[ aquarius records — Experimental ]

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Showing results 9251 through 9280 of 9280.

One of Zorn's most popular groups continues in its quest to take up as much space as possible on the cd-shelves of loyal fans. This concert, recorded for Belgian radio, features more of their wild and wonderful klezmer-inflected jazz.

But music for whose children? Cover art by Katan Amano, Yoshida Ryoichi, Macioce, Henry Darger, Hans Belmer and other artists give this music a context of abject child sexuality. The music is really diverse, from the quick-change acrobatics of Boston's Prelapse performing Naked City compositions, to Zorn "playing" wind machines (lovely!), to Anthony Coleman playing a celeste music box, to a spaghetti western sounding piece with Ribot, Friedlander and Greg Cohen, to a piece with the Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio. This is one of Zorn's best cd's in quite a while.

Reissue of the reissue. Previously an actual black box, with 2 cds, now everything fitted onto one disc. When these two Naked City records originally came out, it was before aQuarius had started doing our "list". But then Tzadik reissued 'em in The Black Box back in 1996, and we had a chance to review them... but all we said was: "Stars John Zorn, Bill Frisell, Wayne Horvitz, Fred Frith, Joey Baron & Yamantaka Eye. For their re-issue, Zorn has packaged these two albums in a black box, presenting all of the original, controversial artwork in the liner notes. Zorn gives a bit of history behind the graphics for Naked City releases. The albums, one fast and furious, the other slow and brutal, are without equal. They demonstrate the most aggressive sides of these incredible musicians." True that, but there's more that could be said! Perhaps we figured, at the time, that everyone must already know all about Zorn and Naked City and there was no point in any extensive description. But, nowadays, there's gotta be people reading this who haven't yet experienced the mindboggling, genre-jumping musical mastery of Naked City, especially as intensely expressed on Torture Garden, originally released as a 45rpm 12" on the Shimmy Disc label in 1989, and if you're one of those folks, you're in for a treat - as long as you dig the idea of a "jazz" band playing almost every style of music imaginable, from lounge to country to surf to grindcore, in jarringly short, sharp stop on dime bursts, with Eye from the Boredoms vocalizing over top like a gibbering demon, screaming along with Zorn's saxophone, performing songs with titles like "Thrash Jazz Assassin", "Speedball", "Jazz Snob Eat Shit", "New Jersey Scum Swamp", and "S&M Sniper"! It's like the cartoon music of Carl Stalling meets Napalm Death meets, well just about everything else in the realm of music. Utterly insane and influential (though it must be said, Napalm Death was a HUGE influence on this). It's how we first heard about the Boredoms, too! Blew us all away the first time we heard it. 12, 17, 28, 43 second songs that had more and better riffs in 'em than some ten minute Metallica epics. Well maybe that's exaggerating. But you get the idea. Amazing. And definitely Naked City's most "metal", grindcore-iest moment. Utter mayhem, with Zorn and Co. cramming a crazy number of changes into each track. Videos of them performing reveal a reliance on sheet music, but we don't blame 'em. That almost makes it more insane. On this disc, the 42 tracks of Torture Garden (the longest of which clocks in at 1'19", but most don't come anywhere near the minute-mark) are followed by the single, 31'38" track that comprised the entirety of the 1992 Naked City album Leng Tch'e, long out of print, the yin to Torture Garden's yang for sure. Leng Tch'e is like the Naked City version of Earth or the Melvins, one long sludge trudge, super heavy and doomic and nightmarish. Again, Eye's vocals vie with Zorn's saxophone in emulating the screams of the damned. If we had to choose our favorite Zorn album from amid his VAST discography (The Big Gundown? Spy Vs. Spy? Spillane? Bar Kokhba? Absinthe? Execution Ground?) Torture Garden would get a lot of our votes... it's certainly one of the most "extreme", though an argument could be made for Leng Tch'e too. No wonder they both belong together here (which also has something to do with the original, controversial cover art, necessitating the "black box" treatment). Nice to have 'em back in print, for the uninitiated, and also for old fans like us who had almost forgotten how incredible this shit is. FYI some of the Torture Garden tracks also appeared on cd on the self-titled Naked City disc on Nonesuch (1989) and the Avant-label release Grand Guignol (1992).

