly sales rep at Forced Exposure distribution. With this new cdep release under his own name, Keith/Hrvatski combines his
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Keith Fullerton Whitman aka Hrvatski takes a break from glitching and skittering and breaks of all shapes and sizes to indulge his first loves, minimalism and Krautrock. This *lp only* release is 4 tracks of hypnotically blissed out drones and Sunroof! like shimmer. One track does start to pulse and almost rock, with booming percussion and a darkly propulsive riff, but for the most part these pieces fall more into the Reich, Riley, Flynt, etc. sonic realm. Beautifully droning and repetitive, dark and abstract ambience.
Keith Fullerton Whitman gets the honors of launching a new series of manipulated field recordings to be released by Locust Music. Keeping to the theme of the series in which one raw recording is paired with a processed 'response,' Whitman (who has also recorded as Hrvatski) offers an evironmental recording from a tunnel near a subway station in Boston. He explains that glass walls line the tunnel which provide an unusual acoustic situation which accentuates a naturally occurring reverb. Along with screeching breaks of the subway and the occasional dialogue from passersby, Whitman captures an eerie buzzing, possibly from halogen street lights. Despite the thick reverb, some of the voices are a little distracting from the phenomenology intrinsic to that space. Altogether a great field recording.
For the processed response, Whitman pulls a sample from that buzzing and amplifies it into irridescent mass of electric field disturbances. In subtly shifting all of the parameters, Whitman unravels a lovely piece of Minimalism.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
One of four new Root Strata tapes this week, this one from long time aQ fave Keith Fullerton Whitman, who we've dug ever since his days as Hrvatski, turning jungle and drum 'n' bass inside out and upside down. Since then Whitman has released a ton of amazing music, on his own and in various collaborations, so we were pretty excited about this, especially when we heard that it was Whitman's stab at creating what he calls 'automatic' electronic music. The liner notes go into great detail about the sounds' genesis and creation, but unless you're a total tech geek or make electronic music yourself, you probably won't follow most of it, we sure didn't, but it hardly matters, as the music is totally fantastic, whether you understand the ideas behind the sounds or not. Lush looped tapestries of sounds, the notes beeping and chirping and blooping, gorgeous hypnotic melodies, ever shifting, overlapping, blending and then splitting off, the sounds bouncing from speaker to speaker, dizzying and dreamy simultaneously, hovering somewhere between outer space kosmische krautrock, academic electronic music and new age.
The opening track is a gorgeous swirling whirl of sound, like some sort of Lubomyr Melnyk / Expo 70 mashup, but played by robots on handbuilt synths, flurries of notes spidery strings of melody, all winding and unwinding, unfurling and, furling (?). The second track is a short stretch of abstract spaced out glitch and abstract dronemusic, before the next track returns to that sort of looped melodyscape, sounding a bit like a way more raw, lo-fi, analog Alva Noto, this time much more buzzy and crunchy, but with the same swirling shimmery vibe as the record opener.
The next few tracks work their way through creepy super hard panned beep and bloop bliss-scapes, all fuzzy and warmly distorted, the sounds literally leaping from speaker to speaker, adding a definitely surreal drugged out quality to the music, to thick sheets of buzzing distorted crunch and layered Merzbowian noise, to deep, new age-y bleep flecked swells of deep meditative tones, finally culminating in the 23+ minute closer, another dizzying array of swooping tones, and tangled melodies, a lush and psychedelic electronic headtrip, that manages to be dense and dizzying as well as impossibly hypnotic and lovely, slipping from soft focus and beautifully blurred to frenzied and frantic.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES, housed in super nice, thick offset printed covers, with liner notes by Whitman himself...