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Downtown jazzmaster cum avantegardist John Zorn plunges into the world of opera with Rituals, composed for the Bayreuth Opera Festival in 1988. At just under 27 minutes it has to win the Guiness Book of World Records award for the shortest opera. An engaging and mysterious work written for solo voice and 10 instruments, Rituals' strange orchestration includes Owls, Wind Machines, Gravedigging, and Ritual Magick! This recording of Rituals features Heather Gardner, Tara O'Connor, Mike Lowenstern, Peter Kolkay, Jim Pugh, Jim Pugliese, Stephen Drury, Jennifer Choi, Fred Sherry, Kurt Muroki and the inimitable Willie Winant.

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This weeks' John Zorn overload intensifies with the release of these 1986 Zorn radio-play soundtracks, similar to his noir-genre-splice piece Spillane of the same period.

Wow! Essentially part two to Zorn's wonderful Bar Kohkba. Let's go with the obi: "The first cd, Issachar, showcases the exciting Masada String Trio and features the telepathic interplay of Mark Feldman, Erik Friedlander and Greg Cohen. The second cd, Zevulum, expands the trio into a sextet with Marc Ribot, Cyro Baptista and Joey Baron. Passion and virtuosic fireworks abound in this historic set of New Jewish Music at its best."

Obi (Wan Kenobi) explains: "Zorn's infamous solo music for saxophone and duckcalls brings together his obsessive love for cartoon music, free jazz and musique concrete in a passionate and astonishing heterophony." 2 albums on one disc, c. 1981-85.

Nothing can do better justice to a John Zorn release than his own obi (that chic Japanese-style paper card that fits over the spine), so without further ado, we give you the word from the horse's mouth: "This exciting release initiates a new series of CDs documenting the best of John Zorn's infamous game pieces, harnessing improvisers in complex compositional formats, combining the unpredictable edge of improvisation with the structural integrity of written composition. "Xu Feng" (shoo-fung) was composed immediately after "Cobra" and is the most dynamic and fast-paced of them all. Intense and violent, and featuring an extraordinary all-star band [Fred Frith, John Schott, Chris Brown, David Slusser, Dave Lombardo & William Winant], "Xu Feng" captures the exciting Kung-fu action of the martial arts for which the piece is named."

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

SORRY. Unbelievably, the FINAL volume in the Masada series, featuring as usual Zorn, Dave Douglas, Greg Cohen and Joey Baron. Also, as usual, it's great.

Long-awaited reissue of rare 1984 lp, a collaboration between Zorn's saxophone and the Japanese shamisen of Sato Michihiro (who has also been heard collaborating with other downtown NYC types on his wonderful "Rodan" album from a few years back, and solo on a great PSF disc). Includes bonus tracks.

Includes the infamous "Bad Hawkwind".

This is John Zorn and "Yamantaka" Eye, part of the Radical Jewish Culture series.

No need to belabor the point on this one. This is the first Zoviet France record in 13 years. It's a triple vinyl set with a 12", a 10", and a 7". This is the second pressing mind you, as the first sold out in less than a day when it was released back on October 7, 2012 (a fitting date for the format!). We can safely report that the droning loops are as good as anything that Zoviet France did during the latter part of the Robin Storey era (e.g. Shadow Thief Of The Sun, Shouting At The Ground, Look Into Me, etc.). Storey and Ben Ponton were responsible for the best work for Zoviet France from 1981 to the early 90s, producing beautiful hypnogogic sounds, looping passages, and ethnomusicologically unhinged instrumentation all cast through tape delay effects and time-lag accumulation. Storey left unceremoniously in 1992 taking with him Zoviet France's prolific work ethic, but never really achieved the full glory that Zoviet France once had. Ponton continued on with the project in fits and starts, but he never seemed to find the right chemistry... until now. If you know Zoviet France's work even in passing, you will NOT be sorry. At the same time, we are not all that confident we'll be able to stock this in the future. Delay picking this up at your peril.

It's a little strange that we had never written anything about Zoviet France's 1995 classic album Digilogue, since we love this band and their albums were all uniformly exhilarating and hypnotic, this one especially. So, here we are waxing poetic about this album even as Zoviet France has all but disappeared from the public eye, with founding member Ben Ponton holding onto the project even though no new recordings appear in sight and as former member Robin Storey has released a whole bunch of middling albums (amidst a couple of greats) as Rapoon. Given how many contemporary gutteral drone artists have been delving into tape loop manipulation, multiple delay pedal configurations, and transcendent tones vulcanized from base elements, listening to Zoviet France in today's climate is essential... as it would prove that this British semi-anonymous collective had better ideas, better execution, better packaging, and better results than 99% of what's coming out today. Sadly, the Zoviet France albums that would have best paralleled much of the current lo-fi drone obsession (i.e. Eostre, Norsch, Mohnomische, and even Shouting At The Ground) are all woefully out of print thanks to a unreconcilable rift between the aforementioned Ben Ponton and Robin Storey. Only a handful remain available for public consumption; and Digilogue is one of them, demonstrating the Zoviet France process of overlapping loops, hypnotic atmospherics, and ephemeral dub activity when applied to digital technology. While there is a considerable crispness to many of the sounds heard on Digilogue, Zoviet France still managed to render their sounds as if they were the liturgical / ritualist music for some hitherto unknown non-Occidental culture hidden in the English countryside. Digilogue's opening track "Alchemagenta" is a noteworthy entry into the Zoviet France pantheon of sounds for its eerily dubbed out miltaristic horn stab which former AQ-employee Byram Abbott was convinced made its way on to an early episode of The Simpsons. Mechanized bells, streched out vocal plainsongs, and oceanic swells of electric wash all cascade through Zoviet France's graceful use of delay patterns for what truly is one of the best records of the '90s and is absolutely required listening for anyone with a passing interest in experimental music over the past 50 years. Digilogue has been out of print for quite some time now, and now is available once again.

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Throughout the '90s, the legendary post-industrial ensemble Zoviet France had experienced a handful of changes within its anonymous citizenship, with newcomers bringing forth digital technologies and propensities for that 'new' electronica sound. While Zoviet France itself maintained its aesthetic trajectory of building miasmic looping drones and radical dub deconstructions that

While Post Modernity and its malcontent little brother Punk effectively deconstucted and ridiculed religious institutions by pointed out their hypocrisies and inconsistancies with rational thought, the two have been wholly unconcerned in addressing the possibilities of transcendence or the notions of the sublime. Zoviet France is an anonymous collective of British sound artists who have been clearly educated with the halls of Post Modernity and inspired by Punk's self-sufficiency; yet, the lack of an existential awe in the face of the Divine never settled easily with the group. Beginning back in the early '80s, Zoviet France developed a musical aesthetic for private rituals built from the artifacts and residues from what they saw as a cultural disintegration (both physically and existentially). To a certain extentw, Zoviet France was making liturgical music to a religion that never existed, but offered resemblences to what transcendent music should sound like. The hypnosis from a drone, the relentlessness of a tribal drum circle, and dub's etherial references to various nether regions are all part of Zoviet France's arsenal of quiet noise making devices. Originally released as a cassette back in 1988, "Loh Land" is one of the few albums from Zoviet France's early days that is still in print, and encapsulates many of their ideas for a fictional music rich with amorphously spiritual connotations. The aforementioned drones, dubs, and drums alongside distanced vocal chants with have been thoroughly abstracted through a series of delay effects boxes, tape loop machines, and multi-track studio tricks, to create the album's murky atmopshere. Zoviet France's "Loh Land" succeeds in being beautifully but indeterminantly holy.

RealAudio clip: East Taunts West
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Zoviet France formed in relative isolation in Newcastle, far removed from the rest of the UK industrial and art-punk communities. They furthered the mystery around their sonic abstractions by working in anonymity and by presenting their work in beautifully eccentric packaging (i.e. roofing shingles, aluminum foil, wood boxes, porcelain baked cassettes wrapped in radioactive feathers, etc.). The exact history of Zoviet France remains elusive, although a dramatic rift in the project occured in the middle '90s when founding member Robin Storey left Zoviet France to form his solo project Rapoon. Ben Ponton, one of the other founding members, continued on with Zoviet France, drifting away from Storey's signature looping technology and towards an alien isolationism tricked out with disembodied samples. While both Rapoon and the recent Zoviet France records have certainly had plenty of successes, none had matched the collaborative genius of Zoviet France during the Ponton / Storey days. In a rare interview in the mid '80s, Ponton explained that Zoviet France would record hours of material and then sort it out at a later date. This brings us to Music For A Spaghetti Western which dates back to 1986, one of the most prolific periods for Zoviet France as they began recording numerous large scale projects including the 4-part series Charm, Ceremony, Chance, Prophesy which included two LPs and two cassette only material as well as the monumental Popular Soviet Songs and Youth Music (originally housed in the aforementioned porcelain packaging). Given the amount of material that Zoviet France had finished during that time, it's not surprising that a couple of things never got completed, such as Music For A Spagehtti Western. With many of the ZF recordings being splattered collections of short fragments anyway, the shards of hypnotic loops that comprise the ZF Spaghetti Western make sense in the greater context of the band. As on those aforementioned albums, ZF explore the imagined ceremonial music for non-existant cultures bringing chiming strings, hand percussion, breathy flutes, and extended vocalizations to a dark kaleidoscope of tape loop machinations and multiple delay pedals. If this sounds similar to the work of Finland's Avarus or Kemialliset Ystavat, Zoviet France does share some of those aesthetics, expect for the undeniable fact that ZF are maybe even better at it. With almost their entire catalogue in limbo, any new recordings are a reason to rejoice, and recordings as beguiling as these are certainly most welcome indeed.

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We first heard of Zoviet France's latest offering "The Decriminalization of Country Music" back in December; yet it has taken until now for the distribution channels to get into place for this record to finally make its way here to Aquarius. With almost Zoviet France began 20 years ago as an anonymous collective of musicians who embraced the DIY attitudes of Punk and Situationism, yet found inspiration in Terry Riley's tape mechanisms, Lee 'Scratch' Perry's schizoid dub production, and the wonders of non-Western instruments (tablas, bouzoukis, Tibetan bowls, Egyptian reeds, etc.). While each of their albums hold very distinct aesthetics, the basic ZF sound is a eerie cyclical drone built from a interlocking network of tape loops with dubbed intrusions of the aforementioned ethnic instruments. One of the subtle ties between all of the Zoviet France records is the process of recycling material, in which a handful of discreet sound elements repeat throughout the album within a broad spectrum of recognizability. For an album like "Hessian" it would be the surreal chant "OK, Boys!" and for "Feedback" it would be the distant whir of a sputtering drum machine. "The Decriminalization of Country Music" is one of the more obvious examples of Zoviet France's recycling process, as they had been commissioned by the Tramway Gallery in Glasgow, Scotland to re-interpret the sounds of the gallery's extensive redevelopment from a desolate warehouse to a workable exhibition hall. While ZF utilizes various construction site sounds and the resonant properties of the room itself, the dominate theme for "Decriminalization" is the sound of a languorous slide guitar, making comparisons to Ry Cooder inevitable. At the beginning of the record, Zoviet France boldly introduces the haunting guitar sounds against quiet static loops and rich drone synthesis. Yet as the album progresses, the guitar's presence becomes more diffuse, with only a few fragments of muffled twangs hovering amidst the post-industrial ambience by the end of the album. "The Decriminalization of Country Music" stands as Zoviet France's most minimal piece to date, and like all of their records is an amazing, if not required listening experience.

RealAudio clip: Something Spooked The Horses
RealAudio clip: Pyroclastic Flow

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

SORRY. Early recording by Zoviet-France circa 1981.

There can really be no doubt any more. Zu are the heaviest, fiercest jazz combo ever. And to be honest, they are barely even jazz. They are more some sort of furious metallic math rock outfit that just happens to have a saxophone, and who just so happen to bee able to kick out some bad ass jazziness amidst all the pummeling and rocking they seem to always be doing. This super limited picture disc, features two brand new tracks, both serious barnstormers. The first side begins with churning detuned bass which gives way to a super freaked out burst of psych spazz drumming and wild skronking horns eventually locking into a weird jazzy sci-fi krautrock groove complete with creepy Goblin-esque synth swells. The flip side offers up more jazzy math rock weirdness, swinging wildly from spastic skitter to near-metallic groove sounding more like the Ruins than ever, although things are going on like crazy underneath the surface, pizzicato strings, backwards loops, weird ambient sounds, and brutal bursts of blast beat skronk. Outrageously thick vinyl, a gorgeous picture disc with some killer creepy skull art on one side, and swirling psychedelic eye candy on the other! ----* ----* tUMULt: Back In Print And Back In Stock : ----*

How this one never got reviewed by us before, we'll never know. Two tracks from avant jazz heavies Zu, remixed and reworked by Phantomsmasher / James Plotkin. The already head shearing / ear drum destroying shred of Zu's unhinged metal jazz crush just gets more warped and wild and all gloriously twisted up. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, super swank packaging, colored vinyl in a diecut quarter sleeve, includes a download code as well.

Weirdo black metal (?) from 2004, long out of print. How can you resist a song called "Black Narcotic Obfuscation"? The flip is "Birth, Sex, Death" so this pretty much covers it all. On Vendlus, also for fans of the left-field stuff on Garm's Jester label.

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It took us a while to suss out the name of this band, as the way it's written is actually a series of lines and dots and squares, which somehow equate to Night Toilet. It's almost better not knowing, as the music here is much better represented by the mysterious Morse code like moniker, a sprawling collection of abstract guitar/drum experimentation, that ranges from the spare, minimal, skeletal kraut-pop of the opener, all simple abstract drumming (apparently played by two drummers, sharing one and a half drum kits simultaneously), the guitars clean and shimmery, spidery melodies, pocked with the occasional chordal soft squall, to dirgey NZ style noise rock, all knuckle-dragging drum thud, and wild tangles of guitarnoise, sputtering, stuttering, avant-rhythmic doom-dirges that occasionally blossom into something much more fierce, as often as they (d)evolve into something more blissed out and dreamy, whether that be long stretches of softly tangled kosmiche shimmer, of abstract, nocturnal ambient drift... Some good band math might be Dead C meets Aluk Todolo meets Geronimo? Or This Heat meets Bastard Noise? But then all the pretty parts should appeal to fans of all strains of drifty dreaminess... Grinding, crumbly, noisy, loose, free, but also dense and driving and repetitive, circular and mesmeric, hazy, atmospheric, cinematic, there even seems to be what sounds like horns, bleating forlornly on some of the tracks, we won't say too much, cuz we only have THREE copies. And can't get more, but wanted at least three of you our there, with a thirst for abstract instrumental drone-noise WTF outsider damaged psychedelia, to get a chance to get your hands on one of these. The packaging too is over the top: super thick, gatefold sleeves, paired with a heavy two sided silkscreened chipboard insert. Grab one quick if you can, before they're gone for good.

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To be completely honest, this record was released well over a year ago; but for reasons not known to us, Kantamoinen has only now just been made available here in the US. Ø is the work of Mika Vainio, the Finnish electronic artist who hails from the techno-brutalist duo Pan Sonic and has produced some amazing solo records for Touch. It's been a very long time since Vainio has taken up the Ø moniker, best known for producing the seminal Metri album back in the mid-'90s. Where Metri was a minimalist techno masterpiece of phase shifting arpeggiations of fragile electric tones topping skeletal 808 rhythms, Kantamoinen is far closer to the albums Vainio recorded for Touch, where shivering swathes of arctic ambience and abstracted tone poems emerge from Vainio's sleepless fits of mad-scientist energy. Occasionally, Vainio grounds his plasma and gamma-ray experiments on slow-motion and very sparse electro rhythms, with little of the swagger and groove heard in the Pan Sonic drum machine attacks. Rather, the rhythm on Kantamoinen is a sleepy affair, barely holding the gravitational pull on his weightless electronics. If it weren't for all of those Touch releases in between Metri and this, Kantamoinen wouldn't make much sense at all; but in the context of Vainio's catalogue, Kantamoinen is another wonderful and weird piece of electronic music.

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If you happen to be reading this review online and you get some unkempt bit of jibberish for the artist's name, this is Mika Vaino using his moniker of just an O with Slash through it. While the ascii may come out all screwy, we've been told that the correct pronunciation is "ohm." Anyway, Mika Vainio is the Finnish electronic genius who began recording in 1993 under this moniker with a handful of absolutely essential singles matching the equally essential Metri cd from 1994. Along with Ilpo Vaisanen, Vainio is also responsible for the equally Arctic but considerably more muscular techno project Pan Sonic (nee Panasonic). The records he's best known for embarked on a hyper minimal techno of 4/4 pulses smashing through phase-shifting patterns from his self-built synthesizers and so called "complex sound generators." Recently, the rigidity of Vainio's techno architecture has given way to slinkier grooves of variable breakbeats and plenty of excursions into electro-acoustic abstraction. As cool as his devices are, he's never been one to muster anything truly exceptional without being grounded upon rhythmic principles; and for the most part, Vainio delivers the beat. And he delivers a mighty fine album of frozen electronica. The tracks are dominated by very groovy breakbeats with pristine electronic melodies, frigid ambient gestures and descending icy tones with slinky basslines. It's certainly more captivating than Alva Noto or Ryoji Ikeda, but coming from a similar place. Vainio also offers a mighty fine cover of Pink Floyd's "Set The Controls To The Heart Of The Sun" with the vocals cast as an downer electroid riff laced with acid squiggle. Recommended!

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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. Beautiful hyperminimal electronica between Ø (aka Mika Vainio, who is one third of Panasonic and runs the Sähkö label in Finland) doing glacial drones from his unique hand crafted tone generators, and Noto making abstract clicks and clacks much like Oval's skipping discs and gum smacking. Not to be missed!

While "Mikro Makro" gives the false impression that Mika Vainio (aka � and half of Pan Sonic) and Carsten Nicolai (Noto) actually collaborated together for that album, "Wohltemperiert" is technically the first documented collaboration between these two figureheads of the minimalist electronica pulse. Mostly recorded in the winter of 1998 during an extended stay in New York, Vainio and Nicolai did not employ any of their own gear, instead using equipment provided by their friend Lary Seven. While both artists have made previous works that openly explored the clean schematics of archetectural forms within a crystalline techno, they have mostly done away with the archetypes of purist techno on "Wohltemperiert." It's quite possible that Nicolai has subjugated himself underneath Vainio's recent predilections for much more private procedures of coaxing little accidents out of mis-configured analogue equipment and ill-grounded cables. Much like the preceding Vainio albums "Onko" and "Kajo," "Wohltemperiert" ripples with buzzing electrical drones, twin-tone melodic vibrations, the occasional glisten of a technotic pulse, and vast extended crackles, resulting in an album that is surprisingly dark for these two. Take away much of the death / abject imagry from the industrial masterpieces by MB or SPK, and you come close to the wintery bleak atmospheres found here. "Wohltemperiert" is a welcome diversion from the Raster-Noton sound, which has been running the risk of self-parody and self-reflexivity as of recent.

RealAudio clip: Mur
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